PART FOUR: PASSCHENDAELE

"So you chaps back in Blighty who haven't got the grit
To go and take the shilling and to come and do your bit,
Just now and then remember at night before you sleep
The men who carry rations on the road from Pop to Ypres."

Michael was tired. He was tired of all the bitter soldiers singing as they rode on from Poperingen to Ypres with supplies, dodging mortars the entire way. He was tired of the cowardly generals throwing away their men as though they were nothing. He was tired of the rats, the poison gas, the bombs, the blood and the sickness, but most of all he was tired with killing.

On the 7th of June, Michael Higgins was stationed near Wytschaete in Belgium, when at ten past three in the morning, he was awoken and prepared for battle. That very hour twenty-one bombs went off all over the Messines Sector, four hundred and fifty tons of TNT. The German lines were blasted into the air in a terrific holocaust of flame and smoke, rising into the stratosphere like a mushroom cloud.

Michael had witnessed this explosion from across acres of no-man's land. They had triggered the bombs in the middle of the night, but as the fiery pillars roared into life, they so illumined the air that it was like daytime. The light and blaze of the storm of fire reached Michael before the eardrum-shattering sound of the mines detonating.

Cannons, sandbags, men and carriages were thrown amazing distances into the air as well as tons of displaced mud and dirt, arcing through the sky and falling back to earth burying the hundreds of Germans alive inside their trenches. It was all nothing but a grave as far as the eye could see.

Nine divisions and seventy-two Mark V tanks assaulted the Messines sector, still reeling from the bombs. The 16th Irish took the town of Wytschaete; there was little resistance. The hardened troops had been buried along with the explosion.

Michael, being an avid student of history, remembered a curious and similar incident during the American Civil War. General Grant had decided a similar course of action: plant bombs under the enemy trenches and blow up the enemy along with them. An elite division of the United States Colored Troops was supposed to lead the attack, but Grant, not wanting to seem a racist by sending so many Africans to their deaths, switched the vanguard's role with a white division.

The troops had charged under the stars and stripes down into the crater made by the bomb, and three thousand soldiers were trapped thirty feet below the surface in a hole in the ground. The Southerners threw down bottles and bayonets upon their enemy, and shot them as they struggled to free themselves. As Michael charged the gap in the line created by the bomb, his ears ringing, he wondered if he himself might be trapped and killed.

But there was little fatality in the attacking English, Irish, Canadian and ANZAC troops. They merely skirted the crater, at the bottom of which heaps and heaps of blasted men lay, their lives and sleep interrupted by the torrent of fire and earth that the British had set off under their prone and defenseless bodies.

In a small encampment at St. Eloi, Michael Higgins sat writing once again to his mother. He greatly suspected that his outgoing letters were being censored or stopped, as the replies were becoming less and less frequent and more and more vague.

Lieutenant Vicks was having some trouble away in the Brigade Headquarters Store. They had raised the price of cigarettes twenty pence, and Vicks was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown over it. He was arguing and cursing at the quartermaster, causing much amused glances from the newer recruits and replacements.

What had started out as a battalion of two hundred and twenty-seven men was down to one hundred in total, and only twenty of that number were part of the original group that had set out from Aldershot Barracks in December, 1915, a year-and-a-half ago. It all seemed so long ago...so distant in Michael's memory that he, Tippe and Vesey had tripped up then-Captain Rourke outside the bunks, or target practice, or the two-mile runs though the beautiful, pristine countryside of Surrey.

Pure countryside was something that Michael missed greatly. He was born and raised in Ireland, where the fields extended miles and miles, blue mountains rolling gently across the green plains of Eire, where his fathers and forefathers had built houses, farmed crops, and lived their lives. Belgium had once been like this, it had to have been. There had to have been a moment in time where these shell-torn and cratered hills and stretches of barren, acrid no-man's land were lush river valleys, grass growing long and tall where now was only bodies and rubble.

Michael's thoughts drifted back over the many months...leaving home in Kilbride, enlisting in Belfast, his first day at Aldershot, being sent to Etaples, his first few weeks on the front line, Hulluch, the Somme, Guillemont, Ginchy, Messines...

Major Rourke and Captain Relyea arrived on the scene, the former pulling Lieutenant Vicks by the ear. Michael smiled; Rourke had trained them all to be what they were, industrial-age killing machines.

"Higgins," Relyea said, coming toward Michael, his wounded hand bandaged as always. "I'm glad to see you all right after the battle,"

"Same to you," Michael replied. "You hear the Yanks are coming over?"

"Aye, they signed the declaration of war," Relyea said. "The war's over in Russia though. The Germans will be focusing everything on winning up at Ypres, or down at the Somme again. We're being moved to Ypres, by the way."

