Читать книгу The Desert Column - Ion Idriess - Страница 11

May 30th—It does not seem possible! A few hundred yards distant from this hurtling bombardment comes the command: “Slope Arm-ms!” “Or-der Arm-ms!” etc. Drilling men on a battlefield! Surely those in command have not gone mad?

...There was bitter fighting at Quinn’s Post last night. Seventy stretcher-bearers are carrying our dead and wounded down from the trenches. ... Just now we heard a riotous hullabaloo, and jumping from our dugouts saw a hare racing across a sandy hillock. All hands cheered the hare; they yelled and laughed. It must have thought us queer folk ... Things are quiet now ... A man was just shot dead in front of me. He was a little infantry lad, quite a boy, with snowy hair that looked comical above his clean white singlet. I was going for water. He stepped out of a dugout and walked down the path ahead, whistling. I was puffing the old pipe, while carrying a dozen water-bottles. Just as we were crossing Shrapnel Gully he suddenly flung up his water-bottles, wheeled around, and stared for one startled second, even as he crumpled to my feet. In seconds his hair was scarlet, his clean white singlet all crimson.

...Last night the Turks exploded a mine under Quinn’s Post. I thought the whole dashed hill had blown up. We sprang from our dugouts with bayonets drawn, expecting God knows what to come howling down upon us. But it was only one of those “local” affairs. It is all damned local. It depends just on what particular “local” spot a man happens to be. But what a lovely sensation, to go to sleep and wake up on top of an exploding mine!

A lot of poor chaps up at the Post were killed. The Turks threw hundreds of bombs into the shattered trench; distant though we were we could hear their howling “Allahs!” as they charged in the roarings of the explosions. The survivors of the Post were driven back into the support trenches to the fanatical delight of the Turks. But our supports and the survivors united and went over the top with bomb and bayonet and mad Australian strength and cut the Turks to pieces in the very frenzy of their victory.

...We hear now that the Turkish loss in last night’s little “local” fight was fifteen hundred. Out of a portion of the trench occupied by one company alone of the 15th Battalion they have just dragged fifty-nine bayoneted Turks. Between the Post and the first Turkish trenches, the enemy dead lie in huddled heaps.

...These little destroyers amuse me. One particularly cheeky spitfire sneaks close inshore to suddenly whip around and blaze away at the Turkish batteries like a fiery terrier barking at a big dog hiding behind a fence. The noise of her guns is bigger than herself.

...Fifty of our men were killed at Quinn’s Post last night, including Captain Quinn. But the heaps of Turkish dead lying between the trenches proved their sacrifice to Allah to be in vain.

...Firing is very subdued today. During breakfast we watched two big ‘planes being shelled by the Turks. As usual they could not hit them.

Sunday afternoon—Our guns have started a lively bombardment. The Turkish reply sounds condescending. The rifles are cracking from the trenches now. I wonder if an attack is anticipated. Rumour has it that the English and French have captured the big hill Achi Baba, which bombards us so heavily. But it is only a rumour. ... The rifle-fire is running the crescent circle of trenches for miles. Sounds like an attack. The bombardment is furious now; screeching devils burst above us every few seconds. Columns of smoke and earth are flying skyward as if the land were vomiting under the high explosive. Smoke-clouds are drifting over the warships down on the bay. The thunder of their broadsides crashes against the shore and is blasted back over the intensely blue sea. And yet with all this whining death about us there are actually a few men out of their dugouts tending their cooking-fires. No wonder the Turks call us the “mad bushmens.”

...A mine has exploded up in the trenches, its echoes are still rolling over the hills. Brigades of machine-guns are stuttering as if coughing their hearts out. The cooking enthusiasts have ducked. Two shells burst immediately above them. My appetite has gone. ... The Turk’s sharp-pointed bullets have a peculiarly piercing sound, especially when they land only a few feet away. They seem to split up then and hiss away to hell. ... A man lying flat in his dugout under heavy shell-fire feels so pathetically helpless; the deep, coughing grunts of the shells as they crash down from the heavens turn his belly to water, it does mine, anyway. When a blasted shell comes screaming in that tearing way they have when they are going to burst very close, I feel I have no belly at all and in imagination draw my knees up to my chin, in nerve tingling anticipation. But I don’t move at all, just lie perfectly still and “freeze,” waiting.

...I have just had a narrow escape: a shrapnel-bullet has grazed my right knee. Only a scratch ... The firing is easing down.

May 31st—Last night my troop and A troop were called out for trench-digging. My knee was too stiff for me to go. If my troop goes into the trenches without me it will be just too miserable: I want to be in the first fight the 5th are in. I don’t care so very much afterwards.

