Thirty-eight transports arrived in Alexandria, by degrees discharging company after company, battalion after battalion, for the next stage of their journey to Cairo. From the capital’s railway station to their destination on the fringes of the Western Desert, was a hot, uncomfortable march of several miles. When the first of those eighteen thousand men arrived, there was nothing but the looming Pyramids and a cluster of buildings around a country house hotel. The Mena House was requisitioned, and from that, Mena Camp took its name. Tents began to sprout like mushrooms, vast numbers of them, rapidly taking on all the aspects of a city. A city full of men.
Liam had glimpsed Egypt briefly during a passage of the Suez Canal the year before, but at close quarters it made an impact for which he was no more prepared than those who had never seen anything but Australia. Bleached by centuries of sun and scoured by sand, Egypt, he found, was possessed of a vivid beauty that both excited and repelled him. There was light and colour everywhere, and the most appalling poverty he had ever seen. Scented flowers in formal gardens competed with the stench of decay in the streets, while marble palaces on grand avenues fronted a maze of foetid alleys in the native quarters. Electric trams and gleaming motor cars moved alongside biblical forms of transport: donkeys brayed and camels spat, while their owners screamed unintelligible insults at passing, goggle-eyed soldiers.
The open desert possessed a different kind of beauty. For the first day or so after leaving Cairo, Liam found it a relief, although the nights spent on guard duty were unnerving. With moonlight bathing the Pyramids, the desert managed to exercise its own terrible fascination: the empty tombs of those long-dead pharaohs seemed alive with whispers and moving shadows, and the wraith-like kiss of the wind.
Once the sun came up, rising with speed through each magical dawn, there was little time for dreaming, little time for anything but work. With the completion of the camp, those eighteen thousand men were plunged into an excess of drilling and marching and trench-digging that was intended to bring them to a peak of physical fitness. In effect, after the relative inactivity of their sea-voyage from Australia, it brought them virtually to their knees.
As Liam wrote in one letter home, if the hours had been less punishing, if they’d had enough to eat and been allowed even one day off a week, the men could have adjusted. Even Sundays, he complained, were marked by early calls and church parades, and several hours’ drilling in the heat of the afternoon. After days spent marching through sand on no more than a bread-roll and a half-tin of sardines, heat-stroke and illness had most of them falling down like flies.
At first, few had energy left to go into town, but resentment breeds its own energy. After almost three weeks without a break, trouble was building like a thunder-head.
Physically exhausted, and as mentally adrift as his companions, Liam listened to the rumble of discontent and felt it echoed in himself. He too began to question the sense of things, not least the reasons for their stay in this outlandish place. With Christmas practically upon them, all he could hear were the calls of the muezzin from distant minarets, so alien compared to York and the clamour of church bells. Swept by a tide of homesickness, he found himself longing for sights and sounds not thought about in months.
The patriotism he had privately scoffed at was burning inside, fuelled by letters from his brother, lucky enough to be in France and really doing his bit for England. Stuck in Egypt, doing nothing but march and drill, drill and dig, Liam was possessed by an envy he would not have thought possible on the day he enlisted. Here and now seemed such a terrible waste of time, while that noble cause, repeated in every lecture, of freeing the world from German imperialist aggression, seemed hollow indeed. Pointless while breaking their backs digging useless trenches in the desert, pointless in the face of endless hours on parade, when every missive from England contained news of great battles going on in France and Belgium.
Every conversation echoed that common resentment. Even the least mutinous agreed that they had not joined up to listen to uplifting speeches by officers who had no more idea of war than a bunch of donkeys. They’d come to fight, not learn a set of petty rules and regulations laid down by a bunch of pen-pushers back home.
Bored and tired and viciously frustrated, with day-leave denied, the troops began to depart each night in ever-increasing numbers, with leave and without it, for the fleshpots of Cairo. On five shillings a day the Australians were the best-paid of all the allied armies, and Liam, particularly, had never been so well-off. Even with half his pay allocated in Edward’s name to a York bank, he had more money at his disposal than Robin, and was determined to make the most of it.
Perpetually hungry, Liam’s first thought was always of food, and in Cairo the choice was vast, from the glittering restaurant of Shepheard’s, to cheaper but less salubrious establishments in the narrow back streets. To begin with, a decent meal with a few beers was all he indulged in, but he was soon infected with the atmosphere of excitement pervading these illicit trips into town.
After weeks of confinement, the realization that it was possible to set fire to the rules and get away with it, went to every man’s head. Nightly forays became wilder, tinged by an atmosphere of hysteria as large groups gathered to drink and gamble and fornicate their way through the streets of Cairo. Out of sight of families and employers, with respectable communities left way behind in Australia, they were let loose on a land which had seen everything before, a city which was old in sin and well-used to catering to every conceivable taste.
Liam had been away from home a long time. In the early days, grief had kept temptation at bay, but the licentious atmosphere was beginning to blunt his finer feelings. At first he stuck to Ned on their legitimate nights out, but his friend frequently disappeared without explanation, tapping his nose as he left Liam and Arnie behind. The rest of the crowd assumed Ned the Corp was away looking for sex, too mean to share the delights of a good brothel with them. Liam had other suspicions, but either way those abrupt departures put more distance between him and Ned than rank ever could.
Feeling snubbed, he threw himself into the party. Exhausted by day, at night he seemed to float on a tide of exhilaration, buffeted back and forth against an exotic, lotus-strewn shore. And that shore seemed peopled by half the women of the world. Dark and fair, bold and shy, they inhabited the shadowy back streets in seedy rooms and opulent houses, guarded by ancient, painted Frenchwomen or homosexual Egyptian men.
There were shows featuring eastern belly-dancers and young girls with fans, and there were others more rampantly seductive. On every street corner were postcards for sale and the kind of books that could never have seen the light of day where Victorian morality had gained a foothold. It was a land where sex was for sale, a land where every persistent and importunate native had a ‘sister’ who would love to entertain each fine, wealthy, good-looking soldier before he went to the war. The fact that such offers rapidly reached saturation point made them easy to resist, but the atmosphere, loaded with sexual invitation as it was, impinged upon them all. As far as Liam was concerned, much of what he saw produced nothing more than embarrassment or disgust; but it was also illuminating, larding both dreams and fantasies with an eroticism that had been absent before.
