Redemption - Leon Uris [232]
“Tarbox,”
“Sir.”
“You’ll be in the second boat with Landers and Goodwood. You are to take over as beach master using the other half of the platoon. The Anzac assault troops will be carrying three to five days of ammunition, food, and water. New supplies will be landing right behind you. The beach will belong to you and Jeremy, get it organized.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Landers and Goodwood. Second wave, second day. You two find us our paddock area, stake it out, get back to the beach, and have Jeremy bring the platoon up to lay out barbed wire perimeters. Obviously, we want as much cover as we can for the paddock, and get it as close to the beach as is safely possible.
“I will land late on day two or early on day three and set up battalion headquarters. The mule barges will land on day five. Questions, gentlemen?”
“The British Twenty-ninth drives up from Cape Helles, while we drive across the peninsula,” I said. “I take it we hook up.”
“Yes, here, below Chunuk Bair Plateau. Chunuk Bair is the key bastion on Gallipoli. We hope to consolidate our forces by the sixth or seventh day, organize an attack, and take Chunuk Bair Plateau, say, on the eighth or ninth day. Once that strongpoint falls, the peninsula is ours and the way to Constantinople is open. So, in fact, the Anzac is to act as a diversion, a thorn in the Turk’s side.”
“What is north of Brighton Beach?” the Company C Captain asked. “The map is terribly vague.”
“I agree we haven’t gotten the best of intelligence. We’ve also tried to photograph from aircraft. I have a set of pictures here but find them hard to understand. I can say this much. North of Brighton Beach and inland to Chunuk Bair is very difficult terrain-ravines, gullies, cliffs, etcetera, etcetera. This is where the bulk of the Turkish defenses are expected. That is precisely why we are landing south, in relatively flat ground, to catch the Turks by surprise.”
There were many questions, and most answers fell into the “We don’t know for certain,” “Our best estimates,” “We feel confident.” How many Turks? Perhaps four divisions. They are not considered to be first-rate troops.
I personally did not like the underestimation of the Turks. Maybe that’s what they always say of one’s enemy before battle. The Turks were experienced. Except for a few of our units, we were all untried, green, raw, without a day of combat. The Turks would be fighting on Turkish soil. They were up there and we would be down here and no matter…sooner or later Chunuk Bair plateau had to be taken.
Maybe I worry too damned much, I don’t know. I used to drive the Squire crazy with my mania for detail.
When I finally got to stretch out and think, the unreality of what we are about to do hit me. It would be easy enough for a Frenchman to say why he was in a trench on the Western Front, but why were people going wild with war fever in Auckland and Sydney? It was because of the Empire that we became enemies of the Turks, yet our kinship with Empire, our love of King, was mild stuff.
The big adventure, that’s the ticket. Get off our wee islands and see the big world. There was a war to go to, so why not go while the going is good.
Georgia had had enough of war. She knew war. We only imagined war. Maybe you go to war just because it’s there to go to and you haven’t the slightest idea what it’s really all about.
One thing was for certain. All of us—Jeremy, Johnny, Chester—had to show one another that we were capable of what might come. This became an ultimate goal—to come through clean for your mates. That’s the mesh that makes the machine go, belief in the man on your right and your left.
Men had been caught up in this queer phenomenon in this very place three thousand years ago or some such. An armada launched by the face of a woman—but who owned the Trojan horse this time, us or the Turks?
I went over my coming day’s work one more time. Maybe I was overdoing it, but I put a pair of semaphore flags and a Very pistol and a pair of