by Tony Roberts
“Sure thing,” Casca grinned.
The night went on, with more and more casualties arriving. One other incident caught Casca’s eye. He saw the man he remembered back in the hospital in Alexandria, the short, dark-haired man with glasses called Clark emerge from the dysentery ward and beckon a man over. A short while later two soldiers arrived and they were unmistakably military police. The short man gave them instructions and the policemen left. Casca motioned Alison over. “That’s Clark.” he pointed at the short man.
“Yes, what going on?”
“I think he’s learned where I’m supposed to be. He’s just come out from where Rocky is. I think he’s given me away.”
Alison was horror struck. “Why would he do that?”
“God knows. Don’t go see him. We’re due to leave in an hour. Pack your stuff and go down to the jetty. I’ll join you shortly. They’ll take about thirty minutes to find my unit, and then be told I’m here. They’ll start a search for me. When they don’t find my name here on the casualty records, they’ll get Rocky to identify me. We’ve got maybe two hours. By then we’ll be on the boat, but Rocky must not see us before we go.”
Alison nodded and vanished. Casca glared at the canvas screen, behind which Rocky lay. He had no idea why the young Australian would have given him away, but it meant he now had to get out of there on the next boat for certain.
He felt the net closing in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dawn came agonizingly slowly, but eventually come it did, with a glow to the east over the Asian shoreline. Casca waited impatiently amongst the line of men who had been ordered to be sent to Imbros, and Alison was one of a group of medical staff detailed to look after them and make sure they didn’t go astray anywhere.
As the ship rolled at anchor fifty yards off shore, a couple of motor launches began ferrying the men from the jetty. The ship was an old converted steamer; twin funnels belched black smoke into the crisp morning air and two tall masts revealed that it had been built not too long after the age of sail had slipped away and had been replaced by the age of steam.
Casca pushed forward, wanting to be next to be put on board the launch. Every coming and going in the hospital a few yards distant gave him a fresh burst of anxiety. He would have been known by now to have been sent to the hospital, and the policemen would have returned with the news.
Finally Alison waved the next group, Casca included, onto the launch and he gratefully shuffled forward and was guided down the improvised step ladder to the rolling deck of the small boat. Alison helped him aboard with an extra squeeze of the arm and together they sat close to the stern. The launch cast off and swung about for the steamer. Casca wondered what the hell was going on in the hospital.
Ieaun Clark was wondering roughly the same thing. He stood in front of the young Australian who’d finally revealed that the man he sought was a Private Roman in the third battalion. “He’s here, in this hospital,” Clark said. Behind him stood the two military policemen Captain Hieron had assigned to him. They stood correctly, arms behind their backs, starched uniforms correct, caps firmly on their heads and their eyes half hidden by the down turned peaks. “He’s been wounded. Have you seen him?”
“No,” Rocky shook his head. “I’ve been behind this screen all the time. What happened to him?”
“That’s none of your concern. He’s very much alive but here in this bloody hospital. If you see him, get a nurse or orderly to fetch me. I’m going to be searching the list of new arrivals; that’s where I’ll be if anyone asks.”
“You’ll get that nurse brought back from Imbros now I’ve co-operated, won’t you?” Rocky said in a pleading tone. “That was the deal. You get your man, I get the nurse.”
Clark turned round slowly. “You’ll get your wish once that man is in custody. Now rest. You’re recovering well; I don’t want a relapse.” He nodded to the two MPs and they strode away from the dysentery ward. “Bloody fool,” Clark muttered just loud enough for the MPs to hear. They grinned briefly.
But Clark was to be disappointed. Roman’s name wasn’t on the list. The two MPs helped him, but it was absent. The duty doctor protested but Clark and the two policemen glared at him until he subsided. Clark slapped the list down onto the duty desk. “Were you on duty this last night when the wounded were brought in?”
“No, it was Doctor Wembridge.”
Clark sighed, showing a great deal of patience that he didn’t feel. “Please go fetch him.”
