by Peter Watt
‘I have heard from my Chinese friends that the young lady with you is doing an admirable job assisting our defences,’ Morrison said without turning away from the remnants of the fire.
Andrew was surprised by the remark but realised his fellow Australian made a living from knowing everything that happened within the legation and beyond into the city itself.
‘She is,’ Andrew replied. ‘She certainly is.’
The three-inch artillery shell exploded in the ceiling of Robert Mumford’s quarters, showering John with dust and plaster. For a moment he lost his hearing as he struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his chest from the sudden exertion.
‘Bastards!’ he swore and snatched the rifle propped against the wall.
Stumbling from the house, John was quickly aware that, once again, he had come very close to being killed. He quickly felt for any shrapnel wounds but found none.
‘Mr Wong, you look like a ghost,’ a shocked voice came from the darkness.
John turned to see Liza hurrying towards him and realised that the explosion had covered him in a film of grey dust. ‘I missed you at the hospital,’ he said with a smile.
‘I was on my way over to bring you something to eat,’ Liza said when she was closer to him. ‘But, unfortunately I have spilled the meal.’
‘I would rather see you,’ John replied when he saw the worried expression on the Russian woman’s face.
‘I was annoyed that you actually left the hospital. I thought that you might have more sense than to do that,’ Liza continued, as if chiding a child.
Without any warning, John wrapped his arm around her slim waist and drew her roughly to him. Before she could resist he had turned her face up to his. Feeling his lips upon hers sent an unexpected shiver through the startled woman. As rough as his embrace had been, his kiss was strong, sweet and tender.
‘Just a thank you for caring,’ John said, releasing Liza. ‘Under the current circumstances I don’t think the gesture would be considered forward.’
Catching her breath, Liza just stared at John, who stood with a slow smile on his face, challenging her to refute the statement.
‘I have decided that it would be safer on the barricades tonight, shooting back,’ John said. ‘But I would invite you to join me for breakfast in the morning.’
John slung the rifle on his shoulder while Liza remained speechless. She was still transfixed when he walked off into the dark that was occasionally lit by the flash of an exploding artillery shell. A thousand thoughts swirled through her mind. The man was as brazen as any she had ever met but the kiss had been electrifying. She had not experienced such passion for many years. Although there had been men in her life who had attempted to court her, none had caught her fancy except one. When she remembered the young man she had loved with all her heart and soul Liza also thought about John’s obvious desire for her. ‘Never again,’ she whispered to herself with bitterness for a lost love. John was too much like the man that she had once loved.
But John’s kiss had reignited the possibility of intimacy in her life in a place where death was a constant companion. Elizaveta Gurevich had much to think about on her walk back to the hospital.
In the dark John found a section of the defences, a sandbagged barricade facing the Mongol Market pavilions, manned by a contingent of United States marines under the command of a tough young lieutenant.
‘Came to add my rifle to your defences,’ he said to the American officer. ‘The name is John Wong,’
‘Lieutenant Simpson,’ the officer said without shaking hands. ‘Had any military experience before?’
‘In a roundabout way,’ John answered.
‘You much of a shot, Mr Wong?’ the marine officer questioned him further.
‘Reasonable,’ John replied modestly.
‘Well, you can take your place at the end of the section down there,’ Simpson said, pointing in the dark to a vague outline of a raised wall of sandbags. ‘Not much happening tonight,’ he continued. ‘They wait until first light before shooting at us directly. Had one little yellow bastard last evening almost get us and we are hoping he had a sleepover tonight. Hope to get a chance to send him to his Celestial heaven. You one of those Australians like Morrison?’
‘I’m a Queenslander,’ John said. ‘Dr Morrison is a Victorian. There is a big difference in our country.’
‘A bit like us with northerners and southerners,’ Simpson replied with a chuckle.
‘You could say that,’ John answered. ‘Back home they are talking about putting all our colonies under one government and calling Queensland a state. I don’t think it will be the same when we lose our colonial identities.’
