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On Dangerous Ground Page 9
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‘What can you see, Roy, because I can’t see anything.’ Roy reached for the matches in his pocket and struck a flash of phosphorus in the darkness. ‘Well, it’s deep, Elsie, I can tell you that much.’
‘Of course, it’s deep. The guidebook says the burial chamber of Cheops is the deepest and best concealed of all the pyramids.’
‘What d’ya reckon he’s hiding from then?’
Elsie playfully pushed Roy a little deeper into the darkness.
‘We won’t get much further than this. Here, I’ll get one of the guides to fetch a lantern.’ Outside, a crowd of Egyptians in flowing white gowns fumbled to produce an assortment of lamps, wicks and candles from nowhere.
‘No,’ Elsie whispered, ‘let’s just wait a minute; let’s just rest here.’
Elsie sat on a block of stone and drew Roy down towards her. An age ago the stone blocked the entrance of the tomb, now it sat still in the dust, fanned by the cool air rising from deep below. Elsie took a deep breath. The air smelt of the Katoomba caves she’d visited as a child; silent, quiet, secretive places.
‘Thank God it’s cooler here. That sun is punishing.’
Roy noticed the thin film of perspiration that drew the young nurse’s uniform closer to her body. She was a small woman, what his mother might have called petite but her figure curled with a beauty young men craved, small firm breasts exquisite to imagine. Elsie carefully removed her hat pin, then her hat and finally with a sharp tug of a ribbon, let her hair tumble out around her shoulders. She knew he was watching her. Sometimes a gaze can be as tender as an embrace – and as earnest.
For a moment, the two sat there, enjoying the silence as they had so often done before, thankful for an end to the bruising journey on camels across the sands. Elsie allowed her hand to fall softly to her side. The young officer shuffled a little close on the stone. Now their bodies were touching.
‘We could go back to the Mena. They do a splendid tea you know.’ Indeed they did. The Mena Hotel catered for tourists fleeing the squalor of Cairo for the wonders of antiquity. It squatted there in the sands, shadowed by the pyramids, vast, ornate and almost as impressive. The Mena was barely a mile from the tomb of Cheops where the couple now sat and only twenty minutes’ hurried ride from Irwin’s AIF encampment. For almost a century it had dispensed ice tea to hot English tourists, mixed cocktails in palm-lined gardens, hosted balls in the moonlight, and now all its splendours were at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government.
‘Wouldn’t it be a bit crowded?’ Irwin didn’t want to share Elsie’s company with anyone.
‘I expect so, British officers have taken to calling there – ever since it became a base for Australian nurses.’
‘Oh, have they?’ There was a hint of jealousy in his voice. It wasn’t hard to imagine the English elite with their immaculate uniforms and their smooth purring voices descending on Mena, charming women like Elsie.
‘No you don’t need to worry, really, Roy. They just seem pompous to me, pompous and narrow-minded. Most of the girls look out for Australian company. Besides...’ Elsie smiled, looking like a pixie full of mischief, ‘...Australian troops are so much better paid.’
She nudged him again and found herself nestling in his arms. With the caution of every young love, Roy bent down and buried a soft uncertain kiss in her hair. Elsie lifted her head and their lips and desire came together. They could hear their hearts pounding in that cool quiet place. Every breath tingled with ecstasy.
They remained there for an hour. Their eyes dimmed by yearning gradually adjusted to the shadows. A shape seemed to move towards them.
***
As Lt Irwin neared the Turkish trench, the crack of a rifle followed by a cry came up from the darkness. The young soldier lunged forward, ‘You bloody fool, Clement, put your weapon away – it might be one of our blokes.’
The bloodied face of an Ottoman soldier watched as Irwin and his men crept towards him.
Five
Dawn Will Be Theirs
we would land in daylight and the deathly blaze of battle...
Ellis Silas, ‘The Landing’, Crusading at Anzac Anno Domini 1915, British-Australasian, London, 1916.
Anzac Cove: Remembering the Landing, 1915/1919
For me, as for all of us, the day of the landing began early. At five minutes past midnight, the first of the Allied destroyers pulled away from the island of Lemnos. Her engines strained as she took up her load. I counted as many as 200 vessels in the Allied fleet. Most had boats and barges trailing behind them. We turned northeast against a light wind, towards the straits of the Dardanelles some sixty miles distant.
