Leon Uris (57 page)

In a word, Quinn’s Post probably faced the most heavily fortified acre of land in the world.

A trench line down from Quinn’s Post ran for a quarter of a mile through our forward positions at Courtney’s, Steele’s, on down to Lone Pine. The Turkish trenches and ours in this quarter-mile stretch were pressed so close to one another that no-man’s-land was a mere twelve and twenty yards wide. We could damn near use each other’s latrines.

When Colonel Malone, a New Zealander of few words, took over the Quinn position, he had the shovels going twenty-four hours a day until our concentration and connection of trenches dulled the Turkish ambitions.

Every few feet at Quinn’s Post there was an earthen step to a vertical niche so a rifleman or machine gunner could stand and have a field of fire.

By daylight nothing could move above the trench line without drawing a blizzard of gunfire from the Turks. By night, they had a weapon unknown to us, hand grenades. A couple of nights I had to lay over at Quinn’s Post and the grenades never stopped.

I pulled up all the corrugated metal and heavy mesh I could find on the beach and took it to Quinn’s and they
roofed their trenches with it. The roof was set at an angle so that when a Turkish grenade landed, it rolled back down into no-man’s-land, hopefully before it exploded.

At last we found a decent use for some of our rations. Empty jam tins were filled with bits of barbed wire and sharpnel. Powder, detonators, and fuses were added. These were very crude versions of the Turkish grenades, but Abdul was no longer going to get free throws.

Other innovations came about through necessity. We were able to scan the Turks through homemade periscopes. Other periscopes were rigged so they could be used to aim snipers’ rifles. When we received new Enfield rifles, our sharpshooters, sighting in through periscopes, became so accurate they could shoot through the Turkish firing loopholes.

If the racket didn’t get you at Quinn’s, the smell would. When a man went down in the narrow waist of no-man’s-land, it was impossible to get him back. The vultures became so fat they could hardly fly and began to leave the corpses to rot under a sun that shot the temperature up over a hundred degrees every day.

Our dead who went down in our trenches were stacked at a far end. We’d wait until the wind blew toward the Turkish lines, then pour on petrol and set the corpses afire.

At 0430 my squad gloried in our new socks and boots. Our party consisted of my lads, Major Chris, Lieutenant General Brodhead, and his right-hand strategist, Colonel Markham.

I took them up the eastern wall of Monash Valley where we passed less than two hundred yards from the German Officer’s Trench, a major Turk stronghold.

Yurlob had carved out a mule track from where Monash Valley forked and one of the gullies led into the rear of Quinn’s Post. Turks always had this spot under surveillance from Bloody Angle and the Chessboard.

Without mules we were able to crawl the last fifty yards
without drawing fire. It amazed me how General Brodhead and Major Chris and Colonel Markham always looked like they had walked out of the tailor’s shop, while me and my lads looked ravaged.

I was fascinated by the easy way Brodhead had as he moved through the trenches chatting up the troops, earnestly hearing their input and totally sympathetic about the trials of life at the Post. Brodhead went beyond the automatic stiff upper lip crap the senior Brits seemed compelled to dish out.

Brodhead and Markham went into Colonel Malone’s headquarters dugout and after a few minutes I was called in.

“Landers, how far can you get us up the ridge toward Russell’s Top?”

It hit me in the stomach. I wanted to say “About six inches” or “Depends on how anxious you are to die.”

“How many in our party and what do we want to do?” I asked.

“Colonel Markham, Colonel Malone, and myself. We want to take a look at the Chessboard. Can you do it?”

“We can do an in and out,” I said. We’d been running supplies to the outpost at Pope’s Hill but came in from another direction.

“What we’d really like to get a look at are the four or five gullies falling off Bloody Angle,” Markham said.

I looked at Malone’s map table. “There’s a ditch up Dead Man’s that practically touches the Turkish lines, very close. I’m talking five, ten yards. I think we can see the gullies from there. I should tell you, sir, if the Turks engage us, we can’t be rescued.”

“Let’s have a go at it, what?” Brodhead said.

Well, his uniform was going to get messed up on this one. I had learned from the time I was a kid that you can be standing five feet away from a lost lamb and not see it. If a man plays the brush and little bumps in the land correctly, he can hide his body almost anywhere.

