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.Nulli Secundus -
'Second to None'
by Terence Cardwell
Chapter
Thirty One - Shocked troops
Max Hemmler looked around. He could hear the wounded
soldiers crying out.
‘Help me, I don’t want to die, please help me!’
‘Mother, where are you, Mother?’
‘Oh God, help me, please anyone.’
Others were incapable of talking and lay moaning or
screaming in agony.
‘Where’s Karl and Klaus?’ Max called to Dieter, lying
only a few feet away.
‘Karl got it back there, a bullet in the head,’ he
replied, pointing over his shoulder. ‘And Stefan copped
it in the legs, but I think he’s still alive.’
‘At least Karl didn’t suffer,’ Max said. ‘If Stefan is
lucky he may get a ticket home.’
‘They must all have damn machine guns to fire like that.
they’re mowing us down like wheat,’ Max yelled.
‘Maybe this is a good a time to have that drink, before
it’s too late,’ Dieter suggested.
‘Why not?’ Max replied. He tugged the bottle from his
pocket, pulled the cork and rolled onto his back to take
a drink. He rolled back and passed the bottle to Dieter.
‘Have a good swig and pass it to the others. It might
give them more courage.’
Dieter took a drink and passed the bottle to the soldier
nearest to him, who received it eagerly.
Only a few minutes had passed before the whistle blew
again. They leapt up and charged forward. Their numbers
shrank as they repeated the action three more times. But
now they were within a hundred yards of the British
lines, so close they could smell the cordite from the
enemy rifles.
‘Well, this is it my friend; I don’t think we’ll survive
the next charge,’ Max called to Dieter, reaching his arm
along the ground. Dieter slid sideways until he could
take Max’s hand in a tight grip.
‘God speed, see you in the hereafter,’ he called.
They rose for the final assault. But the attack started
to falter when the last officers fell, and the soldiers’
courage disappeared as they saw how their numbers had
diminished substantially. Realising they had no hope of
taking the British trenches they fell to the ground.
Then en mass, on the order, they retreated towards their
lines. Some of them tried dragging their fallen comrades
with them and were hit by rifle fire, giving their lives
in an effort to save their comrades.
‘Fix bayonets!’ the sergeant major roared. ‘Charge! Come
on, over the top!’ He leapt up and over, quickly
followed by the Guards who screamed and shouted at the
tops of their voices.
‘Retreat, retreat,’ the sergeant called down the line to
the relief of the troops. Max and Dieter required no
urging and leapt up, racing back to their lines,
followed by the other soldiers.
There was a roar of voices and Max turned to see the
British troops leap out of their trenches, running after
them with fixed bayonets. He and Dieter increased their
pace in a desperate effort to escape. Throwing another
glance over his shoulder, Max saw the British soldiers
catching up to those who were wounded or slow,
bayoneting them in full flight.
A few German soldiers stopped to fire back, and although
some hit their target they were soon overwhelmed and
dealt with severely, being bayoneted a number of times.
Max was almost back at the lines when he tripped over a
fallen soldier. As he recovered himself he expected to
feel a bayonet or bullet strike him at any moment.
Expecting to see the British inches behind him, he
glanced over his shoulder and to his relief saw that
they had ceased their charge and returned to their
lines.
He looked at the soldier he had fallen over and saw he
was still alive. He was only a boy, perhaps eighteen
years old. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth
and was also slowly spreading over his jacket. The
soldier coughed, and winced in pain. He looked up at
Dieter, his eyes staring up with a look of terror.
‘Help me, please help me, I don’t want to die.’
Max raised his head a little to see the land between
them was still, with no soldiers moving.
‘If I carry him back they’ll shoot me. If I leave him
here he’ll bleed to death before the medics get to him.
I’ll have to live with leaving him to die for the rest
of my life,’ he thought. ‘What a terrible waste of a
young man. He could have been one of my students. How
naïve we were to believe in this horrible war.’
Max decided to help him. But how? When he raised his
head no one shot at him. ‘But they might if I stand up,’
he thought.
Deciding to stay on the ground, he stretched out and
took a tight grip on the young soldier’s shoulder
straps. He crawled back to his lines, dragging the boy.
Little by little he drew closer to the lines that seemed
terribly far away. He called to the hidden soldiers for
help, but no one came out, even though they were
watching .
‘Damn cowards. It would be different if they were here,’
he cursed. The stony ground was cutting into his knees
and legs, and he knew it would be doing the same to the
wounded soldier. He was now fifty yards from his lines.
‘It might as well be fifty kilometres,’ he thought. ‘To
hell with the Englanders; I will not give up.’ He cursed
them and dragged the soldier towards him, then stood up,
lifting the boy to his shoulder. With his arm around his
waist he staggered towards his lines.
He waited for the inevitable bang of a rifle and the
bullet that would finish him. ‘At least I will die
helping my fellow man,’ he thought. ‘Why hasn’t the
bullet come?’ He was only twenty yards away, then ten
yards— still nothing.
The last ten yards seemed kilometres away and took
forever. Suddenly he was there, and collapsed into the
trench. Soldiers reached up to take the wounded soldier
from him and catch the two as they fell to the ground.
Loud cheering erupted from the British trenches, and men
who moments before had feared for their lives, now
patted each other on the back and hugged one other.
They had returned to their trenches after the bayonet
charge, high on adrenaline and eager to fight.
