18

The Catholic

Michael stood at ease in front of the officer’s desk in the dugout. He held his rifle by its barrel in his right hand, with the tip of the rifle’s butt resting on the floor in line with his small toe. The officers behind the desk were discussing troop movements, enemy bombardment, and gun placements. Michael recognized most of the areas the officers mentioned. He knew the trenches well.

For weeks, by day and by night, he had aided in the replacement of bombed-out shelters by supplying ammo cans, spare rifles, and rations to soldiers fortified in front trenches, and he helped carry hundreds of wounded men to aid stations well behind the lines of battle. The officers were talking about the lines of battle now. One of the officers, the youngest one, beckoned him closer.

“I understand you are quite good at reading map and compass.”

“I can read ’em both, sir.”

The officer handed Michael a paper with two coordinates written on it. “Find them on the map using the compass, Corporal.” He pointed to a map on the desk as the two other officers looked on.

Michael pulled a land compass out of his tunic pocket. Its lanyard was strung over his neck. He placed his rifle at the edge of the desk a full arm’s length from him and leaned forward. Even in the dugout, Michael knew the general direction of north without his compass. Placing it on the map, he turned it to align with the map.

“In the house and up the stairs,” he said to himself, looking at the figures on the paper the officer had given him. He followed a lateral map line from left to right, west to east—“in the house”—with his finger. He glanced at the figures again. Then his finger followed a vertical map line north, “up the stairs.” Finding them easily, Michael quoted the coordinates. He was pretty sure he knew the sector they indicated. But looking at the compass and the map, he said, “The bearings are not right, sir.”

“Excuse me, Corporal? My figures? Not right?”

“Not your figures, sir. ’Tis the rifles, sir. Drawing the compass, they are, and throwing the bearings off, sir.”

The three officers looked at each other. Their rifles had been placed on the desk near the map. “Well done, Corporal!” the youngest one said. Michael had passed the test. “Here’s your assignment.” He handed Michael a note. “You remember the coordinates?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call them.” Michael repeated the coordinates he had found on the map. “Good. Take the note I gave you to the captain at that—shall we say—address. I suggest you wait for full dark.”

“Yes, sir.” And with that, he was dismissed.

Day was still abroad, and it was cold. November had snuck up on him almost without his knowing it. Almost the Christmas month, he was thinking. The rumour in the trenches was retreat would soon be ordered. God knew they weren’t making any headway against the Turks. They fought like dogs. He wondered if the officer who had given him the note knew anything about a retreat. Word was they were calling it an orderly evacuation. The officer was young and seemed a nice enough fellow. But the British officers looked down their noses at the non-coms, especially the “ruddy colonials,” and he didn’t dare ask him.

Michael wondered if the rumour was true. Would they be out of Suvla by Christmas? It didn’t seem possible to move so much equipment, men, and animals in a month or so. He had also heard that when armies retreated they left all manner of gear behind, so it was unlikely they would take all of the mules and horses. Michael had never seen a mule before he was shipped “over there.”

Funny about that term, Michael was thinking. When he sailed from St. John’s with the Newfoundland Regiment to connect with a convoy for the British Isles, they were simply going to Halifax. From Halifax to England they sailed “over there.” From training camps in England they were shipped still farther over there, to Alexandria in Egypt. More training in the cruel desert heat. Now they were in yet another over there. Michael had talked about it to his young friend Jake. They figured over there” was wherever a battle was being fought.

Michael was weary of battle. He had come with the first of the Newfoundlanders to the Gallipolian peninsula. When he arrived he was excited. He couldn’t believe he was actually there in the Aegean Sea on the east coast of Greece. When they were freighted ashore in Suvla Bay, everything was chaos. Men yelled. Mules and horses were gut-shot by Turkish gunfire and screamed. The Turks always gut-shot the animals. It was easy to find centre mass on them. Some of them were shot in the head by Allied soldiers who pitied them, to ease their prolonged agony. Only some, though.

