Blood Mud and Corpses (A Royal Zombie Corps Story) Read online

walked up and down, 'Direction, strength and quickness, all while you is overexcited.  It is no walk in the park crossing no-man's land.  This here bayonet,' He held up his rifle, bayonet attached at the end, 'gives you a reach of five feet.  Aim it at Fritz's throat, and when you see an opportunity, lunge forward with it.'  He mimicked the action so the trainees could see.

  'Now Fritz is going to do everything in 'is power to stop you skewering him.  You may have to make a feint to get him to open up.'  Again, this was demonstrated, 'Or you may need to knock his own weapon out of the way if he is hiding behind it.'  There followed another demonstration.

  'Now this is life and death for you lads, you will have to be quick and use your wits.  But mark my words, your attack will fail if the men around you do not know how to use their bayonets.  So we practice, and we will practice a lot.'  There was a moan from the ranks as they realised they would be mercilessly drilled through the different actions until each was second nature.

  'Davies.  Why would you use a feint?'  The instructor asked, breaking up the moans.

  'To get them to open us so I can stab him, Sergeant.'  Replied Davies, a tall trainee stood at the front right of the formation.

  'Correct boy.'  The instructor chuckled in good humour, 'Now we are going to start off with a few short dashes before I give you lot a lethal weapon to play with.'

  'But Sarge,' Davies complained, 'When we going to learn to shoot?'

  'The enemy is hiding in great big 'oles in the ground.  Shooting will do nothing to him, boy.  It is only by chasing them out of them damn holes that we will win this war.'  The rest of the recruits had been expecting an outburst from the Sergeant, in response to the question.  Despite all the spit and polish so far, and 'silence in the ranks', they were now discovering that questions were the encouraged method of learning bayonet drill, a clear contrast to all their other training so far.  The use of the bayonet highly regarded by the British Army, with a thorough understanding of its usage encouraged, not simple rote learning of a few positions from an authorised instruction manual.

  The bayonet drill proceeded with a startling degree of efficiency over the next few days.  Each session was kept short and interesting with the steps carefully explained and practiced.  The training made a good contrast to the physical exercise and drill that filled up the rest of the time, and was popular as the recruits were expected to show their passion and initiative when making their attacks on the straw filled sacks.  At first, Alfie had been disturbed that the targets were also stuffed with the wood from broken up crates to simulate the resistance of bone, but he soon began to appreciate this as much as the other trainees.

  'Stab it you great lazy bastard, don't tickle it!' The sergeant shouted at Davies who was holding back when thrusting at a sack.

  'I am sarge.'  Davies hit the sack so hard that straw and pieces of wood fell out of a hole he tore in the stomach area.

  'Your turn Marsh.'  The sergeant pushed Alfie forward.

  Marsh ran yelling at the sack, his rifle thrust out at the imagined enemy throat.  As he got close he stabbed at the throat, thrusting and withdrawing repeatedly, just as he had been taught.  

  'Not bad Marsh.'  Commented the sergeant, just as the bayonet stuck solid on a piece of wood.  Marsh tugged, but the bayonet was not coming out.

  'Put some muscle into it!'  The instructor shouted, but Marsh could not get the bayonet out, despite twisting the rifle one way and the other.

  'Want some help Alfie?'  Joked Wells as Marsh tried putting his foot on the sack so he could get more leverage.

  'Give it to me.'  The sergeant snatched the rifle out of his hands and, with seemingly little effort, pulled the bayonet free, 'Practice lad, that's all it takes.'

  'Can't march, can't keep his kit, can't stab the enemy.  What use is he?'  Someone at the back of the squad quipped to widespread laughter.

  'He'll be our bullet shield, don't see much other point to him' Replied Taff Morgan, a short Welshman who sometimes helped Alfie with his kit and at other times ridiculed him.

