Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (5 page)

Wilkins was beside himself with anger. “What do
you mean, Lieutenant? I know what the day’s orders are! The whole Division has
been coming up this ridge behind us!”

“Where are they, then? There is only your
company, Captain. Major Sills and the rest of our Division have apparently
stayed safely down at the bay. We saw this sort of thing in Belgium again and
again,” Gresham said with a scoffing laugh.

“Major Sills could not have changed the entire
Division’s plans,” Wilkins insisted.

“Clever men come up with those battle plans,
Captain, men who look at maps and intelligence reports and make calculations
with five– and six-digit numbers, and they tell the Generals what to do. But
the Generals, they start to lose men on the battlefield and casualties look bad
in the newspaper. It makes them look bad and makes Kitchener look bad, and they
know the ones who embarrass Kitchener will be replaced. So when men start to
die, the Generals play it safe. They halt the advance so the troops can dig in,
bring up supplies, and ‘prepare for the next big push.’ It all sounds very
reasonable and reduces casualties, but it doesn’t win wars, because while we’re
digging in, so is the enemy, and that’s why the stalemate continues.”

Wilkins was furious with frustration and
struggled to contain himself. “Regardless, Lieutenant, there are now Turkish
troops between us and the bay,” he said. “So do we stay here and await the
Division? What would you suggest?”

“Those Turkish units back along the ridge will
probably come along to clear this area as soon as they’ve secured the trenches,
and there are many more Turks to the east who will head up here once they’ve
reformed. We’re back up against the sea here, so our only choice is to head
south-east into those hills and try to get under cover as soon as we can. With
any luck, we’ll find a way back through the lines tonight, before things get
locked up any tighter.”

“We’re behind the lines, then, eh?” asked a
wounded Private. “I only ask as I am having a bit of trouble with my arm here.”
He was holding his left arm tightly up against his chest, but blood was
dripping slowly from his elbow onto the dusty soil.

Gresham turned to the Private: “You know how to
tie that up so it stops bleeding?”

“Can’t do it one-handed,” the Private growled.

“Let me help you with that, Dawkins,” Wilkins offered
and began preparing a tourniquet. “What about him,” nodding at another man
lying motionless on the ground with a bloody wound in his gut.

Dawkins sighed: “Sorry to say, Corporal Jenks
is dead.”

“I'm not dead, you stupid cod!” the man gasped.

“Will be soon enough, mate,” said Dawkins.

“How bad is that gut wound, Jenks? Can you keep
up?” Gresham asked.

“Don’t rightly know, Sir. It hurts to bloody
Hell. Don’t suppose you’ve got a tot in your kit there, have you?”

Gresham pulled a flask from his back pocket and
handed it to the corporal. “Just a bit of whisky left. Finish it.”

“You don’t mean to leave me, do you,
Lieutenant?”

Gresham regarded the Corporal coldly for a
moment, as if uncertain. In fact, he
was
uncertain. The badly wounded man
would obviously not make it back to the lines, and if they dragged him along he
would only slow the rest. But Gresham knew that the rest of the men would
object if he suggested leaving the Corporal behind. “No. I suppose not.” He
took the man’s rifle and rucksack and handed them to Wilkins. “Carry these.”
said Gresham. Wilkins was too stunned to object. “Let’s move. No shooting if it
can be avoided. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

Gresham led the remaining troops along the
ridgeline. Sergeant Hart took up the rear. They stayed in a single line and were
very quiet. The battle was still being waged behind them, but its intensity was
slowing as the Ottoman Turks and Allied troops dug into their positions.
Gresham brought the company east another mile and then they marched south a
mile more; they encountered no Turkish troops or Turkish civilians. After two
hours of cautious and quiet marching, the company halted for a rest in an area
of dense brush. Gresham still had Hart with him, as well as Wilkins and more
than two dozen more men. The sound of sporadic artillery fire was still audible
off to the west, near the bay, but the day had grown mostly quiet and, if
anything, hotter. Each of the men had sweat through their uniforms and no one
had a drop of water left in their canteens. Every time they stopped moving,
small black flies fell upon them in clouds.

