Bill the Bastard

by Roland Perry

By early afternoon Shanahan had regained consciousness but his condition had deteriorated. Overworked doctors pronounced him ‘dangerously ill’. They discussed amputating his leg but thought he was too weak for an operation. Medicos had to make quick decisions for hundreds of casualties. The plan for Shanahan was simple: if he recovered they would again consider amputation.

  The reinforcements arrived between 2 and 3 pm and were immediately deployed to fight off the Turks, who by late afternoon were struggling everywhere. The enemy had anticipated taking the wells near Romani, but that was now impossible. They were out of water and food almost all along the front. The Turks would have to withdraw, defeated. Chauvel revelled in the thought that Romani was the first decisive victory attained by British land forces in the war except for campaigns in West Africa. The Light Horse primarily had denied the Turks in this critical battle, which meant Egypt had been saved for the British. He praised his senior commanders, but it was the disciplined men such as Shanahan and horses such as Bill that had done the courageous hard work in combat against all odds. They were the difference at Romani.

  Thirteen days later, at dawn on 17 August 1916, three Australian doctors examined Shanahan, who was sitting up in bed in a hospital tent at Et Maler. He asked about Bill.

  ‘Bill?’ the thin-faced medico in charge asked. ‘One of your men?’

  ‘My mount.’

  ‘Oh, Bill the Bastard!’ the doctor said, his pale grey eyes twinkling and expression lightening. ‘He is a damned legend! You collapsed while fighting at the bottom of Wellington Ridge. That amazing beast brought you back, but not to us—to the vet!’

  Shanahan managed a wan smile. ‘He is okay though?’

  ‘Far as I know, fit as a fiddle. Sergeant Sutherland is recommending him for some sort of award. A horse VC!’

  ‘My men . . .? My troopers?’

  The doctor began opening a large hold-all. He placed a saw on a table below Shanahan’s eye level. Other cutting instruments were put beside it.

  ‘Don’t worry about them for the moment. You’ll be briefed on everything.’

  ‘The battle . . .?’

  ‘We won, although you wouldn’t know it from the carnage of man and beast that was out there. But it was all over the day you were brought in by Bill.’

  ‘But where is he?’

  ‘No idea. He may be in Katia by now. The whole force has cleared out. They’re chasing the Turks back to Palestine. But don’t worry about that mighty stallion. Sergeant Sutherland is telling everyone that General Chauvel has ordered that he never fight again. He has earned a long life. He’s a packhorse from now on.’

  Shanahan was not yet mentally strong enough to comprehend this. It was confusing. Why was his steed being made a packhorse again?

  ‘You’re going to be okay,’ the doctor reassured him, ‘but I must say you had us worried. Thought we’d lose you a couple of nights ago. But you’re a very fit man, Major.’

  ‘But my leg has to go?’

  The doctor took a deep breath. ‘’Fraid so. We couldn’t operate until now. But it’s gangrenous.’

  ‘Yeah, I realise that. It’s green and putrid.’

  The doctor nodded. A nurse closed the tent flap. The whiff of ammonia dominated the operating theatre.

  ‘Take heart, Major,’ he said, ‘you lived. And you’re not alone in losing a limb. I’ve come from the Western Front. I reckon 100,000 Allied soldiers lost one limb, at least, in this year alone.’ He sighed. ‘I know. I removed my share of them. But that’s good for you. I do know what I am doing.’

  The comment was not comforting. Nurses came into the room with other medical equipment.

  ‘I know it’s not much consolation, but remember maybe a further five, perhaps six million have died in action since 1914. Surviving is something in this war, Major.’

  ‘Life is a fair consolation,’ Shanahan said. ‘I’ll take it.’

  The doctor didn’t respond. His mind was off small talk and onto his speciality with a saw.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Shanahan said, a twinge of regret in his stoic voice.

  A solemn-looking, plump nurse stepped forward holding a morphine syringe. ‘Lie back please, Major,’ she said, with more of a wince than a smile.

