Casca 21: The Trench Soldier (11 page)

The next morning Casca was posted back to the aeronaut. station. He was airborne shortly after dawn with Captain Bryce-Roberts. They were greeted with fusillades of rifle fire as they crossed over the German trenches toward the enemy's artillery emplacements.

"Blighters seem determined to get us," the captain said. "Dump some of that ballast, and we'll take her higher."

Casca dropped a full sandbag, counted to three, then let go another and then another, counting each time and noting with satisfaction that, as he had hoped, they fell in a rough line as the balloon rose and the tether line pulled it back over the trenches, attracting another furious burst of rifle fire. On his next count he dropped a Mills bomb and saw it explode on the earthworks in front of the German trench. The rifle fire ceased abruptly.

"Bravo!" Bryce-Roberts cried. "That shut the blighters'
yaps. Pity it didn't land in the trench."

"The next one will," Casca promised himself.

"Hello," Bryce-Roberts shouted, "what's with the hospital?"

Casca focused the glasses on the blazing tents. Tiny figures were moving in all directions, mule-drawn wagons
maneuvering to no apparent purpose. Clouds of smoke and dust were appearing here and there among the tents which were collapsing like card houses.

"We're shelling it, sir."

"Hell, that won't do. Get me a pigeon." The officer wrote furiously, recopying coordinates from his map. He clipped the message to the pigeon and threw it over the side.

"Bloody fools!"
Bryce-Roberts fumed. "They've mixed up the coordinates."

"Maybe somebody decided to make the hospital a target," Casca suggested.

"Then they're worse bloody fools yet," Bryce-Roberts snarled. "There's no point in wasting shells on men who are dying anyway. The job is to knock out those bloody guns that are plastering our boys. And anyway, it's not cricket."

Casca had never understood cricket even when he had played the game. He moved the glasses back to the shambles of bleeding mules and men among the ruined tents. "No," he said, "whatever it is, this certainly is not cricket."

They watched in mounting frustration as the carnage beneath them increased, the British artillery plastering the hospital tents over and over while the unhampered German guns were pouring an equally fierce barrage into the British lines.

Bryce-Roberts
was fairly dancing in rage. He turned to Casca. "I say, d'you have any more Mills bombs?"

Casca had brought half a dozen, all he could manage to steal from the vigilant quartermaster sergeant.

"D'you think you could do that trick again if I can get in position?"

"I'd sure like to try, sir."

Bryce-Roberts was spilling gas from the balloon and they were sinking fast, the tether line paying out so that they swept toward the German artillery. They passed so low that Casca could see men's faces, and he pulled the pins from two Mills bombs and hurled them downward. The first fell short, but the second exploded on the ground close to a howitzer. The gun crew fell to the ground, either hit or taking cover, but one gun was at least temporarily out of action.

But now they had drifted beyond the guns, and Bryce- Roberts tugged at the communication cord. They began the ride back as the tether line was hauled in.

This time Casca succeeded in dropping all three Mills bombs among the guns but didn't clearly see the results as the balloon was moving faster and faster and was now once more over the trenches. Casca could hear the whine of bullets and knew that the German rifle fire was coming close. He dropped two sandbags on the men below him and emptied his rifle magazine at them.

The German riflemen were now getting their range, and Casca was looking directly into their flashing gun barrels as he traded shots with them.

But Captain Bryce-Roberts stood at the rail of the basket as calmly as if he were on a yacht at Cowes, shooting a sun-sight with his sextant to accurately pinpoint the position of the guns beneath them. Only when he was satisfied that he had correctly established the coordinates did he tug at the communication cord.

But now the balloon started to fall again, and Bryce-Roberts tugged frantically at the communication cord, shouting to Casca, "Drop all ballast! Dump the pigeons, your gun, everything! The blighters put a hole in the bag!"

Casca didn't need to be told twice. The British lines seemed a long way in the distance, and the German trenches horribly close. And, for sure, the Jerries would have a hot welcome waiting for the balloon crew who had directed the fire onto their hospital. He cut loose all of the sandbags and the balloon rose for a moment, then settled again toward the earth. He helped the captain throw over the pigeon cages and map table.

Casca picked up two large knapsacks. "What about these?" he asked.

