Redemption - Leon Uris [256]
But the corpses had locked into one another with rigor mortis. We tried grappling hooks and ropes, but arms and legs and heads pulled off.
After another high-level meeting it was decided that a common grave be dug right down the center of no-man’s-land and all bodies—Turk, Kiwi, Aussie, Ghurka, Maori, German—be put into a common grave and covered with lime.
We exchanged identification tags and personal possessions, both sides agreeing not to strip for souvenirs and wallets. Miraculously I got the tags of all three of my men and the wallet of Happy Stevens…of Palmerston North.
We and the Turks dug alongside each other, traded cigarettes, rations, mementos. Nobody seemed pissed at anyone, but more ashamed than anything else. I think a couple of the enemy even traded addresses…for after the war.
The diggers rotated every few moments, some going back to puke their guts out. When the lime was spread the predators were pissed off. Some of the smell went away. It would fade from our noses after they had turned to skeletons…it would never fade from our brains.
We had killed over five thousand Turks and there were a couple thousand of our dead. Along with the wounded on both sides, the battle had cost nearly twenty-five thousand casualties.
When the dirt was thrown over the lime and the site patted down with shovel backs to clear new fields of fire, we shook hands with the Turks, returned to our trenches, and waited for 1800, when a flare from both sides signaled that it was all right to start shooting again.
I stayed with Colonel Malone for as long as I could. Through him. Through the incredible silence of his suffering I began to regain my own strength and sense of duty.
At last Jeremy came up to Quinn’s to personally escort me back to Mule Gully. He and Chester and Modi took me to the beach, got me deloused and Jaysus, I got to take off my shoes again. No matter how much you are hurting, taking off the shoes and putting the feet in the water must have been what Jesus felt when he was baptized.
I slept for thirty hours.
When I awakened, Major Chris was sitting opposite me. “Well, you’ve vacationed at Quinn’s resort long enough,” he said.
“Colonel Malone said that if you could spare me, he’d like to have me as his aide.”
“Sorry. Yurlob is quite ill.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Dysentery. I think it’s starting to kill more of our people than the Turks.”
“Yeah, I should stay here.”
“Goodo. We’ve lost a lot of mules, as well.”
“Maybe Yurlob will go back to Lemnos, now,” I said.
“I ordered him back. I think sometimes you colonials don’t believe you have to take our orders.”
I know he meant that as black humor, but there was too much of the old Christopher Hubble twinkling in his voice.
“We’ve a long way to go here yet,” he continued.
That got my attention and my clenched teeth got his attention.
“Why don’t you just come out and say it, Landers?”
“Who am I to argue with the brilliant minds who put us on Gallipoli?”
“Llewelyn Brodhead was not one of them,” Chris said, stunningly. “He protested this entire expedition. Generals do not get to choose their commands. He has fought tooth and nail for the Anzac and he has refused to leave Gallipoli because he believes he can do the best job for us.”
Do I say it? Do I shut up? I do not doubt Brodhead’s courage or his resolve or his standing with his troops. But something is fucked up in this command. A thousand men could have been saved by a simple howitzer barrage executed at the right moment. Fortunately for the general he has a cast-iron stomach when it comes to needlessly killing his men. That’s part of the unique credentials a general has to have to be a general—to divorce himself from the consequences of his decisions over life and death. If you’re wrong…well, “Carry on, old chaps.” Somewhere