| A SHORT STORY BASED ON NO SPECIFIC EVENT - COPYRIGHT ROB BUCKELL DUG IN AND DIRTY
Dirt. Everywhere I look I see dirt. I didn’t realise dirt came in so many colours, shapes or sizes. I’ve sat and looked at it now for four days in this hole. Had the opportunity to study it in detail. Fine little grains, some like salt, others like sugar. Coarser lumps, lumps stuck together. Every shade of brown. Little roots as well, all mixed into it. The dirt changes colour when it’s wet or dry. Fascinating stuff really. And then there’s the smell of course. That mush-roomy smell of damp earth, sweat, damp canvas, leather and gun oil.
I say hole, but it’s meant to be a weapon slit, it’s still just a hole. There are two of us in this one, me and Mick. When we first dug it, it was hot, dry and getting on for dusk. We’ve shaped it a bit since, dug out a firing step at the front and a couple of small ‘shelves’ on the sides for our stuff. I managed to find some small branches and twigs to lay out on the bottom to keep the mud out.
Every afternoon it rains; regular as clockwork here, around 3pm. It pours for about 40 minutes and then stops, the sun comes out and then we all steam dry. That’s when the mozzies come alive. Our slit is about fifteen yards from the next one on either side. Terry and Arthur are on our left and Paul and John to the right. Each slit is linked together by a natural shallow ditch that runs behind us. It gets very cold at night, below freezing sometimes and it’s autumn here. At the back of our slit we dug out a place to kip and store our stuff. It’s only a large hole, like a ‘cave’ with some bits of wood and sandbags on the top to protect us from any shrapnel flying about.
When it’s not my turn on watch I sit in there with a small stub of candle and write letters. I write every day, home to my sweetheart Dotty, mum, dad and little sis. Of course being out here in the field I can’t exactly get to a post office, so I keep them all in a little plastic bag inside my shirt pocket. As soon as I get out of the field and back behind the lines I post them. That’s the best part you see, because I also collect my new post. My girl always writes to me every day. Just a few lines sometimes but enough to let me know she’s thinking of me. Sometimes I get a little photo, or she’ll put a little bit of lace with some perfume on it, or a flower petal to remind me of home.
The waiting’s the worst. Waiting and watching. It’s so boring. Nothing ever happens during the day. Sometimes there’ll be a flap. Someone will see a bit of movement up front, but it always turns out to be a bird or a wild pig. Night time is different. That’s when it’s scary. That’s when the buggers sneak about up front. They always come at night, never during the day. Nerve wracking is what it is. I’ve been out here, in Korea for four months now and been out in the field almost constantly since we got here, but I never get used to it. It’s frightening at night. Bad enough during the day if you’re moving about, but night time just sitting here in between snatched sleep and watch, it’s awful. The sun goes down about 8pm really quickly and stays away until about 5am. Then we can hear them moving about up in the hills. Sometimes they get so close we can hear them talking.
I live for the moments I can write to my Dotty. I think of her here every waking moment of every day. I carry a little notebook with me and jot down my thoughts whenever I can. Then when I get a moment I write those letters. I have the book in my hands now. I’m sitting inside our little cave at the bottom of this damp bloody hole. The candle is fluttering with the gentle breeze from outside. It’s only a stub but it gives enough light. It’s light outside as well. My pencil’s also only a stub now, I shall need to scrounge a new one soon. My notebook is only about 4” x 3”, and like everything else around here, it’s dirty, damp and creased. I scrounge bits of paper wherever I can and transfer my thoughts to letters home. When we’re not on watch or writing home, food is the next thing on our minds. What I wouldn’t give for a roast chicken, gravy and roast spuds.
Not much chance of that up here though, on top of this hill. We haven’t had any contact with the enemy for a few days now. The last time we saw them was the night we dug in here. We caught them on the hop. They didn’t know we were here because we crept up here at dusk and dug in. Not long after we’d settled down for the night they just walked straight into our position. Like they were out on a shopping trip! We opened up on them and killed a dozen before they’d managed to get away. Didn’t even counterattack, but we expect them to any time. As I said we can hear them moving about and reckon they’re sneaking forward. The Yanks sent over a plane about 10 o’clock this morning and we’ve just been told they spotted the buggers moving towards our position. The smell of their dead and the buzzing flies up front are getting on my nerves. I reckon we’ll be moving out of here soon. Now where was I, writing a short letter to my Dotty, but I can hear noise outside, which is unusual. Mick is calling me, quietly. I put down my writing stuff and crawl outside, lifting up a canvas flap we rigged up and out into the bright daylight.
‘What’s up?’, I ask him.
‘Over there, a movement’.
Mick points to a small area of open ground just in front and to our right, about 100 yards away and 150 yards wide, there is a scrub line where the area closes in again as the shrubbery becomes very dense.
‘I definitely saw a movement, something moving behind the scrub’.
