by Alan Evans
The first line of men were climbing aboard the trucks now. Taggart was up with the second, urging them on and Smith came up at his shoulder and panted, “Get ’em aboard, Major. Quick as you can.”
Taggart grinned at him. “You don’t need to tell me!” He reached out to shake Smith’s shoulder. “It worked like a charm! Up to now we can’t have more than a couple of dozen wounded. As I said, it’s a miracle!”
A shell fell to the left of the train, two hundred yards away and short, hurling up rocks and dust and making a small crater. Taggart swore. “There’s a mortar somewhere in the trees!”
Smith swore in his turn and headed towards the engine. The crew of the Vickers in the front truck were manhandling the gun around but suddenly, as another mortar shell landed close by, two of them collapsed. The gun fell back into the truck and Edwards rose inside it, wrestling with Garrett. A rifle was between them and it fired into the sky. Then Garrett slipped from sight and Edwards leapt over the side of the truck to the ground, rifle in one hand. He crouched there, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.
Smith halted and aimed the Webley though it was a long shot for a pistol and he was no marksman. “Drop it!” But Edwards only worked the bolt and Smith saw death glaring madly out of Edwards’s eyes. Then a rifle cracked at his side and Edwards pitched over backwards into the dust.
Taggart panted, “It was him or us!” Smith knew that. The colonel’s arrogance and self-seeking had made him a killer, might have made a murderer out of Pearce — and brought him to this.
Edwards was dead when they went to him and they left him where he lay, the red dust blowing over him. Taggart bellowed to a group of his men who came running and climbed into the truck. They passed down one of the Vicker’s crew who was alive, though wounded, and Garrett. Across Garrett’s belly a red stain was spreading. He looked up at Taggart grey-faced, and said bitterly, “When the machine-gunners got hit I took me eye off him for a second. Bastard had a knife.”
“Never mind.” Taggart raised his voice, “Get them into the ambulance truck!” One of the men tending Garrett glanced up and shook his head. The young soldier’s eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly at the sky.
Smith stood by the footplate. Charlie Golightly crouched in a corner with the shovel held up before his face. He stared at Smith and his fat cheeks wobbled as he shouted, “They’re in among the trees an’ right close!”
Smith could see them in the wood two hundred yards or so on the far side of the engine, figures flitting in the striped shade under the spread branches, kneeling and firing. Probably a force from Lydda station south of the dump. There might be ten or a hundred, he could not tell. A mortar shell landed, dangerously close, spattering the engine with stones. He glared at Golightly. “Get on your feet!”
He looked back along the train, saw the last men clambering into the open trucks, Taggart standing by the track with his rifle dangling loosely from one hand, head turning as he urged the men aboard while others gave covering fire. He saw Smith and waved, grinned. Smith swung back to Golightly. Smith’s glare and his order had dragged Charlie to his feet though he still hunched as if expecting a shot to strike him, as well he might because the riflemen in the trees were firing rapidly and some were advancing in short rushes, halting to fire and run on across the open ground. Smith said, “Drive it away!”
He ran forward down the train to the first truck flying a Red Cross flag, leapt up to hang on the side and peered in. The wounded were laid on its floor and as always the sight of them was a shock, the blood, the filth and the pain. Adeline Brett moved among them and Smith shouted, “Keep your heads down!” He saw her turn, startled, then he dropped to the ground as the train jerked forward.
The engine rolled down on Smith and Buckley where they stood alone. Buckley tried to step aside but Smith snarled at him, “Get on!” He shoved Buckley at the ladder, shoved him again so he sprawled forward on the footplate, himself grabbed at the handrail, missed, grabbed again and this time seized hold. He ran alongside the train for three long, leaping strides then jumped for the ladder, found it with one foot, swung wildly off-balance but then threw himself in after Buckley.