  17

  STUMPED BUT

  NOT OUT

  A few weeks after the amputation, Shanahan was taken to an Anzac hospital at Abbassia, two kilometres from central Cairo. He had come to terms with his fate, but it did not console him that he was out of the war. He longed for his mates, the camaraderie and combat. Now all that had been taken from him. But he was philosophical. He was forty-six, not sixteen as some of the Light Horsemen were. Shanahan had lived a full life. Losing a leg was not the devastating event that it would have been for someone younger and in his prime. He had come through Gallipoli and now the Sinai: eighteen months of war experience, much of it in frontline action. He had lived long enough to comprehend what ‘luck’ was. He had been lucky to make it. The doctor who removed his leg had been right. He couldn’t now be killed in combat. Ten million others would not be so fortunate.

  He would have felt much better if the war was over. He wouldn’t miss anything if it were. Yet the Turks had only just been beaten and pushed out of the Sinai. There was still expected to be at least one more year of battles before the realisation of the aim of the Anzac Light Horse: to push the Turks right back over their own border. This meant defeating them in Palestine, Arabia and Syria. It was a tall order. Shanahan’s frustration was in knowing that he would not be part of it.

  He, like every trooper, had heard the rumours filtering down from the Australian command, led by Chauvel. If he got his way, the objective would be achieved. Revenge against the Turks would be complete. The main obstacle preventing this from happening was the British High Command in Cairo. General Murray, a fine peace-time commander, did not have the will to defeat the Turks on a grand scale in war. His lukewarm approach meant the enemy would always be allowed to regroup after defeats such as at Romani and would remain a threat. The Australian approach, in crude terms, was to chase them and wipe them right out, then the problem would be dealt with and the war in the Middle East would be over. But Murray would not go anywhere near that solution. He preferred to supply generals on the Western Front with men and equipment when asked. This always kept his own British force in the Middle East restricted. It was also frustrating for Chauvel and Co. ‘It [the British High Command approach] was like being half-pregnant,’ Shanahan wrote to one of his brothers in Australia, ‘and one can’t really be in that condition.’

  He had plenty of time for writing as he stayed in the fifty- by thirty-metre hospital with its high wooden crossbeams, white walls and rows of beds along two walls. Shanahan was told he would never ride again: his left leg had been removed halfway up the thigh, which would make getting on and off a horse very tough. Shanahan did not agree. He said nothing but worked hard at his physical condition, getting used to exercising minus a limb. He could do press-ups and sit-ups, and there were dumbbells in the makeshift gymnasium at the back of the hospital. Shanahan would rise at 4.30 am to work out for the last hour before dawn when it was still cool. He practised jumping from a tree stump, the sort of movement he anticipated when dismounting. He built extraordinary strength in his right leg. His only problem was the nerve endings in the stump. Night and day there was pain in a foot, a calf, a knee and half a thigh that did not now exist. It could be excruciating, causing him to wake sweating in the night, swearing that the leg must have grown back. He would throw off his sheet to see that it had not. But none of the nurses in the Abbassia hospital ever heard him complain. He would call for large doses of aspirin, shake his head in bewilderment about his ‘ghost of a leg’, as he called it, and say nothing more. The nurses who looked after him—Sisters Wallace, Brown, Reid and O’Neill—knew he was suffering. They saw the sweat on his sheets and pillow. They heard him cry out in the night while asleep but never when he was awake. They admired his courage and
attitude. His strong character quickly caused him to be their favourite patient. One—Sister O’Neill—was rumoured to have a crush on him.

  Shanahan was buoyed by a steady stream of visitors. His Light Horse companions had little to do beyond patrolling after pushing the Turks out of the Sinai. There would be no attack on the Turkish stronghold of Palestine’s Gaza on the coast until at least the early spring of 1917, so it was back to the ‘phoney war’ of a year earlier. His close mates such as Mulherin and Legg visited every other day. They were allowed to take him into Cairo a few times after he had been in Abbassia for five weeks. He used crutches, his one strong leg serving him well as he hopped along with his mates at the bazaar and haggled with stall owners over food and other items.

