Solomon's Song (51 page)

Numbers Cooligan, his eyes wide with terror, grabs Jolly as he’s knocked backwards by the force of a machine-gun bullet, another of which catches one of the navy rowers on the port side. The sailor slumps forward, still clutching his oar until the movement of the boat tears it from his lifeless hands. Both men are killed instantly.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Cooligan cries, then begins to sob, his hand holding the dead Jolly as though it is permanently clamped to his collar. The young naval midshipman in charge of their boat signals to Ben that it’s time to disembark into the shallow water.

‘Righto, lads, into the water, keep your eye out for me as we come ashore!’ Ben is surprised at how steady his voice sounds, for he can feel his stomach clutching in fear and Matthews’ blood sticky between the fingers of his left hand. ‘Cooligan, leave him!’ Ben shouts. ‘He’s dead. Get into the water, will yah!’

Ben makes a quick count as the men leap overboard, he is the last to leave and sees that five of his platoon plus the naval rating are slumped or have fallen. All appear to be dead for none of them moves, and the remaining fifteen of the twenty fighting men in the platoon make it into the water. Twenty yards to his left is another boat drifting helplessly, at least half of its complement dead or dying. Several of the oars are missing though two are stuck in the rowlocks, causing the boat to turn in circles. Ben jumps into the water which comes up to his waist. Shrapnel pellets send puffs of water and spray around him everywhere, the whine of bullets stings the air and the entire stretch of water running up to the beach ahead of him is plopping like sudden rain on a pond. He trails his left hand in the water, trying to wash Matthews’ blood from his hand, and is barely aware of the thunder of the guns from the battleship sending salvo after salvo into the heights where it believes the Turkish positions to be. The threshing of the water about his pumping legs is by far the greater sound. Bodies are floating everywhere and he bumps against several. Closer to the beach he hits a pebble bottom, the small round pebbles causing his boots to slip and slide, but he manages to maintain his balance as he reaches the wash.

The beach is littered with early morning corpses lying sprawled as though asleep in the hot sun. Others, only just wounded, are crawling up the beach. Directly ahead of him a soldier lies on his stomach in the wash and Ben sees that a large piece of shrapnel, probably a razor-sharp section of a shell casing, has neatly sliced off his pack without having touched the man, its straps still attached to his shoulders. He has either been knocked unconscious or the shock of the impact has made him think he is dead, but left with his face in the wash he is likely to drown. Ben grabs hold of the webbing attached to the man’s shoulders and pulls him up to his knees. There is a sudden gasp and gurgle from the man as he opens his eyes. ‘Jaysus, I thought I were in heaven an’ all!’ he says.

‘Keep running, Irish, and you’ll live to fight another day!’ Ben hauls at the webbing again and the man stands up. ‘Git the hell out o’ here, lad,’ Ben shouts, and pushes him forward across the pebbly beach. Ahead he catches sight of the huge lumbering shape of Brokenose Brodie, his rifle held high above his head as if a signal for others in the platoon. Then he sees Cooligan, Spencer, Rigby and Mustafa all running up to the big man. Horne and Parthe, usually found with the others, are missing from the group. He is not aware that he is shouting, ‘Number two platoon, come, come!’ though it is quite impossible to be heard above the enemy fire.

This time there is a great deal less confusion on the beach. Several officers doing duty as guides stand calmly some thirty feet from the water’s edge and with shrapnel bursting in the air over them they read the shoulder patches of the men as they stumble ashore and immediately direct them by way of hand signals in the general direction of their companies. It is apparent at once to Ben that they have landed too far to the right, too close to the Gaba Tepe end of the cove where the Turkish field guns can more easily reach them. Moreover, the part of the slope they have been briefed to attack is some considerable way to the left of where they now are.

He looks for Peregrine Ormington-Smith, who was in the second of the three boats carrying the platoon. All Ben can see are men milling in confusion, but groups like his own are beginning to bunch and he runs towards the five members of his platoon that Brodie has managed to gather together. On the way an officer sees his shoulder patch. ‘5th Battalion to my right, Sergeant,’ he shouts, pointing. Ben reaches the five men gathered at the top of the beach standing in comparative safety under a slight overhang to the cliff face.

