Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (10 page)

Edward stared at the taut, white skin of his knuckles as his hands gripped round his rifle and wondered whether the King would look after his wife and kids if he was called on to pay this ultimate price. The NCO’s had been calling out the five minute time signals for twenty minutes now. 10.50am – only ten minutes left.

Big Charlie carefully wiped his Lee Enfield with his polishing cloth and Liam, slumped on the firing step, muttered prayers for safe deliverance.

Around him he could see the tense bodies of his mates, rifles held in front of them, eyes staring into the ground. He looked at the soldier on his left. He was younger than Edward and came from near the gas works but he was the type who never said that much. Kept himself to himself really. Edward had played football with the lad’s older brother, the aptly named Chopper Hennessy, and had had a more recent bruising encounter with him on a rugby field in Egypt. Young Hennessy had only recently joined the Terriers, having been brought along by Chopper ‘to get him out a bit.’ Edward noticed that the lad had taken off his glasses. Lines of shining dried salt traced down his cheeks. The tension was showing in the tight ridged muscles of the young man’s neck and Edward asked him if he was OK. He got no reply. The eyes never flickered and the only sign of life was the huge throbbing blood vessel on the side of his head. 10.55am.

Edward turned away. The younger man was paralysed by an intense fear and Edward was already struggling to cope with his own. Acrid smelling smoke was beginning to drift down into the trenches.

At 11.00am the synchronized whistles of the officers sounded along the whole of the line and the trench erupted in a frenzy of shouting and movement as the soldiers went up the ladders. As Edward waited to go up he heard a furious shouting at the side of him. He looked round and saw Major Fforbes-Fosdyke screaming at the frightened soldier who was still sitting bolt upright on the fire step. The petrified young Hennessy didn’t move and the Major, shouting at him to stand up and get over the top, grabbed at him and tried to lift him. The lad’s body and mind, however, had completely shut down and he was rigid with fear. The officer took out his pistol and shot the young soldier from near the gas works through the head. The tense muscles in the boy’s neck relaxed as the blood pumped from the wound above his eye. Slowly, but with increasing velocity, his body tumbled sideways, crumbling into a lifeless heap on the floor. Edward stared in disbelief and tried to grab the Major’s hand but he pushed him back. They had already had their tot of rum but the smell of whisky on the officer’s breath was overpowering. His sandy moustache was flecked with spittle and snot from his nose. The white, sweating face and staring blue eyes betrayed the demeanour of an unbalanced mind. ‘Get on with it soldier’ he snarled, waving the pistol threateningly at Edward’s head. ‘If we had left him there then next time we would have had more actors than the Hippodrome.’

Still reeling from the shock of what he had witnessed, Edward grabbed the ladder and went over the parapet. He followed the others as they strode off in a line, their bodies released from the coiled spring tension by the piercing whistles in the trenches but contained by the numbingly slow pace at which they had been trained to proceed. They tried to keep the formation that they had been instructed to hold but the Turkish machine guns swept their lines with enfilading fire and the Turkish infantrymen picked off their targets with ease. The enemy soldiers had established themselves in vantage points higher up the ravine and they could watch every movement of the Allied troops. Some men bent down and tried to help injured comrades but then they themselves were gunned down mercilessly. The officers yelled at them to keep going, waving their pistols in frantic encouragement.

The Turkish machine gun bullets were slicing through the Salford lads as though they were tissue paper. Edward saw men in front whose heads suddenly seemed to explode and others whose bodies arched impossibly backwards then collapsed on the ground. He could hear the bullets whistling past as they sought another victim and black smoke was starting to drift down into the valley from the hill on his left.  He jumped over the twisted bodies of friends, stumbled then raced forward again to catch up. They were running now, being driven by instinct in a blind rush into mayhem.