There was a hand on the rail on the far side of the footplate. Then a head showed and another hand, this one pointing a pistol. Smith stared across at the dark face with its bar of black moustache and the eyes that glared into his. Golightly stood in the centre of the footplate, one hand on the regulating lever and the other gripping the shovel. Now he swung the shovel and the flat of its blade blotted out the face, the hand slipped from the rail and the pistol fired but the bullet only kicked splinters from the wood piled at the rear of the footplate. The Turk disappeared but the echo of the shot still rang in Smith’s ears.
He climbed to his feet shakily, moved cautiously to the side of the footplate and looked back along the track. The dump still built its tower of smoke, the top of it leaning southward and spreading on the wind. There were men coming around the dump into the open ground and others swarming from the wood and on the track now. All of them small with distance and shrinking as the engine pulled away from them, working up speed, the train ahead rocking and swaying as it ran across the plain. The enemy had been on the point of capturing the train and they had escaped only by seconds. But they still had a long way to go. Yet for this little breathing space he was just glad to be alive, to have survived.
The sun would be well above the Hills of Judaea now but it was hidden. They ran beneath low-hanging grey cloud and the wind of their passage was cold on his body and he shivered from that. And from reaction. They roared past the village of Beit Dejan that Edwards had said was the half-way mark and a Turkish patrol appeared from among the little houses to fire at the train, but harmlessly. Golightly laughed with a flush of false courage, feeling safe and at home on his leaping, racing footplate. But that firing was bad news for Smith because it meant that word had gone ahead of them and the Turks at Jaffa would be waiting.
*
Golightly shouted, “Stoke ’er Mr. Buckley, if you please.”
Buckley swung open the door and fed logs into the furnace. Ahead the track lifted to the crest of the hill where they had captured the train and there they would leave it. Smith wiped the sweat from his hands on his jacket, took out the Webley and checked the load, shoved it back in the holster. Buckley hauled the pull-through with its oiled scrap of four-by-two cloth through the barrel of his Lee-Enfield, took a clip from the bandolier slung over one shoulder and loaded the rifle. Golightly watched these preparations and was quiet.
They were slowing now, the engine puffing short-windedly as it pulled up the gradient. Smith leaned out at the side of the footplate to peer forward past the swaying trucks. A man stood by the track, tall, rifle held at the small of the butt, barrel resting on his shoulder, the slouch hat tipped forward. He held up one hand and Smith said harshly, “Stop her!”
As the train clanked to a halt he jumped down and ran forward. Taggart dropped from the train and Smith threw at him, “Get them out and moving!” and ran on.
Jackson asked, “Any luck?”
Smith nodded breathlessly, “The track and the dump.”
Jackson whistled softly and his gaze went past Smith to where the battalion poured from the train and lifted down their wounded. “I owe Taggart an apology.”
He turned and walked long-striding with Smith hurrying at his side towards the point of the wood where the track curved round to go down into Jaffa. “Just before it got light I occupied the crest.”
Smith saw up on the crest the heads and rifles of those men of the battalion left behind. Jackson halted at the point of the wood. Dust hung above the road out of Jaffa and under the dust was a fast-marching column of infantry, an officer on horseback at their head. Smith had seen their like coming up from Lydda. He hadn’t liked them then and he didn’t like them now. They were four or five hundred yards away, abreast of the deserted township of Tel Aviv. Jackson said laconically, “Somebody passed the word
.”
Smith remembered the Turks who had fired on the train at Beit Dejan. He turned to look back at the train where the men milled about, still lifting down the wounded, few of them but more than enough to fill Adeline Brett’s little cart, dragged from its hiding place in the orange groves. He could see her blonde head and the big figure of Merryweather. Some of the wounded would have to be carried.
He said, “We can’t stop to fight. Once we stop we’re finished. And the wounded — we need time because of them. We’ve got to get out quick, no long rearguard actions. But we need time ...” He knew what he was asking.
So did Jackson but he said only, “All right.”
He strode into the grove past a big trooper who asked, “What’s goin’ on, Jacka?”
“Mounted action, that’s what,” Jackson tossed at him. “Get your horse.”
