Over the Top by David Lyons

I hear the curlew flying low over the misty bog on a late summer’s evening. The air is damp with dew and the shadows are black beneath the tall whitethorn hedges. A lone cow calls out for her calf in a field beyond view and then stops suddenly as her charge drains the pressure from her elder.

The magical sound of a flute played by a capless man in a collarless shirt and hanging braces as he sits on a three-legged stool and leans against a whitewashed wall, dances like angel dust across the final beams of evening sunlight. He is unaware that distant unknown ears are filled with the joy of his melody, nor does he care. There is a candle burning peacefully in the window now – a fresh white church candle, that sits in a cracked green jug that was once the prized milk carrier. An old sun-bleached page of a newspaper, whose sentiments have long been forgotten, sits tightly in the jug and holds the candle in place. Its pale flickering light welcomes me towards it like warm loving arms and the sight of it calms my breath, soothing my racing heart in that moment. Inside I know the turf fire is red and an old black iron kettle hangs on

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the crane waiting for me. I am waiting also, for that heavenly aroma of freshly baked soda bread that melts butter with a touch and the pot of stew I know will be simmering on the hot coals. Darkness is closing in fast on an evening that deserves more time. I straighten my cap and pull it down lower over my eyes as I look towards the far field where I know that fence still needs a fresh thorn bush. That ewe with the bare neck will find it for certain and eat Bridget Colleran’s greens once again. She will pretend she doesn’t mind of course, and is always very polite about the intrusion, but even a saint’s patience has its boundaries. Pat-the-boyo with a Guinness ringed mouth sat in O’Shea’s a couple of night ago said that a bath of rain was fast approaching, and everyone became quiet and listened with wide eyes. He was the one who inherited his grandmother from Boston’s antique barometer, and so was the foremost trusted authority on all changes in the weather. The ones who held their glass midway to their lips, were the ones with turf out facing the night sky, like me, and gave more heed to the warning.

A shell landed almost in my lap and pieces of shrapnel tore through my sleeve and allowed life’s blood to dye the cloth crimson. My thoughts suddenly switch to

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the grey streets of Staley Bridge, in that typical cold Manchester rain that falls heavily on my coaldust covered face. The taste of the wet coal on my lips is bitter and the black rivers that flow from my matted hair into my eyes blur my vision of the narrow-flagged path that always emitted the smell of urine and dog excrement like a poison to the sense. This is an untended and unloved back yard path worn by the dejected feet of weary hunched shouldered folk, lost in a world of poverty and despair, where only death promised the possibility of release. The weather-beaten timber door on the path side had many years previous benefited from of a left-over tin of Salford Bus red, borrowed without permission from their body shop. The door creaks as I push down hard on its rusty uncompromising latch and the bottom boards drag lines in the clay as it begrudgingly opens a few feet to allow me to pass through. My narrow red bricked cottage is at the end of a short area of tufts of abandoned grass and looks cold and unwelcoming. Over washed faded lace curtains hang too short on the windows and a pencil thin stream of mean grey smoke filters into the raindrops from a frost cracked chimney pot.

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Through the metal framed window, I can see my wife bathing our son in the old white Belfast sink. She doesn’t smile as she looks back at me through her sunken dark ringed eyes, and I don’t wave hello. Her idle brother’s bicycle’s lay lazily against the wet red brick near the back door, and I stand in the rain looking and tasting the coal in my mouth. It will be four for dinner again this evening.

It is only a matter of moments now to the trench whistle in Ypres. The sky is a mass of black cannon smoke that an eager breeze couldn’t blot out, as shells rain down their death at will. Every extra breath I take is a God’s send, and one that wasn’t expected. A river of cold sticky mud lies on the floor of the trench and freezes and numbs all feet and legs to the calf. My fingers hold the cold steel barrel of my rifle and the dried blood stains on the bayonet dull its shine. The strong aroma of death hangs in the air as though it were possible to grab it in handfuls and is only overpowered by regular intervention of chlorine gas. Some let tears fall onto worn over thumbed photos, as others take a little comfort from the last remnants of chocolate from Queen Victoria’s brass box. I sent mine

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home – not to Staley Bridge but to Mayo. Maybe thinking it was all they will ever have now to remember me by. That small brass box with its royal stamp is all that is left of me to give, all that can be clutched to a breast in remembrance.

The bucket of gin is passed out liberally and taken in quantities to sedate the senses but not for me. I want to see clearly until my time ticks out to the final alarm – maybe even have an edge in a place where no hope is the only constant and death the only prize. Clumps of clay the size of large sheep dogs batter the bodies of the pale faced creatures who lean against the walls of the trenches that are wet with blood and tears. Cries of pain and fear of dying men mix with gunshots and explosions to give Dante an extra circle to explore. This is hell and could death be any worse?

The dreaded sound of the trench whistle was awaited but when it comes it brings an unexpected confusion to me and to the drawn anxious faces of my friends, who unwillingly take part in this mass Russian Roulette, played out by shiny men in opposing camps, at Pless Castle in Silesia, and Montreuil. Shiny men who are brave each day with our lives and blood, as they

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exchanged dinner platitudes over their Chateau Margaux and their chosen gastronomic delights. Breaths become shallow, hearts pound like sledgehammers, and eyes open to their widest extremities. The ladders go up and the command “over the top” calls out in an authoritative tone, as though this were a normal command, the correct thing to do, and something not to be questioned. There is no reasoning now – no wondering why. Plenty of space left for inner regrets but no outward display of fear can save this moment from its appalling finale. I drag a foot with effort from the thick sticky mud that seemingly by instinct wants to keep me frozen to the spot. My soaking wet boot feels out for the first rung of the rough wooden ladder. I close the cold bolt on my rifle, and a bullet fills the chamber. Oozing bodies fall back over me as I climb, some dead, some not so lucky. I don’t remember the middle rungs, just the bottom and the top. I hold the top rung for as long as I dare knowing my next move could be my gateway to eternity. A commanding shout through a thick black moustache from below frees my tight grip and I am where they wanted me – over the top, in no man’s land. Lines of loose barbed wire, that I could have used to greater advantage in the gap in the far field hedge,

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stretch on forever in all direction, like it was hung by madmen from the dadaism movement. Lifeless bodies are suspended on its razor-sharp thorns as if asleep on a two-penny hangover in a back street London doss house. Men I broke cigarettes with and exchanged many a fond life’s memory, drop down around me like carcasses in khaki. Their faces now embedded in the blood-soaked mud, as life drains out from their wretched existences. I wait, hoping for the sound of the curlew, the smell of freshy baked soda bread and that pot of simmering stew in Mayo and a loving call, “Tom your food is ready”.

David Lyons

Image by adriankirby from Pixabay – A curlew in flight against a blue sky.