I gingerly sneak a look over the top of the slit and take a look but can’t see anything myself. I look around for the bino’s and find them on one of the soil shelves we dug out of the side of the slit. Taking another look with them, I spend a few seconds trying to focus them. There’s dirt on the focusing ring which I can feel grinding like sandpaper as I turn the knurled wheel. I can smell sweat, dirt and brass on them as I put the hard bakelite lenses to my eyes. The lenses are dirty and all I can see is a smeary fog. I breathe on them and rub the lenses with my shirt tail and put them back to my eyes. The scrubby dry bushes come into focus sharply and I hold still, trying to work out what I’m seeing. After a few moments I realise I can see through the dry bare branches. Behind them there is movement. Then I realise I’m watching enemy soldiers crawling along, belly down behind the bushes. The realisation hits me like a punch to the stomach and I duck back down into the slit. A feeling of sickness combined with sheer terror hits me in the guts and I realise we are about to be overrun.
‘Bloody hell Mick, stay down, the bastards are right in front of us’. My breath is coming in nervous gasps now.
Right’, I gasp quietly to Mick, ‘You get back into the ditch and let Terry and Arthur know and tell them to get on the wire, I’ll let Paul and John know. Then get straight back here and keep your bloody head down’.
No sooner do I finish that sentence when a flare goes up above us with a noisy hissing whoosh and I hear the desperate shout.
‘Stand to!’.
Mick and I look at each other and then both scramble for our weapons. A burst of machine gun fire that I recognise is our Bren gun pops away from over on our right just as I look up over the top of the slit again, in time to see an arc of tracer rounds pour into the bushes to our front, the last one appears to glide into them, bright red like a slowly moving firefly as it descends towards the ground. A puff of dust whips up from the bushes as the rounds rake the scrub. The whole thing seems surreal and slowed down. I snap out of it and realise that without thinking I’ve already drawn the bolt on my rifle and slammed a round into the breach. I’m now sliding my rifle over the top of the slit and looking for targets. Then all hell breaks loose. All of this happens in fractions of a second that seem like forever. I automatically pat my right shirt pocket to reassure myself that the photo of my Dotty is still there, wrapped in a small plastic bag and sitting right above my heart. She is where she should be and I feel things will be ok. I know she’s my soul mate and guardian and with her near me I feel safe. Mick is to my left and he too is ready with his rifle. I look again at the open ground in front of me and then it happens.
They come out of the bushes from everywhere in front of us. A mixture of green and black clad men, all of them Chinese and North Korean and they’re coming straight at us. Never has 100 yards seemed so close. I watch in fascination as they run towards us, these yellow men. There must be at least 80 to 100 men in the clearing to my front, of all ages. Dirty tired looking men in various combinations of clothing. A loud bang from my left startles me out of my momentary dream-world and I realise Mick has just opened fire on them.
Then everyone opens fire, from everywhere, including me. Our fields of fire have been set up to ensure that each slit creates a deadly cross fire to the ground in front of us. Enemy soldiers are dropping like flies. I sight down my rifle barrel, put the foresight post over the front of a man carrying what looks like a small sten gun and squeeze the trigger. Bang! A cloud of gun-smoke blurs my vision momentarily before the breeze whips it away. The rifle recoils into my shoulder and the whole weapon jumps sharply back and upward. Instantly I lift up the bolt and draw it back, the empty cartridge spins aside to my right with a flip and puff of smoke. I push the bolt forward and can feel a new round slide into the breech as I lock the bolt back down again. As I settle back down I look for a new target. I have no idea what happened to the man I was aiming at, or whether I shot him.
I just line up the foresight post again onto the next man I can see and repeat the action. Bang!, up, back, forward, down, target, Bang!, up, back, forward, down, target, Bang! This action repeats itself and I try desperately to count my shots, was that four or five? I reload, pulling the clip out I snap more rounds in as fast as I can, slip a spare round into the breach and snap the clip back into the magazine, and repeat what I have been doing. I can hear the empty cartridges chinking and rattling as they land on each other in a small scattered area next to me. As I look at the ground in front of me I’m still aware of Mick firing away to my left. All my mates in the other positions around me are also blasting away, and the Bren guns on both sides are cutting them down like a hosepipe washing dirt away. But still they keep coming at us, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they press forward. I can hear them shouting as they advance. Some are whistling and blowing bugles, others seem to be cheering in their strange clipped language. I hear the cry ‘Grenade’, and sure enough seconds later an explosion goes off to the left front, followed by a few more. There’s gun-smoke like fog drifting over the whole area now and the smell of cordite is rich in my nostrils, acrid and stinging them. I repeatedly fire at targets in front of me. Now I’m on automatic pilot, shooting as rapidly as I can, but I have no real idea if I am hitting any of them. I realise later this is what they call ‘red mist’. I have a tunnel vision that stops me thinking too much about what’s going on.
