Captain

by Sam Angus

  One night, as Captain added another blanket to his pile, I asked, “Why?”

  If we were leaving, why did Captain need so many? His eyes met mine and he hesitated, was about to speak, then shook his head and was silent. It was what had happened before, I thought, long ago, that made him so scared of the cold. That was what lay behind the piling up of so many provisions.

  Firkins rose and stood, eyes over the parapet, looking towards the Turkish lines, to the ridge, to the new and deadly German guns they’d brought up. How could we ever get away when the Turk gunners had our range to an inch? Captain was there, and I felt his eyes were on me as I laid my bet.

  “Wherever we go, we go together, you and me and Hey-Ho,” I said carefully.

  I would stay with them, whatever happened. We’d lived together in the crannies of this barren rock, raked by the same heat, the same cold, the same thirst and hunger and illness. Together we’d snatched our food, our water, from the jaws of death. Wherever we went, we’d go together, two boys in a world of men.

  * * *

  It was in December that we received orders to evacuate the peninsula: 83,000 men, 186 guns, everything and everyone to be embarked under cover of night. We’d done the impossible in landing and were now to do the impossible in leaving. There was a sort of guilty anger in all of us then. We’d leave while the blood of the Yeomanry was still wet on the ground, abandon their makeshift graves to the enemy.

  Our tents would stay where they were, the candles remain lit. We’d convince Johnny Turk we were digging in for the winter and all the while we’d load our stores secretly onto ships, each night men filing silently down to the beach, packing themselves onto boats and whisking themselves off the peninsula.

  The days spent in preparation were cold and anxious. Captain and I were together one afternoon, the two of us crouching in my dugout, peeling the labels off tins of bully, then piercing holes in the tins before sticking the labels back on. The idea was that Johnny Turk would be violently ill when he ate them. I watched Captain carefully. I’d seen him that morning, kneeling, a blanket around his shoulders, at the side of the ruined building at the foot of the cliff. All along the bay, up and down the gullies, he and the other men had been making silent, private visits to the graves of those lost. A gale battered and tore at the scrub around him, and poor Hey-Ho waited, his rear quarters to the wind, muzzle to the stone, shivering violently. I’d noticed how thin the little animal was, his staring knife-edge ribs. We all of us looked like living skeletons that winter, especially the animals.

  Captain stuck the label back on, neat and deft always with his fingers, a smile on his face. I always wondered at the smile that came so readily, so easily tickled by the pranks we English liked to play on our enemies, a smile even after a life of so much loss. Recently, though, he’d smiled less than he once had, had been perhaps a little withdrawn, and I thought that somber mood was because of having to abandon his father here to the wind and rain. Captain had taken to going off alone with Hey-Ho, the pair of them wandering up and down the gullies, Captain’s face preoccupied and grave. I noticed, too, that Captain’s pile of blankets and tins had been spirited away, to some other place I supposed, but I thought no more of its disappearance.

  Laden with kindling, Hey-Ho was nosing about in the mud and snow for the thistles that were now all sodden and brown.

  “Hey-Ho!”

  The little donkey raised his head at Captain’s voice and trotted up. I smiled at the sweetness of him, but Captain’s mouth tightened and he shook his head very slightly. He rose and went to Hey-Ho, and bent his head, his eyes closing, his forehead lowered to Hey-Ho’s, and they stood together, nose to nose for a long while.

  * * *

  The next day the Lieutenant set us to rigging up rifles so as to keep them firing after we’d deserted the trench. Captain was quicker than me with his hands, would make a good engineer, I thought. We’d made booby traps too, to blow up the dugouts when Johnny Turk opened the door. I watched Captain placing one can above another next to a rifle, the top full of water and set to drip into the other. When the bottom one was full, its weight would pull the wire tight around the rifle’s trigger and fire it. Captain smiled at the schoolboy contraption.

