The Secret Message Read Online Free PDF Page A

boy? You’ll get mown down by machine guns and grenades.’
    â€˜I’m just telling you, sergeant. He’s my brother. He cracked his head and he’s unconscious. I must stay with him. Never mind about me, sir. Go back without me. I’ll carry him back when it’s safe. Sir.’
    The hand at his throat tightened. ‘I don’t care if he’s the Queen of bloody Sheba, you’ll do as I command without question, you half-wit . Get up. You’re coming with me.’
    â€˜He’s my BROTHER!’ Giles pushed the man off him with a forceful shove, sending him sprawling in the mud, then turned back to Freddy, who lay face-down with his eyes still shut. ‘It’s all right; I won’t leave you, Freddy. Wake up, you’re going to be all right. I promise.’
    The sergeant staggered to his feet and growled, ‘It’ll be far better for you to get gassed than face the music for striking an officer.’ He swore again and disappeared into the fog.
    Frantically trying to wake Freddy, while struggling to pull on both their gasmasks, Giles was already choking from the burning in his throat and churning fear in the pit of his stomach. He lay beside Freddy in cold silence as yellow sulphurous smoke rolled towards them. After what seemed an eternity, he raised his head to peer into the night … when a blinding flash burst just in front of him and tore away his mask. He fell back screaming, as if white-hot splinters were burning into his eyes. ‘I can’t see. Freddy, I can’t see!’
    They held each other in the darkness as the choking stench slowly seeped away and the deadly cloud drifted over. They continued clinging to one another through the night, gasping, groaning, whispering and praying in their sodden, stinking hell.
    At long last, as the sky began to lighten in the east, a silver mist hung above their headsin the deathly stillness. Freddy stirred. ‘I think I heard a skylark. Over there. The larks are in the fields behind our trenches. It’s the way back.’
    Numb with cold, they slowly wriggled free from the wire and stagnant mud sucking them down, to emerge from their boggy crater. Giles could only murmur deliriously as they propped each other up and limped back through the reeking quagmire. Freddy steadily steered him past gruesome shapes in the mud – the twisted limbs of corpses. Giles saw nothing. He could no longer see anything … and never would again.

T HE W AIT
    They sat in the medical tent, wrapped in blankets and sipping strong, sweet tea. Freddy’s torn arm was put in a sling and he was led back to camp with a curt, ‘Nothing much wrong with you, Ovel.’
    A medical officer wound a bandage around Giles’s head, completely covering his eyes. ‘You’ll have to keep this on for a week. If youreyes are affected by exposure to mustard gas, your sight should return soon. If you need further treatment, I don’t think there’s much point bothering under the circumstances. I’ve been instructed to read you this letter then escort you to the cells.’ He took a document from an envelope and slowly read aloud:
    ‘Private 2634 Giles George Hoadley, the charge against you is that on the 19th October 1917, you did wilfully disobey orders from a superior officer and strike him, with the express intention of deserting your duty and subjecting both officer and fellow soldiers to increased danger. Such a wanton display of insubordination and cowardice carries the maximum penalty. The evidence will be examined and the sentence announced within twenty-eight days – delivered to your prison cell.’

    For the endless days that followed, Giles was kept in total isolation in a small room with only a straw mattress and a bucket. Whether the cell had a window, he had no idea for he could see nothing. Apart from calling to the guard outside the door, he had no way of knowing the time of day or night. Then, without warning, he was led