I suppose I must look like that, Chesnaye thought. We are all playing a part. More afraid of showing fear than of fear itself.
He shaded his eyes, conscious of the cool depths of the cliff’s shadow as it closed about him. ‘Steer over there.’ He felt the tiller creak obediently.
It was too quiet, he thought. Like the sea and the sky, everything seemed shadowed and guarded by the might of the land. Faint and muffled, he could occasionally hear the sporadic rattle of small-arms and the steel whiplash of machine-guns. But they were impersonal and did not appear to belong here. Once when he glanced astern he saw the Saracen, her shape deformed as she turned slightly towards the headland, the long guns still probing the air, as if sniffing out a new target. Many other ships were silhouetted against the horizon, but the barrage had paused, no doubt waiting to see the effect of the troops’ progress ashore.
As if reading his thoughts Pickles said breathlessly, ‘It looks as if it’s all over already!’
Chesnaye nodded absently. ‘Watch your steering, Tobias! There are shoals of some sort ahead.’ He had seen what appeared to be low, sandy rocks littered along the water’s edge.
Tobias said tightly, ‘Not rocks, sir.’
The whaler moved swiftly inshore, the last few yards vanishing in seconds. Chesnaye saw the oarsmen watching him curiously, and held his breath in an endeavour to conceal the slow sickness which was squeezing his insides like a vice.
Nearer and nearer. He could see clearly now the shoals which were strewn across the whaler’s path. They moved gently in the lapping wavelets, their khaki limbs swaying and jerking as if still alive.
He heard Pickles gasp, and then as the boat cut a passage between the first of the dead soldiers the oarsmen looked too at the tangle of corpses and discarded equipment at the water’s edge.
The stroke was momentarily lost, and Chesnaye choked: ‘Oars! Stand by to beach!’ He did not know how he had managed to give the order, nor did he recognise his own voice. The boat ground into the sand and the second whaler hit the beach close by.
A few soldiers moved along the base of the cliff, and he saw several tiny tents marked with the Red Cross already erected. But again his eyes were drawn to the waterline of dead.
Australians, New Zealanders and a few British, their faces already pale and expressionless in the salt spray. He could see the gleaming teeth of barbed wire, sewn deep in the water itself, and upon which little clusters of corpses bobbed like obscene fruit. There was blood too on the sand and all the way up the trampled beach to the foot of the cliff. A sergeant lay on his back, his hands digging into his stomach, mouth wide in one last cry. His uniform was stitched from shoulder to groin with machine-gun bullets, yet equipment and bayonet were still smart and exactly in place.
Lieutenant Thornton leapt over the gunwale. ‘At the double! Put out the boat anchors and run for cover!’
The men gaped from the corpses to him and then jerked into life as the sand jumped at their feet and the air echoed to the high-pitched whine of bullets.
A soldier yelled: ‘Come up here, you stupid bastards! There are still snipers about!’
A bullet whacked into the boat’s warm woodwork at Chesnaye’s hip, and with a gasp he started up the beach. He turned to call to Lieutenant Thornton and was just in time to see him reel back, his hands clawing at his face. In fact his face had been torn away by a bullet, but blinded and screaming he staggered drunkenly in a circle while the sand spurted around him.
An Australian corporal emerged from some rocks, his bush hat tilted over his eyes. Unceremoniously he pushed Chesnaye against the cliff and threw down his rifle. In three bounds he reached the naval officer, but before he could seize him Thornton dropped and rolled on to his back, his face a glistening, bright scarlet against the pale sand.
Chesnaye retched as the seamen crowded around him, Tobias carrying Thornton’s leather cases.
The corporal returned and picked up his rifle. ‘Of all the stupid jokers!’ He pulled a cigarette from his hat and squinted up at the cliff. ‘Pretty quiet landing so far, but the boys is held up in a gully over yonder.’ He gestured vaguely to a small cliff path.
Beaushears sidled along the cliff and peered at Chesnaye. ‘All right, Dick?’ He glanced at the spread-eagled lieutenant on the open beach. ‘It’s up to us, then?’
Chesnaye nodded dazedly. ‘I suppose so.’
