31

The hillside was steep and cut into narrow terraces retained by low stone walls and faced banks. Through the scattered ranks of gnarled olive trees, the waters of Moúdhros Sound lay like a sheet of dull steel between the arid hills, watched over by the bald summit of Prophitis Ilias. I could not help thinking how appropriate the colour was, for Greek mythology had it that the island of Lemnos, upon which I was walking, had been the home of Hephaestus, the god of metalworkers, who was exiled here by Zeus. To compound the image, riding at anchor upon the sound was a mottled armada of grey-painted warships.

Leaning against one of the olive trees, I paused to catch my breath. It was hard going. Although the sky was overcast, it was still hot, and the path, more suitable for the cloven hooves of goats than human feet, was so rocky, I had all the while to watch my feet. That I was wearing heavy military boots did not help. The hobnails in the soles occasionally caused me to slip and, in one place, I fell at least ten feet onto one of the terraces, cracking my shin on a tree root and reminding me of my tumble from the slick steps on the path to Dùn an Làmh Thoisgeal. Unscrewing the cap to my water bottle, I took a swig, swilling the water round my mouth before swallowing it, tasting the grit of the dust that had accumulated in my mouth.

Rested, I took the folded map out of the breast pocket of my tunic jacket and spread it open on a smooth boulder, aligning it to the landmarks of the distant hills and a peninsula that projected into the sound to the south of the settlement of Kallithéa, the whitewashed houses of which I could make out clearly across the sea. According to my reckoning, my destination was about half a mile farther on and slightly higher up the hillside than the path. Taking a compass reading confirmed it.

Walking on, I became increasingly excited. The map, which I had copied from an outdated Baedeker guidebook of Greece I had come across in a small shop in Moúdhros town, displayed the whereabouts of a small eighth-century B.C. necropolis close to a site of contemporary occupation, although whether this consisted of secular buildings or a religious structure was as yet unknown.

Finally, after quitting the path and scrambling up a number of terraces, all of them in varying states of decrepitude and abandonment, I reached a piece of flat ground of about six acres in extent, rising slightly at the southern end. The ground was haphazardly strewn about with large sections of cut stone between which grew little except sparse tufts of grass upon which goats had been grazing. Some were nibbled down to the roots whilst, all about, small pellets of goat dung littered the earth.

Leaving my water bottle hanging from a broken bough on an old olive tree at the edge of the site, I set about looking for signs of structures. The outlines of ancient buildings were not difficult to trace. Contours of foundations stood in places a foot high whilst, at the edge of the southern rise, a number of sections of columns lay half-buried where they had rolled, one still attached to its echinus. It did not take me long to work out that there were ten distinct buildings on the site, varying in size from a small square structure to a large domestic house including a peristylium with an exedra leading off from it, divided from the former by a row of four low columns, the plinths for which were clearly visible.

My initial survey complete, I sat under the olive tree, leaning against its trunk and fitting my back into a groove in the knotty wood. Somewhere amongst the stones, a bird was calling with a single consistent, strident note. I closed my eyes. It was good to return to be amongst ancient stones and in the company of the past. For a while, I dozed fitfully, dreaming of nothing in particular but twice seeing, in the misty realm of my subconscious, the girl from Eilean Tosdach. The first time, she was sitting at the water’s edge of the tiny shingle strand by her croft, the water lapping at her feet and her hair damp from the spray being thrown up by a gusty wind. On her second appearance, she materialised in front of me, walking through the ruins by which I was surrounded, wearing a Dorian chiton, her arms bare, one hand balancing an empty hydria upon her head. On both occasions, I could see her face, pacific and happy.

After an hour or so, I got to my feet, rolling up my sleeves and unclipping from my webbing belt the entrenching tool I had brought with me, opening out the pointed blade. Walking to the remains of the large house, I set about excavating a few shallow trenches in places where I thought I might be lucky in finding something of interest. Although it had rained fitfully for three days, the soil was dry, every blow of the tool sending up a spatter of gravel and a fine mist of dust, which soon began to cake my forearms. In less than thirty minutes, I had dug up over two dozen fragments of pottery, including the shapely handle of an oinochoë, the rim and base of a krater and a piece of a black-figure kylix the size of my palm. When I spat upon it, smearing my saliva across the surface, an illustration of three cavorting dolphins clearly materialised into view. Against the footings of a wall, I came across a piece of a marble frieze upon which a hand had been carved, apparently gripping an udder. It took me several minutes to realise the figure had not been depicted milking a cow but holding onto one of the lower extensions of a wine skin.

