Redemption - Leon Uris [272]
Under dark, the ships of the Suvla Bay Corps would get into place and anchor.
At 0230 the Navy would hit the entire Turkish line including the Chunuk Bair Plateau. Whatever Turkish troops were up there were bound to drop behind the plateau until the shelling stopped. However, we would be climbing up at that point to beat them to the plateau at dawn.
At dawn, our entire line would attack. Aussies in the south would make their main attacks at the German Officers’ Trench and across a narrow ridge called the Nek. These were diversionary attacks to pin down a large Turkish force and draw Turkish reserves to them.
The British Tenth, Eleventh, Fifty-third, and Fifty-fourth divisions, known as the Suvla Corps, would land unopposed at Suvla Bay and immediately push a mile or two inland and capture Ridge 269.
At the same time, the Kiwi All-Blacks would occupy Chunuk Bair Plateau, and Kiwi and the Suvla Bay Corps would connect lines.
Colonel Malone would then release several brigades of New Zealanders to cross the Ravine and reinforce us atop Chunuk Bair.
The Aussie would link up with our flank from the south.
We’d dig in by night.
On the second day, the Turks would counterattack, but troops from the Suvla Corps would continue to land and reinforce our lines.
We left Corps feeling exalted. It was your basic bread-and-butter plan. I was wondering whether or not we had enough stamina, guts, vinegar, and what have you to make the march, the climb, and then still be able to throw back the Turks.
Well, we’d soon find out.
No one knew the back of our lines better than my good self, so I led Reconn B down behind Rhododendron Spur. Colonel Malone kept Lance Corporal Willumsen alongside him as though he were a St. Christopher medal.
Although we should be out of sight of Turkish eyes, we traversed friendly terrain behind the lines with great caution. If we met an enemy patrol, Reconn B was to chase them off before they could get a look at the entire battalion. We played it tight, using this time to tape up anything rattling on the web belts and practice speaking through hand signals and semaphore. Reconn B moved a few yards at a time from safe point to safe point. Within an hour or two, it became like a dance. I was at the head of the line for this part of the journey….
By afternoon you couldn’t hear a sound. I watched at every stop to see that we weren’t giving off telltale dust. Nothing. Lovely…lovely.
At dark we stopped briefly under Beauchop Hill where a store of water had been laid in. It was brought down to us and we refilled our canteens and kept moving.
I held up the line! Fucking Turks were creeping down a dry river bed…God, they could wake up a dead man…I called for us to lay low and only fire after I gave the first shot…and I didn’t give the first shot until they were close enough to eat our lunch…
They never knew what hit them. We crept from body to body making certain they were dead. It had to be done by bayonet so as not to make any further noise.
I went back to Malone and suggested we hold up the line for forty minutes. Sometimes the Turks doubled up on their patrols, with the second one larger than the first. Nothing came.
We moved out, still in good time.
The colors of dawn found the Kiwi All-Blacks strung out on the banks of a dry river bed called Australia Valley. We were still behind our own lines but very observable.
Being a dry gulch, the river bed had good high brush on either side. The officers went up and down the line adjusting the men so we would have the day in cover and shade.
I gave Malone the best of the cover for his headquarters, a sort of temple of five boulders that had probably rolled down the hill a million years ago. He was an inspiring sight, indeed. After we made rounds we reported to him that we were satisfied Kiwi could not be seen by the enemy.
How can I say it? He was Wellington New Zealand-Auckland New Zealand-South Island-Milford Sound-Palmerston North….
He was the kind of man, like Uncle Wally, who shook your