Jack’s Promise
‘Go on Tommy – tell Santa
what you want for Christmas’
Tommy gave no indication of
hearing his mum. He sat at the kitchen table and stared at the blank sheet of
paper in front of him. He clutched the pen in his hand. His brows were knitted
in concentration, his mouth pursed and his tongue poked out.
He wrote ‘Dear Santa’ at the top of the page in
large wiggly letters – not too bad for a seven year old.
He leant forward and covered
up so that his mum couldn’t see what he wrote next. All his mum could see was
the top of his head.
She heard the slow scratching
of the pen and his phonetic mumblings as he struggled to spell out the words.
He looked up.
‘Mummy, how do you spell
‘together’? He spoke hesitantly, trying to sound-out the difficult word; ‘Ti Gi
– ether’?
She showed no surprise but a
frown creased her brow as she spelled the word for him.
Tommy put the pen down and
sat back. She could see his large wiggly writing:
Dear Santa
For Christmas I want Mummy and Daddy back together
‘Can you send it to Santa?’ This was the magic
mantra; send it to Santa and all Christmas wishes would be granted. Santa
always came through. Why should this year be different?
How could she explain to her
seven year old son? 1940 would go down in history as being very different.
Jack, her husband, had been conscripted. She had no idea when he would return
home, or even if he would return…or even where he had been posted. The last
letter she had received from Jack had been heavily censored. It upset her to see
her husband’s delicate handwriting scored through with ugly black lines. His location
had been a secret and now his whereabouts were even a mystery to the Army.
Her last letter was from the
war office. It was an official statement. Private Jack Peterson was listed as
missing in action.
How could she explain that to
her seven year old son?
She remembered Jack’s parting
words ‘Don’t worry luv, I’ll be back no matter what’
Even at the time it seemed
like a rash promise. Now it seemed like a desperate fantasy. How could Jack
escape the horrors of war unscathed?
All she could do was pray for
her husband’s safe return. And she did post Tommy’s letter to Santa, maybe the
GPO would have an answer.
Flares sent up into the sky
illuminated the harsh desert landscape for a moment and then the comforting
darkness returned. Private Jack Peterson
was hugging the ground, if barren rock and sand could be called ground. Over to the right, a stone’s throw away was
the crumpled body of an old school mate, hit by a piece of shrapnel and now
curled up as if asleep.
Jack had not dared to move
now for several hours. In the distance
and sometimes not so far away was the occasional sound of machine gunfire and a
stray shell sometimes passed overheard, before landing somewhere in the rear.
Some seemed to scream far overhead, others followed a lazier trajectory and
landed with a bang somewhere nearby.
But the firing seemed most intense when a flare went up, hence Jack’s
hatred of that brilliant though mercifully brief light.
Just a week before it had all
seemed so different. So easy. Like a Sunday stroll in Lambeth.
They had sat in a briefing
tent listening to the C/O drone on.
This was a surprise offensive, a winter attack, designed to catch the
Italians off guard and drive them from this toe-hold they held on Egyptian
soil. The Italians it was widely
believed were not first class soldiers, certainly less fearsome than the
Germans. The C/O, a smirking old Eton
gent with a handlebar moustache painted a picture of pressed and comical
Italians, throwing away their rifles and running at the first appearance of the
British. It would be all over in hours. Jolly good show. The Italians it seemed were not equipped to
fight.
Nevertheless an Italian
bullet or shell could send you to the next world just as quickly as a German or
British bullet, the Italians also had the very irksome habit of firing back it
seemed, despite their poor reputation.
And Jack had no idea whether the offensive had been a
success. Had British troops driven the
Italians back or were British troops driven back to Egypt? ‘Operation Compass’. Jack laughed at the name. How he wished for a compass now! A week or
more wandering in the flat, featureless desert.
An immense expanse of scorching nothingness. Why fight the Italians over mile after mile
of scorching nothing? The reason for the
war, Poland,
seemed so
far away from this burning desert.
Jack’s thoughts inevitably
wandered home. How he wished to be home
for Christmas, to spend Christmas with his wife and son, rather than here,
hugging the sand and trying to stay alive.
‘Home for Christmas’, a
phrased he repeated to himself just to keep himself sane as the shells and
bullets continued to whizz past him.
