26

Michael crouched to light another cigarette and looked at his pocket watch by the glow of the match. 2130 hours. Time to go. He told Jake it was time for him to leave. Jake looked out over his “gaze.”

“Just like winging ducks from a gaze back home,” he had told Michael once, referring to sniping from the trenches. The fog seemed to be lifting a bit but was still hanging around. “Stay under the fog, Mike b’y. Don’t give ’em a good target. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do, Jake. I’ll try not to offer ’em centre mass.”

“I’ll be here when you finish yer run, Mike. We’ll have a smoke. Too bad I can’t leave a light in the window to show ya the way home.” Jake grinned at him.

“My compass will be my light home. See ya, Jake.”

“See ya, Mike. Keep yer head down.” Michael stepped away and was soon lost around a bend in the clouded trench.

Michael’s feet were cold and soaked to the bone. They had been for days. The trenches were filled with water, and the duckboards oozed water and filth. The duckboards stank worse than a ship’s bilge. Human excrement, bloody bandages, scraps of food, and the refuse of a thousand soldiers drew rats, which brazenly prowled both day and night. In exchange for the free food, they gave disease.

Men huddled against the night and keeping watch from the top of the trench greeted Michael as he passed them by. Everyone knew he was a runner, knew how dangerous his job was, and they all liked him. Michael stopped and warmed his hands by a brazier around which soldiers were gathered.

By the light of the coal oil, he used map and compass to determine his route. Northeast-by-east would bring him close enough. The compass only gave him direction and didn’t allow for obstacles or suggest deviations he must take on the way. Dodging men and gear in the trench would slow him down. He should have left earlier, but he had enjoyed his chat with Jake.

There were also lesser trenches that intersected the main tunnel he was following. Added to that was the great swing to the south the trench took before sweeping north again, creating what the Newfoundlanders were calling “the cove” in the line of defence. Across this cove was the quickest way to his destination. It was also the most dangerous.

Michael climbed a rickety ladder propped against the north side of the trench and slid like a tansy up over the lip. He crouched below the fog on the west side of the cove. Keeping low, he started off. The farther away he got from his own side of the line, the greater the danger of getting shot. In no man’s land at night, in fog, he could as well be shot by friendly fire as enemy fire. Michael thanked God for the fog.

Despite the cold, he was sweating long before he got across the cove. Stopping for a brief rest, he caught a whiff of his own body. God! he thought. What I wouldn’t give for a good all-over wash. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been fully clean. He was within a few yards of the redoubt when he stopped again.

Lying prone on the wet ground, he called out in a low voice, “Runner bearing a message.” There was a break in the noise from the trench ahead. Fog, wet and dense, swirled all around.

“You’ll have to do better’n that, mate.” The voice sounded Aussie.

Damn! Michael couldn’t believe he hadn’t given the password. It was one used by no one else but himself. “The Catholic!” he called back, his voice lower still.

“Right-o! Advance! An’ keep yer ’ead down, mate.” Everyone knew the runner named the Catholic.

Michael bent so low it hurt. He scurried forward, crab-like, slid in over the trench’s edge, and stood on the same duckboards in the same filth he had just left. He was directed toward a tent where the commanding officer of the company was housed and stood to attention before a British officer he figured was his own age. Below the dingy lantern light hazing from the tent’s ridge pole, the CO looked twice as old.

“Wot is it this time, eh? Want the bloody sandbags lugged down the bloody hill so’s they can pick the bloody lead out of ’em, do they? Evacuation! Bloody inglorious retreat, defeat is wot it is! Well, where is it?”

Michael pulled the paper from the inside pocket of his tunic with one hand, saluted smartly with other, and said loudly, “Here, sir!”

The irate officer snatched the paper from Michael’s hands. Bending to favour the light upon the page, he began to read. “Bloody ’ell! Read this, ’ave you?” He directed the question at Michael.

“No, sir!” Michael lied. He knew very well what the communiqué said.

“‘Do not evacuate. Repeat, do not evacuate until further orders.’” The officer was very upset. “Bloody sots, the lot of ’em! Not guts enough to put the bloody word ‘retreat’ upon the bloody page.”

Michael, still at attention, was waiting.

“Well?” snapped the officer.

