Christmas Eve, 1914, Flanders.
By December 1914, the exhausted Bavarian army had taken severe casualties such that it was all but wiped out. Fritz was one of only forty-two survivors from a company of two hundred and fifty that had engaged the British and Belgians at the first battle of Ypres—dubbed the Kindermord bei Ypern by the survivors. For the dead were the new recruits, young men and boys who had responded to the call several months earlier.
The guns still pounded the earth, turning the landscape into a desolate lunar panorama consisting of squelching mud, aided by the incessant rain of that autumn, wherein lay the decaying remains of comrades and foes alike. As he moved forward, flinching as another shell landed close by, his nose wrinkled in disgust at the sweet, sickly stench of putrefying flesh.
As a lance corporal runner, he was tasked with relaying messages from one part of the front to another. It was while doing this that another assault from the British lines started and he was forced to leave the trench when it received a direct hit, throwing bits of machine gun and gunners alike into the air, spraying metal fragments along with flesh and bone over the hapless messenger who managed to escape the blast to survive and run another day. His ears were ringing now and he was struggling to breathe with the exertion and the acrid atmosphere as he half walked, half waded through the glutinous mud that tugged at his boots, seeking to draw him down into its deathly embrace.
Another push, he thought to himself. Always another push. And always, he had noted, it was repulsed. By this time, the German army had adopted a defensive mode, so it was the British who charged headlong across the mud, barbed wire and lethal raking of machine gun fire to gain a few meters of ground at a horrendous human cost. Bloody fools!
He slithered through the mud, slipping and losing his footing, scrabbling to stand up, his hands and feet sinking in the mire that stuck to his heavy wool coat. His pickelhaube slipped across his brow and he pushed it back with a soiled hand, leaving slime across his face, cursing as he did so. Bastard war! Looking up as another exploding shell lit the skyline casting lurid shadows against the scorched, skeletal trees across the landscape, he offered a curse to the enemy gunners. Bastard Tommy!
Like most of the young men of his generation, he had willingly signed up to fight for his country that summer. That summer. By God! It seemed like a lifetime ago. For some, he reflected miserably, it was, for most of his regiment were now little more than numbers on a list of casualties—missing or dead, ghosts of a lost generation. The Kaiser had wanted a brief Balkans war. His generals wanted something rather different—old scores to be settled with France from the war some fifty years previously had inspired them to ignore Belgium’s neutrality and with it a treaty Germany had signed up to, prompting the British to enter the war along with France and Russia. A fine, brief Balkans war, Fritz reflected. And we were supposed to be in Paris by Christmas and we are here stuck in the mud of Ypres. Damned Belgian mud! Damned French! Damned British! Damned rain!
Bastard Kaiser! He snarled inwardly, being sure to never let the thought find a voice.
Now, in the cold and wet of the Flanders winter, Fritz reflected sourly on what had become of that national pride he had felt as they marched to the front that summer, all lined up together in their new, smart uniforms to do their country’s bidding. Yes, where was that national pride now? And the smart uniforms, so fine on a warm summer’s day and now caked in thick mud and soaked by the interminable rain, they had proved unsuitable for the environment and the blasted pickelhaube, he swore to himself, a pointless leather adornment that offered no protection from the shrapnel. Useless! Bloody useless! Where was his national pride now? Buried along with his comrades who died in the first battle of Ypres, he realised. Now it was just a fight for survival. National pride could wait for another day. One day, one day he could regain that pride, he assured himself.
Damn! He ducked again as the earth shook and another British shell found its mark. Picking himself up, he ran back towards the German lines. Again, the sky lit up with hellfire and the ground convulsed as mud and bits of bodies flew into the air. Thrown by the blast, he fell sideways into a crater left by a previous round. Sliding down the sheer sides, his pickelhaube fell from his head and his skull hit something hard. His world went black.
