Must have been a soldier

byJohnEdwards1

282 followers

6 years ago

I was born in 1786 in a little Somerset village called Upton Noble, like everybody else, I went to the local school, there was only one, the men usually went to work on the farms in the locality, I left school at 14 and decided I did not want to go and work on the farm, I am not too keen on animals, so I decided I would make my way to Cheddar and do some fruit picking, it was hard work. I never want to see another strawberry ever again.

It was very seasonal work and I found myself moving on, looking for casual work in the nearby town of Weston-super-Mare, it was becoming a popular area for people with money to come and retire so there was some building work and labouring to be done.

There was a retired naval officer who was a doctor and was reputed to have gone up the Nile with Admiral Nelson, the house he was going to retire to had just been completed just above Glentworth bay, he chose the position well, it was the only house in the area, just above the sea level with nice views across the bay. And because of his connections with Egypt, he called his new house Cairo Lodge.

I was friends with some of the builders that had worked on the house and they recommended me to their boss who wanted extra men for the digging of the new well to provide fresh water for the doctor’s house, it was hard work we had to bore down through solid rock with hammers and chisels, and it took many months to complete.

I did not mind the hard work it was toughening me up and putting more muscle on my 20-year-old frame, I did what most young men did I chased the young ladies and I drank too much ale, despite the hard work I was enjoying my young life, and eventually we struck water, but strangely the next morning the hole was dry, we stood around debating where the water had gone, then around lunchtime the water came back.

We had to dig down another 6 feet to complete the well but we could only work when the tide was in because unbelievably when the tide came in the well emptied it was quite an oddity and made the London papers. It was the only known well that acted in this way in the whole of the country

We were discussing this oddity one evening in the local ale house just below where the well is situated when the bar door burst open and a crowd of tough looking sailors stormed in, they were looking for the local fishermen to be press-ganged into the Royal Navy, they did not ask if I was a fisherman I was big and strong, they just knocked me out and carried me outside.

When I came to, I was on board a small sailing ship and heading for a rendezvous with a royal navy man of war, I spent the next 18 months on the 42-gun fighting ship called the HMS Warrior, we sailed up and down the French and Spanish coasts, acting like Pirates and stealing anything that was valuable.

I was enjoying life at sea. It was hard work keeping the ship in working order, but there were plenty of side benefits, we enjoyed a life of luxury having plundered many ships and we were living off the spoils of our piracy, this was all quite legal in the eyes of the British government, they got their share when we returned to port.

Every man on our ship was supposed to receive his share of the prize money when we docked in England and given the option to leave the ship a rich man and go back to his normal life. It was a strange situation really when one of your shipmates died in battle your sympathy was tempered by your greed, you needed to stop thinking about it as a bigger share for you.

We were the kings of the high seas there was not a ship that could match our firepower and there is hardly a vessel that has the speed to run away from us.

It was during an encounter with a Spanish merchant ship that was going well, after a final broadside we could see the Spanish ship had lost a mast and was floundering, the captain prepared to pull alongside so that our crew could get aboard and search for the loot, we had used the grappling lines and the two ships were getting closer together, but the Spanish crew were not giving up without a fight and were firing down onto our decks as fast as they could reload.

They had climbed the rigging and had the advantage of looking down on my poor shipmates, several of whom had been slain or wounded and were lying all around me, I looked up into the rigging to see if I could get a shot at the enemy when I suddenly found I could only see with one of my eyes, I collapsed amongst my fallen shipmates and realised I must have been shot in the head.

I lay on the deck in a crumpled heap as my life slowly ebbed away the last thing I remember was flying higher and higher looking down on the two ships as my shipmates used the boarding lines to get aboard the Spanish vessel.

That evening, Paul was having dinner with his family and he took the opportunity to ask Ben if he would be willing to join his research effort by having a brain scan.

“I do not much like the sound of that” said Betty.

“There is no need to worry they do it to me every time I go to the Deepscan factory”

“Are there any needles involved,” said Nancy

“No dear, it is perfectly painless and less harmful than having an x-ray”

“What do they want to scan my brain for” asked Ben

“Well they are very interested in my beautiful brain and my superior intellect and intelligence they just want to see if I have passed any of it on” joked Paul.

“I am off college for a couple of weeks, so if they can do it then okay”

Chapter 8 Another Layer.

The hypnosis was starting to work, I felt the nurse wiping my forehead and then she put the panic button in my hand, Dr James was droning on and I was getting very sleepy.

“Tell us what memories you are having now, Paul” was the last thing I was aware of him saying.

I started talking almost immediately after I was told to start, it was as if the words were bubbling out of me, they had been restrained inside my mind for far too long.

I was born in Port Talbot in 1890, it was a working-class town in South Wales that had grown around the local steelworks, because apart from shops and services there was very little employment in the town, every child had to go to school but everybody knew that 90% of the men would finish up at the steelworks, just like their fathers.

My mother said it was bad enough having one dirty man coming home from the steelworks and having to bath in front of the kitchen range in a tin bath, so she did her best to urge me to work in the local shops, I stuck it out for a few years, but there was no future in it. I had little chance of getting promoted and without promotion you were stuck on low wages.

I did not like the job anyway. Everybody look down on me as the last dogsbody to be employed, I was not in a position to give anybody any advice, and nobody ever asked anyway, but if they wanted something moved I was the first person they thought of, in addition I was always asked to help unload the new stock when it arrived by the lorry load.

