1. Part One
2. Part Two
***
Chapter Three
Satisfied
by that guarantee, Hadley stepped closer, as though about to confess a great
secret to the two men – and, indeed, he was. “There are plans afoot to evacuate
Gallipoli,” he said. “The campaign has stalled. You have undoubtedly noticed
that yourselves. Constantinople isn't a realistic goal now. Currently, we –
that is, intelligence officers and planning officers – are looking at the best
way to evacuate the Army.”
Jim’s
jaw dropped and the word, simple yet so dramatic and important, seemed to
explode from him: “Evacuate?”
“Exactly,”
Hadley confirmed. “I don’t mind telling you that it won't be an easy operation:
either to get men away, which will have to be done under cover of darkness, or
to continue to convince the enemy that there is a full complement of men
manning the trenches, even when there is not. To that end, we wish to have the
enemy get used to strange occurrences.”
Now,
it was making sense to Jim. Lunatic sense, but at least he could see what the
brass hoped to achieve. “And the cricket game – that’s your first idea of a
‘strange occurrence’?”
Hadley
nodded. “That’s correct.”
At
that, Jim let out a long breath. “Good God!”\
“I
would pray for His assistance during this endeavour, Sergeant Barnes, for it
will not be an easy task,” Hadley said. “The evacuation can go one of two ways.
One way is that things occur as we hope that they will. The other way is that
the Turks get wind of what’s happening and launch an attack that would land us
all in a great deal of trouble and leave a great deal of your countrymen dead.
Need I ask you which you prefer?”
Jim
shook his head slowly as he considered what Hadley had just said, and the
unimaginably high stakes. The idea of leaving ate at him. He was a proud man,
like so many other diggers, but the idea of hanging around wasn’t too
appealing, either. There was no way they were going to win this fight. The odds
had been stacked against them from the very beginning. Sometimes, he wondered
how they’d managed to last as long as they had.
As
galling as sneaking away in the night would be to just about every Australian
and New Zealand soldier fighting on the peninsula, the smart move was to escape,
sneakily or otherwise, and live in order to fight another day, and, not so deep
down, Jim knew it. Perhaps they would get a shot at the Germans on the Western
Front. The supposed back door into Germany – via Turkey – hadn't worked. Now,
Jim wondered about kicking in the front door, through France and Belgium. If
they stayed on Gallipoli, eventually, there would be no ANZACs left at all.
That was a worse alternative than being beaten: being slaughtered like lambs.
“I
reckon you don’t, sir,” Jim said finally, exhaling. His mind was made up.
Hadley
judiciously held back on his smile. “So we are agreed?”
“I
don’t see that I have all that much bloody choice in the matter, sir, but yes,
we’re agreed. I’ll help,” Jim promised. “But, sir, if I’m asking for volunteers
for this stunt…what I mean is that I can’t lie to them. I won’t do that. If
they’re going to do this, they need to know why.”
“Tell
them only what you must,” Hadley ordered. “Is that understood? Operational
security is paramount here, Sergeant. I don’t doubt that your men are
trustworthy, but the less people who know the truth of what’s going on, the
less that can go wrong.”
“Fair
enough,” Jim agreed. He turned to Angus, who had remained silent during the
recent exchange. “What do you reckon, Gus?”
“Bloody
crazy idea,” Angus replied. “But you can count me in.”
Captain
Hadley clapped his hands together, satisfied. “So, it’s decided, then.
Sergeant, I’ll leave you to put together a team, and Major McCaskill will
arrange for some opposition for you. I must communicate this news to the
commanding general. I thank you all for your assistance in this regard.”
When
the British officer headed out into the sun, so did Jim. Beyond the sandbagged
walls of the headquarters structure, the war continued as normal, but it had
changed for Jim. He looked around, watching the never-ending job of unloading
supplies, realising that there was only so much time left here, before the
Gallipoli campaign would be resigned to history: a bloody and unsuccessful
footnote, buried deep amongst the horrendous losses sustained in many failed
battles on the Western Front.
Yet,
for the families and friends of those who had been killed at Lone Pine, The
Nek, Quinn’s Post, in Monash Valley and so many other places that would perhaps
be forgotten over the years, it would be more than just a footnote, Jim knew.
He couldn’t imagine that Australia or New Zealand, would want to celebrate what
would go down in history as a lost battle. He wasn’t sure how to feel about
that, when so many men – friends amongst them – had fallen in pursuit of a
victory that, in the end, had been lost on that first day. But that hadn't
stopped the Australians and New Zealanders from trying. Perhaps that would be
their legacy from this place, Jim thought. In the face of insurmountable odds,
none of the diggers had given up.
