A Bitter Harvest

by Peter Yeldham

  The Turks were’ expecting them.

  A British division landed at Helles, while the 3rd Australian Brigade led an assault twenty kilometres to the north. Together with New Zealand troops, they stormed ashore under ferocious Turkish gunfire, at a beach forever after called Anzac Cove. It was a long and desperate day, and a foothold was secured on the ridges, but casualties were high. News of the attack was sent to Lemnos, and a cable dispatched to the Colonial Office in London announcing a successful landing had taken place. By the morning of the 26th, rumours were circulating that Australian forces had engaged the enemy, and it was a gallant, triumphant victory.

  They waited self-consciously outside the chapel, in the shade of the silky oak tree. Harry was late. Forbes had driven to collect the bride, who was elegant in a slim grey dress, and he showed her into the roomy back seat of the sedan, asking in his customary deferential way if Miss Lockwood would mind him saying how charming and attractive she looked.

  Miss Lockwood did not mind in the least, and complimented Mr Forbes on how polished and shining the car looked, and how well he drove it. Forbes, who had once been terrified at the idea of converting from carriages to motor cars, felt no nostalgia for the days of harnessing horses, or cleaning up the stables after them, and was delighted at his new mistress’s approval.

  At the house, they collected William and Mrs Forbes, who sat in the front with her husband. Harry was to meet them at the university. They arrived to find he had not yet appeared, and they waited with mounting impatience alongside his friend, the Reverend Tim Swanson, while William looked at the large silky oak, and wondered what people would say if they knew he was being married beneath a tree.

  ‘We’re holding you up,’ William said to the minister, after a wait of ten minutes that seemed infinitely longer.

  ‘Not at all. I’d say that’s him now,’ the Reverend Swanson said, unperturbed by the delay.

  A taxi had approached. It stopped a short way off. Two people emerged, and the cab drove off. One of them was unmistakably Harry, accompanied by the slim figure of a smartly dressed woman.

  ‘Good God,’ William said. He thought his heart might stop. He heard Hannah’s gasp, then Mrs Forbes’s incredulous, ‘It’s Miss Lizzie.’

  William saw his daughter smile at their astonishment, and knew it was no dream. ‘Elizabeth!’

  He ran to her, and they hugged, and for the second time in his life, William Patters onshed tears. But these were tears of joy.

  Elizabeth turned to Hannah. They exchanged smiles like old friends, and warmly embraced. She kissed Mrs Forbes and her husband, who thought he should shake hands, but Elizabeth insisted, while Harry and the parson watched and enjoyed the astounded faces.

  ‘Good heavens,’ William said, and blew his nose noisily, and tried to wipe his eyes. ‘I just can’t believe it.’ He felt he had made an utter fool of himself, but was so happy he did not care. But how had it all been arranged? He remembered the three-day postponement for law exams. He looked at his grandson.

  ‘You young bugger,’ he said, then with an apologetic glance at the minister. ‘Sorry, Reverend.’

  ‘Perfectly all right,’ the minister said cheerfully. ‘He is a young bugger at times. Jolly good five-eighth, though. Safe pair of hands. Well, the bishop was not altogether approving, but he stretched a theological point since it’s my last wedding. I’m joining up tomorrow, so he said that provided we observed all the rituals, he’d allow it.’

  ‘What exactly happens?’

  ‘The same as would happen if we were in the chapel.’ He looked at Elizabeth. ‘I’m told you have a request to make, Mrs Muller.’

  ‘If the bride agrees, I’d like to be her matron of honour.’

  ‘I can think of nothing I’d like more,’ Hannah said. Afterwards, at the house, Forbes opened the champagne, and William asked them to drink to his wife. He said it was a joyous day, and that he was a happy and lucky man. And that the surprise appearance of his daughter had been like an added jewel in the crown of what was a magic moment in his life. If he sounded overwrought, he told them, he was sure they would understand. He expressed his gratitude to his son-in-law, for what had been a perfect wedding present. It would be his pleasure to write to Stefan and thank him.

