Angel on the Front Line

ANGEL ON THE FRONT LINE

Corporal Joseph Turner stood rigidly to attention at the war memorial.
At over 100 years of age, he was one of the few remaining World War One
soldiers and he stood there and saluted to commemorate and represent
all those that couldn't appear or were no longer around to remember the
worst of times. As he looked at the numerous wreaths being laid down at
the base of the memorial his mind drifted back to those days, where as
one of over fifty-seven million people mobilised between 1914 and 1918,
he fought for a country that could barely comprehend the amount of
fatalities that resulted in this savage conflict. Where names and
numbers were replaced by damning statistics, purposefully suppressed
from the families back home. He saluted all the brave fallen, as the
rain drifted down from a slate grey sky, a chill breeze adding to the
cold. Rain, grey and cold&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;

Third battle of Ypres
Passchendaele
November 4th 1917

One of the most horrific of battles that took place in the World War
One, six months of constant gun and cannon fire, the introduction of
mustard gas, torrential rain that continuously threatened to cause
wide-spread casualties through disease and half a million dead on the
battlefield. Some months beforehand on 7th June, General Plumer
captured the strategically important Messines-Wytschaete line. He
advocated pressing ahead and taking control of Passchendaele, but was
overruled by General Haig. Haig eventually relented, realising that the
German navy needed to be defeated and on 31st July, the third battle of
Ypres began, some six weeks after Plumer had suggested. The weather
deteriorated almost as soon as the battle commenced, the element of
surprise was lost and over 310,000 British soldiers died trying to take
Passchendaele, which they eventually succeeded in achieving on 6th
November. Two days beforehand Joseph Turner, who preferred to be known
as Joe was about to lead the charge over the top.
He looked around him. Everything was grey. The sky was the darkest of
greys, the mud, which was once a fertile brown/black was a lacklustre
grey. The uniforms that were a dull green six months back were also
washed out with the continuous bad weather and had turned a lifeless
grey. Everywhere grey merged with grey merged with grey.
The trenches were busy with men readying themselves for the battle, the
fighting had been almost continuous since the beginning of October. The
medical areas were overcrowded and unable to deal with the sick and
wounded that were constantly being admitted, limbs missing, serious
head wounds, and horrific burns to the body from the mustard gas, the
damage inside the body was even worse. Lungs could be destroyed within
a few breaths, throat linings burned away.
Joe looked down at a creased and faded photograph of his girl back
home. He hadn't seen her since he lied about his age to get into the
army. He rose to the rank of Corporal within six months of joining and
now he stood waiting for the call to run up the ladder. He said a few
words to the picture, prayed that he would be able to see her again,
thumbing the corner with a slight nervousness. He thought of how many
had gone 'over the top' who had not returned. Good friends that he had
made in a short space of time, the desperate and nightmarish situation
they all found themselves in, the faith they had in each other made
them closer than family, to many this was their only family.
Joe slowly placed the picture back into a box. Within this small,
wooden box there was a letter, sealed in an envelope and addressed to
her. In the event that he didn't return the letter was to be posted to
her, letting her know that he was in a much better place, away from
this world that had turned in on itself.
The sound of the scratchy record on the gramophone somewhere up the
trench was replaced by a series of orders. Joe grabbed his rifle and
stood at the foot of the ladder. The rain that had dissipated during
the night returned with a full frenzy, lashing down and turning the
churned, water-sodden mud under their feet into a slippery sludge
within minutes, clinging to their boots and pulling at them, making
every step more of an effort. They ran up the ladders, like so many
ants pouring out of a nest. Bullets started flying around them as the
German line retaliated. Soldiers were cut down in the hail of flying
metal, others were blown to pieces as shells landed and exploded
nearby. The sound of coughing and choking, from those unfortunate
enough not to be issued gas-masks merged into the sound of the heavy
rain, the cries, artillery, explosions, heavy machines that tried
desperately to pull free of the mud. The men used the tanks for
protection, staying behind them as metal ricocheted off metal, then
jumping into bomb-craters as they approached them, trying to gain
precious inches in a war where even the smallest distance was seen as a
triumph.
Joe weaved in and out of bomb pits, used fallen bodies as shields, held
back behind metal monsters that were either mostly destroyed or
abandoned as the ground sucked them down. He had lost sight of his men,