The night of 25 April was quiet and cool and the sea as smooth as satin. A crescent moon hung high in the sky, teasing bronze light across the water. It bathed the ship and its cargo in an eerie blue, tinging men’s faces with a luminous glow, exposing lustrous bodies. I shuddered as I looked down at ghost-like forms littered over the deck. It was as if the night had already claimed them. I pulled out my pipe and matches from the pockets of my greatcoat. Cupping my hand against the wind, I struck a fizzing red light and blinked at its brightness. It was like a signal to a hundred bodies huddled around me. One after another, flickers of light pierced the darkness. The night air billowed with smoke and phosphorus. They sat there, nursing little red flames, or cursing as the wind stole it from them. I smiled quietly to myself: British stock hardened ’neath the suns of home. Dawn would be theirs.
Conversation broke out. The nervous chatter of men destined for battle. Mindful of the history about to happen, I jotted down words in the darkness. Above us stars shone like hard diamonds in the sky. Glistening. Listening.
‘Whatcha thinkin’, mate? Gone all quiet on me.’ One soldier asked another.
‘Well, I’ve been wondering.’ The second man paused, with a larrikin’s feel for emphasis. ‘What do you reckon it’ll be,’ he paused again ‘...for breakfast, I mean. Porridge or kippers?’
‘Bloody Bully more like...’ Another of the hunched figures spoke, ‘...with stewed tea and Peek Frean’s wooden biscuit.’
The men laughed, grateful for the distraction. Then another spoke. It was a coarse voice, old, grim, portentous: ‘For me, it’ll be dead Turk, raw and red, twisted slowly on me bayonet.’
But the younger man returned to his theme. ‘Now that’s a pity,’ he spoke in a thick Irish brogue, ‘I was just acquiring a taste for the Bully.’ The larrikin turned his peak hat to the side, ‘Here now, do you think I’d pass as an Englishman, a Tommy?’ Laughter again.
For a time I caught what sleep I could, dozing off amidst the groan of the ship’s engines. But this was a night too good to miss. Excitement bristled like an electric current all around me. At around 3.00am, I stepped from my cabin and watched the dark shapes of warships glide by the velvet mountains of Imbros. Then I picked my way through those restless bundles slumped on the deck and took a place by the ship’s railings.
There was a rough democracy there. Sailors, soldiers and officers alike leant on the ship’s side, watching the night and the water, each man lost in his thoughts, each anxious for the morrow. They had come at last to face the ancient test of war – all feared they might fail it.
‘It’ll be just like Lt Irwin said,’ an accent from north Queensland drawled, ‘an easy beach we’ve got, a fair way from the fort. We’ll put ’em in their place, we will.’
I had heard that boast a dozen times already.
‘We’ll meet up with the Tommies, knock out them forts and the whole bloomin’ fleet can sail down to Constantinople. No worries, eh, Jack? No worries.’
But there were. I gazed across the darkness. A white light pierced the horizon. It swept the straits of the narrows for intruders. I listened to the voices around me.
‘Our blokes, d’ya reckon, Bluey?’
‘Not bloody likely.’
I noted the blunt economy of words characteristic of a bushman. I watched as Bluey spat a lump of chewed tobacco at
the sea, and straightened his hat as if ready to mount a brumby. His hair was even redder than mine. I smiled. Little wonder they called him Bluey.
‘Nothing to be alarmed about, men. They’re Turkish searchlights on the narrows, looking out for any run by the destroyers. We’re headed straight for the coast, there’ll be the whole peninsula between us.’ The young lieutenant spoke in a loud clear voice, summoning the confidence that would mark him a man and an officer. It was a role Lt Irwin had little time to grow into. Even as he spoke, the first rim of dawn gathered on the skyline. Men narrowed their eyes and imagined distant beaches. I looked just as keenly at the young officer’s face – braced for the shocks of war.
