Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (2 page)

The hatches of the beetle boat were open, but
the light armor that covered the small landing ship made it more difficult for
the men to board in the dark. Several of the troops fell into the warm
Mediterranean water. Inside the boat, the men were packed shoulder-to-shoulder
and remained steadfastly silent in total darkness. They were new recruits,
trained but unsure how they would withstand the early morning landing under
fire. They stood with their rucksacks and rifles and pith helmets, and stared
out through the hatches at the starry night sky as the boat began to chug
towards the shoreline. Before them, a curtain of artillery fire erupted up on
the ridges surrounding the bay, flashing like lightning and sending red hot
shards of metal soaring into the air.

No chains or mines or other obstructions in the
bay slowed their approach. Slowing down would have only made them ready targets
for the Turkish artillery on the ridges above. The light armor that covered the
boat provided no protection against those larger shells. Several other
companies had already landed and assembled on the narrow beach, and the
tak-tak-tak-tak-tak
of machine gun fire could be heard even farther off as the first British troops
reached the enemy defenses. The sounds of battle grew louder as the boat
approached the shore. “Speed is the key,” their commander had told them. “Move
forward; clear out the enemy positions.” That was the plan to encircle the
Turkish troops on the Gallipoli peninsula and get all the way across the
peninsula.

The troops, “Tommys” as the enlisted men called
themselves, could also hear a booming artillery battle away to the south – a
diversionary action intended to draw the Turkish forces away from the main
landing at Suvla Bay on the northwest corner of the peninsula. Great fires were
burning to the south and lit the sky like daylight, but the troops could not
know if it was the Turkish-held trenches aflame or the British battleships or
both. They tried not to see the flashes of light which erupted in their
peripheral vision or hear the sharp whistling noises streaking through the sky
in their own direction. Shell bursts, muffled under water, erupted around their
landing ships like geysers, and the roar of the British artillery was
deafening.

One very young, fair-haired man on the beetle
boat wore the three diamond insignia of the rank of Captain on his perfectly
tailored khaki uniform. Nervously, he rubbed the grip on his Webley service
revolver and stole glances at his new Lieutenant, who was pressed uncomfortably
against his side.

“Did I understand correctly, Lieutenant, you
were recently at Ypres, in Belgium?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s right, Sir,” said the dark and
scowling Lieutenant, turning to the Captain beside him.

“I am awfully grateful to have an experienced
man in the company.” He noticed that the Lieutenant, even though he was an
officer, carried a rifle and field knife as well as a revolver, and the Captain
suddenly felt rather inadequate with his revolver alone – and his whistle. He
had a whistle. Good Lord what was he thinking? The Captain leaned in
conspiratorially to the Lieutenant and added quietly: “Say, it wouldn’t be
improper for me to come to you for advice from time to time, would it?”

“If you like, Sir.”

“I don’t suppose old Abdul will be as difficult
to manage as the Huns, eh?”

“He’s done alright so far, hasn’t he?”

Even the Captain had to agree that the Ottoman
Turkish army had done a very competent job of stopping the three month old
Allied offensive on the peninsula. After the Turks had closed the Dardanelles
in October of 1914, Britain and France had begun naval operations to reopen the
straights. Those efforts had ended in disaster in March after several British
ships were sunk by mines and artillery fire. The British Admiralty, with
British and French troops and the ANZACs, the Australian and New Zealand Army
Corps, had then launched the offensive on the Gallipoli peninsula in late
April. The offensive had not gone as expected. There had been no appreciable
progress across the peninsula, especially when one considered that the
Admiralty’s master plan had the troops marching up the peninsula and into
Constantinople by now. Just before they had left Egypt for Suvla Bay, the
Captain and the other troops on the beetle boats had read the newspaper reports
which had finally revealed how the campaign at Gallipoli had come to a dead
standstill. The situation was eerily reminiscent of the entrenched stalemate on
the Western Front in France and Belgium, and the number of allied casualties
was a terrible embarrassment. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston
Churchill, had already been removed from his post. But the new troops had joked
that all their Commander-in-Chief needed was a few really ruthless bastards to
cut into the Turks.

