The Place

by Gary Collins

  18

  The Catholic

  Michael stood at ease in front of the officer’s desk in the dugout. He held his rifle by its barrel in his right hand, with the tip of the rifle’s butt resting on the floor in line with his small toe. The officers behind the desk were discussing troop movements, enemy bombardment, and gun placements. Michael recognized most of the areas the officers mentioned. He knew the trenches well.

  For weeks, by day and by night, he had aided in the replacement of bombed-out shelters by supplying ammo cans, spare rifles, and rations to soldiers fortified in front trenches, and he helped carry hundreds of wounded men to aid stations well behind the lines of battle. The officers were talking about the lines of battle now. One of the officers, the youngest one, beckoned him closer.

  “I understand you are quite good at reading map and compass.”

  “I can read ’em both, sir.”

  The officer handed Michael a paper with two coordinates written on it. “Find them on the map using the compass, Corporal.” He pointed to a map on the desk as the two other officers looked on.

  Michael pulled a land compass out of his tunic pocket. Its lanyard was strung over his neck. He placed his rifle at the edge of the desk a full arm’s length from him and leaned forward. Even in the dugout, Michael knew the general direction of north without his compass. Placing it on the map, he turned it to align with the map.

  “In the house and up the stairs,” he said to himself, looking at the figures on the paper the officer had given him. He followed a lateral map line from left to right, west to east—“in the house”—with his finger. He glanced at the figures again. Then his finger followed a vertical map line north, “up the stairs.” Finding them easily, Michael quoted the coordinates. He was pretty sure he knew the sector they indicated. But looking at the compass and the map, he said, “The bearings are not right, sir.”

  “Excuse me, Corporal? My figures? Not right?”

  “Not your figures, sir. ’Tis the rifles, sir. Drawing the compass, they are, and throwing the bearings off, sir.”

  The three officers looked at each other. Their rifles had been placed on the desk near the map. “Well done, Corporal!” the youngest one said. Michael had passed the test. “Here’s your assignment.” He handed Michael a note. “You remember the coordinates?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call them.” Michael repeated the coordinates he had found on the map. “Good. Take the note I gave you to the captain at that—shall we say—address. I suggest you wait for full dark.”

  “Yes, sir.” And with that, he was dismissed.

  Day was still abroad, and it was cold. November had snuck up on him almost without his knowing it. Almost the Christmas month, he was thinking. The rumour in the trenches was retreat would soon be ordered. God knew they weren’t making any headway against the Turks. They fought like dogs. He wondered if the officer who had given him the note knew anything about a retreat. Word was they were calling it an orderly evacuation. The officer was young and seemed a nice enough fellow. But the British officers looked down their noses at the non-coms, especially the “ruddy colonials,” and he didn’t dare ask him.

  Michael wondered if the rumour was true. Would they be out of Suvla by Christmas? It didn’t seem possible to move so much equipment, men, and animals in a month or so. He had also heard that when armies retreated they left all manner of gear behind, so it was unlikely they would take all of the mules and horses. Michael had never seen a mule before he was shipped “over there.”

  Funny about that term, Michael was thinking. When he sailed from St. John’s with the Newfoundland Regiment to connect with a convoy for the British Isles, they were simply going to Halifax. From Halifax to England they sailed “over there.” From training camps in England they were shipped still farther over there, to Alexandria in Egypt. More training in the cruel desert heat. Now they were in yet another over there. Michael had talked about it to his young friend Jake. They figured over there” was wherever a battle was being fought.

  Michael was weary of battle. He had come with the first of the Newfoundlanders to the Gallipolian peninsula. When he arrived he was excited. He couldn’t believe he was actually there in the Aegean Sea on the east coast of Greece. When they were freighted ashore in Suvla Bay, everything was chaos. Men yelled. Mules and horses were gut-shot by Turkish gunfire and screamed. The Turks always gut-shot the animals. It was easy to find centre mass on them. Some of them were shot in the head by Allied soldiers who pitied them, to ease their prolonged agony. Only some, though.

