Read Online Black Hand Gang by Pat Kelleher - Free Book Online

artillery, the zing of bullets seemed somehow muffled and distant. He stumbled as he missed his footing. He looked down. His body seemed to be longer than it should have been, stretching and undulating until a wave of vertigo overwhelmed him. Letting go of his rifle, he dropped to his hands and knees. The small area of ground before him seemed to swim and ripple gently and, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring it into focus. Sweat began to prickle his face, he felt a pressure in his head, something trickled from his ear and he could taste the iron tang of blood running from his nose. The whole world seemed to tilt and from the periphery of his vision an oozing darkness spilled inwards until he could see no more than a few square inches of the Somme mud before his face. What remained of his vision filled with bursting spots of light as the world began to slip away...
     
    Private Garside's feet skittered under him on the chalky mud as he ran through the communication trench. A German shell had brought down the telephone lines between Harcourt and Sans German. He'd been ordered to collect information from the Front. Battalion needed to know how the advance was progressing. He had to get to the Observation Post and run the latest reports back to Battalion HQ. That alone could take about an hour or two. If he survived. Already two others had failed to get through.
    The first walking wounded were beginning to filter back in ones and twos down the trenches, helping each other where they could. Yells of "Stretcher bearer!" filled the air. A shell exploded nearby. Garside flinched, but ran on, pushing past a couple of RAMC sent up from the reserve trenches, carrying their as yet unused stretchers wrapped around their carrying poles as they headed towards the Aid Post.
    "There's no hurry, mate. I'm sure Fritz'll 'ave a bullet or two left for you!" they called after him.
    Garside ignored them. By the time he'd thought of a witty retort he was several traverses ahead of them. He turned into High Street. The OP wasn't far now. The trickle of wounded he'd noticed before was fast becoming a steady stream.
    Two Battle Police were confronting a young soldier, tears running down his face. He's lost his steel helmet and had no gun.
    "I can't," he was saying. "I can't..."
    "Turn round the way you came, you fucking coward," the bigger, burly one said.
    The soldier took a step forward, towards him.
    "I can't !" he screamed, tendons straining in his neck, his face red with effort as he dashed the Military Policeman's face with spittle.
    The smaller man casually put his pistol to the man's head and fired. His legs crumpled beneath him and he dropped heavily to the ground, his head lolling at a sickening angle.
    "What the fuck are you looking at?" the burly one snarled as Garside tried to edge past. He lowered his eyes to avoid meeting their gaze, but as he did so his eyes fell upon the now lifeless body of the young private.
    "Leave 'im, Charlie," the wiry one said. "He's going in the right direction, 'sides he's got a Battalion armband on."
    Garside ran on. He rounded several traverses to put distance between himself and the casual brutality he'd just witnessed.
    "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"
    He skidded desperately to a halt. Small pebbles skittered from under his boots - and off into empty space.
    Before him, where the support and front line trenches should have been, where No Man's Land had stretched away toward the German lines, lay nothing now but a huge crater almost half a mile across and thirty or forty yards deep at its centre.
    The entire front line of the Harcourt Sector had gone.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    " Though Your Lads Are Far Away..."
     
    Blood pulsing in his ears, his breathing shallow and rapid within the claustrophobic gas hood, Atkins struggled to stand. About him, the featureless smog of war billowed sluggishly, draping itself around him, as if seeking a way through his respirator. Shapes swirled about him and he saw Flora's