by Tony Roberts
She said nothing, but stood there a few feet away thinking. A shell smashed into the beach a few hundred yards away. It broke the spell. They started, then looked at each other for a moment. “I think I’d like to see you again,” Casca said.
“Yes,” Alison agreed, “but I’m due back on duty in a while. When will you be back from the front line?”
“Don’t know, but I’ll write notes to you.”
“Please,” she said, then took his hand. They turned and walked back towards the hospital. Casca hoped the girl was serious on him; he wanted some sort of relief from the oppression he felt here. He wasn’t quite sure why he felt this way, and he was determined to sit down somewhere quiet and think on it. He escorted the woman back to her tent and they smiled briefly. Alison hesitated, then ducked through the flap into the hospital. Casca sucked in his breath. He felt for a moment there she was going to kiss him.
Cursing under his breath, he made his way at an angle away from the sea towards a patch of scrub where piles of crates had been untidily stacked. There were some good hiding places amongst the crates and undergrowth there. He squatted down and slid into a clear spot only open to the sky.
He resisted the urge to light a cigarette. It would give him away if anyone happened by and would want to know why a soldier was hiding there. Ever since he’d come to in the hospital in Alex he’d felt oppressed, hunted. It wasn’t the Australian army, that was for sure. It was quite a relaxed and friendly lot, better than the bullshit and blind stupidity of the British army he’d experienced firstly in Hong Kong, then Flanders. Here the officers were approachable and listened. The Brits seemed too many times to stick to regulations and rule books.
No, it wasn’t the army. He shut his eyes and relaxed. It was a feeling of being trapped. Trapped here for sure, on a narrow beach. But he’d been in similar positions before. Why here did he feel this bad? He thought back to the hospital in Alex and remembered the medical orderly. That man had sent the shivers down his spine, like the Brotherhood of the Lamb did. Was he a member? Casca wasn’t sure. You never knew these days, or at any other time either, for that matter. And if he were, what sort of plan did he have? Again, those maniacs were never consistent in what they did. In Virginia they’d tried to take him captive, yet in China they’d looked after him and then set him free. Since then he’d not seen sight nor sound of them. It’d been fourteen years. Were they watching him somehow?
He felt queasy. He always tried to keep anonymous, free from their clutches. If that orderly were a Brotherhood member, then they weren’t far away, and stuck here on this tiny beachhead they wouldn’t take long to find him. And then what?
He resolved to find a way off this peninsula. Either by desertion or somehow transferring himself to another place. How, he didn’t know, but he’d find a way, sooner or later.
He returned to his unit who grinned at him. Comments were thrown in his direction about being nursed, and Casca scowled at them. He sat and began cleaning his rifle. That always eased his feelings, the comfort of caring for his weaponry and equipment. The others, joined by the rest of the platoon, were discussing the new place they were to man, on a plateau where the two sides had begun to dig in at either end.
“You can be sure we’ll be asked to dig more trenches,” Rocky predicted darkly.
“Dig, dig, dig. That’s all we’ll do,” Archie added.
“Well,” Jeb said with some humor in his voice, “we are being called the diggers, so I hear.”
“Bloody right. What are we, moles?” Bill said, rubbing some polish into his brown webbing.
“It’ll keep you busy and help protect you,” Casca said. “Want a Turkish bullet in your head? No? Then dig in and stay alive.”
“You’re full of bloody advice,” Jeb said, turning to Casca. “You’re the newest one here yet you make it sound like you’re the most experienced.”
“That’s because I am. I’ve done fighting before.” He looked at Jeb and held his gaze. The Australian muttered and looked away. Casca always did that to people; his look was full of steel. It took a very strong will to hold it.
“Could have fooled me,” Jeb said quietly, but loud enough for the others to hear.
Casca put his rifle down. “And what do you mean by that, Jeb?”
“You were supposed to be with Tom, and he died,” Jeb blurted out. “You said you were wounded, but I don’t see any wound! You’ve no ill effects from that injury, so it couldn’t have been bad!”
Casca looked at the others. They weren’t saying anything, just looking at him. “You saying I’m a coward?”
