Redemption - Leon Uris [240]
By early evening I learned that there were no proper hospital facilities aboard the troopships. It seems that all the Red Cross transports were in service in the English Channel taking men back from the Western Front. We were using cattle boats here with virtually no medical personnel or equipment aboard. Some ships were making for Lemnos, others for Alexandria.
I don’t know how many men I loaded that day…maybe fifty…maybe a hundred boatloads. I was so soggy with their blood, their bodies continually oozing and slipping through my hands.
Chester found me. A perimeter had been established at the head of what was now Mule Gully with two infantry companies digging in to protect it.
We found Jeremy on the beach, somehow managing to keep a line of order in the chaos.
“Let’s take a bath,” I said.
We couldn’t take our boots off, the sea was too filled with sharp-edged bits of lava, and it was equally difficult to find a clean pool of water away from the blood and slime. We came out of the sea sticky. Then, my second delicious tin of bully beef and hard biscuits.
The Major had set up a fairly decent little cave for battalion headquarters in the hillside. “We’ve ten to twelve thousand more men ashore in this sector,” he announced. “They’re forming a line up there as best they can. Seems to be lots of open spots. How’s the beach, Jeremy?”
“Reasonable. We have our boxes sorted out, more or less, and know about where to send the new units up.”
“Rough paddock is ready,” Chester said.
“The mules will be coming in another day,” I said. “Right now we haven’t got the slightest idea of where to dispatch them. I’d like to go out with a squad tomorrow and find our front lines and figure out the best route to each major post.”
“Good.”
Just like that, Major General Alexander Godley was standing over us in a semicircle of officers. We limped to our feet.
“What have we here?” Godley asked, not even knowing Major Hubble!
“Christopher Hubble, sir, Mule Transportation Battalion. We’re making headquarters in this hill and we’ve set out a barbed wire fence for the paddock, right over there.”
“You’re the one who put those men stationed at the head of the gully?”
“Yes, sir…”
“Next time, get permission from me.”
With no more, no less, he stomped off.
Captain Paul, the battalion executive officer, a ruddy farmer from Mataura, grunted his way in looking a bit shaky. “News from Cape Helles,” Paul said. “The first wave landed and took up the left flank, meeting no resistance. Instead of pushing inland till they engaged the Turks, they sat on the beach and had tea.”
“What!”
“The Twenty-ninth Division landed on the right flank. The Turks are cutting them to pieces.”
II
Quinn’s Post
I learned that some officers submerged while other officers and enlisted men took charge. I knew clearly what my job and territory was and acted as though I had the authority. What I needed, I took. More and more folks thought me hard and I didn’t bother to correct them.
I discovered that Happy Stevens of Palmerston North was a fabulous artist and confiscated him as well as Spears and Dan Elgin and the Vickers gun. I needed to lay out route maps from the beach to frontline posts in the next week or two and these men would make a sweet team.
Where were the goddamned mules? One day late and counting. I had told Modi to round up as many boats as he could with lowering ramps in the front to get the animals ashore more easily. Big sigh of relief as I saw a line of drop ramps heading into Anzac Cove.
Elgin, Happy, and Spears were standing by. As each boat unloaded they were to take the handlers and mules to Mule Gully and into the enclosure. Chester was at my side to go to the gully with Modi and show him where we were going to stash the gear and generally how the paddock was going to operate.
Shyte! We were at low tide and the first boat hit a sandbar twenty feet from the beach. The mules didn’t want to go into the surf. As their