“But he’ll be asleep after a tiring night!”
“I don’t care if he’s on death’s door,” Clark snarled, “or shall I get my two associates here to drag the bloody man out of his bloody tent?”
The doctor looked at the two MPs who held his stare. They looked serious. With a shake of his head the doctor went off to wake the unfortunate Doctor Wembridge. After ten minutes he returned with a disheveled and irritable Wembridge. “Well?” he barked, “this had better be good waking me up! What is it? Has Turkey surrendered?”
Clark got to the point. “You received the wounded last night. A man with a shoulder wound, a Private Roman of the third battalion. Why is his name not on the sheets?”
Wembridge scowled. “I entered every damned man on those damned sheets. Shoulder wound? There must have been thirty of those alone!”
“Twenty-five, to be exact,” Clark growled. “The man I’m after – for murder, may I add – was sent here at around midnight with a shoulder wound. How many men did you examine with shoulder wounds at that time, give or take an hour?”
“I can’t remember,” Wembridge said. “Let me see those chits.”
Clark handed over the sheets, and Wembridge flicked through them. “There were seven with that sort of wound in the two hours from eleven to one.”
“This man is a big man with scars,” Clark said.
Wembridge frowned. He had a headache, and Clark was rapidly becoming a second one. “There was this one,” he waved a sheet at Clark, “but he said he was in the second battalion, a Private Atkins. Bayonet wound. Big man, scar on his face. As you can see I recommended him for convalescence on Imbros.”
Clark snatched the sheet and examined it. “Tommy Atkins?” he exclaimed, “you bloody idiot, man! That’s what the whole British army called themselves last year when they signed up!”
“Well I’m not a damned Pom,” Wembridge retorted, “so how the hell was I to know?”
Clark slapped the sheet onto the table again. “But this is his mistake! It proves he’s not Australian, and was in the British army last year. He’s our man, alright!” He ordered the search of the hospital again, this time for Tommy Atkins, but he wasn’t to be found.
There was only one explanation to Clark’s mind – his fugitive had gone on the boat that had left just a short while back to Imbros. So be it. He would send a message to Captain Hieron to check at the hospital. If he confirmed Atkins was there, then Hieron was to arrest him and then he himself would sail to Imbros himself to identify this elusive man.
The voyage to Imbros would take only an hour or so. Casca had immediately moved away from the other wounded men and made his excuses and popped into the lavatory. There he fully examined the bayonet wound. It had closed and was a red scar. It itched like mad. The dressing was thrown into a convenient bucket and he washed his face in the rudimentary sink. The water was brackish.
He wandered out onto deck and gazed at the receding shoreline of Gallipoli. It had been madness to try to take it in the first place, but he supposed until they failed they wouldn’t have thought that. Military thinking at the top level wasn’t usually great, particularly in these days when the generals making the decisions never came anywhere near the front line. They’d fight until the last drop of their soldiers’ blood. Was this how warfare was to be from now on? Sending battalions of men to their deaths against more and more sophisticated weaponry? The gun had certainly changed everything. He wasn’t sure he liked it. In the old days you could just stand
face to face with your enemy, so close you could see every detail on his face, and smell him, and then kill him.
Alison popped her head out of the nearest door and saw him. “Oh, there you are. Wondered where you’d got to.” She joined him looking aft. “Penny for them.”
“Penny?”
“A penny for your thoughts….. you’re a world away.”
“Oh,” Casca grinned self-consciously. “Just thinking about the war and how it’s going to finish – if it ever does.”
“It’s got to. People won’t stand this slaughter indefinitely. Not even you mad soldiers!”
“True,” Casca nodded. “Another thing’s bothering me. That man Clark – it won’t be long before he connects my disappearance with this boat’s departure. He’ll be over on Imbros with the next one. I’ve got to vanish before I get to the dock.”
“But how?” Alison asked.
“I’ll slip overboard as we get into the harbor, swim ashore and you’ll cover for me. Find a place I can hide until the search dies down.”
