Nightingale (3 page)

Claire grinned. ‘Well, I doubt I'm going to find it here, Matron.'

Jamie made a silent promise that he would never complain about flies again. They had been annoying during the swearing-in parade of the 9th Regiment of the Australian Light Horse at Morphetville, on the outskirts of Adelaide city, but nothing like Turkey.

A lone sniper bullet cracked uselessly above him and a fleck chose that moment to target his eye. ‘Bugger,' he muttered, rubbing at the grit that instantly felt like a rock beneath his eyelid. The thorny scrub had become so dry over the last few weeks it was now brittle. He blinked rapidly, hoping his tears would loosen the annoying mote, and reflected that despite the sniper fire it was a relatively quiet day, given the carnage of the previous week. He was leaning back against the parados of the trench and unless a mortar came straight at him he considered himself relatively safe for breakfast. It was odd how mortar coming from the left or the right could be pinpointed, but if it was like an arrow coming at you, then
you
were its breakfast. He found this twist on the thought darkly comic and smiled privately.

He peered into the tin of jam he'd opened minutes earlier and his amusement died. ‘I can't even tell what fruit's in this,' he lamented, staring at what had got to his treat before him.

‘It's all good, mate,' his neighbour said, reaching over to dig his spoon in where a horde of flies had gathered so thick that the pressure pushed at least a dozen of them into the thick, sticky conserve. His companion sucked the spoon clean with an appreciative sigh. ‘There you go, mate. Fuckin' apricot,' he confirmed, grinning as he swallowed the glob. Jamie noticed that Swampy didn't seem to care that flies were in his eyes or that they were sucking at his sweat on his receding hairline. He'd bounced back from his bout of dysentery too; Swampy just accepted. He was probably the perfect recruit. Never complained, mostly cheerful, and always ready to bait his fellow digger and amuse those around him.

Why had they thought Johnny Turk would be a pushover? They'd just assumed they'd be an untrained rabble of shepherds or farmers, and certainly not as well equipped as the ANZACs. What had meant to be a triumphant, surprise attack had been resisted brilliantly and forcefully. Now both sides had worn each other down into a stalemate of trench warfare and neither Turk nor ANZAC could dislodge the other.

The greater challenge was surviving the despicable conditions of heat, illness, insects, poor hygiene, lack of water and food . . . and rapidly diminishing ammunition.

They had sailed from Port Melbourne in February, arriving into Egypt mid-March, where it was soon agreed that being a mounted division made them unsuitable for the push for the Dardanelles. But the decision was made to leave the horses in Egypt and deploy to Gallipoli, only arriving this month to hear the horror stories of the amphibious landings the previous month and the heroics that ensued.

‘Stretcher-bearer told me the figure's now knockin' forty thousand,' Swampy remarked, rolling a thin cigarette. He licked the paper with a dry tongue through cracked lips that he stuck his smoke to and then lit. The nickname Swampy truly suited him. Jamie had gathered that he'd been a vagrant at the time of his recruitment but somewhere in his past he'd been a brilliant horseman. Jamie had stopped wondering what had gone wrong in Swampy's life. He was happy that he was among them and no longer offended by his poor manners.

‘You're lying.'

Swampy shrugged and scratched his lice-riddled chest. ‘It's what I was told, mate.'

‘I don't believe it,' Jamie said, but he was the one lying. He did believe it. The Turkish counterattacks had decimated entire divisions of the ANZACs but the Turks had paid a terrible price as well. The seemingly endless skirmishes took lives on both sides daily, as did the sniper fire. Just yesterday they'd lost one of their favourites, a popular 36-year-old called Archie Cammelle. Everyone pronounced his last name ‘Camel', so it was only a short leap to call him Humpy. It was Spud, Jamie's closest mate, who'd found Humpy, dead on the latrines; a lucky sniper's bullet had caught him clean through the temple and he'd simply sagged where he'd sat on the timber boards, which barely covered and certainly didn't mask the foul reek of the drop hole.

Spud returned from that very place now, dragging with him a terrible whiff of the latrines. ‘I just took a crap with the lieutenant,' Spud said, sounding chuffed.

Jamie laughed. Spud was reliably amusing without trying.

