The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Sergeant McCann snatched it up with a curse and flung it over the edge where it exploded instantly, cutting down a running group of soldiers like a scythe.

  ‘Over here!’

  Jonathan ran down across the depression and saw several Turks clambering over their own dead, firing as they came, meeting the marines’ bayonets until they were driven back or killed. Four marines also lay dead, while another crawled blindly over their bodies pleading, ‘Don’t leave me, lads! For Christ’s sake don’t go!’ A crucifix dangled from his neck, and Jonathan knew he was the man who had asked the chaplain for a blessing.

  Wyke was firing his rifle, and then drew his revolver as more heads bobbed amongst the rocks. Langmaid left his gun and snapped his bayonet onto a fallen rifle.

  ‘No more ammo, sir!’ In his big fist the bayonet looked like a bodkin. Steel clashed against steel and the marines yelled encouragement to one another, with little time to reload. And all the while the great shells roared above them, while by comparison in this forgotten place they fought like ants.

  Wyke was down, his face shocked with pain and with blood soaking one arm. A Turkish soldier rose above the sandbags and stared at the fair-haired lieutenant, then took careful aim with his rifle.

  Jonathan saw them, motionless like crude statuary: Wyke on his knees while the Turk trained the bloodstained bayonet at his shoulders. Dispassionately he watched the face swim above the Webley’s foresight, then he squeezed the trigger and felt the revolver buck in his fist. In France they had joked that a Webley could stop a charging man in his tracks. He broke the revolver and felt insane laughter tearing at his brain. The man had gone: there was only a feather of bright blood where he had been standing. So what they said was true . . . He fumbled for six fresh bullets and continued to fire. Around him men were cursing and dying, and as though in some horrific dream he heard McCann bawl, ‘Fall back, lads! Reload!’

  Despairing, mad with thirst and pain, the remains of the platoon, no more than a dozen, closed ranks while the wounded crawled or were dragged to join them.

  There was a sudden lull as even the naval bombardment ceased. Jonathan felt a hand on his bloodied boot and saw Wyke peering up at him with pleading, desperate eyes.

  He stooped down and heard him whisper, ‘Shoot me now. I’m done for anyway.’ Then the silence seemed to penetrate even his pain-shocked brain, and he stared at the sandbags and sprawled corpses and gasped, ‘What’s happening?’

  Maxted ran down to them and as if to prove something he did not himself believe tossed his rifle to the ground.

  ‘The bastards have gone!’ He crouched by Wyke. ‘I wish you could see it!’

  Jonathan and Corporal Timbrell approached the edge of the ridge, ready to drop flat if a sniper marked them down. He had to wipe his eyes several times before he could see beyond the pall of thick smoke.

  In long, extended lines the Royal Marine Light Infantry was advancing through the piles of corpses, with bayonets shining: they even appeared to be in step. Behind him, Payne said hoarsely, ‘Jesus, it’s the relief brigade from Mudros. I never thought . . .’ He could not finish it.

  It seemed an age before a lieutenant and some forty marines reached the ridge, some men averting their eyes as they saw the great patterns of blood, the gaping dead, some in uniforms identical to their own and with familiar ranks and badges.

  The officer found Livesay and saluted. ‘We apologise for the delay, sir. The Australian 4th Brigade broke through and we joined them.’

  Livesay said dully, ‘We held them off.’ He stared around with a strange, resentful expression, as if cheated of the death he had come to expect.

  The relief force was already scattering among the rocks, and some light machine-guns were being set up.

  The young lieutenant made another attempt when he saw Jonathan. ‘You may recall your men, sir. Lieutenant-Colonel Waring has ordered you back to the line.’

  Jonathan said, ‘These are my men. All that are left. Bring some stretchers, will you?’

  Again he thought of the Australian infantry captain. Needing to leave; compelled to stay. He walked slowly from place to place, staring at each youthful expression frozen in the instant of death. He must never forget.

  Payne followed him anxiously. Men called out in small voices as they were lifted into stretchers: Waring must have sent one for each man in the platoon. They would not need many of them now.

  Somewhere a bugle sounded, and from another world the rapid fire of guns and rifles shattered the dusty stillness. Then Payne felt something like relief as his captain holstered his revolver and walked unhurriedly after the stretcher-bearers.

