Captain Coffin Read online

  Captain Coffin

  The cigarette was extinguished in an already-full ashtray. The young man leaned back in his chair, casually exhaling smoke towards the low wooden ceiling. The older man seated opposite him was leaning forwards and attempting to look sincere, comforting – the expressions that usually proved of varying comfort to the condemned men, along with his words.

  With Private Swan, however, the Padre had drawn a blank; he did not know which expression to adopt. He searched the young soldier’s face for a clue – for too-frequent blinking or a twitching muscle – but there was nothing.

  And God, was he young! The horrors Swan had experienced had prematurely aged him in both body and mind, true (they did most men), but under that untidy shock of black hair and behind the three-day growth of beard the Padre saw the face of a boy, flushed with life and an enthusiasm for innocent mischief.

  He should be out working, out courting, out playing football, not –

  ‘So come on, sir, you’ve not yet told me why you’re here.’

  Private Swan’s warm Northern accent dispersed the Padre’s thoughts; immediately he analysed the airy words for a secret appeal for help, for comfort...

  But if any such message was intended then it was completely concealed behind the slightly sarcastic tone. It was as though Swan feared being disciplined even now for disrespect to an officer, and so was reluctantly maintaining a dubious respect for authority.

  The Padre shifted his position in the uncomfortable wooden chair, looking at the steel cot with the red blankets where Private Swan would be sleeping tonight. But would he be able to sleep knowing what the dawn would bring?

  The Padre rubbed one of his hollow cheeks with a thin hand as he considered his response.

  ‘I’m here, Swan, to offer you whatever assistance I can. I will listen to you if you want to talk, help you write letters to family and friends – I will do whatever you require, within reason.’

  Lighting another cigarette, Private Swan chuckled disdainfully and shook out the match.

  ‘You’d oblige me best, sir, by getting me a bottle of whiskey, some more fags, and then letting me alone to get pissed.’

  The Padre met the young man’s narrow, suspicious eyes and he momentarily saw the hatred for both himself and his privileged rank flash within them. But still – he’d at last made a connection with the man, despite the pitiful way this had been achieved, and so he hastened to build upon it.

  ‘I can get you tobacco and a... little... alcohol, Swan, certainly. But I would be happier were I to have a constructive purpose – a purpose beyond the mere supply of sedatives,’ he replied, his thin hands stretching in front of him, imploring Private Swan to think, to give him something to do.

  The hate flashed again in the brown eyes and this time remained. Swan’s thin upper-lip curled in a canine grimace as he spat, ‘With all due respect, sir, I think that you and your sort have done quite enough for me already. I can’t help thinking that were I an officer then I’d be for Home Establishment, lying in some hospital in the countryside with a pretty nurse at my beck-and-call. Instead I –’

  Swan shook his head and dragged heavily on his cigarette, choking his stream of vitriol. The Padre waited in silence for him to continue, his eyes steadily observing the young man trying to control his anger, attempting to restore the surface nonchalance.

  ‘I take that back, sir – I’ve nothing against you in particular,’ Swan at last said quietly.

  The Padre gently nodded his head.

  ‘I understand – ’ he began.

  ‘You don’t understand nothing!’ Swan erupted, his fists clenching, bending the cigarette out of shape. ‘Not a thing! You’d only know what it were like were you in my position, nineteen years old and soon to be – ’

  His voice choked again and the compassionate Padre felt like crying himself as he saw the suspicious eyes grow wet. Swan sniffed loudly and smoked in silence, looking away from the Padre and out of the small barred window towards the open field. There came the steady but faint booming of the artillery, far away in a different existence, where death came continually but at least with the slightest element of surprise.

  The Padre touched his clerical collar, as though requesting divine inspiration concerning just what he should say and do now. His khaki-green uniform was the same as the Private’s, virtually – and they were on the same side, for God’s sake.

  He was party to what was going to happen to this boy, when the door opened at dawn tomorrow and the boy was led out into the field and –

  Looking away from the window Swan recovered his composure, his mind again shielded by enforced nonchalance and a light sarcasm towards anyone in authority.

