‘Aye, but I’d rather have any of those than that sodding Major.’
Liam grew suddenly serious. ‘He’s not with us, is he? I haven’t seen him on the boat.’
‘He’ll be somewhere plaguing us. Not too close to any action though.’
‘It all seems a bit strange to me,’ Edward intervened. ‘Why are we trying to take a place like this? Nobody lives here and it is miles from anywhere.
‘They said it is to go in by the back door of Germany,’ Liam explained.
‘It’s more like Turkey’s back yard. And what’s the sense in taking them on in there? They didn’t seem all that bothered in Egypt but they’re going to be a lot keener about us invading their own country.’
The clanking of the anchor chain echoed like a command for silence round the hold of the ship where the soldiers were waiting. Minutes later, the throbbing engines were cut and an eerie silence descended over the ship. From somewhere in the distance they could hear the rolling boom of heavy guns.
There was half an hour to go before the 6.00 am landing time. The men smoked their pipes and cigarettes and gripped their rifles more tightly as the officers gave the final briefing. There was a heightened sense of anticipation, a feeling that they were finally going to be involved in the real action. They were part of a team that was going to be called upon to show their bravery in a fight. Death had not been a close companion in their service so far and it did not insinuate its sinister, paralysing presence now. The detritus of the carnage on the quayside at Alexandria had been sobering but now the Salford men joked and boasted about what they would do to give one back to those Turks.
Edward watched Big Charlie take a large cloth from his kitbag and carefully polish his Lee Enfield rifle. He checked it thoroughly, scrutinising the detail of the mechanism and the precision of the bar of light reflected down the barrel. Satisfied with his inspection, he gave it a final polish, folded the cloth into exact quarters and replaced it in the bag.
The seconds ticked away and they heard the metallic thud of the steam tugs being positioned alongside their boat. Then came the command to be up on deck and they were racing up the ladders and into the open air.
Liam performed a few quick, dribbling steps across the deck shouting to Edward ‘I feel like Billy Meredith coming out of the tunnel at the Cup Final.’
‘Aye, well let’s hope that we don’t score any own goals,’ Big Charlie grumbled as he narrowly missed Edward’s head with the kitbag that he was swinging on to his shoulder but succeeded instead in catching Liam in the crotch with the butt of his rifle.
On the deck they were instructed to load the small landing vessels with a part of the consignment of supplies and ammunition. They set about the task with vigorous impatience, keen to get the job done and to get on to the beach so that they could ‘give those Turks a good hiding.’
Edward stood on the deck of the tug and watched as the sandy line of ‘W’ beach with the high cliff behind grew larger. He could hear the whine of the shells being directed at them from across the Dardanelles Straits and saw the spectacular plumes of water as they missed their targets and fell into the sea. The mules on the other boats whinnied and stirred restlessly, distressed by the rumbling explosions.
Approaching the beach he realised that the line of flotsam that fringed the sea was the bloated carcases of men and beasts that had perished in the water. The tugs eased their way through the stinking remnants and moored alongside the barges that had been fixed against the beach to provide temporary docking. In the rapidly increasing heat of the sunny morning they unloaded the tug and moved the equipment and supplies up to a sheltered position under the cliff.
As they struggled with their loads under the searing sun they heard the crack of a rifle shot. Edward turned and saw that an officer, who had been standing on the beach urging on his men a few moments before, was now lying in the sand with blood spurting from his shoulder. The medical orderlies dropped their loads and ran over to him. He was still alive and he cursed loudly as he was carried over the rough terrain to the temporary first aid post.
The soldiers in the area had fallen to the ground and, with rifles at the ready, their eyes searched the cliffs for the attacker. No snipers could be seen and no more shots came. They returned to the job in hand with renewed urgency. A canteen was soon set up and they stopped for a welcome cup of tea.
