Eleven Eleven - By Paul Dowswell Page 0,41
a dead fellow with a surprised look on his face. Oliver had said it was because, at the moment of his death, he had seen an old friend who had come to take him off to heaven. Will tried to hide his annoyance. He was too old for stories like that.
Will could run no further and he collapsed on to a thick patch of vegetation, gulping down great lungfuls of air. His mouth seemed very damp, and when he wiped it he was surprised to find his hand was covered in blood. Then he remembered that when his helmet had been shot from his head it had been knocked down over his face. The rim must have hit his nose, which had bled quite profusely. Inspecting it now, he didn’t know whether it was broken or just badly bruised. It hurt like hell when he touched it.
His hearing was still not right either. It was as if someone was closing his ears with their hands, then taking them away again. He lay there, occasionally banging the side of his head to try to stop the whistling and those strange dense blanks when he could hear nothing at all.
He surrendered to the silence and lay on his back, staring up through the treetops to the cloud-covered sky. Will didn’t believe any of that nonsense about heaven. How God could put these good-hearted men through such a living hell was beyond his understanding. The new padre said God moved in mysterious ways. Will didn’t like the Reverend Oliver. He looked at you like the village vicar used to look at the poorer boys when they put their grubby fingers in the biscuit tray at the school fête. Will preferred the padre they had had before. But, oddly, he was the reason Will no longer believed in God.
The Reverend Charles Clare was a toff. He’d been to Oxford University. But he would come right down to the firing line to mingle with the men, helping the slower ones with their letters. His wife made beautiful fruitcake, and when a package came over, he’d share it with them all. And he’d put a word in for old Pierce, the one who had been shaking so bad he couldn’t hold his rifle. The one the CO wanted to shoot for cowardice.
One morning the reverend announced his wife had just had twins. They were his first kids. One of the blokes knitted a couple of pairs of socks for the babies and went off to find him. Will had been surprised to discover quite a few of the men knitted on the front line. The man came back white as a sheet, still holding on to those little blue socks. ‘He’s in the latrine,’ he said. ‘Trousers round his ankles, top of his head missing. Stray bit of shell burst must have had him.’ Then he turned round and threw up. None of the men could understand how God could do that to one of his own.
After that, Will was convinced he lived in a rudderless world and only blind luck was going to save him. That didn’t stop him praying though – when they were under heavy fire or the shells were falling.
Now, as he lay on the edge of the forest, Will’s breathing slowly returned to normal. His heart stopped thumping in his chest and he began to feel a creeping sense of fear – not for the sniper, wherever he was. He had missed him for now. But Will had run away. He examined his conscience. Had they all run, or was it just him? In his mind’s eye, he replayed the scene. The shot that set him off had glanced off his helmet, and they had all run off, at least that’s what he remembered. But where were the others now? He daren’t call out for fear of drawing the attention of the sniper. He was even reluctant to stand up and look around in case he was spotted. What was he going to do? If he stayed there, alone in his sheltered hiding place, was he deserting? Was he showing cowardice in the face of the enemy? You could be shot for that. What should he do?
They had shot a boy just like him in early September. Jim said they had done it to encourage the others. Damn right it had. It had certainly worked on Will.
Peering through the foliage, Will realised he was close to the very edge of the