The Horizon (1993) (21 page)

It was dusk of that terrible day before they had reached a position where they could fire on the enemy redoubt. Hours of running and ducking when some hidden marksmen probed the ground for them, or shrapnel exploded and tore around them like deadly hornets. By this time the battalion had lost two officers, a sergeant and a hundred killed and wounded, the latter abandoned until help was sent. If it ever came.

Jonathan saw another side of warfare at its most savage. A corporal caught sight of a sniper, wrapped in rags, and lying by an overturned waggon like a pile of rubbish. With a scream the corporal, normally a quiet man, flung himself at the hidden Turk and before the others realised what was happening impaled him on his bayonet. He saw some of the young marines including a few like Geach, who still grieved for his dead friend, display a similar madness as they surrounded the writhing sniper, stabbing him repeatedly until long after he was dead, and their bayonets were red from point to hilt.

Eventually they were all concealed and Waring snapped, ‘A Company will attack – the rest will supply covering fire. Then B Company.’ He peered at Jonathan and bit the chin stay of his sun-helmet. ‘Then
our
H.Q. platoon.’ He added dryly, ‘C Company will remain here to cover the retreat – that is, if we get that far!’

The rattle of machine-gun fire and the crack of rifles were directed at the other side where the British infantry were pinned down, and had, according to the terrified runner, suffered many casualties.

During a brief lull when they guessed the infantry had fallen back to gather their remaining strength for another attack Waring said, ‘When they advance, we shall begin!’ For a moment his eyes looked tired and he muttered, ‘Give me a division and I’d soon show the bloody army!’

On either side of him the crouching marines shifted their arms and gripped their weapons more tightly as the firing began again.

Waring put his whistle to his lips then hesitated, and shouted, ‘Remember this: you are
Royal Marines
, not a bunch of mothers’ boys! Colour-Sarn’t Grensmith!’

‘
Sir!
’

‘You go across with B Company in the second attack! I want that flag up there where everyone can see it!’

‘Understood, sir!’

Waring blew sharply on the whistle, and while their newly acquired light machine-guns crackled from either flank, the marines charged like madmen up the slope.

Shots flashed from the hidden parapet and several fell, including Major Vickers, the company commander. The
others scrambled forward, yelling like men beyond help and reason, while the enemy were held down by the rapid fire from their companions.

Waring shouted, ‘Ready Company B!’ He blew another blast and the next line charged from cover.

Waring was staring wildly, but managed to say in almost a normal voice, ‘It’s not the first time in their history that the Turks have had their artillery pointing the wrong way.’

He stood up and took out his revolver, his eyes fixed on the bright colours of the flag as it floated lightly in the last of the sun’s rays.

‘H.Q. Platoon
advance
!’

There were no more shots from the parapet, and when they clambered over to be greeted by the gasping but jubilant marines Waring said curtly, ‘A flare for the infantry, Sergeant! Tell them they can come in now!’ He gazed impassively at the flag, still gripped in the colour-sergeant’s dead hands where he had planted it in a sandbagged emplacement even as he fell.

Jonathan saw the carefully dug defences suddenly laid bare by the signal flare.
Only the dead lie here
. As they had on that other ridge. He turned as Waring said, ‘Better have a look round before the general gets here, what?’ He gave his braying laugh. ‘The Turks don’t drink, do they? Pity!’

A deep bunker was abandoned, two lamps still showing in the gloom. Waring sat down and laid his revolver on a wooden table. ‘Not what one might expect to see here of all places, what?’

Jonathan heard Harry Payne whistling outside the
entrance and turned to see Waring’s discovery. It was an English Bible.

He heard himself yell, ‘
No
–
don’t!
’ His voice sounded like a scream. Then Waring opened the Bible, and even as Jonathan flung himself to the ground the book exploded with a tremendous bang. Metal and fragments from the walls and table cracked around him and he heard Payne calling his name through the dense smoke, then his words were lost in deafness.

How long he lay there he could not tell. Seconds, a month? But his hearing was returning, and when he moved his body very slightly there was no stab of agony.