From behind him he heard an officer shout ‘Get Down. Find Shelter and Get Down.’ To his right he saw a small gully but the uphill struggle in intense heat and over rough ground had weakened him. The bullets flew around but the strength had drained out of his legs. The sweat was running inside his heavy uniform and the blood throbbed in his ears. He screamed at his failing body to keep going for the gully. He tripped on another rock, his unsteady legs collapsed and he fell to the ground. He lay there confused by the noise, the heat, the body that would not respond, and he waited for the bullet that would finish him. His blood raced and his lungs hunted for more air. He gasped huge mouthfuls of dust laden oxygen and from somewhere deep inside his body came a moment of stillness. He heard Laura’s words ‘Keep Safe Love’ and he felt that last soft kiss on his cheek like an angel’s touch.

A warm surge of strength flowed through his body and he was on his feet again. He drove himself forward through the scrub and flung himself into the shelter of the gully.

As his breathing became calmer and his heartbeat slowed, he felt a fountain of fury building up inside him. They had been told to attack and take the machine gun redoubts that were five hundred yards away and yet they only had their rifles with fixed bayonets to do it. They had not even been spared the shells for supporting artillery to give them cover. Ten days before, the regulars had failed to achieve those targets and now, after the enemy had been given more chance to consolidate their positions, they were being ordered to repeat the performance. Whoever had planned this attack in some remote office had gambled with the lives of the soldiers in these fields in a cynical attempt to retrieve what had been a poorly planned and badly organized strategy from the outset.

Edward looked around him at the dead and dying. If an injured man moved he would be shot at by a distant Turkish rifle. Sergeant Williams shouted instructions to regroup and they slowly made their way forward, inching along the ravine by erratic, darting runs. The rocks around them splintered with the enemy bullets and they returned the fire whenever they had a view of the Turkish trenches, but it was to no avail. They made little impression on the enemy and the officers realized that the goal that they had been set was an impossible one.

At nightfall they made their way back to their trenches bringing back all the injured that they could retrieve. Edward felt an overwhelming tiredness but couldn’t sleep. He drew heavily on one cigarette after another then said a little prayer that he would be spared to return to Cross Lane and to see Laura and the kids again.

Edward told Liam and Big Charlie about the execution of Young Hennessy by the Major. Their stunned silence was eventually broken by Liam who asked ‘Where’s Chopper at the moment, then?’

‘He’s up on the hill with the 7th’

‘He’ll be out for blood when he hears about this.’

‘Aye,’ Edward said, ‘but he’ll have to watch himself or he’ll finish up in a load of trouble.’

‘Have a word with Frank Williams. See what he has to say.’

During the night they again cleared away the dead and then deepened the trenches. They were told that Gully Ravine was a weak point in the Allied line because it was low down and vulnerable. Up on Gully Spur, the hill to their left that lay between them and the Aegean Sea, the 6th and 7th Lancashire Fusiliers, along with a company from Edward’s battalion, had that day made an advance of 400 yards and that had been held.

The next morning they again attacked the enemy line but this time they had been spared the diatribe by the manic Major. Edward watched as the first groups went over, knowing that shortly it would be his turn. It was the same, disciplined precision of the countdown, the same words of command and the same mechanical response from the soldiers. The officers and NCO’s ran around, shouting and waving rifles and pistols, the men went over the parapet and then, for too many, their lives were blasted out of their bodies. Some did not even make it over the top – they fell back off the ladders and the support groups cleared them away.

The last five minutes of the countdown began for Edward’s group. He could hear the bullets thudding into the sandbags above his head. Hopefully, the first runners would have made some progress up the valley and would be threatening the enemy lines. They had their bayonets fixed, and they had been trained to use them, but the five hundred yards of scrubland that had to be crossed first meant that there would be little chance of close combat fighting.

Edward had been told that this time they would be going at intervals and running in small groups. That way they presented a smaller target to the Turkish machine guns. He knew, though, that the terrain in the valley and the fifty foot cliffs at the sides gave them little chance of crossing this no-man’s land.

He heard the loud explosions as the ships in the sea beyond Gully Spur began firing on the Turkish positions but the chattering of the machine guns kept on. He saw pictures in his mind of the family room when he was a small boy. His brothers were nowhere to be seen but his mother was scrubbing the back of a man sitting in a zinc bath in front of the fire. He tried to focus on the picture but it was gone. The seconds ticked away, he said a prayer to be spared to see his wife and family again, and the shrieking whistles pierced his thoughts.

