‘Gentlemen . . . the Lone Pine,’ Tucker announces.
‘Not the original?’ asks the gullible Dawson.
‘That one was blown halfway to Brisbane during the battle,’ answers Tucker as he empties his canteen at the base of the tree. ‘More like Son of Lone Pine.’
‘We call this place Kanli Sirt. Bloody Ridge,’ Hasan says quietly. ‘There was a whole forest here before.’
They all struggle to picture it as they look out over the grim plateau of tangled barbed wire, eviscerated sandbags, collapsed trenches and, everywhere, grim bone fragments sprinkled across the landscape like shredded coconut on a cake. Hilton dismounts and notes that there is not a bush or clump of grass growing that would reach the top of his leggings.
In the distance there is a rudimentary obelisk fashioned by the Turkish survivors of Lone Pine from concrete and spent artillery shells. A memorial to their friends who lie in the mass graves on the fringes of the battlefield.
‘Do you remember much detail?’ Hilton asks Hasan.
‘Unfortunately. No one who fought here will forget it,’ says Hasan without explanation.
He stands up in the saddle and looks into a series of trenches, framed with rotting sandbags and eroded by the flash floods over winter.
‘That was our front line there,’ he tells Hilton, and then jabs his heels into his horse’s ribs and trots towards it. Jemal pulls alongside him, looking unsettled. Clearly this is not a place he wants to revisit.
‘It can’t be worse than the last time,’ Hasan assures him with a smile.
‘No. But scabs will still bleed if you pick them.’
Connor watches the two Turks and fights a rising wave of resentment. His anger, originally directed at a nebulous beast called ‘The Turk’, is now keenly focused on the man he has already begun to think of as the ‘Assassin’. The enemy has a face, and every time Hasan smiles it is another bullet in the memory of Connor’s boys. In his more rational moments, Connor can distinguish between war and murder. But since arriving on the peninsula, those moments have become few and far between, and more often than not he feels as if he is thrashing around in a dim well somewhere, grappling for a slippery rope.
Hilton, standing beside Connor’s horse, sees the farmer’s grim expression and accurately reads his thoughts. ‘It’s strange to think of him as something other than the enemy,’ he says in a low voice. He swings back into the saddle. ‘Takes a bit of getting used to.’
Connor can’t imagine becoming accustomed to it, ever.
Hilton gives the command to start at the Turkish trenches and work their way across no-man’s land. The party drifts towards Hasan and Jemal, who are already standing on the sandbags above the trenches that hold such painful memories.
Hasan drops down into the trench and lands awkwardly. He grabs at a splintered piece of timber that leans against the trench wall and steadies himself. He hears a sound akin to a rolled-up carpet landing behind him, followed quickly by Jemal’s colourful curses. The sergeant dusts himself off as the two Turks walk the line together. At one point the trench has partially collapsed and they must duck under fallen timbers. Almost everything useful has been souvenired by the local villagers and goatherds long ago, for use in rebuilding and extending their homes. The two men barely recognise the place that was their home and hell for six unbearable months.
Jemal reads the sun, now high above them, and mutters to Hasan.
‘Give me a moment or two.’
He wanders into an adjoining communication trench and lays his tunic on the hard earth. He turns to face southeast and begins his prayers. Bringing his hands up to the sides of his head, with palms forwards and his stubby thumbs behind his ears, Jemal is ready to listen to his god for the first time in months. He places his right hand over his left in front of him and looks down, exhaling hard before bending in half.
Jemal hurries through the rakats, emblazoned in his mind from boyhood; he kneels and bows until he feels the coarse wool of his tunic against his forehead and nose. Amongst friends he calls himself a broken Muslim – he prays only sporadically, but like everything else, he does it with gusto. He says a personal prayer to honour his dead men, his hands cupped in front of his chest; more like a conversation with Allah than a prayer. He surprises himself when he feels the splash of a warm tear land in his palm. He wipes his face, stands and shakes out his tunic.