And Death looked on. He waited, as waiting was what he did. His clients came to him rather than the other way around and surrounded as he was by the carnage of war, his job was becoming all too easy. He leaned on his scythe and watched as Fritz fell tumbling into the shell crater, landing in the brackish water that had collected at the bottom and he waited. It wouldn’t be too long, he thought to himself. Christmas, he reflected, was supposed to be a time of joy. He looked about him and wondered at the ability of humanity to be so inhumane, to have managed to be so efficient at killing their own with such mechanical ingenuity. A time of joy indeed.
They never learn. I suppose they never will.
He looked about the desolate landscape unmoved by the pounding of the shells and the lurid shadows cast by the burned out trees and wreckage of buildings. Soon enough, soon enough.
***
Like Fritz, Tommy had signed up as the national fervour hit fever pitch and Europe mobilised. Somewhere, far away, the assassination of a minor royal that no one had heard of set in motion a domino effect that had passed Tommy by. No one realised the importance of it all as it was a distant land that most of them couldn’t identify on a map if they tried. Why should it affect everyone back in Blighty? During those summer weeks as the newspaper headlines became increasingly shrill and he wondered what all the fuss was about and diplomats frantically tried to hold back the tide that threatened to engulf the whole of Europe, Tommy did has he had done every morning for those past few years of his apprenticeship. Up early to prepare the ovens ready for the day’s bread. He wondered how the old man was coping now that he had lost his young helpers to the war effort. It would be hard now, he thought, but it couldn’t be helped. But they would be back soon enough. Well, he would, he hoped. Most of the pals he had signed up with were gone now. It seemed such a fine idea at the time—all working together at the bakery and joining up together. The weeks spent training and then off to the front to give the Hun a bloody nose and rescue Belgium.
He ducked as another whizzbang went overhead and landed with a loud whump. Home by Christmas, eh? Trouble was, he reflected, no bastard thought to tell them which Christmas. And now here it was. Cold, wet, muddy and bloody. He looked along the line of men huddled behind the trench side. One of the young recruits was raising his head.
“Get Down!” Tommy shouted. “Fuck!”
Too late, a sniper’s bullet threw the boy back and he landed at Tommy’s feet, facing up, staring sightlessly at the grey clouds scudding above, a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
Tommy swore some more. Home by Christmas!
That summer seemed so far away. They marched off to the sound of the band, the crowds all waving flags and the girls lining up to kiss them goodbye. Off to do their duty, off to rescue poor little Belgium from the monstrous Hun that was ravaging the country, murdering, raping and pillaging. Kitchener asked them to answer the call and they did—in their thousands—little knowing what it was they were to face. And back by Christmas. That’s what they said, back home by Christmas. He pulled his coat closer for some warmth.
Home by Christmas. He looked about him. Home was a damp dugout that smelled of latrines and death—a putrid hovel in the middle of a bombarded hell on Earth, home to rats and mould. Poor little Belgium.
The summer fatigues issued to the newly formed army were fine during July and august, but by November it was becoming obvious that they were inadequate. His boots leaked. His feet were cold, his hands were cold, and his bones ached with it. Fuck this bastard war!
It fell silent. The bombardment had stopped. Then came the whistles.
“Forward!” The cries to move out—over the top. Across that glutinous stretch of mud towards the enemy trenches, he reached for his wire cutters, and clutched his rifle close as he scrambled up the steep side of the trench and ran as quickly as he could, zigzagging to minimise the target he presented to the enemy machine guns. Bullets whistled past as he ran gasping for breath, sliding down into the mud to cut at the barbed wire, pushing it apart and picking his way through. Again he ran. Enemy mortar shells landed nearby, blowing the soldier to his left to smithereens. Blood and gore spattered across his face. Christ!
And in the midst of the chaos and the carnage, he thought of her; Edith. Was she thinking of him? He recalled the last time he saw her at the dance in the village hall in honour of the boys going to the front. Boys, they were, just boys and they marched to their fate with smiles on their faces to the sound of the drum.
