Reggie preferred the nights to the days here in Turkey. The invasion beachhead looked almost lovely by night, a cluster of bright electric lamps stretching below his post, instead of just a mass of dugouts on a hill. Down the brushy slopes on the night breeze wafted the scents of wild coriander and thyme—fragrant Mediterranean herbs trying their best to sweeten the foulness of war.
True, the night sky would intermittently be lit by gun-muzzle flashes and shell bursts, garish fireworks blazing in silence, until their thudding reports echoed back across the darkness of Anzac Cove. Australia–New Zealand Army Corps, that was, the awkward English initials given to an ancient, foreign strip of water. The shells would hit mainly ashore, but at night you could hardly see the effects, the rubble and dust and tumbling bodies as men dove or were blasted to earth.
“How goes it, Reg? Is Johnny Turk coming down tonight?”
“Not so far, Willie. Nothing moving out there yet.”
The nights were cool on the coast, so you didn’t feel the thirst. You could go a long time between sips, making your water ration last, and the Tommies could wrestle up fresh barrels along with ammo and biscuit and bully beef. You could move supplies up in the dark, or go to the tank to refill your canteen, without being so worried about snipers.
“I don’t know why we’re just sittin’ here,” Willie the Aussie newcomer said. “We should push inland to Constantinople.”
“Onward and upward, eh?”
Upward, indeed. You couldn’t see the impressive landscape at night, the tall, rugged coastal ridges. There was no joy in scenery anyway, knowing that every hill and ridgetop was controlled by the Mustafas, and that sooner or later you’d be ordered to go up and capture a crest, very likely getting yourself killed in the bargain.
“You Pommies have it easy,” the Aussie said. “Barely here a week, and already you’re dug in, set. No initiative.”
“So, you think it was easy digging these earthworks?”
“Well, you won’t need ’em much longer, now that enough Anzacs have landed. We’ll be movin’ you in off the beach just as soon as the order comes.”
“Could happen,” Reggie said. “Maybe tonight.”
It could indeed, he knew. The only trouble with the nights here in Turkey was that most of the infantry assaults, British and Turkish alike, came at night.
* * *
Word came up the line later that evening. Attack at midnight, relying on surprise, without any naval bombardment. Straight up the hill, and swarm the trenches before Johnny Turk could wake up.
“Trench warfare, they’re calling it,” Willie muttered to Reg, pulling out his hip flask and taking a swig for courage. “Here at Anzac, we don’t have trenches, just ledges.”
He waved his flask at the camp below, crowded with new men filing into place. “These goat trails, cut into the hillside with a few cubby-holes dug in…but don’t dig too deep, or it’s your grave, ain’ it? Crikey, I can’t wait to see the last of this place. Here, let’s have a drink to it!”
Reggie took a pull from the flask. Having dug some of the trench lines in far-off Belgium and fought in them too, he had to agree. When they pulled him out through France, and he gladly boarded the big four-stacker troopship in Calais harbor, he never would have believed it could be taking him anyplace worse than Flanders.
“And the no-man’s-land,” Willie was saying. “Here it’s bad, because you don’t charge across it. You climb it, up these jolly hillsides steeper than attic stairs.”
Reg handed the flask back, also delivering solemn counsel. “For every foot ahead, you’ve got to clamber a foot up, and dodge machine gun sprays, bombs and rocks rolling down, not to mention your own fallen mates.” He passed the flask back. “Stay low if you can.”
“Right enough,” Willie said, taking his final nip. “Now we just wait for orders from godly General Godley.”
* * *
The attack went off on time, except for some New Zealanders who were delayed getting into position, lucky blokes as it turned out. The whispered command passed down the line, and the troops heaved themselves up the embankment to clamber along the slope.
Rifle butts scraped on rock, boots crunched gravel, and it wasn’t long before the machine guns woke up. Over shouts from the Turkish trenches and scattered rifle fire, the German Spandaus hammered here too, stitching industrial death into the ragged Allied lines.
Reggie pushed on ahead as his mates fell on either side. In the darkness lit by staccato gun flashes, Willie was nowhere to be seen. Reg ran alone, stumbling and staggering upward, his lungs burning with effort after a dozen steps. The Turkish trench was close, so close; already Reg was past the deadly arc of the machine gun. Falling on one knee, he felt a bullet pluck at the shoulder of his coat, shock but no pain, and he fired his rifle at dim figures ahead.
Then he was up, lurching into someone in the dark. The heavy stink of Turkish tobacco told him it was an enemy. He shoved the man back, leveled his rifle waist-high, and jabbed savagely with the bayonet fixed to the end. The man groaned and fell at the edge of the trench, pulling the rifle barrel downward.
Another enemy shape rushed down out of the dark, the wide-mustached face lit by gun flashes. Reggie wrenched free his Enfield, but the second Turk fired first, striking him in the hip. As he toppled into a chasm of pain, the man lashed out with his rifle butt, knocking Reg back downslope. He rolled, tumbled, and sank into the blackness of night.
* * *
Weeks later, the days and nights were measured only by sun yellowing the olive drab canvas of the hospital tent. Hot summer gusts and occasional sea breezes blew through the field hospital on Lemnos, out in the Aegean. The staging island was safely removed from the battle, so far away that only an occasional thundering of naval bombardments could be heard. Life, likewise, was quiet and far off, the time’s passage clouded by pain, morphine, and laudanum to bring sleep.
The staff was mostly Aussies and Canadians. The male orderlies and female nurses were patient and understanding with the few Brits in their midst. One Saturday morning, three of the men came in and rolled Reg, over his protests, onto a stretcher.
“What is it, another surgery?” he mumbled vaguely, flinching from the fear of the pain even though it was dulled by narcotics.
“The surgery you need is in England,” the lead nurse told him with a smile. “We saved your leg, but if you want to use it, it will take better than we can provide. You’re being invalided out, now that transport has arrived.” She patted his cheek in gentle farewell as the stretcher-bearers carried him out into blazing daylight.
“What ship is it?” he asked, shading his eyes. “I heard a whistle out in the bay last night.” Cocking his head up and craning his neck, he could see a vast gray shape anchored in the harbor before them, the four tall stacks getting up steam. “Looks like the same one I came over on from England.”
“Why, it’s the Mauretania, mate,” one of the medics told him. “She’ll have you home in no time. A regular luxury liner, she is.”
“Aye,” the other stretcher bearer agreed. “And the fastest ship on the ocean, speedier now than her sister Lusitania ever was.”