Endurance Page 28

  It was a whirlwind trip. London crowds milled in the streets, and theatres were buzzing. But for the khaki uniforms, you could be forgiven for not realising there was a war on. But that night, drifting in and out of sleep in my hotel bed, the now-familiar sound of high explosives took me back to the front. I was photographing a corpse in a muddy pool, a young German boy soldier who lay on his back as if asleep. His reddish hair was flecked with dried clay. It was the type of close personal portrait I usually avoided, only my camera seemed drawn to him and his face was bloated and too close and swelling in and out of focus. I pinched myself to check if I was awake or dreaming of Flanders. Air-raid sirens confirmed that it was German zeppelins bombing London streets. The red-haired boy disappeared.

  I caught up with Azzi in a London tearoom. He was on leave and looking like a ghost. ‘Dad McLean has been gassed,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it, and I thought we should visit his wife together.’

  ‘I won’t have time, Azzi,’ I replied, knowing I would not be good in that situation.

  I dined with Sir Douglas and Lady Mawson. They were rightly horrified by my stories of Ypres and Passchendaele. They had read nothing of the battle for Passchendaele in the papers. Paquita Mawson was like a delightful young schoolgirl compared to the dour Mawson. She was sweet and intelligent and very devoted to him. He has done very well, and with a knighthood to boot.

  I came off the boat in Boulogne and was surprised to see Wilkins waiting with the car. Before we drove off he handed me an envelope. ‘This came for you. I’m sorry, but I opened it before I knew it was personal.’

  It was from Birdwood’s staff. ‘I’ve been given the sack!’

  ‘It’s a transfer.’

  ‘I’ve been bloody sacked!’

  ‘You’re being appointed to the AIF in Egypt. You’re still a captain, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Bloody Bean has played politics to get rid of me!’

  ‘So what if he did? The whole of the AIF would give their eye teeth to be posted there—anywhere but Flanders. It’ll be a whole lot warmer for one thing. And look, it’s not for a few weeks yet. That gives you plenty of time to get killed here.’

  Nothing Wilkins said could persuade me that this was anything other than the most shabby treachery on the part of Bean and his red-tab friends, after I had daily risked my life to get the photographs no one else could get. Wilkins, meanwhile, had been told he was to stay on as Bean’s assistant. I had come to expect self-interest and unfairness on private expeditions, but here with our country’s fighting forces, in the middle of the battlefield with thousands dying each day, I had hoped for something better. Instead, I found the army was a mismanaged bunch of string-pullers and bureaucrats. The good soldiers, and there were many, were the ones who bore the brunt of the misery of the trenches and were wantonly sacrificed.

  I returned to the darkroom at Steenvorde determined to finish off my collection of photographs of Flanders for the London exhibition. Annoyingly, I found we had regular guests. Red tabs would just drop in to request a photograph be taken of them or their unit or to beg a print for themselves. I left these requests to Wilkins.

  I returned to one of my favourite haunts, photographing the smoky ruins of Ypres. I even enjoyed the hair-raising races in the car along Menin Road. One cold afternoon in a dugout on Westhoek Ridge—part of our newly won territory—I watched the Hun artillery, undoubtedly assisted by observation balloons, shelling our ammunition wagons on the main supply road. The wagon drivers gamely galloped their horses as shells burst in front and behind them. A direct hit would send them to heaven. As they gambled with their lives, the men alongside me placed bets as each wagon approached.

  From Westhoek, Wilkins and I crept across to the edge of the lake at Chateau Wood. I fancy it was once a favourite spot for lovers. Now, only death lingered in its forest of uprooted tree stumps, churned earth and duckboard track disappearing in the gloom.

  I took photographs and we turned to make our way back to Hooge Crater and the Menin Road. As we did so, we found ourselves caught up in a bombardment that had us dashing from one inadequate shelter to another. The Hun howitzers whistled overhead as we ran. Wiz-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-boom! A shell landed at my feet without exploding. A dud! It covered me with mud. We leaped to our feet and continued on our way. My legs felt like lead as we scampered for our lives.

