Solomon's Song (56 page)

Wordy Smith reports to Captain Daly and outlines to him what they’ve done. ‘Sir, there’s a lot of Turkish ammunition lying about in crates. I’d like to move it under the section of the trench that’s covered?’

Daly agrees. ‘Go ahead, Lieutenant, ‘fraid we’re too bushed to attempt it.’

Wordy Smith sets out to put a detail together to move the crates and returns some few minutes later with two men carrying a Turkish machine gun between them. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ he says excitedly to Captain Daly.

Daly sighs. ‘We know about it, Lieutenant. Nobody knows how to use the bugger, could’ve been a godsend.’

‘It’s a Hotchkiss, sir, Sergeant Teekleman and Private Horne have been manning one like this all day.’

Daly looks amazed. ‘Something good had to happen in all this, thank God you came.’

A machine-gun post is hastily constructed out of sandbags near the pit furthest to the south, with Hornbill standing behind Ben to feed in the ammunition strips. Almost on cue the scrub and juniper a hundred or so yards below the gun-pits are set on fire, the Turks hoping the fire will reach the gun-pits and explode the ammunition.

But a God who has been anything but kind to the Australians all day changes the direction of the breeze and the blaze turns back on the Turks, forcing them into the more open ground where they can be clearly seen in the moonlight.

The men in the trenches now realise that they are vastly outnumbered by the enemy who have their bayonets fixed and are charging up the slope towards them. It is one of the few occasions all day when the Australians own the high ground. ‘Let them come closer,’ Ben yells. ‘Don’t fire!’

One Turk some ten feet in front of the rest is shouting, ‘Allah! Allah!’ and is caught mid-word on the third ‘Allah’ by Crow Rigby, who picks him off from the trench fifty yards from Ben and they all see the man’s head explode in a black burst. The remainder of the Turks come charging on, the Prophet’s name on their lips, shouting, wildly excited, their bayonets gleaming in the moonlight.

‘Don’t fire, lads,’ Ben shouts again. ‘Steady! Steady, lads. Wait until you can see the fucker’s eyes.’

At a range of about fifty yards Ben gives the order to fire and opens up with the machine gun. The Turks in the front drop like rocks in a quarry blast and the next line follows and then the next. Seemingly in moments bodies are stumbling and tripping over each other and yet they come, there are no cowards among them. The battle lasts no more than ten minutes, the machine gun and the remorseless rifle fire simply cuts the Turks apart. Finally, with some of the Turks having reached almost to the edge of the gun-pits, they fall back. There are more than two hundred of the enemy lying on the black, smouldering apron left by the fire they’d started earlier. Occasionally a small flame from the spent fire momentarily leaps into life and snatches at the rag of a uniform, sending thin ribbons of white smoke spiralling into the moonlit night.

Captain Daly turns to Wordy Smith, his exhausted face barely capable of creasing into a smile. ‘I’ve never seen rapid fire like that before, your lads certainly know how to handle a rifle.’ He turns to Ben. ‘Well done, Sergeant, I guess the machine gun was the difference, eh? I doubt we could’ve held them off otherwise.’

Ben, exhausted himself, grins. ‘Bloody good thing the Turks have a habit of leaving them lying around, sir.’

A little later the enemy organises a second attack, but it is no more than a show of defiance. Hornbill, now manning the Hotchkiss, gives them heaps and they soon lose the stomach to try again. What is left of the attacking force withdraws back over the valley to the Third Ridge.

At about 11.30 p.m. Daly receives orders to pull back to the original line at the rear of 400 Plateau. Ben’s platoon, though nearly as exhausted as the rest of the men, carries no wounded with the exception of course of Jack Tau Paranihi, Library Spencer and Moggy Katz. They are all badly scratched by thorns and in the days to come almost every soldier who fought across the plateau will suffer from scratches that fester badly. Ben’s men are nevertheless in the best shape of any of the men in the gun-pits and so they accept the responsibility for carrying the seriously hurt and wounded men back to the line. Ben, seeing how burdened they are with the wounded, wants to destroy the Turkish machine gun as it will require two men to manhandle it and a third to carry the tripod.

However, Lieutenant Derham and one of his men who is not too seriously hurt elect to take it with them. ‘It’s saved our lives once and it might do so again, we can manage it, sir,’ he says to Captain Daly.