...Six of our crowd were shot yesterday. It is damned hard our getting picked off like this and not being able to fire a shot in return ... Last night they buried a few of our fellows and a lot of Turks who were killed yesterday afternoon. ... There has been a big explosion out at sea. The destroyers are racing towards it, their sides awash with foam. I hope no more of our ships have been torpedoed ... We are detailed for the trenches this afternoon, and I am sick.

...Occasional shells have been coming and going throughout the day. Corporal “Noisy” was badly wounded yesterday. Poor Noisy, he was the regimental comedian. The doctor is making me stay behind for a day or two. As the regiment is only going sapping after all, I do not mind. I hope my blooming knee has not got this septic poisoning the doctor is always warning us about.

June 1st—I have just watched a poor devil of an infantryman being carried down on a stretcher. Half his face was shot away and he was trying to sing “Tipperary.” And yet, here I am lying in my dugout, in no pain, fretting like a great kid because I could not march off with the regiment. My blooming knee is now poisoned. The 7th Light Horse took over our dugouts during the early hours of the morning. I hobbled to the 7th doctor this morning and when I returned someone had pinched my poor supply of jam. The world seemed a dinkum hard place. I complained to the man in the next dugout that they might have left a sick man’s jam alone. He has shared his dinner with me. He has two onions; I have a tin of beef, He is going to fry them to-night and we are going halves. He is going to keep my water-bottle filled. If he gets shot I think I will nearly howl. I cannot boil tea—can’t even crawl now to find the wood—and steel biscuits with water and salt tinned beef is no cure for a poisoned leg. Things are very quiet. Only a few stray shells passed today ... The Turks are just beginning to shrapnel us again.

...We have just witnessed a shameful, horrible thing. Part of the infantry next to us consistently drill their men on a tiny plot of flat ground fronting their dugouts, even when the shells are falling only a few hundred yards, and less, away, and when they know that we are right under the glasses of the Turkish artillery observation posts. Such tragic idiocy, drilling soldiers on a battlefield that is night and day under fire! It is what we call a “Gawk Act.” A shell has burst right amongst the thickly packed lines and six of the poor fellows are hit, two down, two being carried, and two limping for their dugouts. Others are hit who can get away. Another shell has burst while they were carrying one poor wretch in. The little patch of “Parade Ground” was torn up by the bullets, just as a dusty road by a fury of hailstones. Another shell has burst above the ground but they are all away now. One poor fellow is crying out in agony. It was a case of sheer murder. The officers responsible should be shot like mad dogs.

...I have had such a splendid tea. Tinned beef mixed with onions and fried in bacon fat; biscuits and cheese; biscuits and jam, and hot tea. Even some mustard which my good Samaritan pinched from a transport. If only I had a match to light the pipe! My rugged friend is short of matches himself and I have not the heart to hint that I would like one.

...I wish my leg would get better. I can’t even hobble about now. It’s a bit miserable lying here of nights. No sleep, and all my mates away. The stars twinkle ever so high up.

June 2nd—Tragedy visited us last night. The roof of a large dugout fell in and smothered three men. They are holding the burial service now. It is something unusual. The infantry are standing about in quiet groups, listening. I think these three are the first of all the poor fellows buried here to the strains of “Nearer My God to Thee.”

...I felt it would have to come. I am down at the beach at the Ambulance Hospital and this afternoon have to go off to the hospital-ship. The ambulance men say thirteen of the infantry were struck by that shrapnel yesterday, four being killed. It was sheer murder on the part of the officers responsible!

...A great crowd of us are on the minesweeper now. One man, whose body and arm are a mass of bandages is affording much amusement to all by trying to eat his slice of bread and jam with only a third of his mouth visible; the hole is hardly big enough to blow away the flies.

...I feel strangely sick and feverish. My troop leader, Mr McLaughlin, is sick aboard too. We have been swapping tales of misery. It is amusing in a way; if only there was not so much pain about. ... The ambulance men on the boat are kind and gentle: one is making me a bed on the deck now. There is such a crowd of wounded everywhere.

...I am getting a bit of ease at last, thank heaven! There’s one thing strikingly noticeable about this shipload of misery—I suppose every man growls, but almost every one growls only to himself. My safety valve is in this diary. It keeps my mind surprisingly occupied. And besides, if I really live through this war. I want to read through the old diary in after years, and remember what war was really like—as I saw it, anyway.

...The officers on this boat cannot do enough for us. Sometimes I feel miserable watching them trying hard to help the poor maimed chaps, and they have got nothing to help them with. They wear partly khaki and partly naval togs. Why are wounded men dumped on a naval boat? I suppose the two big hospital-ships are full up.