No Man's Land (75 page)

‘Listen! Did you hear that?'

‘Well, it's a shell. What did you think it was? A bloody butterfly?'

‘It means,' said O'Garra, ‘that something is happening, and where something is happening we are safe. Let's go. Now. Now.'

‘Are you sure it was a shell?'

‘Sure. There's another,' said O'Garra.

‘It's your imagination,' said Elston laughing. ‘Imagination.'

‘Imagination. Well, by Christ. I never thought of that. Imagination. By God, that's it.'

They sat facing each other. Elston leaned forward until his eyes were on a level with those of the Irishman. Then, speaking slowly, he said:

‘Just now you said something. D'you know what it was?'

‘Yes. Yes. Let's get out of it before we are destroyed.'

‘But we're destroyed already,' said Elston, smiling. ‘Listen.'

‘Don't you remember what you said a moment ago?' continued Elston. ‘You don't. Then there's no mistake about it, you are crazy. Why, you soft shite, didn't you say we had better talk, talk, talk? About anything. Everything. Nothing. Let us then. What'll we talk about?'

‘Nothing. But I know what we must do. Yes, by Jesus I know. D'you remember you said these Germans were the cause of the war? And you kicked that fellow's arse? Well, let's destroy him. Let's bury him.'

‘He's dead, you mad bugger. Didn't we kill him before? Didn't I say I felt like back-scuttling him? I knew all along you were crazy. Ugh.'

‘Not buried. He's not buried,' shouted O'Garra. ‘Are you deaf? Mad yourself, are you?'

The fog was slowly rising, but they were wholly unconscious of its doing so. They were blind. The universe was blotted out. They were conscious only of each other's presence, of that dead heap at the bottom of the hole. Conscious of each other's nearness. Each seemed to have become something gigantic. The one saw the other as a barrier, a wall blotting out everything. They could feel and smell each other. There was something infinite in those moments that held them back from each other's throats.

‘Not deaf, but mad like yourself, you big shithouse. Can't you see that something has happened? I don't mean outside, but inside this funkin' fog, savvy?'

‘Let's bury this thing. UGH. Everything I look at becomes him. Everything him. If we don't destroy him, he'll destroy us, even though he's dead.'

‘Let's dance on the bugger and bury him forever.'

‘Yes, that's it,' shouted O'Garra. ‘I knew an owld woman named Donaghue whose dog took poison. She danced on the body.'

And both men began to jump up and down upon the corpse. And with each movement, their rage, their hatred seemed to increase. Out of sight, out of mind. Already this mangled body was beginning to disappear beneath the mud. Within their very beings there seemed to burst into flame, all the conglomerated hates, fears, despairs, hopes, horrors. It leaped to the brain for O'Garra screamed out:

‘I hate this thing so much now I want to shit on it!'

‘O'Garra.'

‘Look. It's going down, down. Disappearing. Look,' shouted Elston.

‘Elston.'

‘Let's kill each other. Oh sufferin' Jesus—'

‘You went mad long ago but I did not know that—'

‘Elston,' called O'Garra.

‘There's no way out is there?'

‘*Uck you. NO.'

‘Now.'

‘The fog is still thick.'

‘Now.'

The bodies hurled against each other, and in that moment it seemed as if this madness had set their minds afire.

Suddenly there was a low whine, whilst they struggled in the hole, all unconscious of the fact that the fog had risen. There was a terrific explosion, a cloud of mud, smoke, and earthy fragments, and when it cleared the tortured features of O'Garra were to be seen. His eyes had been gouged out, whilst beneath his powerful frame lay the remains of Elston. For a moment only they were visible, then slowly they disappeared beneath the sea of mud which oozed over them like the restless tide of an everlasting night.

James Hanley
was born in Liverpool in 1897. He went to sea at the age of 17. He jumped ship in New Brunswick in 1916 and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which was part of the Canadian contingent that contributed to the crucial victories of Passchendaele and Vimy. In 1931, he published privately
The German Prisoner
with an introduction by Richard Aldington, who wrote:

Not surprisingly, this short novel, which features the brutality of two working-class soldiers (one from Belfast, one from Manchester) towards a German prisoner, proved too controversial for audiences of the time and was reprinted only in 1967. It is less shocking to a contemporary audience used to the news from Guantanamo and Iraq. Also in 1931, Boriswood Press published Hanley's novel
Boy
, a powerful tale of sadism inflicted on a boy who becomes a slave at sea: the book was banned for obscenity in 1935 and not republished until 1990 with an introduction by Anthony Burgess. Hanley continued to write until his death in London in 1985. As his work becomes more available, he is now beginning to get the recognition denied him during his lifetime.

THEODOR PLIEVIER

MUTINY!

from
The Kaiser's Coolies

translated by Martin Chalmers

T
HE SHIP'S DOCTOR
of His Majesty's Auxiliary Cruiser ‘Wolf' has put on his full dress uniform and requested to see the commander.

The commander receives him standing.

The quarterdeck is packed with prisoners. Hundreds, in rags, a dull grey mass, thrown together from every race. Only at meal times is there movement in the crowd. Otherwise they squat next to each other, like a society of great brooding birds, stare into the air or over the eternally blue ocean.

