Читать книгу The Desert Column - Ion Idriess - Страница 16

September—Evening—First Watch. We are back the firing-possies. The gloaming has brought the mortar-bombs flying about. They explode with a rending crash. The bullets are much more plentiful. It will soon be too dark, and we will be too busy for me to write in diary. No bombs have yet fallen in this particular portion of the trench; I dashed near pray they won’t. The Turks are only a few yards away.

...A few days later—I’m in a hospital-ship again, let me see if I can remember things and write them just they happened. With the last rays of the sun, I was staring through the periscope for any sign of the living among the bodies. There are little khaki heaps of bodies, then twos and threes here and there lying among the Turks. Some are only rotting khaki without either shape or form. The boots last the longest. Within a few yards of my periscope lay a tale telling how furiously both sides died. The Australian’s bayonet is sticking, rusty and black, six inches through the Turk’s back. One hand is gripping the Turk’s throat, while even now you can see the Turk’s teeth fastened through what was the boy’s wrist. The Turk’s bayonet is jammed through the boy’s stomach and one hand is clenched, claw-like, across the Australian’s face. I wonder will they fight if there is an after world.

Well, the dark came, bringing a vicious increase of rifle-fire. The top layer of our possy was only one sandbag thick. The bullets ripped into this, and the sand began to flow out. As the top layer of bags subsided we had to crouch lower, otherwise our heads would have been blown off. Then came one continuous screech of bullets, a piercing chorus, ceaseless throughout the night. Then the roar of bombs in earnest, exploding in front of our trench, around us, behind us, with a blinding flash and roar! and clouds of earth and smoke, and the stench of burning cloth. Soon my mate and I had to smash two apertures through our parapet so that we could peer through and shoot the shadowy bombing men. What hell was let loose outside and all around us! A bomb blew half our possy parapet in and as I was flung back my smoke-filled eyes caught a glimpse of stars far in the sky—I wished I was up there. My new mate was frightened, so he crouched down with both our overcoats folded ready to throw over any bomb that should be thrown into the trench behind us. I tried to throw the burst sandbags together as part shelter against that screaming rain, but there came a series of shattering roars that blew the whole trench parapet to hell. It started from up the right and came crashing along, bang-crash, bang—crash, bang—crash right down the line, all mixed with leaping balls of flame, it was .75 shells—they razed our parapet to the ground and blew into the air burst sandbags and baulks of timber and bits of dead men that came flying down plop, whack, plop into the trench.

In that inferno of smoke and fumes and grizzling explosives, I whiffed distinctly the mixed odour of smashed dead men, we simply crouched, partly dazed, and I kept firing and firing and firing. There was nothing else to do. Men in the possies to right and left were falling back into the trench, some screamed, others just thumped back. New men kept coming up from supports—stumbling over the bodies—groping along the trench—whispering up to us whose places they would take.

The stretcher-bearers down there had a fearful job getting the wounded away to the pitch-black tunnel places that led away back from the line. Stretchers could not be used in those narrow twistings. The Turks, expert fighters, use a sort of sheet to carry their wounded away in. Our machine-guns right amongst us were blazing their own hell to the inferno. Outside, the night was spitting flame from the Turkish rifles, their front-line so close that burning wads hissed down by our faces. Their machine-gun possies screeched in trails of flame. The Turk was fighting hard—both sides were stretched to the limit. Our bomb-throwers stood unseen, a glowing cigarette in each man’s hand—each lit fuse after fuse, throwing bomb after bomb with a sort of sighing grunt. It makes a man’s shoulder-muscles ache.

At long last the relief came stumbling in; we could not see them, we could hear them down there in the dark. At last they groped along the trench and clawed up over us, no man stepping down from the firing-possy until a new man had taken his place. We survivors of the old relief crouched down there in the trench. It was an awful feeling, waiting there, staring upward expecting hurtling bombs or mad Turks jabbing down at its any moment. At last the man behind me whispered: “File off!” I stuttered the word on, and we pressed man against man, shivering in the hope that soon we would be under some sort of cover. But in that awful slowness of moving we saw hissing sparks flying over the parapet—a choking cry, “Bomb! Bomb! Christ!” I tried to jump back but the men pressed behind were new hands and did not know what to do. Poor old King was in front of me. He jumped forward, but the men ahead crouched in the blocked trench. King was on a slight incline and as the hissing thing thudded it rolled horribly towards him. I thought the end of all things had come—I threw my overcoat over it, clenched my arms across face and stomach and pressed desperately back against the men behind. Then all was a suffocation of deathly fumes—I was on my back, quite distinctly hearing the clash of bayonets as rifles thumped across me. Then followed a strange, dull silence, ears ringing like mad. King called out: “I’m wounded, boys.” I called out, “So am I, Kingey,” and struggled up.