On innumerable occasions he watched Arnie and those of like mind leave the bars to take their pick of the girls along the Haret el Wasser. Oddly enough, while he was prepared to drink and gamble with the best, and take his part in the wild dashes back to camp via any form of transport, hired or stolen, the one thing he could not bring himself to do was join them in this nightly ritual. Most of the time he wanted to, and could not understand the reticence which had survived the loss of almost every other inhibition. But regardless of either drunkenness or sobriety, and in spite of the good-natured baiting he endured from the bolder spirits, something stopped him.
To begin with it was thoughts of Georgina, constant comparisons which sprang unbidden whenever he thought some girl or woman might be vaguely attractive; then he would look again, and find that she was not. It became a habit. He told himself that if he could just find a girl who looked like her, then everything would be all right. But Georgina’s true, pale fairness was as rare amongst these rich, dark plums as snow upon the desert’s face, while the fair European nurses at Mena and in the Cairo hospitals were as unattainable as women in purdah. Certainly to humble private soldiers like himself. He did suspect, however, that a few pips at the shoulder might have made all the difference.
Of course, he had his suspicions about Ned, although his old friend still refused to be drawn. Liam saw Mary Maddox a few times, and she was cordial as ever, colouring only slightly when he mentioned their mutual friend. He bumped into her brother quite frequently, and although rank made it impossible to engage in more than a few minutes’ conversation, it was always heartening to see the pleasure in Lewis’s eyes, and to know that this desert training was as tough on the young mounted officers as it was for the infantry. Lewis had not lost his intensity, but it seemed to Liam had he had grown up a great deal. Catching the sight of him one night amongst a group of officers and nurses on the steps of Shepheard’s Hotel, Liam thought how relaxed and sophisticated he seemed. Envying him, imagining his dark and not unhandsome friend as a smooth and successful Lothario, Liam wished he could be so fancy-free. Wished too that he had never met Georgina Duncannon; or, having met her, that he could release himself from the obsession she had become.
She was both forbidden and unattainable, and nothing was ever going to change that. He told himself that he was being ridiculous, and several times swore he would tear up that photograph Robin had taken; but it was impossible. In the end, it seemed the only way to cure himself was to find a girl who looked nothing like Georgina Duncannon, and put into practice what he so frequently dreamed of doing.
It turned out to be more difficult than he had imagined. The first time, the sheer squalor of the room quelled his passion. Even as the woman lit the lamps Liam walked out, pursued by shouts and curses. It was a while before inclination and opportunity combined again.
The second time he went about it with more care, choosing a better-class brothel instead of a casual pick-up. Swallowing his initial nervousness, Liam explained to the Madame that he wanted someone young and clean, with fresh sheets on the bed. The woman was old and fat and grossly painted, but for a moment, as her eyes took in his tall, straight frame and the shock of fair hair falling across his forehead, she seemed about to suggest something else; then with a shrug she turned away. A girl was brought forward. Small and pretty in a childish, undeveloped fashion, she had beautiful eyes and a smooth olive skin. Briefly, Liam hesitated; this was not quite what he had envisaged. He preferred women to young girls, but any protest might be misunderstood. Recalling the look Madame had cast over him, it seemed more prudent to take what was offered.
The room was hardly fresh, and the noise from the street outside was distracting. The girl quickly slipped off her evening dress and lay back on a wide feather bed, legs spread and awaiting him. As Liam glanced at her, slowly removing his tunic, she reached across to a bowl of fruit and began to peel an orange.
That hardened lack of interest in what they were about to do was off-putting. He paused in the act of unfastening his shirt, aware that his edge of excitement was gone. Nothing about her stirred him; she might have been no more than a slab of meat displayed in a butcher’s window. He pictured all the men who had used her, and was no longer surprised by her attitude. Why should she care? He was just one more, and plenty would follow when he had gone. There was a moment’s regret for the money already spent, but it was impossible to claim what he had paid for. With a sigh, he donned his tunic and left.
Back at camp, however, with his pity for the girl dispersed, he called himself a fool and a coward, wondering what was wrong with him that he could not perform the act other men found so simple. In an agony of frustration, he flung himself down and gave way to self-pity. Ned, returning refreshed from his night out, indulged in a burst of knowing laughter.
‘There’s nothing wrong, you bloody idiot,’ he declared. ‘Nothing a decent woman couldn’t put right in no time flat. And for God’s sake don’t start comparing yourself to Arnie – we all know where he keeps his brains, and one day he’ll know about it! Besides,’ he added with a cryptic grin, ‘you can take it from me that most women prefer quality to quantity, and on that score, Arnie’s got no more idea than a second-rate ram!’
‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ Liam complained bitterly, ‘you’ve got no problems that I can see! It is Mary Maddox you’re meeting, isn’t it?’
Ned tapped the side of his nose. ‘Like I told you before – ask no questions, you’ll be told no lies.’
With a derisory gesture, Liam sat up and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, I just hope nobody finds out, that’s all. She’ll be packed off home, and you’ll be on fatigues for the rest of the bloody war!’
Ignoring that, Ned simply laughed. ‘Find yourself a nice little nurse,’ he blandly advised, ‘and keep clear of the bloody Wasser. Nothing but trouble there, mate.’
Except as a patient, Liam’s chances of meeting up with a nurse were remote; they both knew that. Mary Maddox broke every rule in the book for Ned, but only because theirs was a relationship which had begun before they left Australia. Perhaps not openly acknowledged, but Liam had been aware of it. He did wonder, however, what Lewis would say if he knew; and indeed, how Mr and Mrs Maddox would view such an alliance.
After that, he steered clear of the Haret el Wasser, but not for the reasons Ned listed. In truth, Liam’s fear of humiliation temporarily outweighed his desire for sexual experience.
