Redemption - Leon Uris [266]
Calvin Norman sawed and stitched his way through most nights with scarcely time to clean himself and his tools between operations.
“Where are you from, lad? Auckland. Ah, I love those hills about Auckland.”
“It’s gone! My arm is gone!”
“Not to scream, lad, it will go hard on your mates.”
About dawn Dr. Shurhum and Dr. Norman and the other chaps could scarcely stand up, but they continued on until their eyes blurred and their hands could no longer be controlled, making the instruments unsafe. Speech slurred. Dr. Norman could no longer give orders properly.
About that time I’d take him out to the beach and put him in the water. Chester always had a clean uniform laid out for him. As the light came up from behind Chunuk Bair I’d tuck Norman in away from the artillery and help empty Widow’s Gully either for the evacuation boat or the…you know…burial at sea.
Bad news comes fast…good news takes its time drifting to Gallipoli. With a new hospital ship going into service, hundreds of men could be saved.
My nightmares had their own nightmares…a lot of blood and limbs…Dr. Norman’s surgery all mixed up with me at Quinn’s Post…and terribly strange dreams of Georgia. Chester hovered over me as if I was a cripple, as if he didn’t have enough to do. See, I became afraid to sleep…but in this place, a man can learn to sleep standing up in twenty-second snatches.
Can you beat it! A day finally arrived, and none too soon, when Norman had no surgery to perform. We repaired to my troglodyte cave and feasted off some tins of staff officers’ cream of potato soup, and, can you believe, salmon, vino, and custard! Well now, either Calvin Norman couldn’t drink much or he was usually too damned tired out to handle alcohol. I decided to get him pissed. He drank again and again and fell back against the wall and closed his eyes.
I knew I would have to listen to his worries and they were not long in coming.
“One of the problems here are the so-called healthy men,” he said. “I’d estimate that in Anzac as a whole, man for man, each soldier is only operating at fifty percent of his strength. They are skin and bones and open to anything these bloody flies and lice are carrying in. How strong are you now, Landers?”
“Fifty percent.”
“Well, I suppose the Turks are pretty weak as well, although they have access to wheat and meat.”
“How do you feel when you operate on a Turk?” I asked.
“I feel I have to work twice as hard to save him.”
“Aye…. Here, good fucking wine. French.”
“I’m making some bad decisions every night,” he babbled. “Sometimes, just before I put them under and their eyes plead to me, I already know he’s gone and it comes to me that someone is going to get a cable the next day in Sydney or Wellington….”
“Now, you listen to me, Doctor.”
“You can call me Doctor. I don’t scare you, do I, Landers?”
“How’s a man standing on his feet for twenty hours saving lives going to scare anyone?”
“But that’s the point, old man. I’ve spent an entire lifetime making myself feared,” he growled. “I don’t have any friends. I never did. Precision surgery was always my credential for respect. Alexandria was a puff of pastry. In a month I was the only surgeon there good enough to take out the plumbing of the officers’ wives.”
“Well, you’re making up for lost time here.”
“Here? I came to Gallipoli for the wrong reason. What are we eating? It’s good.”
“Some of the General’s caviar. What’s so good about this stuff?” I pondered.
“Well…let me think…it’s better than bully beef.”
“Shit is better than bully beef.”
“Bully beef is shit,” he said. “Speaking of shit. How are Dr. Modi’s bowels these days?”
“He’s chipper as a baby.”
I was never that partial to wine, but I must say it was bestowing its benefits on both of us.
“Bet you can’t wait to get back to Christchurch after the war,” I said, knowing what I was leading into.
“Not going back,” he said.
“London, then. A top-of-the-line clinic.”