  His spirits lifted when he was told that Cath Phelan would visit him in a few days. Shanahan spent the time carving out a miniature wooden doll’s house. It was about thirty centimetres high and included tiny dolls. He had Sister O’Neill create small white and black dresses and tiny red and black hats for them, which replicated her appearance on the two occasions they had met.

  ‘Who is this present for again?’ the big-busted, large-hipped Sister O’Neill asked when it was completed.

  ‘A friend from my early life in Queensland,’ Shanahan replied, as usual giving little away. The gift was wrapped in paper and covered by a silk shawl he had bought in a Cairo market.

  ‘A girlfriend?’ the sister asked, trying to sound casual.

  ‘No, no. She’s engaged to a bloke.’

  Phelan arrived at the Abbassia hospital looking her spectacular self in a loose floral dress, yellow hat and white shoes. She swept up to the front veranda, bringing with her a waft of perfume and a big bunch of flowers. She joined Shanahan and they sat on wicker chairs under an awning that provided shade from the mid-morning heat.

  Phelan handed the flowers to Sister O’Neill, who said frostily: ‘No longer than half an hour, now, please. He’s having too many visitors . . .’

  When she disappeared into the hospital, Shanahan rolled his eyes and said: ‘You can stayer longer if you want. I’m fine.’ He scrutinised her. ‘You’re looking so well.’

  She patted her stomach. ‘Eating too much.’

  ‘Booze puts it on too, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  Before she could say how fit he looked, he handed her the gift. She unwrapped the shawl.

  ‘It’s lovely. I do like the colours!’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  Phelan removed the paper on the doll’s house and examined his handiwork.

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ she said. ‘Where did you get it? The market?’

  ‘I made it.’

  ‘Oh,’ she mouthed, speechless. She reached across and hugged him, kissing him on the lips. Shanahan responded.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ Her eyes welled up. ‘No one . . . no one has given me such a beautiful thing.’

  Shanahan was touched but kept his composure. ‘Don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I’d put the Rolls marginally ahead of this. But thanks for liking it.’

  ‘Like it? I love it!’ She hugged him again.

  Stony-faced Sister O’Neill bustled back and served them tea and biscuits. She tapped her watch.

  ‘Not too long,’ she said with a cold stare at Phelan, ‘not too much excitement.’

  She strode off, her large posterior wobbling with intent. Phelan stifled a giggle.

  ‘She’s wrong,’ he said, ‘I want lots of excitement. Lots of distraction.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said, putting down her tea. ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  Phelan hurried to her car and returned with a carton of books.

  ‘You told me you were a big reader.’

  ‘Great!’ he said, examining some covers. ‘I am devouring one a day in here.’

  They chatted about some of the volumes. She admired the doll’s house again.

  ‘Do you carve things for a hobby?’

  ‘I play around with it when I have time. And it’s in surplus right now.’

  ‘Have you done other things here?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  ‘Aw, they’re not too good.’

  ‘Please?’

  Shanahan sipped his tea.

  ‘Sister!’ he called.

  O’Neill joined them.

  ‘Could you bring me my . . . er . . . carving, please?’

  ‘What? The three of them?’

  ‘No, the last one; the biggest one.’

  O’Neill returned with a wooden horse, which stood at about the height of the doll’s house.

  ‘I know who this is,’ Phelan said, turning it around. ‘It’s Bill the Bastard, and it’s good! I think you shaped the dimensions about right. The big shanks, the long neck.’ She held the sculpture close. ‘That’s his face alright.’

  Shanahan looked embarrassed.

  ‘You miss him, don’t you?’ she said, putting the replica Bill on a chair.

  He sipped his tea. ‘There is no one on him,’ he said, nodding at the sculpture. ‘That’s the way it is.’

  Phelan took out a small hip flask and tipped some whisky into her cup. Shanahan noticed but said nothing.

  ‘Like father, like daughter,’ she said with a grin. They chatted for another fifteen minutes before Shanahan took out a rusted silver fob watch and glanced at it.

  ‘Should I go?’ Phelan asked.

  ‘No, no. Just checking. The sister is strict.’

  As he was speaking, Sister O’Neill’s heavy tread shook the veranda once more.

