by Tony Roberts
In here a group of Anzacs were kneeling, lying or crouching, shooting for all they were worth down the two possible approach routes. Screaming enemy soldiers were running towards them in both. Casca took one look and cursed. “Jeb, Bill, with me!”
He threw himself behind the three foot high sandbag wall and aimed forward. He was aware of Bill and Jeb to either side of him. He concentrated on the foremost figure running at them, screaming praise to Allah. At a distance of twenty feet it was stupidly easy. The shot impacted on the Turk’s chest and he threw up both arms and crashed into the trench wall and fell backwards. He was instantly swallowed up by those following and Casca frantically worked the bolt, thrusting the next round into the chamber.
Just after Jeb and Bill fired, Casca centered his sights on another. This Turk was all eyes and mustache, and almost on top of him. The shot blew apart his stomach and he was lifted up by the force into his colleagues behind. The fusillade of shots cut down more but there were too many.
“Watch out!” Casca yelled, getting to his feet.
Four Turks reached the sandbags and kicked them aside, stepping over the collapsing barrier. Casca took two steps back and fired. One Turk staggered back and fell to the ground, eyes upturned. But another pushed past and raised his rifle to shoot Casca. The Eternal Mercenary lunged, the blade of his bayonet slicing into the enemy soldier’s throat.
Bright red blood poured out. For a second Casca had a bad memory of Jesus’ blood. Then he angrily pulled back and the Turk fell in a heap. Not wasting any time he stepped forward again. The outpost was a seething mass of struggling bodies. Using his rifle butt, he clubbed at the next man. The butt glanced off his head. The Turk snarled and came at Casca, bayonet flashing close to his face. Casca jerked out of the way, then struck back. Rifle hit rifle, blocking the blow.
Both strained to push the other back. Casca was the stronger and sent the Turk backwards, but he stayed on his feet. Once again the Turk swung at him, and Casca blocked it. His left hand shot out and closed round the opponent’s throat. He squeezed. Hard. The Turk thrashed but couldn’t break Casca’s grip.
He tried to pull the hand off, using both of his, so Casca used his other hand to increase the grip and to press even harder. The Turk sank to his knees, Casca dropping with him. On the churned up dusty ground the two men remained locked in their deathly embrace. With one last squeeze Casca made sure his enemy was dead.
Feet went this way and that beside him. Twisting, he saw a cruel face above and a steel-shod boot raised to crush his skull. He seized the man’s foot and twisted. There came a snapping noise and the Turk screamed as his ankle broke and bone shot through his flesh. Casca threw the man aside and got to his feet.
Jeb was underneath a Turk, trying to keep the blade in the Turkish soldier’s hand from boring through his eye socket. Casca pulled the Turk up and slammed a fist down onto the neck, stunning him. With a snarl, Casca picked up the man and threw him into a group of enemy soldiers trying to get into the outpost.
Swinging round, he came face to face with yet another Turk. This one had just bayoneted one of the other defenders and had decided to deal with Casca next. Knocking aside the hasty thrust with the bayonet, Casca hammered down his fist onto the man’s neck. The Turk grunted and staggered back. Not waiting for him to recover, Casca sent a second blow into his gut. The Turk folded in agony over the iron-hard hand and sank to the ground.
A pair of hands closed round his neck and the smell of garlic wafted over him. Some bastard behind him was trying to crush the life out of him. Casca struggled against the man holding him tight. Whoever it was, was tough. More struggling bodies weaved to and fro across his line of vision – one was wielding a spade. Even as he watched, the spade went flying, knocked out of the holder’s grip.
Casca sent an elbow viciously backwards, connecting with the ribs of the man throttling him. Then he stamped on his foot, driving his leg down hard. There came a cry of pain and the grip relaxed. The Eternal Mercenary tore himself free and spun round. The Turk was standing, teeth gritted, facing him with hatred on his face. “Unclean pig,” he wheezed, “you will suffer for that.”
