An End of Poppies
076938964
Ypres Zone
Middlesex Regiment
Sappers Unit 2064
28th May 1962
Pvt. 761382 J.Fitzpatrick
Dearest Esme,
It is well over a month since your last letter and, I hope you do not mind me writing again, but not having heard from you has made me rather worried. I have such an anxiety that perhaps you have decided to cease our communications, or that perhaps you have met someone else. Or worse still something dreadful may have happened. So please, my very dearest Esme, please write to me soon and put me out of my misery. Please allay my fears. I am hoping that nothing has befallen you and that I will hear from you soon.
By the time this letter reaches you, you will have had your birthday. So I will send my best wishes and hope that you have many happy returns. I hope it was a lovely day for you and yours, and I am so sorry that I cannot send you anything. Not even a card. Sorry. I will make it up to you, I promise. I hope too that Dulcie had a lovely birthday.
I will tell you of my life here over the last month, so that you will know that I am safe. I will admit though that these last few weeks have been a touch more precarious than previously, when we were in camp. The lull that there was in the fighting has been broken, albeit only with sporadic skirmishes rather than any large scale shelling or aerial bombardment.
Several times over the last couple of weeks units from my regiment have been sent to the far side of the Wall into the dread alien landscape that is 'no-man's land'.
On days when we have to face this ordeal we are waken by rattling bugles at four in the morning and assemble in full kit; in silent lines we stand, faces down, in the trenches that run perpendicular to the Wall. We stand in the dark with steaming nervous breath curling from each mouth. It is May and the summer is just over the horizon, but still it seems cold here in the slow quiet dark before dawn. Summer; the season of fear. Oppressive summer; the time each soldier dreads, for it usually means more fighting.
I stand in the line waiting, just like every other man. Hendricks and Thompson in front of me, Jones behind. I always look at Thompson's shoulders for any hint of shake from his matchstick body. His uniform sags over his bony frame and his Enfield seems over-sized flopping atop his backpack. It can be that we stand like this, just waiting, for over an hour or more, as the creeping glow of dawn inches up the sky from the east. At other instances they send us quickly while it is still inky dark.
Then the inevitable 'quick march' is bellowed and the men shuffle forward in the narrow trenches. At this part of the salient the trenches dip low into the ground as they approach the flat concrete of the Wall. And then they descend into tunnels that CENSORED and CENSORED as they go underground. We enter the twilight world of the 'warren'; the maze of access tunnels and service tunnels that spill through the solid mass of the Wall. Sometimes our passage through the Wall is quick and fairly straight forward; we simply traverse it underground from one side to the other. At other times we may head east or west in order to exit at different points, depending on what the objective is.
Again we stand silent, in front of imposing underground metal gates. Waiting. These gates often have the appearance of something from a medieval castle, rusting rivets dot their skin and, depending on where they are placed, some of these doors can be up to CENSORED CENSORED thick. Then the instruction to 'mask up' and we pull the claustrophobic rubber of our gas masks over our faces. Like most, my mask is ancient, its rubber corroding precariously in places. I make sure to rub greasy vaseline, if I have any, into my cheeks and neck to try and maintain the seal, which I would not exactly describe as air-tight. It is a mask that has been used by many soldiers before me and it smells of rubber and mould; a scent that sticks in your nostrils long after you have removed it. It gives one a feeling of claustrophobic isolation that is hard to describe. I know that Thompson hates it so, and in those panic moments of great fear I have to almost fight with him to make sure he attaches his mask well, with all the straps pulled tight. We wear gloves, if you are lucky leather ones, and pull our scarves and balaclavas tight. It is best not to have your skin exposed if you can help it.
We form up into ranks; rows of khaki bound figures: puttee strapped legs above our boots giving us the appearance of mummies with blacked-out faces, eyes like frogs, magnified through the over-sized goggles of our masks. Apart from our differing heights an onlooker might think we were all made from the same cloth. Like automatons, clockwork toy soldiers exiting from some great sinister toy factory.