“Lieutenant, how are we going to get back to
our side of the line?” asked a young Private.

“No worries there, mate,” replied his neighbor.
“Like as not, we’re all going to die of thirst before we ever get back.”

Wilkins’ face lifted. “We were supposed to take
the ridge and move south to a rendezvous at the village cemetery to the south.
The companies that were supposed to meet us there might have made it through.
We must go see.”

“It’s possible,” agreed Gresham. “There would
be water there, too. But my guess is that we’ll find a lot of Turks none too
happy to find Tommy Atkins on their flank.” He looked around at the remaining
men of the company. Some men had thrown themselves down on the ground and gone right
to sleep. Gresham had seen that in France too:  Men who can’t stomach war
have a tendency to sleep through as much of it as possible. “Let’s rest a bit
and wait until dark to move on. Perhaps it will cool off.”

“I wouldn’t expect so, Lieutenant,” said Sergeant
Hart. “We had heat like this in India, and I can assure you it will not cool.
Don’t go gettin’ the boys’ hopes up, if you please.”

“How long did you serve in India, Sergeant?”
Wilkins asked.

“Can’t give you a proper answer there, Sir, I’m
sorry to say: Many years, and many years in Africa as well. Born and raised in
the heat, you might say, Sir. I played with Mister Kipling when I was a lad in
Bombay. Whereas he became a great author, I joined the army and became a great
Sergeant. I like to think that I myself was the inspiration for Peachey
Carnehan.”

“But then you served in the Boer Wars?”

“Aye, in the second war, but that were
different from this. We fought man-to-man, village to village, each man for
himself. We’d spend days in the brush hunting those Boer bastards. The heat
takes it out of a man; enough time in the brush can make a man feel like he’s
all alone in the world. Can’t say I recognize any man as my superior any
longer,” then he winked and smiled, “but the Empire knows who I am.”

“King and country, yes?”.

Hart guffawed. “More country than King. King
George is a navy man, and a German,” he added.

“He most certainly is not. He is the grandson
of Queen Victoria,” Wilkins replied indignantly.

“Aye, but Prince Albert was a German, wasn’t he?”

“Sergeant, those sorts of statements will
confuse the men, that is, if it is not outright treason.”

Gresham had been listening and could tell that
Wilkins was getting angry. “You two, stuff it before the Turks end this
argument.”

To the south lay another ridge, one even taller
than the Kiretch Tepe ridge they had just come down. Wilkins, incredibly, had
not thought to bring a map, but Sergeant Hart seemed to carry maps in his head
the way some people memorize poetry. The high ridge to their southwest, he
said, was called Tekke Tepe, and the village Anafarta Sagir sat on its southern
spurs. Wilkins thought that was the village where his company was intended to
rendezvous with companies from the Ninth, so a plan was agreed to march there
after dark.

They stayed in the shade as best they could but
the sun beat down on them and the flies continued to fall on them in clouds.
The flies especially liked Dawkins’s blood-soaked arm and nearly covered him
despite his best effort to swat them off. No man had any appetite for the hard
biscuits and the few tin cans of greasy, flavorless “Bully Beef” which were
their only food. As a hot breeze blew in, the men could smell only putrefaction
and decay from the battlegrounds to the west. The company spent the rest of the
early evening resting in the hot shade, and prepared to march as the sun set.

 “My little sleepers,” said Hart, kicking
the sleeping men. “Get up, we’re off again.” Corporal Jenks, they found, had
died, and a few minutes were taken to bury him in a shallow grave. The remains
of the company continued east and south around the Tekke Tepe ridge, marching
down shallow gullies and over gentle spurs, avoiding the Turkish troops and
resting every mile or so among whatever trees they found. Finally, well after dark,
the group walked through a pine tree grove and saw a number of low brick
buildings a short way off. There was a vast array of troops and horses, carts
and artillery pieces moving into the small crossroads village. All of them were
Turkish.

