The Horizon (1993) (11 page)

‘The drill is much as before.’ Waring was obviously excited. ‘The men have already rested and they will be fed as soon as a last weapons inspection has been carried out. We will then disembark to the boats provided, and be towed as near as is prudent to the beaches. By first light I want every man in position, kit stowed, magazines loaded, and ready for action – do I make myself clear?’ His incisive voice lingered in the warm air. ‘The fleet will continue to provide support beyond us and as far as the enemy supply lines, so the rest is up to us.’

The tall Australian officer stood up, as if he had been waiting, perhaps, to be asked.

Waring snapped, ‘You wish to say something, Colonel Ede?’

‘I do.’ Then he faced the watching officers and gave a brief smile. ‘Just a couple of points that are never in any drill book. Like most other serving officers I know and admire the reputation of your Corps – as I believe Kipling described them, “soldiers and sailors too”. But this is a different sort of campaign for you to fight. It certainly is for me. I think that many of my men were contemptuous of the Turks – thought of them as a cross between brigands and aborigines, something to stamp on
and still have time for a beer.’ He leaned towards them. ‘So that
you
don’t make the same mistake let me tell you: Johnny Turk is one of the most deadly fighters I’ve come up against. They attack when they have no chance – when they run out of ammo they’ll stand bayonet to bayonet till one falls. Their weapons aren’t a scratch on ours and in many cases their rifles are single-shot relics.’ He had their full attention now and Jonathan could feel all of them hanging onto his words. Ede continued in a contained voice. ‘We fought our way into our present position just three days ago. Not a week or a month, but three days. I don’t know what the hell is happening on the other beaches but in that time
I’ve
lost a battalion. My men have been fighting day and night, no chance to sleep. We can’t even bring in the wounded – Turkish snipers are everywhere.’ The power seemed to drain out of him. ‘Just be careful. The Turk is a brave and dedicated enemy, not some kind of native.’ He looked hard at some of their faces. ‘Think how you would feel if you had the Germans coming ashore in England, shooting their way up the beach at Dover. You’d fight like men possessed if that happened. Well, see it from their point of view and you’ll have a better chance of survival.’ He was about to turn away when he saw Lieutenant Wyke holding up his hand. ‘Yes?’

Wyke’s rather affected drawl seemed in stark contrast to the colonel’s blunt and abrasive manner.

‘But we
are
getting reinforcements, sir.’

Ede said coldly, ‘So they tell me.’ He studied the young lieutenant’s sunburned features for what seemed like a minute and then said, ‘By the time this war is over,
millions may have died at the rate they’re going. The Dardanelles, you and me, we’ll be forgotten. So when you take your fellows into battle don’t waste them. Lead them. Don’t let them die for nothing.’

He turned sharply for the door with only a brief nod to Beaky Waring.

As the curtains fell again into position Waring remarked, ‘Well, that was all rather disappointing, wasn’t it? A bit of sour grapes, I suppose.’

Several of them chuckled.

Waring continued, ‘Tell your men as much as you think best. But no heroics. We are here to do a job in the great tradition of the Corps. That we shall do. Carry on, gentlemen.’

The chairs scraped, and they all stood up while waiting stewards and messmen darted through the curtains to prepare the tables for supper.

Jonathan turned as he heard Waring speaking with the officer commanding
Impulsive
’s marine detachment. He was a grim-faced acting-captain named Peter Whitefoord who had made a lot of notes during the meeting. Waring said, ‘You will lead in the first boats, Captain Whitefoord.’ He watched him searchingly. ‘Yours is the honour. After all,
Impulsive
’s detachment has been together longest – not all fingers and thumbs, what?’

Jonathan walked into the passageway where some of the ship’s officers were already waiting to reoccupy their wardroom. He heard Waring’s braying laugh and thought of his dismissal of the Australian’s quiet warning. Tarrier walked beside him in silence.

Jonathan glanced at him. The next hours would be the
worst. He said, ‘Go round the platoon commanders, Roger.’ He saw him start at the casual use of his name. ‘Impress on each of them the importance of drinking-water. Stop them from using it all up before we get replenishment. You can tell them the order’s from the colonel, if you like.’

‘Is it, sir?’

