I left a dying comrade to save my own life
as a young officer, historian Michael howard experienced a tragic outcome on a night patrol in no man’s land, accompanied by a single Guardsman.
THIS was fear — the sudden stop of the rhythm of breath and heartbeat, followed by agonised butterflies in the breast. I stopped. the voices stopped. then came the challenge ‘Halt! Wer da?’
We got down, and all was still. After a while we cautiously stood up and began to walk. We had gone only a few steps before I felt a stinging blow in the back of my legs and heard a little explosion just behind me.
‘Are you all right, terry?’ I whispered. ‘No, sir — it’s got my foot.’
Pressed to the ground, I heard the bullets swish overhead. Poor terry began to scream in fear and pain.
this is the end, I thought. I am in the open and in the middle of a minefield. I can’t get terry away — he is almost twice my size. Seriously I thought of surrendering, but that would have been stupid. this is the hardest part to write. Deliberately, and fully aware of what I was doing, I left terry and crawled away.
the Germans were only yards away. I told myself they would find him at daybreak and bring him in. I shouted that there was a badly injured british soldier here, but the only answer was a flurry of grenades.
I found that I had been lightly wounded in the legs by terry’s mine, and could only move with difficulty. terrified of more mines, I crawled, feeling ahead among the tufted grass as I went. the mist was thick, and I had now lost all sense of direction.
I thought of that warm room at battalion headquarters with its fire. It seemed the summit of all earthly desire. Pressed into a hollow as the machine guns rattled, I wondered whether I would ever see it again.
Eventually, forcing my way through briars and brambles, I found the right track and stumbled back as quickly as I could. My mind was a series of layers of feeling: a layer of relief, a layer of shame, a layer of anxiety . . .
I learnt a great deal — too much — about myself; not least that I did not deserve a Military Cross [which he was awarded at Salerno, Italy, almost a year earlier]. It is easy to be brave when the spotlight is on you and there is an audience. It is when you are alone that the real test comes.
Everyone at battalion headquarters was kind. I offered rather unconvincingly to take a party back to find terry, an offer which Colonel billy Steele sensibly refused. I was sent back for another spell in hospital.
And terry? He did not survive. Whether he bled to death before the Germans found him, or died in their care, I do not know. Years later I sought out his grave, and sat beside it, wondering what else I could have done. I still wonder.