The shallow ditch and deliberate slow movement
could put us on a U-turn we wanted. A hundred yards…a hundred minutes…right near the end, I spotted a triangle of land mines and looked for trip wires…shit…I hate snipping trip wires….

Click! Only pliers, but it sounded like a cannon.

Bloody Turks had the mines set so we couldn’t get around them without waking up their army. We had to crawl through them…I hummed the Maori farewell song under my breath…“Now is the hour for us to say good-bye”…did they read my signals…three mines, go through them…

Close your mouth, Brodhead…the sun is going to bounce off your smiling teeth…

Wa…Wa…Wa…Wa! Lookee here! Whole fucking Chessboard, big curve at the top of Bloody Angle and one, two, three of the gullies…my, my, my.

Malone was beside me. He had that Quinn’s Post perfume aura about him. Look at these sons of bitches…they still haven’t gotten their uniforms dirty.

I focused my binoculars as did the others. Shit! The Chessboard had grown by over a dozen squares…an entire new trench area had been added on. The gullies off Bloody Angle were filled with troops…lots and lots of them.

The four of us were packed tightly together. Our window to the Turks was only a few feet wide, the only possible place to have our look without exposing ourselves. I wanted to get back, even to Quinn’s, but Brodhead seemed to be enamored with what he saw. It seemed like a year before he signaled me to take us back.

None too soon. I didn’t see them, but after a time you sense a Turkish patrol and we’d been hanging out there for quite a time.

Okay, Rory, go back at exactly the same pace…don’t rush it…breathe deep…Maori farewell song…now we go…now we go…through those fucking land mines.

I looked behind me. Got to say, the Brits were beautiful in the way they followed my line…each pebble of
recognition gave me an urge to stand up and run for it…a hundred minutes out…a hundred minutes back.

Oh God, it felt good when the hands in the trenches grabbed me and hauled me in.

“Come on, guys. You know, I always send extra rum up to this post. How about some now?”

“Here you go, chief,” Dan Elgin said. “We owe them two bottles up here.”

“In tomorrow morning’s mail,” I promised.

Damn the protocol. Malone, Markham, and the General saw the bottle and partook without ceremony or invitation.

“Nice work, Landers,” Brodhead said. “Find Major Hubble and come with him to Colonel Malone’s headquarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

I went through the tarp into the Colonel’s quarters. All of them were on the bad side of grim.

“Malone?” Brodhead asked.

“Well, it’s what my patrols suspected but never got to see. The Chessboard has increased in size by twenty percent.”

“It feels like a full brigade in the gullies off Bloody Angle,” Markham said.

“I’d say more,” Malone suggested.

Brodhead posed with his teeth lurking through his lips. “Two brigades and we can identify them,” Brodhead said. “One brigade is going to slide along the line between Quinn’s on down to Lone Pine. Their attack will be to pin the line down. Their main assault will be directly on Quinn’s Post with another brigade. They’ll come over the gullies in waves right into your face, Malone. There’s really no room to maneuver around with flanking tactics. They’ll try to overrun us right down Monash Valley.”

“Who’s resting in Heavently Spa Valley?” Malone asked of the place with the queer name where troops were rotated off the lines.

“Canterbury’s,” Colonel Markham said.

“Better get them up here,” Brodhead ordered. “Colonel Chapman’s dead. They’ll need a new commander.”

“Who’s the exec?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Hinshaw.”

Malone held his tongue but showed visible uneasiness.

“I think not,” Brodhead said.

I’ll take the Canterbury’s,” Colonel Markham said.

“Let me think about it,” Brodhead said. “Well, we do have some decent news. Chris told me just as we pushed off this morning. A hundred Maxim guns were unloaded yesterday. How soon can you have them up here, Chris?”

“Depends how they’re packed. Right away if they’re not in grease.”

“Just in light oil,” I said. “I checked.”

“Good. Landers, Chris…fifty of the Maxims go right here to Quinn’s. I want another twenty-five down the line to Lone Pine. Twenty-five in reserve. We’re going to need an ammunition dump up here.”

“I don’t like ammo on top of the trenches,” Malone said strongly. “We almost had a catastrophe with that.”

“It has to be within a few minutes’ reach,” Markham said. “Landers?” Chris asked.

“I can set up a series of small dumps right behind the post, sir. If I stay up here with my squad, we’ll create the space.”

