Passions of War (15 page)

They travelled by train, first to Nis, where they spent the night, and then on to Kragujevac, and all through the journey Leo was beset by contrary emotions. First she was reminded of the last time she had passed that way, sitting between Ralph and Tom, wearing the dowdy dress her brother had bought in Salonika to replace her boy's breeches and tunic, all three of them too angry and shocked to talk. But then she became aware of the beauty of the countryside: the green hillsides and deep pastures, the orchards awash with cherry and plum blossom, the storks sitting on their nests on the tops of chimneys in the villages they passed. That recalled the drive out to the Malkovic estate when they had been invited to the family's Slava day celebrations and the garden where she and Sasha had sat and talked and she had understood for the first time that he cared as much for her as she did for him. It was that memory that she clung to as the train chugged slowly towards its destination.

Her companions teased her for her silence and her abstracted manner but she smiled and said nothing. Some of them remembered her from Lozengrad, but they had never been at Chataldzha or Adrianople and never met Sasha Malkovic.

At Kragujevac they were met by the commander of the local garrison. There was already typhus in the town, so it had been agreed that the hospital would be set up on a small hill outside. They had brought specially made tents with them and a detachment of soldiers from the garrison was detailed to put them up. By the following day they were ready to receive their first cases.

As soon as she had the opportunity Leo asked one of the officers for news from the front line. He was cheerfully optimistic. It seemed the Austrians, who had been badly mauled during their last attempt to invade, were thinking twice about trying again. Besides, they now had a Russian invasion on their eastern border to deal with. The Serbian army was encamped along the border, ready to repel any further incursions, but everyone was hopeful that the danger was past.

‘The only worry is the Bulgarians,' her informant explained. ‘So far, they have stayed neutral but if the Germans can persuade them to come in on the side of the Central Powers we shall have a real fight on our hands.'

As casually as possible, Leo inquired for news of Colonel Count Aleksander Malkovic, whom she had met during a previous visit to Belgrade. He was with his regiment, she was told, on the border and, as far as anyone knew, in good health. Leo thanked the officer and made an excuse to hurry away, so that he would not see the relief on her face.

Ten

Eight days after Leo's arrival at Kragujevac Luke Pavel stood on the deck of the ship that had brought him from Egypt and gazed across at the dun-coloured cliffs and snaking ravines of the Gallipoli peninsula.

‘Looks a pretty godforsaken sort of territory, Sergeant,' the young officer beside him remarked.

‘Too right, sir!' Luke responded. ‘There isn't enough vegetation to feed a goat up there.'

‘You sound as if you know it.'

‘I do. But last time I was here I was up there, trying to push the Turks into the sea, instead of down here trying to get at them from the beaches.'

‘What the hell were you doing?'

‘Working as a stretcher-bearer for the Bulgarians.'

‘What made you want to do that, for Christ's sake?'

Luke was beginning to explain when his companion interrupted.

‘Hold up! Looks like the Aussies are on the move.'

Luke watched as the first troop transports headed for the shore. The beach appeared undefended but beyond it the cliffs rose steeply and as the first men landed they were cut down by merciless fire from above. Soon the beach and the shallow water along it were choked with bodies and the beach itself was a chaos of milling men as more and more transports discharged their cargoes. Groups of men ran for the narrow ravines that carved through the cliffs and Luke saw that once there they had some shelter from the fusillade and that they were beginning to work their way upwards towards a ridge that resembled, from his angle, the trunk of a sleeping elephant. The objective, he knew, was to gain the heights above it, but he knew, too, how broken and contorted the landscape was, and how easy it would be to lose all sense of direction. He licked dry lips and swallowed. The Turkish defence was more determined than they had been led to expect and there was no artillery support from their own side. He knew it would be his turn to join the melee soon.