Poor King had an arm and leg broken, and other wounds. Two sergeants were struggling to get him away, but in that narrow network they did not know the way. I stumbled forward, but fell over a dying man. Another man had his ankle smashed, another was groaning with a smashed back, yet another man’s leg was broken. My arm was numb, I could feel warm blood trickling down my ribs. I knew it was my own blood: I felt it belonged to me. The slow rising fumes swathed the shadows of groping men, like blind things in hell. I pressed back against the trench-wall praying they would he quick getting away the wounded, and glanced fearfully upwards, expecting another bomb. What annihilation a second bull’s-eye would have been! They got poor old King and the others down a black side trench at last. Then we groped through pitch darkness into a cave-like dressing shelter, the wounded hardly moaning, just holding back their agony through clenched teeth. I was not hurt much at all. The dressing-shelter was rudely cut out in the earth. I glanced instinctively at the low roof. Thank God! It was heavily timbered and tight-packed with sandbags. I crouched down on the floor to wait my turn. The doctor was working with a tiny dull light. His A.M.C. men were all shadows; every man had his back bent. We seemed to be down in the pit: coming down the tunnel was a heavy, continuous rumbling—a sound like madmen’s voices muffled by thunder.

At last they temporarily fixed the wounded, got them on and moved off. We staggered out of the tunnel, tramped through a long sap, and finally emerged on the dark hillside.

What intense relief! The air fresh and cool—stars above—the bay so peaceful. The fairy lights of the hospital-ships bespoke havens of rest. As we climbed down the track I laughed at the bullets zipping about; but it was not a usual sort of laugh; I seemed to be half on earth and half somewhere else.

They took us to the main beach dressing-station where our little lot were attended to and then laid out with the rows of wounded to wait for the day. I sat by King the remainder of the night. I nearly cried sometimes—I was not hurt at all—but those hundreds of poor maimed chaps lying there on the sand were trying to help one another with a joke, a whispered word—a smile—a look.

...In the hospital-ship Salta. What a contrast to the Franconia! Long lines of clean bunks, clean tables and chairs and decks, lifts up and down the holds for bringing in the badly wounded. Actually nurses, that smile at a man, and kindly doctors. Fancy getting into a real bed at night! This ship is just heaven.

A few days later—We are having a lovely trip, we lucky ones who can move about. Gus Gaunt is aboard—he knows every nook of the ship, and has taken me to where the best eats can be got. We promenade the place regularly. Poor King is having a rough time. The nurses and doctors are kindness itself to the wounded.

September 9th—Steaming into Alexandria. Poor King died last night at twelve and was buried at sea this morning. King was always game. He was a gentlemanly sort of chap, too, and he died game.

Back in the Egyptian Government Hospital again. How strange! And I’m glad. Same doctors, same smiling nurses, same good old tucker, and unceasing attention. Gus Gaunt fills the bed next to me, all smiles. Neither of us is hurt badly, though; we won’t be here long. We have been issued with parcels from the Australian Comforts Fund, and private parcels. They were jolly well appreciated by everyone.

September 20th—All we convalescents were gorged with cakes and good things at the Recreation Cricket Ground by the whites of Alexandria who have been helping the wounded ever since the war began. Mr Harrington, I believe he is the postmaster, and his friends are thought no end of by the wounded men.

September 21st—I wish the war were over. I am getting such a longing for the bush again. I saw Darby MacNamara and Trembath yesterday at the Deaconess Hospital. Both are being shipped to England.

September 29th—We are at Ras-el-Tin convalescent home now. It is a big stone place of enormous corridors, with a huge courtyard in the centre. Rules not in the least oppressive, plenty of leave, a liberal allowance of pay, and Captain Dwyer, the Adjutant, a man thoroughly liked by all the cosmopolitan hundreds. We are mostly Aussies and En Zeds; but there are quite a number of Tommies.

Adjoining us on one side is the Sultan’s palace, with its smartly uniformed Egyptian soldiers full of the pomp and sneering haughtiness of the East. At night the languorous city is lit up, it comes out and lives, the stars twinkle from a deep velvet sky, the American man-o’-war is signalling with coloured lamps, all the close-packed vessels are illuminated; here and there arises a queer native song, the plaintive melody of some reed instrument. And if a man be outside, passing the big shadowed wall of some private quarters, quite likely he will hear a soft laugh from inside amongst the rose bushes.

October 19th—This is the first place where I have really seen value for the money that Australia has lavished on her wounded. The Australian Comforts Fund have sent us easy chairs, tobacco, lollies, and pipes, and a game of indoor tennis. State School kiddies sent us little bags full of soap, toothpowder, etc. And we have received lots of parcels with socks and kind notes. It was great! Showed us after all we are not forgotten. ... Thought out another invention while in hospital, and yesterday worried Captain Dwyer about it. To my surprise he was quite interested. Has promised to see a submarine officer about it.