  He thanked the Reverend Swanson for an enjoyable and unique wedding ceremony, and wished him luck and a safe return from the war. He told Mr and Mrs Forbes it was good they were a part of this day, for they had shared his life for over twenty-five years. They were friends.

  ‘I think that takes care of everyone,’ he concluded, gazing around, and then as if he had forgotten — ‘Ah, yes. My grandson. I’m told he’s a good rugby five-eighth, with safe hands. I think we’ve all been in his safe hands today. Hannah and I were going to slip off to a registry office, but Harry thought otherwise. He’s so devious he should go into politics. He turned our quiet wedding into a real family celebration, for which we thank him with all our hearts. So I think that Hannah and I would like to drink — to Harry.’

  ‘To Harry,’ Hannah said.

  Elizabeth echoed it, and they all drank.

  The following day came the first word of the Gallipoli landing, and by the end of the week the headlines were trumpeting news of a glorious victory. DAWN LANDING. AUSTRALIAN VALOUR.

  It was a time of high excitement. People were thrilled; the general opinion was that our boys had been given their chance and had shown what they were made of. News was slow, but the Turks by now must be in headlong flight. The Anzacs, as they were being called, would sweep along the peninsula and into the Balkan states, implementing Winston Churchill’s glorious plan.

  In May, before Elizabeth returned home, came the first casualty lists. She looked through the Herald in a state of mounting shock. Page after page was filled with the names of the dead and wounded. Her father and Hannah joined her, and their breakfast turned cold while they absorbed the implications.

  ‘Dear God,’ William said, ‘if this is supposed to be a victory, what do they call a defeat?’

  Each day it became more apparent, that while the invasion forces had secured a foothold, the price had been a dreadful carnage. In Cairo and on Lemnos, Australian nurses tended the wounded. Packed hospital ships brought them further casualties each day. The Light Horsemen were sent as reinforcements, but without their prized mounts, for this was a war in trenches and on hillsides.

  The initial surge of national pride and patriotism brought an immediate rise in enlistments, then as the toll mounted, there was an equally sudden fall. It was slowly beginning to sink in. Courageous it may have been, but this was no victory. No triumph. This was an ill-conceived debacle. In certain parts of the country it fuelled anger, and people looked for scapegoats.

  The editor’s name was Gottfried Johanning. He was a man in his fifties, who had begun as a copy boy, then a reporter, until he finally took over the modest German language weekly. He had been editor now for twenty years. When a crowd began to gather, he looked nervously out at the street. But after all, this was Tanunda, where he had grown up, where all his friends and his family lived, and had done so for a lifetime.

  The crowd grew. Someone must have spread the word, for by the time the platoon of soldiers came there were over a hundred people watching in the street. The soldiers stood guard on the premises until a police van drew up. It had been planned as a joint operation. These people were printing a newspaper in an enemy language. There were rumours it contained anti-Empire sentiments and fuelled opposition to the war. It was considered a clear case; the proof was there in pages of German typeface, which no loyal Australian could read, and was therefore a perfect instrument for treason.

  Gottfried Johanning was arrested. No charge was read; he was grabbed and marched out to the waiting van. The crowd cheered the police and booed Johanning. They kept up a chorus of boos as other employees were brought out. A printer and a linorype setter. A young female cadet who wrote the social news. She was pushed into the van with the others
. It drove away, but not before many of the crowd hammered their fists against its sides.

  Soldiers and police emerged, carrying out print trays and forms with the linotype already set. These were smashed by a constable with a mallet. The crowd cheered his every stroke. Inside, the machines were destroyed. A match was struck and thrown onto a pile of newsprint.

  Gerhardt Lippert was visiting friends in Tanunda. He reached the scene, wondering what all the excitement was about, as the first sign of fire could be seen through the windows. The last of the troops ran out, as the flames became a conflagration.

  ‘Are you all insane?’ Gerhardt shouted, but no one heard him over the loud cheers as the fire destroyed the premises.