That day, all the men, equipment and animals were safely brought ashore from the ‘Karoa’, despite the constant threat from the shelling. As the sun sank down into the Aegean the battalion knew that they had worked hard together as a team and had done the job well. They now looked forward to the bivouac on the cliffs and a good night’s sleep without the throbbing of the ship’s engines that had accompanied them for the last two nights.
Edward settled himself down and took out the mail that he had been given. It had crossed from Egypt with them but it had been on the ship that had landed at the adjacent ‘V’ beach.
***
29 Myrtle Street
Cross Lane
Salford 5
Great Britain
1st April 1915
Dear Dad,
This morning we all ran down the stairs because our Edward said that you and Billy Murphy’s Dad were coming down Cross Lane on some camels. When we went outside to see he locked us out with only our pyjamas on and shouted ‘April Fools’ through the letterbox. Mam shouted at him because it started raining and he let us back in. He’s horrible sometimes. Our Ben found a dead mouse in the back yard and put it in our Edward’s shoe and when he got ready to go to his job at the greengrocers he went mad. We were too scared to shout ‘April Fool’ at him and we hid in next door’s lavatory.
I read about camels in a book at school and it said they are called ships of the desert. Do you see them going down that canal that Mam said you are working on?
Elsie Craddock has been chosen as May Queen at Central Mission and I am going to be a Lady in Waiting. They asked our Edward to be the head page boy but Elsie Craddock’s Mam moaned because she said that our Edward had broken their window with a football so he can’t do it now. He said he is not bothered anyway because Elsie Craddock looks like a haddock.
Mam got a chicken from the market yesterday and I helped her to pluck it but it hurt my hands after a bit. Ben was pulling the stringy bit in the middle of its leg and making its claws move.
After we had been to the market we went to see Aunty Mary and Uncle Jim and he said that he will get some wood from work and make me a cot for Dorothy when it’s my birthday and I told him that is in 6 weeks and 5 days but it’s only 6 weeks and 4 days today in this letter.
When I went down for a drink of water last night Mam was sat with her knitting on her knee and just looking at the fire without moving. I thought she had gone to sleep. She is doing a cardigan for our Sadie out of one of your old jumpers. She’s going to do some socks for our Ben with the rest.
Do you think you will be home for the summer holidays and we could go up to the park?
Love
Laura
***
As darkness fell the temperature dropped and the men were stunned by the penetrating cold. No matter what they did they could not get warm. They jumped up and down, they did exercises, they ran around and they huddled together on the ground but nothing could resist the fierce cold of the Turkish night and when the orders came to prepare to move they were glad of the distraction.
During the night the officers had been out to view the enemy positions to the left of their line and then at 3.30am, on the morning of the 6 May, the battalion moved from the shelter of the cliffs and headed up to Gully Beach. They marched through the rest of the coldly lit night and, as the morning sun tinted the ground with colourful hues, they arrived at their position above the beach in Gully Ravine. There the Territorials linked up with the regulars who had fought their way up the Ravine a week earlier and were now holding a line there.
When Edward’s battalion arrived t
hey found a force of tired and demoralised soldiers. The drawn faces and the sunken eyes of the men still manning these front line trenches expressed more vividly than words the horrors and hardships of the past week. They had lost many men, including a lot of their officers, and they now needed both sleep and leadership.
These tattered remnants of what a week ago had been a proud battalion of fighting men, were very bitter as they recounted the details of the poorly prepared landings. They described the way that they were fired on from unseen positions whilst they had been stuck on the underwater barbed wire defences; how they had been mown down with ridiculous ease as they tried to take the almost impregnable positions that were held by the Turks. Only a mile of land had been gained at the expense of a huge loss of lives.
Edward’s battalion was quickly organized into groups to establish the base camp at the entrance to Gully Ravine and to clear the lines of the corpses. After they had buried the dead they strengthened the lines and readied themselves for an attack.