Gathering my finds together on a rock by the olive, I sat down and scribbled quick notes on them. I had no idea of what use they might be, but I felt I had to record them if only to give purpose to my outing. Yet my expedition into the hills had not been just an exercise in academic curiosity or achievement, no matter how slight, but an escape from the world in which I now dwelt.

I had, by the time I arrived in Lemnos, been in the army for just under four months, during which time I had received the basic training of every recruit save that I was excluded from weapons instruction. After a fortnight’s induction process, in which I was marched up and down a parade ground until my feet were too blistered to continue, taught to read a map, blanco my equipment and polish my buttons and cap badge with Brasso so that no residue remained in the detail, I was posted to the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private. Much to my satisfaction, my stepfather’s desire to have another officer in the family was thwarted. Had he even wished to mention it, he could not say his stepson was serving, for then the truth would out: I was a squaddie, a common Tommy.

Some days later, attached to a brigade, I was sent to a barracks near Winchester and embarked upon a course leading to my becoming a battlefield casualty orderly. The routine followed the same course day in and day out. I rose at six, prepared my bed and locker for inspection, then underwent half an hour’s physical exercises on the parade ground. These were conducted regardless of the weather: for several consecutive days, we ran on the spot and did fifty press-ups in two inches of snow. After a quick visit to the ablutions, we were fed a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon and bread, washed down with tea, and given fifteen minutes to disperse to our allotted tasks or lectures for the day. All my instruction centred upon first aid and the treatment of injuries sustained in active fighting.

Major Endicott, an elderly military surgeon recalled from retirement, was forthright in his approach. At our first lecture, he addressed us quite straightforwardly.

‘It is not your responsibility to save the lives of your comrades,’ he declared. ‘No indeed. It is your task to keep them alive until they might be treated in the casualty station. You are not doctors. You are medical orderlies. This does not diminish your status. Indeed no. If doctors were gods, then you would be angels, bringing the lost to them that they might find salvation.’

Every lecture or demonstration I attended was concerned with medical matters, and I was soon proficient in applying triangular bandages and tourniquets, stanching the flow of blood, dressing wounds, bathing eyes, giving morphine injections—we practised on apples with syringes full of diluted ink—and temporarily immobilising broken limbs with splints. For our own protection, we were taught how to lift a stretcher, bending the knees and pushing upwards rather than using our backs, and carry a heavy pack.

One demonstration concerned gunshot wounds. Under the command of a sergeant major, my squad was marched to a rifle range near a village called Chilcomb where, on the butts, there had been erected a gallows from which were suspended two dead pigs. Both were Tamworths, their bristly hair ginger and their ears still alert in death.

As soon as we were standing easy in a line facing the pigs from a distance of about twenty yards, the sergeant major picked up a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle, thumbing a cartridge into the breech and slamming the bolt forward and down in one quick motion. At a nod from Major Endicott, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and, taking the correct stance, released the safety catch and fired at the pig on the left. The bullet struck it in the shoulder, the heavy body knocked slightly back by the impact.

‘As you will see,’ the major stated, ‘the bullet has made a small hole on entry. You will also have noticed that it caused the pig to sway slightly. Now, the flesh of a pig is similar to that of a man, in density and so forth. Yes indeed. However, one of these creatures weighs twice as much as any one of you.’ He cast his eye along the line. ‘If this bullet caused a twenty-five-stone pig to sway, you can imagine what the impact would be like on even a strongly built man. A thigh shot will knock him off his legs. Indeed it will. A hit in the shoulder will spin him round. If you will now follow me…’

He led us down the rifle range and, on reaching the pig, stuck his index finger in the bullet wound.

‘Quite a neat little hole,’ he said. ‘Of course, if the creature were alive, it would be bleeding quite heavily, but not as badly’—he swung the pig round—‘as here.’

Where the bullet had left the pig’s body there was a raw hole the size of a saucer.

‘This, gentlemen, is the exit wound. It has been caused by the bullet striking a bone, deforming into a lump of red-hot copper and lead and continuing on through the body. This is where you should pay most attention.’ He let the pig swing back. ‘Marquand! How would you deal with this?’

‘I do not know, sir,’ I admitted.

‘The answer is quite simple,’ Major Endicott said. ‘You would not. This pig—this man—was shot at close range. This wound is considerable. You will not treat it at all. If necessary, you will give the injured man a dose of morphine, to ease his pain, but then you will move on. There is nothing you nor the surgeon at the casualty station, when and if he finally arrives there on a litter or stretcher, will be able to do for him. It is your job to move on to help those who have a chance of surviving their injury.’

The two pigs were shot several more times, from different distances, the major and a corporal taking us in groups to show us how to pack a wound, remove splinters of bone or, if the bullet was near the surface, remove it without causing too much haemorrhaging. I paid attention to every procedure, noting down salient points in my notebook for further attention, yet my mind was numbed. I had just been instructed, by a doctor, to sacrifice one man for another.

