On Dangerous Ground

by Bruce Scates

  ‘There were a lot of 3rd Light Horse that day, George – reinforcements from Western Australia and Victoria. I don’t know that many of them were wearing slouch hats.’

  ‘Were some?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘This is art, Charley.’ His brush pulls back the wide brim of a bushman’s hat. ‘And here art will get the better of history.’

  I nod. Legends shaped this landscape. Art will always defeat history at Anzac.

  A figure approaches through the early morning mist. I recognise the major instantly. His felt hat and wide epaulettes are drawn sharp and clear on the horizon. Lambert grunts and considers covering his canvas. The Turkish officer’s boots tread heavily on frozen soil. With every step men’s bones are ground into wasteland. Zeki Bey salutes as he reaches us. We nod in reply. And then, with the twist of a smile, Lambert offers the major his hip flask. The Nek has not seen the last of its fighting.

  Zeki Bey turns away. He has come to tell Lambert a story: a story first told in 1915, that will be passed on time and time again, from generation to generation. As the third wave went over, a Turkish officer had clamoured up on the parapet and cried out against the carnage, ‘Dur! Dur! Lütfen, lütfen.’ (Stop! Stop! Please, please.) But today the Australians were not listening. Just as they had failed to listen the day the Light Horse soldiers were shot to pieces.

  ‘Major, please, wait a moment.’ I run after him, but not before casting an angry glance back at Lambert. The artist hears another pack of jackals howling in the gullies. ‘Bastards,’ he mumbles as he paints another dying digger onto the willow board.

  The Botanic Gardens, Sydney, 2015

  Mark sprang down the steps of the state library, casting a slightly worried glance back to the reading room. Vanessa had suggested they meet at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, the rocky outlook overlooking Sydney Harbour. The most direct route was straight through the gardens. Mark dodged the traffic streaming up towards Bent Street and disappeared down green and shaded pathways.

  It was a hot day but a fresh sea breeze splashed across Mark’s face. He had need of it. To meet Vanessa in thirty minutes required a cracking pace and even the thought of their last exchange was enough to raise Mark’s temperature.

  He followed an old stone wall set by the edge of the ornamental gardens. Built by convict hands it had stood for two centuries. An ancient wisteria dripping with mauve was entwined inseparably around it. He turned at an archway that had framed the garden for as long as anyone could remember, then worked his way through carefully organised plots of succulents and savannah. Like every great botanical garden in the world, Sydney’s embodied an impossible paradox: those who would categorise plants by province, size and unpronounceable Latin names ever at odds with anarchic advocates of wilderness. There was enough of English extension Wordsworth still left in Mark to favour the latter and he glided through dappled sunlight with snippets of poetry teasing his memory.

  In twenty-nine minutes precisely Mark arrived at Mrs Macquarie’s Point. A crowd of Japanese tourists had clustered in the shade of three Moreton Bay figs and were feverishly photographing themselves with the Opera House. Utzon’s monument to art stood shining and majestic, more an icon than a building. Its white wings dipped down towards the water like a swan gliding towards the shore. The beauty of Port Jackson never ceased to amaze Mark. This was a significant admission for a Melburnian.

  As he turned towards Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, Mark noticed Vanessa’s Lamborghini parked in a bus zone. Already a parking inspector was scribbling a ticket: for these rapacious predators of the metropolis, the old Domain Road offered some of the richest pickings. There was a pile of similar infringement notices already heaped on the dashboard. It seemed Rex’s Visa card contributed generously and frequently to the state’s coffers.

  A few seconds later he found himself seated beside her. She was wearing a loose and gaily coloured top – a welcome change, Mark thought, to the black chic of her corporate uniform. A pair of shoes had been kicked from her feet. Mark noted, as Vanessa intended he would, the perfect grooming of bright red toenails. At first she didn’t acknowledge his presence at all. She gazed intently down on her phone, absorbed by a message collected in the palm of her hand, tapping frenzied morse on the keypad. When she did speak, her tone was far from friendly.

