Redemption. - Redemption. Part 53
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Redemption. Part 53

I fled but was picked up by the police and impressed into the Czar's army. I am a prime find because I can treat horses and livestock. I know what is going to happen...shipment to Siberia to a remote post and then they'd beat on me day and night to make me convert. It happened to many from my village. They took Christian names and married and were never heard from again.

Once more I fled, to Palestine. Don't ask how. It was two years of agony as well as a miracle to reach Palestine. I go to work on the projects for the Baron Rothschild in Jewish fields and later I become a founding member of a communal settlement in Galilee.

I am a notable veterinarian for settlements in the area and I take care of the Arab animals as well. We Jews of Palestine had a rotten life under the Turks and were very much for the English when the war broke out. The Turks rounded up dozens of my comrades and tortured them as spies, beat them on the soles of their feet...some were crippled. So I fled again, to Egypt along with hundreds of other Jews, and soon we volunteered to make up the Zion Mule Corps, although the British would not let us be official members of the army. GOD! WHY DO THE FLAMES LEAP SO WHEN THE CANDLES BECOME LOWER! FUCKING FIRES!

Modi's woman was large because, like an Arab, he liked large! Her name? Not Malka...her name? She is Maat. She is hushing me and wiping my brow. I will melt into her....

God in heaven, I can never let go of my secret. The gaffers will despise me. These are my cobbers...the only people...except for Uncle Ned Thornberry...who ever cared tuppence for me.

Chester Goodwood was the name the Chinese forger put on my documents so it would appear that I was a relative of Sir Stanford Goodwood.

My name is Stanley Thornberry. I'm a bastard born in London. My ma died from the consumption when I was six. I fled the orphanage when I was seven, preferring to work the streets. That didn't last too long. I ended up in the borstal, a thief, before my ninth birthday.

My one relative was Ned Thornberry, but he lived in Hong Kong. Uncle Ned ran the stables for the show horses and the polo horses of Sir Stanford Goodwood.

Ned promised the court he'd give me a good home, and Sir Stanford signed a letter for me, so I was shipped to Hong Kong. Working for Uncle Ned is how I became a horseman.

I thought what Sir Stanford was doing was pure kindness. He sent me to a proper school where I learned to speak correct English. Everyone was stunned at my mathematics skills. Sir Stanford provided me with a private tutor to learn banking and accounting and by the age of fourteen I was mastering all the ledgers.

...Kindness, was it, now? He had long-range plans for me. Uncle Ned passed away just after my fifteenth birthday and Sir Stanford invited me to move into the mansion...and I realized what he had been planning all those years.

...I was like a prisoner, kept on the grounds until he was sure I wouldn't run away. He came to my bed night after night making me do all the pansy things. Threatening my life if I made trouble, he also promised me I'd go far in the banking business if I became his nancy boy. I pretended to be going along with it until I could run for freedom.

My chance came just as the war was about to begin. I got this Chinaman to make false documents and I stowed away. I thank God every night for Rory and Johnny. How can I ever tell them what Sir Stanford and I did? I would become lower than shit in their eyes.

I know Rory fixed me up with Shaara and I know Shaara really makes believe also. I am going to become rich after the war. I'll give all my friends here a great deal of money so life will be easier for them. I know I won't see Shaara again but if I do I'll see that she gets a great deal of money, as well.

Leilah's heavy lips fell down to Jeremy's neck and she kissed him and he groaned and she whispered to go away and to the bedroom. Although the kisses were pleasing, she knew his mind was in a place far away....

My secret, which only Rory knows, was my cowardice and my terror of poverty. My secret of secrets which I cannot share with even Rory is that I should like to kill my father.

Before I did I would make him recite every pain he has imposed on his peasants and his workers and make him beg for mercy for every foul deed he has ever done in his life. After I shot him, I'd burn Hubble Manor down, except for the Long Hall and the Great Screen.

Then I would renounce my title. I'd give away the lands of the earldom to those who deserved it, those who had toiled on it. Like other Irish Protestant patriots, like Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and Charles Stewart Parnell, I would become a republican. What I mean is...I want to be an Irish Irishman.

Jaysus, Rory thought, the party has turned grim. Or has it? Is it not better to tell truths to yourself in the presence of friends, even though it is done in silence? Look at them. Each is in his own milky way.

I knew from the moment I wrote my first letters to my sisters and Tommy that I had always been their master and made them live somewhere beneath me. I've been a real prick to my brother Tommy. It wasn't Tommy's fault he was anointed by the Squire as the favorite son. It wasn't Tommy's fault he wasn't the brightest kid in South Island. I've gone out of my way to make certain he felt like a dunce when I might have helped him and taken care of him, as a decent brother should.