‘Yeah, well, you need that before you can have secession and a civil war,’ Simpson said with his lazy Texas drawl.
Even in the brief meeting with this Aussie, Simpson admired his manner. The unseen man with the name like a Chink had an easy confidence about him and Simpson liked that.
John groped his way to the end of the defences and settled down next to a young marine sleeping by his rifle. He laid the rifle against the sandbag wall, settling back to wait for dawn. He had time to think and was learning to cope with the sharp pain his chest as if it were a natural thing in his life. His thoughts were of Liza and John cursed himself. He knew that he had acted like an oaf by forcing himself on the young woman but it was like he had said to her, time was measured in minutes in this place. Some things could not wait. The explanation helped ease his guilt at forcing himself on Liza. He would know the upshot of his actions in the morning. Would she still want to share his company?
Tung slid across the pavilion roof, dropped carefully down onto a stout wooden rafter and peered through a hole beside a young warrior gripping his rifle. Through a couple of tiles that had been removed Tung could see that dawn was nearly upon them. It was time to seek targets in the grounds of the legation. From where Tung was perched on the rafter he could see the flames of small fires flickering all over the area. None were blazing enough to immolate the buildings but a good wind might change that situation.
‘Do not waste ammunition,’ he said quietly to the sharpshooter he had assigned the evening before. ‘I have seen your courage and good work. Today you will be successful and kill many foreign devil soldiers.’
The young man did not reply but was pleased at his commander’s confidence in him. He had mastered the use of the rifle and had proved to be the best shot in his squad of Boxer warriors under the honourable Tung’s command.
Unwittingly, John had allowed himself to doze off with his back to the sandbagged wall. He was torn from sleep by the yelp of a man down the line, followed almost immediately by the crack of a rifle shot.
‘Goddamn!’ Lieutenant Simpson swore at the top of his voice. ‘Who did he get?’
‘Corporal Gates,’ came the reply from the centre of the defences. ‘But he only nicked his elbow, sir.’
‘Someone send that goddamned son of a bitch to hell,’ Simpson roared. ‘But only if you see him. Don’t waste ammo. Anyone see where the shot came from?’
‘No, sir,’ the slightly wounded corporal replied. ‘Not that we don’t know he’s on one of the rooftops out there.’
John rolled onto his stomach and saw a loophole in the sandbags that had been made from stockings and men’s trousers sewn together. He had a good view of the Mongol Market and the pavilions and, easing his rifle forward to rest the barrel tip on the edge of the loophole, he scanned the curved, sloping rooftops of the buildings before him. Three hundred yards, he calculated, shifting the rear sight of his rifle to that distance. Slowly he swivelled the sights over the tiles but saw nothing. The young marine beside him was doing the same thing. Then John saw the slight movement of a tile in the distance. No wonder the gunman had been so elusive, he thought as he brought his sights onto the possible target. The sharpshooter was not on the roof but in it. He must have been there all the time.
The morning shadows had shown
John the missing roof tiles although for someone scanning only the actual edge of a rooftop, they might have gone unseen.
Without taking his attention from the shadow he had in his sights John spoke softly to the young marine lying beside him, ‘Lad, you see the second building from the right of that lone tree?’
The marine turned his head to glance at the man who had joined their defences only the night before. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.
‘Look halfway down and you will see a shadow on the roof where there is a missing tile. You see it?’
After a short silence the marine answered. ‘I see it,’ he said, levelling his rifle on the point John had indicated.
‘Just keep your eyes on that shadow,’ John continued. ‘I expect that we are going to see something interesting very soon.’
John had hardly spoken when two tiny figures appeared to fill the shadow. Then John saw the tip of a rifle barrel.
‘You see that?’ the young marine said excitedly.
‘Don’t shoot yet,’ John cautioned. ‘We will take one each and with any luck get them both. You take the one on the right and I will take the one on the left.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the marine replied, barely containing his excitement. ‘Should we tell the lieutenant?’ he asked, holding his rifle steady.