Just after Christmas, when three hundred men were posted absent without leave, one battalion was forced to abandon a parade for the simple reason that there were not enough men present. The next day, a strong picket line was placed across the road from Mena to Cairo, and all passes rigorously checked. Hard on that, training was intensified, longer marches into the desert became the order of the day, and some units – including Liam’s – were exiled to garrisons along the Suez Canal.
There, although the food still consisted largely of bread and jam, sardines and bully beef, it was just adequate, and Sunday became at last a day of rest. Church Parade was still compulsory, but apart from that the men did have a free day at their disposal. They began to behave more like tourists and less like vandals, and the numbers going sick from exhaustion dropped dramatically.
But then a different problem began to make itself felt. Until one of their number went down with it, venereal disease had been something of a joke amongst Liam’s unit, but after Arnie reported sick they never saw him again. Despite feeling that he, more than most, had ‘asked for it,’ all were shocked by the treatment meted out. Under military guard he was taken to join the increasing numbers who had ‘wilfully’ contracted the disease, and as per the regulations, his paybook was stamped accordingly and he was forced to wear a white band on his arm, ‘like a leper,’ as Liam put it. Arnie had been a fool, that was agreed, but the disease could have been contracted just as easily by a man who had succumbed to temptation only once. Liam felt sick when he recalled his past intentions, and guilty that he had not tried harder to keep Arnie away from prostitutes. Conscious of having abandoned the boy, Ned felt worse. They went down to the barbed-wire compound the next Sunday afternoon, with fruit and cigarettes.
They were turned away. No one was allowed to speak to the patients, not even their guards. As Ned and Liam stood outside in the burning sun, all they had from Arnie was a half-hearted wave. He looked like a dog which had been tethered and penned and does not know why. Liam took a long, bitter pull at his cigarette then stubbed it viciously into the sand.
‘A fine way to make an example of us!’
‘Come on,’ Ned murmured, ‘there’s no point in standing here, staring. They’re like animals in a bloody zoo.’
It was a harsh lesson and one which sobered them all. Rumour had it, correctly so for once, that the VD cases were to be repatriated to Australia along with some of the worst criminal offenders. It seemed an ignominious end to what had begun so hopefully six months before, and the bulk of general opinion gave one reason: Egypt.
With the novelty worn away, even rebellion lost its attraction and the troops settled down to something approaching acceptance. Life, however, continued to provide its irritations. Course desert sand found its way into eyes and ears and noses; it was in their food and in their bedding, and the frequent dust-storms were misery for man and beast alike. After four months Liam began to wonder, along with everyone else, if they would ever leave the dirt and grit to get on with the job for which they had left Australia.
Those eight and ten mile marches out into the desert with machine guns and rifles and heavy packs seemed just as pointless and pitiless, but it began to be noticeable even to the least enthusiastic that they were pulling together under their officers and NCOs. For the first time they were beginning to feel like fully-trained fighting men, instead of an ill-directed rabble. Liam, who had always been something of a loner, was discovering the tactical advantages of team-work, the necessity of reliance upon others. He was also finding pride in himself. Training and a seemingly natural ability had made of him an excellent marksman, the best of his platoon, while four months of trench-digging had developed a muscular strength more than equal to his height. He was twenty years old, lean and fit, and he could not wait, as he wrote more than once to Robin, to see some real action.
By the middle of March, with the issue of new rifles, rumours began to fly. Some said they were about to leave for France, others that the Canal was to be defended against an attack by the Turks. But with the naval bombardment of the Dardanelles having failed, there was also talk of an infantry campaign in that area, the object being to capture Constantinople and thus knock the Turks out of the war. Success would release Britain’s Russian allies from the Black Sea, where they had been blockaded for months, and seal up Germany’s back door into the Mediterranean. With stalemate on the Western Front, it was a success the Allies badly needed.
Back at Mena Camp, keyed up by the knowledge that they were going somewhere, and soon, the atmosphere was taut with anticipation. Within days their destination was known: it was to be the Dardanelles after all, their jumping-off point an island in the Aegean, Lemnos.
The 8th Battalion was one of the first to receive marching orders. It was to be within thirty-six hours. After four long months of waiting, the news came both as a relief and a shock. Other battalions would follow by train to Alexandria, and thence aboard ships sailing singly across the Mediterranean. A convoy might have attracted too much attention.
In a wind which stirred the atmosphere over Mena into the consistency of soup, the 8th packed their tents on the morning of 4th April, and marched the ten miles into Cairo, none of them sorry to be seeing the last of it.
‘And if I never see the bloody Pyramids again,’ Ned remarked bleakly, glancing over his shoulder, ‘it’ll be too bloody soon.’
At the station, it was a different tale. On one of the platforms, surrounded by a small group of nurses, Mary Maddox was waiting to say farewell. Her kind, distressed face touched Liam’s heightened emotions, especially when she came to speak to Ned before they climbed aboard the long line of open trucks. Liam tried, tactfully, to move away, but was stayed by the light pressure of her hand and a half-whispered plea. Bemused for a moment, it suddenly dawned on him that Mary needed his presence as cover. He too belonged to the Maddox farm, sufficient reason for her saying farewell to both of them, but not to Ned alone.
Amidst pithy comments from all sides on the standard of accommodation for their hundred-mile journey to Alexandria, Mary exchanged a few words with Ned, before turning to Liam. To his astonishment she reached up and kissed his cheek.
‘God be with you,’ she whispered.
He did not catch what she said to Ned, but their lips met, and for a second he embraced her passionately; then, as though ashamed of that weakness, abruptly turned away.
Liam glanced over his shoulder; but the men milling about were his own platoon. A couple of winks and sly grins told Liam all he needed to know. With a sigh of relief he turned to tell Mary not to worry, he would look out for Ned; but she had slipped away into the crowd.
From the vantage point of the truck he could see her with the other nurses, all come to wish ‘their’ boys good luck. The 8th Battalion was the State of Victoria’s own, and for many of the nurses at Mena House the interest was personal. If the little group with Mary Maddox all looked stricken, so did Ned. Wanting to sympathize, Liam found it hard to say anything at all. A sudden longing for Georgina overwhelmed him, and he was envious of the scene he had just witnessed.
