The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  There had been no report of any suspicious death, perhaps because they were almost too commonplace for mention. Shortly afterwards Timbrell had gone down to Portsmouth and enlisted. That had been eight years ago. He was safe.

  Lieutenant Wyke stumbled over loose stones and the broken packing cases that had been laid over them like duck-boards to make movement at night less audible. ‘What now, sir?’ He sat down heavily and ran his fingers through his fair hair.

  Jonathan thought of the Australian infantry captain who had described the ordeal of his men when they had taken and held this miserable place. ‘I think they’ll attack. Soon.’ He shaded his eyes to watch Private Geach as he crouched down with the youthful Barlow and offered him what looked like a toffee. Kids. Geach was a Yorkshireman who had given up work on a farm and taken to the Royal Marines like an old sweat. The others had pulled his leg about his broad dialect, and the ‘Hey-oop, then!’ which was his regular greeting.

  Wyke was watching him narrowly. ‘But the bombardment, sir. Nothing could live through that.’

  The air quivered to one heavy explosion and everyone crouched down, teeth gritted against the shock.

  But when it came it was far away, like thunder on the hills. That must be the big gun the Turks had mounted on the high ground, he thought. It fired again, with the same muffled result.

  He said quietly, ‘There’s your answer, my lad. They must be firing at our ships.’ In his mind’s eye he could see them: the flags darting up and down the halliards, the semaphore arms wagging from bridge to bridge as the admiral ordered his squadron to safer waters, from which the big ships like Reliant and Impulsive could concentrate their fire on the enemy’s heavy gun. But while they were doing that they would be unable to support B company or anyone else.

  The sudden clatter of machine-guns shattered the dusty silence and men covered their faces as bullets cracked amongst the stones and torn sandbags. Interspersed with it they could hear concentrated rifle fire.

  Lieutenant Wyke replaced his sun-helmet and unfastened the flap of his holster. ‘Where the hell is it coming from?’ He sounded quite calm now that they were under fire.

  A runner panted along the trench and halted when he saw the officers.

  ‘From th’ Colonel, sir. There are enemy soldiers on the ridge, left front.’

  ‘Very well. Pass the word to the next section.’ He watched the man pound away, pausing only to give a thumbs-up to someone he recognised as he passed.

  Second Lieutenant Cripwell polished his binoculars and trained them on something to adjust them better. With great care he climbed onto the firestep, his chin almost touching the rough edge of the trench.

  Jonathan turned as someone shouted, ‘Get down, you fool!’ There was a sharp crack, like an axe splintering bone, and Cripwell seemed to pivot round like a puppet before he pitched down amongst them.

  In those seconds Jonathan saw it like a small fragment of war: the staring marines, their stricken young faces unable to move or cry out. One, the Yorkshireman Geach, was splashed with bright daubs of the blood that had spurted over him.

  Cripwell, the young subaltern whom he had heard discussing the ladies of the music hall with his platoon commander, who had tried to talk like a man of the world, had been killed instantly. The heavy bullet had struck his sun-helmet and punched a hole through his skull before he had even been able to scream. He lay at their feet, staring at the clear sky, his brains and the white chips of bone already alive with flies.

  Wyke knelt but Jonathan snapped, ‘Not now.’ He saw the lieutenant staring at him, his face hurt, even angry, but that no longer mattered. He shouted, ‘Be ready! Stand-to, marines!’ They tore their eyes from the dead officer. Already he was nothing: unreal. His mind again tried to rebel against what he saw. He was nothing. Dear Mr Cripwell, I have to tell you, with regret, that your son . . .

  ‘Take over, Mr Wyke!’

  The lieutenant swallowed hard and then drew his revolver. ‘Marines! Fix bayonets!’ Along the trench and around the bend which was supposed to protect the occupants from splinters, the sound was like a prolonged hiss of steel, as they dragged out their bayonets and slammed them onto their rifles.

  A marine close to Jonathan was saying with every breath, ‘Oh, dear God, protect me.’ It was like a chant.

  ‘Here they come!’

  They all heard the baying yells and cries, mingled together like one vast inhuman voice.