  ‘Well, I suppose you know why I wanted to talk you?’

  Mark thought it best not to speculate.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ She nodded her head at no one in particular. ‘Seriously? You haven’t seen it then? Haven’t seen the papers?’

  Vanessa thumped Mark’s lap with a city tabloid.

  ‘You sit in a fucking library all morning and you don’t even read the paper. What planet do you live on, Mark?’

  The newspaper’s headline stared up at him accusingly. Professor Condemns Government Cover-Up. Graves of Lost Anzacs Desecrated. At that moment, Mark would happily have relocated to another galaxy. His eyes ran down the column sifting substance from journalism.

  ‘I don’t see that the professor said that – not anywhere here does he actually say that.’

  ‘The point is Dr Troy that he wasn’t supposed to have said anything at all.’ Snarling Mark’s academic title was more than enough to implicate him. ‘This is a disaster. The minister has already been on the phone to me – and The Fat Controller.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Brawley, it’s my nickname for him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mark quickly considered his options. Then, for a reason as great as knowledge itself, loyalty to a teacher and a mentor overrode even the most elementary instinct for survival.

  ‘Sure. OK, I remember Howard Brawley’s advice. But that doesn’t mean the Inquiry proceedings were technically in camera.’

  Vanessa looked back in anger and disbelief. Latin jarred on the young man’s lips. Since when did they speak like that in the Wimmera?

  ‘And there is the issue of academic freedom,’ Mark stumbled on. ‘The professor is a scholar. He’s not some consultant in the pay of the government.’

  ‘Don’t give me that bullshit, Mark.’ She screwed the newspaper into his face, a violent act even for her. ‘Don’t you see this changes everything? God knows how we are going to get out of this.’

  We, thought Mark, wasn’t quite the way he’d put it. He flattened the newspaper and read on. Vanessa sat fuming beside him.

  It was, as she’d suggested, serious. It was not just that the minister was accused of authorising roadworks outside his jurisdiction, or that a historic site might well be compromised by inappropriate development. The issues that excited the journalists were much more visceral. On page three of the Tele there was a photograph of piled human bones – though whether they were actually from Anzac was doubtful. Page four featured a damning chart of government denial and admission. Another set of headlines pushed readers to a foregone conclusion. Call To Recover Lost Anzacs: Government Vandalises Proud Heritage.

  ‘Page nine will interest you,’ Vanessa’s voice read like a charge sheet.

  Mark turned the crumpled paper again.

  ‘That’s just ridiculous,’ he muttered. A group calling themselves the Friends of Anzac had called for DNA testing of any human remains recovered from the peninsula.

  ‘Is it, Dr Troy? You’ve rather changed your tune, haven’t you? Remember those bones “are someone’s son, someone’s brother”.’

  ‘That isn’t fair. I was talking about the 1920s, not today.’

  ‘Really?’ Vanessa snapped back. ‘And you think the public can fathom the subtle academic difference?’

  ‘And that is so condescending.’

  ‘No, that’s politics. And the opposition needs a 1.7% swing to take the seat from the minister. Assuming, of course, he’s not forced out before the next election.’

  Vanessa looked longingly out beyond the harbour, towards the open sea, the deep and distant ocean. A Manly ferry slipped beyond the headland. It left a long silver st
reak in the water. Vanessa wondered why she had ever bothered talking to Mark. What a fool she had been and what a price she’d pay for it.

  And yet something told her otherwise. Something was happening here, something she didn’t quite understand.

  Vanessa turned to face him.

  ‘They used to just throw soldiers’ bodies into common graves, you know. No monuments, no names, just long pits in the ground with nothing to say anything.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Indeed, the professor had written on something similar. A line from Thomas Hardy drifted half-spoken, half-forgotten through his mind, another relic from his schooldays, lamenting all the dead of all the wars through all the ages.

  They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

  Uncoffined – just as found:

  His landmark is a kopje-crest

  That breaks the veldt around;

  ‘What did you say?’