Watching the nurses sheltering from the dusty wind, he wondered whether Georgina would be wearing a red cape too. According to letters from home she was no longer in York, but nursing the wounded in some unnamed military hospital in London. That knowledge made him bitter about not going to France, dulled the edge of his excitement now. The likelihood of him seeing her again was nil. Their cheerless Brigadier had told them that in a month’s time, most of them would probably be dead.
He envied Ned the hours he had spent with Mary, even the enforced brevity of their parting. With sudden insight, he realized that outside the peculiar circumstances of Egypt and wartime, Ned might never have pursued Mary Maddox, and outside the bonds of marriage, such intimacy as they had no doubt shared would have been impossible. Was that a good thing, or was it as morally wrong as he had always been led to believe? It was an uncomfortable question, one which opened avenues he had no wish to explore. Amidst that noisy, jostling throng, Liam suddenly felt alone. He was glad of the locomotive’s shrill whistle, and the lurch which set them all scrambling and laughing. They were off, and a cheer went up immediately; hats were waved and thrown into the air, and the little band of nurses smiled bravely, handkerchiefs waving, red capes flapping like flags against the wind.
They left Alexandria four nights later, in winds which were strengthening to gale force. The old troopship rolled and pitched its way across the Mediterranean in some of the worst weather Liam had ever experienced. It was no consolation to the seasick men that the weather was just as bad for enemy submarines. Quartered in cargo holds, packed as close and tight as sardines in a can, the sick groaned and vomited for two days and nights, and prayed for death to claim them. The stench was enough to turn the most hardened stomach, and despite the coldness of the nights, Liam spent as much time as possible on deck, huddled in a greatcoat.
With the second night the weather subsided, and they arrived off the island of Lemnos to a glorious April morning. Liam thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. Against a curving sweep of grassy, flower-strewn hillsides, the sea was a calm, pale turquoise, reflecting the simple whitewashed village of Mudros at the head of the bay. A vast array of ships lay at anchor, dreadnaughts and destroyers which had taken part in the earlier attack; among them were the flagship Queen Elizabeth with Agamemnon and Lord Nelson. Between were black-hulled cargo boats, white hospital ships and little sailing vessels. Their design must have been old, Liam thought, when the ancient Greeks were young.
It was impossible to set up camp ashore, there being too little water to satisfy the thousands of men gathering for the coming assault on Gallipoli. Instead they lived aboard their transports in the same cramped and insanitary conditions which had been their lot from Alexandria, and waited for others to join them. For two weeks, training was continued, although much of it was novel enough to pass as fun. Every single day they practised climbing up and down rope ladders with full packs, over the ship’s side and into lifeboats. The best rowers were trained intensively, races across the bay being one of the highlights of the week, while trips to Royal Navy ships were organized for afternoons off.
Route marches across the island were part of the agenda. Thankfully, in the rest periods, they were also allowed to bathe. After the dust and dirt and stench of Egypt, Lemnos was like a holiday camp, with warm sun, fresh breezes and shy but hospitable islanders. Curiously dressed, like characters in some eastern fairy-tale, they seemed bemused but friendly, selling food they could spare at a fair price. None of them, Liam noted ironically in a letter to his brother, had sisters for rent.
In the warm, gently lapping sea, Liam swam and dived like a porpoise, revelling in its clean, salt taste, enjoying the fresh tingle of his skin in the sun. His body was hard and brown, his spirits elated once more by the thought of the coming action; keyed up by expectation, he had no fear of dying. His fears were reserved for the pain of serious wounds. If that should be his fate, Liam hoped he would behave with dignity and not be a whimpering burden.
On the evening they left the safety of Mudros Bay, he was suddenly beset by doubts. As were the majority of those aboard. Everywhere men were scribbling notes, and in quiet asides asking their particular friends to be sure to pass on certain possessions if they ‘bought one on the way in’.
‘Bet my sister’ll be checking out the will when she reads this,’ Ned joked, showing Liam the envelope with a Melbourne address. ‘Who’re you giving the benefit?’
‘My people in York,’ Liam said shortly, pen poised over a blank sheet of paper. Ned carried on talking, about his sister and her family, about the broad acres they had left behind in Australia. It was a topic which had drawn them closer, a shared ambition to own land one day, to farm a spread like Ewan Maddox. Now he gave vent to hopes for a future with Mary, if she would have him once the war was over.
‘Course, her father might not approve, me being just a hired hand and that. But she’s not a kid. Old enough to make up her own mind, Mary is. And I think she’d have me...’
He continued to muse aloud, while Liam wished he would be quiet.
Taking a sealed envelope from his breast pocket, Ned nudged his friend. ‘Just make sure Mary gets this, will you? You know, if anything should happen to me. I don’t want to post it,’ he added with a surprisingly bashful smile, ‘in case I come through – I’d look a prize dill, wouldn’t I, saying all that and not a scratch on me.’
With a smile, Liam nodded. He thought Ned should post anyway, but part of him understood the reluctance: after all, he had already written something to Georgina that he did not intend to send through official channels. That letter, addressed via Edward, lay between the pages of his notebook, and if he should survive, it would not be sent at all.
His pen still hovered. As Ned lapsed into reverie, Liam sighed, leaning his head wearily against his pack. Lights were dimmed to a minimum, and in the unaccustomed quietness the steady pulsing of the engines was like a heartbeat, the slight roll of the ship across calm water no more than the gentle rocking of a cradle. The faces all around him were heavy with apprehension, some still writing, many smoking as they lay propped against packs and equipment.
It took no great leap of the imagination to suspect that most, like himself, were thinking of homes and families so far away. It was months now since he had received that first letter from his mother and there had been others since, innocuous enough, as though she realized her mistake. But he had never replied. Now, with the unknown awaiting him, conscience was dictating its own terms. In truth, Liam knew that given his time over again, he would not – could not – have behaved in any markedly different way; but he did regret the pain he had caused. Ever since Robin’s letter, he had regretted that. And if he were to die with the dawn, her pain would be even greater; it would be too cruel to add silence to the burden, to let her feel that he had gone to his grave not forgiving her. He just wished that he could find true forgiveness in his heart, but even now it eluded him. There was still that hard lump of anguish whenever he thought of his mother, and to mention the reasons for his going would have brought forth a flood of recriminations. That would not do.