"We are?" Michael said in surprise. Ypres had very negative connotations. At the first battle of Ypres in 1915, the English had taken the town, but were constantly under attack on all sides. At the second battle of Ypres, two Canadian divisions had been decimated by chlorine gas. There were rumors even now of Germany unveiling a new weapon at Ypres—mustard gas, a deadly poison that would maim a soldier for life.

"Yes...and you've been promoted to sergeant."

"All right..." Michael said, nodding. "What happened to Sergeant Pyle?"

Relyea looked down and said quietly, "Your squad leader, Sergeant Pyle, turned his gun on himself. You're now the leader of the squad. It's Tess, Rollins, a few others you would know. And also...there's someone else."

"Who?" Michael inquired, tired of surprises. He looked at Captain Relyea, and then beyond him...and couldn't believe his eyes.

"Jack!" Michael blurted out, running from his seat across the dirt floor of the encampment to his old friend.

Coming up behind Relyea was Jack Vesey, walking just as fine as always despite the bullet that had torn through his hips. Michael embraced Jack, his old friend he hadn't seen for almost a year.

"An entire year," Vesey said.

"I can't believe you can walk again," Michael said, looking down at the crutchless, bandageless legs of Vesey.

"Neither can the doctors," Vesey replied. "The bullet went right through my hips, it just missed the sciatic nerve and the big artery. If it had hit those, or my joints, I'd either die or not walk again. The surgeons were amazed."

"Did you hear?" Michael asked worriedly. "We're moving to Ypres."

"I heard. Maybe by that time the Americans will have come. How has everyone been? How is Tippe, and Relyea, and Pyle?"

Michael bowed his head. This would be the hard part.

"Tippe died at Guillemont, Jack," Michael said. "And Pyle killed himself. He shot himself, I just found out today. Relyea's doing fine."

"Conor's dead?" Vesey asked, his face growing ashen.

"I thought you might have known," Michael said softly.

There was a long silence. It had been a while since the two had talked. Vesey had gone through rehabilitation, hearings on whether he should be sent back to England, and more hospitalization...it had been a year ago, June 1916, when they last had talked in the Chapel de Notre-Dame de Consolation.

"Time goes by fast," Vesey said, sitting down next to Michael. "Remember when Rourke loved my target, and always hated yours?"

"He always shouted at you over how slow you were running," Michael replied.

"Tippe is dead..." Vesey muttered again. "How did it happen?"

Michael debated telling Jack the truth, how Michael had begged for morphine at the end as he lay dying on the blood-soaked ground at Guillemont, even the medics being shot about him. Instead, Michael chose an easier way out.

"He took a bullet in the heart. Right dead center of the chest, died instantly," Michael answered.

"You swear?" Vesey persisted. "He didn't feel any pain?"

"No," Michael lied. "You hear a lot about these lads getting addicted to morphine as they die, after they're wounded, but that wasn't Conor. He took a bullet right straight through his heart and just went out like a candle."

"Good," Vesey said, relieved.

It was in mid-June that the 16th Division was moved once again northwards up the line, to the small village of Passchendaele. In July, the Germans began using mustard gas for the first time.

The 16th Division was stationed near Borry and Zonnebeeke, a little ways away from Passchendaele and the Ypres salient. The closest major village was Langemarck, to the east.

As soon as Michael and Jack stepped off of the lorry at Poperingen, the grey skies began to rain. The dark and gloomy clouds opened up their torrent, and the deluge poured upon the fields. The distant popping of shells and machine guns mixed with the pitter-patter of raindrops on the cobblestones.

"This rain will make our lives hell, won't it?" Vesey remarked.

They traveled down the barren, treeless road from Pop to Ypres, and from the main camp and divisional headquarters at Ypres to the ruined town of Passchendaele. The rain flooded the ground, and by eveningtime when they had reached Borry, the humidity and water in the air was palpable as it fell from the sky down onto the muddy ground. They were up to their shins in water and mud.

Through the blasted forests they walked, the branchless and leafless trees rising like matchsticks above the troop column marching to Borry like a giant khaki caterpillar. Bodies floated in the damp condensed pools of chlorine, their faces detached and floating on the surface.

"Oh, lord," Michael said.

Bodies were stacked like miserable piles of firewood off the wooden planks leading through the bloody marsh. The bullets zipped through the upper branches of the trees, too high a trajectory to injure, but enough to scare. Corpses rotted in the phosgenous water and cooked gorily in the mephitic vapors of the swamp, embers glowing like lanterns on the brine. When a wounded man fell into the poisonous water, the evil fluids would seep into his wound, and kill him in pain. When a dead man lay in the toxicity long enough, his skin would detach and float away, leaving a faceless head decomposing where once a smile had beamed.

"Trenches," Captain Relyea called out from the fore of the column. In single file the company cleared the poison swamps, and entered the flooded trenches.