  ‘We’d love more tea, please,’ Shanahan said, jumping in first. ‘Miss Phelan is staying another half-hour.’

  The sister glared at both of them but dutifully removed the tray with a noisy rattle of cups and plates and left.

  Phelan pointed to his fob watch. ‘I recall you were awarded that for something,’ she said with a frown.

  ‘Your memory is a little scary,’ he said.

  ‘May I see the watch?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It may have an inscription.’

  ‘It was a long time ago, Cath.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  Shanahan detached it from his shirt and handed it to her. She turned it over. There was an inscription on the back, scratched and faded.

  ‘What does it say?’ she asked.

  He shrugged.

  Phelan took out her glasses and held the watch close.

  ‘“To Michael Shanahan . . .”’ she began, squinting, ‘“for courageous . . .” can’t read that word . . . oh, “service . . . to Roma during the floods of . . .”’ She put down the watch and removed her glasses.

  ‘I remember now,’ she said, smiling slowly, ‘you built a boat at the height of the floods. No one had need of boats where we were. You used it to ferry people to safety— hundreds of them!’

  ‘Noah’s minor ark,’ he said.

  ‘Was it big? I recall it as smallish . . .’

  ‘Just bigger than your average dinghy, but it did the job.’

  The tiny and less obtrusive Sister Wallace arrived with fresh tea, having replaced O’Neill. When she had stepped daintily away, Phelan smiled mischievously.

  ‘There was another thing we didn’t discuss when we spoke last,’ she said. ‘I didn’t forget, I was nervous about bringing it up.’

  He waited.

  ‘Just at the time of the Depression in ’93, there was a cattle rustling gang roaming the bush around Roma. The leader was a young buck who wore a handkerchief over his face so he would not be recognised. He and his gang used to steal cattle from the big properties in the region and give them to the poorer folk. He became known as a sort of Robin Hood of the Queensland bush. We heard that this gang was operating until about ’96 or ’97, long after we left Roma for Brisbane.’

  She paused to scrutinise his face. There was not a flicker in it, not even an eyelid blink. He remained his expressionless
self, even more granite-like than usual. She looked away, putting her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun to see if she could spot the pyramids, which shimmered like a mirage in the desert.

  After a moment, she went on: ‘This Robin Hood had a nickname.’ She turned to face him again. ‘He was known as “The Bloke”.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Bloke.’

  ‘Wait a minute, this bloke—this Robin Hood fella— was known as “The Bloke”?’ Shanahan pulled a face. ‘Not much imagination there. He must have been a pretty ordinary sort of cove to get such a flat, dull sobriquet.’

  ‘A sobri what?’

  ‘Sobriquet. Sort of like a nickname but stronger. An epithet.’

  ‘Epi . . . stop there, please! Nickname is enough.’ She bit into a biscuit. ‘You read too much. I shouldn’t bring you so many books.’

  ‘I’m just an uneducated bush lad,’ he said, ‘left Roma State School at fourteen.’

  ‘I’m an overeducated vet who is semi-literate. Too many equine science reports, not enough literature reading.’

  Phelan studied him. ‘One other thing I recall from those early Roma days,’ she said with a frown, ‘you ran for mayor in ’93, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. I was asked to run for mayor. Never ran. Politics was not for me. Besides, I was too raw, too young.’

  ‘You were twenty-three, right?’

  ‘About, yeah.’

  ‘Why do you think there was such a push for you, then?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Sister Wallace reappeared. She stood close to Shanahan and tapped her watch.

  ‘Just a few minutes more, Sister,’ Shanahan said.

  When Sister Wallace had departed, Phelan held his hand. ‘I want to take you to see Bill,’ she said. ‘He’s back at Moascar. I spoke to Banjo yesterday. The Light Horse won’t need him until April.’

  ‘Might not need him at all. I’m told the British infantry will dominate the attack on Gaza.’

  ‘Will you come to Moascar?’

  ‘The medicos are pretty strict. They say I can go to the Cairo markets, and that’s it.’

  ‘Then I’ll take you to the market, say, tomorrow at 11 am?’ Phelan smiled devilishly. ‘Who knows where my lovely car will take us after that?’