Solomon's Song (54 page)

Ben takes out his own field dressing and places the gauze pad from it on the Maori’s wound. The Australian field-issue bandage appears to be of a slightly heavier gauze than the New Zealand one so he uses it instead, winding it tightly just below the knee. With the first wrap around Jack Tau Paranihi gives a loud involuntary cry and then grabs hold of his shirt front and stuffs it into his mouth, biting down hard, his eyes tightly closed as he fights back the pain.

‘There you go,’ Ben says at last. ‘At least the bloody flies can’t get in. We’ll fix a splint for you soon, lad, get you a brew. Have you eaten?’

‘On the shup this mornin’.’

‘We’ll get you something.’

‘There’s food in me pack hey,’ Jack Tau Paranihi says, ‘bullybeef.’

Ben shakes his head. ‘Only the flags and the badges change, the bloody tucker in every army is the same shit!’

‘Sergeant?’

‘It’s Ben, mate.’

‘Ben, where’s you get that there axe hey?’ Jack doesn’t wait for Ben’s reply. ‘That axe Maori, man, fightin’ axe from me own tribe, it’s got the markin’s.’

‘It was my grandfather’s, he fought in the Maori wars in 1860.’

‘He took it from a dead Maori warrior?’

‘No, no, you don’t understand, he fought for the Maoris.’

‘Shit hey? Your granddad, he was a Maori you’re a quarter of?’

‘No, he was a pakeha, my grandmother was a Maori, her name was Makareta.’

There is a moment’s silence and now Jack Tau Paranihi asks, ‘Your granddad, he frum Tasmania?’

‘Yes, how’d you know that?’ Ben asks, surprised.

‘Tommo Te Mokiri?’

‘Shit, yes!’

‘His brother, General Black Hawk, and hum, Tommo Te Mokiri, he taught us to use the fightin’ axe, they big warriors in my tribe. Not just mine, all the Maori tribes hey.’

Ben points to the tattooing on Jack Tau Paranihi’s face. ‘Jesus, I thought I recognised the moko, it’s the same as Hawk’s.’ Ben thinks back on the stories Hawk has told him. ‘Your grandfather, you said he had an arm and an eye missing, did it happen on a whaling ship?’

‘Yeah, Black Hawk rescue hum from a whale.’

‘His name, was it Hammerhead Jack?’

‘That’s hum. He give me his name.’

They both shake their heads and laugh, Jack Tau Paranihi for a moment forgetting his pain. ‘Jesus, that’s weird, here of all places, eh?’

Hornbill returns shortly afterwards with two flat planks taken from one of the ammunition boxes and three more bandages from the dead New Zealanders. Wordy Smith returns with him and Ben introduces him to Jack. Both men then help Ben with the splints so there is no further time to discuss the amazing coincidence.

Ben, with the help of the two others, begins to set the splints. Jack is stoic throughout, biting on the webbing strap of his ammunition pouches, his brow sweating profusely, eyes dilated from the intense pain. ‘Steady, lad, steady now,’ Ben says as he tries to push back the shattered fibula bone before applying the splint. Blood runs from the corner of the big Maori’s mouth as he breaks a tooth biting down on the webbing. It is finally done. ‘There yer go,’ Ben says, ’sorry, mate.’

Jack Tau Paranihi spits out the tooth and some blood. ‘Can’t be helped, mate,’ he says as Ben gives him his water bottle again and this time the Maori empties it. ‘You a good bloke, man, like the ancestor.’ Ben is not aware that, by this remark, he means his grandfather Tommo, who is now a Maori ancestor pretty high up in the rankings.

Wordy Smith produces a brown medicine bottle from the canvas haversack across his shoulder. ‘Take a sip, Jack, about a tablespoonful.’ He uncorks the bottle and hands it to the Maori who does as he’s told and hands it back. ‘Should help a bit,’ Wordy says, returning the cork to the bottle.

‘What is it?’ Ben asks, pointing to the bottle.

‘Tincture of opium,’ Wordy replies. ‘It helps to have a little botanical knowledge, used to be known as laudanum.’

‘Where the hell did you get it?’

‘Cairo. I had it mixed, it’s almost straight opium, should keep Jack here quiet for a while.’

Ben looks at Peregrine Ormington-Smith quizzically. ‘You don’t. . . er, you know, take it yourself, do you? I mean, like for normal?’

‘Good God, no!’ Wordy Smith exclaims. ‘I’ve seen what it can do, some of the chaps in art school got addicted to it, it’s rotten stuff, but great as a pain killer. I’m a natural coward, Ben, if I get hit I want to die peacefully.’ Ben realises that Wordy’s willingness to share the bottle with a strange soldier belies this remark, that Wordy has brought the bottle along for the use of the platoon.