‘There won’t be time,’ John answered, quickly calculating the wind drift, distance and the remembered characteristics of the former French army rifle. The tiny white dots remained in their sights. ‘I will count to three and on three, you fire,’ John said. ‘One, two …’
Tung knew it was not necessary to expose himself, but he wanted to get an idea of the layout of the defences this morning. From what he could see, little had changed – except that the barricade wall had been reinforced with more sandbags and rifle slits. His marksman’s first shot had been aimed at a small space between the sandbags where he had seen movement. Whether he had been successful in hitting one of the defenders he did not know but at least the accurate shooting would keep the men behind the barricade pinned down.
Tung felt a searing pain along the side of his head as he and the young Boxer beside him were suddenly toppling off the rafter, to slam into the earthen floor ten feet below, where a party of Boxers were resting.
Tung lay winded for a moment. When he turned his head he realised there was a painful ringing in his ear, as if a bell would not stop clanging. He could see the bloodied face of the marksman staring at him with eyes wide open and his mouth agape, while his pulverised brains were spilled along the earth as a greasy slick.
One of the Boxers helped Tung to sit up. Moments earlier the young rebel had been sitting with his back to the wall, awaiting his turn to relieve the dead gunman.
‘You have been wounded, honourable commander.’
Tung could feel the sticky flow of warm blood down the side of his face and when he reached up to feel for its source he winced. The ringing in his shredded ear was not abating and Tung reached for one of the scarfs attached to his clothing to use as a bandage. He had been lucky. A fraction more to one side and the Boxer who had assisted him would have been staring at his brains on the floor.
‘You men can find another place to fire from,’ Tung said, stemming the flow of blood from his torn ear. ‘It seems the foreign devils know of this one.’
‘Three!’ John had said softly, squeezing the trigger of his rifle until it bucked in his shoulder while, at almost the same time, the young marine beside him also fired. A wisp of smoke curled from the barrels of both rifles and John rolled away from the loophole, lest he receive return fire.
‘Who fired?’ Simpson called down the line.
‘I did, sir,’ the young marine called back, remaining in position.
Simpson, mindful that ammunition required careful husbanding, stormed down the line until he reached John and his assistant’s position.
‘I think if you train your binoculars on a roof over there you will see something of interest,’ John said, sitting up to give relief to his chest wound.
Simpson lifted the binoculars strung around his neck and focused them on where John had indicated to see a rifle slowly sliding down the tiled rooftop.
‘Goddamn!’ he said under his breath. ‘Mighty fine shooting.’
‘Probably your young soldier here,’ John said, causing the marine to puff out his chest. ‘We think that there were two of them when we fired and I suspect that we got at least one of them.’
Simpson laid the binoculars against his chest to look at John, and a look of surprise swept across his face in the early morning light.
‘Yeah, I have a touch of Celestial,’ John said, putting the marine officer’s unspoken thoughts into words. ‘And also Irish.’
‘Got nothing personal against Chinamen,’ Simpson said with a grin. ‘It’s just the Irish I object to.’ He extended his hand to John. ‘Welcome aboard, Mr Wong. You are welcome anytime on my part of the line.’
John accepted the handshake. ‘Thanks, Lieutenant, but I have a breakfast appointment so I will bid my goodbye for the moment.’
As John rose to walk away he heard a cheer from the marines on the line and was fiercely proud to have upheld the honour of Queensland in front of the Yanks.
In minutes he reached his quarters and when he entered saw Liza laying out a clean cloth on the desk. She had scrounged up two bowls of rice and hot meat for them and welcomed him with a warm smile.
‘I did not know if I would see you this morning,’ John said in a humble voice.
‘I only came to ensure that your bandages were changed,’ Liza lied. ‘And that you had something to eat.’
John sat down at the desk and Liza took a spare chair to sit down opposite him.