They came across a Turkish prisoner of war with his face, arms and hands painted green and wearing a green uniform. He had been shot down out of his gun nest in a tree, from where he had accounted for many officers with his accurate sniping. He had told his captors how the officers were easily identified targets because they only had pistols and they wore different uniforms.
A sergeant with the Regulars, a Liverpudlian named Frank Williams, suggested to Edward that the officers would be better wearing kilts. ‘The Turks never fire at the Jocks’ he said ‘because they think that they are all women and their principles won’t allow them to kill women.’
Edward laughed. They should issue the kilts to all of us, he thought, then at least we would have a better chance. But he knew that the uniform was just another way of differentiating the officer class. The majority of them had no social, economic or educational common point of contact with the rank and file soldier who generally came from a working class background. Many of the officers were the sons of wealthier families for whom there was no clear career path other than the army. That offered them the chance of adventure and excitement and afterwards they would gain access to the best clubs, marry into the right circles and perhaps be given a safe seat in Parliament.
They were, however, professional and trained soldiers who provided leadership and guidance. It was clear that the number that were being killed or injured by the selective and accurate shooting of this strange looking Turk and his colleagues would leave them with a severe problem.
Nevertheless, the lads from Salford regarded the injured sniper not with hatred but with the sort of pity that is given to an injured carthorse. They had not yet acquired the callousness of war veterans.
By 7.30 in the evening, Edward and his Salford pals were positioned in the front line in Gully Ravine and stretching eastwards up the hill known as Fir Tree Spur. The complete Allied line reached from the Aegean Sea on the left, over Gully Spur and down into Gully Ravine, up over Fir Tree Spur and then across the Peninsula to the Dardanelles Straits on the right. The plan for the next two days was to advance the whole of the front line up the Peninsula and to capture Krithia and Achi Baba.
The evening breeze coming in from the sea was beginning to clear the sickly sweet veils of death from the trenches. Edward sucked in the comfort of another cigarette and tried to work out the time in England. He decided that Laura and the kids should be safely tucked up in bed by now. Would the same bright moon that was lighting up his trench be lighting up their bedrooms and pointing those bright silvery fingers through the slits in the curtain and on to their sleeping faces?
Thank God she wouldn’t know that in a few hours time he would be leaving the safety of his trench and running up this ravine into enemy fire. Whilst she was giving Sadie and Mary a sugar butty he would be trying to kill the Turkish soldiers before they killed him. Turkish soldiers who at this moment were further up the valley, gazing up at these same stars and thinking about their own wives and families in their homes. Please God he would make it and Laura would not be getting that knock on the front door from the telegram boy.
Edward looked around him at the high sides of the valley that were capped with a covering of fir trees. The stream near where he lay ran down from the enemy positions about five hundred yards away and the land between was a rocky scrub land that would provide only limited cover for them behind the small hillocks and gorse bushes. Running off from the sides of the valley were a number of smaller gullies – each with its own surprises. Throughout the night the whine of exchanged shellfire continued with odd bursts of rifle fire between as the trench watches on both sides shot nervously at imaginary enemies in the shadows of no-man’s land.
The small stream that ran down the ravine was full of slime and was blood-coloured in patches around the unreachable corpses. It was also home to hundreds of frogs that eventually added their loud croaking to the chorus of noise of Gallipoli. From nearby he heard a strained, mournful animal sound. He looked round and saw Liam, hands cupped around his mouth, croaking in counterpoint to the frogs.
***
The following morning, shortly before 11.00am, there was a brief and barely noticed artillery attack on the Turkish positions. They had earlier had a briefing from Major Fforbes-Fosdyke who had given them a theatrical, almost comic, address on the need for discipline under fire, showing courage in the face of adversity and for setting aside personal safety when fighting in this noble war. They were told that they should feel honoured to have been given this opportunity to pay the ultimate price for the glory of the King and the British Empire. The Major had come to Gallipoli only two days before, landing on ‘V’ Beach, but spoke the role of a heroic survivor of the first landings in April. He took a perverse delight in talking about the men who had died and how they must be prepared to meet death themselves to avenge the loss of their comrades.