  “We’ll be the rear, Captain,” I said proudly. “The Yeomen will be amongst the last to leave Gallipoli.” I’d asked the Lieutenant if I could be the very last to leave. I felt there was some honor in that, in being the last man up there, and I wanted to prove to the others I was man enough to do it. You see, one man in every sector of the hill had to stay behind right up to the very last minute to set up the rifles. Lieutenant Sparrow had agreed, but I noticed that when Straker heard, his lips tightened as though he thought I were the wrong choice.

  Captain’s eyes dropped to the wire he was wrapping around the trigger of a rifle.

  “Hey-Ho makes more noise than all of them…” He looked up at me. “The mules that make most noise will stay right to the end, to make the enemy think we are all still here.”

  I heard the choke in his throat but thought Captain was worried only by the same fear I had, that we’d be somehow left behind, abandoned to Johnny Turk.

  “It’s an honor,” I said stubbornly, “to be last to leave.”

  We all of us in the following days were tense, and as the shadows of the last day lengthened, we were jumpy as June bugs. There was something steely in the set of Captain’s face that I’d not seen before.

  I had an important role to play in the leaving of Gallipoli that night and I was full of that, and anxious, so I wasn’t thinking too much just then about Captain or Hey-Ho. In the late afternoon, when Firkins and Merriman were tying sandbags round their feet and Lieutenant Sparrow was laying sandbags along the floor to muffle our footsteps, Captain rose to leave the trench. He walked over to me.

  “You will be all right,” he said. “The boats will wait for you.” I thought then that he knew how scared I was to stay on at the top of the hill and man all the rifles till the very last minute, while he was down on the beach, with Hey-Ho there making a racket beside him, with all the boats at very close hand.

  “My friend,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck,” I answered. “See you on the boat.”

  Captain didn’t answer. He looked at me searchingly, paused, seemed to be on the point of saying something, then bit his lip and hesitated before turning quickly to make his way with Hey-Ho down to the beach.

  I stood a while dithering and feeling strangely lost.

  You will be all right. The boats will wait for you.

  Captain’s words played in my head, but I didn’t stop to think why they bothered me.

  Robins and Chips began to light the little cooking fires along the trench as though it were a night like any other. One by one, a thousand other little cooking fires were lit, up and down the hill. The stars were bright, the night strangely peaceful.

  The minutes crept on.

  The hope that we’d get away swelled with every passing hour. Sometimes Johnny Turk attacked at dawn, sometimes at night. If he came now, he’d scupper all our plans. I was with Firkins, in Chips’s kitchen, filling my water bottle and collecting iron rations. Firkins was as jumpy and on edge as me, and when the Sergeant-Major’s face appeared suddenly round the sacking door at the far end of our sector, we both leaped out of our skins.

  “Lieutenant Straker. Word passed to you, sir, to march.”

  The moment had come for them all to go and I’d be left alone in this part of the trench with all the ghosts of the men who’d gone, and the blood-soaked land all around, and the Turkish lines so close.

  The Lieutenant nodded. Another officer appeared.

  “Sir, take your men over the tableland and wait on the beach.”

  The Lieutenant paused in surprise before nodding. The tableland was high, and exposed to all the Turkish guns, and he’d have preferred to take the sheltered gully. In silence, each man was preparing to leave. Lieutenant Straker took
me aside and whispered.

  “Man the rifles, Bayliss, all twelve. Hold the position at all costs. Remain alert at all times. Don’t move till three a.m.” He gave my shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “You’ll be all right, Billy.”

  He turned to address the men and mouthed, “D Company. March.”

  Merriman picked up a pencil and paper and wrote something. The company of twenty-eight filed out in silence, threading through the trench on padded feet, eyes to the ground, a friendly hand on my shoulder as each passed, and I felt proud to be the one to stay, proud as well as scared.

  “No talking now, no smoking,” whispered Straker to each man at the door.

  As he left, Merrick tacked up his note to the lintel:

  AU REVOIR, ABDUL

  I smiled to see that. We respected Johnny Turk, all of us, him being a good and fair fighter.

  I was left alone with all the tiny fires and all the spoiled bully beef and the twelve rifles, and if Jacko came over now, creeping and silent as a cat, it would be only me, only me in all this empty tunnel, to face his bayonets.

