Читать книгу The Desert Column - Ion Idriess - Страница 15

September—At Lone Pine—after a tedious walk along narrow saps then through a tunnel timbered with beams. We stumbled in the darkness instinctively ducking our heads only to thud into the wall of the tunnel where it twisted and turned. The floor was uneven with puddle holes of putrid water. Of course, no one dare strike a light; we were going to the most dangerous spot of the whole Gallipoli line. The route smelt like a cavern dug in a graveyard, where the people are not even in their coffins. We are right in Lone Pine now and the stench is just awful; the dead men, Turks and Australians, are lying buried and half-buried in the trench bottom, in the sides of the trench, and built up into the parapet. They have made the sandbags all greasy. The flies hum in a bee-like cloud. I understand now why men can only live in this portion of the trenches for forty-eight hours at a stretch...

The first Turkish sap is only fifteen feet away; by peering from behind our parapet we can just see into the inner edge of its broken bags, pierced with bomb splintered shafts of timber, and rags of dead men’s uniforms. The Turks cannot hold that sap, nor can we, for both sides can rain bombs into it and make it certain death in a matter of seconds. But the Turks (game men) sneak up it during the night, throw a shower of bombs across into our trench, then scurry wildly back ere vengeance overtake them. Behind that No Man’s Sap are lines and lines of trenches stretching one behind the other, most of them heavily timbered and roofed. Dead men, sun-dried, lie all between the trenches. A dreary outlook, it seems the end of the world. Bullets hum ceaselessly.

Our trench is treacherously narrow, twisty and deep—rugged witness to the haste and depth our men had to dig in seeking shelter from the bombs. The trench was once roofed with beams and sandbags, but all available timber has long since been blown to fragments by the bombs. The front wall of our trench is dug into at a distance of every few feet into firing-possies, in which two men can just stand. The trench proper, which runs behind the possies, is two feet deeper. So that if a bomb falls in your possy you kick it back down into the trench and throw a sandbag over it, then crouch back in the possy all in the one automatic motion as it were, praying that the deepening of the trench behind will shield you from the flying fragments. Narrow walls of earth are left standing between each firing-possy. These walls partially protect the men in the next possy when a bomb falls in yours. Men are killed here every hour. But if some precautions were not taken no one could live here at all. I’m handling a periscope rifle now, it’s the first time I’ve used one. The opposing trenches are so close that loopholes are useless to either side. Any loophole opened in daylight means an instant stream of bullets. So Jacko uses his periscope rifle and we reply with ours. A periscope is an invention of ingenious simplicity, painstakingly thought out by man so that he can shoot the otherwise invisible fellow while remaining safely invisible himself. Attached to the rifle-butt is a short framework in which two small looking-glasses are inserted, one glass at such a height that it is looking above the sandbags while your head, as you peer into the lower glass is a foot below the sand-bags. The top glass reflects to the lower glass a view of the enemy trenches out over the top of the parapet. It is a cunning idea, simple and deadly, but I feel clumsy with it at first. My mate is on the watch now, while I’m scribbling. So long as one man out of every two is gazing out over the trenches (through the periscope generally) the other can stand by—while it’s daylight, that is.

...I’m blest if a Turk didn’t unconcernedly walk down a ravine five hundred yards away, driving a little pack mule—another Johnno sauntering behind him. How unconventional!—they must have thought that with these deadly trenches occupying our attention no one would ever notice men five hundred yards behind the lines. I quickly trained the periscope rifle towards them; the dashed thing felt very wobbly and I had to crouch right back to the extreme edge of the firing-possy. Then, reflected in the wee mirror, I watched two Turks leisurely walk out of a sap. I was so staggered at their cheek that I gazed a while, then crack!—the bullet spurted the dust directly between them. They sprang up and back into the sap as if they had been shot. But the blasted periscope frame had kicked me on the jaw and nearly knocked me back down the trench. Then my mate spotted another Turk casually strolling along. Crack!—we did not see where the bullet hit, nor where Johnny vanished to. Since then, we can see Turks’ heads bobbing as they crouch and run through that sap.