This time Edward followed closely behind the Liverpool Sergeant, Frank Williams. He seemed to know what he was doing as he ran purposefully along, ducking low so that he gained shelter from a low ridge which Edward had not seen on his first run. Clouds of acrid, dusty smoke rolled down the valley accompanied by the rumbling thunder of the bombardment higher up. They dashed quickly over an exposed section and then they were amongst the rocks below the cliffs. The sergeant directed the group as to where they should position themselves and then they sat back to recover their breath. One man stood up to stretch his back and as his head came above the rock the top of his skull flew off. His soft hat offered no protection.

‘They do stop you getting bird shit in your hair, though,’ said the sergeant seeing Edward’s anguished face staring at the tattered regimental cap. ‘It’s the first in our group today so that’s not too bad’ he added ‘but keep your heads down or he won’t be the last.’

They crawled from one sun dappled rock to another for thirty minutes, progressing with painstaking slowness up the ravine, until they found themselves crouching behind a shaded hillock just below the Turkish lines. Across the valley they could see that various groups held positions which also gave them a view of the enemy. Down the valley they had a clear sight of their own lines and of the bed of the stream clogged with the bodies of British soldiers. Some had become gruesomely distended as they baked in the hot sun. On the top of Gully Spur, over the far side of the ravine, they watched the exploding shells from the Royal Navy vessels out at sea as they tried to dislodge the Turkish machine guns. Edward could see that, although they had done a lot of damage to the enemy trenches, they would never stop the machine guns as they had been securely sheltered in the mouth of a cave.

When Williams was satisfied that he had all the men positioned correctly he told them to ready themselves and to open fire if Turkish soldiers showed themselves. ‘Remember that they have killed your mates and they will kill you if you give them half a chance’ he said. When the soldiers in the trench above them fired on the Lancashire Fusiliers below, the sergeant’s group responded. Eventually, they were spotted by the machine gunners and were forced by the furious onslaught of bullets to shelter below the rocks. Their Lee Enfields with their shiny bayonets felt puny and inept against this tornado of fire power.

It soon became clear that they could make no more progress and Williams guided them back down to their own trenches. They smoked, drank tea and cut off chunks of bully beef for their lunch. They talked about the events of the morning, exaggerated the number of Turkish soldiers they had seen fall, and quietly congratulated themselves on surviving.

That afternoon they went over again. The sergeant led them on a different course, heading this time for one of the side gullies. Their route took them through an area of dogwood scrubland and the Turkish gunners spotted them. By the time that they reached the shelter, one man had been killed and another had a splintered arm. The sergeant fixed the arm in the best way that he could with his field dressing pack but the man needed more expert treatment. He was screaming in agony and shouting for his mother. ‘Will you bloody shut up,’ Liam said irritably, cupping his hands to be heard above the racket. ‘Every sodding sniper in Turkey will know where we are hiding with that row.’ Turning to Big Charlie he confided ‘His Dad’s that Italian joiner from behind the Church, you know. They can’t do anything quietly.’

‘Aye, I know. Used to be like that when he got the cane at school.’

 It was clear that they could not go forward because of the enemy gun fire and the only option was to crawl towards the cliffs and then to tack back down to their trenches.

In the safety of the trench, they took the injured man to the first aid post for treatment and then gratefully sipped at the hot tea that had been poured for them. Food had been brought up from the canteen on the beach by the newly landed soldiers who were now gradually filling up the trenches. Although they were hungry they were too tense to eat and they were still sat in the communication trench smoking and exchanging the small details of the battle, the scraps of success that members of a beaten team use to rebuild each other’s morale, when the Captain arrived.

He told them that they were to be relieved from the line and were to bivouac at ‘W’ beach. He said that it was still being shelled and fired upon by the Turks but they might get the opportunity for a game of soccer and a swim in the sea. ‘It’ll be just like Blackpool on bonfire night,’ muttered Liam as he picked up his enamel cup. ‘I’ll see if I can find my bucket and spade.’