As Casca watched, the soldier reached for a knife in his belt. With perhaps a few seconds left to react, Casca reached for his belt. Nothing there. He remembered the spade and backed away, looking on the ground for it. His foot trod on the handle and he grabbed it, gripping it tight and facing his adversary who was advancing on him, pure intent on his face.
The knife flashed and Casca flailed the spade but missed. It wasn’t what he was used to and the knife was quicker and lighter. There came a burning feeling down his left arm but Casca ignored it, swinging the spade hard in an arc. The blade connected with the Turkish soldier’s head and made a dull sickening thud. The spade stuck in the man’s skull and the man fell aside, the spade still sticking into him. Blood and gore oozed out of the gash and Casca stepped back and looked away.
The fight was over. Bodies littered the outpost and the surviving Australians were looking round in wonder - wonder they had survived. Jeb knelt by one of the men lying on the ground. It was Bill. “Jeez, Bill,” Jeb said slowly, “talk to me!”
Bill was covered in blood. It was easy to see what was wrong. A rifle and bayonet still rested in his guts, pointing to the sky. He looked at Jeb and grinned, pain filling his face. Casca grabbed a strip of cloth, rolled it up and pressed it on Bill’s stomach. “Hold him,” he said calmly.
The rifle was pulled out. Bill cried out. Throwing the gun and bayonet away, Casca pressed the cloth on the wound. “Lie still, say nothing.” He’d seen such injuries before. Bill’s chances were slim.
More men were arriving. Reinforcements. Many of those left were wounded. Finally someone got stretchers organized and Jeb and Casca put Bill in one and volunteered to carry him back down to the hospital.
Their part in the attack was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The hospital was chaos. Wounded lay outside in rows. Flies gathered in swarms, landing on the helpless and feasting. Overworked orderlies and nurses tried to keep the insects off but it was hopeless.
Casca left Jeb with Bill and went searching inside. It was a job, pushing past the legions of walking wounded, but finally he tracked Alison down. She was tending a man with a blood-soaked chest. He didn’t look as if he had long to live. Outside on the jetty, boats were queuing up to take many of the wounded to Imbros. Things were getting overcrowded.
“Oh God, Sandy!” she said upon seeing the bulk of Casca. “I’m so glad you’re safe!” She threw herself into his arms. “I was so worried,” she continued, her voice muffled by Casca’s jacket, “and they’re going to send me away because that horrid man is looking for you and I told Rocky to say nothing and he wants me out of the way…”
Casca pulled her away from his chest. “What man?”
“A small man, came here from Imbros. He’s been asking questions about someone like you who’s wanted for murder.” Alison hadn’t intended to tell him but found she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.
Casca looked round and peered into the heaving mass of humanity. “Where is this man?”
“Oh, probably tending some poor man who’s wounded. He gives me the shivers. He’s asking about a scarred man with burns. You haven’t got any burns….. did you murder anyone, Sandy? Tell me, please!”
Casca resisted the impulse to laugh. Murder, in a place where people were killing each other in the hundreds? “I was in an ambulance that crashed, and I shouldn’t have been. I got out and ran, but I think a soldier got caught in the blast when it exploded and he must have died, poor soul.”
Alison looked closely at his face. There was no deceit there, and his voice rang true. “Oh, so everything will be alright! Tell them what happened and they’ll see that they’ve been wrong!”
“Fat chance,” Casca scoffed and disengaged himself. “They’re the military, and this guy must have been sent by the British in Egypt. I’ll be arres
ted and sentenced to a firing squad. They won’t listen – they won’t want to listen.”
“But…”
“But nothing,” Casca interrupted harshly. “As long as that guy, whoever he is, doesn’t know, then he can’t get his hands on me. You’re being sent to Imbros? When?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s going to see the surgeon, and promised to get me sent there as soon as possible. He wants to bully Rocky into telling him where you are.”
Casca’s face hardened. Whoever this mysterious guy was, he was getting uncomfortably close. “Has this man got a name?”
“Clark. Wears glasses, dark hair. Long chin.”
“Alright. I’ll go see Rocky and tell him to keep his mouth shut. You let me know if you’re being transferred to Imbros. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, Alison. I’m sorry.”