Edward stared at the taut, white skin of his knuckles as his hands gripped round his rifle and wondered whether the King would look after his wife and kids if he was called on to pay this ultimate price. The NCO’s had been calling out the five minute time signals for twenty minutes now. 10.50am – only ten minutes left.
Big Charlie carefully wiped his Lee Enfield with his polishing cloth and Liam, slumped on the firing step, muttered prayers for safe deliverance.
Around him he could see the tense bodies of his mates, rifles held in front of them, eyes staring into the ground. He looked at the soldier on his left. He was younger than Edward and came from near the gas works but he was the type who never said that much. Kept himself to himself really. Edward had played football with the lad’s older brother, the aptly named Chopper Hennessy, and had had a more recent bruising encounter with him on a rugby field in Egypt. Young Hennessy had only recently joined the Terriers, having been brought along by Chopper ‘to get him out a bit.’ Edward noticed that the lad had taken off his glasses. Lines of shining dried salt traced down his cheeks. The tension was showing in the tight ridged muscles of the young man’s neck and Edward asked him if he was OK. He got no reply. The eyes never flickered and the only sign of life was the huge throbbing blood vessel on the side of his head. 10.55am.
Edward turned away. The younger man was paralysed by an intense fear and Edward was already struggling to cope with his own. Acrid smelling smoke was beginning to drift down into the trenches.
At 11.00am the synchronized whistles of the officers sounded along the whole of the line and the trench erupted in a frenzy of shouting and movement as the soldiers went up the ladders. As Edward waited to go up he heard a furious shouting at the side of him. He looked round and saw Major Fforbes-Fosdyke screaming at the frightened soldier who was still sitting bolt upright on the fire step. The petrified young Hennessy didn’t move and the Major, shouting at him to stand up and get over the top, grabbed at him and tried to lift him. The lad’s body and mind, however, had completely shut down and he was rigid with fear. The officer took out his pistol and shot the young soldier fro
m near the gas works through the head. The tense muscles in the boy’s neck relaxed as the blood pumped from the wound above his eye. Slowly, but with increasing velocity, his body tumbled sideways, crumbling into a lifeless heap on the floor. Edward stared in disbelief and tried to grab the Major’s hand but he pushed him back. They had already had their tot of rum but the smell of whisky on the officer’s breath was overpowering. His sandy moustache was flecked with spittle and snot from his nose. The white, sweating face and staring blue eyes betrayed the demeanour of an unbalanced mind. ‘Get on with it soldier’ he snarled, waving the pistol threateningly at Edward’s head. ‘If we had left him there then next time we would have had more actors than the Hippodrome.’
Still reeling from the shock of what he had witnessed, Edward grabbed the ladder and went over the parapet. He followed the others as they strode off in a line, their bodies released from the coiled spring tension by the piercing whistles in the trenches but contained by the numbingly slow pace at which they had been trained to proceed. They tried to keep the formation that they had been instructed to hold but the Turkish machine guns swept their lines with enfilading fire and the Turkish infantrymen picked off their targets with ease. The enemy soldiers had established themselves in vantage points higher up the ravine and they could watch every movement of the Allied troops. Some men bent down and tried to help injured comrades but then they themselves were gunned down mercilessly. The officers yelled at them to keep going, waving their pistols in frantic encouragement.
The Turkish machine gun bullets were slicing through the Salford lads as though they were tissue paper. Edward saw men in front whose heads suddenly seemed to explode and others whose bodies arched impossibly backwards then collapsed on the ground. He could hear the bullets whistling past as they sought another victim and black smoke was starting to drift down into the valley from the hill on his left. He jumped over the twisted bodies of friends, stumbled then raced forward again to catch up. They were running now, being driven by instinct in a blind rush into mayhem.
Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) Page 7