Waring had not touched on the subject, even though there was nothing definite about the water replenishment lighters in the prepared orders.

He smiled. ‘Would I lie?’

Jonathan went to his cabin and looked around, imagining the Australian officers who had slept here. Were they still alive, or lying out there waiting for help which never came?

His M.O.A. Harry Payne had laid everything out. Revolver, extra ammunition, and two water flasks. The old campaigner. A true blue marine.

‘After midnight then, sir?’

‘How do you feel about it?’

Payne paused in his polishing and stared critically at the belt buckle. ‘Me? I s’pose I feel all right, sir. Not much I can do about it, is there?’

Jonathan folded the writing case, which Payne had put ready for a last letter home. He had nobody to write to any more.

Payne watched him gravely. ‘I’ve got a bottle of the good stuff in me kit, sir.’ He forced a grin. ‘In case it’s going to be anything like that last little lot in France.’

Jonathan smiled. Payne was pure gold, as old Jack Swan had been for David. Maybe they would end up just
like that: like dog and master, each fearful that the other would die first.

‘Nothing could be as bad as that, my friend.’ He seemed to hear the Australian colonel’s words to the debonair Lieutenant Wyke.
Don’t let them die for nothing
.

Payne glanced up at the deckhead as the engines’ regular throb slowed, and then stopped altogether. Jonathan could picture it as if he were up there on deck. The great ship already in darkness, her upperworks black against the sky. Discreet and without fuss, and with so many of
Reliant
’s company at their evening meal anxiety and emotion would be at a minimum. Through the maze of decks and watertight compartments, he thought he heard the brief lament of a bugle, but it was so muffled it could have been part of a memory.

The engines’ vibrations began again, churning out the ruler-straight wake which would carry them all to the enemy’s shore.

In that same wake, Midshipman Timothy Portal would still be falling through the black depths where he would remain forever undisturbed.

He looked at Payne and knew he was sharing his thoughts. Sixteen years old. It had not been much of a life for him.

Lieutenant Christopher Wyke leaned over the guardrails and stared impatiently at the swaying mass of boats alongside. He reached out and seized the arm of his second-in-command. ‘Hurry them up, Charles! They’re like a lot of old women!’ The second lieutenant
scrambled down one of the dangling ladders, probably remembering the Australians who had done this very thing only a few nights ago. The colonel’s revelation, too, that casualties of battalion strength had fallen during the same period.

Wyke saw Jonathan in the darkness and said, ‘
Impulsive
’s detachment have been off-loaded, sir. I’m just disembarking the H.Q. Platoon. We’ve got some horse-boats apparently.’ He sounded disdainful, as if horse-boats were hardly fit for Royal Marines.

Jonathan joined him by the rail and looked at the strange oblong craft. They would carry more than cutters or whalers, but it was just as well that the sea was almost flat. The noise seemed incredibly loud. Voices that urged or controlled the scrambling marines like horse trainers; clinking equipment and the occasional gasp of pain as somebody’s heavy boot crushed the fingers of the next man down the ladder. But he knew from experience that at this distance from land the sounds would be lost in the sigh of the sea, especially along this rocky coast.

Lieutenant-Colonel Waring was everywhere at once, striding up and down amongst the waiting sections and squads of men, his voice demanding and irritable. Always close by, his M.O.A., loaded down with pack and extra equipment, was finding it hard to keep up with him.

‘Ah, so here you are, Blackwood!’ It sounded vaguely accusing. ‘Are our H.Q. people in the boats yet?’ He saw Wyke and snapped, ‘You should be with your men!’

The battle-cruiser’s vast stretch of pale planking was emptying more quickly, and Waring muttered to nobody
in particular, ‘That’s more like it. Swank and swagger, not a horde of bloody moaners!’

One of the ship’s lieutenants found them by the guardrails.

‘The Captain’s compliments, sir, and he wishes you luck.’

Waring dismissed him with a curt nod. ‘
Luck!
’ He sniffed. ‘Hardly that, believe me!’

Another tall figure loomed from the darkness. It was the Australian colonel.

‘I won’t be seeing you until your men are in position. The admiral’s sending me ashore in his own barge so that I can prepare for your arrival.’ He glanced at the faint stars. ‘Seems quiet enough.’