Someone brought a light and he retched as he saw Waring, still slumped at the punctured and splintered table. The front of his uniform was shining red in the lamplight. Jonathan felt Payne holding him even as he was trying to drag himself away.

I command now
. It was like a hammer beating out the words in his brain. Waring was still sitting here. But he was headless.

Boots clattered in the entrance, and an army lieutenant-colonel stared past them at the hideous corpse as if he thought it was a trick of the light.

Then he said slowly, ‘You can fall back and rest your men, Major. We’ve been reinforced. After what you did . . .’ He could not go on. He tore his eyes from the corpse. ‘Lose many?’

Sergeant-Major McCann called from outside, ‘Seventy, sir!’

The army officer was staring at Jonathan.

‘Was he a friend of yours?’

Jonathan wiped his eyes with a dirty handkerchief. ‘Hardly that. Always making remarks about my family’s decorations. Well, he’ll get a Victoria Cross for what he just did. He’d like that.’ He pushed outside in the gathering darkness, which came so suddenly here, and was glad his young marines could barely see his face, or know how near he had been to breaking down completely.

The other officer offered helpfully, ‘I’ll detail some men to take your wounded back with you.’

He shook his head. ‘The Royal Marines take care of their own.’ And for one wild moment he thought he could hear Waring’s last braying laugh.

At the end of a week’s fighting the forces landed at Anzac and Suvla managed to join their line. But that was as far as it went, and no further advances could be made in the face of fanatical Turkish opposition. The marines had grown dazed and depressed by the savage change of circumstances. To the soldiers in general there came a hopelessness which made every elusive objective unimportant.

There was so much stupidity, so much incompetence. Men driven half-mad with thirst wandered down to the beach from the firing-line, oblivious apparently to the real risk of snipers and shrapnel fired from inland. The water lighters lay close to the beach, but nobody had considered supplying any receptacles so that when water was pumped ashore from the lighters the men found they were expected to direct a hose of some four inches in diameter into water bottles with quarter-inch holes at the
spout. More water was wasted than drunk, and some of the thirst-maddened infantry, their blackened tongues hanging out like dead men’s, hacked holes in the hoses and drank deeply rather than stand in an endless queue.

And the dying who lay out in the open all day could neither be reached nor treated. Not even a Red Cross flag could save the stretcher-bearers from the many hidden marksmen.

Into September, the weather already showing signs of deteriorating. Advance, gain a few yards at a terrible price only to lose the blood-soaked land in the next enemy counter-attack. And at each dawn they could see the same span of the Anafarta Hills, as far away as they had been on that first morning.

By the end of the month Jonathan wondered how much longer the bloody stalemate could continue before a decision was made to evacuate the peninsula. Even in these bitter days there were those who found the time to censor every letter that the disheartened troops tried to send home, and he was convinced that nobody in England knew the true situation here. Perhaps nobody cared.

The battalion was reduced almost by half, either dead or wounded, and on every front it was the same. It was rumoured that Sir Ian Hamilton was to be recalled, and another general sent out in his place. Nobody knew any more how many had been killed or wounded. There were so many different units, so many nationalities. Even Maoris had been thrown into the cauldron of war.

On the first day of October, less than six months after the first landings at Anzac and Cape Helles when all
their naval guardians had been there to protect an army, Jonathan was slumped in the command dugout, still dazed from an attack the previous night. On the left flank the infantry had beaten the Turks back, and had charged on to retake some high ground which had already changed hands a dozen times.

A Royal Engineers signals section, wearing their familiar blue and white brassards, were sharing the line with the remaining marines, and one dashed into the dugout. ‘One of the ships has opened fire on that ridge, sir!’

Jonathan stared at him. Like that last time and all the others when shells had fallen short, or been fired by mistake at their own men.

He ran to the field-telephone but the soldier said, ‘Cut, sir. Won’t work. I daren’t send a linesman down there with all this lot going on.’

It might have happened to his own men. He snatched up a pair of yellow and red semaphore flags and saw Lieutenant Maxted staring at him, while Payne put down his rifle as if to protest.