"Mmm, parachutes. Curious idea – open like an umbrella. Don't really know if they work." He glanced down at the ground. "We're too damned low to try anyway. Throw them over."

Bryce-Roberts unbuckled his holster. "Guns too!" he shouted. But Casca pointed back toward the German lines where dozens of Germans were clambering out of the trenches and running into no-man's-land beneath the fast descending balloon.

"Mmm," muttered Bryce-Roberts and held onto his pistol. He unbuckled his splendid Sam Browne belt. "The pater wore this at Spion Kop," he said regretfully as he threw it over along with his binoculars, cap, water bottle, and whisky flask. "And this," he sighed as he threw over his brass sextant and its teakwood box, "my grandfather used alongside Nelson at Trafalgar."

Casca had jettisoned his pack, bottle, helmet, and everything he could lay hands on but his rifle and ammunition.

They seemed to be only yards above the ground. More and more Germans were joining the chase, and it appeared to Casca that they were getting closer and the balloon getting lower with their every stride.

"Couldn't be more than twenty feet," he heard the captain shout. "No heroics, mind. Forget the bloody balloon. Jump the moment we hit the ground and run like bloody hell. Our boys won't shoot at us, they can see us now."

Casca looked ahead. It still seemed a hell of a long way to the friendly trench with its protecting entanglements of barbed wire. It was then that he recalled throwing over the wire cutters.

The aeronaut station was way behind the line, and they were now so low that
Tommies atop the earthworks of the British trenches were tugging at the tether line where it sagged across the trenches, shouting and waving encouragement while other Tommies were firing at the advancing Germans.

"Cut the wire! Cut the wire!" Casca found himself screaming uselessly.

The basket hit, bounced high, hit again and dragged to a stop.

Bryce-Roberts and Casca were tumbled in a heap on the floor of the basket and thrashed about like a fish in a dry bucket, trying to extricate themselves from each other, the basket, the sagging bulk of the balloon bag, and the tangle of lines that seemed to be everywhere about them like a net. The Germans were shooting at them, and Casca prayed that the heat of a bullet would not ignite the hydrogen in the balloon.

Then they were out and running, rifle fire behind them. Casca cursed the bayonet slapping against his thigh and the nine pound rifle in his right fist, but he held onto it. He would need both at the wire.

The British trenches were still a hundred yards away. A large knot of Tommies watching them approach, a few kneeling to aim carefully at the leading Germans. Casca took a single glance to the rear. The furious, but now elated, Germans seemed to be gaining on them, firing wildly as they ran. He saw one man go down, but there were dozens still on their feet.

Fifty yards now and Bryce-Roberts was screaming, "The wire!
The wire!" Casca wondered that he could spare the breath, and then heard his own voice shouting, too.

Maybe somebody heard them. Casca saw a sergeant start clipping at the inside wire, and he was joined by an officer and then another. At last they realized the problem, and more and more men worked at the entanglement, bending back the barbed strands as the men with the cutters severed them. But it was slow work, and there were three rows of wire.

Twenty yards. Fifteen. He shot a glance at Bryce-Roberts, and their eyes met. "We'll make a stand at the wire!" the officer shouted.

And then they were there. The
Tommies had cut through the first entanglement and were now working on the second. Three or four riflemen on their knees were firing at the Germans. All the others were watching like a crowd at a soccer game.

Casca swung around, firing a shot from the hip which brought one of the leading Germans to his knees. He worked the bolt action as he brought the rifle to his shoulder, now taking aim at the tightly packed knot of Germans. From the corner of his eye he could see Bryce-Roberts standing as if at a practice range, methodically aiming and firing his pistol.

From behind the wire more Tommies opened fire, but the Germans kept coming and kept shooting.

Bryce-Roberts stopped to reload, and Casca saw the pistol drop from his hand as a bullet struck his arm. A moment later Casca felt a scorching pain in his thigh, and he fell to the ground. Bryce-Roberts dropped beside him and both of them lay there reloading, and then they were firing again.

Behind the wire the Tommies were, at last, getting organized and were now pouring lead into the crowd of Germans.

But they kept coming. The shelling of their comrades in the hospital had them enraged, and they wanted the aeronauts at all costs.

Bryce-Roberts coughed, ceased firing, and fell flat. At the same instant Casca felt his left side torn open and was quickly drenched in his own blood.