  While men fought and died along the adjoining landing beaches, the remains of B Company and the other marines were ferried in pinnaces out to Reliant. There were no cheers this time.

  At dusk, the Turks counter-attacked and the ridge changed hands again.

  Eight

  Jonathan Blackwood stood by the covered cockpit of a fast-moving pinnace and narrowed his eyes against the sun’s hard reflection on the pristine whiteness of the hospital ship, which had arrived three days earlier and had been loading sick and wounded around the clock. Against the rocky headland of Mudros Bay and the shimmering Aegean beyond, she somehow managed to look at peace, and remote from all the suffering and death within her. So clean, he thought, her hull lined with a green band interspersed with huge red crosses, and lights on brackets which would establish her identity as a hospital ship even at night, if she should glide into a U-Boat’s crosswires.

  There were a few wounded men in the cockpit with medical orderlies in attendance, their own tunics even more blood-soaked than those of their charges, and Jonathan had been aware of their curiosity, and perhaps their resentment. His own stained and torn uniform spoke for itself, but some might want to know why and how he had escaped unscathed, when so many others lay back there on the peninsula.

  The ship loomed closer, her name, City of Singapore, clearly visible across her elegant stern. Even her port of registry, Liverpool, evoked a small picture of busy streets and the cool presence of smoky rain: a half-forgotten world, unreachable as a dream. But there were few faces at the guardrails where passengers and emigrants had once stared out at the many and varied ports on the long haul to Australia.

  He had seen Waring before coming out in the pinnace to say goodbye to Wyke: Waring at least seemed to possess boundless energy. He had announced that he had been promoted to full colonel, in a tone which suggested he had been expecting it, but sooner. Jonathan still wondered how he had managed to find the time to have his new rank attached to his uniform.

  ‘And you, Blackwood, have been granted your majority, so you’ll be staying under my command, for the present anyway.’

  He had felt no particular elation. Once he had thought of promotion as something exciting and desirable, something to be proud of. Maybe all that lay back there in France or across that placid strip of water to the ridge with its stench of death.

  Major Livesay was not going on to Port Said, nor was he staying here. Waring had remarked absently, ‘The admiral is putting him up for a decoration. I’ve seconded it, of course. He’ll probably be given some training role with new recruits – you know the sort of thing. The rugged hero from the front!’ It seemed to amuse him.

  Livesay had already left in a home-bound cruiser. He had not even said goodbye to his own men, or what remained of them.

  ‘Stand by in the bows, there!’ The midshipman blew on his whistle and the engine surged noisily astern. Tackle and hoisting gear were already hovering by a great open port in the ship’s side, while a scrubbed accommodation ladder trailed skywards.

  An orderly said, ‘You can use the ladder, sir.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘None o’ this lot’ll be walk in’!’ As one of the men in stretchers opened his eyes he patted his arm and grinned. ‘Not yet anyway, eh mate?’

  Jonathan looked away from the young soldier’s face, the terror draining from his eyes as
the memory came back. ‘Safe,’ he whispered.

  Jonathan swung himself onto the accommodation ladder and touched his hat to the saluting midshipman.

  Safe. The man had one arm and only one foot.

  Halfway up the ladder he paused and looked across at the anchored warships: Reliant, smoke-stained and resting momentarily beneath her spread awnings, Impulsive close by, her wounds made good until they could use a proper dockyard, her marines’ messdeck still empty. He continued up the side, surprised that the climb did not tire him. The pinnace was already making for the shore again, the sea bubbling astern in a curving wake.

  Another orderly watched him step aboard, his eyes searching for a label and an identity, some classification of injuries and religion, should the worst happen.

  Aware of the professional scrutiny, Jonathan said, ‘I want to see Lieutenant Christopher Wyke. He was brought aboard yesterday.’ He thought of all the wounded men he had seen laid out in the many huts and tents on the island. Those who survived their wounds and the surgery would be gazing over at the City of Singapore as if she were some kind of miracle.

  ‘Not a relative, are you, sir?’

