23

Jake had gathered with others in one of the shallower trenches down the ridge from the front lines, trying to get warm by a fire fuelled by the storm debris. Standing over the Catholic, who was seated on the ground with a wrinkled map across his knees, pocket compass in hand calculating direction to somewhere, Jake looked over his shoulder and asked, “What’s the name of the tickles?”

“Tickles?”

“Yes. That one and the other one. There.” He pointed to a narrow stretch of water on the poorly drawn map.

“Ha ha! You’ve a good eye for tickles, Jake. This tickle, as you so rightly put it, has seen as much blood flowing as water. Being called the Hellespont, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles, being the arsenal of war from halberds to steel missiles, it has separated armies, lovers, kings, invaders and continents, Christians and infidels, since bards recorded battles on scrolls. Xerxes, King of Persia, and his hordes of fighters were stopped by this tickle when they were hell-bent to invade Thrace. Tied hundreds of boats together to ferry horses and men across, they did. When his attempted crossing failed miserably, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of his men and horses by drowning, Xerxes ordered his soldiers to whip the waters furiously to punish it—and, I dare say, to possibly placate his routed ego. Hell’s Gate he called it. Now we are here trying to cross the same waters with a similar result, eh?”

“Fighting over a tickle, are we?”

“By God, Jake, you’re a man of simple wisdom!”

“I’ll never be a man of wisdom like you are.”

“There is wisdom in all men, Jake. You just have to find it. I have found most of my knowledge in books. Near forty miles long and less than a mile wide in places, the Dardanelles are, or so I’ve read. Still a narrow lead of water separating land. Still a tickle. I’d purely love to sail its length, though, up through the Dardanelles—the first tickle—where Leander swam at night to make love to his beloved Hero, and cross the Sea of Marmara and up the Bosporus—the second tickle—into the Black Sea. Just for the feel of it. To sail right under the skirt of Constantinople spanning the Bosporus, with her feet firmly planted in Europe and Asia. Just to experience one time that wealth of history and land I have long studied and hoped to see.”

“We’ll be a part of its history now, I ’lows. The tickle, I mean.”

The Catholic was lost in thought for a moment. “Never thought of it that way. Doubt if our names will be in the pages of history, though. I doubt anyone has ever called the Dardanelles a tickle before you. But you are right, we are fighting over a goddamn tickle!”

“Why?”

“Why? No one has the answer to that. Not really. I dare say the reason why nations do battle is as complex or as simple as why men fight among themselves in hamlets. In this war, Russia, largest land mass on earth, but without a year-round ice-free seaport, is our ally. The Dardanelles is the only waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Middle Sea and, from there, the rest of the world’s oceans. Allied control over the Dardanelles would give Russia, through Odessa and Sevastopol on the north side of the Black Sea, her ice-free ports.”

“And something as simple as a tickle, big or no, caused all of this.” Jake looked all around him. The siege of war was everywhere.

“There are other reasons, of course. Most of which I can’t comprehend, Jake b’y. Land and its bounties. Wars have been fought over politics and religion. Even women. This land is especially steeped in wars fought over different religions. Holy Wars, they call ’em.”

“Only one religion on my island—Protestant. You’re the first Catholic I ever met. I don’t see any difference between us, no reason to fight you over it.”

“Ah! It isn’t the flock who determines the fight, Jake, but the shepherd. The Muslims we are up against over here have all pledged this idiom: ‘Those who sacrifice their lives to give truth will have honour in this world and their latter end is Paradise.’ Hard to fight a people with such convictions.”

“We were told we must fight to keep them from our shores, from disrupting our freedom, our way of life,” Jake said.

“And now here we are on their shores, threatening a way of life different from ours. The people of this land were living in castles of stone and fought with iron and bronze while our native peoples slept in huts of bark and hunted with stone and wood. The battle being fought here is as old as the land itself and will never end. I guess it still comes down to that body of water separating us.”

