Redemption. - Redemption. Part 65
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Redemption. Part 65

"All boils down to our little acre here," Brodhead said, "strength against strength. We either hold, die, or become prisoners of the Turks. The latter is out of the question for me. All right, gentlemen, 0200 at my command post tonight. We'll get a plan tidied up."

"Sir," Malone said, "is the wireless working to naval gunfire?"

"Yes, we're back in contact."

"General, we and the Turks are going to be on top of each other. I'd like to see the navy concentrate on the Chessboard and nothing but the Chessboard."

"Well, what about no-man's-land?"

"I have a notion, General," Malone went on. "We're too close to their trenches for naval gunfire. I say we keep a battalion on ready alert at all times. The minute the Turks attack, we send the battalion into no-man's-land and meet them with bayonets. They won't figure on that. I think it's a chance to confuse them."

That sobered the place up.

"Interesting," Markham agreed.

"I like it," Monash agreed. "But how do we get out of our trenches fast enough?"

"Have the battalion on alert lie behind the trenches and cross over the top of us by throwing down plank bridges."

"Let me think about it," Brodhead said. At that, the General dismissed everyone except Chris and myself. When they were gone, Brodhead stunned me with his sensitivity. "I know what you're going to ask me, Chris. The answer is no."

"Is this a private matter?" I asked.

"No, not at all. You have wheedled your way onto the front lines for the Turkish counterattack, Landers, and Major Hubble is about to suggest that so long as Colonel Chapman is dead, he should command the Canterbury's at Quinn's Post. Is that about it, Chris?"

"I'd say that is the gist of the matter."

"Not quite yet," Brodhead answered.

"Sir, I took on this mule detail out of deep loyalty to you. My brother Jeremy can run my battalion in his sleep with Subaltern Landers here as his exec."

"Sorry. I think Colonel Markham is better suited."

"You promised me, sir."

"So I did. Exactly what I promised is that if you got a mule transport working, I would skip you a rank at the end of the campaign and see that you got a regiment at that time. However, don't be too impatient. At the rate we are losing senior officers you may get your chance sooner than later, what?"

Anzac crammed as many men and as much ammo and water behind Quinn's and Courtney's Posts. Being the "professor" of the terrain, I helped find little pockets where one- and two-man observation posts could keep constant watch on the Turks. Phone lines were run to these.

Malone had me at his side a great deal of the time, dispensing our stores of material. The Colonel did a lot of his thinking out loud in rumble-mumbles and would then look at me curiously to see if I agreed with him. His richly endowed eyebrows covered his eyes like an English sheepdog to conceal surprise and unpleasant news. Each day I went with him on a sweep of his observation posts before he reported down to Brodhead at Corps.

By mid-May the late morning-early afternoon heat was so intense that hell up here and hell down there probably had little variance. Quinn's Post was always over 110 degrees. Everyone stripped off jackets, trousers, and leggings. We were down to underdrawers, shoes, our web belts, and some sort of head covering.

Between noon and 1500, men fainted from heat prostration all up and down the line. Water was only to drink; it had no secondary use and we were filthy and smelly. Lice and flies adored us.

On May 16, I'll never forget the day, I woke up to a revelation. It came through to me so clearly I bolted into Malone's quarters without invitation.

"Get up, Colonel," I suggested.

He pulled his naked butt off his cot, sat on its edge and got me into focus, quickly. At Quinn's Post a man could wake up within four seconds and be on the alert.

"I've got an utterly clear message about something," I said.

"Ummmm," he rumbled.

"I know when the Turks are going to attack."

"Sure you do."

"It came to me, just like that."

"Quinn's Post does this to people. It may be the heat, Landers."

"That's exactly what it is, Colonel, the heat."

Oh, that awful look of his. It's not fair looking at a man when you can't see through his eyebrows.

"The Turks are going to attack at midday."

"You nudged me out of my sleep for this? Go play with your mules. They'll attack at dawn as any God-fearing Moslem or Christian or Buddhist army would. An attacking force wants all the daylight they can get. If they attack at midday they'll give away seven, eight hours of light."

"Colonel, look at our lads at midday. The lot of them are seeing double and hearing weird voices. They can barely move a limb." Thanking God I was talking to a New Zealander and not a pommy, I dared continue. "Suppose the Turks rest their men all morning in the shade, pump them up with water and a whiff or two of hashish. They'll be able to hit us like a thunderbolt, and ourselves with less than no energy."

Malone heard me.

The red-alert troops were put down in the trenches where it was apt to be twenty degrees cooler, but the observation posts were tripled and rotated so that our eyes never left the Turks. Observers were dead-on focused on the gullies running off Bloody Angle and the Chessboard, where we felt for sure the attack would begin.

