by Bruce Scates
Australian General Hospital, Alexandria, 1915
‘Your lieutenant got further ahead than any of us, miss. He was real brave. Nothing seemed to stop him. But we couldn’t bring him back ... trench just fell in on us. All that dirt, miss, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe...’
‘It’s all right, Private,’ Elsie Forrest sank a flannel in the bowl of water beside her. The liquid was grey and lukewarm. Still it cooled the blazing forehead of her patient. She watched a drip of moisture curl down his cheeks, tracing a path across his face, mingling with beads of perspiration. Slowly, she stroked him, pressing down with each movement of her hand, soothing the soldier as one would a crying baby, ‘Hush, hush now.’
Elsie knew she wouldn’t get much sense out of him. This was her fourth attempt to speak to the injured man, one of the hundreds they had brought in from Lone Pine, and every time she mentioned the collapse of the enemy trench the soldier relived that entombment.
‘You’re safe now, safe,’ she said. It was the word every soldier longed to hear, and the word not a single one believed in.
Suddenly, the wounded man began thrashing at the air. He then burrowed into the sheets as if the whole world was closing in on him.
‘Orderly, Orderly!’
It seemed an age before any help came. The critical ward at Alexandria General Hospital was overflowing with patients; beds filled every room, every stairway landing, every corridor. She threw her weight down on the flapping sheets and waited. Her body buffeted to and fro with the writhing of her patient.
‘Got him, miss, you rest now.’
The tremor seemed to subside as the orderly pinioned the body into place. Bound by leather straps to the bed, all the man could do was toss his head from one side to the other. He buried deep into the pillow as the orderly checked his tongue. The orderly had seen fits like this many times before, men thrashing with fear, pain or fever. The best that could be done was to immobilise the body and check that nothing blocked the airways. For the orderly, this had become routine. ‘Tying down the shakers’ he called it. A patient, Elsie thought, deserved better.
‘Easy soldier, easy,’ she stayed by his bed and continued to stroke his forehead with the tepid flannel. ‘You’re safe now, better now.’
‘He can’t hear you, miss.’ Dilation of the pupils confirmed he had already slipped from consciousness.
‘We don’t know that for certain, do we?’ It was not so much a reprimand as a statement of faith, at odds with all that her medical training had taught her. ‘It’s just that...’
For a moment the orderly tallied the ward’s priorities. The cot cases were quiet, bed 14 was no longer haemorrhaging, 3, 10 and 25 had been moved on to the mortuary ward, he could manage the others. He looked over to the exhausted nurse beside him. Sister Forrest had worked three shifts in a row, refusing to leave her charges. Perhaps it was best she lingered here now.
‘As you say, Sister.’
And with that, the orderly resumed his routine, pacing the rows of sweating, sick and wounded, rendering what little comfort he could, knowing men would probably die regardless. This was his third month in the critical ward; the second since the beds swelled with the bodies of men brought in from the August offensive. Unlike the young nurse, he had learned to dissociate himself from those who whimpered around him – a man would go mad otherwise. And so too, he thought, would Elsie.
It was almost two hours before the patient stirred again. Elsie slumbered beside him. The late afternoon sun streamed through the balcony’s wooden shutters. Heat drained what little nourishment sleep could offer. With a cough the soldier shuddered into consciousness. Elsie guided a glass of water to his lips.
‘Not too fast now,’ the wounded man was gulping. ‘Easy, easy.’
His head fell back on the pillow. ‘Thank you, miss.’
Elsie was taken aback by his sudden calmness but knew enough of nursing not to show it. She wondered if she should ask any more, but feared returning her patient to the dark dreams of the trenches. In truth, he had never left them.
‘I didn’t see the lieutenant killed, miss, none of us did. There was an explosion and he was wounded, that’s all I know for certain.’
Elsie was amazed by the precision with which he spoke, the care and the clarity.
‘Thought I saw him walking on, miss, holding his head, unsteady like, walking up to where the Turks were.’ It was as if the image was unfolding before him. And then the soldier drew the conclusion the young nurse had yearned for. ‘Mr Irwin could well have been captured, miss,’ the soldier coughed again, the last sentence jolted forward, ‘where he was ... he had ... had a better chance than the rest of us. Yes, that’s it ... captured. Must have been...’