  Jonathan took the rifle and snapped on the bayonet. He saw Payne watching him, his casual salute with one finger to his helmet: the face in the background of so many paintings at Hawks Hill and around the world.

  ‘Face your front!’

  Stumbling like old men they climbed onto the firestep, their rifles and shining bayonets probing over the edge in a long serried line. He swallowed dryly. If his voice broke now . . . He did not dwell on it.

  ‘Range one hundred yards! Steady, lads!’ He made himself stare unwinkingly at the oncoming, zig-zagging mass of Turks, as he had at the carnage on the beach. Was that only this morning?

  ‘Take aim!’ He thought of his brother David, his stories of the fanatical Boxers who had believed themselves impervious to bullet and bayonet.

  Sergeant McCann jabbed one man’s shoulder with a broad thumb and the marine cried out with alarm.

  McCann rasped, ‘Take yer safety catch off, Clark!’ Then he climbed up beside him and took aim.

  There was a broken, overturned cart by some forgotten corpses and Jonathan had already judged it to be about one hundred yards from the trench. The first charging figures dashed past it.

  ‘Rapid fire!’

  The insane chatter of machine-guns and the rapid crack of rifles sent a tide of bullets sweeping across the barren land and into the Turkish soldiers.

  McCann bellowed, ‘Reload! Remember what you was taught!’

  Langmaid licked his lips while he swung the heavy machine-gun from side to side, pausing only to allow one of his crew to drag another belt into place. It was as if the enemy troops were charging into some invisible barrier, he thought. Running and screaming one second and then slipping and falling in heaps, their comrades clambering over them only to add to the pile as the carefully-sited guns swept back and forth like reapers in a field.

  Bolts were jerked open, torn fingers scrabbled for fresh clips of ammunition. Some of the marines were sobbing as if they had been running and were too breathless to know what they were doing.

  ‘Cease firing!’

  Jonathan jerked the bolt and ejected a spent cartridge. The enemy were falling back.

  ‘Keep down! Cease firing!’ Some of the marines had to be prevented forcibly from shooting at the dust and swirling smoke. The enemy had gone. Melted into the ground. Only the crawling wounded and the piled corpses proved what they had done.

  There was a solitary crack and then a voice echoed around the bend of the trench. ‘Stretcher-bearer!’

  McCann said heavily, ‘Bloody snipers!’

  Jonathan handed the rifle to Payne and looked at the line of exhausted men. And the Australians they had relieved had been on their feet here for four days and nights.

  He glanced round and saw that Cripwell’s body had been dragged away, and somebody had flung sand over the mess from his shattered skull.

  Second Lieutenant Tarrier was scrambling over some rubble. When he saw Jonathan the terrible strain seemed to fall from his face.

  ‘How are things at H.Q., Roger?’

  Tarrier fell against the trench by his side. ‘We fought them off! I never thought . . .’ He could not go on.

  ‘They’ll come at us again. Be ready for it.’ He watched the warning going home. ‘We’re outnumbered. They’ll keep up the pressure and make certain our people get no rest.’ He saw Tarrier’s eyes flicker as a stretcher was carried past. A pair of dirty boots protruded from beneath an old blanket and blood was running down a dangling arm to show that it was already too late. Another marine, hatless and carrying his d
ead friend’s rifle, followed in the rear, his young features like stone: someone who had aged within the hour.

  ‘Fall them out in sections, Sergeant. One cup of water.’ He said sharply to the men nearest him, ‘Sip it. Don’t take it in one swallow!’

  Langmaid peered from his gun. ‘Wot does them Turks drink, sir?’ He winked at Corporal Timbrell. ‘I reckon if we takes their next trench we might get a wet or two, eh sir?’

  Jonathan felt his mind reeling. He said, ‘Coffee, Langmaid, not much else, I’m afraid!’ He could hear himself laughing, but the laughter seemed disembodied, not his own. The others were all grinning up at Langmaid as if he had said something hilarious, the break in the tension coming like another kind of madness. Eventually he said. ‘When we get back to Mudros I’ll do what I can.’ He walked along the trench and heard someone call out, ‘Good old Blackie!’