‘What's funny?' Spud should never have told Jamie that his mother reckoned he looked like a potato when he was born. In fact, everything about Harry Primrose was entertaining – from his surname for such a block of a man, to his nickname because he did look a bit like a potato (a King Edward, Jamie thought), to his pale skin and the pink splotches that were erupting in this warmer weather, to his deadpan expression that was the key to his accidental comedy. ‘Bloody bugs,' he said, not waiting for Jamie's answer and scratching his crotch. ‘I think I'll just pour petrol over my dick.'

The men chuckled and chimed in with a few other ripe suggestions for what Spud might also try. His friend sat down, leaned back against the wall alongside Jamie, his vast size-thirteen boots looking like a pair of laced twin monoliths soaring up from the duckboard floor of the trench. Jamie was half as tall as their twelve-foot high trench; Spud probably stood six inches shorter than Jamie but his stocky frame was muscular. ‘Years of being a shearer,' Spud had boasted as he'd flexed his biceps when they'd met on Christmas Eve while clearing out the stables at their training barracks.

‘Not going home?' Spud had opened the conversation.

‘I'm happy to tend the horses. Someone has to.' He grinned. ‘How about you?'

His shorter, barrel-chested companion had offered a hand. ‘Harry Primrose. You're a bit dedicated, mate, aren't you? I volunteered to stay because they've ordered extra rations of food and beer for the boys left behind.' He winked. ‘What's your name, then?'

‘James Wren.' He lifted a shoulder with embarrassment. ‘My family calls me Jamie.'

‘Where's home?'

‘A place called Farina in the Flinders Ranges.'

‘Ah, right. Got a girl?'

He caught his breath at the unexpected query. ‘Er, sort of, well . . . not really.'

Spud looked at him with quizzical amusement.

‘No. I did.' He hesitated. ‘But I don't want any girl waiting for me.'

‘Does she understand?'

‘I'm not thinking about all that right now. I don't know what I feel other than I wasn't ready to put any sort of ring on her finger. I just want to do my country proud.'

‘Stupid bugger. Don't you know that every fella needs a girl dreaming about him when he goes off to war? And who are you going to dream of? Your granny?' Spud chortled. ‘Come on, Heartthrob. Let's at least make these girls happy with us,' he said, cocking his head towards the horses.

It had been a wet Christmas Day and the camp had turned into a mud pool; the humid conditions of New South Wales were an unpleasant contrast to the dry summer of the Flinders Ranges. They discovered they were both South Australians and footy lovers and shared a loathing of each other's clubs. It's all they needed in common to become best mates. Jamie had started calling his new pal by an appropriate nickname and Spud had done the same for him, although Jamie could wish his was anything but the one Spud had given him.

Spud was talking footy now, he realised. ‘. . . didn't lose a single match last year, Heartthrob, just you remember that. And then you make sure you recall last year's Grand Final when your blokes gave it up like the ladies they are.' Before Jamie could respond, his friend had added, ‘Champions of Australia, mate.'

Jamie sighed. ‘Guess there's no one to play in any matches this year,' he noted, offering Spud the jam that his mum had sent in a parcel.

Spud pulled a spoon out of his pocket and dug it into the tin, then smeared jam onto a half slice of stale bread that he produced from another pocket. ‘They may play this year but I reckon they'll have to suspend the comp after it.' He bit into his breakfast, speaking as he chewed. ‘There'll be no teams, no crowd – we'll all be dead.'

‘Don't be morbid, Spud. I plan to survive.'

‘You will, Heartthrob. Not me. I've been unlucky all my life.' He didn't sound bitter. ‘These bastard flies,' he spat. ‘I'm eating them now.'

‘It's all these corpses. We've got to do something about it.'

‘I am,' Spud said. ‘I've made a bet with Swampy. You know Johnny Turk on that bush, whose face is turned our way?'

Jamie blinked.

‘Well, I reckon he'll be purple by tomorrow but Swampy reckons it's a couple of days yet. I've got my last bit of tobacco riding on that one. Knackers is happy to lay down his new fruit cake from home that he'll be black in four days.'