He had to wait until four thirty that afternoon and by that time the landing craft had to push through a tangle of floating bodies to reach the beach. Small craft full of wounded surged around them, begging the sailors to take the casualties on board. As soon as his feet touched firm ground Luke ran for the shelter of the cliffs. He had fixed his eyes on a ravine that seemed from the sea to lead inland and shouted to his companions to follow him. The gully was choked with undergrowth, all of it sharp with thorns designed, it seemed, to catch at clothes and boots, but here they were out of the line of fire and Luke scrambled upwards, the others following. At the top the ravine opened out on to a narrow ridge and Luke turned left, heading still for the higher ground. Some yards further on they came upon a company of Australians, sheltering behind rocks from sniper fire. Luke looked around him and realized that there were no officers in sight.

‘What's going on, lads?' he asked breathlessly.

‘Search me,' one responded. ‘We were told to follow this ridge but there's no shelter from here on and the ragheads are well dug in up at the top.'

Luke peered round the rocks and ducked back as a bullet whistled past his head. The Australian was right. To press on was to court certain death.

A runner stumbled up the track behind them. ‘Change of orders. This way is too exposed. You're to rendezvous with Captain Fraser's lot over there, on the parallel ridge.'

Between the two ridges was a deep valley. Somehow they scrambled down into it, but once there they lost sight of the ridge they were aiming for and found themselves wandering in a maze of gullies that ended in unscalable cliffs. By the time Luke and a small group of New Zealanders finally reached the ridge the sun was low in the west and they had lost contact with the rest of the men. Once again, they began to climb towards the summit, keeping low and taking advantage of every scrap of cover from the Turkish riflemen on the hills above.

In a brief lull in the fighting Luke heard another sound, the clatter of loose stones from ahead of him.

‘Wait!' He waved the men following to stop and they crouched in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. The noise came closer. He could hear boots striking rocks and men panting. Several people were heading in his direction, but were they friends or foes? Then someone slipped and he heard a very recognizable expletive.

‘Shit!'

Luke raised his head and called, ‘Don't shoot! We're the Wellingtons. Who are you?'

There was a stunned pause, then a voice came back: ‘Bloody Kiwis! What the fuck do you think you're playing at?'

There was a scuffle of boots and a small landslide of loose stones, and six men in Australian uniform scrambled into the shelter of the rocks.

‘What are you playing at?' Luke retorted. ‘We're supposed to be going up, not down.'

‘Good luck, mate!' was the response. ‘There's a sheer precipice a couple of hundred yards further on. The only way off this effing ridge is back down.'

It was almost dark now. Luke's throat burned with thirst and dust and he was suddenly aware of how exhausted he was. He looked at his men and saw that they were in the same condition.

‘If we try to get back in the dark we'll end up wandering round in circles or falling to our deaths. We'll rest up here for the night and start back at first light.'

The Australians decided that this was good counsel, so they all settled down in the lea of the rocks. Luke tipped the last dregs of water from his canteen down his throat and opened his emergency rations. Several of the others had already eaten theirs, so they shared what was left amongst them. With darkness the sniping from above had stopped and they could hear occasional shouts from other areas of the broken terrain. In one or two places they could see lights from torches moving, but no one came close to them. Far below, they could make out fires lit along the beach and the riding lights of the ships that had brought them.

‘What happened to your officers?' Luke asked the Aussies.

‘Captain was shot before we got across the beach,' one said. ‘Gawd alone knows what happened to the others.'

‘What a bloody shambles!' Luke grunted and there were mutters of agreement all round.

Now the sun was down it turned very cold. They huddled together for warmth and tried to sleep but none of them was sorry when the dawn came. Cautiously, Luke raised his head and peered round. Immediately a bullet whistled past his ear and ricocheted off the rock.

‘Bloody hell!' he muttered. ‘Those Turks are sharper than we reckoned.'

It was agreed that there was no point in trying to continue up the ridge, so they began to scramble back the way they had come. In the valley they met up with some of their own men under their colonel, Malone.

‘We'll try that ridge to the south,' he said. ‘I sent up a scouting party and they say it leads to a kind of plateau.'