She began sobbing. Casca pulled her to him again. All around them people shuffled and moved, trying to find a bed, a chair, or treatment. Finally she pulled back and wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to be separated from you.”
Casca nodded in agreement. He leaned forward, kissed her on the lips, then made his way through the throng to Rocky’s bed. The area he was in, along with the other dysentery sufferers, was closed off by cloth screens. Casca thrust his way past one of these and bore down on the man. “Hey, Rocky,” he said, “how are things?”
Rocky looked up. “Oh, Sandy, g’day, mate. What’s going on?”
He was brought up to date with events; of Archie’s wound and Bill’s condition. Rocky sighed. Casca then broached the subject of his identity. “Don’t tell that man Clark of my whereabouts. I’m counting on you, lad, you understand? Mates got to stick together. You wouldn’t want me arrested now, would you?”
Rocky shook his head. Casca grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “You get well quick. We’ll be needing you back on the front line before long.”
“Sure thing, Sandy.”
Casca left, leaving Rocky to stare at where he’d been for a long time, thinking hard.
The night came fast. The shooting carried on. Men fought and died for tiny patches of ground that meant nothing and everything. Both sides slugged it out toe to toe, neither prepared to concede an inch, until exhausted, the Turks withdrew. The day had ended with three lines of trenches taken, and Lone Pine now in Anzac hands.
Jeb and Casca were fed, watered and then sent back up to the top and ordered along with a file of other men to the new front line. There were precious few of the company left, and units were being amalgamated until reinforcements could get there.
They were told to get some rest and sleep, as the new day promised more fighting. The enemy wouldn’t sit back and be happy to accept the occupation of their lines, particularly the ones covered over and containing deeply dug quarters. Already officers were appropriating them for their command posts, and stocks of supplies were being stored in others.
Sandbags had been thrown up onto the top facing the new Turkish front line, and at daybreak everyone was called to man the top as the Turks threw themselves into a furious assault, hurling their hand bombs ahead of their attack. Casca and Jeb together with their new comrades rested on the sandbags and fired repeatedly at the onrushing enemy, cutting them down in swathes. The nearest they got was twenty yards.
“Suicide,” Casca commented during one of the lulls. He sat on the firing step and ate bread and jam. He needed the sugar. “Damned stupid suicide.”
“Yeah,” Jeb agreed nodding. “Poor bastards are brave, though. Not what we were told.”
“Rarely is,” Casca said. “Not until you fight the enemy do you know just how tough and hard they are.”
The others muttered their agreement. All were showing signs of exhaustion, their faces covered in dirt and blood. Casca took the opportunity when there was a break in the fighting to think more about what Alison had told him. This man, Clark, must have tracked him from Alexandria; there was no way anyone could have picked up his trail here in Gallipoli. If Rocky gave him away then he’d expect military police to be all over him in no time.
Best he planned a way out sooner rather than later. He couldn’t rely on anyone keeping their mouth shut forever. So he would have to desert. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that; he remembered in the aftermath of that terrible battle outside Ctesiphon way back in the second century he’d walked away from Rome. He’d done it plenty of times since, when he’d gotten tired of the fighting or someone got plain suspicious about him. Sometimes he ‘died’ and that was when he just had to start a new life or identity, but other times like now he’d had to cut and run. He didn’t like doing it but it was better he did. It was a pain in the ass.
So where could he go? Not forward to the Turks. It would get him shot or he’d end up in their army running stupidly into a wall of bullets. No, he’d have to get off this peninsula by boat. Could he fake a wound? Most probably. And it would help if Alison kept covering up for him. Once away from Gallipoli he could then stow away in some other boat and get somewhere else away from the manhunt for him. He would have to change identity and nationality once more, but it was something he’d done many times over.
Yes, a wound. Trouble was, how to get it convincingly and not be hit somewhere ‘fatal’, then recovering miraculously. That would just ruin everything. The Turks had been massacred that day and hadn’t gotten close enough. Maybe the next day would give him a chance? Or perhaps administer one himself with a bayonet? In the dark?
