大象传媒

A friend of mine, who was rather severely wounded when he was 19 in ww2, showed me this letter he had written to a girlfriend some 10 years after the end of the war in response to her enquiry 'Why are you so determined always to see things differently from other people'.
Dear Jan
This is just a phase of my evening, an uncontrollable desire to tell you of an experience that I believe is my reason for being as I am. Memories come flooding back and I feel the sudden sting of tears for which I am not ashamed. I am rather melancholy but it is a proud melancholia.
I am watching the closing ceremony of a function at Edinburgh Castle and the Band of the Irish Guards are playing the Sunset Call at the lowering of the flag. The piper鈥檚 dismal wail, the kilt swaying in the slight breeze - and I am transported in mind 10 years back.
I hope you don鈥檛 mind my writing of this to you. You see, were you here, doubtless I should talk of this with you, and writing, I am almost doing that.
Ten years ago! It seems another world was then. The skirl of the pipes sound no different, only the setting changes and becomes as it was then, when life first donned such importance.
A glass-hard moon, cold with snow deep underfoot, the assembly in little groups of men who were afraid. The nervous fumbling with cold fingers checking equipment checked many times before. The fear that makes men angry, the almost hysterical reaction to the careless snapping of a twig, the rise in tension at the approach of the moment, the complete absence of any question of why one should be doing, feeling, all this.
And in the closing minutes that seemed to rush towards one, one wanted to think of what life was before, the experiences one would have wished for; and only succeeds in remembering how hard the biscuits were today. Thoughts of the life that was and may be yet are luxuries beyond the reach of minds that only know of a sudden that life life and death keep such close company. An hour before one thought the waiting was as being on the rack but now, with minutes flitting by as seconds how pleasant an agony that was for then one had the certainty of one more hour of life and now 鈥︹��.
Suddenly one is moving, blindly, hand clutching the shoulder of the man ahead, that claw on one shoulder the only reminder that one is not alone. Not alone? In this abyss of fear, bewildered, unthinking. Not alone? This was a greater loneliness that I had known before or since. A fearful thing when even my limbs were not of me, for like every man there, I knew that some must die this night and knew with a horrible certainty that I would be one. And dying can only be lonely for at dying one has not a single thing in common with the living.
In these moments realization came, too late, that no man could tell me anything of living. There were no great rights, no great wrongs, no ambition worth the having, nothing, if life could end in such a way as this. All the wonders of the world that I have known were showing false, for none could be greater than life and here that was to be destroyed.
We reached the river and it seems there was no shock as warm flesh dipped into icy water. It seemed such a usual everyday thing to be wading waist deep in an icy Italian river at 3 o鈥檆lock in the morning. Even when they demolished the bridge on our left as we crossed the river, its centre arch jerking skywards, ugly light against the black cloth of the night, it didn鈥檛 really seem unusual and though I lifted my arm involuntarily, a feeble protection, it was only as though I had strayed too close to a fireworks display. Until the life of a man 30 yards ahead was extinguished by falling masonry. Then, and all these changes in my feelings seemed to occur quite suddenly, suddenly I knew a great rage. The sort of rage which transforms simple, feeble, timid man into a hating, destroying animal; that makes him press forward, stumbling in his haste to avenge. It makes him curse, his voice distorted, his shout a scream edged with hysteria. It makes him spray the hostile darkness before him with death.
The kick and jolt of the gun against my body was exhilarating and now there are no thoughts of life or death, no thoughts at all in this cold hating mind. Just the knowledge of the darkness ahead that I must fill with death. All around me, men, no longer men, faces contorted with effort, with rage, scream, shout, struggle to mount the slippery bank, fall back clutching wildly at snow-covered mud.
Then a great swelling of pride as the company piper fills the bag and the wail of the pipes, eerie in such a setting spur one to greater effort. I wonder if one really smiles that smiles which seems to fill the body. Can one smile with staring eyes and hate the only occupant of the mind?
Now, crossing vineyards, the slap of wet leaves, the entanglement of vines which clutch at the body as it passes, almost imploring that this life is not wasted. And everywhere movement and noise.
Overhead the whine of death and the white light of tracer bullets cross the sky almost lazily just above one鈥檚 head it seemed. But that there is killing to be done, one could almost stop and clutch these beautiful lazy things from the sky. And just a little way away those same beautiful things had dropped lower and just as though he had tried to catch one, a man screams hideously, as its beauty, buried deep in the palm of his hand, shrivels the sinews catching the flesh afire.
Everywhere men scream, curse, shout. Some even laughed I remember. The cacophony of sound, the product of some brilliant orchestra and from behind the percussion in the form of the heavy guns beat a grotesque rhythm into death鈥檚 overture, sending emissaries of pain and death, sometimes sighing, now screaming, overhead. Shells fall a little way off, first in front, now a little to the left. Was I imagining things, as if one could, or was that rising plume of earth, smoke and lacerated man a little closer than the last.