It was the beginning of three days of hell. In that parched and desolate landscape there was neither food nor water. Twice small provisioning parties reached them, but they never carried enough water to slake the raging thirst they all suffered. In the face of unremitting fire from above they fought their way up on to the plateau and made another attempt to gain the high ground. Men fell to left and right of Luke, a bullet grazed his cheek and another ripped through his trouser leg, but he was unharmed. For two more nights he crouched with the others, shivering, and waiting for the firing to start again at dawn. Finally, on the fourth day after they landed, a runner reached them. The attack had failed, and they were to withdraw to the beachhead.

Eleven

Early in May Luke and the rest of the Wellingtons were transferred from the chaos of what had become known as Anzac Cove to another landing beach on the far side of Cape Helles, where a second beachhead had been established. Their new objective, they were informed, was the village of Krithia, which stood between them and the mountain called Achi Baba. From the top of Achi Baba, the allied forces would be able to command the Dardanelles and enable the British and French fleets to enter the Black Sea. On the day after their arrival, Luke was summoned to the tent occupied by Colonel William Malone, the Wellington's commanding officer. Luke liked Malone. He was a strong leader, who could appear domineering at times, but he understood soldiering and his men trusted him.

Malone came to the point without preamble. ‘Lieutenant Franklin tells me you've been here before.'

‘Not here, exactly, sir,' Luke replied. ‘But inland, above here. I was with the Bulgarians in 1912, when they were trying to push the Turks into the sea.'

‘In Krithia?'

‘No, sir. Krithia was always in Turkish hands.' But as he said it something flickered in Luke's memory. He had heard the name of the village before.

‘And you speak the local language. Is that so?'

‘Yes, sir. My grandparents came from near here.'

‘Could you pass for a local?'

Luke drew in his breath. Instinct told him to say ‘no', but there was a quiver of excitement in the pit of his stomach that urged otherwise. ‘Possibly, sir.'

Malone had been pacing around the tent. Now he stopped and fixed Luke with his eyes. ‘What I am asking, Pavel, is this. We desperately need more information about the Turkish dispositions. Would you be prepared to go in undercover and try to find out as much as you can about their numbers and type of armament, position of guns etc.? It's asking a lot, I know. But it could save lives when it comes to the attack.'

For a moment Luke struggled to take in what the request implied. Then he said, ‘I'll do my best, sir.'

As darkness fell, Luke, clad in rough peasant's clothing whose provenance he thought it best not to question, made his way to the forward trenches. The night was still and clear, with no moon, and the cloudless sky was brilliant with stars. As he crouched listening for any sign of movement a nightingale began to sing from somewhere above him on the hillside. The landscape was very different here from the cliffs above Anzac beach. Reconnoitring the area through glasses earlier, he had seen grassy slopes, dotted with orchids and rock roses. The village itself was set in a slight valley among mulberry and oak trees and surrounded by orchards of apricot and almonds.

Everything seemed quiet, so he hoisted himself up and wriggled on his stomach over the edge of the trench. Keeping low, he worked his way forwards until he was several hundred yards from the allied position. Then he stood up. He had decided that if he was challenged he would say he was a shepherd searching for a lost goat. He was guessing that the defending troops were not local and would not be able to recognize that he did not belong to the village. It was a gamble, but one that seemed worth taking. He kept moving up hill, pausing every now and then to listen, until he heard low voices speaking Turkish and knew that he was close to the first line of trenches. Making use of the cover provided by bushes and outcrops of rock he worked his way to his left, trying to establish how far the trench system extended. It seemed to be continuous until it ended in a steep drop into a ravine. Luke edged his way down the slope but, in spite of his care, loose stones rattled away from under his feet. Above him a voice shouted a challenge and he froze, until a second voice spoke. The tone was derisive and Luke understood enough Turkish to interpret it as ‘Relax! It's only a goat!' He stayed still until he thought the Turks would have lost interest and then crept down the last few yards. The bottom of the gully was choked with prickly undergrowth, which made progress difficult, but he managed to work his way uphill until he became aware that the head of the valley was blocked by a looming dark shape. Crouching by a rock he made out, silhouetted against the stars, a sandbagged gun emplacement.