  Frustratingly, despite a number of attempts, Wilkins and I had not been able to arrange with 69 Squadron what would have been my first flight. Instead, I found an obliging lieutenant who allowed me to join him in his observation balloon from near the Menin Gate. We ascended to three and a half thousand feet, until we overlooked the vast necropolis that was Ypres.

  Even had there been no war, it was the most fantastic and frightening experience to be floating so high above the earth suspended in a wicker basket with a highly flammable hydrogen balloon above my head. Was this what God saw when he looked from the heavens at this world of man? From this height, individual acts of valour were imperceptible. Certainly the haze made poor conditions for photography. The battleground ran to the horizon in both directions like an ugly scar across Flanders and the whole of Europe, consuming thousands of lives and seemingly endless industrial resources. A pall of smoke overhung no-man’s-land and below us the grey sky was reflected in the muddy pools of a thousand flooded shell craters which pockmarked the ground. To the east, a constant flickering of artillery gun flashes marked the way to Passchendaele. Then out of the northern sky slightly above us we observed seventeen Gotha bombers approach. When they were about a mile away, I saw the ground rise up behind them in a series of massive eruptions as they dropped their bomb-loads of deadly high explosives. They disappeared from view above our balloon and we had a nervous wait, in parachutes, to see if we would be fired on.

  Wilkins sat up suddenly brandishing a crumpled old newspaper. ‘My, my, these are fancy words indeed. I say, Hurley, listen to this.’ And then, in a pompous voice, he read aloud: ‘“To you men and women of Australia . . . When I arrived . . . I did not know what the word Anzac meant. But I learned it was a title of fame and glory . . . . . . I cannot imagine that you men are failing to realise your debt of honour to the men who have gone before, to the men who have died in that temple of blood and glory, Gallipoli . . . Death is a very little thing—the smallest thing in the world. I can tell you that, for I have been face to face with death during long months . . .”’

  ‘What are you reading?’ I said, but Wilkins ignored me and read on.

  ‘“For this call to fight means more than ease, more than money, more than love of woman, more even than duty; it means the chance to prove ourselves the captains of our own soul.”’ Wilkins looked up. ‘That’s laying it on a bit thick, isn’t it? But then again, you made captain by joining the army!’

  ‘Who’s saying that?’ I asked.

  ‘Why,’ he said, ‘it’s your good friend.’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘Shackleton. He’s been in Australia giving recruitment speeches. He spoke about your great white war in the south.’ And again, in his pompous voice, ‘“I say to you men of Australia: Face the test of battle.”’

  ‘He must have given that speech on his way home from the rescue of the Ross Sea party,’ I said. ‘They’d be wishing they had not listened to his speeches.’

  ‘Still, he went and got them.’

  ‘He got those who were still alive, Wilkins. But, crikey, he hasn’t been near the front. Would he give that speech if he had seen what we have seen?’

  ‘Well, let’s face it, we have seen and we’ve photographed, and those photographs will be used for recruitment propaganda, same as Sir Ernest Shackleton.’

  Wilkins was right, there was little I could say.

  ‘We have been employed to do a job as best we can,’ I said. ‘We are in Bean’s hands as to what he does with our photographs.’ Then I added, ‘Shackleton was a bloody dreamer, heroics at any cost. He had a favourite poem ab
out death. Browning, of course.’ As I lay back I could hear Shackleton’s voice.

  Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

  The mist in my face,

  When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

  I am nearing the place . . .

  No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

  The heroes of old,

  Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears

  Of pain, darkness and cold.

  On the Saturday before I left Flanders, Azzi dropped in for the evening. We talked about how much longer the war could drag on. Passchendaele had at last been taken by the Canadians. They succeeded where the Anzacs had failed. But there was no breakthrough, there was no collapse of the German army. The Americans were arriving and could help fill the trenches in the new year. Azzi spoke wearily, as if he would not live to see the end of it. In the morning, Azzi said he would go to the Sunday service. Wilkins and I offered to accompany him. We made our way to a sunken roadway where a crowd of soldiers were gathered in the shelter of a large earthen embankment.

