The Sun Always Rises
It is cold, miserable and wet. A light moody drizzle turns the golden beach I stand in into viscous, sinking, glue like brown slush that sucks, moulds and squelches around my boots. Gunshots ring around the beach, and horses stumble and collapse onto the mud, cold, dead, shot by their own masters. The unwounded and educated soldiers are waiting chest high in the cold, biting sea water, carrying guns and personal objects above their heads. There are a few tattered fishing boats in the distance, ferrying crowded men across the English Channel to safety. But there are not enough. Hundreds of soldiers wade to their ticket back home, but as I clutch my wounded leg, I am not one of them. For every hundred that make it back to their safe and warm home, another thousand perish here, on this wretched, beach.
For many brave souls, this is their last day alive, and they know it. Many soldiers have made use of it by reducing their once noble minds into a tangled delighted and sorrowful delusion of drink. Drunk, confused and singing men are hanging off broken carousels and swings, playing and shrieking like innocent children, loving and hugging each other more than they had ever loved their mothers. Indistinguishable, decomposing bodies hang off the slowly turning Ferris wheel in the hazy distance. With some morbid realization, I realize the only way the bodies could have ended up there would if they had shot themselves, or an airplane or blimp had an unfortunate accident.
Many come back from the front in crippled jeeps or tired horses, only to realize that there is no way back, except for the cold, deathly retreat of the sea. I walk through a barely trudging line of exhausted soldiers returning to the front, and almost trip over a pile of ammunition crates. A girl sits on it crying, her mother attempting to comfort her. Technicians and Privates drag sandbags and place them around gazebos, checking and loading machineguns as they glance occasionally at family pictures in their pockets. There is a broken, paper-thin defence that would only last for a few minutes. Tired and weak soldiers stand vigilant on crates and makeshift observation posts, barely clutching their rifles with their frail hands. A staggering unit of men half heartedly set up machinegun posts and rotate artillery mortars, looking jealously at their drunk and happy friends, but not slacking on the fear of being shot by their superiors. A weak tangle of rifle bearing marksmen have already given up on the last line of defence, and are writing letters home to their mothers and wives, bottles of wine and beer in their shaking hands. I wonder why they aren't scared of being reprehended, until I see their screaming and laughing generals and captains riding off on flamboyantly decorated circus horses.
A looming black storm cloud from the south is rapidly approaching, which is followed by the sound of shells and gunfire. The sun is setting, its light casting a strange eerie glow behind the clouds, and the source hidden behind the fog line. The bitter and realistic have accepted their impending fate, while others are too busy being carried away by their dark and drink induced fantasies. The sober without orders are smoking, lining banisters, writing wills and last letters, chatting under faded umbrella stands or busy crying and contemplating. Everyone knows that the left behind will be dead, either tonight, or the next painful years in German prison camps. Engineers smash their rifles into car engines, spotlights and shell casings, and toss guns into piles of burning, twisted metal. Battered trucks, fresh from the fight, push their way onto the beach, dropping off companies of bloodied brothers. A squad of ordered men rip fluttering documents, journals and Bibles into a growing fire, lest our enemy find them. Even though we will probably not eat a lot in prison camps or in a shallow grave, we cannot bring ourselves to. Something about imminent death spoils your appetite for food, but makes alcohol suddenly enticing. The bitter sadness here is not exploited into harsh anger or resentment, but has spluttered out into a sad, impending and humiliating defeat. This is not the Second World War we see in the cinemas back in London, where we send the 'fleeing, cowardly' Germans back to their country; this is a pathetic, slow and painful failure, that can only end in death.
Two men roll down the sand in front of me, swearing, scuffling, punching and screaming, fighting like livestock. People look on, staring through them with glazed eyes. A sober man only makes an attempt to break up the fight when one of the fighting men is a cold, twitching corpse. Inside a tea pavilion, the wounded and faithful are singing to their God or Gods, as there are no atheists in a foxhole. The light of things hoped for starts to fade as the rumble of thunder and cannons approaches, and the faint echo and stutter of machineguns crescendos. Many of us are not prepared. It is like a nightmare that is painfully real, and shall never go away and only get worse. A drunkard stares at me with sunken glass eyes, and with a moment's flicker of recognition, sways at me and tries to swing a blow to my shoulder. It is soft, weak and unbalanced, and I easily shrug him of, making him stumble into the mud, shrieking at first then drinking again.
Angry, tired and frustrated by the sight of once noble men reducing themselves to mere delusions of grandeur, I march up to a rowdy soldier filled pub, brushing past a vomiting fisherman. The stench of sweat, blood and alcohol hits me in an almost solid wave. Blasts of care-free music come from the dancing Captain's banjo. It's easy to be happy when you're intoxicated. They smash beer bottles against walls and dance and sing along in the frenzied raucous room. I push my way past them, and reach for a beer tap to quench my thirst. The rusty tap shudders and splutters, surrendering a little trickle of stale beer which I greedily slurp into my parched throat. It is not enough. As I contemplate whether to search the cellar or upstairs for a bathroom tap, a hurled bottle smashes against someone's head, and the room roars into violent fury and indiscriminate fighting. Soldiers are lashing out at each other, burning their raw wrath and rage. I duck, a flung revolver just missing my head. Desperate, I run upstairs, and with relief find it empty except for a dead body, which with all honestly looks like a meaty, splattered pizza. I wonder if he had a wife, children or siblings, or if his parents knew what had happened to him. His cold hands are wrapped around a shiny, heavy pistol, which I pocket guiltily, just in case. I jog to the other room, a rundown bathroom, and frantically grab the tap, turning it and gasping in relief as clear, cold water gushes out. It flows into my parched dry mouth, moisturizing my raspy throat and hydrating my body.
The other bedrooms are occupied by mothers clearing cupboards of personal items, hiding passports and hiding anxious children. An empty cinema is rolling in a small hall, projecting an enlarged kissing French couple on a dirty screen. I run downstairs, where the violent activity has mostly been quelled by a shouting fat general holding a smoking rifle. Soldiers stand wide eyed at him, huddling near the walls, staring at the unmoving bodies on the floor, most covered in bruises and glass shards, and a more recent one with a fresh bullet wound on his temple. I hurriedly exit through the back door, and I cannot be prepared for what meets my eye.
It's a panorama from hell. From this position I can see the depressing and empty sadness that engulfs this entire dismal beach. I can't see any extreme violence, not physical bestial murder or screaming pain, but I can see the pain and conflicting violence within each and every of our miserable beating hearts. There are thousands of us here sharing this long and imminent fate, under the same blood red sky, on the same muddy beach, thinking the same thing. There are no winners in war. Everyone loses something, even the people who leave this dismal begotten place alive. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children, your sanity, your health, your blood, toil and sweat. The intoxicated have been ordered by now sober commanders to shape up for an attack, or to return to the front. Madness. They'll be like sitting ducks to the Germans' guns, as if waiting for your death wasn't bad enough already. Columns of smiling soldiers line up in the freezing and frenzied waters, grateful for their ticket back home. More – Most – of us, are left here to die, sitting or leaning around, waiting for the guns to claim us. It's unsettling to see how many are not prepared, how many are simply young boys taken away from their homes and given a rifle. The fear and exasperation inside me begins to grow as the crackle of bullets grow louder and closer. As we watch the sun set down, its bleeding light fading in the dimming sky above, I see it as the sun closing the curtains on this grim chapter of human history forever.
But then of course, the Sun Always Rises, shines on our blemished past, dries our flowing tears, drives the darkness away and brings back the radiant blue skies of hope.
For hope is the bravest thing here.