Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  Before I arrived, the Franks had already demolished the fort at Seddülbahir with battleships, and also the fort at Kumkale, and they sent soldiers ashore to occupy them and destroy them completely, but after our soliders had withdrawn, they came back again, and drove the Franks out. This is how we did everything in that campaign. If we withdrew, we always came back. There was a soldier called Mehmet whose gun jammed, and he attacked a Frankish sailor with stones. Mustafa Kemal held him up to us as an example, and now the incident is famous all over Turkey, and that is why, I think, everyone these days refers to a soldier as a Mehmetçik. Of course, when I hear the name, I think mainly of my old friend, and I wonder where he is and if he has survived.

  We still had very big guns at Çanakkale, across the other side of the water from where we were, and we had big guns at Kilitbahir, where there were forts. The Franks demolished the forts and the big guns in them, but they couldn’t do very much about our field guns and howitzers, which were mobile. We had torpedo tubes as well. I was near Kilitbahir, which is not far from Maydos, but I was glad not to be in the fort itself, because the big ships were dropping shells on it by the hundred. Imagine big holes opening up in the ground, and pieces of rock and lumps of earth hurtling past your head, and no enemy to get your hands on directly. Imagine a noise like the end of the world, like the roll of thunder and the crack of lightning, and whistling noises, and whirring noises, and pinging noises, and strange intervals of absolute silence. Imagine the groans and gurgles of the wounded, and all the different kinds of screams, from low and musical ones, to shrieks that cut the brain. Imagine being covered with filth and being so soaked in sweat that the filth clings to you and cakes on to your body. Imagine being full of cuts so that the daub of filth has dark patches of blood in it. Imagine your throat so dry with thirst that it feels as though it has swallowed dried leaves and swollen up enough to stop the breath. Later on, when the Frankish ships bombarded our trenches, they used shrapnel which burst harmlessly, because we covered our trenches over. If they had used high explosive we would have been defeated, but they cannot have had any left. We too ran out of shells at different times. The curious thing about the Frankish high explosive was that it made you turn yellow, and you would be as yellow as a serin finch.

  My particular job on the day of the great bombardment was to commit suicide by setting off smoke bombs that would draw enemy fire, hoping that the enemy would think they were real guns. I was told not to set off too many in any one place, and so I ran from rock to rock, setting off smoke bombs and waiting to be shelled. If I was shelled, this would signify my success. In the meantime, the howitzers would be dragged from place to place by their crews, and there weren’t enough horses, so they had to use teams of buffalo, and the idea was to knock out the Frankish minesweepers, and it was important to keep moving so as not to be destroyed by return fire. I had never seen such frantic activity, and neither had I ever heard such a quantity of obscenities, because the lot of the gunners was even worse than my lot. This is one of the consolations of the soldier, that when you are in shit up to the chest, there are always others who are in shit up to the neck. The gunners were clever people, because they hid their howitzers just below the crests of the hills, on the side where they could not be seen, and in such a way that the trajectory of their shells would fall on the ships, but the shells from the ships would have to pass over them without touching them. It was then that I realised that much of war depends not upon courage and strength, but upon cleverness. The Franks never had enough howitzers, or high-explosive shells, or trench mortars, or proper grenades, and without these there can be no success in the trenches. It is surprising that the Franks were not clever enough to realise this, when they were clever enough to make such big ships. Only the French Franks had proper mortars, and these dropped a bomb that we called the Black Cat, and we were appalled by them. They made a noise like a steam train, and they came vertically down out of the sky. We called the French Franks “Tangos,” and they also had the most lethal artillery.

  Sometime after midday we thought we had lost, because we were exhausted and we had taken too much damage, and used up most of our ammunition, but for some reason several of the ships that had been bombarding us from close by began to withdraw, and then one of them hit a mine on the other side of the bay, and it sank in two minutes before our unbelieving eyes. Some minesweepers came in, but they lost courage, and then, maybe two hours after the first ship sank, another two ships also struck mines, and one of them drifted so close that it was easy to shell it. Later on, both of these ships sank, and it made us sad to know of it, because those ships were magnificent, and it was like when a bull is slaughtered, and one is glad of the meat but sorry for the death of the great bull.