‘It works good, man,’ Jack Tau Paranihi exclaims. ‘Thanks a lot, sir.’

‘It’s Wordy… Wordy Smith, Jack.’

‘Mate, we’re going to move you onto that stretcher, you’ll be better off lying down,’ Ben says. ‘You all right?’

Jack smiles. ‘Don’t feel a thung.’

‘Good, then we’ll do it now.’ Ben points to Jack’s ammunition pouches and webbing. ‘We’ll take that off, you’ll be better without it.’ He nods to Hornbill, who helps the Maori remove his webbing and then moves behind him with his shoulders against the back wall, gripping the big man under the armpits. Ben instructs Wordy Smith to hold the legs together at the ankles and he takes hold of Jack by looping his arms under his bum. ‘Righto, one, two, three, lift!’ The huge man must weigh in the vicinity of two hundred and eighty pounds, maybe more, as they move him the few feet over to the camp stretcher.

‘Shit, yer ain’t small neither,’ Hornbill, a big man himself, says, breathing hard from the effort.

‘Lock forward,’ Jack Tau Paranihi says.

Hornbill nods. ‘Rugby,’ he says, explaining to Ben and Wordy Smith.

Later Jack explains how they got to the Turkish trench. It seems the New Zealanders had landed on the beach at roughly the same time as the 2nd Brigade and like them had expected to fight to the north on Baby 700. But his landing boat had become unsecured, breaking away from the steam pinnace towing it, the tow rope possibly severed by a piece of shrapnel. They had been forced to row ashore, landing to the right, the Gaba Tepe side. Half of his boat had been hit by shrapnel pellets and machine-gun fire and those not dead or wounded, sixteen of them, had been bunched together with the Australian 6th Battalion in a company under Captain Hooke. ‘Like the pirate in that story,’ Jack Tau Paranihi said at the time. They’d crossed over a series of spurs leading down from the southern edge of 400 Plateau, five in all, the last, Pine Ridge, being the tallest. Each of the ridges led into deep gullies and the small New Zealand group, sticking together, somehow became detached from the rest of the company after entering a deep gully between what would later be known as Snipers’ Ridge and Weir Ridge. Losing contact they pressed on and eventually found their way alone onto Pine Ridge and decided to go up it. It was the steepest of all the climbs, but fortunately one on which the scrub grew mostly higher than a man’s head and so they were able to conceal their approach. They’d surprised a group of about ten Turks near the top who were carrying water and supplies and, as Jack put it, ‘got in among them’. The Turks made a run for it and they chased them up the final slope. The guns of the British cruiser Bacchante, firing on the battery on Gaba Tepe from the bay, were making such a horrendous racket that the Turks in the trench couldn’t possibly have heard them approaching. Foolishly thinking themselves safe, they appear to have posted no sentry on the southern side and the New Zealanders had almost reached the trench before the Turks realised what was happening. Nevertheless, they’d managed to kill four of the bayonet-charging Kiwis at close range.

‘But then we was among thum with our bayonets,’ Jack Tau Paranihi explains. ‘Thum Turks didn’t have the stomach for that stuff and they’re out the top end o’ the trench like jack rabbits and gorn f’their lives down the slope out back! I jump into the trench and see the part what’s covered, there’s a Turk next to a stripped-down machine gun, but he, or somebody, must’a had a rifle, ’cause as I stuck hum there’s an explosion and me leg crumples under me and I don’t remember nothink more. When I come to, all me mates’a gorn.’

Ben reasons that the remainder of Jack’s New Zealanders, unaware of him lying wounded in the dark recess, had moved on in their attempt to find their company or to follow after the escaping Turks.

Ben and Wordy Smith now talk about their position. To press on over the hill into the valley beyond where the 3rd Battalion lies pinned down will bring them back into the Turkish line of fire. Moreover, not long after they’ve arrived at the trench the Turkish fire over Lone Pine and further south along Pine Ridge has grown much heavier and artillery and machine-gun fire is whistling over their heads. They are not to know that the Turks have spotted the 12th Battalion pushing towards Pine Ridge and a little later the 6th coming over the southern spurs. This means that Lone Pine is not only receiving aim from the Turks on the Third Ridge but also catching the bullets and shrapnel pellets which miss 400 Plateau. Ben and Wordy Smith were lucky they took their platoon across the plateau when they did. Half an hour later, they would have been in the very centre of a maelstrom of bullets and artillery fire. Leaving the trench now means almost certain death.

