Only Birds Above by Portland Jones

Author:Portland Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Being shot, Arthur thought later, was like being kicked by a horse. The speed of it and your own weak smallness. He was running, firing and then all of a sudden his face was in the sand and his fingers round his leg like a rabbit trap. Panting, oh god oh god, trying to see through the smoke haze with the Turkish twelve pounders like a hammer in his head and the cold-water pain-sweat down inside his shirt.

And then the order came to fall back and he picked up his 303 and ran with one hand on his thigh and there was blood in his boot and with his fingers he could feel the edge of something meaty, hot and wet. But his foot worked and he ran, through the sand, up over a ridge back towards the horses.

Joe steadied the little mare by the bridle as Arthur mounted and waved him away, out past the cactus hedges and the trampled, shell-holed gardens till he could see the long lines of men and horses in haphazard lines heading away across the plain.

He caught up with the field ambulance after a couple of miles. The thick briny smell of it – he couldn’t look, the broken men weeping, calling out, and the thick-legged horses straining to turn the wheels in the sand. Camels with cacolet stretchers strapped either side jolted along behind and Arthur, reining in the little mare, his heart going all funny and his head full of air nearly wheeled her away, but the blood was still coming out between his fingers and his boot seemed full of it and he had started to wonder just how many bootfuls of blood there were in a man.

The convoy halted and a British medical officer climbed down from his seat, smiling. His face was splotched with blood, his sleeves rolled back and his arms to the elbow caked with brown. Arthur noticed small lumps of meat caught in the thick hairs of his arms and watched as he drew on his cigarette, his lips around the scab-coloured end of it.

Arthur dismounted and swayed on the sand, the flies like a crown around his head.

‘Ah yes,’ said the man in an officer’s voice, waving his cigarette, gesturing for Arthur to come closer.

The officer turned to the groaning men in the cart behind him. ‘I say, keep it down a little, chaps,’ he said, and then turned back to Arthur. ‘It’s always their mothers they cry for,’ he shrugged, his brown seamed palms held upwards. ‘Always their mothers. When really, what good is your mother when your leg’s been blown off? Just a glorified scratch,’ he added, pointing to Arthur’s thigh with his cigarette. ‘All rather superficial, nothing to write home about I’m afraid. Some muscle, some subcutaneous fat and a bit of skin absent without leave. A spot of carbolic acid and some gauze and you’ll be back to your best in no time.’

Arthur gasped when the antiseptic splashed his thigh, like a bee sting or a paper wasp and a hot sick feeling in his throat.

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