Redemption - Leon Uris [279]
If the pain of it, the worthlessness of it, and aye, the godlessness of it consumes me for the rest of my days, as it will many men, then I have not honored the death of my beloved comrades.
Modi explained so clearly that he went to Palestine to honor the death of his wife and child by realizing their dreams for them.
And so I must honor my comrades’ deaths by living a full life…live it with and for them…name children after them…see the green of New Zealand for them.
Modi and Chester told me to open my dreams up to finding Georgia. She was alive and real. She must be the hope.
Even with these two souls of compassion, the fight for my own survival was frightening and I asked Conor Larkin to help me.
I did not know Shelley MacLeod. I had learned of his love for her from his letters to me. The letters stopped after Sixmilecross. The news of Shelley’s death came from Father Dary. Conor was in prison and had just taken a cat-o’-nine-tails lashing when he learned of her murder.
Knowing Conor, he must have blamed himself for her death or, at the very least, the two of them were certainly partners in a death vow.
And Conor’s guilt? Now there’s a man who must have suffered no less than the savior on the cross.
I asked him for some of his strength. Conor had survived the most foul and brutal of all human experiences. He came through it, God knows how, and he made a decent and important life, useful and worthy to his last breath.
More important than all else was that he found it within himself to be able to love again. This Atty Fitzpatrick must have been a wonderment to get through to him.
I clung to Conor…and Modi…and Chester…and I demanded of myself not to let Gallipoli take me down.
Lieutenant General Brodhead kept me around Corps. His own shield had been pierced. He was in a sort of funk either over his mistakes or the heavy losses or both.
Why me? Brodhead had had a very special relationship with Christopher Hubble, older brother, father-son, what have you. Chris had done a lot of black work for the General from Ireland to Gallipoli. I think the General had come to depend on Chris enormously. Generalship is a lonely place. Confidants are golden nuggets. Had all gone well, Christopher Hubble was due to come out of the war as one of the youngest brigadiers in British history and, in a sense, Brodhead’s legacy.
I certainly did not have that closeness of Ulster, the military tradition, the station that those two had, but he liked my ways and some of my fairly good results. I found him chatting me up about the promise of a bright future and felt that he was going to ask me to become his aide.
I did not harbor hatred for him. His terrible tactical and battlefield decisions were those of a general whose wars had been fought in the last century. He did not understand how to send men against machine guns. They marched in grenadier lines to be mowed down like wheat.
He was a personally courageous man, rather well liked by the troops, whose hardships he shared. He did the best he could for Anzac after being put into an impossible position, against his better judgment.
With myself at Corps, carrying top clearance and admission to the secured message center, I was able to pick up on the furor in the aftermath of the Suvla Bay landing.
Admiral Jack Fisher, the top naval officer of the Imperial Navy, had flipped and flopped several times over Gallipoli and finally resigned in protest.
Fisher’s resignation forced Churchill to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty.
General Darlington, commander of the Mediterranean theatre, was relieved of his command.
General Stopford of Suvla Bay Corps was fired, as were his division commanders and staff.
The Asquith government fell and a coalition cabinet was formed to conduct the balance of the war.
Brodhead’s probable fate was that he might well not be considered for another field command, a devastating blow to him.
As the shock and scandal of Gallipoli raged and the inquiries began, Keith Murdock, the Australian journalist, rocked the empire with his exposure of what had been