“Relax, this is my own mixture, isn’t it?”
“You mean—”
“He’s been brewing this stuff in secret for days,” said Gutsy, shaking his head. “I tried telling him it wasn’t a good idea. If he gets caught he’ll be for the high jump.”
“So what’s this gut-rot called then?”
“Flammenwerfer,” said Mercy with a grin. “Who’s first?”
Porgy and Half Pint pushed Atkins to the fore. “Go on, Only! Put hairs on your chest, will that.”
Mercy, laughing, poured a large tot into a dixie can and thrust it towards Atkins.
“Down! Down! Down! Down!” the others chanted.
Egged on by the rest, Atkins, wanting to be a good sport, grudgingly emptied his dixie in one draught. He immediately regretted it, stumbling back, half-blinded by stinging tears as the liquor burned down his throat. Flammen-bloody-werffer indeed. Although, as he fought for breath, he thought ‘Gas Attack’ would have been a more appropriate epithet. He could feel a pounding begin at the base of his skull until the beat of it filled his head. The burning liquid etched a path down his insides to his stomach where it seemed to reach flashpoint and ignite, expanding to fill his entire body. His limbs began to tingle and throb to the beat of his pulse. As he wiped the tears from his cheeks, he began to feel dizzy and light-headed. Blinking, he tried to speak, but it seemed that his vocal chords had melted.
The faces of the men before him began to contort, twisting and turning like a Futurist canvas, their features malleable, fading and shifting. The khakis and mud greys around him began radiating kaleidoscopes of geometric patterns that burst against his retinas. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of the vision, opening them again only to find the scene around him stubbornly ablaze with guttering colours. He tried to speak again, but his voice sounded so far away and foreign he could barely hear himself let alone distinguish what he was saying or whether it made sense. He was finding it hard to breathe. He thrust a finger down the collar of his shirt and pulled at it. He looked down at his feet impossibly far below him and a wave of vertigo washed over him. Arms reached for him but he batted them away and struggled to put one foot in front of the other as he broke away from the garish India rubber limbs that tried to claw him back.
He clambered out of the blue-tinged trenches that expanded and contracted in waves before him, threatening to swallow him, and ran over sky blue mud with teal vapours rising in convection eddies. Above him, the sky boiled gently off into magenta hues. Time seemed to contract and expand in waves, too. One moment he was stumbling across crusting mud then next he found himself oozing slowly across the deep red stubble of the burnt open ground beyond as the orange fronds loomed towards him.
Two lidless eyes stared back; multicoloured whorls like oil on water dancing on their dark surface, watching him from the foaming purple undergrowth before shadows crept in from the periphery of his vision, occluding all…
NOISES INTRUDED ON the blackness. Atkins felt himself surface from dark depths as diffuse light seeped into his consciousness. The noise grew until he thought his eardrums would burst. He sat bolt upright, gasping for air like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface.
“Eyes!” he cried. “There’s something watching us!”
Gentle hands urged him back down. Everything seemed raw and tinged with garish colours, like a hand-tinted photograph. The after effects of the Flammenwerfer, he expected. Things still wavered slightly, washing gently to and fro. He went with it and sank back into the pillow.
“There, there, you’re safe. You’ve been hallucinating,” said a soft warm voice. It was Sister Fenton. She soaked a cloth in a bowl of water by his stretcher and gently wiped his face. “That was a stupid thing you did. It could have killed you. How many of you drank that filthy stuff? Three are over there. One is blinded, another two have lost their minds. One poor wretch stumbled into a flooded shell hole and drowned. You were lucky.” She held his head and gave him a sip of water. His dried, cracked lips stung as the water moistened them.
“Where…”
“You’re safe. You’re in the Casualty Clearing Station. Your friends brought you in. They found you wandering about — out there.”
“Mercy,” asked Atkins.
“Pardon?”
“My mate, Mercy.”
“Is he the one who brewed the liquor?”
“Yes,” he rasped.
“Hmm,” said Fenton with a note of disapproval. “Well he’ll get what’s coming to him. He’s in custody on a charge. There’s to be a Court Martial.”
CAPTAIN GRANTHAM, SECOND Lieutenant Everson and Lieutenant Jeffries sat behind the table. Everson hated this part of the job. Already that morning they had heard several cases. The penalties for even minor infractions were often excessive and out of proportion for the supposed crime. And as the accused this time was one of his own he felt a little ashamed too. Evans had always been one to run close to the wire. He looked along the table. Captain Grantham was playing nervously with his fountain pen, clearing his throat every minute or so. The only person who seemed relaxed with the situation was Jeffries. Since most of the men who tried the liquor were in 4 Platoon, Lieutenant Jeffries had a personal stake in the case. One of his men had died, another had been temporarily blinded and another had been relegated to the stockade with the shell-shocked. Everson heard Hobson’s bark outside. He shifted position, sitting upright.
“Prisoner and escort, halt! Right turn!”
Evans entered the dugout flanked by two soldiers.
“Prisoner and escort, halt! ’tenshun!”
Evans stood to attention, his thumbs extending down along his trouser seams, looking straight ahead at the wall over the officers’ heads, his face emotionless but for his eyes betraying a flicker of fear.
“What’s this one?” asked Grantham.
Everson read from the charge sheet regretfully, “The accused, 98765 Private Wilfred Joseph Evans, 13th Pennine Fusiliers, a soldier of the regular forces, is charged with, when on active service, wilfully destroying Army property without orders from a superior officer and with brewing and distributing alcohol.”
“Which frankly doesn’t cover the half of it,” said Jeffries. “Several of my men are in hospital and one is dead because of this man’s actions. Brewing and distributing alcohol in the trenches. In fact, worse than alcohol. The report from the MO says here that the liquor, while being extremely alcoholic, also contained some form of noxious opiate, causing hallucinations. This man’s expertise with the still equipment suggests to me that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.”
“With respect, Lieutenant,” said Everson. “There is no evidence he knew the ingredients to be harmful.”
“Nevertheless,” pressed Jeffries in clipped and measured tones. “I would ask for the maximum sentence.”
“Has the accused anything to say in his defence?”
Even if he had, thought Everson, it wouldn’t do him any good.
“With respect—” began Evans.
“Respect?” barked Jeffries, shouting him down. “You know nothing of respect, Private!” He turned and whispered to Grantham.
The Captain had a glazed look in his eyes, almost as if he had given up. He nodded, and then spoke up. “The unauthorised use of Army property will not be tolerated. I will be issuing a general order expressly banning the fermenting of alcohol for consumption forthwith. Sergeant, make sure his equipment is put beyond use. As for you, Private, penal servitude not being practical at this point, I hereby sentence you to Field Punishment Number One. I trust you will learn from this. Dismissed.”