Alison looked unsure. “I don’t know if I can, Sandy.”
“If you don’t, they’ll arrest me and shoot me.”
Alison grabbed his jacket. “They won’t! Alright, I’ll hide you, but don’t you do anything stupid and get caught, you understand?”
Seamen were moving about on deck, so it was better Casca hide out of sight. The wounded were crowded in the mess, being tended by the other orderlies, and it was unlikely a good hiding place could be found there. Casca looked at the rows of lifeboats. Ever since the Titanic disaster three years before it had been maritime law that all vessels had to have sufficient lifeboats for all crew and passengers. So most ship owners had crammed their vessels to the brim with them.
Casca lifted the corner of the canvas cover of the nearest one. It was dark, warm and dry inside. It would do. He nodded and untied the two loops at the stern and wriggled in. Alison put the canvas back smoothly so it didn’t look out of place. “I’ll watch out for you,” she said, then returned to the wounded indoors.
It seemed like an eternity before the ship slowed, but it was only probably two hours. The ship turned and came to a halt alongside a jetty. Casca could hear the voices and footsteps on deck and lay still. He didn’t want any noise betraying him. There was a distant rumble, then a clatter. The sound of voices diminished and finally died away, except for the occasional voice of a sailor on deck. After a while he lifted the corner of the canvas and looked out. There was nobody to be seen and he pushed himself up. Another quick look, this time all the way round, and again he was in the clear. He swiftly crawled out onto deck and reached the rail. The harbor of Imbros was before him, a wide, shallow bay with a jumble of white painted houses sprawling along and inland for a short distance. Hills rose in the background.
The smell of dead fish, salt water and smoke from the ship’s funnels assailed his senses. He climbed the rail and hung over the edge of the ship. The drop was twelve feet or so to the water. He wasn’t going to jump onto the jetty. A quick check to see nobody was around, then he let go. He plunged into the warm water and it closed over his head. Then he floated back up and broke the surface. A few quick strokes and he was under the jetty.
“Did you hear that?” a voice came floating to him from above.
“Yeah,” a second could be heard. “Sounded like something landed in the water.”
“There! The water’s disturbed! By the stern.”
Casca peered up through the slats in the jetty. He could see two men peering over the side to the point where he’d plunged into the harbor. He remained absolutely still. After a few minutes the two sailors were called away, the authoritative voice demanding to know what the hell they were gawking at and get back to work. Casca smiled to himself.
He would wait till dark before making his move. Before then he’d best get out of the water and dry off. The jetty was built on thick piles and supported by cross beams. Casca got up onto one of the cross beams and sat there, his clothes dripping. He peeled off his jacket and shirt and hung them on the beam. The darkness shrouded him and kept him hidden from the people working on the jetty as the next ship came in, but he heard them clearly enough.
Soldiers marched back and forth. Orders were shouted. The afternoon went on and more ships arrived. Casca had dried off except for his trousers, and they were now merely damp. He was getting bored, sitting there. But it was at that moment that more heavy boots came crashing along the jetty. They stopped almost directly above the spot where Casca was sitting.
“Captain, we’ve been sent by Doctor Clark to report that the murderer – now known as Tommy Atkins – is present somewhere here on Imbros. He escaped Anzac Beach this morning on the hospital ship.”
Casca’s ears pricked up.
“Where is Clark?” came a deep voice, obviously the captain’s.
“Still on Anzac Beach, sir. He’s seeking to get a transfer here at the earliest opportunity. Says he’ll bring a dysentery sufferer who can identify the murderer Atkins.”
Casca’s teeth bared. That bastard Rocky was going to do his best to get him caught. Why – he had no idea.
“Very well,” the captain said. “Resume your duties here until Clark arrives. In the meantime I’ll get every spare man to patrol the harbor front to look out for Atkins. I’ll pass his description onto every man in the unit. Dismissed.”