‘That’ll teach them a bloody good lesson,’ Bob said.
‘They won’t be back in a hurry.’
‘Nice shooting, Jack,’ George said, patting Jack on the
back. ‘You were knocking ’em over like flies.’
‘You did bloody well yourself. I reckon we all did. But
they were men, probably got wives and kids like us.’
‘That could be true, but Jack, remember we didn’t start
this war, they did,’ Bob said with his hand on Jack’s
arm.
‘Yes, and we’ll bloody well finish it for them,’ Jim
enthused, flushed from their success.
After the men stopped cheering there was an eerie
silence. Clouds of smoke drifted across the battle field
with the smell of cordite.
Then they heard sounds that were to be burnt forever
into their minds, that no soldier on either side would
ever forget. The sounds would haunt them with nightmares
for the rest of their lives.
Out of the battlefield terrible moaning came, like the
howl of a wind. Through this were the screams of men in
agony, some pleading for help in German, others begging
to die.
The cries brought the soldiers down from their elation.
As they looked over the parapets the terrible
vision of men with their arms and legs missing, trying
to crawl, lay before them. Wounded soldiers tried to
help their comrades. Bodies lay in heaps where they had
been shot, and men lay unable to move, gasping away
their last moments.
Blood was everywhere, covering the fallen soldiers and
the ground around them like a red sea.
As they watched they saw men lift themselves up, crawl a
short distance and collapse as their life blood spurted
from their bodies.
The Guardsmen could have shot the wounded who were
staggering or crawling back to their lines, but none
could bring themselves to do it. They witnessed in
horror the reality of war, recognising it for the first
time. Jack felt the bile rising, and desperately
swallowed to try to hold it down.
Another sound joined the first, the sound of men
retching, unable to control their repugnance at what
they were seeing.
Jim and Bob leaned against the bank, holding themselves
up as they vomited on the ground. Jack saw their eyes
transfixed, looks of horror on their faces he had never
seen before. George was breathing deeply, trying to look
away from the carnage. He looked at Jack and shook his
head.
‘This is slaughter— they’re fellow human beings. Men,
like us, with families. They’ve got wives, children,
brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and now we’ve
shot them. It’s bloody horrible.’
‘Worse than that,’ Jack replied. ‘They’re going to do
the same to us. We’ll be lucky if we survive this war.’
Bob had recovered and was listening, wiping his mouth
with the back of his hand.
‘If you had asked me if we would go to war with Germany
two months ago I’d have said you were bloody mad. Now
they’re our enemy and we’re doing our utmost to kill
each other or be killed,’ Bob said.
‘You are very lucky, mad or both,’ the sergeant said to
Max. ‘But you are also one very brave soldier.’ He began
to walk away then stopped as if in thought, and came
back to Max. ‘I never told you this, but seeing how you
risked your life to save someone else, I’d hate to see
it wasted. So I’ll give you a few tips.’ He looked
around to make sure no one was listening.
‘When you attack with the others, run a little slower
and try to keep someone in front of you. Let the heroes
run out and get killed; you and I can stay alive by
using our wits. You’re only given one life, so try to
look after it.’
The sergeant gave him a wink and tapped the side of his
nose with his finger. He walked away, leaving Max
standing stunned.
‘I’d never believe it,’ he thought in amazement. ‘A
sergeant telling me that! I suppose it makes sense. It
sounds like good advice.’
He leaned against the trench wall and quickly fell
asleep.
It appeared to be only minutes before he was woken to
loud shouting.
‘We attack in five minutes,’ the sergeant shouted.
Dieter came running up to him. ‘They’re mad; we’ll all
be killed before they realise how futile this is.’
Max told him what the sergeant had said. ‘Swear you
won’t tell anyone,’ he added, and Dieter nodded in
agreement.
They waited, and then they heard the sound they dreaded
most, whistles blowing over the sound of artillery,
commanding them to attack.
Max was amazed that there were still soldiers keen to go
over the top. He clambered over the parapet and ran
forward with the rest. Dieter ran alongside him, both
were making sure they were three rows back, as the
sergeant had suggested. Again there were the long lines
of grey uniforms with spiked helmets, but this time Max
derived no comfort from their presence.
They ran past their fallen comrades, still on the
ground. Some were alive and called out as they ran past,
but they could not stop for fear of being shot by their
own officers. Max felt the bile in his throat souring
his mouth, and his stomach seemed to be constricting,
knotting his intestines. The fear grew with each step,
but he held it under control, forcing himself to keep
running. Following the sergeant suggestion, they both
ran a little slower and kept soldiers in front of them.
The artillery was still firing on the British lines to
try and destroy the defenders. Although it was reaping a
toll nothing stopped them.
Suddenly, as before, there was the sound of rapid fire
as the British opened fire with their multitude of
machine guns, and men started falling everywhere. The
artillery guns continued to fire as the men neared the
trenches, ceasing only when they were one hundred yards
away. The British immediately increased their gunfire
even more, and Max knew he was about to die.
‘Down!’ someone shouted and Max fell to the ground. The
soldiers who lay prostrate on the ground tried firing at
the British with no success, and many were shot where
they lay.
‘Retreat, Uhlans retreat,’ an officer called out.
‘What a sweet word,’ Max thought, leaping to his feet,
and joined by Dieter he ran as fast as he could in his
heavy uniform. This time the British did not charge and
they returned safely to their lines, followed by the few
surviving soldiers.
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