The little party of fighting men under Daly trudge slowly back over Lone Pine. About halfway to the rear they come across a soldier with a broken leg and Derham and his offsider abandon the Hotchkiss, which Hornbill quickly disables, hurling several of its parts into the gorse, and they take the man with them. Light rain begins to fall and the air grows a little cooler. They arrive behind the lines a few minutes before midnight.

So ends the first day of fighting on Gallipoli. They stand exhausted no more than thirty yards from where they’d started digging in behind the rear lip of 400 Plateau shortly before nine that morning. Ben’s platoon finds itself with nineteen men dead and three wounded and those still standing barely have the strength to remove their packs. Bruised and cut, their uniforms torn, their faces and arms blackened with cordite and dust, they fall asleep on the damp ground at their feet.

If they can think at all, which is doubtful at this stage, they will be aware that they’ve killed men they could see, and will never again look at life through the same clear, clean eyes. They have undergone a process of corruption they will be unable to explain and which will cause them to cry out in the small hours of the morning. While some may grow old, where they have been and what they have seen will only ever be acknowledged by a sidelong glance, a knowingness, a look in the eyes of a mate. There are no words for what happens in the organised slaughter of men. It is a thing they’ve shared, a glory they’ve felt and a shame they will know all the days of their lives. While they have fought valiantly and with great pride, they have voluntarily lifted the lid to hell and plunged inwards. And, in the process, they have taken a terrible hiding from the proud Turks, whose ancient land they have dared to violate.

GALLIPOLI

Had he never been born he was mine:

Since he was born he never was mine:

Only the dream is our own.

Where the world called him there he went;

When the war called him, there he bent.

Now he is dead.

He was I; bone of my bone,

Flesh of my flesh, in truth;

For his plenty I gave my own,

His drouth was my drouth.

When he laughed I was glad,

In his strength forgot I was weak,

In his joy forgot I was sad

Now there is nothing to ask or to seek;

He is dead.

I am the ball the marksman sent,

Missing the end and falling spent;

I am the arrow, sighted fair

That failed, and finds not anywhere.

He who was I is dead.

- Dame Mary Gilmore

THE ATTACK ON LONE PINE

Gallipoli and. Alexandria 1915-1916

GALLIPOLI 10th December 1915

My dearest Victoria and my esteemed Grandfather Hawk,

This letter is to be shared between you and is, alas, long overdue. I had hoped to get something to you in time for Christmas but several factors intervened of which I will presently write.

I did manage a scrap of paper to Victoria in mid-November wishing you both season’s greetings, I hope you received it as there has been no mail from you these three weeks. Something is going on down at the beach and the mail does not appear to be coming in or is not being distributed. The men are ropeable, letters from home and the regular copy of the Bulletin is what makes life tolerable for us.

Sitting here in a dugout carved out of the cliff face like a gull on its nest and writing by candlelight has no feel of Christmas whatsoever. I met a cove yesterday who has occasion to visit the ships in the bay below and he told me that the thousands of candles from these little shelters where troops bunk down at night give the impression of Christmas lights. I believe it’s also been most inappropriately called ‘a fairyland of lights’. Although I can vouch there is very little peace and goodwill to all men to be found on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the moment. There may be a few wicked goblins about but there are certainly no fairies.

To further the idea of Christmas coming, we have had the first snowfall of the year. As there has been no issue of blankets, it is bitterly cold. (Did you buy the blanket factory in Launceston?) Coming after the severe summer heat with very little autumn weather to warn us, the snow, the first most of the lads have ever seen, has been disastrous. We are told nearly eleven thousand troops have been treated with frostbite, bronchial conditions and the like. Several hundred men froze to death on the night of the first fall. Even the snow, it seems, has sided with the Turks. I must end this for the time being as we are to go out on patrol at dawn and I must try to get some sleep. I will take up again tomorrow.

PALACE HOSPITAL

1st January 1916

My dearest Hawk and Victoria,

You will see from the above address that my luck has changed, or has it? I lie on a bed in the sunshine, looking over the coming and going of warships and transports in the harbour below, knowing that I am not, for the present, going anywhere.

Your mail sent to Gallipoli has caught up with me at last and I have a pile of eight letters from you, Victoria, and have taken to rationing myself with one each day. Two also from you, Grandfather Hawk, very precious and much cherished. The constant flow of letters from home has kept me sane and I don’t quite know how I would have managed without them. My platoon looked forward to them as much as I did. I was in the habit of reading relevant bits to them and, towards the end, I feel sure they regarded your letters as if they had themselves received them. It is now obvious why they were not received on Gallipoli as they would have arrived over the period we were preparing to evacuate, though, of course, I didn’t know this at the time I started this letter.