  I moved along the trench, lighting a candle in each dugout. I had to make as much noise as possible while I was in the trench, and Captain and Hey-Ho would be on the beach, going to and fro, squeaking and barking and being noisy and trying to make the noise of ten donkeys, but they would be close to the jetties and the boats, and they wouldn’t be forgotten or left behind.

  I leaped with fright at a sudden sound, stood rooted to the spot, every sense straining. Muffled footsteps—our own—just another column of men—the Australians, perhaps, from the sector to our left. We were still all a bit in awe of the Australians, and their swaggering, easy ways, and I wished I were going down with them. While Hey-Ho and the donkeys on the beach were busy making a racket, the men abandoning the trenches had to keep silent as snakes so that Jacko would think we were still in them. I checked the slow and creeping hands of my watch. The sappers, I told myself, were up here too in the trench beyond, and they’d be the only ones to leave later than me. Only once they’d lit the fuses to detonate the mines could they leave.

  Moonlight shone spookily through the entrances onto each rifle position. The minutes crawled by, slower than any minutes I’d ever known. I bent to retie the rags around my boots once again. There were more footsteps, the ghostly tramp of another column of men moving through the support trench.

  I checked my watch one last time. 2:50 a.m. My nerves gave out just then, at 2:50 a.m., and I moved along the line of rifles, filling each water can with a trembling hand. At 2:55 I abandoned the position and got myself as fast and as silently down the loose, slipping scree of that near-vertical track as it’s possible to do in a state of abject terror.

  At the foot of the cliff I ran into a mass of men, huddled together and shivering. The darkness was thick with whispered commands and muffled tramping feet. I asked after D Company and was directed to the third jetty. A figure stood marshalling men onto a barge. Breathless, heart still pounding, I got there as the last man embarked.

  “Hurry, Bayliss,” said Lieutenant Straker, but I heard the relief in his voice that I’d made it.

  Instinctively, I scanned the faces on the boat, looking for Captain. Very slowly a single, staring fact dawned on me. My stomach lurched: there were no animals—not on this boat, nor on any other. Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!—Where was he? How were they getting out? Where were they all? All the valiant creatures who’d gone up and down those gullies for us with their heavy loads, and nothing but thistle and Army biscuit to eat, hour after hour, up the scree, down the scree … Where were they, and how would they get away? I cast my head around wildly.

  “Where’s Captain, sir? Where are they?”

  “Bayliss. Get aboard.”

  Captain’s strained and anxious face flashed before me. I remembered the strange hug he’d given me and my gut twisted.

  Lieutenant Straker looked up at the sky, then down at his watch. The waves moaned softly around the barge.

  “Where are they, sir?”

  He shook his head, as if despairing of such nonsense at such at time.

  “Get aboard, Bayliss.”

  “No, sir,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”

  “As your senior officer, I command you to board.”

  I scanned the faces of the men on the barge once more, face after face, all filthy, haggard, lean, and weary. No Captain—of course not, not if Hey-Ho weren’t here.

  The Lieutenant pulled me aside.

  “For God’s sake, Billy,” he hissed. “Captain’s not here … The animals aren’t—they’re—they’ve…”

  I looked at him, slack-mouthed, sick with horror.

  “Did you not know? Didn’t he tell you?”

  I pulled away, took a step backwards down the jetty.

  Captain had never told me the animals were to be left behind. Perhaps he thought I’d known. Did he not trust me? Was that why he’d said nothing?

  The Lieutenant grabbed my arm.

  “Billy, we can’t—the Army can’t … can’t get the animals off—”

  “Where? Where are they, sir? Where are they?”

  Wherever Hey-Ho was, Captain would be.

  “For God’s sake, get aboard … Look, it’s too late—”

  “What d’you mean, it’s too late? What do you mean?” I mouthed, silent with horror.

  He stretched out an arm towards the northern end of the bay, but didn’t turn his head in that direction. Very slowly I turned mine and looked. Gradually I made out dark mounds, row after row of them, the dark blood of them staining the shingle and running down into the water. I reeled—their throats slit—cut with a knife so they’d die in silence—Hey-Ho? No, no, no, surely not—his throat slit?—No—no, not that, not his throat, not Hey-Ho, not …

  The Lieutenant released my arm, took a step away from me, and barked, “Bayliss, get aboard. That is an order.”