The horse-holders brought up the Walers, troopers snatching at the reins and swinging up into the saddles. One of them held a horse for Smith, who was not expecting that, hesitated but saw no help for it and let another impatient trooper boost him up into the saddle. He caught a glimpse of Buckley’s face, worried, disbelieving and exasperated all at once. Then he grabbed at the reins and held on as his mount went with the others. Somewhere ahead of him in the jostling throng of shifting, stamping horses Jackson shouted, “Remember, you jokers, it isn’t a flamin’ steeplechase!”
One of them grumbled, “Aw, give it a rest, Jacka. You told us once!”
“Come on, then!”
The horses plunged forward, the troopers whooping and yelling, and Smith went with them, out of the shade of the orange grove, leaping the railway track, and before them lay the long, gentle fall of the hill to Tel Aviv. Jackson was in the lead, horse stretching out into a gallop and the ragged line of ragged troopers tore howling after him. Smith was caught up in their madness. He may have howled like the rest of them but he did not know, though afterwards he was hoarse. The rest of the world slipped away so the little troop of horsemen seemed to gallop down a funnel leading them to the centre of the blue-grey enemy column and nothing else existed. The Turks were firing, he could see the muzzle-flashes of their rifles, but the rush of the wind in his ears blotted out the reports and he only heard the whistling rip as the bullets sped past.
A man dropped his rifle, collapsed on the neck of his Waler but clung on. A horse plunged forward on its knees and rolled, throwing its rider over its head to sprawl in the dust. The column of Turks floated up towards Smith and now he could make out faces under the caps, staring eyes, fingers jerking at the bolts of rifles, all glimpsed across a shrinking strip of sand that the charging Walers gobbled up in seconds. And the charge struck home.
There was no bone-jarring impact, just a moment of slipping about precariously in the saddle as he reined in one-handed and snapped the trigger of the Webley at faces looming out of the fog of dust churned up by the hooves of the horses that circled and pranced. The Australians wheeled, followed Jackson’s lead and charged in again on the column, the troopers firing the rifles one-handed, slashing with the barrel, clubbing with the butt.
The Webley was empty. The Waler surged under him, rode down a man who shrieked as he went under the hooves. Smith swung with the Webley at the face of another and he spun away ... He was alone. For a second he faced back up the hill and saw fallen horses, a trooper on foot wandering with his hands pressed to his head, the men from the train heading up towards the crest and the road to the Auja. Then his horse wheeled, galloped on of its own accord, nearly throwing him. He managed to pull it to a halt and the beast stood trembling under him, both of them running with sweat.
Before him lay the plain where the Turks had stood. Some of them lay there still, marking the line they had held, while beyond them the rest ran madly for the shelter of the houses of Tel Aviv, Jackson and his troopers hunting them, firing, clubbing. There was no sign of the mounted Turkish officer as his shattered command reeled into the streets of Tel Aviv, disappearing among the houses.
Jackson’s voice bellowed, the words lost but the horsemen turned and trotted back to him. Smith realised slowly and with disbelief that he had been in a cavalry charge. It was ridiculous and he was a fool — he was a seaman and not even a half-way competent horseman.
These were the real thing, the men riding towards him now with Jackson at their head, dirty and ragged in their weird miscellany of uniforms that was not uniform at all, some of them with laughter showing the teeth in the brown faces, others silent and withdrawn. He thought all of them incredible. Already it was being said that this Anzac mounted force was the greatest cavalry in the history of the world. Smith believed it.
He turned his horse and urged it back up the hill. Jackson and his troopers had cleared the way for the rest of them; there was no Turkish force to be engaged in a rear-guard action: the fugitives in Tel Aviv would not be rallied for hours. But now they faced the long march back to the Auja. Smith was as weary as all of them were weary, but there could be no rest. Now it was a race. All surprise was gone and Edwards had said the Turkish regiment north of the Auja would come down like the hammers of hell. Edwards ... the memory of his mad face still haunted Smith.
*
He marched with Taggart at the head of the column, Buckley two paces behind him. The Australians rode as front and rear-guards and flankers and inside that screen the battalion marched, boots pounding, foot-slogging on. Adeline Brett’s cart was pulled along in the centre of the column, crammed with wounded but there were others who walked or limped along with a man propping each side.