So much, I thought, for our regimental motto of ‘In Arduis Fidelius,’ or the Hippocratic Oath or the sanctity of human life. Here was I, who had refused to take another man’s life, being ordered to arbitrarily decide upon the life or death of a comrade.

I made no friends in my unit. Soon after my arrival, it became common knowledge that I was a conscientious objector—the word conchie was scratched on the door of my foot locker—and I was in effect sent to Coventry. Despite this, no one sought to harass or confront me. I was for all intents and purposes in a state of military purdah, a non-person in the ranks. Where my superiors were concerned, this had its advantages, for it was deemed unwise to give me cause for complaint in case I went running to the No-Conscription Fellowship and kicked up a fuss. Consequently, I was treated with a certain degree of laxity. Nevertheless, I determined to teach them that I was as good as the next man, all the time striving to ensure that my uniform was as unblemished as the other soldiers’ and that I was never out of step during parades.

It was getting late. The few hours’ leave I and the others of my unit had been granted was coming to an end and I had to be back at the camp on the outskirts of Moúdhros by 17.30 hours. With some reluctance, I decided to abandon my finds. I had nowhere to keep them safe. Had I put them in my pack, they would only have been further broken, and I considered they had been damaged enough by earthquake or weather: it would have been a travesty to have them pulverised by war.

As I prepared to leave, I pondered on those who had lived here, worshipped their gods and made love to their women, drunk their wine and pressed their olives into cloudy oil. And what, I thought, of the other visitors who had followed in my footsteps up the hill—farmers and merchants, pilgrims and priests, sailors and warriors … For a moment, I wondered if I should do as Byron had done at the Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion, carving my name into one of the rocks with the entrenching tool, but it seemed blasphemous to deface this place. Better it should be left unscarred for those whose spirits inhabited the wind.

It was at that moment, as if one of the lares was nudging me on the arm, that I recalled the story of Philoctetes. It was here, on Lemnos, that he had been marooned by his fellow seafarers who could no longer stand the stench of the suppurating, gangrenous wound upon his leg, caused by a snake bite. No one missed him until war broke out. Then, as the possessor of Herakles’ bow and arrows, he was visited by Odysseus and a doctor, the one to persuade him to fight, the other to cure his leg. Yet his leg was healed. The soil of Lemnos had cured him. Thereafter, Lemnian earth became a valuable salve, dug up annually on a propitious day by a priestess near the village of Kotsinos, which I could see from where I was standing beneath the olive. It was compressed into tablets, stamped with a relief of the head of Artemis and sold throughout the Mediterranean.

Leaning down, I lifted a stone and scooped up a handful of soil. It was as dry as talcum, thin drifts of it falling through my fingers like the sands in hour-glasses. Watching until half of it had leaked away, I spread my army-issue khaki handkerchief out on the rock beside the pottery fragments, putting the rest into it, tying the corners tightly and placing the little package in my pocket. I was, however, certain that the efficacy of Lemnian earth was hardly likely to be valid. Considering the quantity of goat dung on the hillside, the earth was more likely to give one tetanus than alleviate an asp strike. Yet I was, that day, on my way to battle and prepared to consider any possible miracle.

As I set off from the ruins, a depression in the slope down to the first terrace caught my eye. It was clearly not a natural feature, as there was, over the top of it, part of an archway of dressed stone, the remainder having fully collapsed, the cavity behind it fallen in. This, I assumed, might have been an entrance to a tomb. Having no time to investigate it, I marked it on my map and was about to turn away when something polished caught my eye. Bending down, I brushed the earth aside to uncover the shell of a tortoise. For a moment, I gave it no further thought: tortoises are commonplace through Asia Minor and this one might have died whilst in hibernation in the hollow, perhaps caught by the cave-in. I was about to turn away when I noticed that there were four holes neatly drilled in the carapace, in such a position as must have been made after the animal’s death. Using a sharp stone, I scratched around the shell and lifted it clear from the soil, shaking it to dislodge its contents and flipping it over. On the flat plastron of its underside were two more holes and, where the tail plate curled inwards to protect the tortoise from a rearguard attack, there were seven other holes, of which one was lined with a little ring of bone.

Unconsciously, I tapped on the flat surface of the shell with my knuckle. It resonated, much as the body of a violin might. Now I knew what I had found. It was the sound box for a lyre. Holding it, I wondered what the music it had produced had sounded like and heard, again, in my head the strange song of the girl as she washed her hair at the pool on Eilean Tosdach, which accompanied me all the way back to the outskirts of the encampment in which I was billeted.