All of a sudden a silence
fell over the area as the bombardment ceased. The quiet was so loud that it
buzzed in Jack’s ears. Was this the beginning of an offensive? Were the Italian
troops about to attack? Jack’s thoughts raced through his mind as he prepared
for the worst to happen.
But nothing did. It seemed as
if the Italian gunners and the army had just stopped and gone home for the
night Maybe now, thought Jack, I can get back to my battalion.
But which way? Jack looked
all around at the undulating sand and confusing landscape. He had been on a
reconnaissance mission when the bombardment had started and he had been pinned
down for days, creeping forward by inches and then huddling down in some shell
crater or dip in the sand.
Jack
had been one of ten men that had made up the‘recce’team.
They had left from the Front
and entered ‘No man’s land’ about a week before. Jack was the only one who had
survived and Lieutenant Royce, just before he died due to a bullet wound, had
entrusted to Jack, a document upon which he had recorded details of the enemy’s
strengths and locations of heavy machine gun batteries.
“Get back to the battalion,
Jack,” he had spluttered. “They need this information!”
Jack’s rations had just about
run out and he only had a small amount of water left. Now, he had lost the way
and had only his intuition to guide him back to his men.
Slowly raising his head he
squinted into the desert. If the shells had been falling over towards a small
ridge of sand dunes, did that mean that he should make his way in that
direction?
It was a ‘six and half a
dozen’ situation. Whatever he decided, thought Jack, he had a fifty /fifty
chance of being right.
Jack had crawled, scuttled
and slithered for about a mile when he heard something ahead of him. Instantly
he dropped down flat and lay still. A light desert breeze blew some sand into
his face and he licked his parched lips. Had it been a sentry that he had
heard? And if so, was it one of his or one of theirs?
“Ohhhhh!” a voice moaned out
from somewhere ahead of him. Someone was in pain. Could it be a British
casualty? He would have been caught in the last barrage of shells. He may have
been out looking for me and the rest of the group. Jack crawled forward a
little bit more and found himself looking down at an Italian officer lying in a
shell crater. The man was covered with blood and his eyes were shut, but Jack
could see that he was still alive as he gave another moan.
Making sure that the man had
no visible weapons, Jack slid down the side of the hole and at the noise of
stones and sand being dislodged, the officer’s eyes opened in fear and he
shrunk back.
“Don’t be afraid,” whispered
Jack. “I won’t hurt you.”
Jack unpacked his water
bottle and held it to the officer’s lips. The man drunk greedily, but Jack
pulled it back to save some of the liquid for later.
“You’ll get more later,
mate,” Jack said. “Can you speak any English?”
“I have a little English,”
the Italian replied. “Have you any food? I have been out here for long time.”
Using sign language and the
little English that the Italian officer had, Jack was able to piece together
why the officer was caught in the shell hole.
The man had been an artist
before he was seconded into the Italian Army. His father was a prominent
citizen in Italy
and had managed to get his son a commission.
With all the slaughter due to
various battles he had been given ‘battlefield promotions’ as his superiors had
been killed and now he commanded the battalion that had been bombarding the
area that Jack had been pinned down in. Assured by his officers that the area
had been ‘sterilised’ due to the shelling, he had decided to go out and make
some sketches of the desert. During the campaign the Italian officer had made
many basic sketches of places and buildings that he intended to paint as and
when the fighting ceased.
“I was not seeing the hole
that I fell into and hit this” the officer said shaking his head and pointing
at a large piece of rusty metal.
Jack was astounded that
anyone with a military background could still possess an eye for the beauty of
nature, after all the fighting, the shelling and the deaths. Was this man real?
Wasn’t he living in a fool’s dream? He was in command of a human wave of
destruction, yet was able to switch off and return to his former life by the
drawing of various lines on a bit of paper.
“My wife and bambinos,” muttered the Italian,
proffering a snapshot from his wallet. “They live in Roma.” Jack took the photo
and
saw a black and white picture
of a dark haired woman with two chubby children.
“They all look very happy,”
said Jack, unsure of what to say.
“I also, will be happy to get
home,” the man replied.
Jack pulled his wallet out
and carefully plucked a photograph from one of the pockets. “My wife and
…bambino.”
The Italian looked at Jack’s
family and slowly raised his head.
“We are both…very lucky. Are
we not?”