“AM right with you, Hubble?” the General asked.

“Subaltern Yurlob has the transport completely under control. I think Landers up here is an excellent idea.”

I knew Christopher Hubble had changed, but I could not help but be touched by the total trust he had placed in me since we landed. He knew I went crazy when Johnny Tarbox died but he saw past it.

Colonel John Monash, the Aussie Commander of the line down to Lone Pine, entered.

“We’ve just drawn lottery dates at my headquarters,” Monash said. “My date is…let’s see…the. Turks attack on May 18.”

“Well, I hope they give us that much time,” Brodhead retorted He told Monash what we had seen today and his notion of the Turkish assault.

“I’ve lost over thirty men on patrols trying to get a look,” Monash said. “So the Chessboard’s pregnant. You’re going to have to take the big hit,” he said to Malone.

“All boils down to our little acre here,” Brodhead said, “strength against strength. We either hold, die, or become prisoners of the Turks. The latter is out of the question for me. All right, gentlemen, 0200 at my command post tonight. We’ll get a plan tidied up.”

“Sir,” Malone said, “is the wireless working to naval gunfire?”

“Yes, we’re back in contact.”

“General, we and the Turks are going to be on top of each other. I’d like to see the navy concentrate on the Chessboard and nothing but the Chessboard.”

“Well, what about no-man’s-land?”

“I have a notion, General,” Malone went on. “We’re too close to their trenches for naval gunfire. I say we keep a battalion on ready alert at all times. The minute the Turks attack, we send the battalion into no-man’s-land and meet them with bayonets. They won’t figure on that. I think it’s a chance to confuse them.”

That sobered the place up.

“Interesting,” Markham agreed.

“I like it,” Monash agreed. “But how do we get out of our trenches fast enough?”

“Have the battalion on alert lie behind the trenches and cross over the top of us by throwing down plank bridges.”

“Let me think about it,” Brodhead said. At that, the General dismissed everyone except Chris and myself. When they were gone, Brodhead stunned me with his sensitivity. “I know what you’re going to ask me, Chris. The answer is no.”

“Is this a private matter?” I asked.

“No, not at all. You have wheedled your way onto the front lines for the Turkish counterattack, Landers, and
Major Hubble is about to suggest that so long as Colonel Chapman is dead, he should command the Canterbury’s at Quinn’s Post. Is that about it, Chris?”

“I’d say that is the gist of the matter.”

“Not quite yet,” Brodhead answered.

“Sir, I took on this mule detail out of deep loyalty to you. My brother Jeremy can run my battalion in his sleep with Subaltern Landers here as his exec.”

“Sorry. I think Colonel Markham is better suited.”

“You promised me, sir.”

“So I did. Exactly what I promised is that if you got a mule transport working, I would skip you a rank at the end of the campaign and see that you got a regiment at that time. However, don’t be too impatient. At the rate we are losing senior officers you may get your chance sooner than later, what?”

Anzac crammed as many men and as much ammo and water behind Quinn’s and Courtney’s Posts. Being the “professor” of the terrain, I helped find little pockets where one- and two-man observation posts could keep constant watch on the Turks. Phone lines were run to these.

Malone had me at his side a great deal of the time, dispensing our stores of material. The Colonel did a lot of his thinking out loud in rumble-mumbles and would then look at me curiously to see if I agreed with him. His richly endowed eyebrows covered his eyes like an English sheepdog to conceal surprise and unpleasant news. Each day I went with him on a sweep of his observation posts before he reported down to Brodhead at Corps.

By mid-May the late morning-early afternoon heat was so intense that hell up here and hell down there probably had little variance. Quinn’s Post was always over 110 degrees. Everyone stripped off jackets, trousers, and leggings. We were down to underdrawers, shoes, our web belts, and some sort of head covering.

Between noon and 1500, men fainted from heat prostration all up and down the line. Water was only to drink; it had no secondary use and we were filthy and smelly. Lice and flies adored us.

On May 16, I’ll never forget the day, I woke up to a revelation. It came through to me so clearly I bolted into Malone’s quarters without invitation.

“Get up, Colonel,” I suggested.

He pulled his naked butt off his cot, sat on its edge and got me into focus, quickly. At Quinn’s Post a man could wake up within four seconds and be on the alert.