A great clanging signals the opening of the gates and then we trot through into sloping tunnels beyond and out into the broken trenches. This is sometimes the most dangerous moment. Obviously the exits and gates are below ground but the Germans are well aware of the exit points, despite the continuous attempts to move or hide them. Like us they scan from various slits and vantage points on their Wall. Hundreds of eyes continuously stuck against the rims of binoculars and telescopes, scanning for movement. If they spot you in the first fifty yards or so, then the snipers shots split the air. They don't often waste machine gun rounds at this distance but it is not unheard of. The base of the Wall, where the trenches connect, are often easy targets of shelling so the first bit of trench is always the most exposed; blown to buggery.
No-man's land is an unearthly place and often one's first experience of it is eerie silence. The sniper shots stop quickly as one moves into the trench proper. Hopefully they cannot see you there. The trenches on this exposed side of the Wall are a haphazard fluid affair. They are sometimes no more than broken holes in the ground and we are frequently sent to re-dig them or shore them up, or dig fresh ones. It is best in the deepest trenches; one is always attempting to estimate the angles and wondering if you are really hidden from the heights of their Wall.
It is a place of mist. A mist you cannot trust, for it could simply be the falling dew of dawn or it could as easily be the cloying choking death of mustard-C. One cannot always tell, even by its colour, so as we tramp through the dirt each man unconsciously checks the rubber edges and seals of his mask. They say it has a yellowish tinge and smells of horseradish. Not that one should ever be tempted to smell it, it is always best to be on the cautious side. The gas, once deployed via shells or launch-grenades, has a habit of hanging in pockets for days between the Walls. It hides in shell holes and ditches and mixes with the stagnant water; its poison ever present and ready to blister your skin in painful yellow bulges or worse. It can agonisingly melt your lungs. They say this is like a most painful form of drowning, though most don't live to tell the tale. The gas is the most undiscriminating of weapons and is just as likely to cut down the ranks of either army, despite whoever launched it in the first place. Some say it is the reason we first began to build the Walls in the first place, back in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. The gas is heavier than air and the two giant Walls trap it between their heights. When the weather is windy it can be blown to the summits but mostly no-man’s land can act like a wind tunnel; the gales force the gas back and forth along the front, before it finally dissipates.
So no soldier ever dare venture here without a mask. Inhuman masked figures populate this, the most lifeless of places; a place filled with wreckage and bones. The wreckage of millions of the lost lie here, and it is not unusual for your gloved hand to touch a broken skull or femur when you grasp for a hand hold. Countless unburied souls, never recovered; listed as 'missing in action' by the accountants of this war.
No-man’s land is also the dumping ground of a billion shells, bullets, rockets and grenades. Unseen and unexploded ordnance fills the earth as far as the eye can see. Any brass shell casing that happens to stick up from the mud is best avoided. How many lives and limbs lost to a simple footfall in the wrong place? Another reason experience teaches one to keep one’s head down, if you can, eyes on the ground.
It seems to me that it is a place that abhors life. No birds sing and no plants grow in the gas poisoned earth. Except, we
ll, it seems almost unbelievable, but I saw a poppy when I was last there. A solitary red flower poking its strange bright colour out into the air from atop the languid mud of the trench. It wobbled in the breeze, clinging on as if to announce to the world that life persists. I stood staring at it for a while, through the oily haze of the goggles of my mask, amazed that beauty and life can somehow persist in such a place as this. I wonder if that poppy knew. Knew it was life persisting. Against all the odds. A symbol of hope? I hope that I can persist.
So I sit here in my bunker waiting for the next set of orders, the next set of tasks for us tiny cogs in this slow machine of war. And I think of the small things, the smallest chinks of sunlight and beauty left in the world. Like that solitary poppy in no-man's land you are that chink of sunlight in my world; you are my poppy of hope. I look at the glow of life in your cheeks and eyes in your photograph and hope that you are safe and well. Please write soon my Esme, please ease my mind and let me know you are safe and well. Thinking so much of you.
All my love,
Jimmy
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M.O.D Approved. This letter has been censored in accordance with War Office Directive