You must try to understand that all of this is taking place in seconds and slow minutes, yet it feels like it’s been going on forever. I hear a faint series of thuds and sense a change in air pressure. It’s only now I realise the enemy are also shooting at us but their fire is ineffective as they are running towards us and trying to avoid being shot. I can hear ‘phip’, ‘phip’, pinging noises around me as their bullets whiz over us. Then moments later our artillery rounds find their targets, the end result of the thuds I could hear earlier. They crash into the thick scrub behind the now advancing enemy, two rounds explode close together, sending dirt, bushes and the enemy scattering all over the area. There is a fractional lull as everyone; enemy and us, startle from the impacts and my hearing rings back into focus. The first sounds I hear are the pops of the Bren guns, still blasting away. Whoever is directing the artillery must be requesting new coordinates.
As I look again at the ground in front, the smoke is thicker than ever from the artillery. Still out of it they come, stepping through the smoke like wraiths in some medieval vision. This time there are only a few of them and they are only now about 30 – 40 yards away. Bang!, Bang!, the shooting continues, reload, fire, reload, fire. Again I hear the artillery rounds screaming in overhead and brace for the impact, praying they are on target. Boom, Boom, Boom. Rounds explode right on target, walking across the naked ground like giant raindrops, exploding in a shower of dirt, and the limbs of the already dead and those still coming at us. Instantly Mick and I slide down into our slit, our backs turned away from the hell in front, heads down, clinging onto our rifles like they were our mothers and lovers hugging us for the last time. Dirt cascades down onto us, scattered in fat clumps into the bottom of our slit.
No one else exists right now, just me and Mick in the bottom of this hole. The world around us has turned into a hostile turmoil, indiscriminately killing both friend and foe alike. We wait for a few seconds for the artificial shower to cease. I look to my left, Mick is now on my right as I’m seated at the bottom of the slit and have turned around. A few feet away there are the charred, naked remains of a leg. Hurled into the slit by the explosion, I can see the yellow skin along the lower leg and the foot still partly wrapped in a black plimsoll type shoe.
Peace. The air is still and there is no more gunfire. I wonder for a moment if I have been deafened by the gunfire and explosions. I snatch a look at Mick. He’s looking at the sky, like me he’s listening. I stand up and turn to face the front and again slide my rifle over the front, finger on trigger, ready. Nothing there. Gun-smoke is still clinging in small pools around the still figures of the dead, but as I watch it peels away on the breeze. Nothing is moving in front anywhere. What was once an open dry, dusty patch of ground about the size of a football pitch now looks like a field of burnt stubble from some Suffolk county painting. Except there are bodies of men scattered across it. For the most part they look as if they are sunbathing, still and asleep. They never got any closer than about 20 yards before they were all finished off. Further back they are two deep where they were initially cut down as they left the bushes, their mates falling over them as they fell. A series of craters across the centre of the ground are clear of bodies around them, thrown aside like toys. Each crater smoulders like a small volcano.
Only now do I realise I have been holding my breath and I let it out in a loud gasp. I let my rifle lay to one side, still pointing forward. Relief floods through me and I start to shake as I stagger back, leaning on the other side of the slit. My legs feel weak and I can feel myself shaking. I need a drink, and I reach for my canteen. As I scrape dirt off the top I unscrew the cap and gulp down water rapidly. Mick is still looking forward, holding his rifle at the ready.
‘Are you alright Mick?’, I ask him, concerned.
He wipes his arm across his eyes and turns to look at me. I can see the smudge of damp tears in a smear of bright clean skin across his face. He too lets his rifle go and slides down the side of the slit again, collapsing onto his knees.
‘Bloody hell that was close’. He states the obvious and I can tell he’s as frightened and exhausted as I am. I take a look at my watch. Fifteen minutes have passed since I was sitting in the ‘cave’ writing to my Dotty. Fifteen minutes in which men on both sides have died or come close to death. I pat my shirt pocket again. Dotty is still there and suddenly I feel ok again. My legs don’t feel so weak. Suddenly I hear noise from behind us. I leap forward and grab my rifle just as our platoon commander slides into the slit. He looks at me and Mick, quickly assessing us for injuries.
‘Hello chaps, bloody close scrape. Everything ok?’, he asks, as bright as a button and as enthusiastic as a schoolboy on a daytrip. In fact he looked very much like a schoolboy. I release the grip on my rifle and relax again.
‘Just doing a roll call. Keep your heads down. Once everyone’s been accounted for we’ll be moving back. Arty are going to stonk their position for a few more minutes. Keep down’. And off he slithered, back the way he came, into the ditch and off towards Terry and Arthur’s position. Neither of us got the chance to answer his question or find out if anyone else was injured. Bugger this I thought, I need a brew.
‘Mick, I’m gonna make us a cup of tea. You keep watch and I’ll brew up’. I retreated into the cave and fiddled around for some matches. Inside the cave I noticed my notebook and pencil where I had left it. Everything was covered in dirt. I picked up the notebook and blew the dirt off, but before I did I couldn’t help but notice the colour of the dirt again! I knew what was coming next and a brew would help settle my frayed nerves. Some of us were going to have to search the bodies for intelligence; maps and things, and get a rough count of the dead. It’s a horrible job but someone’s got to do it and it needed to be done quickly, before the bodies had time to spoil.
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