  If only they knew.

  He stopped dead, then ran back to the position he had just left as the cry was passed along the trench.

  ‘Stand-to! Here they come again!’

  Some of the marines had not moved, and could only stare at him as if they were shell-shocked.

  Hatless, half-blinded by the sun, Jonathan jumped onto the firestep and shouted, ‘Face your front, damn you!’ He added brutally even as he worked the rifle’s bolt, ‘I can’t carry you forever!’

  Then he took aim at the oncoming Turks, their bayonets flashing through the rolling dust. Without looking he knew his men had taken up their positions. He shut them from his mind and yelled, ‘Rapid fire!’

  Seven

  Reliant’s chief yeoman of signals lowered his long telescope and reported, ‘From Impulsive, sir. Have sustained some damage and ten casualties. Will return to Mudros as instructed.’ He closed the telescope with a snap. ‘End of signal, sir.’

  Captain Soutter walked from his chair to the opposite side and watched the other battle-cruiser’s lean shape shorten as she altered course to port. He allowed his binoculars to fall to his chest. He had seen the black pattern of splinter holes along Impulsive’s hull below B Turret, which moments before had been firing onto the peninsula and the Turkish support lines. The shell had come from nowhere, then a pair had almost bracketed Impulsive before she could take avoiding action. With her armour plate sacrificed for greater speed and agility, it was lucky she had not received a direct hit, and as Quitman the gunnery officer had commented from his control position, the Turkish guns were much more powerful than before.

  Soutter saw the rear-admiral coming out of the chartroom, his usually immaculate white cap-cover smudged with smoke and oil. Purves had been in contact with the fleet’s flagship, and was evidently not pleased with the way things were going. The news of the total destruction of Impulsive’s landing parties had shocked everybody, and Soutter could well imagine how his old friend Captain Vidal must have taken it. His men and boats, Royal Marines, midshipmen and sailors, wiped out in minutes. With communications so bad it might be weeks before the blame would be laid where it belonged, and then it would serve no purpose. And all the while the ships maintained their bombardment of the enemy positions: tons of high-explosive, shrapnel and even the lighter armament, to offer protection to the troops and marines ashore. But still the Turks counter-attacked, and the casualties continued to mount by the hour.

  Boats’ crews repeatedly risked their lives to carry the wounded to safety but the hospital ships had been badly allocated, so that some lay almost empty and others, like the nearest one, were already full. In desperation the boats were offloading the casualties into warships, and even Reliant’s sick-bay was overflowing. Bandaged, shocked, maimed and dying: it was pitiful to see them being hoisted on board.

  Soutter looked at his superior as he heaved himself into the captain’s chair.

  ‘Any news, sir?’

  Purves glanced at him. ‘Reinforcements are on their way. Next month the Australian Light Horse will be arriving from Egypt.’ He added savagely, ‘The admiral was careful to point out that their horses would be left behind!’

  Soutter did not have to consult the chart or the map sent from the flagship. The ships had been able to hold the enemy at bay, but only because they had closed the range during the day, and retired in the hours of darkness. But the new Turkish guns, which were probably on or near the all-commanding ridge of Sari Bair, would soon prove a real threat to any large warships that came too close. Even the old Russian ship Askold, popularly known to the troops as the Packet of Woodbines because of her five spindly funnels, had narrowly escaped one of the enemy’s big shells.

  Soutter said, ‘The marines must be supported, sir. They’ve been in action almost without a break since Impulsive’s landing parties were massacred. These are not seasoned soldiers – by rights they should be in Port Said continuing their training, doing guard-duty on the Canal.’

  Purves glared at the Impulsive. Smoke was drifting from her wounds as well as from her funnels. ‘Do you think I don’t know? As far as I can tell it’s the first ridge on the left front of our positions which is the real threat. That’s where the snipers and enemy machine-gunners are. Our marines cannot advance while that ridge is in Turkish hands.’ He waved vaguely at the two blackened muzzles immediately below the bridge. ‘Our guns could wipe them out in a single day if we could stand closer inshore. Their heavy artillery has put paid to that!’