  At the end of that day we knew we had won a victory, and no one was more surprised than us. We wandered about in the smoke and the chaos and the carnage, with a great thirst, and we smiled at each other and gave thanks to God.

  All the same, we knew that we stood no chance at all when the enemy came back with his ships in the morning. Our towns were devastated completely, our forts had all but gone. We knew that soon the big ships would be in the harbours of Istanbul, and the war would be lost.

  That night we ate melons and drank raki with water in it, and you know what raki does. You don’t want to go home, and you love everybody, and it gives you serenity. On that occasion it reconciled us to death in the morning.

  The next day we rose up prepared for martyrdom, and we talked about the green birds that would take us to paradise, and the virgins that awaited us, and some people were elated because they would soon meet the Prophet in his own garden. We waited and waited for the ships to come back, but they did not come back either that day or in the days after.

  The triumph swelled our chests and we felt like giants, and we who had believed that God was with us, believed it now even more than before, and those who had not believed it began to do so, because the fact is that the artillery at the narrows had only thirty shells left, and the Franks could have sailed straight past us in the morning.

  CHAPTER 58

  Karatavuk at Gallipoli: Karatavuk Remembers (2)

  It was another month before the Franks returned, and in the meantime a very great deal happened.

  In the first place I discovered something that confused us all, which was that some of the Franks were on our side. We were confused because of the proverb that “Unbelief is one nation,” and now it appeared that it was not, and there were some Franks who were on the side of the House of Islam, and not the House of War. These Franks were called Germans, and most surprisingly they were Christians. They had an emperor who had declared himself the protector of the Muslims, and it was they who supplied us with the new battleships that replaced the ones that were withheld by the other Franks called British. I had not been aware that the Franks were divided among themselves, and I thought it strange, as I still do, that these German Franks were fighting alongside us when our own Christians were forbidden to do so. All the more strange was that these German Franks were in positions of great power, and we were commanded by one such who was called Liman von Sanders, who was a very great general for us. Sometimes you saw him with his ADCs, walking about the lines, and sometimes he was on a horse, and often he wore a Turkish uniform and not a Frankish one. There were many other of these German Frank officers, and they gave advice and orders to our Turkish officers, and they conversed with our officers in a language which was neither German nor Turkish, but it was another Frankish language called French. I will confuse you, as we were confused, when I tell you that the French people who actually originated this language were among our enemies who invaded us, and were the ones we called “Tangos.” My lieutenant, who was called Orhan, explained to me that he spoke French with the German officers because French is the universal language of civilisation.

  In the second place I was forbidden to write any more letters to my mother, and I was treated very harshly because of the writi
ng.

  It was not expected that a soldier would know how to write, and therefore I fell under suspicion. One morning after the prayer, when I was just about to set out with a labour detail, I was seized suddenly by two soldiers and taken to see my company commander. On the way I was kicked and beaten by the soldiers, who were military policemen, and I was struck with a rifle butt. Everybody hates the military police, and they in return have a hatred of proper soldiers. These two men were very big, and they had stupid faces, and they smelled of raki. By the time that I got to see the commander, I was bleeding from a wound in my cheek, and I had difficulty marching in before him, because I had been kicked in the knee.

  The company commander looked up at me when I saluted, and moved some papers on his desk, and he said, “At ease.” He then confirmed my name and my unit, and he showed me a letter, saying, “Did you write this, Abdul Nefer?” and I took the letter, which was the second one to my mother, and looked at it, and I said, “This is the second letter I have written to my mother.”

  The commander said, “Read it.”

  I did not want to read it, because it was to my mother, but I realised that one does not refuse a company commander who gives a direct order, and so I began to read: “My dear Mother, I am sitting once more under a pear tree, and everything is more beautiful even than it was before. My soul is enchanted yet more greatly by the sweetness of the land …”

  It was something like that. When I wrote to my mother, the thought of her made me inspired, and I wrote more tenderly than when I write this, and I told her no bad things that would make her concerned. I read it from start to finish, knowing the terrible shame of having a private thing exposed to strangers, and then I handed it back to the major. He said, “How do we know that it says this?”