Jeb looked up. “Naw. The way you took out that machine gun post was crazy, but no coward would have done that. I’m saying you let Tom down with an injury that wasn’t as bad as you made out!”
“I was hit; you all saw the blood. It was a messy flesh wound, and I got back to duty quick. I’m sorry Tom died, but it could have happened any time. It wasn’t down to me not being there; he’d’ve been hit whether I was there or not, and you know that.”
“The hell you say,” Jeb snapped.
Casca stood up. “Well, Jeb, put your money where your mouth is. I’m not going to take your bad-mouthing lightly.” He balled his fists.
Jeb stood up and threw down his bush hat. “Yeah. About time someone shut you up. You talk big, but when it got tough you pretended to be hurt.”
Casca gritted his teeth. Being called a coward or afraid was something that always got to him. He knew he wasn’t. Hell, what was he to be cowardly of? Death? No way. He did try to avoid injury because it damn well hurt, but he would always recover.
The others scrambled to their feet and formed a ring around the two, taking sides and encouraging on their choice. Casca caught the sight of money changing hands. Shit, I’m even being betted on! He planted his feet wide and waited for the Australian to make his move.
Jeb didn’t keep him waiting. With a snarl the Australian stepped forward, right fist swinging for Casca’s gut. The Eternal Mercenary blocked it with his left and sent a right uppercut up under Jeb’s guard and connected with his jaw. The tough, wiry soldier staggered back and bumped into the surrounding men. He looked at Casca with surprise. Holding his jaw, he moved forward again, but this time a little more cautiously. Casca moved sideways to counter where Jeb was going, then suddenly stood still as Jeb sprang forward.
Unarmed combat was something Casca’d had plenty of experience with over the centuries. Uncounted numbers of street and bar brawls had taught him more moves and strikes than anyone could possibly know in a normal lifetime. But on top of that Casca always remembered the first lessons he’d had. It was like that with everyone; the best memories were the earliest ones. So it was with Casca. The man who’d taught him some incredible moves was a wise Chinese sage by the name of Shiu Lao Tze when both had been slaves of the Roman Empire. Casca had never forgotten Shiu or the things he’d taught him.
Jeb’s attack was to catch Casca in a bear hug and pin him to the ground. Casca dealt with that by suddenly twisting, grabbing Jeb’s outstretched arms and pulling him over his hip and letting go. Jeb sailed through the air and landed hard on his back, his breath exploding out of his mouth in one loud noise.
Jeb slowly rolled onto his back and got to his feet, dust and dirt dropping from his uniform. “That was a dirty trick,” he said breathlessly. “You don’t fight properly.”
Casca, despite the situation, laughed. “And how do I ‘fight properly’, Jeb? Let you wipe me over all of Gallipoli?”
Jeb wiped his mouth and sprang forward, fists whirling. They would have knocked down a lesser man, and the left glanced off Casca’s temple, but the scarred warrior had already moved and was sending in two blows into Jeb’s midriff. The Australian stopped, gasped, and sank to his knees clutching his chest. He’d never been hit that hard before!
The men crowded round, encouraging Jeb to get up, but the man was too winded and stunned to move. He remained on his knees, grey-faced and whooping
in breath, his head bowed. Casca stood a few yards away, watching him warily.
Footsteps heralded the arrival of a group of men, led by a lieutenant and a sergeant. “Okay boys,” the lieutenant said, “fighting isn’t allowed. You two are in trouble.”
Hands grabbed Casca and Jeb and they two were swung round to face the youthful looking officer. The lieutenant didn’t look angry, merely sad. “Pity you can’t direct your energies at the Turks,” he said regretfully. “Now you’ll be on fatigues here on the beach clearing up while your mates are living in luxury in the trenches.”
The men gathered around smiled at the irony. Even Casca thought it a good one. Jeb straightened and grunted. “Never liked digging anyway,” he growled, then grinned at Casca. “You hit like a bloody horse! Strewth. No hard feelings?”
Casca shook his head. “You took it damn well, Jeb. Not many I’ve seen take that many and still stay on their feet.”