He finds Hasan looking out over the sandbags in a way he would never have dared when they’d last occupied these defensive lines. Tucker and half a dozen of the Anzac soldiers have fanned out from the top of the trench, doing an initial sweep for unexploded grenades and mortar shells. They move quickly and methodically. Twenty yards out from the trench they hammer a line of stakes into the hard ground and run a white rope between them. Tucker gives a whistle – the all-clear – and the rest of the party joins them.
Hilton’s men break into small teams. After three months, their macabre task has become run of the mill for many of them. They examine the scattered bones and shapeless bundles as if they are doing little more than picking vegetables in a market garden. They spread out across the broken landscape, lugging hessian sacks, labels, notebooks and spades, passing smokes between them and chatting. Every day they argue over football codes, lay bets on just about anything and give blow-by-blow accounts of their conquests during nights on leave.
No one dares talk about families – some of the men haven’t been home since they enlisted – and they never bring up the war. What’s the point? It’s not like they weren’t all there. Hell, they’re still in it. They know what went on and why what they are doing now is important. If it was their remains lying about, they would want someone bagging them up and giving them a proper burial.
‘It is impossible to care for so many, that’s all,’ Hilton once heard one of the rank and file telling his mate. He knows what he means.
After six months fighting at Gallipoli and another two years on the Western Front, Hilton expected that he would be inured to death, his senses and emotions cauterised. At least now there are just the blanched skeletons to deal with, not the fly-blown bodies that used to swell up and pop like paper lunch bags in the sun. The smell reminded him of sheep carcasses lying in the paddocks during the drought, buzzing with the sound of unseen flies and the waxy skin rippling over the maggots feasting below.
On the hottest days he would give the order and men would fire single rounds into the bellies of the dead to release the putrid gas before the bodies exploded. Inevitably what started as a grim necessity descended into a sport. There was always someone to take a wager on the longest shot or the most spectacular splat.
‘Battle can bring out the best in men, but the waiting around has had the exact opposite effect,’ he wrote to his wife in the middle of the summer of 1915.
Dawson hovers over an assemblage of weathered bones. The only clue to their nationality is a hobnailed boot with a collection of toe bones rattling around inside like a gruesome game of jacks.
‘You couldn’t lend us an arm, could you?’ he asks Thomas. ‘I’ve almost got a full set here.’
‘Left or right?’
‘He’s not choosy.’
Thomas picks up a long, thin bone – a radius – and flings it across the ground to Dawson with a nod. No point in burying half a bloke.
The two men approach a shallow shell crater with a puddle of rancid water in the bottom. Grim-faced, they inspect the sodden uniform and sallow bones sticking out of the water.
‘Oh, crikey,’ complains Dawson, crinkling his nose at the fetid stench.
‘Anzac soup.’
‘Your turn,’ says Thomas, pushing Dawson into the hollow and throwing him a bag and a short-handled entrenching spade.
Dawson bends down and fishes around in the water with his hand. ‘He’s still got hair. He must have been washed out of his grave over winter.’
He lifts his hand out of the rank puddle holding a small brass button embossed with the unmistakable ma
p of Australia and an Empirical crown.
‘Guess that answers that,’ says Dawson, and starts to lift the gruesome remains onto the end of the spade. ‘Hold the sack open.’
‘Wonder if he was much of a swimmer?’ asks Thomas, grinning from ear to ear. He looks up and is skewered with the disapproving eyes of Connor, who is watching from the Turkish line. Thomas’ smile withers and he dips his head. ‘Not much of a sense of humour, this old bloke.’
Hasan scrambles out of the trench and walks along the sandbags as if they are castle battlements. Hilton keeps a respectful distance, taking notes as Hasan speaks.
‘We were here,’ he explains to Hilton. ‘Your men were over there.’ He points across the plateau.
‘We had a machine gun here,’ he continues, waving his hand emphatically. ‘Another here. And one more there. We were close enough to see you – so many blue eyes. Maşallah. It is very lucky in Turkey to have blue eyes . . . Everywhere, that is, except here.’
The young Anzacs hear Hasan’s wavering voice across the battlefield. One by one they stop working and drift towards the trench to hear him better. He takes a breath to calm himself and undoes the top button of his tunic. He locks eyes on the blue-eyed audience and smiles thinly, before continuing.
