Redemption - Leon Uris [237]
I brought my lads together. “We’re hunting for a gully or ravine north by east, say at twenty degrees to forty degrees, or like one o’clock if that knob of land is noon. I’ll move in twenty-yard bursts, more or less. Chester is always in sight at my rear. You are twenty yards behind.”
It was the most fucking miserable day of my life. No one had warned us that the sun shot the temperature up over a hundred degrees, even in the springtime. There wasn’t much in the way of firefights, but the day was spent crawling on our bellies. We must have been in a line of fire from Chunuk Bair into what was supposed to be Brighton Beach. Shit! Had we landed on the true Brighton, we’d be beyond their fire.
I couldn’t go too fast because the lads behind me were packing a fair load. I wanted to drop my jacket but the rock and underbrush would have ripped my flesh to pieces.
At one time or another we all came close to fainting from the heat. I had to keep telling them, “Easy on the water, lads, easy on the water.”
Each gully was either in Turkish gun sights or had a ridge sticking up in the air exposing us to the skyline.
SHIT, NO! GODDAMN SONOFABITCH!
We were huddled in safe shade when our entire field started blowing apart! Our own destroyers were shooting us up. As we scattered for better cover I saw O’Rourke go…in God only knows how many pieces.
It seemed like a year before the assholes stepped their fire farther up the hill.
It was closing in on our witching hour. One more exposed hillside to crawl, our fourth gully. Either this would be the one or we’d have to call it a day.
Lord! It was almost like looking at the Promised Land from across the River Jordan. The gully below took a weird U-shaped turn with the end of it running down to the beach at an off-angle. We gathered up and counted shells landing in the area. Only one in five minutes, that was off the side walls. We could live with that.
“Happy.”
“Yo.”
“It’s too late to set the barbed wire down, but get down to the beach and tell Hubble where we’re at. He’s to be here at the crack of.”
It ran through my mind that we could all go back, but I didn’t like the top of the ravine. It was too wide open. Hell…I don’t know. I didn’t like it that there were none of our troops above us here…the Turks could just maybe slip into the ravine….
“Take off, Happy.”
“Elgin, Spears, Chester. I like that indent about halfway up the ravine wall. Let’s set up the machine gun there.”
How in the hell with all those thousands of men shooting millions of rounds did anyone leave this ravine open? We set up the machine gun so that if anyone came into the middle of the ravine we’d catch them broadside.
I got a craving feeling in my stomach. I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten for over twenty hours. I’d heard bitching about the rations, but on this very day nothing ever tasted so good. That would change over time.
As the firing went from dusk into darkness we moved to get a better look at the sea. There seemed to be more chaos than ever. I didn’t like the looks of the water. It was filled with bobbing bodies.
Elgin and Spears were on the gun. Chester and I had our first minutes to reflect. I found a leaning rock, put my back against it, and directed abuse at myself. I hadn’t made myself very proud this day.
“Forget it,” Chester said, reading my mind.
“I didn’t know myself,” I whispered.
“And I didn’t have Johnny Tarbox’s brains and blood all over me. You were back in control within a minute.”
“That’s not what I mean, Chester. Not that I haven’t been scared in my life. The worst fear I’d known before today was realizing I’d never see Georgia again. But I was totally frozen in terror when Johnny got hit. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Jesus, I didn’t know anything like this existed.”
And I was going to take care of Chester today, make certain he didn’t become freaky. He went through the day like a Sunday stroll in the botanical