The wounded man closed his eyes, struggling not to succumb to the memory again, longing for merciful oblivion. But Elsie imagined it for him, men buried alive as the trench collapsed, some struggling to the surface amidst the blaze of Turkish guns, most choking to death. Private Taylor was the only man recovered alive from that trench. The rest of his comrades were still posted as missing.
‘Thank you, Private, you rest now,’ Elsie rose as Private Taylor slipped back into sleep. Then she walked unsteadily from the crowded balcony the army called a hospital.
For well over an hour, Elsie drifted through the streets. Trams rattled by her, pigeons flapped around her heels, horsedrawn cabs cried out for her custom. By late afternoon, she was like a boat cut loose from its moorings, directionless, adrift on an ocean of grieving.
In something of a trance, she crossed the Corniche, dimly aware of the traffic weaving around her. She found herself on the seafront. The warm waters of the Mediterranean drifted in to the shore, stroking Alexandria’s pitted seawall as they had done for generations. A veil of spray floated around her. It carried the scent of distant lands, sheltered bays and half-forgotten islands. For Elsie, the sea was like memory unleashed. It purred with a thousand unimaginable meanings. She remembered the touch of him, the smell of him. She longed to run her fingers through his hair, ached to hold him again. She suddenly sensed someone else standing beside her.
‘Thought I might find you here. That orderly finally let you go then, he’s a bit of slave-driver isn’t he?’ Maggie spoke quickly. Intruders on grief have need for such haste. Then the sudden honesty. ‘Oh, look at you, love, you’re barely standing.’ Elsie was propped up against the wall, swaying as visibly as the shifting sea beneath them. She had not slept for as long as she could remember. This was her third day without eating. Maggie, almost twice Elsie’s size, slipped an arm around her friend, partly for support, mostly for comfort. She wanted to lift Elsie up and pull all the pain away from her. She brushed the hair away from her eyes. It was damp and sticky with sea spray.
Maggie remembered a happier time. Not so long ago, they had stood on the heaving deck of their hospital ship, rounding the Bight en route to Albany, where all the ships of the Anzac convoy would anchor. The two seemed so much younger then, full of the excitement of the voyage, convinced their war would yield romance and adventure. She remembered a frosty sheet of water lashing up and washing them in its fury. The two of them had giggled with surprise, thankful for the brimming sea and a wind that sang with wonder. Nothing, she thought, had made them feel more alive: standing out there, with all the world’s elements whirling around them.
And now look at them. Maggie held her friend a little closer. The great sea that carried them there had crashed to a standstill on the cobbled pavements of Alexandria.
‘Come on, let’s find somewhere for you to rest, somewhere you can find space for yourself.’
Maggie’s first instinct was to take her back to their quarters. She soon decided against it. Far from home and desperate for distraction, the small colony of Australian nurses was a frenzy of activity. The long hot days and nights of caring for their charges were forgotten in a whirl of outings, parties and adventures. There was never a problem in finding handsome officers to escort them. El
sie too had found her young man – different to the rest perhaps. Found him and now lost him. For a moment, Maggie was thankful she’d found none of these young men appealing. Elsie’s company, however glum, was at least a constant, and now she wouldn’t be wrested away. It was a selfish thought and Maggie knew it. But why not be a little selfish when every day was giving, giving, giving?
‘I know where we’ll go,’ Maggie decided, ‘those tearooms in the gardens, I know you like it there,’ and for just an instant there was a spring in the young woman’s step. She pulled Elsie away from that melancholy sea and turned to the throbbing heart of the city.
Seven
The Deep Night
man to man, soldier to soldier...
Gallipoli Mission at Anzac. I am standing second from left, Zeki Bey behind me. Lambert, always keen to look the part, wears the slouch hat of the Light Horse.
Photograph by George Hubert Wilkins, February/March 1919.