One of our own 25 pounder shells fell short, its blast sweeping half the battalion into oblivion, and panic and confusion are everywhere. The screams of men who feel deaths鈥檚 touch are the most hideous of sounds and in fear one becomes callous and calls for them to stop their stupid moaning. Did one, I wonder, hope to intervene in a dying man鈥檚 futile argument with death. Here a man clutches a rifle that lies many yards from him; stares stupidly at what was once an arm, and screams, never closing his mouth so that the sound is only from the throat. And there are only 3 of us left now 鈥� three at our end of the company line untouched, at least physically, and we lay not very far apart along a hedge peering stupidly into the darkness ahead. All rage has gone now, once again we are afraid and the hideous music men make when dying adds to those fears. About us, bodies, little heaps of battered humanity, some moving just a little. Here were men we knew, with whom we had laughed, lying near some just crying quietly, pitifully as though they knew no pain other than in the heart, in the mind. Some screaming in terror and pain, others just dying quietly.
And for the now we three knew life without pain and wondered why. Peering through the hedge I see, silhouetted against the greyness of the sky, an enemy fighting patrol coming towards us. They are not men those moving shadows topping the rise. They are not men with thoughts to think, lives to live. They are but shadows, harbingers of my death. One of them stumbles humanly, lurching to regain his balance and I am shocked that they are really men.
Being in the centre of my companions I move back a little seeking a firing position, the chill of the gun of my cheek as I sight it is reassuring. Sighting is difficult with only gray cloud as a background but the first man in the group seems to dance in the little V of my sights and in that instant I am his god. I hold his life completely in the pressure of one finger. Behind me a man moans, his cries seem weaker, and very deliberately I hold my breath and squeeze the trigger. From that moment on nothing is very clear. I remember just as the gun began to buck against my shoulder, hearing or was it even feeling that something had fallen in front of me, between us three, and then a terrible blinding light of colour I have never seen, or was that just a manifestation of pain. The gun that for an instant had made me god, had gone, blown out of my hands over my shoulder, and I knew with great fear that I had been hit. The man on my left received most of the effect and he only screamed for a few seconds before dying. The other man clambered to his feet and ran off stumbling into the darkness. An unearthly wailing screaming sound was all about me, filling my ears, my head, and to my horror I realized that it emanated from my own throat.
I had been hit in the chest, no great pain, only the horrible fear of dying in such circumstances. One鈥檚 imaginings at such times are terrible, and putting my hand to my chest I felt blood-soaked tunic, wet and strangely heavy and I knew that my chest was smashed beyond repair, and only my tunic restrained it from complete disintegration and that soon the lungs would fail to draw those gasps of air that rasped the throat. But I would fight off death. I would drag each breath from the reluctant air, for I wanted life so very much.
The sounds from my mouth were mere whimpers now, for breathing was an effort, and pain was growing. I tried to stand, and called upon effort that would not come, only succeeding in rising to my knees. Kneeling, the weight of the tunic fell away from my body and I screamed as it dragged at lacerated flesh. I turned and crawled on hands and knees through snow, here and there churned to icy mud, threading my way through the scattered bodies of men for whom now I had no eyes, no thought. Every movement demanded great exertion, and gouts of blood flowed from my mouth as I moved each hand forward. Each painful breath seemed to hang a while, almost mocking my striving to draw it into the body, a little gift of life, one more moment of life and pain.
And then I was crawling whimpering, animal like through those same vineyards that had known my proud rage. The clutching vines now pronounced me dead, and would hold me back from the world of the living. In those moments that were to me all time, I knew the seductive touch of death, and fiercely brushed her cold hand from my brow.
I came upon two men, resting, and my coming didn鈥檛 startle them, for their minds I鈥檓 sure, like mine could not register shock at anything in this strange world.
One, his hand severed from the wrist, a rifle strap for a tourniquet, struggling on hands and knees his good arm under the shoulder of his companion trying to drag him along. His companion, moaning a little, the whole of him below the waist useless and dead, dragging himself on his stomach, and the man whose only loss was a hand, perhaps his livelihood or the ability to draw music and beauty from some instrument, encouraging and urging the other onwards.
Then followed that never ending drag, the man between us a leaden weight, stopping now and then to rest or just to vomit great gouts of blood, until we three proud warriors, reduced a little to the necessity of crawling on hands and knees reached the river we had crossed that night.
By now dawn was coming and looking down the steep slope of the bank we could almost see the water and it looked miles below. I remember too how desperately we tried to go down that slope slowly, edging down a little at a time, but with weakened grasp it was beyond us, and we three rolled, screaming in terror and pain down into the river..
The R.A.M.C. boys dragged us out and took us to a hut in which, before violence had assumed command the vine growers had kept their tools. I was propped up against a wall and the stretcher bearers came and looked 鈥淭here鈥檚 a bloke over here with a damn great hole in his chest鈥�, and another voice 鈥淵ou鈥檇 better just put a field dressing over it鈥�.
To me those words were my obituary, for a blackness was steeling over me that I tried to fight off knowing that it was death. Outside in the doorway of the hut stretcher bearers were trying to give some comfort to a man who had a smashed thigh. His screams it seemed were the music for my funeral. Then oblivion.
As I have written tears for which I know no shame have appeared for this, I believe, was the greatest experience I ever had.
Do you wonder now why I love life; Why I refuse to recognize any greater authority than I? Or yet why I alone would dictate as far as possible how I will spend my life to come, that legacy bequeathed to me that day 10 years ago.

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