If the Turks facing the old 5th where we have steel loopholes and our own good rifles were only a quarter as game, or rather as foolhardy, we would put up some record sniping tallies. My mate and I got quite perked up for a while, firing away out above the dead men to those lively Johnnos behind their front-line trenches. I suppose they owe their false security to the fact that these trenches are constantly being filled by a stream of new men whose attention is immediately occupied by the trenches in front, allowing them no time to train their glasses on to the drab distance behind. Or perhaps not all our chaps have the sniper’s curiosity...

These flies are awful! It is comical seeing the new men trying to stick it out. Each old hand is given a new hand as a mate, to “break in.” They are going to have a rough breaking in. I can hear one chap vomiting from the smell away down the trench already. They stick desperately to their firing-possies, trying to peer out through the periscopes and so keep their attention away from the crawly things about them. My little fair-skinned mate shivers every time a maggot falls on him.

...Twenty raiding Turks rushed these first three firing possies last night. Forlorn hope! Fancy trying to surprise men whose hearts are in their mouths, whose every nerve is strained as they stand with tautened muscles, their bayonets thrust waiting at the trench parapet. Nineteen of the Turks were instantly killed in a mad rage of overstrained nerves. The last Turk fell head over heels into the trench and the sergeant snatched him by the throat, but some fool instantly blew the Turk’s head off. He might have given information.

...We have just been chuckling over a bit of fun away up at Quinn’s Post. The boys rigged up quite an inviting bull’s-eye and waved it above the trench. Each time the Turks got a bull, the boys would mark a bull. For an outer the boys marked an outer, for a miss they yelled derision. The Turks laughed loudly and blazed away like sports. After a while an officer came along and of course had to be a spoil-sport.

...They are gossiping now of one of the every-day game things that are never noticed. There was one of the little local charges farther up the line. Our men were badly cut up. A man in safety down in the support trench saw his two mates fall close to the parapet. He jumped up and ran out under a furious fire. He brought one man in and ran back for the second, but while bending over him was shot in the back. Though in dreadful pain he dragged the other man to the parapet and both fell head-long back into the trench. ... One of the 12th Light Horse has just been blown to pieces by a bomb. Poor chap. He was “broken in” all right.

...Maggots are falling into the trench now. They are not the squashy yellow ones; they are big brown hairy ones. They tumble out of the sun-dried cracks in the possy walls. The sun warms them I suppose. It is beastly. ... We have just had “dinner.” My new mate was sick and couldn’t eat. I tried to, and would have but for the flies. I had biscuits and a tin of jam. But immediately I opened the tin the flies rushed the jam. They buzzed like swarming bees. They swarmed that jam, all fighting amongst themselves. I wrapped my overcoat over the tin and gouged out the flies, then spread the biscuit, held my hand over it, and drew the biscuit out of the coat. But a lot of the flies flew into my month and beat about inside. Finally I threw the tin over the parapet. I nearly howled with rage. ... I feel so sulky I could chew everything to pieces. Of all the bastards of places this is the greatest bastard in the world. And a dead man’s boot in the firing-possy has been dripping grease on my overcoat and the coat will stink forever.

...This is the most infernally uncomfortable line of trenches we have ever been in, which is saying some for the regiment. We are in “reliefs” now, “resting” about fifty yards back of the firing-trench. For a couple of hours, to rest our nerves, they say. There are forty-eight of us in this particular spot, just an eighteen-inch-wide trench with iron overhead supports sandbagged as protection against bombs. We are supposed to be “sleeping,” preparatory to our next watch. Sleeping! Hell and Tommy! Maggots are crawling down the trench; it stinks like an unburied graveyard; it is dark; the air is stagnant; some of the new hands are violently sick from watching us trying to eat. We are so crowded that I can hardly write in the diary even. My mates look like shadow men crouching expectantly in hell. Bombs are crashing outside, and—the night has come! If they hadn’t been silly enough to tell us to sleep if we could I don’t suppose we would have minded. The roof of this dashed possy is intermixed with dead men who were chucked up on the parapet to give the living a chance from the bullets while the trench was being dug. What ho, for the Glories of War!