‘We built a roof over the trench. I ordered them to cut down the pine trees on the ridge, and lay them side by side, like this,’ he explains, showing how the rough-hewn trunks were fitted.
‘The roof was to protect us from shell fire. Instead we made a trap for ourselves.’
Jemal stands in the trench, looking down the line and listening intently. Back when the timbers were in place the trench was twilight dark. Shafts of sunlight penetrated the gloom through gaps between the pine planks. When the Anzacs attacked in those early days in August, Jemal had expected them to run over the roof and on to the second line of trenches. When he heard men stomping heavily back and forth along the roof he knew they had made a terrible tactical mistake. When the men saw gun muzzles and bayonets poking through the gaps in the timber they panicked. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Not content to stab and shoot mercilessly into the dark tunnel, the Anzacs began tearing at the timbers like rabid dogs. When the gaps were wide enough they wrenched their bayonets from the ends of their rifles and without hesitating, dropped down into the dark.
‘You came in from two sides, here and here, and then from above,’ Hasan says quietly. ‘Inside it was bayonets, hands . . . teeth. It was so dark and close we didn’t always see who it was we struck and slashed. We tore flesh off each other like mad men’
Jemal witnessed the most brutal and desperate fighting of his life in that tunnel. Men from both sides clawed at each others’ faces, bit pieces of ears and noses off, pulled hair out by the handful and jabbed bayonets into each other’s flesh at close quarters. He saw an Australian grab a Turkish boy by the face and force his thumbs into his eye sockets. The digits came out dripping gore the colour of strawberry jam. Another Australian swung his bayonet with his right hand while he held his own entrails in place with the other. Eventually the guts slipped through his fingers and landed on the trench floor where the man stomped all over himself as he parried. Jemal finally battled his way into the sunlight covered in gore and blood, not sure if it was his own or not.
‘Three days we attacked and counterattacked,’ Hasan continues. ‘We only stopped because we could no longer climb over the bodies.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
An eerie quiet.
From nowhere, three figures cut through the plumes of impenetrable steel-grey smoke. Eyes white, flashing. Teeth bared.
Three young men. Tall, broad-shouldered. Boots catching on the rough-hewn timber planks.
Sharpened steel slashes through gaps in the boards. Bayonets jabbing, stabbing at them as they leap and stumble along the trench line.
Shots.
Close.
Too close.
A tug on Henry’s jacket – the bullet pierces his sleeve but miraculously misses his flesh.
Ahead, a breach in the timber roof. Henry doesn’t hesitate. Pulling the bayonet off the end of his rifle, he drops straight down and disappears. Shrieks. Hideous cries.
Art and Ed follow him into the blackness. Wet, blood- sodden darkness. Can’t see. But the sounds. Grunts, things tearing, unholy slaughterhouse screams.
Eyes adjust to the dim light. Dirt falls through the cracks, sharp-edged sand beneath eyelids, tears streaming down filthy cheeks. Thin slits of light penetrate the gloom, revealing Dante’s inferno.
Hands turn to sickles, ripping flesh from bone, tearing away bleeding chunks of scalp still attached to skeins of hair.
Henry is in the thick of it, his blade slicing and flashing like a scythe. Ed, pulling hair by the handful, digs his teeth into a young Turkish soldier’s cheek. Henry blocks a knife as it thrusts towards his younger brother; slips his bayonet easily into the attacker’s throat. It chips the spine as it severs the Turk’s windpipe, blood mixing with bubbles of air in a hideous foam.
Art’s back is to the wall. Slammed into a corner with nowhere to go. An Ottoman soldier has his rough hands around his throat, clamping it shut. Stars burst before his eyes – he can’t breathe. He claws for a hold, desperately scratching at the man’s face. Art’s thumbs find the eye sockets and he pushes. Resistance, then a yielding as one eyeball pops out. The Turk stumbles back, his eye hanging down onto his cheek from the nerve. Drawing breath, blinded by blood and fury, Art reaches out, grabs it and pulls.