  It was a week after the incident with the lodged bayonet, that the recruits ended up on the rifle range for the first time.  It was a desolate and windy spot alongside the river estuary, low clouds threatening rain.  As trainees, they had already completed the basics of looking after the weapons, learning how to clean and maintain the Lee Enfield rifles.  Using training rifles, they could quickly strip, clean and reassemble, as well as load with their eyes closed.  Marsh found the most challenging part was loading the ammunition onto the clips that were used to insert the rounds through the breech into the magazine.  Each round had to overlap the base of the preceding round, alternatively above or below, otherwise they would jam in the magazine when the bolt cycled them into the breech for use.  Not something that any soldier wished to deal with in a combat situation.  Using the dummy rounds, he had jammed his training rifle several times, and on one occasion he had forced the rounds into the magazine so fiercely that he had broken the spring, something that was not unknown, but also potentially lethal when the rifle failed to work in battle.

  Laying on the worn grass on the range, he worked the bolt quickly, aiming downrange and firing.  Clearly he was not up to the speed and accuracy of the pre-war regular army, but he could see the target had a reasonably close grouping of rounds on it.  Either side of him, his peers worked with growing confidence.  As he worked the bolt, he felt it jam solid, it would not move backwards or forwards and he knew that yet again he must have lined the rounds up incorrectly on the clip.  He raised his hand to summon help and over walked Corporal Simpson.

  'What have you bloody done this time Marshy?  You is bloody useless.'  The firing to either side slackened as everyone listened in anticipation of the dressing down that they all knew Marsh was going to get for his latest failure as a soldier.

  'Jammed my gun Corporal.'

  'Gun!'  The whole range heard the corporal shout, 'It ain't a bloody gun! That's what those great big bloody things in the Navy have.   Guns!  This is a rifle and you will treat it with respect!'

  Marsh held the butt of the rifle up for the corporal to take.  With rough efficiency, Simpson went about working the bolt free, eventually ejecting the jammed round.

  'Here, take it back and make sure you load the bloody thing correctly next time.'  Despite his bite, Simpson carefully handed the rifle back, all the time the barrel pointed downrange.

  'Thanks corporal.'  Marsh muttered.

  Marsh was not particularly surprised when he received the extra fatigues at the end of the day, this time stripping and reassembling his rifle.  At least the punishment might make him a better soldier, unlike some of the other fatigues he had been put on in the past.  

  Wells was alongside him, sharing the same punishment, having been a poor shot on the range and therefore earning the corporal's ire.

  'Let me help you with that.'  Joshua took the clip and showed Alfie how to load the rounds the correct way.  It was not the first time he had done this, but he was patient nevertheless.

  'Do you think we'll do alright when we go out there?'  Alfie asked, nervously showing the fear that he felt in the depths of his soul.  Everyone else seemed so certain of themselves.

  'Should be fine, why not?'  Joshua light heartedly replied.

  'Just we don't seem to be much use.  You can't shoot and I can't do anything else without some corporal losing his rag at me.'  Alfie confided.

  'Kaiser Bill doesn't have an army of corporals, thank God.  He just has lads like us, just as fucked up I should think as well.'

  'So you reckon we'll do good when we go into action?'  Alfie directly addressed his worries, hopeful that he would get a sympathetic answer from his friend.

  'That's the point of the training isn't it.  Get us to the point that we can function even when everything around us is going to hell.'  Joshua demonstrated this by putting down a freshly loaded clip of practice ammunition and setting about readying another clip, with his eyes closed and nose in the air to emphasise the second nature of the skill.

  'Suppose so.'  Alfie chuckled as Joshua's hand roamed the table trying to find a cartridge that had escaped him in his blindness, 'Although if my life is going to depend on highly polished shoes, I'm clearly stuffed.'

  'We'll get by, and I'm sure the mud will see to your shoes.'

  It was toward the end of training, in late July, that the letter arrived.  The training platoon had just come back from a night exercise when the mail call brought Marsh a letter.  There was nothing unusual in this as both his parents, and older brother, communicated with him regularly in this way.  There were people in the platoon who did not receive regular post, seemingly shorn from their families and previous lives, but Alfie was not one of these.  Alfie sat on his bunk to read the letter, ready to hear the latest news from home.  He was a little worried as his brother was on the Western Front and there were rumours that the new offensive on the Somme had resulted in vast numbers of casualties.  The newspapers had been obtuse about these losses, but newer arrivals at the training camp had confirmed that there had been an increase in their communities of telegrams announcing the missing and the dead.  In fact, the training had been accelerated, and the whole squad suspected that this was due to the need