  ‘I am asked—must this war continue?’ said the balding English minister, glaring fiercely at the few hundred heads bowed before him. ‘May we not now join with President Wilson and negotiate for peace, is that not the humane path? And I am compelled to answer—look ye to the root cause of this conflict, has that cause been purged? That cause, we know, is original sin and the heathen forces in Christendom. Do not err by looking only to the moral condition of Germany, which as a nation has made a foreign policy of foul murder. Look, I say, to the impurity, the intemperance, the Sabbath-breaking that we see daily in our midst.

  ‘So do not say, as President Wilson may well say, “Let this cup pass from me.” The shedding of blood is not to be taken so lightly. For Christ died that we might live. This is the very crux of the sacrifice that our young men have made when they offered themselves as instruments of God’s punitive justice. The fight against sin requires we see this terrible war through until the heathen renounces evil.’

  This was foreign to me. Perhaps I had been away too long from churches and politics. The congregation listened patiently, however. What were they hoping for? I wondered. What good could come of this war? There was nothing redemptive in what I saw at Ypres. This religious dogma, along with Shackleton’s brand of fatalistic patriotism, both seemed claptrap to me.

  I did not want to be out of step with the world but to me Azzi looked no better off for the haranguing he had received. He was as flat as a tack. It all made me quite angry. The institutions of church and state had either gone mad or always been mad.

  15

  Egypt and Palestine, December 1917–March 1918

  Guncotton and explosives were our cargo as we waited to depart Plymouth on P&O Malta. The only clue to our secret departure time was the sudden loading of mailbags. One by one, some twenty merchantmen raised anchor and headed out to sea. Armada Castle, a large auxiliary cruiser, was our main escort, accompanied by six destroyers. All the merchantmen had six-inch guns mounted. The rumour on board was that there were nine U-boats off Gibraltar, and we would have to give an account of ourselves.

  After six days our convoy entered the Strait of Gibraltar. Even though we were entering the most dangerous sector of the Mediterranean, I was stirred by the sight of the rugged Spanish coastline to our north and the distant outline of Africa in the south. By the time we took shelter in Malta, two vessels had been torpedoed and sunk.

  The U-boats did not get me, but I was struck instead by Nurse Jillian Loch.

  The padre, with whom I shared a cabin, brought Jillian Loch to our table at dinner. The church has its uses, as I would otherwise never have had the gumption to introduce myself. Even had she not been about the only young woman aboard the Malta, I would have been swept away by her lively, friendly manner. She was not at all overawed by the company of so many men, nor the conversation, which ranged from submarines to boxing. She had wavy nutbrown hair, did not wear make-up, and had a schoolgirl’s mischievous smile. She did not wear rings or jewellery of any kind.

  ‘I am afraid you won’t have heard of my unit,’ she said when I asked. ‘I’m with Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps for India. A mouthful, isn’t it? A group of us were transferred to England and France just before the Somme.’

  ‘Looking after the Gurkhas?’

  ‘No. We are not allowed near coloured soldiers; I’m afraid it’s very old-fashioned.’

  Jill Loch—or Jilloch, as I would sometimes call her—became my partner at cards that night, and deck quoits the following days.

  A few days later we anchored in Malta and alongside came several brightly painted rowing skiffs with high prows fore and aft, just as I imagined Venetian gondolas. Their skippers haggled to take us ashore. Jill was excited at the prospect of an excursion. She proved to be a good walker and in quick time we had climbed to the top of the nearest hill and explored its fortifications, both old and new. We dined at the Westminster Hotel and I made sure we were back on board by 9 p.m.

  In my cabin that evening I was so ecstatic I could hardly sleep. Our outing had been a success and Jill’s company a refreshing change from the world of men. I couldn’t wait till morning, when we had agreed to meet over breakfast.

