My Cruel Foe

(Image Contributed by: Ridip Deka)

My Cruel Foe!

      -Abja Jyoti Sharma

May 1940

‘Two shores are alike yet separated by a mighty powerful sea’
All there were the sounds of guns, cannons, bombs and planes flying in the sky. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder. I, Christensen Williams, a nineteen year old soldier from a small village of south of England was brought like many others to serve my country with few months of training and no experience of Warfield. I was frozen with fear, hiding behind a rock with my gun and my frozen fingers that couldn’t pull the trigger. I heard about the Nazis, their cruelty and strength. When I was seventeen I saw the dead body of the boy from my village, killed by Nazis in a war – not just killed he was, the Nazis shot and then tortured him to death. And there I was, facing the same enemies and sacred if I would face the same consequences. A son of a farmer with two sisters never in my wildest of dreams thought of joining the English army and face the cruel and powerful Nazis in a war but that was the situation in England at that time, the army was recruiting every man eighteen and above, as there was a shortage of soldiers for the ongoing war and the headmasters, the teacher, the other elder ones of the society, all wanted the young boys like me to serve the nation and that was one of the reason for me joining the army. It wasn’t that I was unpatriotic; I wanted to serve my nation for its glory but not by fighting a war. But fate had different thoughts.     
My village – small and far away from those big black chimneys and rush-hush streets of London – surrounded with greenish fields and blue hills, where I used to play football all day with my cousins and friends. Even after the outbreak of the horrendous war nothing much had changed in the lives of the villagers despite the boy the killed by Nazis. When I was leaving, my mother and my sisters hugged and cried but my father didn’t, he kept starting and said only two words – ‘Fight well’, maybe he was ready for the fact that I might not return from the war.
The sounds of firing guns and cannons increased. I held myself behind that rock with my ears blocked with my hands and the riffle on my lap. Some might think me as a coward and betrayal who was thinking about his own life rather than thinking about the greater glory of my nation. But I can say, anyone of eighteen years old and placed directly in a battlefield from a small village farm would have done the same. Those creases on my hands carved by ploughs and shovels were trying to blend with my riffle – but couldn’t really. I wanted to see my mother, father and my sisters again – might they had lost the hope of my survival. I wanted to play football again with my cousins and friends on those lash green fields. My ploughs, shovels and the crop fields were all waiting for me – what would they know about war and Nazis.
“Run run. Save yourself. The Germans are advancing”, an English soldier cried in uttermost disguise as he ran beside me. A cold sweat ran down my forehead, cold enough to freeze me in the posture I was in. I wanted to run but my legs were like numb out fear, the fear of Nazis, the fear of death and cruelty. I kept hiding myself behind that rock, picked my gun and placed a finger on the trigger. I had to ensure that the full bullets loaded, so I loaded my gun with maximum bullets. But as I tried to pull the lever I struggled – my riffle was jammed. On both of my sides, I could see the English soldiers fleeing the battlefield and as were they running, many were shot by the Germans on their backs. The Germans were behind me; I could hear their loud voices but couldn’t make myself up to look behind over the rock. I also could hear the heavy tanks passing behind me – of course they were of Germans – and felt them by the tremor they produce on the earth near them – they might have been few meters behind me. I was almost sure that I was going to die. I pulled my family photograph out from the pocket of my trousers and I cried, cried a lot looking at my mother, father and my sisters without uttering the faintest of sounds for I might not see them again. I grabbed the photograph on my hand, stuck it to my chest and closed my eyes and waited for my death. The hunger and the sleepless nights loosen my body and mind and put me to sleep. Even when I was asleep, I could hear the loud German voices, the screams of the soldiers shot, guns and bombs and the flying German planes. I cannot clearly state, but I guess the Germans walked past me and assumed me as dead.
As I woke up but didn’t open eyes, there was an unusual silence with one or two random cries far away. I thought England won the war; I smiled and opened my eyes and what I saw in front of me was profoundly shocking. There was a Nazi soldier pointing his riffle on me. The ‘SS’ badge on his chest reminded me of the stories I heard about their gruesome cruelty. The Nazi soldier also seemed a teenager like me with his rich brown hair and glittering eyes – might have been even younger than me. I was in total dismay for I knew I couldn’t see my family again; the photograph that I was grabbing, kissed it whilst crying. He tightened his grip on his riffle and as he was about to pull the trigger, I closed my eyes and loosen myself up and waited for the bullet to pierce through me. My family photograph fell off from my grip on the ground beside me.
Few seconds went by and no sound of gunfire and no pain I could feel. I opened my eyes to check whether I was dead or alive. And as I did, he was looking at my photograph that fell from my hand with his riffle pointed still on me. He then looked at me and slowly loosened his grip on his gun, pulled out his finger from the trigger and hung the riffle on his shoulder. He looked around to check if someone was watching him, all he and I could see were the dead bodies of both English and German soldiers but none alive. He then looked at me and went to one of his knees in front of me, then pulled out a photograph from a pocket of his trousers and showed me holding it right in front of my eyes. It was a family photograph, a man and a woman with their two sons and a daughter – I could recognise one of the sons was him – the photograph wasn’t very old as the resemblance was quite absolute. He then picked up my photograph, flipped it, then took out a pencil from one of the front pockets of his shirt and drew few straight lines with two intersections – which was suppose to be a map. He circled the starting point and then pointed at me which his pencil, to which I understood that the starting point was the place where I was. He then drew over the lines of the map he just made and showing me the way to reach the end point of the map. He drew a small English flag at the end point of the map, which made me understand that it was there where my fellow English soldiers were and the place where I was at that time was a German occupied land. He opened his bag and pulled out a piece of bread and handed over to me. Then wore his bag again, picked up his family photograph, put it in the pocket of his trousers and left.
All I could collect at that moment before heading towards my fellow English soldiers was that the war wasn’t about common people but a way of satisfying the greed of few. All I heard were the stories of cruelty of Germans, of course there were some on both sides but then it was a German who saved my life. A German who might have been brought to this horrific war from a small village like me. Like me he was missing his family too. Like me he wanted to see his family again and so he understood my agony. Like me he might like football too. I couldn’t find any difference between him and me like two sea shores, only he was a German and I’m English and were made enemies by the mighty pride of some.