“Reply, sir?” Michael was half afraid to ask it.

“Reply?” The CO peered at Michael’s armband, which was smeared with mud. “Bah! Lance corporal! Runner! Bloody page boy! Traipsin’ all over bloody Gallipoli with bloody notes from bloody sots! Reply? ’Tis rhetorical, sir. Tell ’em this. Tell ’em I am a British officer of the line, sir! And British officers never evacuate without orders. Tell him that, sir! There’s my answer, sir. Dismissed!”

Michael gladly vacated the officer’s presence. Feeling as though he had just been attacked, he made his way back to the trench. A sentry bade him good night as calmly as if he were leaving a kitchen party back home and cautioned him to keep his head down. The sentry called him Mike. No one called him the Catholic to his face.

Michael checked his compass by the sentry’s brazier. Southeast and a point or so farther east would guide him home. Jake would be watching for him. He was sure about that. It gave him confidence to know someone was waiting. A lamp waiting in the window.

Michael slithered back over the roof of the trench. Wondering why he had been sent here, he crouched so low it hurt all over again and left to cross the cove. At intervals, almost as if it were timed, rifle shots blasted over his head, seeking unseen targets through the fog. Michael lay prone until it ceased. Blind shooting, the soldiers called it. The shooting was more frequent from the British side.

It was rumoured the Germans, allied with the Turks, were stingy with the bullets they doled out, restricting the Turks to just ten rounds per day. Michael scrambled over the clinging mud of no man’s land and wished the entire supply of bullets had been depleted. The fog was lifting. At times clear patches, yards wide, were opening up.

Michael was still partway across the cove when he came in contact with a dead soldier. The corpse, lying on its back, had been stripped of clothing and boots, and the young man’s eyes were wide open. After getting over the initial shock of seeing a dead man close up—it didn’t take long; Michael had seen dead soldiers before—he noticed the soldier had died with his eyes wide open. There was something irreverent about a man dying with his eyes open, he thought. Besides, vultures, the winged ones, always went for the eyes. The ones without wings had already taken their spoils.

Reaching up, he attempted to close the soldier’s eyes. Rigor mortis had long since claimed him. The eyelids were fixed open.

It was Nate Osmond!

Michael stumbled back. He had heard Nate enlisted, but during all the time over here, they had not met. To see him like this, dead on a field strewn with death, upset him badly. He forced himself to peer at the face again. He had to be sure. It was Nate, all right. He would never forget that face.

“I forgive you, Nate Osmond,” he whispered, and meant it. Life was too short to hold grudges, the old priest had advised him.
With handfuls of mud, Michael smeared Nate’s eyes close. It just wasn’t right for a dead man to lie there with his eyes staring into an abyss. He would do his best to have the body recovered. There was nothing more to be done.

Cannon fire erupted. Michael saw a smear of fire resembling a distant lightning storm threatening through a scudding dark cloud. The shells burst, sundering the air around him, but reaffirmed his direction. It came from the British ships in Suvla Bay, to the southwest. The way home. The shells had been fired from a ship anchored in Suvla Bay. The British were defending their evacuation. Michael crawled away, realizing that if they did come for him, no one could tell if Nate had been friend or foe. The vultures had stripped him of his identity.

Michael didn’t hear the sound from the rifle that speared the bullet into his back. It happened so quick he couldn’t tell if it came from a Brit or a Turk. No matter, now. He had ventured above the fog. The b’ys always said that if you heard the bullet with your name on it, it was already too late.

Jake was right. They always aimed for centre mass. Stupid of me, he thought. I always considered centre mass was in your chest, not your back. He felt no pain, but sure enough, Michael was dying. His head was suddenly filled with death. Not his own, impending, but of Ruth, his heart, who had died trying to give birth to their daughter, Leah.

So vivid were the images of Ruth’s death and the days that followed, he cried out. Not from the pain of the bullet that would soon silence him forever, but from the temporal pain of a lost love. “My heart! My sweet lost heart!”

Rifle fire followed his anguished cry, and bullets raked the ground around him. The sniper, probably the one who had shot him, was listening. Oblivious now to current troubles, and about to walk the halls of the dead, Michael’s fading mind relived the aftermath of Ruth’s passing.