So here I am. Left dangling, as they say.
“Looks like e’s lost ‘is head,” some wit shouts, peering up towards my branch.
“Forgot hisself more like.”
The jokes pass along the moving line; spiralling into the hot morning sky, mingling with the caws of the ravens swirling hopefully above; knife- beaks at the ready; like they’re hoping my eyes might have grown back in overnight.
Bloody stupid ravens. I don’t know what’s worst - them, or the bloody stupid jokers tramping past that thinks they’re so clever.
“I en’t lost my head you numbskulls,” I want to roar down. “If you care to look proper my head’s still here innit? It’s my bleeding body that’s gone.”
They do say your hearing’s the last thing to go. They never said nothing about your thinking. When’s that gonna stop I wonder.
‘You never hear the one that gets you’; that’s another thing they says.
I reckon they must’ve told us that one to cheer us up, ‘cause I heard mine all right. A great hum and a roar, and a whoosh, like God’d let off an almighty trump, and suddenly the sky’s full of bits. It’s raining arms and legs. There’s screams and groans in the corn beneath the gibbet, and the stench of guts rises, steaming and sticky, like the butcher’s just opened shop. And my hanging body is wrenched from my neck and goes flyin’ down among them to join the fun.
Leaving my head still up here, swinging in the noose like a turnip on a string.
‘cause I’d already been got once, you see. This was my second getting you could say. Though my first one wasn’t a German mortar, it was Major Bassington-Smythe.
I was sorry about the cornfield. It was the only spot of colour in this festering sea of slime. Like someone’d spread out a soft yellow shawl; just the sight of it refreshed your eyes. If there was a lull in the guns, me and Jim Malone and Sammy Holden used to sneak along here just to have a look. We never said nothing – just leaned on the fence staring; drinking it in; breathing great gulps of it, letting its peace soak into our noise-battered heads. Now I suppose it’s the same murky sludge as everywhere else. Can’t see none of it of course; but I can remember.
I remember the dawn stillness; the dwindling darkness; the pale-faced little moon in a lacy cloud veil, hovering like it was hoping some gentleman would escort it home. I remember the drill-party hustling me through the forest, me stumbling on tree roots and falling and being dragged up again. I say forest. It were that a few days ago, dusty and dim like the woods back home; quiet as church, with little splashes of light where the sun’d sneaked up and lobbed a few beams past the pine trees. Now it’s a graveyard. A mess of charred trunks and stinking holes. Moss churned into mud; a bed of bones.
I remember the log fence where the path met the field. I had to roll over it on account of the handcuffs. Landed on my elbow; didn’t half hurt. The cornstalks opened to welcome me like they’d been waiting. They was cool and rustling and sparkling with dew, and there was a ladybird caught in a cobweb on one of them. I just wanted to lie there for ever, but Major Smythe –Bassington ordered them to get me up.
By rights I should have been shot, all formal and correct but the Major said there was a big push coming and we had to move on toot sweet as the Frenchies say.
“No time for the niceties,” he’d said.
There was time enough to rig up a gibbet though; sling a rope over a handy branch on the one tree that was still standing.
“I’ll make the fellow an object lesson,” I heard him say. “It’ll stiffen resolve seeing him hanging there. If nobody’s man enough to do it I’ll do it myself.”
Turns out a couple were man enough so he didn’t have to soil his hands after all.
The chaplain didn’t like it though. He said they should take me along with them so they could do the thing by the book when we got there; have me executed proper. But the major said the men were getting jittery; it’d be bad for morale to have to march with a Hun-lover, he said. He wouldn’t be able to answer for my safety. And if the chaplain made a fuss about it, then he was afraid there’d be only one conclusion they could draw.
I’m no Hun-lover. You make sure to tell that to my ma. I weren’t quick enough to stick him that’s all. He were only a tiddler, it’d be like pitchforking my little brother. He had the same mussed up blond hair and round face as our Billy, even the same freckles. And his nails was bit to the quick just like our Billy’s. The poor little bugger was shaking so’s he could scarce hold the bayonet and his eyes was staring so wide I thought they was going to pop out. They was the brightest blue I’ve ever seen. I just stood there, looking at him.
So Sam Holden stuck him instead. But it was too late, the sergeant had seen.
‘He who hesitates is lost,’ Mr McKnight at school used to say, just before he blacked your eye for not answering quick enough in class.
‘Twelve eights is er…’
Wham. You’d be sprawled on the chalky floorboards, blubbering and wiping the cow muck from Will Ridley’s boots off your mouth, and tasting your own salty blood.
Happiest days of your life, they used to tell us.
I reckon they was right.