The troops in the beetle boats that day had not
received their orders from Sir Ian Hamilton, the Commander-in-Chief of the
Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. Instead, they were commanded by Lieutenant
General Sir Frederick Stopford, an elderly commander with very little battle
experience. Stopford had been selected by the Earl Kitchener specifically for
the Suvla Bay offensive. The surprise landing on the Turkish northern flank at
Gallipoli was intended to bring the attack to the rear of the Turkish forces,
thus encircling the enemy and leaving an undefended path to Constantinople
before the Allied troops. Everyone knew that Constantinople was the key. Capturing
the Ottoman capital would knock Turkey out of the war, clear the route through
the Dardanelles to re-supply the flagging Russian Empire, and open a new front
line against the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires that would draw troops
away from the Eastern and Western Fronts. If they succeeded, the war would
surely be over in the first months of 1916!

The Captain and the men in the beetle boat had
trained for the landing ahead, but they were all new enlistments fresh from six
months’ training at Brackenber Moor near Kendal and four weeks more at
Alexandria in Egypt. Still, many of them had combat experience of a different
kind. Some of the men had come from cities in Ireland and some from the poorest
streets of Manchester, and others were trade union men from the factories and
were used to knocking heads. Every one of them was eager to kill the “Turks” on
the ridges before them.

The company sergeants were experienced men, of
a sort:  Most had fought in the Boer Wars many years earlier. Conversely,
their acting commanding officer, Captain James Wilkins, had only just
celebrated his nineteenth birthday. He was the youngest British officer serving
in the Mediterranean. Of course, it was obvious to the Tommys that Captain
Wilkins must have achieved his rank through connections rather than merit since
he was the youngest son of Lord Bartlett and a recent graduate of Eton (albeit
the top student and a King’s Scholar there). At least, they thought, Wilkins
stood head and shoulders above his immediate subordinate, Lieutenant Charles
Keeling. Keeling was nearly always tight and far too chummy, and it didn’t make
him a good officer. And finally there was the other Lieutenant, the new fellow,
Gresham. True, he was the one man in the company who had previously fought in
the front lines: He had been with the Lancashire Fusiliers in the trenches in
France and had fought at Ypres; he’d been at Gravenstafel Ridge when the
Germans had first used poison gas on the lines, and he’d even seen action at
the Suez Canal. But Gresham was surly and quiet, the other officers clearly
didn’t like him, and no one knew what to expect from him once the attack began.

Captain Wilkins was again shoved rudely against
Lieutenant Gresham on the beetle boat, adding to his anxiety and dread over the
landing now just seconds ahead. “Of course, I was disappointed when Major
Davenport fell ill,” Wilkins said, looking out the corner of his eye to see if
Gresham was listening. “He should be here to command the company, not me. . . .
I only just received our orders this evening and barely had a moment to glance
at the maps, you see.”

Gresham could not think of a gentlemanly
response to these revelations, so he kept his mouth shut and focused his eyes
on the shoreline. Gresham had served under a number of incompetent and
inexperienced officers and knew how dangerous they could be. Gresham was also a
young man, only twenty-two years old; he was shorter and stockier than most of
the men in the company, and he generally avoided conversation. He knew the other
officers distrusted him and criticized him constantly:  Gresham’s straggly
coal black hair was too long, his chin was never freshly shaved, his mustache
was grossly untrimmed and filthy; and, worst of all, he was the bastard son of
a very wealthy Manchester industrialist. Wilkins beside him was by contrast the
quintessential British officer:  Fair-haired, perfectly clean cut,
well-educated, and the cream of British nobility. It was surprising that
Wilkins wasn’t yet in charge of the whole damn regiment, Gresham thought.

The beetle boat chugged noisily on. Captain
Wilkins nervously recited his orders in his head:  Take the company north
up the Kiretch Tepe ridge, capture the guns, proceed east along the ridge and
then swing south to rendezvous with companies from the Ninth at the cemetery
behind the village there. But now he couldn’t remember the name of the village
– if he had only spent more time with the maps! Colonel Banks had told him it
was simply a matter of “overwhelming” the Turkish soldiers; the British Ninth
and Tenth Divisions would easily encircle the enemy troops on the peninsula,
and then it would be clear marching all the way to Constantinople. Wilkins
prayed it would all be as easy as Colonel Banks had made it sound.