  ‘No. I’m Captain—’ He hesitated; the new rank seemed so unfamiliar. ‘Major Jonathan Blackwood. He’s one of my officers.’

  The man’s expression changed. ‘He’s going to be all right, sir.’ Then he said, ‘Told me about you, sir. What you did.’

  Jonathan closed his mind as someone began to scream. The orderly showed no emotion. In his work it never ceased.

  He said, ‘In there, straight down to B-Deck – they’ll put you right when you get there. Don’t be too long, sir. The Old Man’s going to weigh anchor after this next lot’s brought out. Get away before the Jerry U-Boat gets here.’

  ‘What U-Boat?’

  The orderly grinned. ‘Sighted a week ago, they tell me. Steerin’ east – that’s here at a guess!’

  Jonathan forced a smile. ‘Nobody tells us anything.’ He heard an incisive voice say, ‘Warn the boat to take this one back. The captain knows all about it.’ He glanced at a blanket-shrouded shape on a stretcher. No miracle for him, after all.

  Twice he lost his way during his descent, encountering only lines and lines of silent cots and a tangible sense of pain and endurance.

  ‘Can I help you, Captain?’

  It was so unnerving to hear a woman’s voice that he found himself staring at her. ‘B-Deck?’ She was darkly pretty, the sort of face you saw in the West Country or Ireland.

  ‘This way.’ She caught his arm as, with disbelief, he recognised a face and moved towards the bunk. ‘Not him, if you don’t mind, sir. He’s too drugged to know you anyway.’

  He looked down at the huddled figure, the mass of bandages, the staring, empty eyes. It was Bruce Seddon, Reliant’s whist-playing captain of marines. Waring had mentioned it with his customary callousness. ‘Seddon’s wound deteriorated. Gangrene . . . well, what do you expect in that pig-sty? I ordered him to leave with the pinnace but he insisted on staying with Reliant’s people . . . said it was a matter of pride or something equally feeble. I told him it was conceit, and he should be able to tell the difference.’ He had shrugged as if it were of no importance. ‘So they took off his arm. Not much use to any of us now, is he?’

  They descended another ladder and she pointed at a curtained, water-tight door.

  ‘Thank you, Sister. I’m sorry I was taken aback just now. I—’

  She regarded him gravely: such a young face, he thought, too young for the horrors she must see.

  ‘I think you should be coming with us, Captain.’ Someone was ringing a bell, and she added only, ‘Take care.’ Then she was gone.

  He found Wyke propped up in a bunk, his arm bandaged and splinted. It had been a near thing: the bullet had passed through it, chipping the bone, but an inch or two the other way and it would have been his heart. He was pale and seemed exhausted, probably from the drugs they had given him, but his smile was so genuine and full of surprise that Jonathan was deeply moved.

  ‘It does me good to see you sitting up like this, Chris.’ He rested one hand on the blanket and realised that it was still badly bruised. The corpses, the insanity of battle while they had clashed and fought with the enemy bayonets and blasted them with their own grenades. The nightmare. He knew Wyke was remembering it, too.

  He said, ‘Major Livesay has gone home.’

  ‘I know, John Maxted told me. And about your promotion too . . . congratulations, sir.’

  Maxted would miss him, he thought: he and Wyke had always been good friends although they were poles apart, Maxted a first-generation marine while Wyke’s family, like the Blackwoods, had always been in the Corps, and his father was a major-general.

  He felt the deck quiver slightly. Deep in the City of Singapore’s bowels the engineers were testing steam pressure. Eager to be off.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I was proud to have you under my command, albeit temporarily. And when you’re well again I hope you do have that night on the town you were talking about, with a very pretty girl.’ Wyke was watching him intently, the pain, the drugs, the memories forgotten. ‘Raise a glass of champagne to us out here, will you, Chris? I have a feeling we’re going to need that extra bit of luck.’

  He disengaged his fingers from Wyke’s without consciously recalling the handshake.

  Wyke said faintly, ‘I won’t forget, sir. And if you find yourself in England with nothing to do—’

  ‘I know. Piccadilly.’ He stood up. There was no point in prolonging it. ‘My regards to your family.’