  By the evening he was too drunk to walk. Stefan carried him into a spare room, and Eva-Maria covered him with a blanket. She said she should go home, because their chooks had to be fed and the eggs collected, not to mention the dogs unchained, and after the morning chores she would come to collect Gerhardt in the cart, because he would be too sick to walk. Stefan tried to dissuade her from going back to an empty house, pointing out there was another spare bed with her goddaughter Maria away at school. When she insisted, he took a lantern and walked with her.

  ‘I worry, Stefan,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen him like this. It is a stupid, dreadful thing they do, but he gets so angry.’

  ‘I get angry,’ Stefan said.

  ‘But you control it.’

  ‘I try.’

  ‘Not Gerhardt. He wants to go and shout at the police, to tell them they destroy freedom of the press. That terrible day, when we’re made to swear an oath, who was the only one that talks back to the police inspector?’

  ‘I know.’ Stefan sighed. He was starting to worry they might not be able to constrain Gerhardt. It had been a long, noisy argument that night, with Gerhardt appalled by what he had witnessed in Tanunda, and Stefan pouring him glasses of wine so that eventually he was too drunk to fulfil his promise to ride into town to lodge a complaint with the authorities. They hardly needed the lantern. The moon lit their way and the sky was lustrous with stars.

  ‘Any more news from Elizabeth?’

  ‘Just the one letter. It sounded like a wonderful day.’

  ‘Nice if you could have been with her.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d have been welcome.’

  ‘I think you misjudge her father. People change.’

  ‘He had such plans for his daughter. I’m the one who spoiled them. Even if he no longer hates me, I doubt if he can ever forget or forgive.’

  ‘At least, by the sound of her, that would not be the case with his new wife.’

  ‘She seems nice. Elizabeth is fond of her.’

  ‘You should invite them here one day.’

  ‘I’d like that. To show him what we’ve done. And to meet Hannah. But after the war, I think. When it’s peaceful.’

  ‘You think he’s anti-German?’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘Who knows? As you said, people change. But he once called me a dirty fortune-hunting foreigner — and worse.’

  Eva-Maria did not know what to say. Stefan shrugged.

  ‘I don’t hold it against him. I was shabby — and I hardly had a penny. And it was a very grand house. Servants and gardeners. Stables and a tennis court. Perhaps the tennis court is still there, and Harry and his friends play on it.’

  ‘You call him Harry?’ She did not know this.

  ‘I bow to the inevitable.’ Stefan smiled, as they crossed the front paddock to the Lippert house, and he held the lantern high for her to use her latchkey.

  There was blood on the front door.

  ‘Mein Gott,’ Eva-Maria said, and started to shake.

  The blood was wet and fresh. Crude lettering formed the words: GERMAN PIGS.

  She began to cry, shivering distressed cries, and Stefan held her, and told her he was taking her back with him. He would listen to no argument. She could not stay here alone.

  ‘But the dogs … ’

  ‘I’ll unchain them,’ he said, then each realised the dogs had not barked or made a sound at their approach.

  They’ found both the dogs dead, still chained, with their throats cut. The blood disfiguring the front door had been theirs. It had happened only recently; the bodies were still warm.

  In the chicken run behind the house, the light from Stefan’s lantern revealed the bloodstained feathers and crushed shapes of over fifty hens. They had all been bludgeoned to death.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ David Brahm said. ‘How could anyone’s mother look like she does?’

  Harry laughed. He remembered that long ago he had predicted this response with remarkable accuracy. The comment pleased him, and made him feel proud, but it also posed a problem.

  They had been having a practice hit on the tennis court, and his mother had paused to watch, and after a rally which Brahm won, she had applauded. They stopped play for a moment, and Harry said, ‘Ma, this is David Brahm. David, my mother.’

  He had not introduced her by name, because he was suddenly aware what it would mean. He could hardly introduce her as ‘Elizabeth’, not to a friend of his own age. ‘Mrs Muller’ was the correct wording, but by so doing, he would expose the truth that he had kept private for so long. It was made all the more awkward by David coming to shake hands, saying they were about to stop for a lemonade, and would she please join them? He had been, as Harry expected, greatly impressed, and if aware he had not been given a name, he called her Ma’am with considerable charm.

