Read Online Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? by Horace Greasley - Free Book Online

etched into its casing. It was the nearest he had ever come to death, and the sheer destructive powers of the big guns frightened him. He had never witnessed it close at hand before. He had seen an occasional destroyed vehicle and of course the pictures on Pathé News, but nothing had prepared him for the immense power of destruction he was witnessing first hand. Aberfield lay just in front of him, his hands covering his head. Horace sought a tree trunk for protection, figuring out that the hundred-year-old tree would absorb most of the blast of any shell landing on the opposite side of the field. To a man the whole section curled up in balls as tightly as they could or pressed themselves deeper into the contours of the land and prayed that it would all be over soon.
    And then it came. The shell with Greasley on it.
    Horace heard the faint whoosh in the distance; his mouth was dry in an instant and as the whoosh turned into a whistle it was louder than anything he had heard previously. The other men sensed it too. This shell was heading their way. ‘Take cover!’ screamed someone behind him as it came ever closer. The noise was unbearable; the shell was coming straight for them. Horace covered his head and cursed for mercy as it exploded in the middle of the track. He remembered the noise as a huge fireball plumed 30 feet into the air and then a split second later – darkness.
    Horace heard the groans at first. He had no idea how long he’d been out. It was silent now apart from a few birds singing. Those birds again, thought Horace. How do they know when to start singing? How do they know when to stop?
    Most of the men were on their feet. Some attended to their stricken comrades and applied bandages to head wounds and an odd broken bone. No one lay motionless that he could see. Miraculously they had all survived. They had made it.
    Horace tried to get to his feet. He couldn’t. He tried againlifting his body from his hips, aware of a hot sensation in the small of his back as he attempted to push his backside up into the air. Nothing. He couldn’t move. His back was stuck fast as if a huge weight was pressing down from above; his ammunition pouches bit into his chest. His worst nightmare, a broken back, life confined to a wheelchair. But somehow he sensed that was not the case. His back felt fine. He wiggled his toes. Fine. He bent his left leg from the knee so his heel pressed into one of his buttocks. It worked perfectly. The brain had sent the signal all the way down the spinal column and the leg had obeyed the order. Nevertheless he was still scared.
    ‘Help me, Fred! I can’t move.’
    His comrade walked over to where Horace lay and his mouth fell open in amazement.
    ‘Fuck me, Jim, you’ve been lucky.’
    ‘Lucky? I… what?’
    Fred held out a hand, which Horace reached for and Fred dragged him out from beneath the stricken tree. A piece of artillery casing an inch thick, the size of a car tyre, had almost split the tree in two, embedding itself seven or eight inches deep into the trunk. The protruding bit of smouldering red hot metal had entered the tree parallel with Horace’s back, a fraction of an inch above it. It was this piece of French shrapnel that had temporarily disabled Horace. Fred shook his head in disbelief.
    ‘Two inches lower, Jim, and it would have cut you in half.’
    The enormity of just how close Horace had come to death sank in and his breathing became laboured. He sat for a few minutes in silence, staring at the broken tree and the shell casing. He removed his webbing belt and his hands instinctively massaged his kidney area. He’d had a close shave, of that there was no doubt. He took a deep breath andeased himself to his feet. The drama was over, time to put it to the back of his mind and think of more important matters, like food.
    Twenty-nine men were grateful for an almost uninterrupted night’s sleep under a sturdy roof for the first time in a week, and each fell asleep on a