In the end, he wrote only a few lines, begging her forgiveness for the grief he had caused, and telling her that she was in his thoughts. He added that she was not to worry about him, as he was not afraid of dying; and anyway, he had some good friends, and they would stand or fall together.
Hurriedly, before he could add more, or change his mind completely, Liam folded the single page and thrust it into an envelope. Come what may, his mother would have something from him, and if it was only halfway to reconciliation, then it was better than nothing.
Just after one o’clock, having slept fitfully for a couple of hours, Liam went up on deck. Sailors were moving silently between the troops, handing out mugs of cocoa; he accepted one thankfully. Beneath a moon which shone a path across the glassy sea, he could make out the hulking shapes of other cargo boats; the group of warships and destroyers which had passed them at sunset would be well ahead by now, poised and ready for the landing. Those warships carried men of the 3rd Brigade, those who would be first ashore; Liam envied them. They would have the advantage of surprise, while the 1st and 2nd Brigades must face a roused and implacable enemy. As far as he understood, the 8th Battalion would be one of the last to land. It was a daunting thought.
Time passed with dragging slowness. By three o’clock they were passing the southern tip of Imbros Isle, with possibly a dozen miles to go to the Peninsula. They were to land where it was not much more than four miles wide, where the long, mountainous backbone was broken by gentle uplands. The aim was to push inland and cross the Peninsula to a high point commanding the Narrows. At the same time the British would be landing at Cape Helles on the southern-tip, and the French on the Asian shore, directly opposite. Hearing the objectives put as simply as that by their CO, Liam thought it sounded deceptively easy, but there had to be hidden snags, else why that dire warning before leaving Egypt?
The moon was setting behind a thick veil of mist. Orders came from the bridge to extinguish all lights, and Liam reluctantly nipped out a cigarette lit only moments before. It must have been his tenth since coming on deck. As he returned the stub to its packet, he noticed his hands were trembling. In the pit of his stomach, the hot breakfast eaten too recently was churning, threatening to disgorge itself. Then a murmur distracted him from that unpleasantness. There was a light, white and hazy, behind land away and to the right of them. Someone said it was a searchlight. The light moved jerkily to left and right, then disappeared. The men around him began fidget. Liam craved another cigarette; beneath his greatcoat, despite the night’s chill, he was sweating profusely. In the first, faint, greenish light of dawn, he could see the high, broken ridge of the land, make out the shapes of three other transports around them, moving into line. In a whisper, someone asked the time: it was almost half past four. The suspense and the silence were terrible. Liam found himself longing to get there, for something to happen, anything break the tension.
It came a few minutes later in the form of a bright yellow light way to the south. A moment later there was a peculiar sound of knocking, isolated small-arms fire which rapidly became continuous.
They’d landed! The first wave was in there and fighting!
Awareness rushed over and through them like a sigh. In the brightening dawn, faces were suddenly smiling, fingers clenched on rifles, all eagerness to join the fray.
The knocking grew louder, brilliant flashes began to appear from a point on the shore; a shower of rain made the sea boil on the starboard side. Surprised, Liam realized it was too local for rain: shrapnel falling. From one of the battleships close by, a thunderous explosion rent the air. He saw the gun’s recoil, the great curl smoke which followed, and wanted to cheer. Destroyers which had been close in to the beach began to come alongside the transport, ready to collect the next wave of men.
‘Must be our turn next,’ a man beside Liam muttered, ‘the jolly jacks are here with the rum.’
Shells were falling near the ship. The massive naval guns retorted, flash and boom, flash and boom; a whistling scream and great fountain of water rose beside the old Clan MacGillivray making her roll and sag like an old woman. Liam staggered, the sailor beside him almost lost his footing, but saved the rum, handing it out with twice his previous speed. Liam downed his tot in a second, coughing as the thick, treacly spirit hit his throat and burned its way into his chest. He felt better for it, had cause to be doubly glad when their destroyer moved in alongside.
In the first rays of the early morning sun, her decks were like a scene from hell, littered with maimed and wounded, running with blood. Liam was aghast at the numbers, could not believe so many in so short a time. Fear clutched at his guts. Waiting while the wounded were transferred was torture. He tried not to look, tried not to hear the cries so clear against the scream of the shells. The platoons took position, the routine of scrambling over the ship’s side and down the ladders going without mishap. Tension again as the destroyer sped towards the beach, men packed like toy soldiers on her decks; then down rope ladders and into the boats, more like barges, Liam thought, wondering how the rowers would handle such large, unwieldy craft.
They were about two hundred yards from the shore, with shrapnel bursting around them; an oarsman was hit and lost his oar, another fought to take his place, pulling out of time with the rest. ‘In, out — in, out,’ their officer yelled, for all the world like a coxswain in a boat race. Liam wanted to laugh.
The boat grounded on shingle. ‘Right, chaps, this is as far as we go – everybody out!’
Overboard into four feet of water, he gasped with the shock, holding his rifle up and clear, determined not to lose his footing with the heavy pack on his back. On a narrow strip of beach he saw huddled shapes like bundles of rags and wondered what they were; then bullets danced in the sand and more fell. Something sang past his ear, the sea was suddenly hissing around him; a man with two stripes turned at the water’s edge, urging his platoon on. Liam saw that it was Ned and struggled to join him as a shell burst on the rocks ahead. He had time to register the blinding flash before the shock wave knocked him flat. Deafened, half-drowned, aware of nothing more than a need to reach the shelter of those cliffs beyond the beach, he rolled, cursing the pack. A man behind caught his arm and dragged him clear.
Liam looked for Ned and could not see him. From the shelter of the cliffs he scanned the beach with mounting panic. Wallowing at the water’s edge was a body; soldiers from another boat tripped over it, revealing the stripes on the sleeve. It was Ned; Liam knew it was Ned. Shedding his pack he staggered to his feet, only to be grabbed by the man beside him. What was he thinking of, the stranger wanted to know; they had to get off the beach, leave casualties to the stretcher-bearers.
