Some Mothers' Sons

On one special night, Christmas spirit reaches even to the trenches – as well as the families left behind.

- Hilary Halliwell

Thud, thud, thud; it was difficult to see or think in the mist but Mitch was sure it was a sound he knew only too well. Not the thud of shelling this time, but the thud of a football – yes, a football resounding on compacted mud perhaps twenty yards in front of him, out in no man’s land.

The sound transported him back to his beloved Scotland, to carefree days – and his youth that had mysteriously disappeared on that overcrowded rolling troopship that had brought him here, far from everything he knew and loved, all the way to hell.

The noise continued as he drifted back to a time when the world wasn’t mad. To happier days; he and the lads having a kick-about on the cobbles after Kirk, using their rolled-up Sunday best for goalposts.

He longed for a smoke but he was all out of baccy, his Christmas ration owed to at least half his battalion.

His lips were dry and cracked, his mind wandering. He could almost smell a fat capon roasting in the blacked stove oven, taste the neeps and tatties and hear his mother’s happy voice, while his sisters made paper chains and his younger brother, Hamish, made a nuisance of himself teasing the dog.

It was bitter after a frosty, sunny morning. He pulled his greatcoat tighter about him, fantasising about his mother’s chicken soup and dumplings that they always had on Christmas Eve.

The thudding was nearer now and in the close distance a glow, a tiny red glow, burned bright. For a moment, he wondered if he were dead and that the glow was Heaven; he could have sworn he heard a choir of angels somewhere.

Then a new sound brought him back to the moment, as a friendly German voice said, “Frohe Weihnachten, Tommy – Merry Christmas!”

From the shadowy gloom a figure appeared; a wisp of smoke curling from the mouth that spoke the greeting, teasing at Mitch’s nostrils. Tobacco…