  Jill was again happy to go exploring, and before long we reached the top of Fort St Elmo, which had a commanding view over the harbour and out across the Mediterranean Sea. There were views inland of several walled villages, all tightly packed around the spires and domes of their basilicas. In the distance, we were beckoned by the dramatic outline of an ancient city.

  We found our way by crowded train to Citta Vecchia, through a draughtboard pattern of fields of wheat and barley and once there we lost ourselves among ancient stone walls, ramparts, towers, domes and minarets. We were accosted by dozens of street urchins: Mister, you need guide, you need taxi, I spik good Ingleesch, you give me coin, me have no father, me no mother, no aunt, no uncle . . . We escaped and strolled through markets, climbed well-worn stone stairways and turned up narrow laneways, until eventually we entered a square at one end of which was an exquisite Renaissance cathedral.

  I had been to St Paul’s in London, but felt I had seen nothing to compare with the beauty of the interior of this cathedral in Citta Vecchia, with its ornate marble walls, mosaic floors, statuary, vaulted ceiling, cupolas and frescoes. I could only account for my rapture as being due to the presence of my companion.

  ‘A place as beautiful as this,’ said Jilloch, ‘makes it so much easier to believe in a caring God.’

  My gaze moved from the ceiling to her upturned face. ‘How you cope with the sick and dying I can’t imagine,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I cope with the dying,’ she replied. ‘There are any number of deaths each day. It’s mourning the dead I can’t cope with. During the Somme, there was a piper from a nearby regiment of Scot’s Guards. He made a point of coming to us each time there was a funeral, and some days there were several. He would stand in ceremonial dress and play the Piper’s Lament. All of us nursing sisters were constantly in tears. We had to ask him to stop coming.’

  ‘I am afraid I have become very indifferent about corpses on the battlefield,’ I confessed. ‘I have learned to photograph without thinking too much. It’s the wounded I get distressed about.’

  ‘Yes. We are told to concentrate on the lightly wounded . . . to get them back to the front. Well of course it’s the last thing they want. The bad cases just linger and, if lucky, they recover enough to get a boat home.’

  An eight-mile walk back to the port did not diminish our mutual sense of freedom and escape from the world of war.

  ‘Frank,’ said Jill over dinner, ‘is it top secret why you are heading to Cairo?’

  ‘If it is, Jilloch, no one has told me. All I’ve heard is that with all of the setbacks on the Western Front, Lloyd George wants the army to take Jerusalem as a Christmas present for the British people. I’ll be there so they
can preserve a photographic record of it all. Trouble is, my photography can’t preserve the protagonists.’

  ‘No, I suppose that’s left to the nurses.’

  ‘And you, Jilloch—why are you returning to Bombay?’

  ‘My mother is unwell and I’m told I am needed. The ANC has given me leave.’

  ‘You are single then?’

  ‘Why yes, Frank—of course, yes. What did you think? I am writing to someone, though: an officer I met in France. But it’s all just so shocking, isn’t it? This damn war. And India is so far. It is so far away, it’s like being in another world.’

  I have the U-boats to thank for keeping us in the harbour at Malta for five days, five delicious days when the two of us explored to our heart’s content and forgot about the death and destruction that gripped Europe. I experienced the excitement of sightseeing for its own sake with a companion ready to laugh and share stories, neither of us feeling any urgency to reach a particular destination. However, I felt a strange anxiety inside, conscious our days together were both precious and numbered. Really, our friendship seemed quite hopeless. She was writing to someone else, and I was at the start of a new adventure. I did not want to make a fool of myself.

  The night before we reached Port Said, I could not sleep. I rehearsed things I could say to Jilloch and wondered whether I should say them. She gave no sign that she was interested in me as a suitor. I was not interested in having a correspondence unless we could meet again, but how could we? I was reluctant to embarrass myself in front of her for nothing.