The three Connor boys run from the apocalyptic underworld towards the light. Plastered head to toe in gore, they scramble to the surface, clambering up a pile of bodies; tangled and severed limbs form a ghastly ladder.
Light. Air.
Suddenly, the Turks counterattack. A wave of enemy soldiers charges towards them.
The rifle. Art grabs it, aims, and starts to fire.
‘Retreat! Get back to the trenches!’ he howls, half-battlecry, half-plea.
The boys. Have to get the boys out of here.
‘Retreat!’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘There was no honour in this.’
As Hasan continues, no one notices that Connor has wandered across no-man’s land towards the Anzac Line.
The major’s words are flooding his senses. His eyes are fixed on the map that he holds out in front of him as his feet feel their way over the uneven ground. He steps deliberately over the rope barrier and into the red zone, not yet cleared of shells and mines. He folds the map and pushes it into his jacket pocket. Instead he reads the land, scanning the contours and feeling for the slightest ripple or vibration in the earth.
With his divining rods the subterranean water feels like a wave lapping at his subconscious, ebbing and flowing faster and faster until the rods cross. Today he feels like an exposed nerve. He is the rod and his instincts are tuned to a shapeless disquiet in the air that swells into a fitful quivering the further he walks. It turns him left and then right and his breathing quickens. Trance-like he begins moving in familiar, ever-decreasing circles, honing in on the source of the agitation.
Behind Connor, Hasan continues, visibly shaken, his eyes unfocused. ‘As long as Allah grants me breath, let me see nothing like those days again. At night we would hear injured men crying for their mothers and pleading for water. They begged to be shot. Our snipers would finish them so we could sleep.’
Hilton surveys the faces of his men who have now all worked their way within earshot of Hasan. He notes that Connor is absent. Probably just as well, he decides. Could be a bit much to hear it like that. Tucker catches Hilton’s eye, dips his hat brim towards Connor and lifts his eyebrows.
Hilton spins, alarmed, and catches the farmer taking two small steps forwards and another to the right and then pausing with his hands outstretched.
‘What the devil does he think he is doing out there?’ asks Hilton.
‘Not sure, sir. The suicide waltz?’ quips Tucker. ‘Do you wan
t me to bring him back, sir?’
‘No, I’ll go.’ He is furious with himself for ignoring his gut and allowing Connor to accompany them. The man is clearly a loose cannon. Hilton crosses the rope barrier and carefully follows Connor’s footprints out into no-man’s land. As he does, he realises with surprise that the farmer is following a complex and deliberate pattern, not succumbing to the wild meanderings of a father driven mad by grief.
Connor stands still now, his eyes closed as his heart pounds in his ears. His fingers are stinging, a searing heat like a thistle burn piercing his skin. He smells eucalyptus and hears the creaking of a windmill. He feels a hand on his shoulder and opens his eyes. Hilton offers him his canteen.
‘Civilisation can be a bloody thin veneer, Mr Connor. Come back; it’s dangerous out here.’
‘They are here,’ says Connor, his voice raw.
‘Yes, we’re still looking but we –’
‘No, they are here.’ Connor looks directly at the ground and marks the dirt with the heel of his boot, digging it in four times – north, south, east and west. ‘I need a shovel.’
He strides purposefully back towards the rope, leaving Hilton in no-man’s land, not sure what he has witnessed and no idea what to believe. One thing is for certain; Connor means to dig with or without their help.
Hilton yells out. ‘No, Mr Connor. We do all the digging here.’
Dawson scrapes back the soil with the end of his entrenching spade and exposes an unmistakable porous ivory line. He has been scratching away the earth beneath Connor’s mark and is barely a foot below the surface. He lets the spade fall beside the shallow pit and drops onto his hands and knees to brush the dirt from around the bone. He chances a furtive look at Tucker, who stands above him supervising with an amateur archaeologist’s eye.
‘No shortage of those out here,’ the sergeant says. ‘Could be anyone.’ He struggles to sound convincing. This is exactly the spot where the farmer said to dig.
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