There was nothing good to be said about it. It was a miserable job. The staff were miserable, the customers were not happy. It was a hard time all round, there was no sign of any romance in the air all the female staff were much older than me and it was not the sort of shop that attracted a lot of young females, so I was out of luck there as well.

My father had worked his way up in the steelworks to the position of a supervisor and as he sat in the kitchen whilst mother scrubbed his back. He told me of an opportunity that had arisen at the steelworks that he thought I might be interested in.

In the steelworks they had a narrow gauge railway system for internal transport between various departments and there was a vacancy for a train driver, my imagination for a moment had me driving a mainline steam locomotive to London and beyond, but I had seen the train driving around the steelworks and the locomotives were little petrol driven things like toy trains, nevertheless I liked the idea, and that is how I became a steelworks train driver.

Now it was 1916. Thousands of men were being sent off to France to live and die in the trenches, but I was in a reserved occupation, they did not take men out of the steelworks unless they volunteered. At least that is what I was told. Unfortunately, the army had been using narrow gauge railways as a convenient way of transport to and from the front line, they used the same little petrol engines because steam would have been a dead giveaway and now they had a need for experienced train drivers, so, I was conscripted out of my reserved occupation as a special case. I went for a medical at the local town hall and the doctor said he could not pass me as A1.

“This man is not fit to be a soldier he has flat feet.” He said to the recruiting sergeant.

“Do not worry about it in this case because, according to this form here he is a railway engine driver, so he will not have to walk very far.” He replied with a grin.

“Well, okay, I will put him down as passed his medical, but I will put a note that it was on your recommendation”

“Congratulations lad, you are now a soldier in the British army”

I was kitted out with uniforms and overalls and two pairs of hobnailed boots, I was given a pistol, but never had any training in using it, I guess they had very urgent need of my services around the trenches in France.

The real soldiers that I travelled across the Channel with were all late conscripts and none too happy about where they were going, but at least they had some basic training. I was a soldier in name only, I think they looked down on me because I was untrained for the task of killing people, I frequently heard the term nignog, but I was unaware of its meaning until much later.

I was rushed to the front line, well as rushed as the old lorry could manage being piled with animation boxes and spare guns, as we struggled along through the mud I thought this is not the ideal way to go to meet the enemy.

When I finally got to my workplace. I could see the look of relief on the faces all around me and as I first got the engine to move they raised a big cheer, I could see why, you could hardly move in the heavy mud and riding on my little train must have been like luxury.

Each journey was like a nightmare, we were constantly being shelled by the German artillery and occasionally a shell would blow up the track in front of us and my little train would be at a standstill sitting there like a target in a coconut shy, the army engineers were very used to this, and because it was narrow gauge and lightweight track. It did not take them long to get us rolling again.

I fussed around the engine whenever we stopped I soon learnt that if the sergeant saw you are doing nothing he would tell you to get on and help with the loading whatever that might be, I soon learnt the old soldiers trick of keeping your head down and volunteering for absolutely nothing, I was a nignog no longer.

Going up to the front. It would be either ammunition or fresh troops and coming back there would be an endless stream of wounded or dead soldiers, I soon got very depressed and wished I was back in the steelworks.

On one trip I got as near as I could to the front line, only to find that the track behind the train had been blown up by shellfire, so I could not immediately return.

“Come with me lad, I will show you what we have to put up with at the sharp end”

“I cannot leave my train, Sir it is my responsibility.”

“You have no rails to run on so I am afraid you are stuck with us until the line is repaired.”

I still hung back, so he said.

“You cannot stay here, you will get your head shot off, let’s make our way to the bunker”

“Come on lad, you are one of us now” said a cheerful Tommy

“You don't look much like a soldier” said the officer thrusting a rifle into my hands.

“Jackson show him how to fit the bayonet, he might need to know that soon”

A junior officer came in with a report about the casualties and the situation in the front line.

“One more thing, Sir, that railway engine has received a direct hit and is totally destroyed.”

The captain turned and looked at me and said

“You had a lucky escape there by boy” then shook his head sadly.

“You had better go with the Lieutenant and join C company in the front line”

“Yes, sir.” I replied.

We trudged through what seemed like an endless zigzag of trenches until I was handed over to the sergeant in charge of what was left of C company, he took me straight away to where I was to remain for the next few days under constant bombardment from the enemy guns and in fear of being overrun by German soldiers at any moment.

A young officer came along at dusk on the third day, he was looking for volunteers for a scouting patrol, they wanted to know just how close the enemy was, he could not find anybody stupid enough to volunteer, he looked at me and the two Tommies beside me and said.

“Right, you, you and you follow me”.

“You have to be quiet no talking, the slightest sound will give us a way, take a look where the Moon is it will be your only guide back to our trenches if you get separated”

“Best of luck and stay close behind me,”

As soon as the moon was covered by the fleeting clouds, we went over the top, we crept from one shellhole to the next until we got close to the German lines, when we got close enough that we could hear them talking the officer stopped to listen and began taking notes.

He was still busy writing in his little book when the grenade that killed him, and one of the other soldiers exploded nearby.

“We had better get out of here” I whispered to my fellow survivor.

“You lead, I will be right behind you.” He managed to whisper before clutching his chest, he was dead before he hit the ground.

The two Germans that appeared over the rim of the crater, must have fired almost at the same time I was hit in the throat by one round and the other one made a neat hole right between my eyes.

The last thing I remember was looking down at the trenches by the moonlight and seeing a German soldier collecting the dead officers watch.