  I pointed to the paper, and said, “Because it is written.”

  He said, “The characters are Greek.”

  I said, “The words are Turk.”

  The commander looked at me and said, “Not long ago the Greeks were at war with us, and before long they may well be again. They did terrible things to us in Thrace. I know, because I was there. I have seen little children disembowelled and nailed to doors. We don’t want Greeks among us here, not in the army. The danger of espionage is obvious.”

  “I am not a Greek, sir,” I replied.

  “You are not a Christian?”

  “I am Muslim, sir. I am not an infidel.”

  The commander said, “The imam of your unit assures me that you are a Muslim, but then it is easy to impersonate a Muslim. Please explain this letter.”

  “It is a letter to my mother, sir.”

  “Yes, yes, it is a letter to your mother, but why is it in Greek?”

  “It is not in Greek, sir,” I repeated, “it is Turk, and only the letters are Greek. I was taught by my friend because I was anxious to learn.”

  “How does this come about?” asked the commander, as if to no one in particular, and at that point Lieutenant Orhan, who was standing behind him and to one side, leaned over, and said, “If I may, sir.” He took the letter and looked at it, and said, “There are places where Turkish is spoken and written in Greek, I have heard that is quite common on the west coast, and in particular in the south-west where this soldier comes from. The people are sometimes called Karamanlids.”

  The commander said, “How can we check this?” and the lieutenant replied, “We do have a great many Greek doctors,” and the commander said, “Fetch me one.”

  So it was that shortly afterwards a Greek doctor from a medical detachment came and looked at the letter, and said, “The letters are Greek, but the language is Turkish. No Greek would understand this unless he were also a Turkish speaker.” I remember that many of us were opposed to having Greek doctors, because we thought that they did not care to treat us properly when we were ill or wounded, but all that was to come later, and this particular doctor was a good thing for me without a doubt.

  When he heard that it really was Turkish, the commander dismissed the doctor, and he spoke to Lieutenant Orhan, of whom I will speak later, and who was my platoon commander, and he said, “Is this a good soldier?” whereupon Lieutenant Orhan said, “He volunteered in place of his father, and he distinguished himself in the naval attack. I have every confidence in him as a soldier, and I have thought of recommending that he should be promoted to corporal. I would like to say, sir, that I object to him being beaten for no reason by the military police.”

  The commander sighed, and he stood up and said to the two military policemen who had brought me in, “Was it you that struck this soldier so that his face bleeds?” and they said, “Yes, sir, it was us.” And the commander asked, “And was it because he resisted arrest?” and the military police said, “No, sir.”

  I have always thought that this shows how stupid the military police are, because they should have said “Yes,” but anyway the commander told them to stand to attention. He drew his pistol from his holster, and he struck each one of them across the cheek with the barrel of his pistol, so that they bled as I did. They stood there at attention, bleeding, and said nothing. Afterwards the commander turned to me and said, “You will write no more letters in Greek script. I have enough to worry about without the censors coming to me with their stupid problems. Do you understand?”

  I said, “Yes, sir,” and he said, “You are dismissed,” so I came to attention, saluted and left, and limped with Lieutenant Orhan back towards my platoon, and it is for this reason that my mother heard nothing of me for the next three years.

  Lieutenant Orhan once said to us, “I think we have been lucky in having such a stupid enemy, so we should take heart.” He said this because the Franks always gave us plenty of time to prepare our defences. Four months before the big battle I have just described, they sent in ships to bombard the forts at Kumkale and Seddülbahir, and a magazine exploded, killing eighty-six men, and so we knew that we had to fortify the narrows, and then two months later a Frankish submarine sank our battleship Messudieh, and so we knew to lay mines and submarine nets.

  When we were walking back to my unit, and a gentle rain had begun to fall, Lieutenant Orhan said to me, “You interest me very much.”

  I did not know how to reply, and said nothing, because a soldier does not normally converse with an officer, and then he turned and explained: “You are the only soldier I have ever had under my command who was able to read and write.” He paused, and then continued, “And the odd thing about it is that what you have learned is almost useless. To write Turkish with Greek letters is like growing a new fruit that is partly a lemon and partly a fig, which no one will ever eat.”