  At least, he considered, it would be both clean and quick. Better than Cooky, anyway, who’d had both legs blown off at the knees and who’d lived for two days in agony before he’d finally bit the bullet. You ended up as food for the worms or the rats one way or the other – and some ways were better than others.

  There was mild amusement to be gained from the thin, earnest-looking Padre with the hollow cheeks yet. So Swan suddenly said, ‘Actually, sir, I’ve just thought of something that you could do for me, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Swan. What is it?’

  Lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of his old, Swan mumbled, ‘Have a word with Captain Coffin – see if the old sod hasn’t had a change of mind?’

  Respect for authority was fast slipping as the mind prepared itself for finality, the Padre realised. And it was a powerful thing, this authority – it compelled men to WALK not RUN in a line across land raked with machinegun fire and torn apart by shells; to pull the corpse-rats from their faces when they awoke in the morning and to ignore the fact that the vermin had grown fat on dead comrades; to squat and not moan as their dysentery-plagued guts stained the behind of their shirts red; to eat, fight, shit, sleep, cry and finally die in the bastard mud.

  ‘This... attitude of yours doesn’t help matters any, Swan,’ the Padre said quietly, all the while wanting to take hold of the boy’s hand and to say: Yes, you’re right – he is a sod, that Captain Coffin.

  He could not of course say anything of the sort, although he felt slightly heartened as Swan looked searchingly at him for the first time. It was as though the lad was trying to see the actual human being behind the stinking veneer of authority.

  ‘You heard about Tomkinson, didn’t you, sir?’ Swan asked quietly, and the Padre, realising that the Private had some point he wished to make, did not answer.

  ‘Coffin liked him, you see, for some strange reason – it were ‘bout the only soldier he did. So when they got hold of him after he tried to leg it, it were just a Field Punishment Number One – Coffin saw to that.

  ‘Besides which Tomkinson were shaking and crying and moaning, walking round in a circle and screaming every time there were a bang – they said that he weren’t in his right mind when he deserted, although that ain’t worried them before. And they thought Tomkinson would get better were he to be put right out in the thick of it, so to speak.’

  Swan paused and gazed distantly out of the window, memories dulling his eyes. He continued, ‘’Course, it were different with me, sir. I were judged ‘in complete possession of my mental faculties’ – I remember them saying that at the court martial; I thought it were grand.

  ‘Besides which Coffin always hated me, right from the first day – I were put on sentry whenever fire were heaviest, and he had some of the lads kick the – beat me up soon after I joined, after I fell asleep one time on duty. He preferred that, you see, even to a court martial – rough justice. I weren’t shaking or wailing when I were caught in that field; I were lying low and waiting for the sods to bugger off so’s I
could carry on escaping.’

  ‘And just where were you going to go to, Swan, hey?’ asked the Padre.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Dunno, sir. Would’ve just walked a good long way and found a farm or summat to work on ‘til the war were over. Perhaps I’d have even met a girl or summat like that.’

  Such simple dreams, thought the Padre pityingly. Such simple, stupid, utopian, unobtainable dreams: fresh air, honest work, a warm body next to one’s own in bed. The reality was –

  ‘Anything,’ snarled Swan suddenly, ‘were better than them guns going all day and all night – boom, boom, boom; and all those screams so’s you got not knowing whether it were horses or men or just yourself gone raving.’

  He slowly shook his head and his eyes dulled again, the brief flame of feeling forcibly extinguished. ‘But I were forgetting about Tomkinson. He did a week chained to that gun, sir, right out there in the thick of it. Screamed and screamed and screamed he did, sir; and there were Coffin saying he’d personally shoot the first man as complained about it.

  ‘Two hours a day, and then he were put back in the trench, me and the others giving him cigarettes and even our ration of rum so’s to quieten him down. He’d one more day to do as punishment for desertion, that were all – Coffin said he were becoming a better man and he’d make a decent soldier of him yet.’