It was a macabre pastime but the gallows humour helped to not only pass the hours between surviving to another dawn, but keep the fear of death or terrible injury away . . . and the increasing thirst. It wasn't the pathetic lack of food that got the men down so much as the spartan supply of water. Jamie was sure that if you offered the men a dixie of fresh water to a loaf of bread or pot of boiled potatoes, they'd take the water each time. But the water had to be sailed in, hauled up the cliffs in carts and then hand-carried in pots by soldiers, dodging machine-gun strafing and sniper bullets. He began to wonder how they were ever going to manage when the summer really kicked in. The worst months beckoned; dysentery was rife and surely going to get worse. Poor Kenny Pidgeon was sleeping by the latrines, his running belly was so bad. He'd lost perhaps two stone already and was too weak to make the journey over the ravines to the medical officer. Jamie had shared his water rations with the ailing man yesterday. Spud hadn't approved, giving him a lecture that every man must take care of himself first. Jamie didn't bother arguing that he'd been raised differently. If Kenny didn't improve over the course of today, he was going to carry the sick man to the medical tent on the beach.

He pointed towards no-man's-land. ‘Those bodies are going to make us all sick. It's why the flies are so thick.'

‘There's talk of clearing them,' Spud shrugged.

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, I heard about it during my crap. They're hoping to organise some sort of truce. The lieutenant called it, um, an armistice. Guess we'll hear about that soon enough. Is it time yet?'

Jamie glanced at his pocket watch. ‘Few more minutes,' he said, in no hurry to go on sniper duty.

‘Enough time for another cuppa if one's going,' Spud said.

As his friend left, Jamie nodded and carefully returned his father's watch to the safety of a pocket. The old man had given it to him when they'd driven their horse and cart to Quorn in the mid-north of South Australia and the railway line that would take him into Adelaide. They'd had to overnight at the large Transcontinental Hotel across from the station and Jamie recalled the packed public bar, brimful of laughing young men, all of them heading in the same direction as him, most of them standing with male members of their family. It had felt strange to be alone with his father amidst the laughter and jollity and he was unsure of what to say. His father sipped his drink quietly, standing at the furthest end of the bar, neatly licking the creamy froth of the cold beer from his lips.

‘You'll be all right, won't you, Dad?'

‘We'll be fine,' he answered in his usual dry tone. ‘You go do your duty. You can pick right up where you left off. Fencing repairs never end, as you well know.'

Jamie nodded, sipped his beer mournfully, wishing he could share in the fun of the others around him or drag a smile from his father . . . some show of emotion.

‘How was your young lady?'

Jamie looked up, surprised by the question. ‘Oh, you know, she likes the idea that I'm going to be in a Light Horse Regiment but she's not happy about having to wait.' He gave a single shoulder shrug. ‘I mean about getting engaged. She isn't fussed about the ring yet, but says she wants to tell everyone that we are planning to get married.'

‘Does she make you happy?'

Jamie hesitated. This was a most unusual conversation to be having with his father.

‘Does she make you laugh?' his father continued. ‘Do you think about her when you should be thinking about your tasks? Does the sun remind you of her smile, the wheat fields of her hair?' He poked Jamie's chest lightly. ‘Does it hurt in here when you are apart?'

He met his father's hard stare and knew it was a moment for honesty and still he couldn't give it. ‘I don't know.'

William Wren's mouth twitched, the vaguest of smiles beneath his bushy moustache. ‘No need to rush in then, son. How did you leave it?'

‘I said it was best to wait until the war was over. See how we both feel.'

His elder nodded. ‘You'll have seen plenty by then and no doubt be changed by it. You'll know yourself a lot better.'

His father's remark sounded cryptic but he was clearly speaking from experience, having served in the Boer War. Jamie had let the comment sit between them until his father's beer glass was empty. He drained his own.

‘Right,' Wren senior said, glancing at his pocket watch that Jamie never saw him without, except when he pulled on a nightshirt and turned in and then it sat at his bedside, ticking away the hours to 5 a.m. when his father habitually rose to beat the worst heat of the day. ‘We might as well go to the platform. The train is about ten minutes away.'

It was as though their movement towards the pub's door was infectious because a stream of men began to flow behind them in the direction of the weatherboard station and its platform. Women in their Sunday best long dresses and broad-brimmed hats were standing beneath the shade of the huge Moreton Bay fig in the forecourt, more out of habit than need, for it was not a hot day. He could hear an occasional soft sigh of laughter but mainly the women were subdued.