The brightness of the snow seemed to partially illuminate the scene from below. The figure which lumbered into view was a Nazi, that much was clear. The man, perhaps six feet tall and with a stocky, muscle-bound frame, walked with a presumptive arrogance, almost as if he was daring anyone to confront him. Dressed in a white uniform covered with dark patches and stains, he had an extremely pronounced, sloping limp. His good right foot crunched through the inches-deep layer of snow, whilst he was dragging his mangled left foot behind.
Wilkins noticed that the stumbling Nazi left behind a trail of glistening dark liquid which could only have been blood. He’d clearly been injured in battle. Physically wrecked, bleeding profusely… just how was he managing to continue to function in this bitter winter cold? Wilkins was finding it enough of a struggle just trying to sit still and stay warm up here. The enemy soldier (who was now just a couple of feet away from the base of the tree in which Wilkins was hiding) appeared impervious to it all. Wilkins wondered if he was in shock, and whether it was sheer adrenalin which kept him moving forward?
The branch he was sitting on creaked under his weight as he shifted to get a better view. The noise had an effect on the figure below. The Nazi stopped walking and changed direction, swivelling back around and looking for the source of the noise. When the man looked up, Wilkins saw that his face had been badly mutilated in battle. His lower jaw was dislocated, hanging uselessly, and one of his eyes was hard to make out amidst a mass of blood and scarring. Wilkins held his breath and remained completely motionless, and was relieved when, after a few more seconds had passed, the injured Nazi trudged on through the snow.
He must have fallen asleep again, because the noise of an animal burrowing in a bush near the base of the tree woke him up. At least Wilkins thought it was an animal. It was difficult to be sure.
Whatever it was, it was hurt. It dragged itself through the snow-covered undergrowth with an awkwardness and lack of speed which indicated it was no longer in full control of all its faculties. He shifted around as best he could, thinking he should drop down and kill the beast and put it out of its misery. Also, if it loitered too long around the base of his tree there was a real risk it might draw unwanted attention to this place. Wilkins took out his clasp knife and cut the parachute cords, then carefully climbed down.
When the animal crawled out into a patch of daylight between the shadows of Wilkins’ tree and its nearest neighbour, he had to bite his fist to stop himself screaming out in horror. The creature on the ground was another Nazi, or what remained of one, anyway. The poor bastard appeared to have been brutally cut in two. How it had happened was of little interest to the British soldier – he’d seen far worse injuries before today and would no doubt see more – instead, he tried to understand how this poor bastard was still alive and continuing to move. Incredibly, when what was left of the Nazi lifted its head and saw Wilkins standing a short distance away, it actually sped up. Wilkins backed away, feeling his guts churn at this most horrific and inexplicable sight. Behind what was left of the mutilated soldier’s torso his severed spinal cord thrashed in the snow like a stunted tail. It looked vaguely comical, but the Nazi’s clear and vicious intent was no laughing matter.
Wilkins reversed, keeping his distance as the dead man reached out his arms and dragged himself along the ground, moving ever closer. His jaw was a constantly snapping maw. Wilkins saw that the flesh around the man’s mouth had been torn away, as if someone had taken hold of his top lip and peeled upwards, removing a painful-looking swathe of skin. He backed up against a tree. No where else to go. The Nazi kept coming towards him.
Realisation dawned. ‘What the hell am I doing?’
Wilkins cursed himself for allowing himself to become distracted by the abstract horror of what he was witnessing. He’d heard the stories before he’d parachuted in. He’d known what to expect. He reached down into the snow and picked up a football-sized rock, then dropped it hard on the back of the Nazi’s unprotected head. And again. And again. And twice more until the foul creature stopped moving and was finally dead. Wilkins had cracked its skull like an egg, and had done more than enough damage to thoroughly mash and mangle everything contained within.
For a moment the lone British soldier contemplated climbing back up into his tree again and never coming down, but he knew that wasn’t an option. He and his colleagues had work to do here.
4
The scars of war were everywhere he looked. Craters, bodies, burned-out vehicles… Wilkins came upon the remains of a jeep which had ploughed into a tree at such speed that its chassis had virtually wrapped around the trunk. Its driver and passenger remained trapped in their seats, pinned into position by the twisted metal wreck. Wilkins hoped for their sake they’d died on impact and not as a result of the fire which had overwhelmed the accident site. Little of the dead men’s bodies remained distinguishable; all traces of their history, rank, allegiance and military record having been burned away. And yet their skeletal, charred faces remained horribly readable. Both of their mouths were frozen midway through never-ending screams of pain. Their burned out eyes looked up to the heavens for an explanation which would surely never come.
It was uncomfortably quiet here. Unexpectedly so. No fighting. Nothing. A dead zone. Wilkins almost began to wish for an enemy encounter to prove he was still alive. Whether it was as a result of the bitter cold, the after-effects of being left hanging from a tree, the hideous creatures he’d seen since landing in the forest, or a combination of all three, he was beginning to doubt his sanity. Am I the one who has died? he asked himself. It made marginally more sense to believe that the grotesque, borderline surreal things he’d seen were as a result of serious trauma to his brain. He’d witnessed more than his fair share of unspeakable horrors in numerous places since the beginning of the war, but this was different. This didn’t feel right.
He’d been keeping a watch for signs of any of the other Brits, and his heart leapt when he spied parachute material entangled among the lower branches of an oak tree tall enough to be hundreds of years old. He ran towards it at speed, only to find one of his countrymen hanging from a bough and quite dead. It was Graeme O’Neill, a good sort he’d known for some years. Poor bugger. O’Neill had a protruding chin and a distinctive mop of tightly curled and well-oiled hair, so there was no question it was him. From the waist up, he appeared relatively unhurt, but the lower half of his body had been unspeakably defiled.
O’Neill’s legs had been stripped of all flesh. Little more than blood-stained bones remained, as if the muscles, nerves and sinews had all been eaten away. Directly beneath the dead Brit, the snow had disappeared from a wide circle of ground approaching two yards in diameter, perhaps even larger. Blood and other unspeakable discharge had soaked the forest floor, and there were countless slushy footprints moving to and from O’Neill’s body in numerous directions. O’Neill himself bobbed up and down gently as the branches of the mighty oak rustled in the spiteful winter wind.
All’s fair in love and war, Wilkins remarked to himself, but there was nothing remotely fair or decent about what had happened here. O’Neill had, apparently, been tortured without mercy. A degree of hatred and inhumanity towards one’s enemy was perhaps to be expected in conflict, but this was something else entirely. This desecration of a fellow soldier’s body was senseless. Barbaric in the extreme.