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Australians advance under fire. Western front. (AWM)
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The men crouch in the pit of the trench, their bayonets fixed and pointing skyward where, above them in misty pre-dawn gloom, shells burst like angry thunderclaps, each monstrous detonation shaking their flesh and blood to the very core.
Privates Alex Wilkins and Rodney Burnside stare at each other, wincing in terrified unison as the lethal explosions creep ever closer. Incoming artillery from the Germans, entrenched in similar fashion several hundred yards to the east, howl like a banshee before thudding into the earth and, in a nerve-shattering eruption, shower the men with heavy clods of mud and occasionally the body parts of their disintegrated comrades.
Utter terror sweeps through their ranks like a wild fever. Men cry like colical infants, soil themselves helplessly, vomit violently or just stare like a rabbit caught in the beam of a spotlight.
Behind them, not nearly far enough away, are the answering British howitzers, spewing diabolical fusillades in return. Until they suddenly fall silent to a gun.
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| British troops fix bayonets in preparation for an attack. |
Sargeant Penfold, an old man of 34 with the complexion of a windblown prune, fumbles for his whistle, wiping it with a handkerchief even filthier than the tiny instrument itself. His trembling hand holds a plain pocket watch, the attached chain vibrating like an F-string. His dry tongue vainly tries to moisten parched lips as he slowly draws the little brass object closer.
Both Burnside and Wilkins look to their NCO just as he draws that fateful breath. At that same instant, a line of intensely bright white phosphorus flares shoot up into the smoke-filled sky to a height of 50 to 100 yards, hanging like macabre fairy lights from tiny parachutes and trailing away into the distance. And like the kick-off for Satan's own grand final, a hundred whistles blow all down the line, followed by the roar of ten thousand men as they clamber up their rough ladders and 'over the top'.
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| Over the top |
Burnside and Wilkins were just two young men, not yet 21 and like so many all through the ranks, they were really just boys. Blooded and traumatised by months of violent, futile combat in the so-called 'sausage grinder', they operated like soulless machines, programmed to function to their masters' whim who cared not the slightest if they perished or prevailed, as long as the immediate objective was met.
The two brotherless boys had grown up in the suburbs of Adelaide on the fringe of the bush. They went to the local schools together, played football and cricket together and, as their teens faded, courted the prettiest girls while evading their quarry's outraged fathers.
When war was declared in 1914, they waited impatiently to reach the age where they could volunteer without a parent's consent and fronted the recruitment lines with the same naive excitement of a couple of lads who'd just perpetrated a successful prank on a wicked classmate. Little did they know how that satisfying jubilation would soon be replaced by the all-consuming horror of The Great War. The war to end all wars.
Just after the sun had finally come up on that tumultuous morning on the Somme, Burnside found himself gasping for air, his mouth half filled with a lumpy poultice of mud and blood. Choking like a man on his last breath, he managed to half spit, half cough out the evil mixture which contained several of his teeth. His helmet was gone and his Lee Enfield 303 rifle, bayonet still fixed, was cradled beneath him, caked in the same dark, heavy mud.
As the grit slowly worked free from his face, he could see all around him the shapes of contorted khaki corpses, some piled on top of each other like a collapsed scrum, others missing various vital segments that held clues to their form.
Cordite smoke penetrated his muddy nostrils while at a distance he could not determine, random rifle shots and machine gun bursts rang out. Men called out from behind and in front of him. Some groaned that guttural dirge as death took them in a final act of mercy while others cried pitifully for their mothers. Burnside tried to right himself and immediately collapsed into the mud again like a drunken sailor crawling out of a gutter. The arm he needed to complete the action was gone, the bloodied bone stump protruding from his tattered tunic bearing witness to the most cruel injury.
In defeat, Burnside let himself fall back into an awkward repose, eyes skyward, chest heaving. He could neither shriek, nor whimper, much less complain.
In the neat sandstone cottage in outer Adelaide, the silence was only broken by the chorus of Magpies from the garden and the unsympathetic tick-tock of the old mantle clock. August Wilkins stood hands clenched behind him with his back to his wife, Genevieve, who sat as if struck by a palsy. In her hand was a crumpled telegram, delivered just minutes ago by a panting boy who was clearly having the busiest day of his life.
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| Thousands of pink telegrams like this were delivered to grieving families. (AWM) |
Amid the fluff of words on the official letterhead supposed to soothe a mortified mother was the ominous phrase, " .... missing presumed killed."