  That first night, when they had dug into the hillside, when the stars were visible between the shell bursts, Michael thought, I am actually sitting on the ground of ancient Thrace. His old priest and mentor back home had more than the Bible in his possession. He owned volumes of books about ancient lands and great battles fought around the shores of earth’s middle sea. Michael was his only student. He studied Alexander and Hannibal, Suleiman the Magnificent, mighty Xerxes, king of Persia, and the Roman Empire. He loved the books he read about the Crusades and their protectors, the Knights Templar. They had walked, ridden, and fought across this very land. All had crossed the Dardanelles Strait, what Michael’s friend Jake called a tickle, which divided Turkey from Europe and Asia.

  Jake was right. Britain and her allies were fighting for possession of that tickle to allow them safe entry into the Black Sea and Russia. Michael wanted to see that tickle of history more than anything. He was a devout Christian—but not religious—who knew much of the history of the Christ, His followers, and the subsequent crusades that fought for his teachings long after His death. They were still fighting over it. Now with the rumour of evacuation, Michael feared he would never get to see the Dardanelles.

  The Catholic would never forget the first man he had seen killed. It was a young Newfoundland soldier running toward a trench Michael had helped dig. Turkish bullets from trenches fifty yards away strafed the ground all around him. The soldier went down hard. Blood poured between fingers clutched to his chest. He had been hit centre mass. He screamed like a mule. Michael was scrambling to go over the lip of the trench to get to him when he was pulled back by a sergeant. “There is nothing we can do for him, soldier.” Michael could see the sergeant’s frustration in his eyes. It was probably the first man he had seen killed, too.

  “But without help he will die!”

  “Out there you will die with him.”

  The young soldier’s screams stopped. He was dead.

  “He died alone,” said Michael.

  The rifles kept firing, and the shelling from both sides whined and exploded. More screams erupted from farther away between the lines. Michael couldn’t tell if the hurt was coming from man or beast. In the cruel heat of September days and in its sultry nights, men died. The rainy season of October began. The trenches were soaked with water. Mud oozed from every step they took, and men died. Fog as dense as Newfoundland’s shrouded the fields, and more men died. Dead bodies remained where they fell. Some, still alive, yet mortally wounded, bled out and died without rescue. Michael witnessed a screaming soldier, his stomach ripped wide open by shrapnel, suddenly keel over from a bullet through his head. A mercy bullet.

  The bodies on what they were calling no man’s land were growing in number. Many of them were never recovered. They rotted where they fell, half buried in foreign soil. No man’s land, the correspondents were calling it, claimed by no man. Their statement was wrong. It was a man’s land. You just had to be dead to claim it.

  The flies went to the soldiers, feasting on the dead and returning to spread their disease among the living. Death from disease vied with death by bullets. And on dark nights, vultures, from both sides, crawled out of their holes with barbed-wire pliers in hand and plucked gold and picked silver trinkets from the bodies. Michael bore mute witness to it all. The rule of four days in the trench and eight days out had
become reversed. The battle raged on with no sign of victory in sight.

  The season of rain in Gallipoli climaxed with a deluge of biblical proportions. Every smooth-flowing river, every bubbling stream, exploded into miniature tsunamis from hell. Trenches dug by friend and foe were flooded. Men drowned in the sudden flood. Soldiers already soaked became waterlogged. Boots not meant for water provided no protection for tired feet. Rampant trench foot took men out of the fight. Their ranks were replaced with more soldiers wearing the same leaky boots.

  Mercifully, the rain stopped. The skies cleared. Star- and moonshine lit up a land drowned by water. Then the temperature dropped far below freezing. A bitter wind colder than a Newfoundland nor’easter tore over the fields of battle, lashing and biting at unprepared skin. The water froze solid. Every drop of moisture to be found froze solid. Boots that couldn’t repel water now carried the deadly bite of frost. Toes and feet were burnt black. Gangrene searched the trenches, found dying tissue, and quickened its demise. Toes and feet were amputated. Gangrene was victorious over bullet and shell.

