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There’s salt and water burning the back of his nose and if he could spare any air from his lungs, he thinks he would be screaming.
There’s blood in the water around him and he thinks it might be from where the Jerry’s bullet took off the tip of his finger as he tried to plug the holes in the side of the ship.
He thinks maybe it’s his blood or maybe it’s someone else’s but at that moment all he can focus on is the drowning boy below him, so close but not close enough.
He's the first person he meets on the beach at Dunkirk, the metal tags around his neck declare him as Gibson, H, but it doesn't take him long to figure out they're lying.
It doesn't matter though, anymore, who you are or who you once were. They signed their names on those forms and since then they've been nothing more than rifles and hard leather boots and numbers for radio presenters to read out back home. 70,000 killed at Dunkirk, and in the years to come Tommy will wonder what if he was a part of that number.
He came to France when he was nineteen in a green uniform that slumped off his shoulders and with twenty-nine other boys who looked barely old enough to be taking care of themselves, let alone fathering guns and being forced to kill.
He was the only one of them left now.
The Frenchman's face floats before his own, just out of reach (he's lost everyone else and he'll be dammed if he loses him too).
His vision starts to go dark and he thinks if this boy's face is the last thing he ever sees then he doesn't really mind never leaving the hull of this boat, but then there are hands on his shoulders, pulling him towards the surface in a way that says it's not worth it.
Tommy meets him as he's burying who he assumes is– was– his friend, but who he later finds out to be the owner of the British uniform the Frenchman now dons.
He introduces himself as Tommy and helps him finish burying the soldier. All he gets in return is a smile and Tommy wonders how anybody can smile in the middle of all this, and he thinks it's the most wonderful thing he's seen since leaving home.
He manages to see that smile three times while they’re on the shores of Dunkirk, the one that pulls at the sides of his face and crinkles the skin beside his green eyes. He thinks it’s that smile that stops him giving up.
He’s pulled out of the hull of the sinking boat, leaving the other boy underwater, with arms struggling and eyes dark as he sinks. Maybe there are tears on his face, disguised beneath all the seawater, or maybe he’s forgotten how to feel and there’s nothing beneath the film of water on his face except a boy who’s ready to give up.
They meet a boy on a boat, they think they’re finally escaping and they meet a boy who calls himself Alex. Tommy lets himself drink tea and talk among the other men who are really boys and he lets himself relax in part, but he still worries for his silent friend who refuses to come down from the deck. He wonders if he should go see if he’s okay, but figures if he’s out there he probably wants to be alone. Or maybe he just tells himself that because this is the first time he’s eaten in days, and inside the boat is warm and dry and the closest thing he’s got to home.
Alex gets angry a lot, Tommy realises. He doesn’t blame him, after all the things he would have witnessed. But then he accuses Gibson of being a German spy He’s a fucking Jerry, isn’t he? and all Tommy can think is
“He saved my life”
and
don’t punch him in the face
Alex backs down after that, but there’s still distrust behind his eyes, and Tommy knows it won’t take much for him to let go of all his anger at the world and the war onto this man who can’t speak a word of English but is still human like the rest of them.
It takes all of his strength of will to not blame him for Gibson’s death. He thinks maybe, if he just had more time, he would have been able to save at least one life that day, but he knows, somewhere he does, that he would have only ended up killing himself.