  The cigarette joined the overflowing multitude in the ashtray and Swan rubbed his suddenly fatigued face, his body beginning to tremble.

  ‘I’ve never heard nothing scream as Tomkinson did when he copped it, half his body gone but still enough there for him to feel everything. Oh, bloody hell could he feel every-thing, sir! Off he went in a sodding stretcher, carted away double quick-time, and Coffin saying nothing and ignoring all them looks he were getting. But he caught mine – and that were me. If it weren’t this then I’d’ve just got a bullet in the back later on.’

  ‘I hardly think that the Captain –’ the Padre began, but then reflecting on Coffin’s odious character, he considered that such a thing was actually quite feasible.

  Swan stood up and stretched his weary muscles. He yawned, exposing a tongue grey with tobacco. Outside the summer’s day was fading into night, and distant as it was the artillery fire became almost hypnotically musical.

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d best be turning in. I’ve an early start tomorrow.’

  The Padre realised that there truly was nothing more he could do or say: the young man was as resigned and as acceptant to his fate as ever he could be. He held out his hand; and after a moment’s hesitation Swan took it, hard.

  ‘I’ll be with you tomorrow, Swan,’ he stated.

  Swan spat on the concrete floor and looked him steadily in the eye.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes. I promise, lad.’

  Swan shrugged.

  ‘Well, that’s summat, I suppose. It’s as good to have a friend, sir, whatever the circumstance.’

  His heart gladdened more than he could ever have imagined by these words, the Padre finished shaking hands and knocked on the cell door, requesting to the guard that he be let out.

  ‘Bloody blanks – who told you that?’

  Private Jones reacted angrily to his friend’s scathing question, as he stood with rifle ready along with the eleven other chosen soldiers.

  ‘It’s what top brass say, ain’t it? So no one here knows who actually killed the poor bugger,’ he said in a low voice, so that Captain Coffin wouldn’t hear him.

  His friend chuckled humourlessly.

  ‘’Course they tell you that, Stan, you soft bugger; but it’s all guaranteed balls – every round in everyone of these rifles is live, and that’s a fact.’

  Oh Christ, thought Jones – if this was true then it removed the comforting uncertainty of whether it would actually be himself who killed poor Tom Swan...

  ‘I don’t believe that, Fred, not a – ’

  ‘SILENCE!’ bellowed Coffin, staring daggers at the group of men stood in a semi-circle a short distance from the empty chair. ‘If I hear speaking again then you’re all on a charge!’

  ‘Old bastard,’ swore a soldier beneath his breath, as another whispered, ‘Here he comes!’

  The figure that emerged from the small wooden building onto the field attempted to walk with casual insolence, the Padre beside him. Coffin took several paces back from the chair, as though fearing that he would be mistaken for its intended occupant. He stared almost challengingly at the youthful figure whose hands were bound; those soldiers of the firing squad picked for their good eyesight observed that Swan returned this stare with an uncaring glance.

  Without any order being given Swan seated himself and a soldier stepped up to bind him to the chair with a length of rope. Swan motioned him away, the soldier ignoring him until the Padre whispered to him. So with just his hands bound Swan stared at the soldiers picked from his own regiment, a white handkerchief placed over the area of his heart as the target.

  ‘Oh sweet Jesus Christ,’ sighed one member of the firing squad.

  ‘Ready!’ Coffin bawled.

  There was a clanking of bolts and a solitary cough.

  ‘Take aim!’

  Another cough.

  ‘FIRE!’

  There was a multitude of cracking noises and Jones peered through the gun-smoke and involuntarily cried out. His tunic bloody, Private Swan had stood up and was starting to run.

  ‘You incompetent swine!’ bellowed Coffin, reaching into his holster as he moved to intercept the severely wounded man.

  ‘Bastard!’ shrieked Swan almost in the Captain’s face.

  Having withdrawn his pistol Captain Coffin shot Private Thomas Swan in the head, killing him instantly.

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  Ben Stevens, Captain Coffin

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