  Vanessa’s tone puzzled him.

  ‘Nothing – well, just something the professor told me once. He said how we remembered the dead would change with every generation. Said, “we have to work at memory”. That we mustn’t take “Lest We Forget” too literally...’

  Mark knew he hadn’t really explained anything.

  ‘Something like that, anyway.’

  Vanessa looked back blankly. It was as if a question had frozen on her face.

  There was a bleat from a foghorn as a cruise ship set out to sea. Vanessa thought she could see passengers lining the deck, looking back on their last view of Australia. For a few minutes, Mark’s thoughts also took him far away, to a beach on the Gippsland coast where they’d held a funeral service for his grandfather. He remembered his dad scattering ashes into a storm-maddened sea, pouring a bottle of scotch into the wind, watching all that remained of Pop rise to the heavens. No need for a grave. No need for a monument. What other way would you ‘bury’ an airman?

  Mark turned to Vanessa again and braced himself for history.

  ‘But to that generation it meant a great deal, meant everything to actually mark a grave – especially when they died so far away. The government promised, Vanessa, our government promised.’

  She looked him in the eye. Mark noted her eyes had reddened.

  ‘And you think we’re bound by that? You know these Friends of Anzac want to repatriate those remains, return them to their families? They’ve appealed for relatives to come forward, to test for mitochondrial DNA. How many hundreds are we talking about, how many thousands?’

  ‘There is no legal – or historical – obligation to do that.’

  ‘Historical obligation!’ Now the tone was quite familiar. ‘Jesus, Mark, today you are just full of bullshit.’

  Vanessa drew a cigarette from a silver case and tapped it three or four times before lighting it.

  ‘Silly habit really,’ she mumbled absentmindedly.

  ‘And a dangerous one,’ Mark admonished.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mark, I meant tapping tailor-mades, no point to it.’ She took a deep breath of smoke and held it in much longer than Mark believed possible. ‘This is one habit I enjoy. Look,’ her voice changed like the tide, ‘I’ll have to go back. Tonight. Are you coming?’

  ‘But my notes are in the Mitchell.’

  ‘And your bags are at the college. You can fetch both and I’ll meet you at the uni at eight.’ Vanessa organised him with the dexterity of any public service meeting. ‘We’ll get something to eat on the way and be back in Canberra by midnight.’

  Well before then, Mark thought, if Vanessa was driving.

  ‘But I have to know something, Mark. Seriously.’ The same party of tourists passed by, firing their cameras seemingly at random. ‘Are you with me on this? If we can come up with,’ she paused in a slightly legalistic way and breathed out smoke and words simultaneously, ‘some kind of compromise, will you support me?’

  ‘I’m a historian, Vanessa, not a politician.’

  ‘And since when has history not been about politics?’

  Mark looked again out to sea and realised he couldn’t answer. A few minutes passed and a fleet of yachts ventured out across the furrowed water. Their sails tilted towards the heads just as they had when Lady Macquarie sat there and dreamed of England. The water winked with light. At last, Mark thought it safe to resume the conversation.

  ‘So you call your boss “The Fat Controller”. Do you have a nickname for me, too?’

  Vanessa turned to Mark and smiled for the first time that afternoon. ‘A Gallipoli scholar called Mark Troy? Believe me, you don’t need one.’

  They laughed together and agreed to meet that evening. From that moment on, with a heart swelling like the harbour, Mark knew something would happen.

  Lone Pine, Eastern Extreme of the Turkish Trench Line, 1915

  It is difficult to say whether or not Lt Roy Irwin had been dreaming. This was the third night he had spent in the enemy trenches and for all that time the battle for the Pine raged relentlessly. He may have nodded off – not even fear held sleep at bay forever. Or he may have actually seen it. Whatever the case, the image of a headless man, running on, haunted every conscious moment. Time and time again, the horror replayed itself in his mind. Sharp metal cutting like a blade through butter, limbs that lumbered on with no thought to guide them. Every soldier has his nightmare. This was Irwin’s.