Gresham stood by a hatch and looked at the
beach ahead; he felt slightly nauseous, but that was only due to the thick
black smoke venting from the boat’s engine. He knew what to expect ahead and
was focused and at ease. The shore was beginning to turn grey in the pre-dawn
light. Many beetle boats had already offloaded troops at the shoreline, and
some were already headed back with the first casualties. A handful of troops
lay dead on the rocks and bobbed in the water. As Gresham looked, an explosive
shell landed in the midst of a pack of India mules that had been brought onto
the narrow beachhead. As if in slow motion, the animals flew apart – their
heads, vitals, and limbs flying outward in every direction. A few men standing
nearby were knocked flat by the concussion and covered with bloody gore.
Gresham had seen scenes of slaughter like those awaiting them on the peninsula.
At Ypres, he had spent weeks rotating in and out of the trenches, scouting in
No-Man’s-Land, growing slowly accustomed to the stench and gore and wet. In the
trenches he learned that although it was costly to advance, it was far, far
worse to stand still. To stay in one location meant a certain slow death from
snipers, random artillery, gassing, disease, exposure, and, most of all, the
ruthlessness of ignorant and ambitious officers. He had become inured to the
sight of corpses and bloody wounds and the sweet, rancid smell of the dead. To
stop moving and lay still among the dead drained the life and purpose from a
soldier. It was a sensation that Gresham knew the Generals in their bunkers in
the rear would never understand.

           
Suddenly a shell squarely hit one of the other beetle boats nearby. The
explosion, blinding flash and flying chunks of steel panicked the men in
Wilkins’ boat. They all tried to duck down at once – an impossibility since the
boat was so crowded. Even Gresham turned his head away. The men could hear the
shouting and cries from the struck boat, and a murmur to get out of their boat
swept through the troops. The struck boat then demonstrated another reason why
the small lightly armored landing ships were known as “beetles” – it suddenly
flipped over onto its heavy steel top and instantly silenced the dozens of men
aboard in the warm, dark water.

The air was now filled with shells whining
overhead. There was a constant but irregular
tink
,
tink
,
tonk
as shell fragments glanced off the boat’s light armor. At last Wilkins’ boat
hit the rocks and ground to a stop a few yards from the shore. The entire front
of the boat slammed down into the water.

           
“Get out!” Wilkins screamed. “Get out of the boat! Forward now, men. Get out!”
He blew his whistle furiously. As a mass, the men pushed forward into the
shallow water. Two troops in front suddenly exploded, hit by chunks of shrapnel
from an artillery shell. A third man was wounded on the shoulder and he pushed
back into the troops behind him. He fell, and the rest scrambled in panic right
over him and into the red-stained water. Wilkins was still shouting, trying to
contain the shrill anxiety in his own voice. The troops were eager to get up to
the beach and away from the boat. Two more fell in the water and another on the
rocky shore as shrapnel shells burst above them. The shore was littered with
chunks of metal and wounded men and pockmarked by blackened shell craters.

           
Wilkins quickly glanced around to identify their position. “Goddamn it, we’re
in entirely the wrong place! We should be at the other end of the cove,” he
shouted to no one in particular. “Dunham, Hart, assemble the men and march them
to the north end of the bay. Gresham, you stay with me; Keeling, you bring up
the rear.” The Sergeants immediately got to work shouting at the Tommys to form
up. Gresham could see that the heaviest of the Turkish artillery fire was now
directed at the ships, and since the Turkish snipers near the shore had mostly
withdrawn to defensive positions, they were relatively sheltered for the
moment. The sergeants screamed at the troops from several of the beetle boats
to form up and march. It was less than a mile to Suvla Point at the northern
end of the cove, but the ritual of forming lines and marching, which was all
the raw troops really knew how to do, was reassuringly familiar.