The doctor reports:

‘The state of health of the prisoners is even more worrying, but the same typical symptoms are present on the mess deck: cardiac dilatation, muscular atrophy, trapped nerve pain. Many are losing their teeth. All beds in the sick bay are occupied. A further hundred men should be admitted to the sick bay, thirty can no longer stand. A couple collapse every day. All are suspected of having scurvy. If the voyage is not brought to an end within a few weeks, the whole crew is facing death!'

That was in the Indian Ocean.

Since then we have sunk more ships, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the Atlantic Ocean from south to north. For the second time we are lying off the Denmark Strait, this time off the western channel.

The distance we have covered is equivalent to circling the globe three times and we have sunk 300,000 tons of shipping. All that is behind us. Our holds are stacked up to the hatches with precious cargo. The engines are overtaxed; the ship's hull has sprung a leak because of repeatedly going alongside and unloading the captured steamers. We're taking on 840 metric hundredweight of water every hour. The bilge pumps cope with the inflow of water.
^*

The wind is blowing from the north and throwing fields of broken ice at us. In front, at the sides, under the keel, ice everywhere. Vast herds of great grey pieces. The hull echoes under the hard blows. Now and then the dammed-up sea hurls a piece on deck. It then moves back and forth like a freight car being shunted on a swaying track, crushing superstructure and emplacements. A torpedo bay is gone. Number II windlass is smashed to pieces.

The blocks of ice are wedged in and dumped overboard again, making use of the ship's motion. Cables, crowbars, other hand tools! One hundred and fifty pairs of arms and legs! And we've got nothing on our bones, are drained of strength by scurvy, when we bend down we're already wet with weakness. A prisoner jumps overboard, Captain Tominaga of the sunken Japanese steamer ‘Hitachi Maru'.

The Denmark Strait is blocked.

The ice forces us south. Finally we find our way into the North Sea between Iceland and the Shetland Islands and reach the Norwegian coast without catching sight of one of the English patrol boats.

We sail on within the three-mile zone, at night pass the lights of fishermen lying by their nets – Skagerrak, Jutland, the Little Belt!

We drop anchor in Kiel Bay. After 444 days at sea.

Sent out on our voyage to sink and drown! The death notices have already been written and sent to relatives by the Admiralty Staff. But now we have returned and put in to Kiel. A hospital ship takes off the sick, another the prisoners. Twenty-six of our men are in prison in Bombay for murder and piracy. The four victims of our own guns lie in the Indian Ocean.

The rest of us have fallen in on deck.

The commander of the Baltic Station, a white-bearded admiral, inspects the ranks and puts ‘affable' questions, always the same ones: ‘What is your name?' – ‘How old are you?' – ‘What is your position?' – ‘Geulen, Sir!' – ‘Twenty-five, sir!' – ‘Seaman, sir!'

A welcoming telegram from the German Emperor is read out and the order ‘Pour le mérite' placed around the commander's neck. Then the Iron Crosses are distributed.

Two days later:

The Iron Crosses have been taken away from us again, the ‘Pour le mérite' from the commander. The admiral has come on board again, this time with a captain from the ‘Propaganda Office for Raising War Morale in the Hinterland'. A film camera! Close-ups: of the commander, of the pack of dachshunds, of the crew.

The cameraman turns the handle. The admiral awards the confiscated Iron Crosses for the second time, puts the same idiotic questions, reads the same telegram from the Emperor, places the ‘Pour le mérite' round the commander's neck again. A big cinema show! The nation's highest military honour has become a prop. The commander who is not allowed to marry his wife because she is an actress is himself forced to take the part of an actor. All the other officers including the admiral and head of the Baltic Station make up the extras. The crews of the warships in harbour, the jetties populated on orders provide the big and cheap background. We roar hurrah half a hundred times until we're hoarse and grin as we do so: propaganda to raise war morale in Germany!

Sixteen hundred feet of film for the hinterland and the military hospitals. The captured cargo to the value of 40 million marks, raw rubber, copper, human hair, rice, coffee, tea, tinned meat, delicacies, spirits is not intended for the hinterland and the military hospitals. The Kiel Officers' Mess is interested in the cargo, sends out a number of barges in a kind of surprise attack and wants to begin the unloading. But as commander of a ship operating alone the commandant is not subordinate to any unit and has sole right of disposal. On his instruction the prize goods are taken off in the open harbour of Lübeck beyond the control of the naval authorities.

We are loaded with decorations. The Kings of Saxony, of Bavaria, of Württemberg, the Free Hanseatic Cities send medals on board by the box load. The officers are promoted. The commandant gets his fourth gold stripe: means a salary rise of 800 marks a month. The Artillery Officer his second stripe, 400 marks a month.

We remain coolies, on a daily wage of 50 pfennigs. The prize money due to us gets stuck somewhere in the maze of bureaucratic procedure. The soldiers' wives of Lübeck, who take us into their beds, wear nightshirts of coarse cloth, wash themselves with soap lacking oils or fat; they don't even have enough money to buy the rationed ersatz foodstuffs. We steal as much of the cargo as we can, split with customs and police, sell to the black marketeers and middlemen who have turned up. A retired senior naval officer resident in the town writes to the Admiralty Staff: ‘…the celebrated crew of His Majesty's Ship “Wolf” – no heroes, but robbers and thieves! Making off with state property! Should all, right down to the youngest sailor, be court-martialled!'