I have taken a bullet to the stomach which occurred on the last day on the peninsula, in fact only six hours before we pulled out. It is not as bad as it might seem, it was not a direct hit, but a ricochet and has lodged sideways near my spine. The doctors have not operated and there is some talk that I may be sent to England where the facilities for removing it are better. Though I have some pain, it is nothing compared to that suffered by most of the men here and I count myself fortunate. They have shaved my head and I am able to wash my body every day, it is quite the most wonderful experience.

You must both forgive me if I return to the subject of my letter to you from Gallipoli, now three weeks ago. I fear it will be a long one as I have much to get off my chest. You would do well to read it in dribs and drabs to avoid tedium. It is now even more important to me that I write it all down. So, with your permission, I shall finish it, though thankfully in the past tense. This morning, for the first time, I have been able to reflect on being alive and am not yet quite sure how I feel, though I think I am grateful and, perhaps, as the saying goes, time will prove to be the great healer it is supposed to be. And now I shall continue.

What a change has come over us since we first sailed from Egypt keen as mustard to get to the Turk and to show him what it meant to come up against Australians. At the time, I am ashamed to say, we had little opinion of the fighting ability of our foe, thinking him just another kind of gyppo with a broad yellow streak running down the centre of his back. We referred to him, as we did the Egyptians, as ‘wogs’ and often enough as ‘dirty wogs’ and yearned to be dispatched to France to fight the German soldier whom we regarded as a white man like us and therefore a worthy foe.

It seems quite astonishing to me that this was only seven months ago and in so short a period I could go from such youthful arrogance to the person I have now become. No matter what you are told at home, the Turk has proved to be a brave soldier who is not afraid to die and loves his motherland as we do ours. He has also given us a thorough trouncing and, although I shall always be proud of the way we fought on Gallipoli Peninsula, the Turk has no less reason to feel proud that he defeated us. You must believe me when I say we were not easy to beat and that we never gave up, not even at the very last disillusioned moment.

2nd January

It seems strange lying here in the winter sunshine without the constant crackle of gunfire or artillery shells bursting over my head. The biggest disruption to the peace and quiet is the occasional mournful sound of a ship’s horn in the harbour below or the clatter of the tea trolley down the hospital corridor.

Now that it is all over and I lie once again between clean sheets, I want to put down a few bits ‘n pieces. I do so not because they are important, but because there are ghosts in my life which must be laid to rest. So many of my mates are dead and I must speak for them and the battles they fought in. I feel at last able to write about the previous months. I, who always stared out of the window when old Mrs Wickworth-Spode tried to get me to put my thoughts to paper, now wish to set the record straight as far as I was concerned in the Gallipoli campaign.

Some day, they’ll write the history of what happened in the Dardanelles but my mates won’t be in it. They will not be included in any report, which will tell instead of plans and attacks and the doings of colonels and generals seeking vindication for actions taken that were foolish and unwarranted and which resulted in thousands of good men dying needlessly.

But Gallipoli was never about charts and logistics or the vainglorious careers of our military leaders. It was about young lads doing the best they could, giving the best they had, showing courage and humour and a love for their mates that was always decent and honest and true. Somebody has to tell of them. I will write about my own men, but you could substitute their names for many others, the young blokes who came to Gallipoli who fought and believed until the last. They were the best we had and I doubt we shall ever fully recover from their loss. Wordy Smith once told me that lads like these, strong and brace, most nearly a foot taller than their English equivalents, are the genetic seed from which a people is made. When you see a thousand young lads strewn across a battlefield, their bodies filled with maggots as they rot in the sun, it is difficult not to feel bitterness and despair at the terrible waste. I am not yet thirty years old though I feel twice this age and when I see an eighteen-year-old lad lying dead or calling out for his mother while he holds his intestines in his cupped hands, I cannot think of any cause that can justify such destruction. I’m afraid the old easygoing Ben has been changed, forever, though I doubt for the better.

And so I am writing down what happened to my mates while it is still fresh in my mind. I will write their proper names at the end of this letter and I want you to find their families and read this letter to them so they know what happened to their sons and can be proud that they raised such men.