Jeb nodded and eyed the guards. “Well, seems you and me are going to be cleaning out latrines and clear up limbs from the beach for the next few days.”
“Too true,” the sergeant said ominously. “You don’t seem too worried, so I’ll find you the worst jobs I can.”
The lieutenant sighed. “Take care of these two, Sergeant. I’ll have to report them to their unit. You men, show me your officer’s quarters.”
As the others moved off, Casca and Jeb were sent down to the beach to be shown, along with a group of others on charges, what they had to clear up. It wouldn’t be fun, and the jetties that had been hastily built looked unsafe and rickety. But they were to pile the discarded boxes, crates and barrels onto them and then lift them into the shallow-draught ships that came up to them to be filled. And while this was being done, the occasional shell roared overhead and crashed into the sea or the beach.
Casca thought it was one hell of a way to continue his stay at Gallipoli.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The one good thing about being on fatigues, Casca realized, was that he could see Alison when they fell out or when the work was done for the day. A steady stream of casualties filtering down from the front trenches ensured the field hospital kept busy and so it was hard to get to see her. But he did manage it a couple of times. She disapproved of him being on a charge but when Jeb turned up and said it was all forgiven and they were good mates, she seemed to relax a bit.
Three days of dragging or lifting packages gave Jeb blisters but Casca was immune to them. His body was now back to what it had been before he’d been burned in Flanders, and in the growing heat of the day stripped off to the waist, drawing amazed looks from his fellow defaulters. Scars criss-crossed his torso and arms, and they gave up counting them.
Some of the lesser ones had vanished with the growth of the new skin but most of the older and bigger ones remained. Jeb wondered at the large one over his heart but Casca wasn’t going to tell him it had been gained on top of a Mesoamerican pyramid centuries back.
Eventually the army decided they’d repaid their dues and were sent back to their unit high up amongst the ridges and plateaus above the beach. Here the danger was all present, with sniping a growing irritation. Casca was told that some Turks had sneaked behind lines when they had been less settled and shot a few soldiers from behind, but they had been flushed out and dealt with. Now it was just the sniping from the trenches a few dozen yards away, and it was very dicey indeed to show yourself for even a couple of seconds.
Casca experimented by putting his hat on a stick and raising it above the level of the sandbags. A few moments later a shot sent the hat spinning off the stick. Casca picked up the hat and thoughtfully poked a finger through the hole that had been drilled into it.
“Yair,” Archie drawled laconically, a wry smile on his face, “watch it or your head will have a hole in it next time!”
The trenches had been dug fairly quickly and now snaked along the plateau. Dry, dull yellow earth had been thrown up to form more protection and sandbags lumped on top. Every few feet the trench widened into a large foxhole where five men lived and kept alert. At night this dropped to three men with two asleep. Casca, Jeb, Bill, Archie and Rocky were grouped in the same hole. Casca sat on a roughly hewn fire step, shifting his ass to get comfortable. “We need cover. The sun will bake us in here. It’ll get hotter the further we get into summer. We’ll need shelter.”
“You know this area then, Sandy?” Bill asked.
“Yeah. Baking in summer, freezing in winter. I hope we’re not here come November. That won’t be fun.”
The others muttered and looked along the line of the trench. A few yards away a communications trench ran off rearwards and it was through here any new men entered the trench. The trenches were merely rough and hastily dug at that moment, but if they were to stay there for any time, and Casca couldn’t see how they could advance without more men and a well prepared plan, then they would have to be dug deeper and made more sophisticated and comfortable.
But Casca’s thoughts were interrupted. An officer he hadn’t seen before, a lean and tough looking captain, appeared, accompanied by a couple of subalterns and a few guards. “Where is Private Roman?” he demanded.
Casca froze. The others pointed wordlessly to him.
“Roman?” the captain demanded, his face serious.
Casca half stood awkwardly, not wanting to show his head above the line of sandbags. He saluted. “Sir?”
“Come with me.”
Casca looked at the others who all looked mystified. “You been stealing from the general’s personal food hamper, Sandy?” Archie asked.