I see now, as I read the letters of my brothers and sisters and even my mom, I should have been a far better brother to them.

I was too damned busy establishing my prowess.

My da did me wrong, but even so there were a thousand times he fished around for a smile or a kind word from me and all I did was twist the knife or get his kind attention by wrecking something, by showing how tough I was. Maybe, if I had tried, he might have started trying, and things would have become lighter between us.

Secret? I'm scared of going to Ireland with the name of Larkin. What can any man do with the shadow of Conor Larkin hovering over him? But I'm going, and I'll do what is expected of a Larkin. That is the only way I can earn my passage back to New Zealand.

Secret? I'll hate myself if my prayer really comes true. I'll hate myself for the rest of my life, but the TRUTH is, I hope that Dr. Calvin Norman gets killed in the war...

"Hey!" Modi called through the creamy mist. "Everyone is so passionately sad. What have I here? A room full of Russians? I have a favorite idea."

"Is your idea about your public life, your private life, or your secret life?"

"Definitely, a secret. Chester, stop playing the tambour so I can tell everyone my secret idea."

Chester was in a trance. He continued playing.

Leilah became passionate. Jeremy gently admonished her. "Please, Leilah, Modi has an idea."

"Yeah," Rory said, "let's hear your idea because I don't like my own ideas right now."

"Are we not exceptional comrades?" Modi asked, then answered, "Yes, we are, and in this sacred temple of paradise we...let me think...oh yes, I know-we should desecrate our brotherhood."

"You mean consecrate, old chap," Jeremy said.

Modi scratched his head. "I mean we should take a vow of eternal brotherhood because we are eternal brothers."

"That's a bang-up idea," Johnny said.

"Chester? Hey, Chester."

"Eh?"

"Stop playing that fucking thing. Are you prepared to vow an emotional desecration?"

"Absolutely."

"Aye," Rory said, "let's consecrate."

"How?" Jeremy asked.

"Let's cut our palms and mix blood," Johnny said.

"Tarbox, you are a real peasant," Modi said. "I say, we all get a brotherhood tattoo."

"Done!" Jeremy said. "Nothing will piss my father off more, although grandfather is apt to be delighted."

"That's very, very beautiful, Modi," Johnny said, starting into tears.

"I have already spoke to our sister, dear Sonya. There is here nearby a tattoo artist who specializes in tattooing the dates of the Haj to Mecca, but he also does other things."

Sonya bared a breast. It held a tattoo of a pomegranate.

"Jaysus, that's magnificent," Rory said.

"It took long enough for you to make notice," Sonya retorted.

"Send for the bugger!" Johnny cried.

"Although he is Armenian, he is honest I will also join and have a tattoo," Sonya said.

Chester puffed up. A tattoo! Goddamn! Bully!

"We don't just want to put on a date," Modi said. "What shall we tattoo?"

"I think something in Latin might be appropriate, a motto," Jeremy said.

"Oh shit," Johnny reacted. "Let's be warriors, let's get into battle. A fierce Maori to signify New Zealand."

"New Zealand?" Modi protested.

They tried to think. It was difficult for them to think.

Chester kept his rhythm going on the tambour. "A mule's head," he said, and kept on beating.

"Of course, I was just about to say a mule's head," Modi said.

"With gigantic ears so he won't be mistaken for a horse," Rory added.

And so it came to pass that the gaffer squad, headquarters company, Seventh New Zealand Light Horse Battalion, and three of the ladies of the evening had magnificent mules tattooed by Mr. Suhollanian, an Armenian artist, on their left buttocks.

68.

Secret Files of Winston Churchill, February 1915 Nay to the Nay-sayers!

February 19 A glorious day in the history of the British Navy is commenced.

One hundred and seventy-eight guns ranging from five to fifteen inches, mounted on a dozen warships, opened fire on the four other forts at Cape Helles on the southernmost tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

What a magnificent sight we and our French allies must have evoked with our invincible vessels erupting in salvo after salvo. I shall regret not having been a personal witness to the Union Jack being raised to the staff of our mightiest dreadnought-HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH.

The attack fleet consisted of three divisions. The first squadron carried the heavy guns of the ELIZABETH, AGAMEMNON, and INFLEXIBLE.

The second division bore the names of VENGEANCE, ALBION, CORNWALLIS, IRRESISTIBLE, and TRIUMPH.

I salute the French squadron; SEFFREN, BOUVET, CHARLEMAGNE, and GAULOIS.

