Redemption - Leon Uris [253]
Again and again the Turks emptied the gullies. Now they came from another direction down from the Chessboard. Our troops, over the valley at Russell’s Top, hit them in their flanks.
Now the Turk appeared like a herd of stampeding cattle over Dead Man’s Ridge.
“Allah Akbar!”
Jesus, three bloody prongs coming at Quinn’s. Were there enough bullets in the British arsenal to halt them? Some were able to get within touching distance of our trench, some fell on the antigrenade sheeting and crashed down into us.
My field of fire took a queer change. At first it had been wide open. Now, it was filled with corpses that slowed down the advancing Turks. The Turks had to climb mounds of bodies, slipping in their own blood, then making targets of themselves as they stood erect. Their charge in front of me became very confused.
It was a big battle raging on a front two miles long but it was a tiny battle, as it is for every soldier. All I had to do was take care of what was in front of me and watch my comrades on my flanks. These are the grand minutiae of war, tiny windows. If my squad and I held our ground and our flanks and everyone else did, they’d not break us.
My machine gun began smoking and jammed. The water in the jackets had boiled. Shit! I picked up a rifle and fired until it burned the palms of my hands, then picked up another.
On the Turks came!
A breech in Monash’s line! He called for a battalion at Angel’s Haven Spa to come and plug it up. Runner in from the Aussies. Bayonet fight with the Turks at the breech. A second reserve battalion went up.
The Turks branched off and went after Pope’s Hill, a small but vital observation post. How many guns at Pope’s? Not enough. Malone dispatched a platoon to Pope’s. Only half of them got through but the post held.
Abdul charged at us unabated for nearly seven hours until the sun began to fall into the Aegean. The night was flooded with flares. One more charge and the battle slowed to a trickle….
Runner from Monash. Their line was straightened and held. They were bleeding with casualties. We had reached very deep into our reserves but Monash had to have them. His line was thin.
Quinn’s Post had held! The cost was seventy-five percent casualties. Over half our weapons had burned out from overfiring.
Quick, Malone ordered, get new weapons and ammo out of the dumps behind the trenches.
Our dead had turned the trench floor into ankle-deep blood-mud. The night was amoan from the cries of thousands of wounded out in no-man’s-land. We made a try to bring some lads in, but it was impossible. They were totally intertwined with corpses, ours and the Turks’, and any illuminated movement in no-man’s-land drew instant fire.
A few men managed to crawl back to our trench. We took them in—Kiwis, Aussies, Turks.
Yurlob and Modi brought mule trains as close as they dared, and throughout the night came up Monash Valley and carried the wounded down into Widow’s Gully for daylight evacuation.
By midnight the dead had been removed from the trenches, reinforcements and supplies set in place, and we grabbed a quick, delicious meal of bully beef shit and hard biscuits, a fitting belly-warming dinner for the working lad.
My own anxiety level dropped to a point where I realized that my hands were blistering from burns from the gun barrels and I was bleeding from my sides. Christ, I had taken some bayonet cuts. No use using up a medic on me. They had their hands full. Can I tell you, I was aching so much all over I could hardly feel the pain of stitching myself up.
Happy Stevens, Dan Elgin, Spears, and I often got separated during the day up at Quinn’s but always gathered near Malone’s dugout come evening.
I could hear the Squire complaining to me…“Rory, you get into a punch-up just because there’s a punch-up to get into, whether it’s yours or not.” I had no business on the line and I fucking threw away the lives of my friends.
“Colonel Malone wants to see you,” a runner said.
Colonel Monash and Malone were ending a meeting as