Changing Step

"Just my fucking luck?" Gilberthorpe said to the man next to him, as he looked down the gangplank that led from the old cattle boat’s deck. "I join the bloody Navy, and think all right, better than being on the bloody rag and bone round, but then I end up in worse shite."

"Stop bloody moaning," yelled the Chief Petty Officer, "And get a bloody move on down that gangplank."

"Who wouldn’t bloody moan?" wailed Gilberthorpe, "Three years I’ve been a bloody sailor, now they stick a pack on my back, a rifle in my hand, give me three weeks poxy training and stick me in a pongo’s bloody uniform. Then they send me off to shitty Belgium with the fucking so-called Royal Naval Division – send me off to a dump called bleedin' Antwerp. I ask you, who’s ever heard of a bloody place called Ant bleedin' twerp? Who wouldn’t bloody moan?"

The Chief screamed, "Shut your fucking mouth, Scarface. It’s your own bloody fault. If you hadn’t been without a ship because of being in the clink you wouldn’t have been drafted into this outfit, would you? So shut your fucking mouth, and get down that gangplank before I put my fucking boot right up your jacksie."

Gilberthorpe touched the scar on his face, "If he calls me Scarface again, I’ll put more than my boot up his fucking jacksie," he whispered to his oppo as they trudged down the gangplank. "Hey look, Jacko, they've got a bleedin' train waiting for us - bout time our bloody luck changed."

*****

As the Naval Division’s advance party marched along that seemingly endless straight road, which led away from the railway sidings and towards the rising sun, the artillery fire up ahead began to shake the ground.

These Belgians have the right idea, Gilberthorpe told himself as he watched the constant flow of bedraggled and wounded Belgian troops heading towards the railway sidings, which the British column had just left a couple of miles back. Time you got yourself out of here, Billy boy. Fuck this for a game of sailors, we’re going the wrong fucking way. I’m off back to the railway, disguise myself as a Belgian and get on a bloody train, any train as long as its going away from this bloody lot. Just hope it's going back to them docks we landed at, so I can jump on a ship back to Blighty?

Marching at the rear of the column, Gilberthorpe stopped and knelt down, pretending he had something in his boot, and as the column continued its march, he dodged behind an old roadside wall. To his surprise, he found two Belgian’s had also found the far side of the wall an ideal place to be. Sitting on the ground, backs resting against the wall, rifles across their knees with helmets pulled down over their faces, one had blood around his stomach, the other around his right leg.

Gilberthorpe sat between them and shook the first one by the shoulder; he fell to the side, his helmet falling to the ground revealing a frozen death mask. The other had also succumbed to his wounds; the ground around his leg soaked black by pints of lost blood.

"About time your bloody luck changed, Billy Boy, this is going to be bloody easy." Gilberthorpe cried out as he started to strip the nearest dead Belgian of his tunic.

"What the fuck are you up to, Scarface?" Chief Petty Officer Meadows bellowed as he looked round the wall.

"Nothing, Chief, my ankle’s knackered. I can’t even stand on it, let alone march. Thank Christ you’ve come back for me, Chief, I thought you’d bloody left me behind?"

"I wish I could leave you behind, Scarface, but what you’re up to is a shooting offence, so I might just get some fucking pleasure out of you yet?"

"Come on, Chief, have a look for yourself if you don’t believe me. The ankle’s knackered, it’s swelled up to high heaven, here have a look?"

As the Chief bent down to examine the ankle, Gilberthorpe drew his bayonet and in one continuous movement thrust it upward into the Chief’s stomach.

The artillery’s vocal chorus drowning out the Chief’s death cry as the bayonet sank deep into his innards.

"You’ll never call me Scarface again, will you, you fucking bastard gobshite? I’m going to pinch a uniform off one of these pillocks, then I’m fucking off out of here. I don’t think you’ll be shooting any fucker now - do you, Chiefy?" he hissed into the Chief’s face as warm sticky blood gushed out of his victim’s abdomen, down the bayonet’s handle, and across his fingers as it made its downward dash into the Belgian dirt.

*****

After donning the uniform of the Belgian with the wounded leg, Gilberthorpe feigned a limp, using a Belgian rifle as a makeshift crutch, as he joined a small line of Belgians making for the railway tracks. As he hobbled along he rubbed some blood from his trouser leg into the scar on his face, making it look fresh, so he could give anyone who spoke to him the impression he couldn’t answer back because of damage to his cheek and chin.

So far so good. Get back to them docks we stopped at, jump on a ship, and the way my luck’s going I might even manage to collar a little mamzel or two on my travels.

"HALT! Drop your veapons and raise your hands!" The Germans appeared as if from nowhere, all heavily armed and meaning business.

"Jesus! Fucking Jerries," Gilberthorpe thought to himself, "Oh well, better a prisoner than dead in some fucking dirty Belgian ditch."

"Ve haf no time for prisoners," Yelled a German officer, "You vill strip to your undervear unt march in ze direction of ze next willage, vith your hands raised, unt you vill meet our comrades there, who vill take you prisoner. Iz zat clear?"

They immediately began to strip their uniforms, "HALT! Vas is dis?" the German officer asked Gilberthorpe as he spotted another, different coloured tunic, under the one he'd just discarded.

"British Sailor, er army, er navy, er British soldier," answered Gilberthorpe.

"Englander?"

"Yes, Englander sailor."

"Englander, vearing other uniform, unt marching vith these? Englander spy!"

"No! No!," Yelled Gilberthorpe, "Englander sailor!"

"Nine! Englander spy. Shoot him."

© John Sales 2009