  I took another step backwards, then another.

  “That is an order, Bayliss.”

  “Damn orders,” said a voice in the boat. “Damn orders.” Chips rose to his feet. “The boy comes with us.”

  “Get aboard, Bayliss,” the Lieutenant said again, his eyes on me.

  “Every drop of water we drank—” Chips continued.

  “It’s an order, Bayliss,” the Lieutenant interrupted.

  “Goddamn orders…,” said Chips.

  “No, sir,” I mouthed to Straker.

  He grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “I order you, Bayliss, onto that boat.”

  “Damn orders,” said a voice I recognized as Firkins’s, then Merriman and Robins and Beasley said it too, and a whispered chant was taken up down the ranks of waiting men sitting in that boat. One by one they rose to their feet.

  “Captain comes with us. Captain comes with us.” Some looked uneasily up to the sky, but still they whispered. “Captain comes with us.”

  Straker caught me by the hand and whispered, “It’s too late, Billy—Can’t you see? Not without … he won’t come, wouldn’t come without…”

  As the chant continued from the boat, the muscles of Straker’s jaw tightened. They seemed to quiver and he whipped his head round and hissed, “Damn you, Bayliss, for this insubordinate behavior. Five minutes, I give you five minutes to find him. After five minutes we leave.”

  Where would he be?

  “Please God, please God,” I whispered to myself as I spun around, “please let me find him…”

  He’d not be up in the hills, he’d not surrender—Johnny Turk was gallant in a fight, but you wouldn’t want to be taken prisoner by him. We’d all seen what he could do to a prisoner.

  I paused midway up the beach, careless of the unwinding rags on my boots. Would he be at his father’s grave? I raced, frantic, to the far end of the bay. If it wasn’t too late, he’d be … he’d be where the ruins were, where his father was buried.

  * * *

  I found Captain. He was in the ruined building at th
e foot of the gully at the northern end of the bay. He was there, alone at the back of the building, in the dark, quaking with fear at the sound of approaching footsteps. Behind him stood Hey-Ho and Captain’s arms were stretched out, one to the donkey’s head, the other to his rump, and his fingers were trembling and quaking and clutching at Hey-Ho’s silver fur. The little donkey, squeezed between his master and the sheet rock of the cliff, was muzzled with a strip of Army blanket, his hoofs bound in sandbags. Despite the unusual circumstances and the strange wrappings on him, there was no fear in him. He was with his master and all was well with his world.

  “Captain…,” I said.

  Like a wild cat he looked at me. He was coiled tense as a spring, chest rising and falling. He’d thought perhaps I was the enemy creeping up on him, or a British General come to slit Hey-Ho’s throat. I stepped forward, searching in my pocket for the biscuit I knew would be there. I stretched out my hand to Hey-Ho, who stretched out his head to me, and I eased the muzzle just enough to let him eat.

  “The boat is waiting,” I whispered to Hey-Ho.

  Captain looked steadily at me and slowly moved his head from side to side.

  “We stay, Hey-Ho and I stay, together,” he said, his voice shaky but determined.

  “Well, we will miss the boat, then, all three of us…”

  Behind Captain, provisions were stacked on a ledge of rock. He’d been planning to stay on here, he and Hey-Ho alone on this savage shore with only a small stash of tinned food and a large number of blankets.

  “Because if we have to swim to Moudros, that’s what we will do. I will not go without you both. But right now, there happens to be a boat waiting for you both, and for us all.”

  A single tear slipped down Captain’s cheek.

  “Quickly,” I added.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Straker had rigged up a pair of broad planks to the barge. One ear forward, one back, Hey-Ho stepped onto it, calm and easy as you please.

  “Insubordinate hooligans, the pair of you boys,” Straker hissed, watching Hey-Ho’s picky, tippy-toed gait up the planks. But I knew he was relieved—relieved and happy and surprised.