Ben calls the platoon together. ‘We’re staying put, lads, moving on is pointless and suicidal. Our objective was to cross the plateau and try to engage the enemy and we’ve done the first and we’ll attempt to do the second from where we are. There’s a good position to mount a machine gun on the northern end of the trench and although it’s a fairly narrow trajectory across the valley onto the Third Ridge we can hit the enemy from here a bloody sight better than firing at them pinned down from behind a rock.’

‘Machine gun? Where we gunna get one o’ those?’ Numbers Cooligan asks.

‘There’s one in the shed back there with the wounded Maori, stripped down, it’s a French Hotchkiss, the Turks have got quite a lot of French weaponry.

‘Yes, but will we know how to use it, Ben?’ Library Spencer asks.

‘Yeah, I reckon. I covered all the Allied machine guns when I did a special weaponry course at Broadmeadows, the German ones too.’ Ben adds, ‘I admit, I’ve never actually stripped one down, matter of fact this one is the first I’ve seen in the flesh so to speak, but I remember the system.’ He hesitates, ‘I think .. . hope.’

‘She’ll be apples,’ Hornbill says. ‘I reckon if I can get the blighter assembled we’ll know how she works orright.’

Towards noon the machine gun is ready but for a part in the firing mechanism. Hornbill calls Ben, ‘Lookee at that, willya. Bastard’s perfeck, except for the one small part.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ Ben asks.

‘Well, we’re fucked, it’s a small high-tensile steel spring behind the trigger, without it we can’t fire the bastard.’

‘Can’t you make one, get it out of a rifle, modify it?’

Hornbill points to a Turkish Mauser and one of the New Zealand rifles, which are Lee-Enfields same as the Australians’. ‘I’ve tried that, no good. The Frogs don’t do things like other people.’

Wordy Smith comes over. ‘What seems to be the trouble, Ben?’

‘Spring in the trigger mechanism’s missing, without it the bloody thing won’t work.’

Wordy doesn’t pursue the usual litany of questions -the have yous or did yous - knowing full well both Ben and Hornbill will have covered all this. He thinks for a moment then looks at Hornbill. ‘The sergeant!’

‘Huh?’

‘The Turkish sergeant Jack here took care of, wasn’t he working on the gun?’

‘Probably, he was right next to it when I done him in,’ Jack calls from his cot. He has had another tablespoon of Wordy’s medicine and is reasonably comfortable.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Hornbill is up the ladder and over the top. They both jump onto the firing platform and peek over the edge. Hornbill has found the dead sergeant where they tossed him overboard. He’s rolled down from the top of the trench about ten or fifteen feet and now Hornbill rolls him onto his back and is going through his pockets furiously.

‘Nothin’,’ he says at last, looking up at them.

‘Get back up,’ Ben says, then, ‘Wait on, look at his fist, left fist.’

From where they are they can see the dead Turk’s left hand is closed.

Hornbill commences to pry it open. ‘Gotcha!’ he calls suddenly and turning runs up the red-soil embankment and climbs down the ladder back into the trench. ‘Bugger me dead, it were in the bastard’s hand all the flamin’ time! Imagine that, hey!’ He has a huge grin all over his gob as he turns and looks directly at Wordy Smith. ‘Blood’s worth bottlin’, Wordy. How’d yer think o’ that an’ all?’

‘Nine times out of ten it would have been a bloody silly suggestion,’ he says modestly.

‘Fuckin’ genius, mate,’ Hornbill says, happily squatting beside the machine gun again.

In another ten minutes, with the rest of the platoon, barring the six sentries, crowding around, Hornbill has the machine gun ready. They’ve discovered more ammunition stored in boxes in other parts of the trench and they have sufficient to keep pumping away all day if they can get it to work.

Ben slips a strip of cartridges in carefully, trying to remember the steps involved in loading it up, then resting it on the parapet he pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Ben curses and examines the machine gun closely. ‘Anyone know what “Firm” means?’ he says suddenly. ‘Firm with two “e”s?’

‘Ferme, it means “shut” in French,’ Wordy Smith says.

‘The safety catch!’ several of them call simultaneously. Ben pushes a small lever which doesn’t look as though it should be pushed or tampered with and then pulls the trigger. A burst of machine-gun fire fills the air to the cheering of the platoon.

They fill a series of sandbags and place them on the northern end of the trench with the Hotchkiss barrel protruding from it with a sufficient arc to cover the section of the Third Ridge known as Scrubby Knoll within their range, and further south to Anderson Knoll. Standing on the firing platform the machine-gunner can see out quite clearly while still being well protected by the sandbags. To the immediate right Ben constructs another sandbag barricade for Crow Rigby and Woggy Mustafa, which duplicates the area covered by the machine gun.