  Soutter’s glance fell on the navigator as he entered more calculations in his log.

  He could find no fault with the admiral’s comment. To order the gunnery officer to open fire at a more realistic range, perhaps ten or twelve thousand yards, was like passing a sentence of death on the marines as well. No range-finder was that accurate, especially when the guns had to fire into rugged territory which was poorly described on the chart.

  He said bluntly, ‘Well, sir, they won’t be able to hold on much longer. The Australian 4th Brigade can offer some support but they are hard-pressed, too. The Royal Marine Brigade on the other beach has had so many casualties I think they may be withdrawn for regrouping at Mudros.’

  Purves turned and gazed at him calmly. ‘You always were a canny dog, Soutter. You show an excellent grasp of the facts, but you manage somehow to avoid the one true issue.’

  Soutter met his eyes with equal hostility. ‘I imagine that, as we are in command of this inshore squadron, the admiral has put the decision in your hands, sir?’

  Purves did not reply directly. He appeared to be watching their nearest escort, a small destroyer regularly deluged with spray as she zig-zagged abeam of her massive consort.

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Waring is a very experienced officer.’

  Soutter wondered how he would present it if the worst happened. If? There was little doubt now. He thought of the grave-faced R.M.A. captain, the one officer who had given heart to the inexperienced marines. Was he still alive? Soutter had seen the wounded for himself. Left too long without proper dressings or water: men and boys driven to the edge of despair and anguish and then beyond even that.

  And their own captain of marines, Bruce Seddon, who enjoyed playing whist with the commander: what of him?

  He said, ‘I was not impressed with Colonel Waring, sir.’

  ‘I have known him for some years.’ Purves sounded less certain. ‘A fine record.’

  ‘He has no experience of a war like this.’ Soutter added bitterly, ‘Who has? I am not suggesting that Colonel Waring lacks courage. At Omdurman or Trafalgar I am certain he would have distinguished himself.’

  Purves tugged his cap over his eyes and said angrily, ‘I didn’t make the damned rules. I don’t suppose anyone in England cares a jot for this campaign in any case. Damned civilians – they want to be safe behind their fighting men. I’ve no time for them!’

  Soutter thought of his quarters down aft, of the clean bunk where Colonel Ede had found peace for the first time since the landings at Gaba Tepe. Those hard-won beaches had already been rechristened by the army and were now called Anzac Cove,
a name written in blood.

  Just to lie there for a while without every eye on the bridge upon him; to drink too much like the red-faced man who was now sitting carelessly in his chair. As soon as he thought of it he knew he would do neither.

  Purves muttered, ‘There’s another R.M. battalion on its way to support Waring. If we waited one more day, two at the most, the new battalion would relieve them, at least to get some rest.’

  Soutter almost felt sorry for him. Almost. ‘We can’t afford it, sir. If the Turks overrun those positions it would take an army corps to fight its way back. Even then they might be repelled.’

  Purves pulled out his watch and beckoned to his flag-lieutenant, who was hovering nearby.

  ‘Warn the wireless office. Signal to the Flag, coded and Top Secret.’

  Soutter walked to the gratings and climbed up to obtain a better view of the shore. Even above the noise of his ship’s fans and a winch near Y Turret, he could still hear the far-off clatter of machine-guns and dull explosions, guns or bombs he could not tell. There was so much haze and smoke it seemed the whole coastline was smouldering. He heard Purves dictating the signal, his voice quite empty. Very soon now that smouldering would burst into flames.

  Tomorrow the ships would repeat their bombardments, each to her allotted sector, but the shells would be at extreme range to fall on the enemy’s support lines or reinforcements on the march. And this time there would be no need to avoid the one ridge ahead of Waring’s men, because by then the marines would have stormed and seized it, or they would all be dead.

  He glanced curiously at the marine bugler who was always in attendance: one of Reliant’s own detachment which was over there somewhere in the smoke. Then, angry at himself and ashamed at the intrusion, he looked away. The youth was standing rigidly at his position but he had heard Purves dictate the signal and his eyes were shining with tears, which he made no attempt to staunch.