"Watch for puffs of dust, particularly a line of dust. If the noise level drops, it could mean they are tensing up to make a charge."

Each morning Malone snapped, "Looks like you're right again, as far as today is concerned."

May 20, 1915-1150 Elgin, Spears, Stevens, and I were down to drawers again. In the trenches, the alert battalion waited bare-assed, sharpening their already razor-edged bayonets.

You know how you can sense...smell things...without a coherent reason? Yurlob Singh's yoga had rubbed off on me. I knew it was the day. I mean, I really knew. And I knew that when the Turks didn't hit us at dawn, it was going to be high noon. I knew it would be high noon because German and Turkish officers don't have any more imagination than British officers.

What I felt must have started running through our trenches. Suddenly, the men who were going to lay up ladders to bridges over no-man's-land began to tense up. The alert battalion, Otagos, South Islanders like myself, were on their feet.

About three minutes to noon, my squad and I went to our own observation post.

Look! Fucking look!

Turk Gully #3 had a strung-out cloud of dust a hundred yards long and it was drifting. The high racket of the shells audibly fell and fell till it became quiet like we were on the moon.

Colonel Malone tore up a ladder, crouched, and looked.

A whistle went off from Pope's Hill Observation Post.

"Colonel. Pope thinks it seems Abdul ready to swarm."

A second whistle blasted from Dead Man's OP.

All noise from the Turkish lines stopped! Then, a droning sound rose on the air like a trillion bees buzzing.

"Let's go, lads!" Malone cried. A bridge was lifted up from the trench and laid over its top. Malone ran across it into no-man's-land but no one followed. I looked down in the trenches. The alert battalion was frozen. I grabbed my pistol and fired into the trench side.

"Get your asses up here!" I screamed.

Over the way, still out of sight, the buzzing swelled to a steady hum. Our men started up. I threw them bodily over the bridge.

"More bridges! More bridges! Follow the Colonel!"

The hum from the Turks exploded into "Allah Akbar!" Now our lads were coming...up, up, over, goddamnit, let's go, let's go!

I grabbed Elgin and shoved him at the bridge. He turned and hesitated and I kicked his ass over it, then snarled to Happy and Spears to follow me. All up and down the lines a haka battle cry arose as we surged into no-man's-land.

We were not greeted by gunfire from the Turkish trenches. Clearly, they were assaulting in waves from the gullies behind their trenches.

Just like so! The gullies were emptying thousands of Turks, coming at us at high port.

"Allah Akbar!"

We had beaten them onto no-man's-land by a full precious minute. Colonel Malone's outrageous gamble was working! We were at the edge of their trenches when Abdul tried to cross to us. They were shocked to see us greet them. I emptied my pistol, tossed it aside. A rifle and bayonet were not hard to find this day. We gutted their first line of attackers down into their own trenches. Their second line ran right up the backs of the first line.

The Turks were thrown from offense to defense. It was they who had to hold us off, then fight their way back onto no-man's-land where they thought they had free access.

In an attempt to achieve surprise, the Turks had not preceded their assault by cannon barrage so there was no clouding and smoke. The field was clear. As Abdul saw his comrades scream and sink, guts in hand, his nerve was shaken.

The second wave of Turks, boiling after their long dash from the gullies, threw off their jackets as well and it was naked Turk and naked Kiwi stabbing and slicing with their pointed razors.

Now I was filled with the antifear. In the insanity of no-man's-land, two things would get me out alive. I must not lock up my brains through maniacal rage. I must think about what I'm doing. My moves must be decisive and correctly drawn. I must also work like hell. This is harder than taking a barrage, harder than digging, harder than climbing a cliff. This is plain, bloody, hard work...think and work.

This was the gladiator's pit blown up by ten thousand! In the midst of fury and heat and confusion there came the blackest of black humor. Our uniforms-both Turks and Kiwis-were nearly the same color. Naked it was even more difficult to tell us apart. I went for men with swarthy color and big moustaches. An opening of flesh and in the point went...sometimes sticking tightly between his ribs...bring the rifle butt to the man's head. Take him fast, pop him off balance, and pounce.

Was I still human? I was human in the speed my mind was working. I was not human in what I was doing. We were a bit bigger and stronger than the Turk with a great deal of bayonet training in Egypt, but the main thing was the tide...we had the tide with us, we had outfoxed them, and they were digging out of a hole.

By their sheer numbers we inched back.

Colonel Malone then unleashed a second battalion of bayonets-Maoris from our trenches, and their sudden fierce arrival was like a hard wave bashing.

