Redemption - Leon Uris [265]
His second asset was a sensitivity that made him rail at incompetence, no matter what rank it carried on its shoulders. Chester tore into officers to get their asses moving and, at Lemnos, colonels froze in fear of his wrath.
In due course he demanded that Major General Godley fire his top-ranking quartermaster, a light colonel, and in the showdown, Godley meekly complied. I must say I could not have been more proud than when he became First Lieutenant Goodwood. Can you imagine? He still was not big enough to support his own beard.
Finally, Christopher Hubble got his long-held dream, a battalion to command under Colonel Malone. It was a mixed bag of troops, under the esoteric designation of First Kiwi.
Jeremy had done the beach long enough. He caught the fever and was transferred up to First Kiwi where he was given the scout platoon known as Reconn A.
To be factually honest, Modi could run the paddock in a yawn. Over time we had developed a couple dozen packers and trail masters who could handle the operation, including the Palestinian Jews and the Sikhs.
I therefore put in my own request to join the First Kiwi and used my weight with Brodhead to get the request directly to him. I was stunned when it was denied. I went to Colonel Markham, about as pommy as Christopher Hubble, and “requested” to know why.
At first Markham diddled with me, saying that as a man who was potentially going to be decorated, it would be better if I did not get shot up. Well, that’s no reason, and I let him know it. He gave up and showed me my request for transfer. There was an attached sheet and notation. Subaltern Landers would have utmost value to my unit in assisting with the wounded. It was signed Lieutenant Colonel Calvin Norman.
What were the gods trying to tell me? Truth be known, as the paddock ran on automatic, I had become inexorably drawn to Widow’s Gully, getting his surgery constructed, and doing a number of things requiring the common sense generally lacking among the staff officers.
Somehow I decided not to protest, knowing deep down I could make off to the front lines if I really cared to.
What I did was run the overall movement of the place…seeing that supplies got in for the surgery…carving out places where the wounded would be most safe and comfortable…using Turks around the clock to clean the area…keeping the floor of the surgery free of blood…moving amputated arms and legs to the garbage barge on a path that those waiting for surgery could not see them…working with Chester for extremely swift and smooth evacuations…sitting with the odd chap who particularly needed my hand as he was bleeding to death…keeping fresh uniforms supplied for Norman and his surgeons and teams….
I can’t even start to tell you, but there was a lot to do and I must say I found a real reason for being.
Every day Dr. Norman would select out fifty to a hundred most in need for surgery and divide them up among his surgeons. Down in the gully he would look them over, lying there like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse, and he’d tag them…some for death…some for evacuation without surgery…some for surgery.
He and the other doctors operated under beastly conditions, the floor under them always gone slippery from blood as the Turks mopped up bucketfuls under their feet as they operated.
The big room resembled a coal mine cave: badly lit, smelly, poorly ventilated, the fly netting constantly in need of repair…bloody guns always banging nearby….
It might sound diabolical but I learned more about humanity here than I knew existed. You see, here was the stuff of my people, the New Zealanders, and the Aussies as well. We tried to instill a single hard rule telling the wounded that we would all fare better if they could bear their pain in silence.
Screaming and yelling and thrashing about would only upset the other men and make it ten times more difficult for the surgeons. Maggots were put on rotting flesh to eat away the infection, rubber bits were clamped on the men’s teeth. There was a steady moan