Read Tall Poppies for Free Online

the sun behind us so they’ll be looking into it.’
    â€˜Break out the rum, then, Sergeant.’ Richard took in a deep breath and checked his equipment. The Mills bombs were ripe lethal plums tucked into his webbing. He was a walking ammunition dump, and if a bullet hit him in the right place he’d explode, and they’d never find the scattered fragments of his body in all this mud.
    He stared into the shit brown horizon. It reminded him that he’d been in a bit of a funk these past few months. Not that he was scared of dying. He’d lost that fear in the first gung-ho weeks of the war, when his body had been fully nourished and he’d been pumped up with the bullshit of propaganda, convinced that if he died for his country it would be a hero’s death.
    Now he felt like an old man with the ague, and the courage and conviction, along with the youthful venom, seemed to have been sucked out of him by the everlasting mud. Men died all around him. They didn’t look like heroes, but victims of some lethal game of cricket, as they lobbed chunks of hot metal back and forth, trying to score points with the number of people killed.
    Those who didn’t catch a bullet often died of the flu. It was unstoppable. It felled the healthy, striking them down. It was said it could kill you in three days, and that if the lips turned blue the patient wouldn’t survive. It had only just begun to make real inroads into the ranks, and soldiers were dropping like flies. Others got over it.
    Richard had heard that the opposing forces were just as ill, just as hungry, just as dispirited – and just as low on ammunition. There were rumours that peace was being negotiated. Now he was scared because he could see an end to this war, and although he’d survived the disease he had an irrational fear that he might survive the conflict, but emerge from the war without honour in the process. When all was said and done, most people would prefer a dead hero than a live coward in the family. It was less embarrassing.
    The golden-haired youth who’d marched bravely off to war, carrying the pride of his friends and parents on his shoulders, would return to Foxglove House changed. He had killed – he’d smelled death. It had sickened him even while he did what was expected of him. And those left behind would expect him to be the same as he’d been before, if he survived – the remainder of his life would have to be an act.
    He didn’t want to kill any more of the enemy  . . . in fact, he no longer thought of them as the enemy, but as men like himself, with families waiting for them to come home. He wanted to turn and run, not fight  . . . and that made him feel like a coward.
    â€˜It’s almost time, Sir,’ the sergeant said.
    Richard nodded, trying to look nonchalant to give courage to his men. His army-issue Lee Enfield had been cleaned the best he could, and his ammunition and bayonet were at the ready. He hoped they didn’t run into any machine guns. If they did, he hoped none of his men would suffer. He fingered the cross he wore around his neck, a gift from his mother. ‘God be on my side today,’ he whispered, tossing back his ration of rum, which would give his legs the courage and fuel to keep moving onwards instead of backwards.
    A tremor of extreme fear ran through him as the Verey Light ignited and began to float across the sky in a beautiful halo of white mist that looked as though it had been sent directly from heaven. He had a strong urge to cower into the mud with the grisly, maggoty remains of those who’d tried to escape from the trench they’d occupied before he’d arrived. The war was over for them.
    Instead, he scrambled out of the trench almost recklessly, urging his men forward. The sun came flaming up to warm his back and send its glory to shine over the glistening sea of mud and gore. He was up to his neck in death and