And he ran, dodging the bullets from the German machine guns. As he skidded past a shell crater, he lost his footing and twisted his ankle. It gave way beneath him and he fell, rolling over and over down the steep sides of the crater to the muddy water lying at the bottom. He lay still as the battle raged on without him. His world was black.
And Death watched. And waited, for waiting is what he did.
Soon.
And the sun slipped below the horizon and the guns, one by one, fell silent. The moon broke free of the clouds and drifted across the sky, bathing the landscape in a silvery light as the ground cooled and the frost enveloped the land, hardening the mud so that it became like rock and the water a fragile, glass like substance. And the world shivered as it waited for the anniversary of the coming of the messiah—a world desperate for the coming of the messiah.
And Death watched. And waited, for waiting was what he did.
Yes, soon now.
Tommy woke. The evening was silent. He shivered. The cold ached into his very bones, chilling the marrow. His thin woollen summer tunic was no comfort. He shifted and slid himself up so that he was sitting. His left ankle hurt, but he didn’t think it was broken. Sprained, more like he thought to himself. He rubbed it and winced. “Nah, not broken, but bloody painful.”
He looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was in the dank, waterlogged pit of a shell crater with near sheer sides. Wreckage from ordinance lay scattered about and the body of a German soldier lay nearby. Ah, Fritz, we are all in it together, eh?
He fished in his tunic pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and put one to his mouth. He struck a match looking about him furtively, but the likelihood of a sniper seeing the flame down here was minimal, he figured, so he went ahead anyway. He breathed deeply and blew the smoke out into the clear air. Above, the moon drifted across the sky like it had all the time in the universe. It looked so peaceful up there.
“Home in time for Christmas, eh? That’s a fine lie we was told.” He turned to the inert German. “Bet they told you the same too, eh, Fritz?”
The German soldier remained still, not answering him. Tommy continued nonetheless, unperturbed at talking to the dead, for he had been doing that for several months now. Most of his friends were dead, so why should it make any difference talking to a dead Hun. “Mind you, you probably don’t understand a word of it, being a Hun and all that—don’t speak Hun. I’d offer you a smoke, but I guess you wouldn’t be wanting one…”
Had he but known, Fritz didn’t like tobacco anyway and his comrades would trade their jam rations for his share of the tobacco ration. But as it was, he lay still, not hearing Tommy.
He drifted into silence for a moment or two, contemplating nothing in particular, which, he figured was just as well. If he contemplated his fate, things could be much worse.
“Got a girl back home, Fritz?” Tommy asked. Fritz said nothing. Tommy pulled out his wallet and waved a small sepia image of a dark haired woman with a round face and wide eyes before the inert German. “Edith.” He looked at the picture and thought of her at home. Probably putting up a tree now and decorating it, too. He turned to Fritz. “Yeah, putting up a tree. We got that from you lot, we did. Funny, that. You know, the way things turn out. Home by Christmas. That didn’t turn out so well, did it?”
Fritz lay there. Silent as the moon above.
Voices. Tommy strained his ears to catch them. German voices. They were singing.
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”
“Your lot,” Tommy said. Then the voices were joined by ones he could understand.
“Silent night, Holy night.”
Tommy listened as the sound of battle and carnage was replaced by the sound of voices lifted in song. “Y’hear that, Fritz?”
Tommy scrabbled to his feet but his ankle gave way and he landed heavily in the mud. He sat for a moment, panting with the exertion, the song drifting across no man’s land.
“Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”
He hummed along to the tune, “all is calm, all is bright…” Then he heard another sound. The thud of a ball being kicked and raised voices. “Hear that, Fritz? They are playing football. Ha! England against Germany!” He reached out and slapped the inert soldier on the shoulder.
Fritz groaned.