‘I’ll set up my signal party here as arranged, Dick,’ Beaushears was speaking fast as if unable to stop. ‘You must take Thornton’s job with the Army until Saracen can send a replacement.’ He looked grim. ‘Or do you want me to take over?’
Chesnaye shook his head. ‘No. I’ll go!’ He wanted to scream. These stupid, formal tones. A man he had known was still bleeding barely feet away, his face a bloody pulp. An Australian was smoking a cigarette, his eyes on the distant monitor. Nothing was real any more.
Tobias said carefully. ‘We’d better be off, sir. It may take some time to contact the army signals blokes.’
‘Er, yes.’ Chesnaye looked at Pickles’ stricken face. ‘Can you make it to the top?’
Pickles seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’ll be all right with you, Dick!’
Then they were off up the path, the soldier still leaning against the cliff, his eyes slitted as if in deep thought.
* * * * *
It took Chesnaye more than an hour to lead his small party of seamen to the top of the cliff path. The sun was already high in the clear sky, and every step up the dry, crumbling track brought the sweat pouring down his body, so that he repeatedly had to stop and wipe his face with his sleeve. At last he turned sharply into a deep fold of rock, the sides of the cliff rising on either side of him sheer and smooth as if the very weight of stone and boulders had split the land in two. His eyes were dazzled by the heat haze which shimmered above the barren countryside and the sparse tangle of small trees which clung desperately to the ridges above the cliff path, and he almost stumbled on to a group of soldiers who were squatting comfortably outside what appeared to be a narrow cave.
A harrased-looking subaltern rose to his feet and stared at Chesnaye and his men. ‘You’ll be the gunnery experts, then?’ He grinned companionably and eased the weight of his revolver at his belt. ‘In the nick of time, too!’
Chesnaye looked around him. Just beyond the V-shaped end to the gap in the cliff he could see the rounded crest of a long ridge. It seemed quite near, yet he knew from his map that there was a deep gully between it and the coastline. And beyond that there was a higher ridge, and then another. They had cut the Peninsula into a mass of valleys and gullies like a bird’s eye view of a badly ploughed field, each ridge dominating the next for a watchful friend or enemy.
Already the sea had vanished, the hiss and murmur of wavelets along the beaches lost in the boom of artillery and the vicious rattle of machine-guns. Yet the dust which hovered in the humid air like smoke was tinged with salt, and a handful of angry gulls still circled and screamed above the narrow path from the shore.
The subaltern pointed towards the gap in the cliffs. ‘Our chaps have pushed forward quite well. Not much resistance on the beach either, thank God!’
Chesnaye thought of the nodding corpses in the stained water. ‘It looked bad to me,’ he said quietly.
‘Hell, no!’ The Australian accent seemed strange and casual. ‘My signals outfit reported that the main landings down south have had a really bad time of it! Lost hundreds in the first minutes.’ He grimaced. ‘Cross-fire. The Turks had the whole damn’ beach zeroed in!’
Chesnaye looked across Pickles’ heaving shoulders at his silent seamen. In their dusty and crumpled uniforms they seemed out of place, lost and dispirited. Chesnaye bit his lip. They had not started yet. He wondered how the dead lieutenant would have dealt with the situation. No doubt as casually and as efficiently as this young soldier.
‘Can we go forward now?’ Chesnaye saw Pickles stiffen at his question.
The subaltern gestur
ed towards the squatting soldiers. ‘Here, runner! Take these jolly Jacks up to the observation post.’ He grinned again. ‘If it’s still there!’
Chesnaye waved his arm. ‘Come on, lads!’ He was too tired to look at them again. ‘We’ll rest when we get there!’
The subaltern called after them: ‘Keep your heads down when you cross the first gully. There’s a goddamned sniper about somewhere!’
They reached the end of the path and Chesnaye stared mesmerised at the small pile of corpses which littered the saucer-shaped arena at the opening of the gully. Not people, he thought. Just things. Khaki uniforms and discarded rifles. Heavy boots still stained from the beach, and fingers digging into the stony path as if to mark that last second of agony. Dried blood and staring faces across which the flies busied themselves in their hundreds.