“Seems to me we all have our tickles to cross.”

The Catholic looked up in surprise at hearing Jake talk so. “Indeed we do, Jake. And some of us will never make it across. There’s the rub.”

————

The month of Christmas came, and everyone knew there would be retreat. The lives of so many men had been lost for nothing: the hills of Gallipoli were still held by the Turks. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) had suffered the worst of it. Those wonderful, fun-loving men who got along with the Newfoundlanders as fellow colonials, who had been put ashore at Suvla months before to soften up the Turks, had been slaughtered by the thousands. The waters of the Dardanelles were littered with sunken ships that had not made it past the Turkish batteries. Modern steel ships had settled on the channel’s floor, disturbing the wooden bones of ancient vessels which had also failed to cross. Some of the wrecks would have to be bombed again to allow safe shipping.

The weather moderated, and withdrawal was planned while the fighting continued. Men were still dying, fighting down the ridge as hard as they had fought up. Retreat took as long as invasion. Jake looked out over no man’s land again in a different sector. He saw two dead bodies, one curled in the fetal position, the other half-buried with soil from the shell which had claimed them both. A late evening mist presaging another cold night came stealing over the ground like the icy fog that crept low over their tickle water back home on a late winter’s evening. He thought he caught movement behind a low juniper bush, but it was only the night mist changing the shadows. Jake hated juniper trees.

His thoughts were of her. What should have been a wonderful Christmas with her was now going to be a sad Christmas apart. They hadn’t talked much about Christmas, but he knew she loved pine trees. He’d get her a soft, sweet-smelling pine Christmas tree from the forests in the bay when he returned home. Even if it was long after Christmas had gone. He’d bring it back for her and tie it to the corner of the twine loft. Not like the scrub tuckamore juniper his father had cut on the island, dragging it behind him over the snow, carelessly breaking the branches as he went. His mother had hung it in the kitchen away from the stove. Jake could see right through its thin branches.

The shadow behind the juniper tree between one of the communication trenches caught his eye again. The night was stark calm. Noise from the careless carried far. The crouching shadow was the only thing moving out there—one of the regiment’s runners bearing a message, waiting for the caul to hide his dash toward the headquarters dugout. Jake sensed someone other than himself was watching. It couldn’t be directly behind the bush where the runner was hiding. If a Turkish sniper was watching, it had to be on the fringe of the bush, either the right or left side, but which one? Jake wanted to yell at the runner and tell him to stay down, but that would have betrayed his hiding place. Juniper branches would not stop a spray of bullets.

The cold deepened. The night grew darker, more still. The mist lowered and seeped along the ground like the gas mist they had been warned to look for. They had been issued masks to breathe through if they encountered chemical warfare. Jake sniffed the air. It was cold, damp, and smelled sweet. Not gas, just night mist. The runner would take off from his hiding place any moment now, thinking the mist would cover him, not considering that the enemy was on higher ground, not knowing that the mist would betray him if he rose above it.

Jake heard it then, to the right of the juniper, the same side as the runner. Faint, but sure to the canny ear. A rifle cocking. He instantly adopted the standing firing position, his favourite. Left arm merely supporting the rifle, never gripping; the action, oiled daily, fully cocked, soundless and ready, right hand squeezing. Both eyes wide open, focused on the spot where he had heard the sound. Listening and watching for that one careless movement. There was always a movement. Patience. Patience was the answer.

Without turning his head, he heard the shuffle as the runner burst from his cover. If he was right, the shot would come now. And then he saw it! The movement of betrayal. A dirty piece of cloth that looked like a part of the trench moved slightly. At the same time came a tongue of flame from a rifle. Jake squeezed his hand, and his own rifle reported. Behind the cloth opening, a scream of pain was cut off before it really began. The Crackie had not missed.

But neither had the Turkish sniper. Jake had seen the movement too late. He heard a cry of misery from the runner. Jake would know that voice among thousands.