  The hospital ship weighed at dusk. He watched her illuminated red crosses until she passed the headland, while Reliant’s bandsmen marched and counter-marched to the bright music of ‘Highland Laddie’ and ‘Bonnie Dundee’. The bandmaster came from Fife, so it was hardly surprising.

  Then the lights and crosses vanished, and he made his way down to Reliant’s wardroom; unable to shake the conviction that she should have gone accompanied not by stirring reels and marches but by a lament. For all of them.

  Captain Auriol George Soutter was standing by an open scuttle in his spacious day cabin when his steward Drury announced that Blackwood had arrived. He closed the polished scuttle, tired of the ceaseless rumble of artillery and naval gunfire from across the glittering water.

  When he turned to greet his visitor some of the tension was gone from his face, and his smile was genuine.

  ‘Sit down, Major Blackwood. Scotch? A nice Islay malt, perhaps?’

  Jonathan sat in a chair beautifully upholstered in green leather and tried to relax. He had been busy since the City of Singapore had steamed out of Mudros Bay; Waring had seen to that. More marines would be arriving very shortly, both from Chatham and Portsmouth, some recruits but not all of them. Fresh officers too, ‘as green as grass’, Waring had commented. ‘We’ll soon change all that!’

  He took the tumbler from Drury and looked across at the captain. Strained to the limit. It was there in every gesture.

  Soutter said, ‘A lot of changes.’

  ‘Yes.’ He let the fine malt whisky run over his tongue. Sergeant McCann was promoted to sergeant-major, Corporal Timbrell, the Londoner, had been made up to sergeant. He had seen the pleasure and pride on Timbrell’s foxy face and wondered why he still felt no satisfaction at his own promotion. He was losing young Roger Tarrier, who had been ordered to relieve Reliant’s one surviving Royal Marine officer so that the latter, who had commanded the marines’ gun crews in Y Turret, could take over Seddon’s work. Tarrier’s quick promotion to acting-lieutenant, to be quarters officer for two of the ship’s great guns, would do his career no harm. But Jonathan knew he would miss the youth’s simple honesty all the same.

  He said, ‘There’s to be a new R.M. battalion to work in liaison with the Royal Engineers, and a Gurkha battalion.’

  Their eyes met, each thinking the same. There was to be no let-up, no acceptance of stalemate, despite the cas
ualties that mounted with each advance or counter-attack. Another landing was even now being planned to take the pressure off the Australians at Anzac, where the whole front was devoid of depth and proper communications. Only the previous day the Australians had launched a determined attack on a vital crest line, similar but far larger than the one Jonathan’s own men had taken. The cheering infantry had driven the Turks back and eventually cleared them completely from the ridge, but because of poor communications the advance had not been reported to the bombarding squadron, and the cruiser H.M.S. Bacchante had opened a murderous fire on the ridge, still believed to be in enemy hands. The bombardment had forced the Australians from their captured trenches, only to be cut down by machine-gun and sniper fire.

  Soutter said at length, ‘And now I’m losing you.’

  Colonel Waring had insisted that he needed Jonathan as his adjutant. The C-in-C had agreed.

  ‘I shall miss the ship, sir. I know marines are not supposed to care – “By Sea, By Land” and that kind of attitude – but I’ve been happy in Reliant.’

  Soutter eyed him gravely. ‘Naval Intelligence is convinced that a German submarine is on its way here.’ He did not mention how Rear-Admiral Purves had scoffed at the idea when the rumour had first filtered through. Impossible! No submarine could reach this far without refuelling! ‘You may as well know, Blackwood, that the Admiralty, or Lord Fisher to be precise, is going to withdraw the battleship Queen Elizabeth . . . to prevent his finest man-of-war from being sunk, of course.’

  Jonathan was not sure whether he had expected it or not. After the appalling naval losses when the fleet had attempted to pass through the Turkish minefields and force the Narrows against well-sited shore batteries and without support from the army, the doubt had always lingered. Apart from the lightly-armoured Reliant, most of the capital ships were outdated, relics as he had heard Purves call them. The ‘Q.E.’ as she was affectionately known, was the newest and most powerful battleship in the fleet, if not in the world. To lose her would be a disaster; to Lord Fisher, who had done more than anyone to force this hopeless campaign into action, it would be something personal.