Where are they all going? Busily scurrying across the concourse, women and children, couples, some in formal dress, others more casually attired, some carrying cases, others clustered around the tea trollies, some looking to buy newspapers or magazines, one or two waiting to be served cigarettes or perhaps even a cigar, the odd uniform still on view. Less than two months on from the guns falling silent, how had it all got back to normal so quickly? Perhaps it had always been like this, the battlefields, no further away from London than Manchester, some remote island a million miles away, a different world to read about in the newspapers like an exciting fiction novel.

I was overwhelmingly tired, losing a constant battle against complete exhaustion, so I had to seek rest, glad to find an empty bench. It had felt so good to walk through the gate from the platform into Waterloo Station. It had been a long journey, starting with road transport, slow train from Belgium to Le Havre, boat to Portsmouth and train to London. A bus ride and I would be home, but what would that be like after so long away?  I closed my eyes, wanting to sleep there and then, but the activity around me wouldn’t allow that. A children’s choir at the far end of the concourse singing carols failed to offer relief or comfort, but was a reminder that it was Christmas Eve. A time for comfort and joy, but I struggled to feel either.

“You all right, mister?”

It was a boy, no more than ten years old I would have said, sporting a shabby overcoat, a scarf wrapped around his neck, round-faced with a mop of blonde hair.

“I’m fine, thank-you,” I lied, “just a little tired.”

A young woman, probably around her mid-twenties wearing a red ankle-length coat that had also seen better days, came up and flustered around him. She wore minimal make-up, but was still pretty and it was easy to see where the boy’s blonde mop came from.

“I’m so sorry if he disturbed you,” she said, “He would have meant no harm.”

“There’s no problem,” I assured her, “I just wasn’t looking for company right now.”

“Then we’ll be on our way.” She moved to pull the boy away. “Have a good Christmas.”

“I’m not sure such there is such a thing anymore.”

She stopped and turned.

“You just back?”

“Does it show that much?”

She smiled. “I’ve seen that look enough times over the past few weeks to know it when I see it”

A look that would stay as long as the nightmares stayed and that would probably be for ever. The mud, the lice – oh God, the lice, in your hair, in your shirt, in your trousers, constantly biting - the shelling, the bullets flying, the dead, the scattered body parts, the haunting cries of lads dying with their insides hanging out crying for their mummy.

A whistle blew, then another from along one of the platforms. A train about to depart. No, no, no, not the whistles. There they went again, all along the trench. Time to go. Over the top lads and on to glory. No, over the top lads and into hellfire. It was going to be easy this time, a stroll in the park we were told. Heavy bombardment from our artillery would have knocked out the enemy trenches. But that had not always worked before and it didn’t work this time. Half way to the German positions, the machine guns opened up, cutting us down like moving figures on a fairground shooting range.

Then the German artillery entered the fray. The first shell exploded harmlessly, well ahead of us, but in the next instant they had our range. A shell exploded next to me, the blast sweeping me off my feet. It took a few moments for my head to settle and then I became aware of the blood.  My face was covered but I could feel no pain. I looked to my left for my best friend, but couldn’t see him.  That was when I realised the blood on my face wasn’t mine. My best friend was gone, obliterated from this earth and his blood, bits of flesh and bone splattered over my face and uniform.

“Forward, lads, keep moving,” an officer cried, but they were his last words as machine gun bullets took off the top of his head.

Desperately resisting the urge to scream and vomit, I pulled myself up, wiped the blood from across my eyes, and broke into a run. No shrapnel wounds from the shell, machine gun bullets flying either side of my head, so close I could hear them scream past my ears. I was leading a charmed life until that moment. A shell exploded right in front of me. I was in the air, out of control desperately trying to resist, reaching unsuccessfully for the ground, and then the darkness, blessed silence. The sounds of the battlefield mercifully gone and I didn’t remember hitting the ground.

When I emerged from the darkness, I was in a field hospital, tucked away at the end away from the other casualties. Heavily bandaged across my chest and legs, I felt for my arms and legs. With great relief I found my limbs intact. Most of us would rather die on the battlefield than come home with no legs.

A doctor was talking loudly to one of the other patients. My heart sank. He was talking in German. I suffered no hostility from the German casualties, they simply ignored me.

“How did you end up there?”

It was the boy. I didn’t realise I had been talking aloud.

“I was the only one of my platoon left alive in that section. Covered in blood and mud, my helmet blown away, I don’t think German stretcher bearers knew whether I was one of theirs or not, so they took me in and luckily the doctors insisted on treating me instead of putting a bullet in my brain, despite being the enemy.”

From a nurse who spoke a little English, I gathered I had been unconscious for two days. A day later I was shipped out, a long, difficult journey to Germany.

“So, while others fought and died I was tucked away in a Prisoner-of-War camp.”

It sounded like a confession

“You shouldn’t feel guilty about that. You did your bit and it wasn’t your fault that was how your war ended,” the woman assured me. “I’m sure being a prisoner was no picnic.”

Ill treatment from the guards, pitifully meagre rations, hard labour in the fields, some died along the way, but we weren’t facing the shells or the machine gun bullets. It was difficult not to feel some guilt.

“What about you?” I asked, looking up at her. “Has your husband managed to get home yet?”

It was the boy who answered. “My daddy’s not coming home.”

I ruffled the boy’s hair. It was stupid to ask that question at this time. “I am so, so sorry.”

“Passchendaele,” she stuttered desperately trying to hold back tears. “His body has never been found.”

An elderly gentleman passing doffed his hat. “Pardon my overhearing madam. Your husband was a hero doing his duty. May he rest in peace.”

I’d always considered that a strange expression. He’s not resting, sir. He won’t get up in an hour’s time, have a good stretch and carry on enjoying his day with his wife and son. He’s dead, gone, his body parts scattered across a foreign field, more food for the already over-bloated rats.

“Do you have family?” the woman asked, the tears stifled at their onset.

“A wife and a boy, about the same age now as your lad.”

Then, go home, be a family again.”

“I’m not sure. Four years away and I know I’ve changed with what I’ve been through. Perhaps my wife has too. My son may not even remember me. We could be strangers. I’m not sure I can face going home right now. What kind of hero would I be to my son, a prisoner for the last year of the war? And it’s Christmas day tomorrow and I have no presents, not even a little one for my boy. What sort of a father is that?”

“I wish my dad had been a prisoner,” the boy said. “He’d be coming home just like you and he would still be a hero to me.”

The woman had disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a steaming, hot cup of tea she had bought from a small kiosk, only a few pennies, but pennies she could probably ill-afford.

“Come on,” she said softly, handing me the drink “everything always seems better after a nice cup of tea.”

This simple act of kindness from a complete stranger was the trigger. I could hold it no longer. All the frustrations and suffering of being stuck in a prison camp, the screams of the dying, the blown-up bodies, trying not to trip over severed arms and legs as you ran towards the flying machine-gun bullets, dead bodies hanging for days on the barbed wire and the unforgiving stench of death. It was a stench that was always in the air and I could still smell it now. Would it ever go away? It all burst out into uncontrollable tears. I sobbed like a baby and screamed in anguish, my whole body wracked with the force of the tears, overwhelmed by the nightmares that had never gone away and probably never would. Seen too much, done too much.

The woman put a hand on my shoulder, but it failed to offer any comfort. It was left to the boy, old before his years, a boy without a father, a mother to look after, a product of our time.

He stepped onto the bench, knelt beside me, putting his arms around my neck.

“You’ll be the only present they’ll want this year,” he said softly. “Go home and it will be the best Christmas ever.”

And so I did. And so it was.