But, first, now that it is over in this part of the world, though we still fight the Turk in Egypt, I must tell you of our life on Gallipoli. I hate written to you of the landing and the first few days and so I intend to take up from there. Oh, by the way, I was mentioned in dispatches over the incident with the Turkish machine gun late on the first day. I hate lost touch with Captain Daly who put me up for it, though I hope they have seen fit to give him the Military Cross as he deserted a medal far more than I deserved the ‘mention’. I must say I was a bit embarrassed by it all but the platoon took it in the right spirit and said although there is no ribbon for it, if there was they’d each take turns pinning the ribbon above their tunic pocket. Quite right too, if I got a mention all of us should have.

After the first fierce fighting, when we were eventually driven back and we dug in on a front line that never really changed much for the duration of our stay, things sort of settled down a bit. The fighting went on in pockets, sometimes fierce and sometimes simply an attack on a patrol, or we’d come across a dozen or so Turks up to no good and give them hell. The artillery from both sides (though mostly from the Turk who was better equipped than us in this regard) went on for most of the daylight hours and so did the snipers. On one such day Crow Bigby and a Turkish sniper exchanged shots for four hours until our man seemed to have got the last shot in because we heard no more from the beggar higher up on the ridge. Such contests were common enough and we took a win from one of our own snipers to mean we were superior, like a football match where your side wins against a hated team.

Oh, how we despised their snipers who made walking out in the open in daylight always a dangerous occupation and who forced us to do most of our chores at night when we were exhausted. The biggest danger was going down to the beach to fetch water for the platoon and I lost three men doing this. Ducking or falling to the ground became a habit almost as common as brushing flies from the corners of your eyes. I found myself on one occasion clawing the ground when someone near me snapped a plank of wood free from a bullybeef crate. Without thinking, our ears were tuned unconsciously to the Turkish artillery fire. The snipers’ bullets never really stopped and silence was unknown to us, the crackle of rifle fire, the whoosh of a shell passing overhead or the sharp crack, bang and whirr of shrapnel pellets raining down was the only constant.

3rd January

Yet, after the first month, we became so accustomed to these conditions that the men pronounced themselves bored. The only one of us who seemed remarkably adjusted was Peregrine Ormington-Smith who somehow found flowers still growing on ground that was cratered by artillery shells and churned to dust. He would sit quietly in his dugout with some specimen the size of my little fingernail under his microscope and paint it, making copious notes beside it as though this tiny blossom was of the greatest importance to mankind. The man was quite impossible.

The rest of us soon forgot those first few days after the landing when we were too stunned to think and wished only to get off the peninsula and never fire another shot in anger again. In the long period of tedium after the first onrush the thing we hated the most was not being able to see the enemy while they, perched higher up, on the ridge and cliff faces, could look directly down on us. We constantly told ourselves that if only we could fix bayonets and have a go then we ‘d soon enough have the better of them.

I know you must find this difficult to understand, but day-to-day living conditions were so tedious and difficult that the men thought of fighting, even dying, as a kind of relief from the tension. Most had become quite indifferent to losing their lives. Wordy Smith said it was a type of insanity brought about by battle fatigue and the extreme tension of being shot at all the time without being able to effectively shoot back. He may well have been right. We are different now, none of us the same nice lads who left home ten months ago. Death was such a common occurrence that it seemed almost as normal to us as staying alive. We came to see the business of staying alive not as good management but purely a matter of luck.

But always there was a hunger for victory, to do what you could when you could, so that those who followed you had a better chance. Every day wounded men returned to the trenches, not because it was critical that they did so, but because they had begged the hospital or first-aid post to be allowed to fight with their mates. They had quite lost the ability to see themselves as individuals, but only as a part of a unit that was not complete without them nor they without it. This changed after Lone Pine, Quinn’s Post and the Daisy Patch, where there was so much slaughter and where we lost so many of our mates that those of us who were still alive felt completely isolated and unable to go back to the slaughter. It was as if a part of us had been removed, disabling us as fighting men. I shall tell you later of these three battles which took place in August.

4th January

Victoria, you must excuse my not pandering to your feminine sensibilities, but I want you and Grandfather Hawk to get a clear picture of how things were here in the summer (June, July, August) and still were right to the end, except that we suffered less from flies and disease in the cooler weather.

I tell you these things not because I want you to take pity on the lads but so that you can understand the life of an ordinary soldier here on Gallipoli. We left Australia not caring what the war was about, it was a chance to fight for King and Country to show what we were made of. Now, with so many dead and so little resolved, I must question why men go to war against each other. If you are to marry and have sons of your own I pray that you will teach them war is a hell to be avoided.

If my life is to be spared there are some things I can never talk about. This is not because I caution myself not to do so, but because men who must kill each other are not given the words for how they feel afterwards.