Almost an hour passed. The night ebbed away as light blistered the horizon. I glanced at my watch – 4.25am. The men of the Third Brigade would already be landing, stumbling from their boats and climbing the grey hills ahead of us. Our turn would be next. Already the transport had taken its place beside three others, flanked by a destroyer and a host of smaller vessels. As the engines slowed I made out another sound – a distant hollow tapping, as if someone held a small wooden box and drummed it time and time again with the end of a pencil. First slow and irregular, then heavy and continuous. It took only a second for me to realise it was the clatter of rifles blazing from the shoreline.
I scanned the line of soldiers standing beside me. The lieutenant and his company looked expectantly to the shore, transfixed by the early sounds of the first battle. Every man was now awake and alert. Hundreds of crumpled silent bodies took up a place on the fo’c’sle forward, breathing heavily as they gazed across the water. To the south a small flash suddenly appeared. Then a clap of thunder. As it died away a shrill whiz took its place. It grew louder and louder as it flew towards us. The pitch of the sound suddenly changed. Then a flash in the air a quarter of a mile away, a deafening bang and a sound strangely like rain as spinning pellets splintered water. Shrapnel. ‘These blokes look serious,’ bellowed the larrikin. I could see young Bluey was shaking.
The destroyers were not long in replying. I had never heard a sound so terrible. One warship after another spat fire and smoke towards the shore. The vibrations buffeted the transports from side to side and the water, smooth as satin an hour before, was slashed by turbulence. The first boats had landed without covering fire, hoping to steal some element of surprise from the enemy that had long expected them. But we would land in daylight and the deathly blaze of battle.
Another broadside fired and I noticed an oval object floating lamely through the water. It drifted towards us, silent, broken, without a hand to guide it. As the white side turned in the transport’s wake, I recognised it. An upturned boat, its cargo lost somewhere on the beaches. To my left, a destroyer was taking on its first load of wounded. Blood flowed across the lower deck like the floor of an abattoir. I turned away. Like every other man that day, I would look only to the shoreline.
The warships were firing every ten seconds now. In between, I could hear the rattle of musketry. It seemed to echo in the pit of my stomach. Then an order barked out across the deck. ‘All right men; take your places.’
By then a destroyer had come in beside the transport, its grey funnels fuming. The ship’s engine roared as it made ready to run for the shore. The young lieutenant was the first over the side, his body swinging on a rope ladder linking one vessel to another. In all, a hundred men of the Second Brigade slipped down to the ship beneath them. Rifle bands cut into their shoulders and eighty-pound packs pulled one way then the other. Men cursed as they pounded against the hard metal; some fell into the arms of mates waiting to receive them. From the deck of the transport, men cried ‘good luck’ to troops massing beneath them. There was no cheering after that, no bravado. Those above knew they were soon to follow.
I was among the last to scurry down the rope ladder and onto the deck of the destroyer. For a moment I clutched an iron rail to steady myself, then I swung my body over the destroyer’s side and landed with a thud into the longboat moored beside it. As the boat filled with men and equipment, it slipped back toward the stern of the vessel. A sailor, a sturdy Jack Tar, secured a thick rope to the warship. Next, he tightly wrapped the rope around first the boat and then his body.
‘All ready, sir, that’s the last of them.’
Slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed, the warship pulled away from the transport. The sailor on the longboat’s bow let the rope curl and tense around him. It seemed an impossible task, finding a place among the twenty boats that trailed the destroyer, riding just beyond the wake, avoiding the fierce wash of the engines. He shouted out against the spray.
‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll get you there.’
Our boat boomed against the water. As the speed increased, the ride became more dangerous. Twice the small craft was almost swamped in the wash, its helmsman buffeted by one wave after another. Still he clung to his post. He had little option. To loosen his grip would have tumbled us all into the sea. And so, like Kipling’s boy on a blazing deck, my sailor sternly stood there. The destroyer sped across the sea. There was to be no turning back. Not for anyone.
I wiped the spray from my eyes. I could just make out a beach less than a mile wide and a line of boats littered beside it. A sense of foreboding rose up inside me. It wasn’t supposed to look like that. The shore was too narrow, the boats too cluttered and chaotic. Thousands of men had already landed there. Many lay there still, an indifferent tide tugging at their bodies. Then the destroyer reeled and turned. Shrapnel scattered around us. Forty men to a boat, 200 yards to the shoreline. Men pulled on heavy wooden oars knowing their lives depended on it.