sadly accepting that many were probably dead already. Smoke hung around
him, further decreasing his visibility. Shells exploded within close
range, sending shrapnel into the air around him. Bullets whistled and
struck objects. The noise, smoke and virtual darkness disorientating
him, his sense of direction completely lost. His ears were starting to
ring with the constant bombardment and he started to feel the panic
well up within him. No longer sure where his or the German line was,
but realising that he had to get back to his, he pulled himself across
the mud. Beneath the whistling, buzzing noise in his ears he was sure
he could hear people running about, shouts and yells. He tried to make
out the shadows in the distance but the mist that had descended hid the
details from his view. The noise in his head was getting worse. Driven
almost insane by the sounds he stood up. He saw lines of orange-yellow
gunfire dots in the distance. He pulled up his rifle and started
shooting, aware that this was most likely to be the German line.
Everything appeared to be moving so slowly. He could almost make out
the tracer lines of the bullets as they fired back towards him. Even
slower, he could just see the blur of metal. Slower still, to the point
where objects appeared to hang in mid-air. His first thoughts were that
this was death. This was the point where nothing else mattered anymore,
where life finished.
A bright light started to emerge in front of him, maybe it was an
exploding shell, or the tunnel that appears to you as you die. His mind
was strangely clear and at ease, acceptant of the fact that his life
was about to end. The light looked very attractive. Blue, silver,
white, grey. Not the kind of grey that encompassed the battlefield
though. A shiny, bright, almost warm grey. He was sure there was a
figure inside it somewhere, human but he was unable to see if it was
male or female. He squinted to see into the brightness but could not
make out any further details. A voice called out to him from
within.
'Joe Turner.'
It was a friendly, asexual voice, as bright and encouraging as the
light that held it.
'That's me.' he replied.
The light was quiet for a while, pulsing and changing a thousand shades
and hues. 'I am here to take you from away, Joe.'
The voice was soft, musical and the Joe feared nothing from the words.
'Am I to die here?' he asked.
The lights paused their ever-changing sequence for a moment. A long
pause, a stillness and silence. The whole battlefield was quiet, the
ringing in his head had gone. He could now see the blurred rush of
bullets around him, halted, as if waiting for the light to answer. Time
was now in stasis.
'No!' the voice replied at last.
Joe was confused by this. 'Is this not what you have come here
for?'
'No!' came the reply again, still soft and musical.
'The why have you appeared to me now?' he asked, even more
perplexed.
'I am here to prevent you from dying, your time is yet to come.'
Joe was troubled. 'Why me?'
The voice, for the first time, sounded full of sadness and regret. 'I
do not know, Joe. Half a million people will die on this field, most
have died already. This battle will be over within the next two days.
It is not for me to say who should survive and who should die.'
Shaken and tearful, Joe thought of the full impact of this war and of
the countless lives affected by it all. The full horror and the graphic
images that he saw day after day. The saying he had heard - The war to
end all wars. This was a hell that he wished was over. 'When will all
this end?' he asked.
The light shimmered and blurred, colours rolling gently into one
another. 'Is it ever over, Joe? This is why you have been chosen. You
will remember. People will remember because you will.
'I am here to take you away from the war, you will be injured and
survive the war. But you will never leave the battlefield. You will
always be there when you close your eyes, and when you open them there
will always be an image you are reminded of.'
The light started fading. 'I will be back for you one day, Joe. But not
today.'
Darkness returned as the voice faded out. The bullets that had halted
their journey around him dropped to the floor and the ringing returned
in his ears. Another shell exploded nearby, shock-waves dropping him to
the floor, shrapnel hitting him in various parts of his body.
He lay there in the mud, the words in the light moving smoothly inside
his head. He relaxed and waited for the Red Cross lorry to move around
the battlefield, closing his eyes and seeing battles over and over in
his mind.

Joe looked around him, eighty odd years on. He remembered his stay in
hospital. His slow-healing wounds. He never returned to active service
and got shipped back home. A year later the war had ended, within a few
months the seeds had been sown for a second world war that would take
just twenty years to manifest itself. Within the generation that
thought the Great War would be the only world war, only to find itself
mourning losses in almost every family once again. Joe looked at the
three words that stood proudly and profoundly over the poppy wreaths
and mouthed them silently as he dropped his own wreath down.
'Lest We Forget.'