‘Thank you,’ John said, reaching for a spoon beside the bowl. He was hungry and weary, and for the moment everything happening outside the building was forgotten. All John cared about was that he was alive and in the company of this extraordinary woman he wanted to learn more about. Somewhere in the compound a Chinese shell exploded as if to remind both that death was only yards away.
They came as a colourful swarm into the Fu, shouting their war cries, only to be mown down by the seemingly hopelessly outnumbered Japanese soldiers under the command of Colonel Shiba. Spent brass cartridges spun through the air behind the barricades where the Japanese soldiers ejected their rifles to reload and fire through the loopholes they had made.
Andrew snatched his revolver from within his waistband, seeking desperately for Liling. She stood frozen, mouth agape, watching the mass of Chinese soldiers attempting to storm the former palace of a Chinese prince.
‘Liling, to me,’ Andrew screamed above the ear-shattering din of continuous rifle fire.
Hearing his voice, Liling stumbled towards him. The Chinese troops were only a hundred yards out and closing the distance, but the Japanese soldiers’ well-disciplined volleys continued to smash into the advancing ranks.
‘We have to get the converts out,’ Andrew yelled.
Liling nodded, her fear etched plainly in her face. She turned to see a Chinese woman holding a baby and with a toddler clasping her trouser leg. The woman was frozen with fear and the baby bawled in her arms. Liling went to her and spoke loudly to the woman, breaking her trance-like state. The woman immediately clasped her child’s hand and dragged the small boy with her as she fled the Fu. Andrew similarly shouted orders to the terrified converts and they all began to flee the advancing rebels.
‘You too!’ Andrew said loudly to Liling, but she shook her head, standing her ground. Andrew dashed across and shook her roughly. ‘You have to get out of here,’ he said harshly.
‘I will remain by your side,’ she replied stubbornly.
Andrew was in a quandary. If he decided to remain and add his pistol to the firepower of the defenders he knew Liling would not part from him – even if it meant her death. To get her to leave required him to also desert the Fu.
Colonel Shiba had sent an urgent message by
runner for reinforcements to stem the attack and a detachment of Germans and Americans fought their way along the strategically important Tartar Wall to relieve pressure on the Japanese flanks. Denying the Boxers and Chinese troops the wall meant keeping the enemy from being able to fire down into the legation area.
Andrew chose to fall back with the fleeing Chinese converts, deciding that his pride was not as important as Liling’s life. As he did he could hear the firing from the barricades tapering off and when he turned to view the battleground he saw the multitude of dead and dying rebel Chinese scattered before the Japanese defences, their remaining comrades wisely choosing to retreat against the steady nerve of those they had intended to overwhelm with their numbers and firepower. Andrew’s pistol had not been needed after all.
John worked the bolt on his rifle, pouring a steady fire into the advancing enemy soldiers. It was mid-afternoon and the new attacks had proved to be well orchestrated. He found himself back with the US marines under Simpson’s command, along with many other civilian volunteers armed with a variety of weapons, ranging from target rifles to Colt revolvers.
John had found the young marine soldier who had worked with him to dispose of the sharpshooters that morning and the marine was glad to see him. He introduced himself as Larry Gilles, a former farm boy from Maine, and side by side behind their barricade the two kept up a furious volley of fire, dropping their targets as if they had been on a shooting range.
Despite the withering fire from the barricades the attackers reached the sandbagged walls and grappled with the marines in vicious hand-to-hand fighting. It was sword and spear against rifle and bayonet. John was reaching frantically for more rounds to load his rifle when a snarling face appeared above him. The Boxer warrior was wielding a spear and instinctively John swung his rifle like a bat to parry the weapon thrust down at him. The wooden butt smashed against the spear, jarring the wound in John’s chest. Ignoring his pain, he stood to counter his foe who had now scrambled over the sandbags to thrust once again at the Australian. The young marine beside him lunged at John’s attacker with his bayoneted rifle, wounding the Boxer in the side. The rebel doubled over, collapsing at John’s feet. He smashed the butt of his rifle down on the man’s head, stunning him.