I May Be Some Time

Cold.

Darkness.

Wind.

Above all …. Cold.

Hellish cold.

Hear my words all you fine preachers standing high in your Sunday pulpits, giving your weekly sermons of blood and thunder. Making pronouncements of how a vengeful God will judge, of how the Devil and all his minions are waiting for us with pitchforks and fire for the smallest infringement of a commandment.

You are wrong.

Hell is not heat, nor lakes of fire. Neither is it brimstone.

Hell is unremitting cold, dark, full of snow and ice.

Hell is this god-forsaken land of ice at the bottom of the world.

Hell is not getting far enough away from the others.

Hell is them finding me. Finding me dead or worse … alive.

Hell is death for them if they do, for in the latter case, I will slow them.

Hell will then kill us all without thought, without mercy.

Stinging chips of ice flying amongst swirling snow - driven by a freezing wind howling with manic ferocity, across frozen ground resembling concrete - hit like pellets from a shotgun.

Cold creeps insidiously through my head coverings, clothes, boots, gloves. Every tooth aching from the cold. Every breath a tortured inhalation of frozen air. Each exhalation of warmth instantly freezing on the inside of the wrappings shielding my face. Nose half-blocked by snot like slush, blackened at the tip. Eyelashes and brows coated in a rime of ice despite goggles, which are so crusted in ice I peer at the world through a small, misted area.

Lips, blue, swollen, cracked, bloodless. Ears … long gone, I think they may have fallen off. Feeling in my legs below the knees lost a lifetime ago. Hands? I’d had them once. I was sure of it. Now just stiff, lifeless blocks of black tipped fingers of frozen meat hanging on the end of my arms.

It is fortunate my blocked nose stifled my sense of smell. I can no longer detect the odour of my rotting flesh within my boots as frost bitten flesh blackens with gangrene. The others said nothing but I know they were aware of the sickly, sweet smell overpowering the odours of our unwashed bodies. A stench which haunts me for it foretells my end. That smell with pain which ebbs and flows each moment of each hour of each day, has prompted this action, leading me out into the storm.

Another grudging step on wooden limbs brings me crashing down onto the icy hard surface as my toe catches on a wind sculpted ridge of ice. I lie winded, then rouse enough to turn my head. Each torturous second, muscles, bones and sinews, creak, grate, reluctantly moving, until peering past my feet I see no spark of life.

No feeble flicker from the lantern guttering on the pole above the entrance to the tent. No pale amber glow from within where my companions huddle together around a small paraffin stove melting ice to drink. The tent and its occupants lost to me in the dark bitter cold gripping the land in a fist gloved in ice.

The incessant wind has scoured my footprints from the ice and I retain little strength to lift myself to go further. This will be far enough. Has to be far enough. They cannot find me for they will want to take me with them. They have barely enough energy for the living. None for the dead.

Where had we been going? I wasn’t sure anymore. Where had we come from? I couldn’t remember. Why were we doing this? Cognitive thought was turgid, slowed by a lack of blood as my body tried to retain heat leached by the wind and the ice I’m lying on, withdrawing it from extremities in a desperate effort to retain the core warmth.

I can go no further. Here I will lie and go to sleep. I hope for just a slow gentle drift into oblivion. Here I will lie for eternity. Must lie. They must go on without me. Go on while I lie here and dream of home. Dream of my mother, my sister and her family, friends in the regiment, acquaintances. Dreams of England in the summer, warm sun, colours fresh and bright.

I feel a little warmer. The ice is not so cold beneath me. The wind seems to have softened its assault; its wail no longer constant. Thoughts seem sharper, clearer now I am lying down. Knew now what we had been doing, trying to achieve. I felt sadness and renewed disappointment. We had failed. Failed by such a small margin. Failed despite all our efforts, our struggles, the hardships. Yet we could be proud of our achievement, for we had behaved like Englishmen, we had attained our goal. I wished the others well in their return to civilisation, if only in my thoughts.

There they will still be feted, cheered, praised for having achieved the goal we had set out to reach. No matter that we had come second. We had undertaken a great feat and reserved a place in the history books, no matter where that place in them is.

It is strange how clarity of thought has returned as my body slows. I can see my mother as clearly as if she was stood before me and there at her shoulder … my father. They are both smiling. My father nodding his approval, pride in his eyes. My cracked lips part in a painful smile.

A shuddering indrawn breath of frigid air and my parents fade from view. I closed my eyes in sorrow at their departure. The frozen world around me is diminishing. The sound of the wind that I have lived with for so many long days of weary trudging across this hell has grown distant, fading as my senses begin their final shutdown.

 I am so, so, tired.

I am past regrets. Past hope, past feeling, past wanting. Life sliding, slipping slowly away. The pain is … not gone, just no longer relevant, no longer important. It has lost its meaning as a warning that my body is hurt. I am beyond hurting. Drifting now, mind detached from body.

Surely Heaven must await me for I have suffered Hell on Earth.

Now I am … I am … I ….