The runner gripped his rifle and pointed to a deep hole which had been cut into the sandy side of the rock, ‘Watch,’ he said shortly. ‘There’s a fixed rifle somewhere up in that hill. The sniper fires it every so often in the hope some poor joker’ll be crossing this spot. He’s on to a good thing, really. It’s the only path from our beach!’
There was a whiplash crack, and the gravel around the hole jumped as if blasted from the inside. The bullet must have passed right through the piled corpses, for one of them turned on its side, like a sleeper who has been momentarily awakened by some unusual sound.
‘Now!’ The runner ducked his head and ran.
Chesnaye banged Pickles’ arm. ‘After him! Come on, the rest of you!’
Dazed and unsteady, the seamen scampered across the opening. Chesnaye watched them melt into the boulders beneath the rock shadow and then took a last look round. Nothing moved, yet he could feel the eyes of the nearest dead soldier watching him with fixed curiosity. Crack! The stones jumped again, and the runner called, ‘Have a go for it, chum!’
Chesnaye wanted to walk calmly past the silent figures, to pass some confidence to his own small party, but as he stepped into the sun’s glare he thought suddenly and clearly of that hidden marksman. Perhaps he was already shifting his rifle and even now had found Chesnaye’s shoulders within his sights. He had another stark vision of his own body sprawled on top of the others, and he imagined that the corpse with the staring eyes would be glad. He ran.
Up and up they climbed, each step dislodging stones and stirring the dust. The Saracen seemed impossible to imagine, their mission merely a memory.
The observation post consisted only of a natural wall of boulders strewn deep into a long patch of the small, stunted trees which Chesnaye had seen from the cliff path. There was no shelter from the sun, and the stupendous view of a wide valley and the ridge beyond was swirling in a fantastic heat haze. The ridge flickered with scattered flashes as hidden marksmen crawled and outmanceuvred the enemy, whilst below him Chesnaye could see the clean scars in the hillside where soldiers had already dug their way into a quickly arranged defensive trench which curved out of sight around the foot of the nearest hill.
The runner mopped his face and crouched gratefully behind the rocks. ‘This is the narrowest part of the peninsula,’ he said solemnly. ‘That big formation of ridges to the left is Sari Bair, and over the ridge the Straits are only four miles away.’ He smiled sadly. ‘If we can break across this lot we’ll cut the bastards in half!’ He ducked instinctively as a shell droned overhead. ‘Got to watch that sort,’ he explained. ‘Johnny Turk has got a big gun somewhere over that brown hillock. It fires shrapnel mostly. Got a lot of good cobbers this morning!’ He stiffened. ‘Ah, here comes your mate! I’d better be off to the command post.’ With a cheerful nod he was off, his long legs taking him down the slope like a goat.
Chesnaye turned to face the young army officer with the blue and white brassard on his arm. The soldier was walking stiffly as if only just holding himself together. He looked at Chesnaye and they both stared at one another with disbelief.
Some of Chesnaye’s despair seemed to melt. ‘Bob Driscoll!’ For a few moments he forgot his loneliness, the helpless feeling of loss, as he saw the weariness lift from the young officer’s face.
They clasped hands and Driscoll said: ‘Good to see you. It’s been bloody hell up here!’
Chesnaye crouched beside him as he told the seamen where to find some sort of shelter while he outlined his orders. Chesnaye felt a stab of uneasiness as he watched Driscoll’s dust-stained face. The same mouth, the same grave eyes as Helen. It was unnerving.
Driscoll looked at Pickles. ‘Right, then. My sappers have started to lay a wire to the beach. As soon as they’ve connected they’ll send a morse signal to my chap here.’ He gestured to a small soldier hunched over a jumble of wireless gear above which glittered a single transmitting key. ‘You’ve got a range map of the area, but I expect we’ll have to make a few alterations after the first shots.’
Chesnaye nodded, his mind clearing slightly as he collected his thoughts in time to Driscoll’s calm voice. The monitor would fire from somewhere behind their spotting post, hidden by cliffs and hills, her presence only marked by the passage of her great fifteen-inch shells. It would be almost a blind shoot to start with, not much more than a compass bearing. Chesnaye and Pickles would watch and note the fall of shot and pass the alterations of range and deflection to the man with the morse key. The message would travel down the new, hastily laid wire to where Beaushears and his signalmen would be waiting at the foot of the cliffs to flag it to the watching Saracen.