All
around, the battle continued, thousands upon thousands of troops unaware that
the end was nigh. A machine gun rattled, it’s harsh sound reverberating off the
cliffs. But so many men were so immune to the sound that life went on as
normal. A shell burst close enough to the ridge that smoke and dust drifted
lazily down towards the beach, though, for the veterans, it was barely worth
them looking up from whatever they were doing.
At the
far end of Anzac Cove, Jim could see men kicking a soccer ball around, as
though there was no war whatsoever, as though they were enjoying a sunny day
out at the beach. They were, of course, just with the added presence of the
Turkish guns. The biggest of them all was the monster that the diggers had
nicknamed Big Bertha. It was the only gun capable of targeting beyond the
beach, right out into the water, putting the Royal Navy fleet in peril.
Suddenly,
Angus was standing alongside. “Hell of a plan they’ve cooked up, isn't it?”
“Yeah.”
Jim snorted. “It isn't the dumbest one I’ve ever heard – that’d be sending our
blokes after The Nek, but it’s right up there. Evacuation, Gus! Can you believe
it?”
“Not
really,” Angus admitted, shaking his head. “I wonder how long they’ve been
thinking about it?”
“Knowing
the morons the poms have in charge, one of the buggers probably woke up
yesterday morning and realised that we weren’t going to win. Like it was some
new piece of knowledge his little mind had latched onto! Bloody English,
wouldn’t know their arses from their elbows. We couldn’t even trust them to
land us on the right beach!”
“Yeah,
well, I don’t like the idea of sneaking off like a thief in the bloody night,
mate,” Angus replied. “It’s un-Australian!”
“Not
too bloody crazy on it myself, but Hadley’s right, Gus. I – hell, we’ve all said the same thing, most of us since
the first night we were here. There’s no way we’re getting to Constantinople,
and thousands of our blokes have died proving that. The Turks are too well dug
in. We’re not shifting them. About time the bloody poms worked it out. But this
business of a cricket match on Shell Green? Christ, that’s one from the left
field. You didn’t have to throw your lot in, mate.”
Angus
shrugged his shoulders and grinned. There was no way known to man that he’d let
his friend shoulder all the responsibility on his own. “Nor did you.”
“Not
at first, anyway,” Jim allowed. “When Hadley told me the whole stunt’s to try
and get our blokes off in one piece, I couldn’t very well say no, could I? If
there’s even a small chance that we can keep the bloody Turks looking in the
other direction long enough to get away, it’ll be worth it. Besides, it’ll be
something to tell the missus and kids about.”
“If we
don’t get blown to kingdom come up there, you mean?” Angus asked morosely.
Jim
nodded, and couldn’t avoid an involuntary shiver as he thought about the
shooting gallery that Shell Green had become.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Look
around, Gus, and remember this. I’m the least sentimental bastard you know,
but, I reckon this is all going to be history in a month or so.” No matter what
happened, be it a successful evacuation or a failed one, the Battle of
Gallipoli was winding down to it’s conclusion: a resounding Turkish victory.
“You
reckon they’ll send us to France and give us a crack at the Hun?”
“I
hope they bloody send us to somewhere to get a few good nights of sleep and
some decent tucker before they pack us up again!” Jim responded. He’d never
known such complete exhaustion before, and on that, he wasn’t alone. “Honestly,
mate, after that, I don’t care. I thought we’d all be bloody old men before we
left this place. On a full stomach, and with some decent generals leading the
way, I’ll go just about anywhere.”
Angus
looked up towards the ridge, following a group of shirtless diggers carrying
supplies towards the front. “I just wanna win the war so we can go back home.
What do you reckon now, mate? Back up to tell the lads?”
“Good
a time as any,” Jim agreed. He could already imagine the reaction from the men
in the trenches when he asked them to volunteer for, of all things, a cricket
game.
But it
was not to be, for Major McCaskill approached at that moment, wearing a rather
sheepish smile. “A moment, lads?”
“Of
course, sir,” Jim replied, saluting – laconically, as was the Australian way.
“I
wanted to explain that the idea presented to you in there wasn’t mine.
Personally, I don’t think it’ll do anything but put you men in the sights of
the Turkish gunners, but captains from the staff of the commanding general
carry far more weight in the grand scheme of things than mere battalion majors.
Essentially, I was powerless. As for how you came to be involved: it so
happened that Lieutenant Evans was present when Captain Hadley first revealed
his plan, and Lieutenant Evans volunteered you, Sergeant.”
That
knowledge didn’t surprise Jim at all. “Thanks for letting me know, sir, but it
doesn’t matter much anymore. We’re in – and we’re not going to back out. I just
hope it does what the brass hope it will do!”
McCaskill
looked up, watching an artillery shell streak through the sky, and land twenty
yards offshore, scattering a group of swimmers. Then he looked back to Barnes
and nodded. “I hope the same thing, Sergeant.”
No comments:
Post a Comment