Eight days after Leo’s arrival at Kragujevac, Luke Pavel stood on the deck of the ship that had brought him from Egypt and gazed across at the dun-coloured cliffs and snaking ravines of the Gallipoli peninsula.
‘Looks a pretty godforsaken sort of territory,’ the young officer beside him remarked.
‘Too right, sir!’ Luke responded. ‘There isn’t enough vegetation to feed a goat up there.’
‘You sound as if you know it.’
‘I do. But last time I was here I was up there, trying to push the Turks into the sea, instead of down here trying to get at them from the beaches.’
‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘Working as a stretcher bearer for the Bulgarians.’
‘What made you want to do that, for Christ’s sake?’
Luke was beginning to explain when his companion interrupted.
‘Hold up! Looks like the Aussies are on the move.’
Luke watched as the first troop transports headed for the shore. The beach appeared undefended but beyond it the cliffs rose steeply and as the first men landed they were cut down by merciless fire from above. Soon the beach and the shallow water along it were choked with bodies and the beach itself was a chaos of milling men as more and more transports discharged their cargoes. Groups of men ran for the narrow ravines that carved through the cliffs and Luke saw that once there they had some shelter from the fusillade and that they were beginning to work their way upwards towards a ridge that resembled, from his angle, the trunk of a sleeping elephant. The objective, he knew, was to gain the heights above it, but he knew, too, how broken and contorted the landscape was, and how easy it would be to lose all sense of direction. He licked dry lips and swallowed. The Turkish defence was more determined than they had been led to expect and there was no artillery support from their own side. He knew it would be his turn to join the melee soon.
He had to wait until late afternoon, and by then the landing craft had to push through a tangle of floating bodies to reach the beach. Small craft full of wounded surged around them, begging the sailors to take the casualties on board. As soon as his feet touched firm ground, Luke ran for the shelter of the cliffs. He had fixed his eyes on a ravine that seemed from the sea to lead inland and shouted to his companions to follow him. The gully was choked with undergrowth, all of it sharp with thorns designed, it seemed, to catch at clothes and boots, but here they were out of the line of fire and Luke scrambled upwards, the others following. At the top the ravine opened out onto a narrow ridge and Luke turned left, heading still for the higher ground. Some yards further on they came upon a company of Australians, sheltering behind rocks from sniper fire. Luke looked around him and realised that there were no officers in sight.
‘What’s going on, lads?’ he asked breathlessly.
‘Search me,’ one responded. ‘We were told to follow this ridge but there’s no shelter from here on and the ragheads are well dug in up at the top.’
Luke peered round the rocks and ducked back as a bullet whistled past his head. The Australian was right. To press on was to court certain death.
A runner stumbled up the track behind them. ‘Change of orders. This way is too exposed. You’re to rendezvous with Captain Fraser’s lot over there, on the parallel ridge.’
Between the two ridges was a deep valley. Somehow they scrambled down into it, but once there they lost sight of the ridge they were aiming for and found themselves wandering in a maze of gullies that ended in unscalable cliffs. By the time Luke and a small group of New Zealanders finally reached the ridge, the sun was low in the west and they had lost contact with the rest of the men. Once again, they began to climb towards the summit, keeping low and taking advantage of every scrap of cover from the Turkish riflemen on the hills above.
In a brief lull in the fighting Luke heard another sound: the clatter of loose stones from ahead of him.
‘Wait!’ He waved the men following to stop and they crouched in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. The noise came closer. He could hear boots striking rocks and men panting. Several people were heading in his direction, but were they friends or foes? Then someone slipped and he heard a very recognisable expletive.
‘Shit!’
Luke raised his head and called, ‘Don’t shoot! We’re the Wellingtons. Who are you?’
There was a stunned pause, then a voice came back, ‘Bloody Kiwis! What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’
There was a scuffle of boots and a small landslide of loose stones, and six men in Australian uniform scrambled into the shelter of the rocks.
‘What are you playing at?’ Luke retorted. ‘We’re supposed to be going up, not down.’
‘Good luck, mate!’ was the response. ‘There’s a sheer precipice a couple of hundred yards further on. The only way off this effing ridge is back down.’
It was almost dark now. Luke’s throat burned with thirst and dust and he was suddenly aware of how exhausted he was. He looked at his men and saw that they were in the same condition.
‘If we try to get back in the dark we’ll end up wandering round in circles or falling to our deaths. We’ll rest up here for the night and start back at first light.’
The Australians decided that this was good counsel, so they all settled down in the lea of the rocks. Luke tipped the last dregs of water from his canteen down his throat and opened his emergency rations. Several of the others had already eaten theirs, so they shared what was left amongst them. With darkness the sniping from above had stopped and they could hear occasional shouts from other areas of the broken terrain. In one or two places they could see lights from torches moving, but no one came close to them. Far below, they could make out fires lit along the beach and the riding lights of the ships that had brought them.
‘What happened to your officers?’ Luke asked the Aussies.
‘Captain was shot before we got across the beach,’ one said. ‘Gawd alone knows what happened to the others.’
‘What a bloody shambles!’ Luke grunted and there were mutters of agreement all round.
Now the sun was down it turned very cold. They huddled together for warmth and tried to sleep but none of them was sorry when the dawn came. Cautiously, Luke raised his head and peered round. Immediately a bullet whistled past his ear and ricocheted off the rock.
‘Bloody hell!’ he muttered. ‘Those Turks are sharper than we reckoned.’
It was agreed that there was no point in trying to continue up the ridge, so they began to scramble back the way they had come. In the valley they met up with some of their own men under their colonel, Malone.
‘We’ll try that ridge to the south,’ he said. ‘I sent up a scouting party and they say it leads to a kind of plateau.’
It was the beginning of three days of hell. In that parched and desolate landscape there was neither food nor water. Twice small provisioning parties reached them, but they never carried enough water to slake the raging thirst they all suffered. In the face of unremitting fire from above they fought their way up onto the plateau and made another attempt to gain the high ground. Men fell to left and right of Luke, a bullet grazed his cheek and another ripped through his trouser leg, but he was unharmed. For two more nights he crouched with the others, shivering, and waiting for the firing to start again at dawn. Finally, on the fourth day after they landed, a runner reached them. The attack had failed; they were to withdraw to the beachhead.