Without waiting for events to change his mind he climbed over the rear of the trench and said harshly, ‘Fire a flare! Any bloody kind you’ve got left!’

Then carefully and deliberately he began to semaphore his signal to the destroyer firing over the beaches. The sea was so calm that he could see her full reflection on the water.

A signal lamp winked over the gently-moving water and all firing ceased, and with immense relief he was about to turn when a shell exploded somewhere behind
him. He was flung face down on the loose rocks, and as consciousness returned he could hear his own cries as the agony closed around him like a white-hot metal trap.

Men were holding him, but nothing made sense: Harry Payne was wiping the hair from his eyes and muttering, ‘
Please God
!
Not now!
’

He knew Maxted was kneeling beside him and wanted to tell him what to do. All the company commanders were killed. But all he could see now was his own blood, hear his breath rasping in his throat as he tried to breathe. An authoritative voice interrupted, and through the mist of agony Jonathan could vaguely make out the red tabs of the brigade major.

‘Who is in command of this battalion?’

And Lieutenant Maxted’s hoarse reply. ‘I am, sir.’

‘Give me an ’and!’ That must be Langmaid, the oafish machine-gunner. McCann was there too.

But suddenly the pain was too much, and there was only darkness.

In the weeks that followed he did not know if he would live or die; nor did he care, in those few blurred, terrifying moments of understanding. He became part of a nightmare, where the villains were the hard-eyed surgeons in their bloodied coats, and the only peace was the oblivion of drugs. He lost all sense of time, and waited only for the dreaded agony’s return to torment him: even drugs could not soften the pain of the probes that explored or reopened his wounds where shell splinters had struck him with the force of axes.

He could not recall being moved, only that he was on
some sort of ship with many others on stretchers. He had felt tears on his face, and was angry with himself when a nurse had dabbed them with a cloth.
Going home. Going home
.

But after an eternity of pain and the awakened torture when the soiled dressings were changed, he was moved again. Not into an English winter but into sunshine, where he had managed to discern palm trees.

When he recovered his senses again he was in a clean bed, and soon the surgeons came once more to examine him.

He was in the Royal Military Hospital in Cairo: a great building full of pain, where men died of their wounds or struggled to survive against the odds. Harry Payne came each day to see him, and the staff allowed him to sit beside the bed, just to reassure himself that his officer still lived.

And while Jonathan fought his fiercest battle, the war in Gallipoli drifted to a close.

Payne told him some of it. How they had made one last attempt to break through the enemy’s line. It had failed, and in four days’ fighting the army had lost another eleven thousand men, killed, maimed or simply vanished. By January a complete evacuation was carried out by the navy at night, with a mere handful of gallant defenders remaining to the end to conceal their intentions from the Turks. Then even they had been safely lifted off, and without the loss of another life the army was carried to safety.
An heroic failure
, Jonathan had heard one surgeon call it.

Payne told him that the battalion’s survivors were
being sent back to England. He was careful not to mention that when the ships had lifted the troops to safety, they had left behind that other army of a quarter of a million souls: the army of the dead.

In February Jonathan took his first steps, cheered by an unknown soldier with only one arm.

In March the matron came to see him where he sat staring out of a window; he had been watching an army officer who had spent the entire morning saluting his own shadow on the wall. There must be thousands like him.

She said severely to Payne, ‘Get this officer’s kit ready.’ Then she rested one hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. ‘We need the bed.’

She softened very slightly. In her work neither compassion nor hope came easily, but she had been the only one who had expected him to live. She said, ‘Major Blackwood is being taken to the ship.’ She saw his emotion and added, ‘Now you
are
going home.’

Eventually he said, but only to himself, ‘In time for the spring.’

It was over.

The overloaded train gave a great shudder and came to a halt, steam spewing over the edge of the platform to hang motionless on the damp, bitter air. Major Jonathan Blackwood rubbed some condensation from the window with his greatcoat sleeve and looked for the name of the station. It was a slow train from Southampton, stopping at every halt, and sometimes redirected into sidings to allow the progress of more important ones.