  The senseless fighting went on and on. Evacuation was ordered on December 18, but in the ranks the fighting went unabated. The word was they would have to fight the Turks until the last soldier was hauled over the gunnels of the last lighter.

  19

  The eve of Christmas came without herald. Michael met the sniper just before dusk at Jake’s station below the top of a trench. “Merry Christmas, my friend. In yer ‘gaze,’ I see.” Michael grinned at Jake.

  Jake wished Michael a Merry Christmas as they shook hands. “Guess yer right. I’ve made this place kinda like a gaze, all right. Wouldn’t mind a spell huntin’ ducks wing and bill right now. A plump king eider fer Christmas dinner wouldn’t go astray, eh Mike?”

  “Not much of a duck hunter, myself. Not much a hunter of anything, come to think of it. Besides, I prefer leg o’ lamb for the Christmas repast. I couldn’t watch Father slaughter the lamb, though.”

  “Can’t handle the taste of mutton,” said Jake. “Hates it as much as fried squid.” Michael was going to tell him lamb didn’t taste like mutton, but Jake continued. “But you were an ice hunter, Mike. We met aboard the Stephano at the seal hunt last year. You were a good hunter. If I remember right, your watch did well.”

  “Aye, Jake, the sealers in my watch did very well. Killed thousands of seals, I dare say they did. I killed some, too. Not many. I was good at keeping the men in my watch in the thick of the hunt. Spotting the herds from the deck of the Stephano, I took bearings and used my compass to walk straight to them. As you know, down at ice level, distant seals lying flat on the ice pans are hard to find. My men did most of the huntin’. Now here I am, a soldier among soldiers. The greatest hunters of all. Hunters of men.”

  Jake ran a hand up over his rifle to wipe the moisture from it. A shroud of fog was settling over the land. Gunfire didn’t sound as sharp as it had before the fog came. Even the artillery sounded dull. The thud of exploding shells was muffled by water droplets. There would be blind shooting now—bored, tired, and frustrated men shooting at sounds. Wounded men who cried out were prime targets for blind shots. Trouble was, though, men shot down in no man’s land moaned in the same language.

  “Always loved huntin’ all the seabirds that came around,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Seals, the odd caribou, too, when I got the chance to go with the men up the bay where they roamed. Never considered myself a hunter of men. Guess you’re right, though, me being a sniper. Never knew I could kill a man, either. War changes a man, eh Mike?”

  “For sure it does, Jake. None of us will ever be the same. The first man I saw die was out there on the ice. All those sealers from the old Newfoundland, seventy-eight of them perishing like they did, all of them innocent of doing nothing more than trying to keep food on bare tables. Over here, all of us, still innocent, die by the thousands. And no one pays heed.”

  Michael was quiet then for a while. A shell screamed overhead and exploded west of them. It was close enough for them to feel the ground vibrate. It dislodged pebbles that ran in a trickle of water down the sides of the trench. The fog created ghost-like images and brought cold with it.

  Jake lit the small coal-oil brazier and placed a bully beef tin filled with scummy water on it. Both men held their hands over tiny tendrils of flame licking around the bottom of the tin. The smell of burning coal oil from other braziers drifted down the trench. Up and down the line, soldiers were trying to keep warm.

  Jake looked toward the area where he had shot his first Turkish soldier. “I never saw a man die out on the ice. Saw their dead bodies but didn’t see them die. The first man I seen die was in my rifle sights, just along this same trench, it was.” He had killed more after that one. Jake had become a real crack shot and had earned the nickname Crackie.

  “You were there when your father died, Jake,” Michael said quietly, knowing the answer.

  “Aye, I was there, all right. The two of us fishin’ on the Offer Ground from the punt. The punt leaked a bit, too.” Jake seemed to be evading the subject.

  “All punts leak a bit, Jake b’y.” Michael grinned in the fading light.