  “What should I do then, sir?” I asked him, and he said, “The first thing is to survive the war. However, I have heard Mustafa Kemal say that we should write in Roman letters, like the Franks, so if he has his way, one day you might have to learn those instead of the Greek ones.”

  “I expect we will win the war, inshallah,” I said, because to say or think otherwise was unacceptable, “and afterwards I can go back to writing things down.”

  “We have been fortunate,” said Lieutenant Orhan. “The Germans have great military skills that we are learning, and the British and the French have been unaccountably stupid in giving us so much time in which to prepare ourselves. I think it is very probable that we will defeat them. Also, we have Colonel Mustafa Kemal in charge of the reserve.”

  “What should I do?” I asked him, and he said, “Keep your bayonet sharp, enjoy everything you do as if it were the last time you are ever going to do it, and when you have to dig, dig deeply and dig well.”

  Lieutenant Orhan was the best of the three officers we had, and before an attack we would always hear him sharpening his sword, making the blade sing with a rhythm like marching feet, and when we went into attack he would go before us with his sword in his hand, and we would watch for the moment when he raised his sword, and he would cry out “God is Great,” and at that moment we would begin the c
harge, and we would all cry out “God is Great” and feel the wild courage rising up inside us. Lieutenant Orhan was like an angel to us, and it was a terrible grief to us when he was killed. I think this was at the second battle of Krithia. After the Franks fell back, I crept out between the lines to look for him at dawn, because I had seen him fall, and I had the idea that he might still be alive, but when I found him he was already bloating, and his blood was black in his wounds, and he was covered in the eggs of corpse flies. I prised open his fingers and I took his sword, and when I brought it back, we few survivors of the battle took turns to kiss it. I don’t know what happened to the sword in the end.

  I often think about Lieutenant Orhan, and now that I am older, if I doze off in the early afternoon, seated under the plane trees in the meydan, I dream that he and my comrades come, one by one, and clasp my shoulders in their hands, and kiss my cheeks in greeting.

  CHAPTER 59

  Karatavuk at Gallipoli: Karatavuk Remembers (3)

  We all knew that the Franks would return with an army as well as ships, and many people grew fearful, but I had the fate of being commanded by Mustafa Kemal, and so I and my comrades were among the lucky ones.

  You know how it is. Sometimes there is someone who is special and stands out among all others. I think that Abdulhamid Hodja was like that, and also Rustem Bey. Sometimes there is someone who is selected to be a lion or an eagle when the rest of us are selected to be sheep and sparrows, and this someone is not caught up by destiny, but makes destiny for themselves, as if they have a greater knowledge of what must be done, and an understanding of the direction in which the world must go.

  I know that Mustafa Kemal is now the President, and anyone would be ignorant indeed who has not heard of him, and I know that for all of us now he is the greatest Turk of all, and those like me who have met him personally shine with some of his glory for ever afterwards, but back then he was just an officer, and none of us knew how he would grow to be great. Even so, we knew he was the best commander to have, and we soldiers were grateful to serve under him rather than someone else, because we had confidence in him. This was because he was a serious officer, and not somebody who was just passing his life away in a uniform, and he had served in that region before, and therefore knew it very well. He would go forward and spy on the Franks with his binoculars, and risk getting shot, like a proper soldier, and he would stride about in the battle and never get hit, as if he were protected. It was said that when he commanded the 38th Regiment, he had made it perfect, and this knowledge strengthened us. Mustafa Kemal knew how to read the intentions of the enemy, and so he was able to confound them, and most of his attacks were successful, but nowadays, when I think back, I have to admit that I have grown doubtful. As I have said, all the attacks were frontal assaults, and several times Mustafa Kemal sacrificed thousands of us in one day. He inspired us, and anyway we were prepared to die, but now it strikes me as wasteful. A soldier is a kind of ammunition, and we were always told not to waste ammunition. In my opinion, looking back after all these years, there was no need for us to make any attacks or counterattacks at all. All we had to do was wait for the Franks to exterminate themselves by attacking us, because all the casualties for both sides were caused by attacks and not by defence.