They were heading up the long lift to the distant ridge, beyond which lay the Auja river and the sea. Smith turned his head to peer back at the column, a rippling carpet of bobbing caps, cropped heads and the muzzles of slung rifles under the cloud of red dust. He looked past them over the village of Summeil in the hollow to the road where it fell down from the crest that hid Tel Aviv. For a moment he thought he saw a bird but then it turned and he made out the biplane wings, the floats and the big radiator like a basket planted right in front of the pilot. It was a Short.
Another swung over the crest behind it and the pair of them came charging along the column, roared low overhead and circled, the noise of engines hammering at his ears. Both Shorts carried bombs slung in the racks under their bellies and one was unmistakably the bloody Delilah with little Maitland waving excitedly from the rear cockpit. Smith was glad that Pearce had not let him down but he wondered where the third Short was? The two straightened out and tore away ahead of the column. Smith saw them turning again in the distance, dropping below the ridge ahead and so out of sight. In the silence after the engines’ clamour he heard the distant crump of the bombs. Minutes later, above the shuffling tramp of the boots, there came the rattle of rifle and machine-gun fire and it was heavy. He had lost his race, the Turks had come down from the north to slam the door shut in his face.
He swallowed and ran forward as the familiar shrieking of a falling salvo of shells ripped the air. Lieutenant Jameson stood on the crest ahead and Smith laboured up to him and stopped, chest heaving. Before him the ground fell away to the river that lay under swirling, drifting smoke. Through it he saw the lighters running in to beach at the ford, the motor-boat over by the far bank and on the ridge beyond it and on a level with Smith the sprawled figures of marines, rifles at their shoulders. He could not see over the ridge but heard the bursting shells of the salvo beyond it, saw the smoke lifting in the middle distance and he whirled to peer out to sea. Dauntless patrolled scarcely a mile off-shore and the salvo came from her. A light flickered rapidly just below the ridge and that was the signaller relaying to Dauntless Griffiths’s orders for the shoot. He was up there on the ridge putting to use the expertise he had displayed in the Dardanelles, bringing down the fire from Dauntless to lay a protective curtain ahead of the little party of marines.
Jameson was saying, “The Turks came out of Jaffa in the night to look for the break in the telephone wire but there
were only’ a couple of signallers and we grabbed them before they knew what was going on. But a patrol came down the coast from the north at first light and Brand took his marines across to the other side when the firing started.”
Smith saw this crest was a line of defence held only by the men of the cutter’s crew strung out along it. He said, “Watch me. I’ll give you the sign and you get out quick.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Jameson and asked, “What success, sir?”
Smith told him and the cutter’s crew cheered.
The column came up. Smith knew they had only minutes because there was a full regiment of the Turks and, despite the guns of Dauntless, they would slip around that thin line of marines and then only Jameson’s men would stand between them and the river and the lighters. He shouted to the battalion R.S.M., trying to keep his voice tight and controlled but it croaked in his ears, “Get ’em aboard anyhow, but as soon as you can!”
“Sir!”
Smith stood on the crest with Taggart and watched the battalion pass, boots plodding wearily, eyes staring through the mask of red dust that coated them all. You could not order these men to double, it was a miracle they kept up the pace.
Adeline Brett’s little wagon came up, dragged by a dozen men, the girl striding stiffly alongside, Charlie Golightly hobbling behind her. Now the rear-guard of Jackson and a file of troopers came up. All the time the shells from Dauntless howled in and burst, while the two Shorts trundled desperately low on the far side of the river and a mile or so away, their bombs all gone but the Lewis guns chattering.
Smith left Jameson’s men to hold the rear, went down with Jackson and Taggart, hurrying after the column that trailed along the track beside the river, and waded the ford crowded with exhausted men stumbling and splashing out to the lighters and scrambling aboard. He went on, found Brand, the marine captain, with Griffiths and his signaller lying at the top of the ridge and knelt beside them. Taggart and Jackson flanked him, crouched at his shoulder and behind them down the slope stood Buckley.