Australian Camp, near Lone Pine; Anzac Cove, 1919
In deep night we lead our horses to the campsite, dismount at the edge of the tent line and walk towards the light of the fire. Hammond has sited the base camp with an engineer’s precision. The quarters of the Australian War Graves Unit are set low in a gully, sheltered from the wind that whips around the peninsula. Firelight throws our shadows and Lambert shudders as he watches our ghostly forms drift across the landscape.
‘So you’re back then gentlemen. Didn’t think you’d be out quite this long. There’s cause to take some care you know,’ Hammond holds a bullet up for all to see. ‘Unexploded ordinance. It’s everywhere.’
Keen to make his point Hammond then throws the cartridge into the fire and an instant later, it flies back out at him. The angry crack sends the horses rearing. For the last five years, Hammond has lived in constant danger. That particular bullet wasn’t meant for any of us.
‘You’ll be hungry, I expect.’ The mention of food lifts Lambert’s spirits instantly. ‘I’ll get one of the Indians to cook you up a curry.’
Curry was the chosen food of Anzac. It disguised the taste of rancid meat, sweetened sour bread, made even the weevils palatable. Vickers once told me he’d traded a week’s rations for a single meal with the Indians. Swarthy chefs would gather up Gallipoli’s thyme and grind down the saffron spices of the Orient. The chatter of their kitchens comes back to me as I imagine the cloves of onion and garlic that hung from the colonel’s tent poles. I can almost hear the sound of mustard seeds popping and smell the amber oil fusing with fenugreek and cumin.
‘Don’t suppose there’s anything to wash it down with,’ Lambert is ever the optimist. ‘A red goes rather well with curry. An excellent but young wine for preference – to be imbibed, I think, in rather large quantities.’
‘That lot would disagree with you,’ Colonel Hammond gestures towards what he likes to call the Turkish enclosure. The Islamic injunction against alcohol has always been an affront to a digger’s sensibilities. ‘I can’t offer you any burgundy, Lambert. Left my last case on the Somme, don’tchaknow.’
I note Hammond’s parody of a clipped British accent. It is perfect.
‘But there’s the local brew, my boy. I warn you. It’s got a kick to it.’
And so within the hour we are sitting beside the fire, tending the flames and chewing our bully beef as we had done at Anzac. The heat of the fire reddens my face and thaws my frozen hands. I savour the warmth of companionship.
‘So you got down to the beach then?’ Hammond hardly need ask.
‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘and to the cemeteries.’
‘Call them that, do you?’ Again, Hammond’s voice turns. He is short-tempered at the best of times and this topic touches a raw nerve with him. ‘Turks have made a mess of our cemeteries. Even in the old graveyards, Shrapnel Valley and Brown’s Dip, it’s taken me weeks to find where the men are buried. Grim business.’
I imagine it is. Already we’d seen Hammond’s men pushing their steel probes into the earth, seeking the soft ground or the blunt obstruction of a body. Bodies – after four years you could hardly call them that.
‘You know, Hammond...’ Vickers runs his fingers through his hair as he speaks, ‘...we would like to know why the Turks tore down our crosses. Was it just religious zeal – or did they really h-hate us. I find all this so hard to-to believe.’ His voice trails off towards the end, clouded by emotion.
Hammond is appalled. ‘Pull yourself together, man. And don’t be so damned naive. Even though we thought the Turk was a fair fighter, what happened here shows their true colours. Islamic zeal, I call it; they did it because they’re fanatics.’ Hammond chews his meat vigorously and spits gristle into the flames. ‘Bad crowd, the Turks, I tell you.’
Lambert motions towards a party of Turks milling by a separate campfire. Some are bearded, some not, several wearing the remains of ragged uniforms, their heads covered with a kind of makeshift turban. They seem dark and sinister. ‘Fanatics you say, Hammond?’ He reaches with some deliberation towards the bottle, ‘Yes, well, you’ve got to admit, they do look the part, don’t they? Rapine and sudden death in the eyes of every one of ’em! Awfully like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, eh Vickers?’
I remember the eyes of that Turkish officer in no-man’s-land blinking at the sight of so much carnage and I ponder his final words: ‘At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.’ He held a tiny copy of the Koran in the palm of his hand, his lips quivered with prayers across an acre of the slain. There was no fanaticism in him, only in the orders that laid waste a generation.