  ‘Don’t doze off now, sir.’

  His sergeant shook him.

  ‘No, I’m with you, Clement, what’s happening?’

  ‘Turks massing for another attack – you can hear them.’

  Between the explosions and the gunfire, Irwin and his sergeant listened intently. Something thudded against the earthen walls of the trenches. There were muffled calls and directives, the sharp bark of an officer’s orders, ‘Hazir Ateş!’ followed by a shower of bombs.

  Few actually landed in the trench. Corpses, from both sides, had been piled high on the parapet – as effective a barrier from bombs as sandbags or wire netting. Gutted bodies absorbed much of the blast. Butchered flesh and earth rained down on the soldiers. The downpour was over in a moment but seemed to last an eternity. Delirious from lack of sleep it reminded Irwin of the first great drops of rain that signalled every summer storm in Merimbula. Now a new storm gathered around them.

  ‘Ready men – they’re coming.’

  The sergeant lit the last of his bombs and counted to a sparking fuse, then in the last possible instant he lobbed the missile over. It exploded with a crack. A howl let loose and a blinded man stumbled into their trench. For a time, he turned and twisted, scratching at the dust. Irwin drove a bayonet through his back.

  To their west, the bombing duels continued unabated. Gunfire flashed red on the skyline. It wouldn’t be long now.

  ‘That’s the last of the bombs, sir.’

  The lieutenant snorted the hot morning air. There was no moisture left to swallow.

  ‘Think the men can take another charge?’

  The sergeant glanced along the broken line. Men clutched rifles in their bloodied hands, all tired, most wounded, some past caring.

  ‘Don’t like your chances, sir.’

  An officer knows that in defence, attack is the best strategy. And Irwin knew his men would follow him. He wondered what appeal he could make to them, so they should leap once more into the breach. His voice rattled in his dry throat: ‘C’mon men, c’mon you Aussies!’

  And thus they clamoured over their own dead to kill the massing enemy. In trenches just a few feet away, another call to other soldiers to kill for cause and country. Not that anyone really listened. The earth ran black with blood. Men killed because they had to.

  A few minutes later the last of Irwin’s men returned to the trench.

  ‘How many did we lose?’

  The sergeant scanned the line.

  ‘Barkley, McKay, Smith ... and Fraser.’

  ‘Damn.’

  Barely seventeen, Fraser had long been the company favourite; in fact several men had
died to spare him. In truth, Irwin’s regret wasn’t so personal. The dead now were simply a matter of arithmetic. They couldn’t hold out much longer. Irwin knew there was only one choice.

  ‘We’ll have to break out of here. Work our way back to our own lines.’

  ‘But our blokes may be on their way – they have to be – have to bring up reinforcements.’

  ‘But there is no sign of that, is there, Sergeant?’

  In fact everywhere along the line was much like their own position. Men had been ordered to hold their ground whatever the cost. And what that really meant was that they would die there. Across the Pine, trenches were piled four-deep with bodies: the dead, the wounded, the dying. Hard boots trod on spongy flesh. There was no avoiding it.

  ‘We’ve got to get out, Sergeant.’

  ‘But what about them?’

  Of the fifteen men left, at least a third were badly wounded. Some, despite their pain, managed to load rifles for the able. Others slipped in and out of consciousness. The worst of the wounded just waited to die, their doom-laden eyes sunk in the hollow of their faces.

  ‘Have to leave them.’

  ‘But, sir...’

  Irwin looked away. Like the generals who directed the attack, officers in the field were complicit in sacrifice. War killed not just men, it also killed compassion. By now it had killed the best in Roy Irwin. As he turned back, he saw a Turkish bullet silence his sergeant. It burrowed through Clement’s chest and blew a hole out of his back. Air wheezed from the body as it slumped to the floor of the trench.

  ‘Prepare to charge, men!’ Irwin wondered if there was a soul left to hear him. ‘Steady!’