‘There aren’t any bloody stretcher-bearers. And he’s my friend, for Christ’s sake – I can’t just leave him to drown!’
He leapt forward, and to his credit, the other man followed. Between them they hauled Ned out of the red waves, getting in the way of the next boat-load coming ashore. Liam cursed them as he tried to cut Ned’s pack free. He was alive but only just, blood pumping from a wound in his neck. Amidst a hail of shrapnel they dragged him to shelter.
Conscious enough to recognize Liam, Ned smiled. Minutes later, with his blood seeping through a hastily-applied field-dressing, he died in Liam’s arms.
Wet through, with sea-water dripping from hair and clothing, Liam was not aware of the tears he shed. His companion’s urgent demand as to what they were supposed to do now, went unheeded for the moment. From the back of his numbed mind, Liam recalled instructions dinned into each of them on exercise.
‘Report to the nearest officer. We have to remember the dead man’s position and report.’
‘Sod that! We’ll be dead ourselves if we don’t get off this bloody beach. God knows what’s happened to my mob – they’ll be halfway to Constantinople by now. Come on!’ The stranger started to scramble upwards, then looked back. ‘What the hell are you doing now? Let’s get moving.’’
Liam was searching Ned’s pockets. ‘There was a letter he wanted me to post...’
‘In this lot? Are you crazy?’ He slithered down to Liam, grabbing his arm as he found the wet and crumpled letter, and dragged him upwards. ‘Get moving, you stupid bugger, before you get us both killed.’
Numb with shock, his mind operating on a different plane altogether, Liam did not resist again. He was only vaguely aware of scrambling upwards amongst a group of gasping, cursing men; hands and knees were gashed and scraped on sharp rocks, but he was not aware of it.
‘Where the hell are we?’ a voice demanded from the left. ‘This ain’t the place we was supposed to be. Flat, they said – they said the sodding landing place was flat!’
‘Tide rip,’ somebody else gasped, ‘took that first lot north, I reckon. Should be down there, where that bloody fort’s firing from.’
‘Stupid bastards,’ another voice commented. ‘You’d have thought the bloody navy could bloody navigate!’
For the first time, Liam looked down the way they had come. The narrow strip of beach below them was still in shadow, curving from a peaked headland on the left to a smaller one on the right. Beyond that it broadened considerably, reaching gently inland to where a distant wheatfield looked like a patch of pale green silk. A rocky headland overlooked that longer beach, and from the promontory came a series of flashes which indicated the source of those shells exploding with such deadly accuracy over the landing craft still coming ashore. Privately, Liam thought they would not have been any better off had they landed down there; the Turkish defences were obviously concentrated at that vulnerable point, any attacking force likely to be mown down immediately.
From the sea, at least two of the destroyers were pumping shells at the fortress in an attempt to silence those deadly guns; it was a heartening sight for the men on the cliffs, but did nothing to halt the equally deadly machine-gun fire coming sporadically from above.
Just below the summit they came across a group who had paused to gather breath. Some bore the red and white shoulder flashes of Liam’s battalion, but none were of his platoon. Where were they? With a flash of panic, he knew they could all be dead.
With an effort, he quelled the thought. Along these cliffs they could be anywhere.
An officer of the 9th, whose men were scattered in a ravine to the right, was trying to organize all the odd members of other battalions who had been separated in the chaotic advance. He kept saying it was important to reinforce the line, while Liam wondered how he could know where the line was. From here, it was impossible to see what was ahead; below, it was all too clear. Men were still landing, still being fired upon; the dead lay huddled among discarded packs on the shingle, while a few brave souls struggled to get the wounded back into the boats and off the beach. Seeing the terrible numbers, Liam forgave the man who had dragged him away from Ned. He had saved Liam’s life, while Ned was gone and nothing more could be done for him.
Except the decency of burial. That was not possible here and now, but Liam swore he would not rest until he had found his own company and an officer to whom he could report the details.
If that had been me, he thought, Ned would have done the same.
Looking to right and left, for the first time he saw they were not alone on the cliffs. Half-hidden by the thorny scrub, working their way up in groups of three of four, were scores of men. Every now and then one would fall. With a shock, Liam realized they were being picked off by snipers hidden amongst the dense, low-lying vegetation.
The officer was talking quietly, rallying the scattered force for concerted attack on the machine-gun post above them. As they fixed bayonets, Liam kept thinking of manoeuvres, the rushing and yelling before the carefully balanced thrust into the gut. When it came the reality was nothing like that.
It was far from easy to rush the crest through that terrain, over rocks that crumbled and rolled with every footfall, but somehow they achieved it. On the right flank, Liam stumbled into a hidden trench, almost on top of a Turkish soldier struggling to escape. For a second he hesitated. The man levelled his rifle and Liam went at him awkwardly; there was no room for the balanced thrust, the bayonet shuddered as it went in and the Turkish soldier fell forward, his scream ending in a froth of blood. Shocked, Liam jerked back, narrowly avoiding a bullet. A sergeant silenced that man, while others loaded rifles and shot at the retreating enemy.
The men were jubilant at their success, putting forward a dozen ideas as to what their next move should be. The officer thought they should man the gun and use it against the Turks; their own guns had yet to arrive, and would be the very devil to manhandle from the beach. But no one knew how to operate the one they had captured, so it had to be disabled. Liam drank from a Turkish water bottle and tried to avoid looking at the man he had just killed. In little more than an hour he had watched his best friend die, and killed a man at close quarters. He was shaking so badly he could hardly light a cigarette, and beneath the constant whine and crump of shells to the right, his ears were still ringing from that explosion on the beach.
With an effort he forced himself to concentrate on what the sergeant was saying. They were to make their way carefully across the ridge and down into the next gully, where some sort of rendezvous was being set up. From there they might find their own units.