Chesnaye swallowed hard. It sounded simple.
Driscoll was saying, ‘You must be quite an important bloke, Dick!’ His teeth shone in his grimed face. ‘I’d have thought that your C.O.’d send someone a bit senior for this job!’
Pickles spoke for the first time. ‘He was killed on the beach!’ He still sounded shocked.
‘Hmmm, I see.’ Driscoll settled his elbow on the rocks and lifted his binoculars. ‘Get your telescope rigged, Dick. You’ll be able to see the Turkish battery if you watch long enough.’ He winced as a shell passed overhead. ‘That’s a small chap. Mountain battery. The whole bloody place is alive with Turks, yet I’ve not seen one!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Imagine that! Lost my sergeant this morning. Bang through the head. Yet we didn’t see a bloody one!’
Chesnaye jammed the telescope carefully in position. In its enlarged eye the ridge seemed very near, and as he watched he saw the telltale drift of smoke as the hidden battery fired once again. On the hillside to his right the pale rocks leapt high into the air, and he imagined that he could feel the ground lurch against his crouching body.
Driscoll took off his cap and wiped his brow. ‘Their shooting is improving, blast it!’ He pointed at the hillside where some running soldiers had shown themselves for a few brief seconds. ‘If the Turks can batter down our defences to the right of us we shall be in bad trouble. When night comes they’ll try to cut down the valley and split this section in half.’ He shook his head. ‘You men’ll have to act like infantrymen if that happens!’
The linesman reported: ‘We’re through, sir! Contact with the beach signal party!’
Driscoll put on his cap. ‘Well, Dick, it’s all yours! Let’s see what the Navy can do!’
Chesnaye peered through the telescope and watched the distant ridge. One real error and the shells would fall right on to the Australian positions below.
He gritted his teeth. ‘Very well. Make a signal to Saracen. Commence first salvo when ready!’
His limbs seemed to grow tighter. He was committed.
5
The Enemy
The Saracen shivered as the two big guns recoiled violently on their springs and the twin detonations blasted across the placid water as one. The sound was magnified and echoed by the craggy shoreline, so that the noise of the bombardment was constant and enfolded the quaking ship like a tropical storm. The two guns were angled at about forty-five degrees and pointed directly over the port rail. Already the smooth barrels were stained and blackened for sever
al feet back from their muzzles, and the acrid cordite smoke hung over the monitor’s bridge in an unmoving cloud.
Commander Godden coughed loudly into his handkerchief and then looked with distaste at the black stains on his uniform. ‘How much longer, sir?’
Royston-Jones was squatting forward from his chair, elbows on the screen, his powerful glasses trained at some point along the coast. The light was beginning to fail, and there was a hint of purple shadowing across the jagged headland of Kaba Tepe. He shrugged and then jerked as the guns roared out once more.
The Yeoman moved dazedly across the bridge. His cap and shoulders were speckled with flaked paint brought down from the upper bridge by the constant gunfire and recoil. ‘Signal from beach, sir. Cease fire. Turkish battery silenced and supporting infantry dispersed.’
Royston-Jones gestured impatiently. ‘Very well. Cease firing and secure the guns.’
Muffled and indistinct within the great turret they could hear the tinny rattle of the ‘Cease Fire’ gong. The sweating, near-demented gunners would be almost too dazed to leave their stations after a day of continuous bombardment. The Quarters Officer, too, would have his work cut out to prepare the turret for immediate action if required.
Godden sighed with relief as the turret squeaked round until it was trained fore and aft, while the two guns drooped wearily to a horizontal position, their dark muzzles still smoking angrily.
‘Signal from Flag, sir.’ The Yeoman watched his captain warily. ‘The bombarding squadron will withdraw at dusk to reinforce the southern landings. Saracen will maintain position in this sector until relieved or reinforced, with two destroyers in attendance. Every available effort to be made to evacuate wounded under cover of darkness.’ The Yeoman looked up from his slate. ‘End of signal, sir.’
Godden groaned. ‘Left alone again! God, what do they think we are?’ He glared round the bridge. ‘What the hell are we going to do with a lot of wounded soldiers?’
H.M.S Saracen (1965) Page 9