At that very moment another Turkish officer walks into the centre of our circle. ‘Perhaps they burnt the crosses because they were cold, gentlemen,’ he rubs his hands by the fire, ‘far colder than when you English left Anzac. Crosses were the only wood left to burn on Gallipoli.’
He takes a cigarette from a silver case, taps it three times on the lid, then, as if remembering something, returns it to the case. ‘I am Zeki Bey,’ he continues, ‘Major Zeki Bey. I am here as your liaison officer – as agreed in Constantinople.’ He raises a smart hand in salute and the party leaps to its feet. Vickers and Hammond return the compliment, as brisk and as sharp as if they were on a parade ground. ‘And the war is over, gentlemen. Open old wounds and they will only bleed again.’ He opens the case again and offers each of us a cigarette. It is the same dark tobacco I had smoked in 1915 and barely a week ago at Maidos. All but Hammond accept.
For a moment we consider the new arrival. The major has the pleasant complexion of a tanned European, a slight, dark moustache, deep brown eyes and a quick smile. His smart uniform is not unlike the German field grey with red shoulder patches, black gaiters and a Turkish helmet of dark felt material. I suppose he is slightly under average height, about the same height in fact as Vickers. There is the same sensitivity in his face, too – a softness about the eyes and the lips. But unlike Vickers the major seems strong, self-assured, confident. Zeki Bey has the bearing of a man who’s known victory and defeat and who treats those two imposters just the same.
Vickers is the first to respond.
‘Actually this was the Australian section of the line, Major, and we placed those crosses there for the families of the dead, families grieving for graves they’d never see. The English held Helles and Suvla. Mostly, we Australians s-s-served at Anzac.’
‘Of course. But Australians, New Zealanders, Indians – you all fought for England. From the other end of the world you came to fight and die for England’s Empire.’
‘It’s our Empire too,’ Lambert barks back. ‘And Australians to a man are proud of that!’
Vickers says nothing.
‘Of course,’ the major is a man who knows the virtues of diplomacy. ‘Perhaps, though, we were all just soldiers here, we did our duty whatever our nation. We all fought, bled and froze to death here. Your crosses were raised for the living as much as for the dead, Colonel Hammond, and for the living they
were taken.’
At a signal none of us had seen, one of the Turkish workmen places another stool by the fireside. Zeki Bey quietly assumes the role of host, a reminder of whose land these men had died on. ‘Please, shall we not be seated?’
He pulls out the stool intended for himself and gestures to Vickers to take it. Harry Vickers smiles meekly, mingling gratitude with embarrassment. There is an elegance in the Turkish officer’s movements that seems almost statesmanly. Trust, warmth and affection are all signalled by this single gesture. Hammond grimaces.
‘And what about the graves that were looted? Did that serve the interests of the living as well?’ The colonel tosses back his drink, as if offering a challenge.
Zeki Bey replies without a second’s hesitation. ‘Now that, my friend, was never the work of Turkish soldiers. Isolated marauders, bandits deep in the mountains. I have seen Turkish graves looted in much the same way.’ He gestures towards Helles. ‘The Ottoman army respected the bodies of the dead. We repaired your cemeteries.’
Hammond has had enough of this. He will not be lectured to by any Turk. He looks with contempt at the major’s neatly tailored uniform, so unlike the rough khaki of men he was proud to command.
‘So you “repaired” our cemeteries, did you? Bloody ruined them more like. I’ve seen what your Ottoman army did,’ Hammond points down towards the gully. ‘Mounds of earth made up to look like graves with no bodies beneath them; little circles of stones anywhere and everywhere. It’s a disgrace, Major. The Australian Government, the Australian people protest in the strongest possible terms.’
‘And where are our cemeteries, Colonel? Why are their no markers for the graves of our martyrs? Who has blotted out their memory?’
By now the two men are on the edge of their seats. I am worried. This is getting out of hand. The Turks can make things hellishly difficult for us and the last thing we want is to lose so valuable an informant. All through my life I’ve played the role of peacemaker – dutiful son, diligent prefect, disinterested scholar, fair-minded sportsman. Tonight is no exception.