Page 4 of The Last Kiss

From down the line came the first shrill blast, slicing through the deathly silence. Ash blew his own piercing whistle and began to climb. “Off we go, boys. Good luck!”

Hard on his heels, West growled, “And God help us all.”

Then no man’s land stretched out before them, a pockmarked hellscape of blasted trees and mud and death. Low cloud crouched above them, as heavy and bleak as the cratered ground beneath their feet. Ash’s mind turned sluggish with fear, focus narrowing only to the few yards around him, heart hammering loud in his ears. He knew only that he must advance and keep his men with him. “Stay in line!” he shouted, conscious of West’s steady presence at his left as they ran forward in a half-crouch, slip-sliding in the treacherous, drowning mud. Gunfire sounded to their right, but nothing close to them yet. Perhaps they’d be lucky. Perhaps this time the bombardment really had taken out the German guns. He kept going, leading his men on, deeper into the wasteland.

They’d covered almost a hundred yards before machineguns opened fire, raking across their line. Someone dragged Ash down into the mud: West, his hand fisted in Ash’s uniform.

“Find cover!” Ash yelled as his men fell and scattered.

And then the shells began, screaming overhead so close Ash could feel their scorching heat across his back. One hit behind them — almost in their trench — and the ground convulsed, raining mud and debris down over them. Laying prone, heart pounding hard against the earth, Ash prayed they wouldn’t be buried alive. Christ, any end but that.

Then West was tugging on his arm again, yelling something Ash couldn’t hear. Was he deaf? He scrambled to his feet. Smoke blew everywhere and he couldn’t see his men, but he sounded the whistle anyway to help them find their way to him as he staggered forward. Still advancing, as ordered.

They were under heavy fire now. So much for the bombardment knocking out the German guns. Another shell hit to their right, the concussion knocking Ash back to his knees and he went half-sliding over the lip of a flooded shell hole. Machine gun fire kept him down, arms over his head as bullets peppered the ground behind and before him.

West wasn’t holding his arm anymore. He couldn’t see him. Fuck.

“West?” He turned, squirming in the mud, and saw West on his hands and knees several yards back, shaking his head as if dazed. Ash’s heart seized. “West!” He couldn’t hear his own shout; the noise of the bombardment was ear-splitting. “West!”

He slithered backward, trying to find his feet. Through the blowing smoke, West kept appearing and then disappearing like a mirage. Or a ghost.

No. No, no, no. Not that. He wouldn’t lose him. He couldn’t.

Another smoky plume blew over them and away. West had struggled to his feet, still shaking his head. And in a single moment of clarity, as if the mists had parted, West lifted his head and their eyes met across the field of slaughter. Such a look! Relief, terror, desperation.

Love.

But then West’s eyes widened in horror. He flung his arm out, reaching for him, as the earth erupted beneath Ash’s feet.

For a second, he was airborne and the world fell silent. Then it rushed up to meet him, smashing the air from his lungs. Searing pain engulfed him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t move. Oblivion.

When he came back to himself, he was sprawled on his back, cradled in West’s arms, looking up at his dear face. His first thought was relief. West was alive. He looked unhurt as he held Ash up out of the sucking mud, a filthy hand stroking the hair from his face. But his eyes were red-rimmed, his mud-splattered face ashen. “It’s alright, Captain. I’ve got you. Everything’s alright.”

It wasn’t. Something was very wrong.

Ash felt paper thin, cold and fading. It was an effort to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t feel his legs and didn’t dare look, gazed only into West’s desolate eyes. All he needed to know was written plainly there. He tried to lift a hand to touch West’s face, but even that was too much. His lips formed a word — West’s name — but no sound came.

He felt no pain, only grief to be leaving him.

All around them the shrieking riot of war continued, but between them fell a terrible silence. “Oh God.” West’s voice broke and he clutched Ash against the sodden kaki of his jacket. “God,please.”

Ash was sinking, grey crowding the edges of his vision, but he tried again to speak. He had to. “Harry…” The name whispered past his lips, just loud enough to make West look at him. Ash tried to smile, to convey in these last moments how West had been everything to him in this nightmare — his solace, his succour, his burgeoning joy.

“Captain.” Pale tracks cut through the dirt on West’s face, tears gathering at the corner of his mouth. “Ashleigh….” He leaned down and kissed his brow like a mother might kiss her child, a last kiss offered to the dying.

Then he shifted and Ash felt the unfamiliar pressure of lips against his own, tasted mud and blood and salt tears. A lover’s kiss at last, its sweet promise unfulfilled.

When Ash woke again it was in a clearing station and to raging agony.

But Harry West was gone, sent back up the line to hell.

CHAPTERTWO

One month later — 18th November 1917, Passchendaele, Belgium

Hollowed out, exhausted, Harry West hunched against the remains of a building that must once have been a home and dragged on a fag before passing it down to Tyler, slumped on the ground near his feet. The lad took it with a shaking hand and drew in a couple of lungfuls, passing it along to Little Bill.

It had been a bloody few days, this final push into the village. And now here they were, after months of fighting, five sodding miles from where they’d started. The brass hats were calling it a victory, but they could bend over and fuck themselves as far as Harry was concerned. Victory? It was a sodding disaster, that’s what it was.

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