The two marched off. Casca sat there very thoughtfully, pondering on the next move he could make. He was still deep in thought when darkness fell. With a sigh he got off the beam and clambered his way across the supports and emerged cautiously above the wooden platform of the jetty. Men could be seen, vaguely as shadows against the poor lighting of the town. Most of those would be guards. He’d have to make a wide detour around them.
In fact, going anywhere near the town was not a good idea. Casca sloped off to the left along the shoreline, keeping as close to the water as possible. Away from the harbor there was no reason any soldier or supply worker would have to be down by the waterside. The sea reflected some light so Casca at least could see if any object was there to trip him up. There was no sand, just rocks and pebbles, and away from the harbor the vegetation came right down to the sea in places, making it easier for him to sneak through undetected.
The hospital was up on a rise, away from the town. It wouldn’t have made sense to place a hospital amongst a crowded settlement, and sanitation wasn’t much in evidence in the town in any case. The approach was up a rocky slope dotted with olive trees and a carob grove. Low uneven stone walls separated the olive trees from the carob grove and as he slid over one he caught sight of guards patrolling the perimeter of the hospital.
This far out he was away from the lights that had been set up around the medical station but the closer he got he’d run the risk of being seen.
There was a road, lined with trees and stones that had been pushed out of the way when the road had been driven up to the new hospital, and cover was better there than the approaches across cleared land elsewhere. But there were guards there at the end where a gate stood. And there was something else; a fence.
Invisible until he got close, it was a five strand barbed wire fence, held up with wooden posts. Not a formidable barrier in itself, but the noise he’d make getting over would attract guards in no time. It looked like it would creak like a gibbet.
Casca grumbled while crouching in the shadows. “I got into trouble in the first place breaking out of a hospital, now I’ve got to break into one.”
Somewhere in there Alison was stationed. She said she’d look out for him. Would she guess he was out there waiting?
As if his thoughts called her, he suddenly spotted her off to the right walking along as if lost in thought, smoking. She was nowhere near a door so she must have been walking there for a while and he’d not spotted her. She was going to walk past the place he was concealed in a few minutes, about twenty yards distant. The nearest guard was walking away to the end of his pa
trolling patch and to the other side the nearest guard was by the gate, fifty yards distant.
Casca grabbed a loose rock and hefted it. He judged the distance, the weight of the rock, and the trajectory. He hurled the lump of stone and watched as it struck the ground ten feet or so in front of her. She jumped, startled, and Casca stood up quickly, waved, then crouched down again. Alison quickly recovered her senses and came over at a trot, making sure the guard was not looking.
“I wondered if you’d turn up at night! They’re looking for you everywhere. Some police captain came to the hospital earlier and questioned us all.”
Casca took her half-finished cigarette and drew deeply on it. “Yeah, I heard him talking to some soldiers at the jetty. That man Clark is going to come over with Rocky in the next day or so. Rocky’s helping them for some reason, although why I don’t know.”
Alison took the cigarette back, making sure she didn’t catch herself on the wire. “What now? I’m due to return to duty in a few minute, then I’m off duty at ten.”
“Find a place for me to hide inside the hospital. Then get a sheet to place over this damned fence; if possible not a white one but I know it’ll be hard to find one that’s not. I’ve got to get over this without noise.”
“And once you’re inside the hospital, what then? You can’t hide forever.”
Casca nodded. “True, but the hunt for me will be away from here. I’ve not arrived as far as they can tell, so I’ve got to be elsewhere. My guess is that Rocky will be put here to identify me for sure when they catch either me or someone who could be me. The hunt will go over the island. It’s a big place so it’ll take time for them to realize I’m not there. By that time hopefully I’ll have worked out how to get off this place. I’ll need transport and a new identity. Can you help? I’ll pass myself off as a Greek.”
“A Greek?”
Casca grinned. “I look Greek, and I speak Greek. Why not? I bet you’ve got Greek orderlies or workers there, maybe doing the laundry or cleaning, or such like.”