‘Righto, lads,’ he puffs, ‘Packs off for the moment, take a break, the company’s down this end,’ he says, pointing south to a small fold between the ends of two ridges running parallel down to the cove. ‘We’ll move out as soon as you’ve all caught your breath, but scatter wide, nobody within four or five feet of the other, no bunching, you hear? Avoid other groups, a sniper will always go for the biggest target in his sights.’ They rest up for five minutes, watching the confusion on the perimeter. There are some troops walking, trying to show they’re not afraid or perhaps too dazed and confused to know any better, others have unclipped and discarded their packs and are running down the beach for dear life. Ben looks at the five men. ‘We’re shitting ourselves, that’s an order, when you get back onto the main part of the beach, run like scared rabbits! Packs on, let’s be off, lads, full pack, everyone, the only thing we leave behind is our flamin’ footprints.’

‘And a shit-streak or two,’ Crow Rigby quips.

The lads arrive to find Lieutenant Peregrine Ormington-Smith with all twenty members of the platoon in his boat present. Remarkably, his landing boat made it onto the beach without a single casualty. They have taken shelter hard against a clay bank within the slight fold made by the two ridges, which now contains a mass of confused men. Officers are checking shoulder patches and trying frantically to sort them into their correct companies.

Wordy Smith tells Ben that they witnessed the third boat carrying the remaining ten members of their platoon take a direct hit by a large shell. The boat simply disappeared in a huge flash. The only evidence of its existence comes with the afternoon tide when several dozen broken and splintered oars with various landing boat numbers marked on them are washed up onto the shore. They are gathered, with other combustibles, by members of the Engineers Unit stationed at Hell Spit and piled up outside the depot to be used as firewood.

Among these are the oars belonging to the landing boats ferrying B Company of the 7th Battalion. Heading in to the beach on the second landing, four of the boats somehow managed to drift or were mistakenly rowed to the outside perimeter of the cove, coming under the direct fire of four machine guns. All the rowers were almost instantly killed and their oars were smashed or lost overboard. The boats then drifted helplessly, making the troops in them an easy target for the machine guns. The few who managed to abandon ship and get to the shore were cut down. Only two men in the four landing boats survived, crossing the pebbled beach and hiding in the scrub, where they were rescued two days later.

‘I cannot tell you how immensely pleased I am to see you, Sergeant, a chap has been terribly concerned,’ Wordy Smith says, extending his hand. Ben takes it in his own and the lieutenant shakes it over-vigorously. In his excitement he has unconsciously reverted to the syntax and accent of his English public school.

‘Who’ve we got, sir?’ Ben asks, still panting heavily from the sprint. He rapidly counts the men. ‘Thirty-four, one missing, five dead in my boat and the ten who took a direct hit in the third, we should have thirty-five.’

To everyone’s surprise, Wordy Smith starts to call out the names of every member of the platoon. He knows which ten were in the third boat and abstains from naming them and as he calls the name of each of the four dead in Ben’s boat, Ben simply says, ‘Didn’t make it ashore, sir.’ When he’s called all the names and each man has answered he pauses and says quietly, ‘Private Horne is missing, let’s hope he eventually finds us.’

Ben now calls out, ‘Privates Flynn, Phillips and Spencer, step up!’ Library and the two others move to stand in front of Ben. ‘Where are your packs, lads?’ Ben asks.

Library elects to speak for them. ‘Dropped them, Sergeant.’

‘Where?’

‘On the beach,’ Phillips says while Flynn nods.

‘In the water, Sergeant, I… I panicked,’ Library admits miserably, his head bowed.

‘Back onto the beach you three, pick up a discarded pack, a full kit, nothing missing, shovel or pick axe as well. Did you drop yer rifles?’

‘No, Sergeant!’ the three of them chorus.

‘Now bugger off, and get back here at the double… and keep yer flamin’ heads down!’

The three members of the platoon return humping packs, Library Spencer with a shovel and the other two with picks attached. ‘You’re on a charge, the three of you,’ Ben says. ‘We’ll sort it out later.’

