Marking Time
Inspired by Thomas Hardy’s short poem Drummer Hodge
They were upon them at last. For God’s sake come back screamed the Colonel’s hastily scrawled note to the advance column, who were obtusely unresponsive and chasing glories of their own in the open fields towards the royal kraal. Hodge had been scooped up out of the east end gutter by the servants of empire, eager to escape the squalor of the workhouse and find the kind of fame and glory he’d only dreamt of in the stories of those lucky enough to return from the fronts. He enlisted as a drummer, but it was far from his own choice. Small enough to avoid being in the way of the fighting, but mighty enough to keep time as the army marched to the sound of the guns, Hodge has always favored the fight. The adrenaline which rushed through his adolescent veins as the captain screamed for the volley fire again and again until the spears ran dry.
But they never did. Today they would wash themselves in the blood of a thousand soldiers. A pyrrhic victory bathed in the half light of a solar eclipse and drowned in the tears of widows back home. Hodge had no such family to grieve him. He had always been on his own until the empire saw fit to gather him into the warm embrace of colonial dispute. He felt loved by those around him, even as they beat and berated him in the drill square. Even as the ground shook with the trembling terror of the thousands pouring over the hills in front of the doomed column. Even as the captain ordered the retreat. Hodge, like those around him, dropped his bundle and ran as the hand to hand fighting replaced the slowing rifle’s growl. They were upon them as the regiment began to roll up on itself, and dozens fell in desperate last stands. Back to back with expended ammunition but bayonets fixed, unhorsed, encircled. Their defense marked centuries later by sunbleached cairns where they fell.
Hodge ran towards the guns, unsaddled and unspiked. He saw the captain pierced through the heart as he writhed in the agony of a position lost. The camp was overrun within the hour, and Hodge with it. No-one knew where he would meet his fate, as he hadn’t even been on the official record of service. He would mark time, but time would be hesitant to mark him. An unrecorded death where the drum beat of empire had fallen silent. Eclipsed by the howling victory of the thousands now looting the camp and denuding the fallen. Tearing out their insides in death ritual which would free their souls but haunt those who would return to see what was left the next day. The horrors of war which fueled divine retribution at the hands of the great white queen in whose name it all happened. Uncoffined, Hodge would never find the peace in death which had eluded him in life. His body returning to the earth in the receding foreign field in which it had fallen. Forever screaming, for god’s sake come back.