From the trenches a stream of water from the rain ran out. The soldiers stomped through knee-deep mud, burst sandbags and exhumed bodies that had been washed from their graves in the torrential downpour.

"We'll be working with the Inniskillings," Relyea shouted behind him. "They're in the trenches already. Let's get some sleep. Stand-to in the morning."

"Sleep? Christ." swore Abraham Tess. "In this mess?"

"'Hell up, Abram," Rollins muttered, selecting a niche in the wall. As he settled in, a gush of water collapsed onto his head, drenching his already-wet trenchcoat.

It was the middle of summer, but freezing. These were the worst conditions of the entire war, wet, miserable and bodies stacked about, used as couches or seats. Skeletons lay randomly about, some still wearing their uniforms. A German skeleton sat in a place of honor atop three freshly-killed recruits, a cigar in his mouth and a spiked helmet adorning his mossy crown.

As night came, the shells began to fall, throwing up mud down into the trenches, burying the Irishmen.

"Remember the night we fought Fritz in Hulluch?" Vesey shouted.

"That was a hell of a scrap," Relyea replied nervously, looking about at the rockets whirring like comets above their heads, popping and throwing sharp shards of metal shrapnel down into the trenches. "Old Jameson got both his feet blown clean off charging the Germans, and he kept on running on his stumps until Fritz bayoneted him down. That was some scrap."

"What about Guillemont?" Michael shouted. "Remember Conor Tippe? Remember the machine guns ripping through us? How Conor Tippe got shot down a hundred yards from the station, and how the bullets went right through our tin helmets?"

"Remember that huge pile of bodies in Devilles wood?" Rollins said, clenching his teeth together as the bombs exploded chaotically above him, tears running down his face. "About a hundred Fritz, all just lying there..."

A hissing cat-sized shard of metal screamed as it passed clean through Rollins' stomach, nearly cutting him in half.

"Bugger it all, my rotten luck," Rollins moaned as he doubled over.

"Shite, he's down?" Relyea cursed. "Heads down! Mind the shrap! Keep a guy out for splinters!"

Everyone placed their faces down into the river of mud and water, the splinters of metal dinging off of their helmets. Rollins' blood spread from his body and he thrashed about as he drowned in the rainwater, his blood pouring out of the massive wound in his abdomen.

The brutal night passed on, and no one got much sleep. At dawn, the fatigued Relyea cried, "Stand to!"

Everyone in the company got up to what was left of the firing step and when Relyea blew the whistle, threw themselves over the edge.

"Stay with me, Jack," Michael cried vainly as they ran through the barbed wire and tank traps. Gunfire roared all around, mortars and grenades bursting in the earth.

"I will, Michael!"

The fog and rain obscured the German lines, but they could see the muzzle flashes of the machine guns spattering death through the Irish. Vesey screamed as they made their way to a small dugout in no-man's land; a former trench.

"No, Vesey! Not now!" Michael cried, turning around. Vesey was on the ground, clutching his leg. He had been shot again. Michael knelt down by his side.

"It'll be all right, Jack," Michael said hesitantly. "Just a leg wound. It'll be all right."

"Thank you, Michael," whispered Vesey.

German machine gun fire rattled all around, sinking into the dirt around the pair. Bombs went off as the Irish counterattacked the Germans.

"Will I survive?" Vesey asked.

"Of course, you'll live, you're all right," Michael said comfortingly.

"Will I have my leg?"

"I don't know."

"Damn," Vesey grunted, his face twisting in pain. The bullet had shattered his thigh, cutting the femoral artery. He needed immediate help, or he would die.

"The things they can do with prosthetics these days," Michael said. "You'd never know that your leg was gone, it's plastic silicon molded into the shape of a human leg."

Vesey bowed his head, eyes closed. His mangled leg twitched. Bullets were still flying, but the Germans were in retreat.

"We'll keep in touch though, even though they'll send you home," Michael said, his voice more and more high pitched. "It's a right good blighty. You can go home to the countryside of Mayo, and we'll visit each other every weekend. Our children and grandchildren will play together, and we'll grow old together. They'll respect us for what we did in the war, and we'll be part of the Black and Tans, and be the local bobbies for the rest of our lives."

Vesey went limp in Michael's grasp; he had fainted.

"It's all right, Jack," Michael sobbed. "Just go to sleep now. It's just a leg wound."

The battle was winding down, and now more Irish and English soldiers were coming near the dugout where Michael and Vesey hunkered.

"Bloody hell!" came a surprised English voice over from the other side of the crater. Michael looked over; it was a corporal of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, rifle aimed down toward Michael. "I nearly blowed you away, I thought you was a Fritz."

"Help me!" Michael begged. "Jack's wounded!"

The corporal made his way down, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. He knelt down and examined Jack Vesey.