*

The situation, by the time the 2nd Brigade arrives in the second wave, is perilous. Earlier, the men of the 3rd Brigade who had survived the landing made no attempt to find their companies, but in the total confusion they set out in isolated groups, ‘penny packets’, to climb after the unseen enemy. As they attempted to scramble up the rocky cliff face and steep ridges beyond, the Turkish snipers picked them off willy-nilly. Soon enough, some of the most intrepid of these unattached groups reached the first ridge, their shapes silhouetted clearly against the skyline. Those coming behind them, thinking at last they were seeing the enemy, fired at them. Suddenly those keenest and in the most advanced positions found themselves sandwiched between the Turkish snipers still higher up on the second ridge and their own rifle fire coming from below. Many of them perished in the hail of misdirected bullets.

However, instead of waiting for their own troops to catch up with them, they are driven on by the fact that, from time to time, they witness the enemy vanishing into the dark tangle of gullies ahead of them, their shooting dying away, and so they think that victory must be close at hand. They thrust further and further inland, isolating themselves completely. They are encouraged in this perception when some of the Turkish soldiers, seeing the Australians catching up, throw down their arms and surrender. But the attacking soldiers, determined not to be slowed down by taking prisoners, simply shoot them and continue on in pursuit.

The advancing troops are unaware that the Turks, not expecting a landing north of the Gaba Tepe headland, only have a single company guarding the slopes. But not far behind Sari Bair, the very topmost ridge and the most important objective for the Australians, there are several companies of Turkish reinforcements who are no more than half an hour’s marching distance away.

Just before five o’clock Turkish shrapnel begins to burst among the troops along the ridges and shortly after nine the enemy reinforcements arrive. The Anzacs near the top of the second ridge see them advancing towards them. The Turkish counterattack moves up the valleys, outflanking the Australian outposts on their left, driving the scattered groups backwards and in the process killing a great many men of the 3rd Brigade.

The Anzacs are not to know that the keenest among them would reach no further than their initial attack in the hours immediately after dawn on the first day until after the surrender of Turkey in 1918. Someone had blundered terribly. Strategically the landing at Gallipoli had failed.

Hamilton, the supreme commander, has vastly underestimated the enemy and, to boot, possesses a sense of geography that is to cost his Australian and New Zealand troops dearly, not to mention the English, Indians and French who also die like flies in what, within the context of the total war in Europe, is considered a relatively minor diversion.

In Australian and New Zealand terms it is a terrible sacrifice. As young growing nations, they can ill afford a vital part of their life seed to be sacrificed in places with names such as Baby 700, Lone Pine Hill, Courtney’s Post, Quinn’s Post, 400 Plateau, The Nek and what will, in time, become known as Anzac Cove.

But now, with the sun not long up, the Turkish troops have been reinforced and are advancing from the heights above the Australians. The first Australian wave is pushed back predominantly on the left flank where they dig in, hoping to hold the line. The Anzac forces in the centre and the right, or southern, flank are increasingly being sucked into the left flank, thinking to reinforce the line where the fighting appears to be the fiercest. Subsequently, the centre and southern flanks become too thinly manned and are exposed to a Turkish attack, threatening disaster for the whole assault.

It is here, on the southern flank, that the 2nd Brigade coming into the beach in the second wave will be sent. This time, despite the fierce hail of artillery, shrapnel, machine-gun and rifle fire, which is considerably heavier than the reception given the 3rd Brigade in the first wave, the troops are directed to an assembly point, which proves relatively safe from enemy fire.

Here they are organised into their companies or assigned to new platoons if their own has been decimated. The act of reassembling is by no means all calmness and order, instead it is a process of stop-start, with officers screaming commands at confused troops, their own senior officers frequently countermanding their instructions in a similar manner. But somehow the officers and N.C.O.s given the task of organising the troops back into a fighting unit manage to get a sufficiently concerted force together. This allows the brigade commander, Colonel M’Cay, to assemble the means to reinforce the scattered remnants of the 9th Battalion, who are grimly holding their positions on the southern flank against a now increasingly fierce Turkish counterattack.

Shortly after eight o’clock in the morning with the 5th Company in reasonably compact order, Wordy Smith returns from a short briefing. Major Sayers, their company commander, gives the platoon officers their map co-ordinates and tells them they will be advancing up the southern flank known on the military maps as 400 Plateau where they will reinforce the 10th Battalion from the first wave who have been damn near decimated.