He pondered on that awhile.
The next attack came at night. This time the Turks threw loads of their bombs before creeping along the trenches and trying to surprise the Anzacs by suddenly springing up close by and using sheer weight of numbers. Casca and Jeb stood side by side shooting away until their hands ached with working the reload mechanism. The Turks broke through close to midnight and a vicious hand to hand fight developed.
Casca clubbed one man down with the butt of his rifle, then dropped to one knee, reversed it and blasted a second man back as he stepped over the half-ruined barricade. As more Anzac reinforcements came running, Casca deliberately fell onto an upturned bayonet, held by a dead enemy soldier. The blade entered his shoulder and Casca pushed hard, gritting his teeth against the sharp pain. He cried out and Jeb came over, concern on his face. “Jeez, Sandy! Stay still, I’ll get it out.”
The pain was intense, but Jeb pulled the weapon out of Casca’s shoulder. “Thanks Jeb,” the Eternal Mercenary gasped. “Just my luck!”
He was taken to the first aid point where his wound was dressed by an orderly, then Casca was sent to stand with the other wounded in a group. Jeb wished him luck and Casca thanked him again. It was, Casca knew, probably the last time he’d see the reassuring figure of the Australian, if things went the way he hoped.
When the attack was broken off, the wounded were sent down the paths to the beach; Casca and the other walking wounded first, escorted by a couple of able-bodied soldiers, the less fortunate wounded were then carried down by stretcher bearers.
There were oil lamps lighting the way to the hospital, so that nobody tripped over the many objects littering the beach. The wounded were separated by the severity of their wounds, and Casca was put into one of the front areas of the large tent. They sat on rough chairs or crates and were called up one by one and inspected. Casca worked his fingers into the dressing and tensed, then gritted his teeth. His fingers pushed into the wound, reopening and enlarging it. Already the skin was closing, so he had to delay the healing as much as he could.
New waves of pain and nausea swept over him, and he gasped and leaned forward, sweat breaking out over him. It was a warm enough evening as it was. “You, over here!” came a peremptory voice.
Casca saw it was directed at him and he obediently made his way to a man in doctor’s clothing. “Wound type?” he barked.
“Bayonet.”
The doctor looked at Casca in irritation. Casca held his gaze. If this man was going to speak to him in that ma
nner, then by hell he would respond in kind. The doctor broke the gaze and pulled the rough dressing off. He looked at the wound, then wiped off the blood. Casca hoped he’d wash his hands afterwards – his blood was poison. “Humph. This should heal in a week or two. Convalescence on Imbros for you my lad.”
He wrote out a form and asked for his name. Casca gave a false name and said he was from the 2nd battalion. Anyone examining the records would now have no way of knowing he was no longer on Gallipoli.
Sent to rest further back, he got up from his seat and looked for Alison. He asked a couple of other nurses and finally tracked her down tending a soldier suffering from dysentery. He waited till she’d finished, then grinned as she recognized him.
“Hello, thought I’d get myself wounded just so I could see you.”
“Oh my God, are you alright? How badly are you hurt?”
He showed her the new dressing. She breathed in relief. It wasn’t serious. “I’m to go to Imbros tomorrow,” she said sorrowfully. “That horrible man has got his way. I was going to write to you but I’m glad you’re here.”
“Imbros. I’m off there for convalescence.” He showed her his copy of the form the doctor had written out.
She was delighted, then frowned. “Tommy Atkins? That’s not your name!”
“It is now.” He told her why. “I’ll have to lie low on Imbros for a while, but then get the hell out of there. I don’t think I can return to Gallipoli, not with that man Clark hunting me.”
“Come with me to Australia,” Alison said, “we can have a life together!”
Casca thought on that. “Maybe I will,” he said slowly. “But I’ll have to convince the army I’m no longer fit for duty.”
“I’ll help you,” Alison said, smiling. “Just leave that to me!” She suddenly seemed full of life. “Stay over there and when they come to evacuate you tell them you’re being looked after by me. I’m to go at first light.”