Keen as Mustard

'We couldn't believe it when we got there. The queue ran all the way to
the bottom of Ramsden Street and Danny and I knew most of the lads in it. The best part of three hours we were, before we got sorted, but
we were all keen to join and never stopped laughing the whole
afternoon. There was this bloody great recruiting sergeant, at least
six feet four he was, with a shine on his boots you could see through
to next week in. It was fantastic, there was a real buzz of
excitement and anticipation. Well, we thought it was fantastic at the
time, but it didn't quite work out that way.'

'Why didn't it work out grandad?' quizzed Jimmy, notebook and pencil
poised.'What went wrong?'

Eighty year old Frank Williams barked his familiar hacking cough into a
large spotted handkerchief and looked across at his grandson with his
doleful rheumy eyes. 'I'll tell you what went wrong Jimmy,' he
wheezed. 'We hadn't got the faintest idea what we were letting
ourselves in for. We were young and daft and we thought we knew it
all. We actually knew absolutely bugger all and it didn't take us
long to find out. It'll be an adventure they told us. Go over to
France with our mates and sort out the Bosch. It'll all be over by
Christmas they said. What they didn't say was which bloody
Christmas.'

Jimmy scribble frantically in his notebook, trying to record as many of his grandad's words as possible for his school project.

'Mr Jackson told us that our soldiers were much braver than the Germans and that's why we won grandad. He said that we had right on our side and that's what always wins out in the end.'

'Then it sounds as if I should come to that school of yours and put your Mr Jackson straight. It was absolute hell, Jimmy, and we were all
terrified from the moment we got off that boat in Boulogne, to the
moment we were told it was all over'

Frank's sixty year old hacking cough exploded again and he struggled to gain his composure in front of his grandson. He spat blood flecked phlegm into the handkerchief and slowly recovered.

'We were boys of eighteen and nineteen,' he gasped, 'and so were the
Germans. We had rifles so we could shoot at each other from our
flooded, rat infested trenches. We were just fifty yards away from
them Jimmy, so close to each other we could hear them talking.'

Jimmy sat wide eyed listening to his grandad's words. He'd never heard him speak of the war before and he had certainly never seen him so animated. He flicked through his notebook, back to the questions he'd prepared in class.

'Were you with the mates that you joined up with grandad. Did you all stay together?'

Frank stared out of the window. He could still see the Somme and the
carnage out there. He heard the dull thud of the sniper's bullet
smack into his sergeant's chest and he closed his eyes, as he always
did, to erase the thought. He paused before turning to face his
grandson.

'We started out together Jimmy. We were a Pals regiment, that's what they called us. Made up of lads all recruited from the same town. We were shot at and shelled night and day, but the worst thing was the gas.'

Frank was abruptly brought to a halt by another coughing attack and sat for a while gasping into his handkerchief. Eventually, he lifted his
watery, bloodshot eyes towards Jimmy. He'd never spoken of these
things before and felt strangely compelled to continue, however
painful it would be.

'They fired shells at us that filled our trenches with gas Jimmy and if you couldn't get your gas mask on quickly enough you were in real
trouble. Mustard gas they called it. It could blind you and cause
dreadful damage to your lungs if you breathed it in.'

'Did that ever happen to you grandad?'

Frank turned away from the question and looked through his window out at the battlefield. He saw himself leading a line of his blinded
comrades, hands on the shoulders of the man in front, to the
first-aid station where many of them died an agonising death. But
worst of all, he saw Danny, his best mate since their schooldays,
lying lifeless on the cot with blood running out of his nose and his
face and hands covered in horrible yellow blisters.

'There were just fifteen of us left in my company Jimmy; out of a hundred and fifty. And not one of us came home without being damaged in one way or another.'

Jimmy scribbled furiously into his notebook, noting down the statistics,
but totally oblivious of the horrors that created them.

'Did you get any injuries then grandad?'

Frank paused for a moment and then smiled lovingly at his grandson. 'Not really, Jimmy. I was one of the lucky ones.'