"His leg has lost a lot of blood," Michael said. "They might have to amputate."

"They won't have to amputate," said the corporal matter-of-factly.

"But look at it!" Michael exclaimed, pointing at the bloody mess in Vesey's calf.

"They won't have to amputate," repeated the corporal. "Because he's dead."

"It's just a leg wound! Look!" Michael said, exasperated, pointing at the leg.

"You look," the corporal said, bending Jack's head forward. There was a tiny hole nestled in his tawny brown hair, caked in dirt. It oozed blood in a small dribble. "He took a small-caliber shot to the head. He's dead. No more."

"He's not dead!" Michael roared. "It's just a leg wound! He's going to be okay! He's only bloody shot in the leg!"

"He's dead, you culchy, and crying won't bring him back," the corporal said in disdain. "The most you can do for your friend is bring him back to the lines so he won't rot out here. Come on, lad, I'll help you."

Michael looked down at Jack Vesey, age twenty-one, from Charlestown, Mayo, the first of five children, now dead and gone.

"Come on, lad," the corporal said. "He's dead, but we've won. We've pushed back Fritz. Come on back, lad. Leave the dead in peace."

Michael stood up, looking down at Vesey's body. He was going to rot there. This barren, muddy dugout would be his final resting place, this burnt-out corner of Belgium.

Michael walked back, headed toward the trenches. As he and the Inniskilling corporal made their way back, a trench mortar struck near the dugout, throwing dirt into the pit. As decent a burial as any that a soldier could get out here.

Jack was dead. Michael was alone.

Darkness. Heart beating like a drum, pounding the ribs. Searing air in the lungs.

"Michael!" Relyea cried.

He sunk deeper into the mud, desperately wheezing as he reached for his fallen gas mask. Every breath was an agony. He could feel the fluids moving in his chest. Mustard gas. Far worse than chlorine or phosgene. It was Fritz's new secret weapon, and now Michael was dying.

Michael knelt down at the dirt, clutching his throat in pain. He was drowning in his own lungs, they were filling with fluid.

"Michael, don't breath!"

Michael's eyes teamed with tears and his lips began to turn blue. He fell prostrate on the ground, his body immersed in the mustard gas. His mask lay abandoned on the ground.

"We're nearly there, Michael,"

Voices blurred and faded away. He was going, gone. He would be with Vesey and Tippe. Relyea...just save...

Michael listened and thought, trapped in his own body. He was paralyzed, couldn't speak or breath.

"Flank attack..."

"Good god...."

Machine guns sputtered above him. An American voice called out orders...no, a Canadian voice. Irishmen fought and died in the mud and marsh, dying for what? For divine monarchy, for tyranny, dying for the British crown and the country that kept them oppressed.

Monarchy, communism, despotism...thoughts and flashes of a draining intelligence burst in waves of color through Michael's mind. He saw his own life flash before his eyes. Childhood innocence fading into warfare and bloodshed.

The last wisps of consciousness were blown away from Michael's mind in a gust of air that swept the mustard gas away from him.

Michael was gone.

But he survived. Michael Higgins returned alive but maimed from the war to end all wars. He returned to life in Kilbride, Mayo, from where his brother John had departed to America.

Michael's body was hurt. He was a physical and emotional wreckage, and he had chronic problems with his lungs and heart due to the effects of the chemical warfare. He did not survive to see the second world war.

Michael died in April, 1929, almost twelve years after he returned from Belgium. He died in his mother and father's house in Ireland, surrounded by his family and his memories of all his friends who had met their end at Passchendaele, the Somme, or Hulluch. He had never married.

Michael's brother John Joseph emigrated to America in 1916, where he was refused entry at Ellis Island. Not letting something as little as that stop him, as the ship turned around headed back to Ireland with the rejects, he leaped overboard into New York harbor and swam to Manhattan, obtaining a fake ID and never being bothered by the authorities every again.

John Higgins married Brigit, and had a daughter: Beatrice. Beatrice was my grandmother; she gave birth to my father.

Like all stories designed from historical records and vague memories, this story had some exaggeration. Some names are either fabricated or changed to protect identities. But some things are undeniably real. Michael Higgins fought in the 19th Corps, 16th Irish Division and distinguished himself at Hulluch, Guillemont, Ginchy, and Langemarck. In 1917, he was gassed and maimed permanently, dying at a premature age of the long-term effects of the gas.

This story is not meant to make light of my great-great uncle's sacrifice and death, nor to derive cheap entertainment value from his painful fate, but to remember a hero and a courageous man who braved death and misery on the Western Front for the sake of callous monarchs.

So that all can remember the supreme valor and honor of all those who fought in the Great War, and all other wars.

Michael Higgins - born 1896, died 1929
6th Bttl, Royal Irish Rifles Reg., 16th Div

THE END