The journey from ship to shore was the longest I have ever made. I counted each stroke of the oars as they rose and fell dripping with water. Around me men prayed, shivered, gasped each breath as if it were their last. The cliffs of Gallipoli rose up before us, steep, sharp, unforgiving.
Some of the landing craft had missed the beach altogether. They skirted the shore just north of us, well within the range of Turkish machine guns. For almost twenty minutes, a fusillade riddled the boats, splintering the wood, mauling men’s bodies. As our party laboured on towards the beach, the boats were still drifting, trailing a pool of blood behind them. I had seen death before: in the bush when mates fell from their horses; at home on soiled bed sheets; from disease, age and injury. But I had never imagined death like this. Young men thrashing at themselves and the sea, a hundred men lost in an instant with a thousand there to witness it. I tried to remember Gordon at Khartoum, Nelson at Trafalgar, heroic deaths, the stuff of Empire. A ripple of fire danced across the water. A death in battle was really nothing like that.
And then the shore was upon us. Pellets of shrapnel scattered in the shingle. As the boat slid across the pebbles, men leapt up from their places. A few fell face-down in the water, overbalanced by heavy packs, exhausted by fear and tension. But most ran towards the cliffs that faced us.
‘C’mon lad, let’s be away with you,’ the seaman leant forward, and shook the soldier seated behind him. I noticed that the peak hat was turned to its side, and thought for just a moment that the larrikin was still jesting. But the young man’s body slumped down in the space between the seats, his face washed red. Glassy eyes stared back at me. Paddy had gone to God and no wake would sing his passing.
‘Leave it, sir!’ the sailor’s hand barred my way as I reached towards the body. ‘There’s naught to be done...’ The crash of a shell clipped his words, ‘You’d best get off with your company.’ In the brittle light of early morning, a Jack Tar had mistaken me for an officer. And in the gullies and ridges above us, officers made mistakes that would cost the Allies the landing.
‘Do you remember where you came ashore then?’
Lambert has let me stare a good twenty minutes at the sea before he breaks the silence. The wind bites at his words and spits them back against the ridges.
‘I say, Skipper, do you remember where you came ashore?’<
br />
It was something I was never likely to forget. ‘Over here, George, I’m pretty sure it was here. It’s odd you know ... the beach looks even smaller.’
‘Well, Charley, that’s what they say.’ Lambert’s voice bellows with an almost unseemly confidence, ‘An empty house looks smaller than a furnished one and there is nothing here now, is there?’ But neither of us believe that. The water clatters on the shore, as if it is trying to speak to us.
We take shelter by an old condenser corroding into the sea. Lambert reaches for a flask buried deep in his pocket and for a pretext, any pretext, to leave that brooding beach behind us. ‘I say, Bean, what’s become of Vickers? Where’s that boy got to?’
I look back up towards the gullies. ‘I expect I know where we can find him.’
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015
Barely a week after the Inquiry had opened, Mark found himself back in Melbourne, standing once again on the steps of the state library. As always he was one of the first to arrive. To his left, spaced between tall Corinthian columns, stood all the usual suspects: students, family historians, academics on sabbatical and young backpackers keen to check their email. To his right, a statue of St George charged defiantly towards a Swanston Street tram, leaving the last of Melbourne’s dragons crippled and bleeding behind him. Further up the street, modern apartment blocks as cold and grey as steel, and probably as comfortable, pushed the city skyward. In the opposite direction, Melbourne’s Shrine squatted on the Domain, a hybrid of Greek Pantheon and Egyptian pyramid, positioned to be seen beyond the furthermost reach of the tramlines, a monument that demanded remembrance. A long-term resident, Mark knew pockets of Melbourne still lived steadfastly in the past; the southern capital lurching between the classics and modernity. On the side of a nineteenth-century smog-tarred building, an ancient billboard shouted to passers-by, Join the Druids. Mark wondered if the young goth slumped at the base of the column had considered conversion.