So here I am. Left dangling, as they say.
“Looks like e’s lost ‘is head,” some wit shouts, peering up towards my branch.
“Forgot hisself more like.”
The jokes pass along the moving line; spiralling into the hot morning sky, mingling with the caws of the ravens swirling hopefully above; knife- beaks at the ready; like they’re hoping my eyes might have grown back in overnight.
Bloody stupid ravens. I don’t know what’s worst - them, or the bloody stupid jokers tramping past that thinks they’re so clever.
“I en’t lost my head you numbskulls,” I want to roar down. “If you care to look proper my head’s still here innit? It’s my bleeding body that’s gone.”
They do say your hearing’s the last thing to go. They never said nothing about your thinking. When’s that gonna stop I wonder.
‘You never hear the one that gets you’; that’s another thing they says.
I reckon they must’ve told us that one to cheer us up, ‘cause I heard mine all right. A great hum and a roar, and a whoosh, like God’d let off an almighty trump, and suddenly the sky’s full of bits. It’s raining arms and legs. There’s screams and groans in the corn beneath the gibbet, and the stench of guts rises, steaming and sticky, like the butcher’s just opened shop. And my hanging body is wrenched from my neck and goes flyin’ down among them to join the fun.
Leaving my head still up here, swinging in the noose like a turnip on a string.
‘cause I’d already been got once, you see. This was my second getting you could say. Though my first one wasn’t a German mortar, it was Major Bassington-Smythe.
I was sorry about the cornfield. It was the only spot of colour in this festering sea of slime. Like someone’d spread out a soft yellow shawl; just the sight of it refreshed your eyes. If there was a lull in the guns, me and Jim Malone and Sammy Holden used to sneak along here just to have a look. We never said nothing – just leaned on the fence staring; drinking it in; breathing great gulps of it, letting its peace soak into our noise-battered heads. Now I suppose it’s the same murky sludge as everywhere else. Can’t see none of it of course; but I can remember.
I remember the dawn stillness; the dwindling darkness; the pale-faced little moon in a lacy cloud veil, hovering like it was hoping some gentleman would escort it home. I remember the drill-party hustling me through the forest, me stumbling on tree roots and falling and being dragged up again. I say forest. It were that a few days ago, dusty and dim like the woods back home; quiet as church, with little splashes of light where the sun’d sneaked up and lobbed a few beams past the pine trees. Now it’s a graveyard. A mess of charred trunks and stinking holes. Moss churned into mud; a bed of bones.
I remember the log fence where the path met the field. I had to roll over it on account of the handcuffs. Landed on my elbow; didn’t half hurt. The cornstalks opened to welcome me like they’d been waiting. They was cool and rustling and sparkling with dew, and there was a ladybird caught in a cobweb on one of them. I just wanted to lie there for ever, but Major Smythe –Bassington ordered them to get me up.
By rights I should have been shot, all formal and correct but the Major said there was a big push coming and we had to move on toot sweet as the Frenchies say.
“No time for the niceties,” he’d said.
There was time enough to rig up a gibbet though; sling a rope over a handy branch on the one tree that was still standing.
“I’ll make the fellow an object lesson,” I heard him say. “It’ll stiffen resolve seeing him hanging there. If nobody’s man enough to do it I’ll do it myself.”
Turns out a couple were man enough so he didn’t have to soil his hands after all.
The chaplain didn’t like it though. He said they should take me along with them so they could do the thing by the book when we got there; have me executed proper. But the major said the men were getting jittery; it’d be bad for morale to have to march with a Hun-lover, he said. He wouldn’t be able to answer for my safety. And if the chaplain made a fuss about it, then he was afraid there’d be only one conclusion they could draw.
I’m no Hun-lover. You make sure to tell that to my ma. I weren’t quick enough to stick him that’s all. He were only a tiddler, it’d be like pitchforking my little brother. He had the same mussed up blond hair and round face as our Billy, even the same freckles. And his nails was bit to the quick just like our Billy’s. The poor little bugger was shaking so’s he could scarce hold the bayonet and his eyes was staring so wide I thought they was going to pop out. They was the brightest blue I’ve ever seen. I just stood there, looking at him.
So Sam Holden stuck him instead. But it was too late, the sergeant had seen.
‘He who hesitates is lost,’ Mr McKnight at school used to say, just before he blacked your eye for not answering quick enough in class.
‘Twelve eights is er…’
Wham. You’d be sprawled on the chalky floorboards, blubbering and wiping the cow muck from Will Ridley’s boots off your mouth, and tasting your own salty blood.
Happiest days of your life, they used to tell us.
I reckon they was right.