It was vicious, unfriendly country, full of jagged rocks and hidden holes, perfect for snipers; a country ideally suited to defence, but hostile to attack. Unexpected scree slopes sent the unwary careering down into thorny, dried-up stream-beds, and in a couple of hundred yards Liam counted three exposed ridges and as many hidden gullies. Reaching the rendezvous in the deepest and broadest, which ran at an angle up from the beach, was a nightmare journey, unrelieved by what seemed even greater chaos when they arrived. Hideously wounded men were being ferried by stretcher-bearers down the rocky slope, while active companies struggled to climb in an attempt to reinforce a thin line spreading out along the ridges. Brigadiers were holding hurried meetings in rocky ravines, messengers dodging stray bullets, while the NCOs of a dozen different companies transmitted garbled orders to their men.
Liam and his friend from the beach searched for the red and white square of their battalion, finding several men in the same position as themselves but no NCOs. During that short delay on the beach and their subsequent scramble for the first available cover, it seemed as though the main body had advanced without them. Accosting a harassed adjutant, Liam asked where they were likely to be; in a vague gesture, the man indicated the hills to the right, and equally vaguely gave Liam permission to go in search of his missing company.
‘Might as well,’ one of the men said in answer to Liam’s question, grinding out a cigarette. ‘Were like a pack of bloody dills, standing here.’
The man who had dragged him off the beach was less keen. In the gully they were far from safe, but the odds against survival on the ridge were vast; he was for waiting on direct orders. Impatiently, Liam took a vote and found that they were evenly divided. Sadly, for he felt he owed the man something, Liam said goodbye, and squaring his shoulders, set off with his small group.
Implicitly they followed his lead up and across another series of crests and gullies, benefiting from a lull in the firing. Within the hour they spotted a large body of Australians ahead of them on the next ridge. Without field glasses it was impossible to tell whether they were men of the 8th, and a sudden increase in shelling over the beach made shouting useless. Scanning the intervening valley, Liam paused for several minutes. It seemed to him that the body ahead must have come this way, and the absence of gunfire below suggested that any lingering Turks had been flushed out. The greatest danger, as Liam was beginning to understand, would inevitably come from above. Nevertheless, it was a chance that must be taken.
Exhausted from their exertions, with little water and no food since well before first light, the others wanted to stop and rest. Liam, sweating just as freely in the hot sun, was anxious to press on before the group ahead moved out of sight. He pointed to the scree slope and told his companions to dig in their heels and slide down; from there it was but one more climb.
‘Yeah,’ the most aggressive of his companions muttered, ‘just one more bloody climb through that lot!’ His hands were torn and bleeding, his breeches, like Liam’s, already in tatters. ‘I say let’s rest: we can catch them later.’
The rest were wavering; hesitation, Liam felt, might well prove fatal for them all. The bayonet which had wrought such damage a short while before, was in its sheath. Threateningly, he pulled it free. Although not aware of it, he was a daunting figure with blood all over his breast and sleeve, face scratched and filthy, blue eyes glittering beneath the broad-brimmed hat jammed firmly over his brow.
‘If they’re advancing,’ he said tersely, ‘they need every man they can muster. I say we go now – and we stick together. Right?’
‘All right, mate, keep your hair on. You want to go now, fine, we’ll go now.’
‘We will indeed – you first!’ With that he shoved hard and sent the other man careering down the slope. The others went of their own free will, while Liam followed, bullets from some hidden point flying round his head. The others scrambled for shelter in the gully, but Liam had grown immune to the noise. It seemed to him there was little point in being afraid of bullets, it was more important to discover their source. From the cover of a scented myrtle bush he looked for the hidden sniper; a movement from above brought for two more flashes from across the gully, only a hundred yards or so from where they had passed. With great care he levelled his rifle and waited; not long and there was another flash and a report; an instant later he pressed the trigger. As the butt thudded back into his shoulder, he saw the barrel of a gun jerk upwards through the scrub. He fired again and a body fell like broken puppet. Gripped by elation, he wanted to jump up and cheer his own success; instead he kissed the barrel of his Lee Enfield and scurried to join the others.
For a moment they were speechless, then, clapping him on the shoulder, resumed their climb. There was a short whistle and one of them dropped like a stone. Shocked, Liam realized another sniper was at work, something he should have known from the shots that had rained around him as he came down the scree. This time, however, the sudden fire attracted attention from the company above them. Within minutes a regular battle was going on, while the four remaining men climbed like beings possessed.
They found men as shattered and exhausted as themselves, almost unrecognizable as the smartly-uniformed troops which had mustered on the boat-decks before dawn. Of the gathered companies, one was Liam’s, but of his platoon, only a handful remained. His arrival caused a stir, because the shell that killed Ned had taken out several others. They thought it had finished Liam, too. Their young officer, exhorting them all to pull together, had met his end beneath a burst of shrapnel fire in the first gully; others had been killed or wounded by snipers and machine-gun fire in the subsequent advance. Amongst so many, Ned’s death made little impression, and it struck Liam strangely that his own survival should be the cause of such rejoicing. He had not thought himself so popular.
There were, apparently, several companies of different battalions gathered on that long, southerly spur; separated by thick scrub, but under the general command of Colonel Bolton of the 8th. It seemed they were on the extreme right flank of the line. Although orders were confused and conflicting, it filtered down that the advance had been stopped by concerted enemy fire, and that they were to dig in and hold their position on the heights.
During a break in the trench-digging, Liam shared out water and biscuits with the remaining men of his platoon. It was hardly a feast, but the food and the respite from constant action put heart into them all. It was pleasant, suddenly, to be there; the sky was blue above and birds were singing, and in the noonday warmth they were surrounded by the mingling scents of myrtle and thyme. Before them and to the left, where the hilltop widened before dividing into another ridge, was a small wheatfield, scattered with scarlet poppies, the field Liam had seen in his original climb from the beach.
With familiar faces around him, for the first time that morning he felt safe. Relaxing with a cigarette after that small but satisfying meal, almost idly he watched a destroyer closing into the long beach below them. Peace was abruptly shattered as Bacchante fired shell after shell at the fort of Gaba Tepe on the promontory. The men cheered as shells burst into great gouts of flame, cheered louder still when one of Gaba Tepe’s massive guns was flung into the air and broken like matchwood.