In the weeks that followed, nothing further could be learned from War Office about the fate of their only son. The day of his supposed death saw more young Australian men and boys killed, wounded or go missing than on any other single day of the entire war. The newspapers heralded a brave and courageous offensive that was sure to bring an end to the conflict that had already denuded the fledgling Commonwealth of so many of its finest young heirs. In truth, it was a shambolic bloodbath of unimaginable horror. A scheme only Beelzebub himself could contrive.
The following year, the returning troopships unloaded their ever-increasing cargo of broken and shattered men. The macabre cavalcade of debilitated youth who should be in their prime and building the nation instead hobbled, limped and staggered along the wharf. Various aids from wheelchairs, crutches, prosthetic limbs or just the helpful shoulder of a mate were employed in this most pathetic of parades.
Amid the solemn crowd at the dock in Port Adelaide, August and Genevieve Wilkins stood stoically beside their neighbours, the Burnsides in anticipation of their son Rodney's arrival. The once-strapping lad had completed a lengthy convalescence in England and was deemed fit enough to return home to a life of uncertainty. Meanwhile back in France, the war continued and the death toll mounted.
The shuffling mass of broken men and their bearers began to dwindle when the four, their heads craning and bobbing, caught sight of young private Burnside, now just 22. He was walking at least, albeit with a labouring gate. The right sleeve of his uniform was neatly pinned at the elbow and his face bore the telltale marks of corrective surgery to his lower jaw. Both parents embraced the unresponsive stranger, but as the loving clinch lingered, a glistening could eventually be seen around the boy's empty eyes.
Back at the Burnside's cottage, tea and cake is being served. The young private, still looking dazed and detached despite several months away from the fighting and returned to the familiar surroundings of leafy Adelaide, sits staring at the opposite wall, making only the most perfunctory responses to each delicate enquiry. Finally, her curiosity bursting, Mrs Wilkins can not contain herself any longer.
"Rodney, please tell us what you know about our dear Alex. Could he possibly have survived? Could he be sitting mute and shell-shocked in some asylum not knowing his own name?"
Private Burnside slowly met her intense, inquiring gaze. His face barely hinted at any emotion.
"To be 'onest, me memories of that morning are a bit 'azy Missus Wilkins," said the Private with some effort, his speech slurring slightly, "but let me tell youse what I can remember."
"It was the biggest bloody mess we ever was in. Alex were right next t' me the 'ole time and when ol' Penfold blew his whistle the 'ole flippin' lot of us went over the top and ran like buggery at the Hun."
"That's when the rest gets real fuzzy. I remember being flat on me back on a cart with a mob of other blokes all moanin' and groanin' an' I tried real hard to see if any were Alex but we was all in such a state I couldna recognised me mum the way we was all chucked in."
"Arfta 'bout a week or so in the 'ospital, I started to git about the wards trying to find 'im and asking the other blokes if they'd seen 'im either. One bloke, Newlands, reckons he saw us both get 'it by a shell. He sure were surprised to see me on me feet. 'fraid I can't ask 'im no more. He died next day."
"Gotta be 'onest Missus Wilkins," he said, clearly coming to the end of his exertion, "I reckon 'e were killed outright. Blown t' bits. A lot of blokes were just gone like that."
The two sat at the old kitchen table amid a deathly silence. Young Burnside's empty stare had returned, fixed on Mrs Wilkins face which had frozen into an incredulous gasp. Two torrents of tears issued from her red-tinged eyes, leaving a most discernible residue on the bare wood of the table.
Against the pleas of her heartbroken husband, Genevieve Wilkins is determined to go to France and find out what she can about her missing son. She resolves to scour every hospital and infirmary if that is what it takes. By the grace of God, or by any other means, she will find him.
Even after the sale of the house and much of their belongings, there is only enough money for one of them to travel. August Wilkins, now resident with his own ageing mother, farewells his sombre wife as she sets out on her mission from Outer Harbour with a modest suitcase packed with grim determination.
After a gruelling month-long journey aboard a returning troopship, the foul odours of tobacco and gangrene still permeating every deck, Mrs Wilkins eventually checks in to a dour London guest house in Shoreditch to begin her melancholy mission.
The weeks turn to months as the exhausted woman interrogates hospitals from Cambridge to Cornwall and Blackpool to Bradford. She traipses the corridors and wards of countless houses of horror where men with faces and bodies so grotesquely disfigured by shrapnel and shell, that they look more like flailed carcasses strewn in a slaughterhouse than living flesh and blood. Sometimes they cried out, while other times they just moaned and mumbled trying to deliver mute messages. On one occasion, a faceless young man whose once handsome features had been brutally carved from his head grabbed her so tightly with his remaining hand, the orderly hand to strike him several times with a crop before he would release his grip.