Jonathan heard a marine murmur, ‘The admiral’s barge, eh, Tom? Doesn’t want it filled with the likes of us!’ And others, invisible, chuckled.

Jonathan saw the Reverend Simon Meheux standing by some empty davits, his surplice flapping in the breeze. All his other darker clothing merged with the night, so that he appeared to be hovering above the deck. Jonathan had always thought him a rather ineffectual sort of man, who was slow to offer an opinion in the wardroom. Apart from religious matters, he occupied himself more with writing long letters to his superiors about the need for better instruction and education concerning the Church in general, than with the sailors he was supposed to serve.

Another small drama happened even as he watched the next file of marines clambering down the nearest ladder. A man removed his sun-helmet and stepped out of the ranks as the chaplain was passing.

‘Would you bless me, Father?’

Meheux seemed startled. ‘I am not a Catholic, my son. But be assured, God will be with you when you need him!’ He hurried away as if afraid of becoming involved.

Sergeant McCann, a massively built man with square hands like a pair of spades, rapped out, ‘You’ll need more than God to ’elp you if you breaks ranks again,
my son
!’

Colonel Ede said, ‘Sorry we didn’t have time to speak together, Captain Blackwood. I know your family’s history. We could certainly use a few more officers like you.’

Jonathan said, ‘Like them perhaps, sir. Not like me, I think.’

Ede was staring at him as if his eyes could pierce the darkness without difficulty.

‘I think you’re wrong.’ He glanced at Waring but he was speaking sharply to another officer. ‘I’ve seen too many bloody heroes just lately. Death or glory, but mostly the former. Those days are gone forever.’

A midshipman murmured, ‘The barge is ready for lowering, sir.’

Ede nodded and then shook hands. Afterwards Jonathan remembered it: hard and rough like the man, but warm too. A man you would follow to hell and back if need be.

‘Has he gone?’ Waring gave a brief smile. ‘It’s all been too much for him – that’s what’s wrong with these people, Blackwood!’

‘Ready, sir!’

Jonathan glanced around and saw off-duty seamen
watching them. Deep in his heart he must have known it was to be like this, and now it was time. He felt untried, unready.

Waring snapped, ‘Off you go, Blackwood. It is the custom, you know!’

Jonathan climbed down, his body already soaking with sweat. Apart from the awkward sun-helmets none of them had been issued with light tropical clothing and they were still wearing thick serge tunics and breeches. Once ashore in the bright sunshine it would be torture.

Payne was waiting in the crowded horse-boat, and some witty marine, safe in the darkness, whispered, ‘We must be all right, lads – the Colonel’s with
us
!’

Two cruisers were already towing their clusters of boats, the hulls merely shadows, their size revealed only by their bow-waves.

Silence closed over the boats as they were warped astern of
Reliant
’s pale shape until they were moving again, the boats squeaking together, the water splashing dangerously over the gunwales.

Waring crouched with his shaded torch and took a quick glance at his map. Then he and the other officers checked their watches, as if to put a seal on the task ahead.

When at last the main tow-lines were cast off and the steam pinnaces took the strain on their assorted charges, Jonathan felt the sudden sense of loneliness like something physical. Men he had come to know in the day-to-day routine of a big warship, faces in the mess, cheering at the make-shift boxing-matches and skylarking on the passage out from Portsmouth, the
sweating tolerance at the drills and inspections. Now that had all been discarded, and the towering funnels and tops of
Reliant
’s outline had already vanished into the night.

A lot of men around him would be thinking that. Like the marine who had asked for a blessing, had risked the scorn and the ribbing of his mates, because he needed it.

Once, the boats swayed and banged together when the towing pinnace swerved hard over. Later as they ploughed past a stationary pinnace with its towed boats drifting out in all directions, Waring demanded to know what was wrong.

The pinnace had broken down, and the towed boats, with most
of
Impulsive
’s marines crammed aboard, were unable to proceed.

Jonathan heard
Impulsive
’s marine captain yell, ‘The snotty says we’ll be moving very soon, sir!’

‘If not, I’ll send someone for you!’ He brandished his black stick. ‘Can’t hang about here!
Plan Two
?’

Jonathan felt Tarrier close beside him. ‘Will it make any difference, sir?’