“My God! You’re alive!” He squatted up and reached forwards to grab the man by the lapels and heft him up into a seated position, wincing from the pain in his ankle. “Here, let me…”
As he heaved at the other man, pulling him up from the mud, Tommy realised that something wasn’t right. Fritz twisted as he sat up and moved his legs under himself into a half crouch, aggressively thrusting his body forward at the British soldier in front of him. Tommy felt a sudden, violent pain deep in his chest. Gasping for breath and tasting blood in his throat, he released his grip on the German soldier’s lapels as he fell back in the mud. Dying now, he looked up at the German soldier crouching over him with a bloodied bayonet in his hand. He coughed and blood ran down his chin as he relaxed back onto the ground, his life slipping away with his blood into the freezing mud. Jesus!
Eventually, he stood. It all seemed a bit detached, he thought to himself, looking down at his corpse spread-eagled in the congealing mud with the Hun crouching over him, wiping the bayonet blade clean. He turned and made his way to the edge of the crater, scrabbling his way to the top. The pain in his ankle had gone now, he noted.
He looked at the figure in the black cape who waited patiently at the lip of the crater, more in idle curiosity than fear.
“I know who you are.”
“Jolly good. No need for introductions then.”
“I’ve bought it, haven’t I?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Tommy turned and looked back at the tableau in the crater below him. “I should have checked. Should’ve made sure he was dead. And then killed him when I found out he was alive. But… I dunno… There’s a temporary truce…”
“Nur das traute hochheilige Paar. Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,”
“I figured…”
“That he would honour it?”
“Yes. Should’ve killed the bastard when I had the chance.”
Death sighed. “Yes, well, perhaps you should.”
Tommy raised an eyebrow in question and Death realised that an explanation would be necessary—I’ve said too much. Why do I always say too much? Why don’t I just get the job done and move on to the next? He harrumphed to himself as he hated explanations. They always took too long and were invariably a waste of effort. He nodded towards the bulge in Tommy’s top pocket. “Do you mind?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Tommy took the packet out and shook a cigarette free, handing it to Death who put it in his mouth. Death waited as Tommy prepared to strike a match looking about furtively.
“I wouldn’t worry about that anymore, I mean, no one can see us,” he observed drily.
“Oh, yeah, of course.” Tommy struck the match and cupped his hands around the flame as Death leaned forwards and sucked at the cigarette. He lifted his head and inhaled deeply, the tip glowing bright red in the night. “You would have been doing me a favour,” he said. “But it wasn’t in the plan.”
“There’s a plan?”
“Oh, yes, there’s a plan.”
“I didn’t know you had a plan.”
“Oh, I don’t. I’m not a planner. Way above my pay grade. I just clock on, do the job and go home. I leave planning to those who know what they are doing. I’m just a foot soldier—a minor cog in a much larger machine.” He stopped and surveyed the scene about them and a bitter note entered his voice. “Mind you, I do wonder sometimes. I mean, who would plan this?”
“I always assumed the top brass.”
“Mmm. Top brass indeed. Like I said, above my pay grade. Still, yes, Tommy, killing Fritz down there would have been doing me a favour.”
“You know my real name’s not Tommy, don’t you?”
“Indeed.” Death took a final drag and dropped the butt into the freezing mud and ground it out. “Just as he isn’t really called Fritz.” He looked down at the soldier in the crater and his gaze bored into the man’s soul and found only darkness. “That mad little Austrian is going to cause me an awful deal of work in a couple of decades’ time, you know. All in the plan, of course and not your concern.”
Death lapsed into silence and contemplated the way of things. Eventually he realised that he wasn’t alone. He turned. “You still here?”
“Er… I…”
“I’ve done my bit. Time for you to run along.”
“Oh, righto… I…”
Death pointed. “Your trenches are that way.”
Tommy turned and walked away from Death who continued to lean on his scythe absorbed in his melancholy. They were still playing football because he could hear the thudding as the ball was kicked and the Germans were still singing.
“Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh! Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!”
Suddenly Death stood up straight. “Oh, I nearly forgot.”
Tommy stopped and turned around. Death lifted a hand in a half wave.
“Merry Christmas.”
This and other stories can be found in the 7th Underdog Anthology.