That first night, when they had dug into the hillside, when the stars were visible between the shell bursts, Michael thought, I am actually sitting on the ground of ancient Thrace. His old priest and mentor back home had more than the Bible in his possession. He owned volumes of books about ancient lands and great battles fought around the shores of earth’s middle sea. Michael was his only student. He studied Alexander and Hannibal, Suleiman the Magnificent, mighty Xerxes, king of Persia, and the Roman Empire. He loved the books he read about the Crusades and their protectors, the Knights Templar. They had walked, ridden, and fought across this very land. All had crossed the Dardanelles Strait, what Michael’s friend Jake called a tickle, which divided Turkey from Europe and Asia.

Jake was right. Britain and her allies were fighting for possession of that tickle to allow them safe entry into the Black Sea and Russia. Michael wanted to see that tickle of history more than anything. He was a devout Christian—but not religious—who knew much of the history of the Christ, His followers, and the subsequent crusades that fought for his teachings long after His death. They were still fighting over it. Now with the rumour of evacuation, Michael feared he would never get to see the Dardanelles.

The Catholic would never forget the first man he had seen killed. It was a young Newfoundland soldier running toward a trench Michael had helped dig. Turkish bullets from trenches fifty yards away strafed the ground all around him. The soldier went down hard. Blood poured between fingers clutched to his chest. He had been hit centre mass. He screamed like a mule. Michael was scrambling to go over the lip of the trench to get to him when he was pulled back by a sergeant. “There is nothing we can do for him, soldier.” Michael could see the sergeant’s frustration in his eyes. It was probably the first man he had seen killed, too.

“But without help he will die!”

“Out there you will die with him.”

The young soldier’s screams stopped. He was dead.

“He died alone,” said Michael.

The rifles kept firing, and the shelling from both sides whined and exploded. More screams erupted from farther away between the lines. Michael couldn’t tell if the hurt was coming from man or beast. In the cruel heat of September days and in its sultry nights, men died. The rainy season of October began. The trenches were soaked with water. Mud oozed from every step they took, and men died. Fog as dense as Newfoundland’s shrouded the fields, and more men died. Dead bodies remained where they fell. Some, still alive, yet mortally wounded, bled out and died without rescue. Michael witnessed a screaming soldier, his stomach ripped wide open by shrapnel, suddenly keel over from a bullet through his head. A mercy bullet.

The bodies on what they were calling no man’s land were growing in number. Many of them were never recovered. They rotted where they fell, half buried in foreign soil. No man’s land, the correspondents were calling it, claimed by no man. Their statement was wrong. It was a man’s land. You just had to be dead to claim it.

The flies went to the soldiers, feasting on the dead and returning to spread their disease among the living. Death from disease vied with death by bullets. And on dark nights, vultures, from both sides, crawled out of their holes with barbed-wire pliers in hand and plucked gold and picked silver trinkets from the bodies. Michael bore mute witness to it all. The rule of four days in the trench and eight days out had become reversed. The battle raged on with no sign of victory in sight.

The season of rain in Gallipoli climaxed with a deluge of biblical proportions. Every smooth-flowing river, every bubbling stream, exploded into miniature tsunamis from hell. Trenches dug by friend and foe were flooded. Men drowned in the sudden flood. Soldiers already soaked became waterlogged. Boots not meant for water provided no protection for tired feet. Rampant trench foot took men out of the fight. Their ranks were replaced with more soldiers wearing the same leaky boots.

Mercifully, the rain stopped. The skies cleared. Star- and moonshine lit up a land drowned by water. Then the temperature dropped far below freezing. A bitter wind colder than a Newfoundland nor’easter tore over the fields of battle, lashing and biting at unprepared skin. The water froze solid. Every drop of moisture to be found froze solid. Boots that couldn’t repel water now carried the deadly bite of frost. Toes and feet were burnt black. Gangrene searched the trenches, found dying tissue, and quickened its demise. Toes and feet were amputated. Gangrene was victorious over bullet and shell.

The senseless fighting went on and on. Evacuation was ordered on December 18, but in the ranks the fighting went unabated. The word was they would have to fight the Turks until the last soldier was hauled over the gunnels of the last lighter.