Two out of three of the Germans were now falling to the British fire, but still they kept coming.

Casca's rifle was empty, there was no time to reload.

The closest German was only yards off. He got his bayonet fixed and pushed himself up onto his knees. "Like a Welsh coal miner," he thought as he ran the bayonet up into the first German's balls. The man went backward screaming, leaving the bayonet free, and Casca hammered it into another German's knee.

It was all he could do. A great wave of nausea engulfed him, his eyes clouded, and he collapsed, thrusting feebly with his bayonet at a third German whose rifle butt smashed the gun from Casca's grasp, then thudded against his skull.

Several hands grabbed him. Others picked up Bryce-Roberts. The Germans turned and ran, carrying the two bodies.

The British troops now had an opening in their wire, and they came pouring out, shooting as they ran. The first of them caught up with the Germans and fought them, shooting, stabbing, clubbing with their rifle butts, kicking and punching as they tried to wrest the two bodies from them.

The Germans stopped running and made a determined stand, decimating the front ranks of the
Tommies.

More and more men streamed out from the British trenches, one squad with fixed bayonets led by a lieutenant.

The Germans formed a tight cluster around their unconscious captives and traded bullets and bayonet thrust until there was not a man standing.

Casca awoke in the field hospital.

He ached and burned all over. When he lifted his head from the pillow, it felt as if he had slammed it into a wall, and he fell back groaning as his head throbbed as if under a succession of hammer blows. When the pain in his head diminished somewhat, Casca became aware of his other hurts. His right leg seemed to be on fire. His left side felt as if it had been opened with a wood saw. His exploring hand found blood-soaked bandages on both wounds and on his head.

A white jacketed captain came to the foot of the cot and looked down at him. "Well, you’re certainly a tough 'un," he was saying when the front of his jacket exploded open and he covered Casca with guts and blood, then crashed on top of him.

Casca registered the explosion that was followed by a succession of others as shell after shell burst in and around the hospital. Casca could hear men screaming and cursing. He was dimly aware of hurried movements as rescuers dragged wounded patients out of the shambles. But nobody came near him. He lay unable to move, crushed by the corpse of the doctor.

The bombardment went on and on. Somewhere nearby a fire started. Casca was aware of flames near the edge of his field of vision. He could smell burning and then the sickly stench of burning flesh. He could hear orders being shouted and men running. The flames died away, but the stink got worse, so strong that he could distinguish the odor of scorched flesh from the stench of the stinking mess that covered him.

The shells kept coming, landing now in some other part of the hospital as the Germans methodically laid waste the entire establishment.

The agony in Casca's side became immense. From long and painful experience, Casca knew what was happening. The Jewish prophet who had cursed him with his dying breath was yet again wreaking vengeance upon him, restoring him to life, the tissues of his body repairing and reknitting to keep him alive. The process was an agonizing reversal of the wounding, the tissues tormenting nerve endings in their reconstruction. It was exactly like being shot all over again but without the anesthetic effects of either shock of unconsciousness.

Casca wanted to scream, and maybe he did. In the bedlam of shouts, groans, explosions, the bellowing of wounded mules, the despairing shrieks of the reinjured wounded, he would not have heard, would not have known, his own voice.

Perhaps he lost consciousness, perhaps the hours of suffering simply ran together in his mind. But at last there was an end to the shelling.

It was night. Small sounds came to him. The whimpering of somebody crushed among the wreckage, the snorting of dying horse, distant shouted orders, from somewhere the crackle of flames, and, farther off, rifle and machine gun fire.

Closer he could see the flicker of lamps and candles and hear people moving about. He could hear the sounds of effort, occasional grunts of distaste or disgust as the dead were manhandled out of the ruins of the hospital tents.

The dead doctor's body was lifted off him, and then Casca felt himself being lifted.

"Boy, this one's really rotten," he heard.

Then a weightless
sensation, and he was crashing heavily amidst other stinking, mangled bodies.

"Hey Bill," the voice said again, "we've got a mix-up here
– this fella has two left legs."

"Oh, then that'll be Williams, Arthur," a laconic Cockney voice replied. "Williams was in my drill squad – was always turning the wrong way. Our sergeant used to say that he had two left legs."

A rough jerk and they were jolted away to the slow clicking of a mule's hooves and the creaking of wagon wheels.

