Chapter 72

Part FOUR BONUS: Henry, the Gaoler

Somerset. September, 1918

Henry

The recruitment posters lied. I went to war, but doing my duty for King and country didn't make me a man.

War shattered me.

The death and horror seeped into my soul and each and every day it tore a sliver from me. Days mounted into months and then years, until only an empty husk remained. Now death shadowed my every step. Like loose hay down the back of my shirt, no matter how much I wriggled or squirmed, I could not free myself of its constant presence.

Even in this truck, death surrounded me. It wheezed in the chest of the man slumped over his knees on the bench next to me. It reflected in the blank gaze of the soldier opposite me. It reeked in the foetid rot coming from the bandages on the man stretched out on the floor at our feet.