Redemption - Leon Uris [270]
Poor bastard Shurhum had to return to the surgery.
I sat with Calvin Norman through the night, breaking into a sort of laughter from time to time at the paradox of it all. Two months ago I was a ha’penny away from murdering him.
Can you imagine?
IV
Chunuk Bair
August 1915
Major Christopher Hubble was happier than a hog wallowing in a ton of tailings. Oh, was the pommy boy in his element! He commanded a mixed bag of troops: a company of Aucklands, a company of Wellingtons, a company of Maoris, a battery of Sikh howitzers, six machine guns, heavy weapons platoon, and the pride of the battalion, Reconn A, a platoon of Canterbury Scouts commanded by his brother, Jeremy. The twelve hundred men of this reinforced battalion were known as the Kiwi All-Blacks in honor of our world championship rugby squad.
The Kiwis held the front line from the Apex to Rhododendron Spur about a half-mile beyond Quinn’s on the other side of the Ravine. Across the Ravine was the Chunuk Bair Plateau, the illusive pot of gold of the entire campaign.
Between the Kiwi All-Blacks’ line and Chunuk Bair, the Ravine lay several hundred feet below and several miles long, creating an impenetrable barrier to our prize of war.
Jeremy Hubble took command of Reconn A, fifty Canterbury Scouts with the most vital of missions. Each night and some days, part or all of Reconn A slipped into the Ravine, partly to contest its possession but mainly to look for some sort of hole or path up to Chunuk Bair Plateau.
The Canterbury Scouts were all South Islanders, like myself, born and raised in hill country. In actual fact, the terrain between the Apex and Chunuk Bair was so much like New Zealand you could barely tell one from the other, except that it was green back there and brown up here.
With Calvin Norman safely gone, Chester and Modi figured they could manage without me. Once more I went around Major General Godley, directly to Brodhead, requesting a transfer to the Kiwi All-Blacks.
“I see that Colonel Malone and Major Hubble have both countersigned this request, Landers. There is a chain of command here, you know. You chaps have been running your own private war ever since Egypt.”
I put on my most sincere face, which Brodhead recognized as that of a confidence man.
“Well, you see, sir,” I said, “if you live in hill country you come to realize that you can always find a hole to slip through. The Ravine has a thousand twists and turns in it through rising and valley ground. After all, sir, I did manage to plot out the trail maps.”
“And you have a fanciful notion you’re going to locate a back door to Chunuk Bair Plateau.”
“If it’s to be found, we’ll find it.”
“You’re such a liar, I’d swear you were Irish,” Brodhead said, approving my transfer. I took the paper with mixed emotions, never having heard that kind of remark from him.
Apparently I was just what jeremy needed. Reconn A needed another officer, a trail man, like myself. We split the platoon in half, making a Reconn B unit and rotated leading patrols into the Ravine.
I spotted a clunky sort of lad, Lance Corporal Willumsen, who turned from human to vampire by night. Willumsen could see better in the dark than in daylight. I kept him on my right wing all the time.
The Turks weren’t too frisky in the Ravine during the day. They didn’t have to be. They had two positions that covered the Ravine floor—Beauchop Hill and the Farm.
By night, however, the Turk had to send in patrols to ward off sneak attacks by ourselves into the foothills of Chunuk Bair.
Willumsen was a fairly new replacement, not yet given to the “Gallipoli gallops” and other infirmities…he was healthy and with a brick-load of strength. We worked his as off. Jeremy would take him into the Ravine one night and me, the next. Each time in, old snake eyes would wiggle his way closer to the bottom of the plateau.
At the end of a week, Willumsen, myself, and fifteen men from Reconn B had settled at the bottom of a steep hill that turned to a cliff directly under Chunuk Bair.
Oh Ma, do we do or