We opened fire from a distance of fifteen thousand yards, beyond the range of the Turkish guns. Using the new technique of a spotter sea plane directing our guns and photographing the damage, Admiral Harmon concluded the long-range bombardment was having mixed success.

Admiral Harmon then ordered the fleet ever closer. We heard nothing from the Turks until SEFFREN, VENGEANCE, and CORNWALLIS came to within five thousand yards of Cape Helles.

Blast the luck, foul weather set in. Harmon had no choice but to order a withdrawal at the end of the day with victory still in abeyance.

February 25 Five days of foul weather has canceled our operations. Today we resumed the attack concentrating on the heavy Turkish guns all over the peninsula from a range of 12,000 yards. When we moved closer to Cape Helles, we received no return fire from their big guns. One must conclude that we knocked out the Turkish coastal guns without even having forced the Dardanelles Straits. The long-range barrage may have weakened them significantly.

Our expenditure of 31 fifteen-inch shells, 81 twelve-inch shells, and the French expenditure of 50 twelve-inch shells seems well spent.

February 26 Moving with caution, three of our destroyers sailed into very close range covering landing parties of 60 to 100 Marines and sappers. They found and disabled forty-eight smaller Turkish guns. The Marines probed up into the hills until they were engaged by the Turks. We immediately withdrew, drawing casualties of nine killed and wounded.

As we study these results it appears that the outermost Turkish forts on Cape Helles are out of commission. Further, many other heavy guns up the Gallipoli Peninsula appear to have been silenced from the long-range shellings.

Interesting bit of business, now. Do the Turks think our bombardment of Gallipoli is merely a feint? Do they believe our real objective is to mount an offensive over the Suez Canal into the Sinai, Palestine, and the oil states of Syria and Iraq? It would appear so.

The Turks sent an infantry brigade across the Sinai toward the Suez Canal, knowing full well of our overwhelming number of troops in Egypt.

We pushed them back into the Sinai but, of course, did not follow up. Therefore, they probably concluded that the invasion of Gallipoli is a reality.

Given the initial success we have had, I firmly believe that our naval might will carry the day. In a matter of a few weeks we shall force the Straits of the Dardanelles and, once again, our ships will punish the Turks on the peninsula into submission. I cannot help but feel that our forces will land and engage in a mop-up operation.

Meanwhile, the Navy will enter the Sea of Marmara and anchor outside of Constantinople as our troops drive from the Gallipoli to Constantinople's outskirts and the Turks shall sue for peace.

As these historic events unfold, I do harbor a secret apprehension.

If the Turks put up a fight on the peninsula, we should have a few more infantry divisions in reserve to get the job done. Kitchener will not release any new divisions to this campaign, save the 29th, which is en route.

I do not fear our ability to take Gallipoli with the forces at hand, and then march on Constantinople, except that General Darlington may be a bit of old school as a tactician. I do not see him making the daring decisions and executing the swift movements to overwhelm the enemy.

I would feel more comfortable if Kitchener would let us have three or four more divisions.

WSC.

69.

"Why must we have two paddocks?" Modi asked his students, and answered himself before anyone could speak. "I'll tell you. One major problem is more major than any other problem. That problem is biting flies. Add in mosquitoes and vermin, and we are dealing with a pot full of bloodsuckers."

Modi's students had quickly gotten the drift that Dr. Mordechai Pearlman, late of the Czar's army, knew his animals. The men he had selected from the battalion for the Mule Medic Platoon would own corporal's chevrons, if they cut it. The next day he would test them. If a soldier failed he was immediately dismissed from the medics and replaced. They hung on his every word and engaged in no horseplay unless he instigated it.

"So, we are two paddocks and our big problem is flies. Each night we will have confined several hundred mules eating twenty pounds of feed that day. Gentlemen, that is a lot of mule shit."

Controlled laughter.

"So," he went on, "each night we bring our trains into Paddock A, which has been spotless cleaned and has new hay spread for the animals.

"Alternative," Modi said. "The mule comes to a dirty paddock. The mules must stand in muleshit. Millions of biting flies attack. They attack ears, the genital areas, and open sores. I have seen jacks and janets attacked so bad, half their ears are chewed off. I have seen mules attacked so viciously, they go insane and have to be destroyed. The mule does not want to stand up all night. It uses his strength. But he cannot lie down and sleep in muleshit. What you will have the next morning is a weak animal, half-crazy, with not enough stamina to go on the trail. In this battalion the mule comes home to a clean paddock. We have been collecting bacon grease from the mess halls. Each night you will rub ears, sores, and genital areas with grease. It will give animals some relief from bites. Questions?"

"Is there anything we can use to drive off flies?" he was asked.