Casca shrugged and went to put his rifle down, but the captain shook his head and ordered him to bring it with him. “You’ll be needing that.”
It filled him with foreboding. This didn’t sound too good.
And so it turned out. The Eternal Mercenary was led to a rear area where a small space had been scraped out from the hillside and here was some sort of officer’s quarters. Rough tables were scattered about as were small chairs and a sand-colored tarpaulin held down by ropes and held up by crudely-cut lengths of wood that served as a large tent. Within were cooking implements and bottles of alcohol.
“Now, Roman,” the captain turned to Casca. “I understand you’re fluent in Turkish.”
“Yes, sir.” Casca wondered who’d been talking. Too bad, he accepted with a resigned air. Whatever was coming he couldn’t avoid. Might as well see what it was.
“Well, we need some intelligence on the enemy positions and what is facing us. We need someone to go get us someone from the other side, preferably an officer. No good getting one of their soldiers, they probably can’t read let alone know what the bloody hell’s going on.”
Casca stared at the captain. Was he being serious? Yes, he looked so. “Sir, how? Its suicide trying to go over the top.”
“Give me some credit for a plan!” the captain snapped irritably. Then he grinned. “You’re to go at night and dressed as a Turk. We’ve got some uniforms from the prisoners and dead after the last three days of fighting. Sneak over, grab an officer and get back.”
“You hope, sir. Anything can go wrong. What if they see me? They’ll shoot. There’s no way they’ll see I’m a Turkish soldier by my size.”
“Roman, we need that intelligence badly. If things go wrong then turn back. You’ll be accompanied by four others as far as about halfway across no-man’s land. It’s going to be dark, you’ll not be recognized, believe me.”
Casca shook his head, but orders were orders. With a growing sense of being trapped, he returned to his unit for a few hours and told the others what he was to do that evening. Rocky was surprised and looked it. “But that’s crazy! You’ll be killed for sure, mate.”
“I said that to the Captain,” Casca replied gloomily, “but he insisted. I’ve got to go at five to be ‘fitted’, so he said.”
“If you survive that you’ll survive anything,” Jeb commented.
Casca wasn’t sharing Jeb�
�s optimism. Although he wouldn’t die, he had no wish to be riddled with bullet holes from trigger-happy Turks. The whole scheme smacked of desperation. “I don’t think anyone high up has any idea of what to do next,” he said.
“Heh,” Archie grinned, rolling yet another cigarette, “d’ya seriously think they had before this party began? Hare-brained from the start, if you ask me, mate.”
Casca agreed with Archie. In all his time down the ages, at least the armies he’d been in had had some idea of a plan, or strategy. But this war just seemed different. Even in Flanders the same confusion and ineptitude reigned supreme; nobody knew what to do with the men they had. Advances in munitions and weaponry had outstripped everything so that now the defense held the upper hand. Casca had seen some of this in the American Civil War the previous century, around Petersburg.
But that was before Vickers and Maxim had produced the machine gun. It was a harvester of men, that gun. Three could sit safely in a dugout and annihilate an entire regiment with one of those.
He was called a short while later and was shown to a camp to the rear where tents were set up. In front of one of those were two soldiers waiting patiently. One of them showed Casca into the tent and he found a pile of smelly Turkish uniforms of varying size. “Captain said to try them on till you get a set that fits,” one of them said helpfully.
The Eternal Mercenary grumbled and began changing. Most of the uniforms were too small but a few fitted. It seemed Turkish soldiers came in two sizes; stick-thin or enormous. Finally he had some semblance of a uniform but it was a dirty, stinking, ragged collection that ill fitted and smelled as if a camel had used it as a toilet for a week. He went with the two others to a reserve trench where the captain was waiting with two others.
“Ah, here we are. Right. It’s dark in ten minutes or so, so I’d like you all to study the ground through these periscopes we’ve set up. You’ll go through the gap in the wire straight ahead and into no-man’s land. Make sure you’re aware of where you can get cover and where you can’t. I’ve got two machine guns sited to the left that can give you covering fire.”