  Jake was lost in thought for a moment before saying, “I was in the fard o’ the punt. He was in the stern. I seen ’im makin’ ready to piss, so I turned me back to ’im. The punt lurched so bad I grabbed the gunnels. I heard a big splash. When I turned around, he was gone. The only sign of ’im was a willum on the water where he went in. I never actually seen ’im die.” He hung his head as if pained by the memory.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. He wasn’t good to you, was he?”

  “Wasn’t good to anyone, far as I could see. Hard to my mother. Harder to me. Beat me, mostly around my head. He hated my red hair!” Jake ran a hand through his hair as if still feeling the hurt. “He cussed me, too. Called me red-headed bastard, stun son of a bitch, most every day. Swore on me ’cause I stuttered. Swore on me fer the pure pleasure of it, seemed like. He used to tell me, when I was a baby, me mother picked me up and put me back not kissed. Said I’d never be kissed. That hurt.

  “He was right about Mother. She never once hugged or kissed me. Never even waved me off to this war. She believed I pushed Pop over the side of the punt, too. That hurt a lot.” Another shell whistled overhead. Jake looked up and followed the noise until it fell to ground and exploded farther away with a muffled whump.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, Jake.”

  Jake looked at Michael before answering. ”Oh, ’tis all right, Mike b’y. She was wrong. I believe she knows that now. I pity her, mostly.”

  “Love her?”

  “She never gave me the chance to. I am loved, though. Kissed and hugged, too, I have been, many times.” Jake grinned at Michael. “My father was wrong. Lize loves me.”

  “Your girlfriend.” Michael knew she was.

  “Yep. Eliza. Lize, I calls her most of the time. Prettiest girl you ever saw. Said she’d look fer me every night from our place above the tickle. She loves my hair colour, too. Says it’s the colour of fir boughs burning!” Both men laughed. It was a soft, pleasant sound that shut out the war around them for a rare moment.

  “Only saw one other redhead other than me.” Jake stopped laughing and continued. “’Twas that day on the ice when Ol’ Man Kean, captain o’ the Stephano, ordered the sealers from the Newfoundland, his own son’s ship, over the side without givin’ ’em time fer a mug-up. You remember?”

  “I’ll never forget that day,” Michael declared.

  “You remember when the sealers were leavin’ and that feller among them, the one with the red hair, spoke to me?”

  “Oh, the fish culler. Redjack, we call him.”

  “That’s the man! The Culler! The only red hair I ever saw outside of me own. Like lookin’ in a mirror, it was. I wonders about it a lot.”

  “Oh, ’tis only your first sight of
another redhead you were seeing, Jake b’y. ’Twas his hair you was dwelling on, nothing more,” Michael assured him. In an attempt at steering the conversation farther away from hair colour, he said, “No one will cuss you for stuttering anymore, eh Jake?”

  “No, sir. It appears me tongue has straightened out. Not one stammer since the day I shot my first man. Strange, that is. How do you figure it?”

  “Not sure, Jake b’y. But based on what you’ve told me about it before, cursing on the man you shot because he had killed one of your mates and then stammering aloud ‘you son of a bitch before you pulled the trigger, the same way your father cursed you, probably has a physiological explanation I am unable to give you.”

  Michael didn’t tell Jake that maybe, mentally, he was shooting at the man who forever abused him, his father. Jake seemed to accept Michael’s explanation.

  Looking westward, Jake asked quietly, “Anyone waiting above a tickle for you, Mike?”

  Michael was taken aback at first. “I—well . . . no there is not, Jake. Well, no one who will look out over a tickle for me. Just my dear mother. She’ll wait and watch from her window above the harbour. Like all mothers who wait for their boys to come home, I expect.” He didn’t notice the wistful look Jake gave him. They shook hands warmly, wished Merry Christmas one to the other again, and parted.

  Jake’s question plagued Michael all that Christmas Eve night. There was a lull in the fighting. Everyone said the eve of the birth of the Prince of Peace was the cause. This night was recognized by as many on the far side of the trenches as the near.