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| Men suffered - and survived - the most distressing injuries. |
The thought that her beautiful boy could be among these mangled monstrosities ripped at her heart, causing her many fitful and sleepless nights. She wailed for the mothers whose cherished sons had been reduced to such a pitiful state by the savage tools of war. She cursed the uncaring, soulless brutes who had inflicted such barbarity onto an entire generation. Yet there was no sign of her Alex.
Her funds dwindling alarmingly, the near-traumatised Missus Wilkins shifted her attention to France to see what could be learned closer to the former front lines. Her meagre funds only permitted lodging in a dingy back alley in Pigalle which she shared with prostitutes, gypsies and shell-shocked returned soldiers in a constant state of putrid alcoholic paralysis.
One chilly evening while stepping over the urban detritus, she heard a raspy voice call out in English.
"Madame, I know what you seek!'
It was most unusual to hear her native tongue and with that, the startled Mrs Wilkins spun around to see a slightly hunchbacked old woman sitting on a stool in a narrow alcove. Through the damp, misty air she could make out a tattered shawl framing the old gypsy’s face.
“Yes, madame, come closer. I have news of your son.”
As if shards of ice suddenly perforate her veins, Mrs Wilkins tries to gasp, but instead utters merely the faint croak of a tiny frog.
She approaches the old woman in slow measured steps until the gypsy extends her hand, beckoning her to proffer her own. She grasps both hands tightly and stares imploring into Mrs Wilkins gaze before her eyes roll eerily backward into their sockets revealing thick, dark purple veins.
“Your son waits by the river. He calls out every night for you to go to him. He is in much torment and begs your succour.”
Mrs Wilkins flinches as if struck by a bolt of lightning but the old woman’s grasp is too strong and pulls her back, mumbling words in an indistinct tongue.
“You must go to the battlefield at midnight on a full moon and sing your son's favourite lullaby. By the will of God, he will come.”
And at that moment, the old gypsy released her grasp, nearly causing Mrs Wilkins to topple backwards, such was the force at which she sought to withdraw.
Notwithstanding her macabre instructions, she makes for the banks of the Somme near where Rodney had described his last vision of Alex Wilkins before the pair were engulfed by the shellburst. The ground is still churned and uneven with fragments of metal occasionally striking her boot and as the sun falls low in the sky, a chill sets in.
A mist gradually accumulates among the skeletal remains of trees, creating a swirling gossamer that embraces the denuded branches. As midnight approaches, the faint glow of the moon can still be seen through the clouds that sweep slowly past overhead. She clears her throat and begins her eery refrain.
“I see the moon, The moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me”
Despite her parched throat and quivering anxiety, the sweet lyrics caress the air and disappear into the darkness. A gentle breeze that once propelled the mist is suddenly still.
“I know an angel watches over me. God bless the angels, and God bless me.”
As she is about to repeat the delicate chorus, a faint silhouette begins to take shape amid the haze. The shape of a limping soldier can soon be made out.
Frightened, she stops singing momentarily and the indistinct figure fades, but when she resumes, so too does the apparition with its tortured gait move silently toward her.
The mist thickens, occasionally obscuring the figure until it becomes so thick she can barely make out her surroundings.
She stops singing and calls out in a faltering stammer. "Alex, if that's you come to me my dear boy, I want to take you home."
At that moment the struggling soldier suddenly appears almost within arm's reach, standing dead still in front of her. Again, she tries to scream, but her chords refuse to oblige.
At such an intimate distance, every horrid detail is suddenly revealed. The uniform is more mud than khaki and great holes are ripped in it so vast they admit light from behind the torso. Beneath the circular peak of the battered tin helmet is a face so disfigured even a mother would not recognise her own son. The entire lower jaw is violently ripped asunder leaving an unholy jumble of teeth, bone and flailed tongue exposed to the horrified onlooker. One eye clings to its socket by little more than a sinew, while the other stares out like that of a Halloween ghoul. All the while the most stomach-churning odour of rotting flesh permeates the scene.
Mrs Wilkins teeters on the edge of consciousness, her heart beating like a runaway steam pump, her arms and hands trembling as if excited by electrocution.
The pathetic figure takes another half step, raising one arm and the hollow sleeve of the other. While apparently trying to form speech, a blood-curdling noise begins to emanate from what is left of the mutilated throat. Just as the tattered hand is placed on the apoplectic Mrs Wilkins’ shoulder, the wretched soldier utters a sound more like a laboured raspy, gurgle. Small chunks of putrefying flesh dislodge from the facial cavity as, finally, that ungodly stutter forms just one discernable word:
"Mother"