It was at that moment that
Jack heard an angry whine and knew that a shell was on its way in. Quickly he
covered the Italian’s body with his own and felt the sand and debris rain down
on his back as the shell exploded.
“It is not our guns,”
spluttered the officer.
“No,” replied Jack. “It’s
ours.”
For the next hour barrage
after barrage pounded the ground around them. Each time the men heard the noise
of an approaching shell, they thought that their time had come.
Then as before the shelling
stopped and silence enveloped the area.
As Jack moved off the top of
the injured Italian officer, he was shocked to see that the man was
unconscious. Gently he nudged the man until his eyes flicked open.
“Thank you,” said the
officer. “But I don’t think that I am long to live.”
Jack loosened the officer’s
jacket and pulled his shirt open revealing a deep, bleeding wound. Upon falling
the officer had impaled himself on the metal debris. Quickly Jack went into his
kitbag and pulled out a field dressing which he pushed against the officer’s
damaged chest.
“We have to get some help for
you,” Jack hissed, as he carefully wound bandages round the Italian’s back.
“You will bleed to death otherwise.” Jack jumped to his feet and began to climb
out of the shell hole.
“No, no!” the Italian officer
replied. “You will be killed.”
As Jack reached the rim of
the crater a shot rang out and a bullet struck him in the thigh. Instantly Jack
was thrown back into the pit. As he lay bleeding a voice rang out.
“Braccia su!” It was an
Italian demanding that Jack raise his hands.
A face looked into the crater
and surveyed the two men laying wounded. It was an Italian soldier.
“Capitano!” said the man as
he recognised his officer.
Quickly the man signalled
back to his comrades and ten minutes later a stretcher was brought and several
Italian soldiers began to
lift the Italian officer onto
it.
“No!” said the Captain
angrily. “This man will go first.” He pointed at the injured Jack.
Eventually both wounded men
were brought into the Italian camp where both received treatment from the
doctor.
On the Captain’s orders, they
both lay side by side like comrades. Jack slipped in and out of consciousness.
The next day under a flag of
truce the Italians prepared to deliver Jack, the sole survivor of the original
reconnaissance team, back to the British lines.
As Jack was lifted onto the
stretcher a medical orderly helped the Italian captain to Jack’s side. Lifting
Jack’s hand, the officer shook it gently.
“Thank you for my life,” he
said. “I must know your name.”
“Jack Peterson,” stammered
Jack. “…sir”
The Italian captain stood
shakily to his feet and saluted.
“It has been a privilege to
know you, Jack.”
As Jack was carried out into ‘No man’s land’
towards his men he shouted as loud as he could,
“Sir, I must know your name!
Sir…please!”
The mists were rolling over
the area and they were being turned blood red by the dying sun. As Jack began
to make out the British lines the Italian officer’s voice rang out loudly with
a name that sounded strange to a British ear, but particularly special to
Jack’s.
Tommy sat and gazed down the
road as the sky began to darken.
“Aw Mummy, its Christmas
tomorrow and Santa hasn’t granted my wish.”
“Never mind Tommy,” replied
his mother, sadly. “Santa is very busy at this time of year, so he may have
forgotten us. Still we have each other.”
Tommy ran over to his mummy
and cuddled into her.
“Yes I know,” he said
wistfully. “But it would have been so nice to have Daddy home for Christmas.”
As Tommy’s mummy hugged her
son her gaze wandered to the window, to the road outside, to the large figure
who was hobbling up the pavement…
“Tommy!” she screamed with
delight. “It’s your Daddy. Santa has given you the best present in the world!”
All three of the Peterson
family sat in front of a roaring fire that night and awaited the arrival of
Christmas. Jack had explained that he had been invalided out of the Army due to
the damage done to his hip bone by the Italian bullet. They, as a family would
have to tighten their belts until Jack got a job that his disablement would
allow, but they were back together.
“Good old Santa,” whispered a
very sleepy Tommy.
“What’s that all about?”
asked Jack to his wife.
“Oh, all Tommy asked Santa
for this Christmas was for you and me to be together again.”
Jack laughed and gazed deep
into the fires blazing heart.
“Do you know what the Italian
officer’s name was, who got me safely back to my troops?”
“No?” said Tommy and his
mummy together.
“Salvato da Santa!”* he
laughed and hugged his dear wife and son close to him.
*Salvato
da Santa is rough Italian for ‘Saved by Santa’