The ride seemed to go on forever. No sound came from any of those around him, and Casca guessed that he was the only one alive in the cart. It only took another instant for him to realize that he was on the wrong side of a burial detail.

Even before his experience on Calvary, Casca had hated burial detail, and always strove to avoid the duty. But seen from this angle, burial detail was a real, stinking horror.

The bodies had been piled with a great deal less care than meat in a butcher's wagon. Some, like the doctor, had been blown
apart, others had been killed while undergoing surgery. Many were in several assorted pieces; arms and legs, spare hands, heads, entrails were loose all about the cart.

And all of this meat had the clammy chill of death and the abominable stink of the rot and decay that had already started.

Casca tried to shout, but there was an arm or a leg across his mouth, and others piled above that. He was struggling to breathe and was so weak from pain and loss of blood that he could scarcely make a sound.

The wagon stopped. He heard the mule driver cursing then felt the wagon move again.
This time backwards.

A second later he was flying through air and crashed on a heap of tangled bodies. Some of the bodies broke his fall, but he felt all of his wounds reopen and felt the sticky wetness of blood at his side, his leg, and from his head.

He must have lost consciousness for a moment. The next thing he knew was the smell and the taste of earth. He could hear the light rain of dirt falling onto the bodies above him. He was being buried alive.

The Nazarene's words sounded in his ear as they had when he withdrew his spear on Golgotha. "Soldier, you are content with what you are, then that you shall remain until we meet again."

For the eternal mercenary to be buried alive was a double horror – an unending one, for he would stay alive until the crucified Messiah's second coming. The prophet's curse denied him the ease of even the most dreadful death.

With a mighty effort Casca shifted the leg of the corpse lying on top of him. He got his head beneath the dead man's crooked knee. He could breathe, and the earth was not falling into his mouth. But the effort had cost him dearly. He could make no further movement and lay there, hearing the soft fall of the thrown earth, feeling the blood seeping from his wounds.

And then he was waking to light. Somewhere above him the black had turned to gray. And the gray lightened more as he watched. He recalled his arrival in the grave in the dark of night and concluded that the burial detail had only sprinkled the corpses with a layer of earth and would return with daylight to complete the job.

He struggled to move and discovered that his strength had been somewhat restored. The Messiah's curse had repaired some of the torn blood vessels, slowing the flow of blood and rebuilding the damaged cells.

But not enough. He was still as weak as death, and the weight of bodies above him was too much for his tiny strength. So be it. He closed his eyes and willed himself to return to sleep. Perhaps in a little while the repair would take more effect, and then he would try again.

He was awakened by a dull thump which was followed by several more. He realized that more bodies were being thrown into the grave.
A lot more bodies.

He heard a voice. "Well, that's the lot, then. Let's fill '
em in and get done with it."

Casca shouted, "I'm alive! I'm alive!"

"Hey," he heard from above the grave, "did you hear something?"

"Yeah,"
came the reply, "a voice from the grave, Arthur."

"But I'm serious, Bill," the first voice objected, "I heard some sort of muffled shout."

"Yeah, me too," the other replied, "but I've heard it before, Arthur. Some sort of effect from their being dumped, all jumbled up like, or maybe it's their guts rotting. I suppose the gas comes out through the throat, and it sounds like a voice."

Earth started falling.

"But what if one of them is alive?" Arthur's voice demanded.

The rain of earth stopped. "Suppose one of '
em is," was the answer, "what difference does it make? We'd never find him. We'd have to lift every bleedin' corpse out of that stinkin' 'ole and check 'em over. And we don't even know how. The doctors have already said they're all dead; how are you going to know any different, Arthur?"

Earth started falling again.

"And anyhow," Bill's voice went on, "if we did get someone up alive out of that bleedin' hole, they'd shove him back in the line in a minute, and by tomorrow he'd be back here again."

Earth started to fall more quickly.

Casca took a long, slow breath, exhaled slowly, then breathed again. Concentrating the entire energy of his body into the one effort, he stamped down with his legs and thrust upward with his arms.

"
Ow, Jesus," he heard a squawk. The fall of earth stopped.

"Yeah, I seen it too, Arthur," the laconic man said. "It happens sometimes. It's just gas escaping. I expect there's a lot of gas in all of them rotting bodies."