The cheering came to an abrupt end when shelling from inland interrupted their high spirits with crumps and booms close by. A company of the 6th Battalion, ordered to dig in on the wheatfield, had been spotted by the Turks. The pale green corn made an easy target, and salvo after salvo descended on that small patch of ground, while those who watched were helpless to defend the men lying low before them.
Ducking into a trench while those shells thudded into the soil and scrub around them, Liam was close enough to the command dug-out to catch something of their officers’ frustration. As yet they had no artillery, but with those huge naval guns so close, if that Turkish battery could be located, it could be stopped. Runners were sent out to make contact with the forward lines to the north, but none returned. Meanwhile, as troops moved on or near the wheat-field, the enemy reopened fire. Other runners were sent back to headquarters in that gully off the beach, returning with the anxious news that the forward line was opening as it continued to advance across the main plateau. If it were to hold, the main body must be reinforced, therefore some of Colonel Bolton’s men must be relinquished in support.
Overhearing some of these exchanges, and shrewd enough to guess the rest, Liam began to wonder whether this was the right place to be. He watched a man detach himself from the party on the wheatfield and sprint up the hill towards them, attracting another salvo as he did so. Wincing, he ducked again, while the man fell in a gasping heap beside him. Even as Liam reached out to help him up, he was scrambling away to deliver his message.
Permission was granted for the men below to advance, anything better than lying prostrate beneath those shrieking salvoes. Orders were hurriedly given, and as hurriedly carried out. Together with several other sections of the 8th, Liam’s platoon was detailed to accompany that party in their attempts to reach the forward line. They had to cross the open field, while shells screeched and thudded beside them. Knowing the Turks had the range wrong did not ease that nerve-shattering dash. With no casualties, they reached the body of men in command of a young lieutenant, from there wriggling forward on their stomachs until they reached the scrub at the field’s far edge. From there it was a steep drop into the gully below.
At the far end of the next spur, they came across another remnant of the 8th, with only one surviving NCO. Hard pressed in that advance from the beach, they were exhausted. Someone asked whether they had eaten: in the heat of battle food had been forgotten. Again, as had happened with Liam, the combination of food and friendly faces put new life into them. After a short spell they set to work digging themselves in.
It was essential to keep on the alert, but apart from the shells still screaming overhead, it was a surprisingly quiet afternoon. Liam found himself counting the salvoes, pitying the men still holding the ridge behind them, for the Turks knew exactly where they were. Detailed for this party, he had been convinced he would not survive that dash across the field; but he had, and this was a better position. But it seemed a strange sort of battle to him, a series of mad dashes with no more than rifles and bayonets, against an enemy entrenched with artillery and machine-guns. As yet the Australians had neither.
At about five o’clock, large numbers of Turks were seen on the skyline, advancing from their positions on the highest ridge, towards the pine-covered spur immediately in front. Silhouetted against the sky, they were a perfect target, but as yet too far off to be reached by rifle fire. Suddenly shells screamed over from one of the warships, but although many men went down, more continued to come on. The joint company prepared themselves for action, and within the half hour, as the Turks crept through a line of pines across the little valley, they opened fire. Heavy and continuous, it was also unexpected, and the enemy fell back; elated, the Australians yelled and whooped for joy. The young lieutenant leapt to his feet, directing fire, and at once a Turkish bullet felled him. Wounded in the chest, for a while he could barely speak, but insisted his company held on until nightfall. Determined to hold back the Turkish advance, they did so, but it was a costly, exhausting action.
His hands blistered from loading and firing, Liam wondered how much longer they could hold on. But then, as the light began to fail, the attack ceased. He could hear isolated battles going on all around, but it was impossible to tell friend from foe. At last the noise faded away, and after dark the runner who had gone to report their situation, returned with orders to retire to the ridge overlooking the wheatfield.
Liam had never envied an officer, never wanted to be one of them. In his mind they were associated with Robert Duncannon, and as such to be held in some sort of contempt. But that day he conceived an admiration for this man, no more than his own age, who had kept his head under terrifying conditions. More than that, the young lieutenant seemed to know what to say and when to say it. Despite his wounds he had, in effect, held the men together.
After the unremitting ordeal of a day which had begun some twenty-hours before, they were each on the point of collapse. Some had simply fallen asleep in the shallow trench, rifles clutched beside them. With the return of the messenger, Liam went forward to their acting commander, a corporal he remembered from Cairo. He was a big, muscular Queenslander, and a badly broken nose testified to more than one vicious pounding from fists as big as his own. But he and Liam were of a similar height, bigger than most of the survivors; it seemed only sensible that they should carry the lieutenant between them.
They made a seat for him from their crossed hands, and with great difficulty descended into the valley. Although he was not particularly heavy, in their exhausted state his weight seemed like lead, and the sheer awkwardness of negotiating a steep slope in darkness, over loose rocks and spiny scrub, called for a strength and control which drained them both. By the time they reached the narrow valley, Liam was sweating and trembling in every limb, his arms burning in their sockets. Faced with the scree slope, terrified of dropping the lieutenant and making his injuries worse, Liam suggested carrying him across his back.
Between bouts of agony, the lieutenant objected thoroughly and colourfully, insisting they leave him. But rumour had it that the Turks mutilated their prisoners and that was a risk that Liam was not prepared to take.
The Queenslander ordered Liam to hold the lieutenant upright. With difficulty he did so, wincing at the groans of agony, easing him as gently as possible onto the other man’s shoulders. With Liam guiding and pulling, they managed perhaps twenty paces. Then Liam took over the burden, and with another man pushing and the corporal guiding, he managed half the slope before collapsing, his lungs on fire. Suddenly, he heard voices raised in argument above. The corporal heard them too, identifying himself before they could be mistaken for marauding Turks.
Help came quickly. Relieved of his burden, Liam found himself incapable of movement. To his shame, he had to be supported up the rest of the incline and across what appeared to be a ploughed field. With something of a shock he realized it was the wheatfield, dotted with poppies, which had looked so beautiful in the rising sun.