Turks fell into disarray, which only made us press harder until finally they broke off the engagement and scrambled back beyond their trenches.

Another wave of Turks was arriving from the far gully stumbling over their own men in retreat.

Three sharp whistles, repeated and repeated, signaled us to return to our own trenches and take up firing positions. I found myself behind an empty Maxim gun and pressed a pair of lads into duty with me.

The new lines of Turks were confused. They did not know if we were going to come out again and meet them with bayonets. Perhaps we were going to counterassault and crack their trench lines.

Whatever, the storm and fury had been taken out of their assault. They came at us again, but rather gingerly, over the narrow no-man's-land filled with bodies, crying, moaning, still.

Colonel Malone had managed our maneuver brilliantly...may be the Turks' steam was gone...we waited, waited, waited...then twenty Maxim guns went off at once.

Word from Colonel Monash's sector! It was brutally active beating back wave after wave of Turks who still had momentum. Monash called for every reserve machine-gun crew to fill in his line.

Again and again the Turks emptied the gullies. Now they came from another direction down from the Chessboard. Our troops, over the valley at Russell's Top, hit them in their flanks.

Now the Turk appeared like a herd of stampeding cattle over Dead Man's Ridge.

"Allah Akbar!"

Jesus, three bloody prongs coming at Quinn's. Were there enough bullets in the British arsenal to halt them? Some were able to get within touching distance of our trench, some fell on the antigrenade sheeting and crashed down into us.

My field of fire took a queer change. At first it had been wide open. Now, it was filled with corpses that slowed down the advancing Turks. The Turks had to climb mounds of bodies, slipping in their own blood, then making targets of themselves as they stood erect. Their charge in front of me became very confused.

It was a big battle raging on a front two miles long but it was a tiny battle, as it is for every soldier. All I had to do was take care of what was in front of me and watch my comrades on my flanks. These are the grand minutiae of war, tiny windows. If my squad and I held our ground and our flanks and everyone else did, they'd not break us.

My machine gun began smoking and jammed. The water in the jackets had boiled. Shit! I picked up a rifle and fired until it burned the palms of my hands, then picked up another.

On the Turks came!

A breech in Monash's line! He called for a battalion at Angel's Haven Spa to come and plug it up. Runner in from the Aussies. Bayonet fight with the Turks at the breech. A second reserve battalion went up.

The Turks branched off and went after Pope's Hill, a small but vital observation post. How many guns at Pope's? Not enough. Malone dispatched a platoon to Pope's. Only half of them got through but the post held.

Abdul charged at us unabated for nearly seven hours until the sun began to fall into the Aegean. The night was flooded with flares. One more charge and the battle slowed to a trickle....

Runner from Monash. Their line was straightened and held. They were bleeding with casualties. We had reached very deep into our reserves but Monash had to have them. His line was thin.

Quinn's Post had held! The cost was seventy-five percent casualties. Over half our weapons had burned out from overfiring.

Quick, Malone ordered, get new weapons and ammo out of the dumps behind the trenches.

Our dead had turned the trench floor into ankle-deep blood-mud. The night was amoan from the cries of thousands of wounded out in no-man's-land. We made a try to bring some lads in, but it was impossible. They were totally intertwined with corpses, ours and the Turks', and any illuminated movement in no-man's-land drew instant fire.

A few men managed to crawl back to our trench. We took them in-Kiwis, Aussies, Turks.

Yurlob and Modi brought mule trains as close as they dared, and throughout the night came up Monash Valley and carried the wounded down into Widow's Gully for daylight evacuation.

By midnight the dead had been removed from the trenches, reinforcements and supplies set in place, and we grabbed a quick, delicious meal of bully beef shit and hard biscuits, a fitting belly-warming dinner for the working lad.

My own anxiety level dropped to a point where I realized that my hands were blistering from burns from the gun barrels and I was bleeding from my sides. Christ, I had taken some bayonet cuts. No use using up a medic on me. They had their hands full. Can I tell you, I was aching so much all over I could hardly feel the pain of stitching myself up.

Happy Stevens, Dan Elgin, Spears, and I often got separated during the day up at Quinn's but always gathered near Malone's dugout come evening.

I could hear the Squire complaining to me..."Rory, you get into a punch-up just because there's a punch-up to get into, whether it's yours or not." I had no business on the line and I fucking threw away the lives of my friends.

"Colonel Malone wants to see you," a runner said.

Colonel Monash and Malone were ending a meeting as I came in. They both looked like ten-ton boulders had fallen on them, they'd got up, and been hit by beer wagons and then punched out in a pub.