Tommy I was stretched out on my back, just looking up at pillowcase-white clouds that seemed to hang motionless on invisible clotheslines in a powder-blue sky. There were no birds singing, just a profound silence, which reminded me of standing in an empty country church with thick, solid walls and a lead-lined roof. I was aware of my surroundings, but just wanted to go to sleep. It had been the longest day of my life; one that I would remember until the day I died. That thought made me smile. This would in all probability be that day. One second I had been jogging across muddy ground that had been churned up and was full of water-filled craters, and the next I was laying here, deafened by the blast of exploding mortars. Reality flooded back in. Sound returned, and I could hear shouts, fearful pain-filled screams and gunfire. Black smoke drifted across the clouds to screen them from sight, and in the seconds that followed and I regained my senses, I was overcome and consumed by pain. It was as though my right leg was on fire. I somehow raised myself up on my elbows and looked down the length of my body, to see the bleeding stump that extended from the ragged remains of my uniform trousers. Panic rose. I was in No Mans Land, halfway between friend and foe. All around me were wounded and dying soldiers that could only be differentiated by the language of their plaintive outcries. And then there was silence and a break in the mindless killing. From out of the trenches on both sides came medics bearing stretchers to take the wounded back to temporary safety. A German was the first to reach near where I lay. He felt for the pulse of a fallen comrade, but the lad was beyond help. And then he knelt next to me, examined my blasted leg, and removed his belt and fashioned a tourniquet around my thigh to stem the flow of blood and undoubtedly stop me from bleeding to death. The years have slipped by, and now I am old and have watched the scourge of war take place dozens of times in my lifetime. It is an appalling state of affairs when the common man has to kill strangers in foreign lands for governments that cannot find the diplomacy required to peacefully resolve differences. I have enjoyed what I consider to be a full life, despite having left a leg on a battlefield in France. And now, as I pen this note in 1990 at the age of ninety-three, I am holding the belt that a stranger, who was supposedly my enemy, used to save my life. ©MICHAEL KERR ~ 2014
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:27:44 +0000