  His mother asked after David’s sister. Was she safe in England, and had there been any Zeppelin bomb raids? David said she wrote often. She had seen Zeppelins, but while the idea of bombs being dropped from the air was alarming, the delivery had apparently not been very successful. He also said Kate had become an ardent member of Mrs Pankhurst’s campaign on votes for women, because strange as it seemed, women in England did not yet have the vote. Harry learned more about Kate’s recent life in those few minutes, than he had in months.

  When his mother went into the house, they poured more cold drinks before resuming practice. That was when Brahm had passed the admiring compliment about her looks. It was also when Harry came to a decision. He had lived with evasions and deceit for too long.

  ‘I should have introduced my mother properly,’ he said, hoping his voice was steady. ‘Her married name is Muller. My father’s name is Stefan Muller, and he comes from Bavaria. In Germany,’ he added.

  ‘I know where Bavaria is,’ David said. ‘Now tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m half-German. You didn’t know that.’

  ‘I knew you were peculiar. I always said so. Why didn’t you tell me ages ago?’

  ‘Because I felt ashamed.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ Brahm said. ‘Ashamed? Why the hell should you feel that?’

  ‘We’re fighting them.’

  ‘So what did you do? Or your father? Did you do something terrible? Did you shoot someone? Are you a spy?’

  ‘Don’t be a stupid prick.’

  ‘Who’s the stupid prick here? So you’re half-German?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘It matters to me,’ Harry said, although he could not say why.

  ‘I’m Jewish,’ David announced.

  ‘I know. What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Well, put it this way. Every now and then, I meet some great hulking bastard who tells me I killed Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Anti-Semites,’ Harry said. ‘Ignorant people. Nobody cares about them.’

  ‘We care. You should try being Jewish. If you’re German, so they hate you for a while — till this war’s over. But we’re different. Everyone has hated us for two thousand years.’ He shrugged and said, ‘Never mind all that. I don’t care what you say, your mother is still too young and pretty to be anyone’s mother.’

  Harry wanted t
o hug him. But it was not the done thing.

  He wanted to say that in his entire life he would never have another friend like him. He was afraid it would sound mawkish. Instead, they finished the drinks and went back on court to play tennis.

  Elizabeth had already made her return train reservation for a week hence, when the letter arrived. She opened it eagerly. When she had read it, she went upstairs to her room, the bedroom that had been her mother’s, for her own childhood room had long since become Harry’s, and she sat by the window and carefully read again what Stefan had written. She was still sitting there an hour later, when there was a tap on the door. It was Hannah.

  ‘We’re all downstairs …’ she began to say, then realised that something was wrong. Elizabeth held out the letter to her, and Hannah sat beside her to read it.

  My darling,

  All of a sudden some terrible things happen here. We don’t know who, but someone slaughtered Maria’s dogs, and all their chickens. Soldiers and police closed down the local newspaper, and arrested the editor, Mr Johanning, who was two years old when his family brought him to South Australia. Gerhardt tried to make the police explain the accusation against the editor: they said there need be no charge — since there will be no trial. He is considered guilty. The inspector ordered Gerhardt to leave before he was also arrested.

  Several houses have been burnt down in Gawler, and two families attacked. Some of our friends have been arrested, and once again we do not know why.

  I hate to tell you these things, but it is a madness, and it will not last. Oscar convinces me the war will be over this year. He says neither Britain nor Germany can afford this terrible loss of their youth, and they must make peace by the end of 1915. So I wonder if it would be best for you to stay there, in Sydney, where such things don’t seem to happen, and if they ever did then your father’s position would be a protection. Carl and I can look after ourselves here, and Maria can stay at school- or else come to join you in Sydney. I wanted you to receive this so you have time to think about it very carefully. With all the bitterness that is developing here, it might be best — at least for now. Whatever you decide, my dearest love to you always.