“I don’t think we can take the company in
there,” said Gresham, sitting with the men among the thickest grove of trees
they could find. The air was cooler, but the ground still felt like a hot pan.
Most of the men looked parched and woozy. Sergeant Hart seemed all right, and
even Wilkins was holding up. The others grasped their rifles nervously. To get
through that village would mean one hell of a fight. Ahead of them, on the
road, Turkish soldiers were moving into the village by tens and twenties, while
loaded horse-drawn carts traveled back from the front. Gresham knew carts like
those had only one thing to bring back from the trenches – the dead. Hadn’t
Wilkins mentioned something about a cemetery near this village? Gresham turned
to the Sergeant. “Hart, you’re pretty good with your hands. Anyone else here a
knife-fighter?”

           
“Aye, Sir,” said a short, thin, and sleepy Private. “Got a little experience
there, I’ll admit.”

           
“I have an idea, Cooper. Let’s you, me and Hart go for a walk. Captain, these
men and I will do a bit of foraging tonight. We’ll meet you and the rest of the
company in that gully over there on the west side of the village as soon as we
can. Take your time and try to avoid any sentries. If we haven’t met you by
sunrise, you should continue back to the lines as best you can.”

           
“As you say, Lieutenant,” agreed Wilkins.

           
“Let’s go then,” said Gresham.

           
Gresham led Hart and Cooper back through the copse of pine trees and started a
long, slow, crawl around the outside of the village to the east. He was in no
hurry, as his plan had more chance of success in the darkest part of the night.
Much of the village had been damaged by British artillery, but the artillery
battle had ended for the time being. Beyond the eastern edge of the village,
Gresham saw what he was looking for – the cemetery. What had once been a small
village cemetery had become a dumping ground. Overwhelmed with the number of
bodies at the front, the Turks had started carting the dead to the rear and
burying them as an odd-job whenever men could be spared. Most of the bodies lay
in a pit and were covered with a light dusting of lime. The flies and stench of
death were overpowering, and Gresham could feel himself starting to swoon. He
gathered Hart and Cooper close.

           
“Look, there will be another of those carts coming before long. They’re
bringing corpses to the cemetery. We’re going to capture the next cart, steal
enough Turkish uniforms for the lot of us, and take the cart all the way back
through the lines. Go find someplace to hole up near the cemetery gate.”

Gresham stepped into a small run-in shed where
horses had been rested out of the sun. The smell of horse manure and urine was
startlingly wholesome compared with the overall smell of rotting human flesh
throughout the cemetery. Still, the flies were everywhere. Gresham pulled an
old handkerchief from his back pocket and held it over his mouth. The flies
could not tell a dead man from a live one, and they descended on Gresham, Hart
and Cooper in clouds.

The waiting was horrendous, but they did not
have to wait long. Within a half-hour, a cart slowly rambled into the cemetery:
One driver, one passenger, one cart full of corpses. Gresham signaled to the
others. Hart was the first. He leapt up and neatly garroted the driver with a
piece of barbed wire. Cooper made short work of slitting the other man’s
throat. The suddenness of the violence spooked the two poor horses that were
bound to the cart, and they were ready to bolt, but Gresham quickly grabbed
their reins. His calm hand quieted the two cart horses quickly.

           
The dead men were stripped of their uniforms and thrown in the pit. Gresham was
checking the bodies in the cart for more useable uniforms.

           
“Hurry up,” he whispered, “before another cart arrives.”

           
They found several more relatively unspoiled uniform jackets and dumped the
remaining corpses from the cart quickly into the pit. Gresham tossed a Turkish
jacket and helmet to Cooper.

           
“Put that on and take the cart around the back road to the other end of the
village. Don’t stop for anyone. Sergeant Hart and I will meet you on the other
side. I want to see what they’ve got waiting for us in the village here.”