Soldier Boy Read online

So it was with this Private up at Wire Gully. ‘It is very quiet where we are,’ he wrote to his mother and father, ‘so we are not seeing much of the fun. Now and again we give a few rounds rapid fire and the artillery and the mountain batteries, the torpedo boats and cruisers send a few extra shells in. Then we get them to waste there ammution’ (his pencil was slipping on the regulation army letter paper) ‘for about twice as long.’

  Indeed, he told them, ‘We have not had many casualties yet. There has only been one poor fellow of our old company been shot and killed and two or three wounded …’

  No. There was only one thing that pained Jim Martin, and it cut the lad to his heart. He still had received no letters from his family or anyone at home. A mail arrived from Australia in mid-September, but once again there was nothing for him

  He tried to be brave about it. But it was no good. ‘It is very dishearting to see all the others getting letters from home,’ he wrote, struggling with the words, ‘and me not even getting one. I have not received any since I left Melbourne on June 28th. So they must be going astray somewhere. I hope you are getting some of mine as I am writing pretty often …’

  Just as he promised he would, when they let him go.

  Jim asked after them all. Aunt Mary and Bill Musgrave at Maldon. Remembering his sisters’, Mary and Annie’s, birthdays. Hoping the house in Mary Street was full of boarders and the fowls laying plenty of eggs. ‘How is Mary and Annie and Millie getting on at school and tell them all to write. Is Alice still at home?’

  Not knowing that Alice had married Percy Chaplin, the military policeman, in August. Not knowing that the whole family was writing to him all the time. Not knowing where or why their letters were being lost …

  ‘I remain Your loving son, Jim.’

  He scribbled a postscript at the top of the page. ‘Write soon as every letter is welcome here.’

  13: DEATH

  Three days after Jim wrote this letter, the weather began to turn. Battleships had just finished bombarding Turkish positions to the south, towards Lone Pine, when a great storm blew in. The wind was like a hurricane and rain fell in torrents. Men were flushed out, trying to sleep in their dugouts, and the trenches ran like creeks.

  It was the first sign of approaching winter, something that was worrying military minds at Gallipoli. At Brigade Headquarters, orders were prepared for support troops to start digging deeper shelters against the frost and snow that would come sooner or later.

  Already the days were turning cool. One morning they woke to see a heavy fog hanging in the gullies and over the sea, the cloud tops tinged with pink in the rising sun. As with the glorious sunsets they still sometimes saw, nature had a caprice of painting backdrops of rare beauty against which men acted out their tragedy.

  More chill winds blew.

  Cec Hogan took sick again on 5 October, and went down to the Casualty Clearing Hospital near the beach. The lingering infection was giving him severe muscle pains in his back and limbs; and the doctors kept him there for a week to recover from myalgia, before sending him back up the line on duty.

  His mate, though, continued in good health.

  ‘Dear Mother and Father,’ Jim wrote from his dugout on Saturday, 9 October. ‘Just a line hoping all is well as it leaves me at present. Things are just the same here. The only difference we are expecting a bit of rain which will not be welcomed by us. This place will be a mud hole when the rain does come. We had a bit of a shower last night, but it was nothing to speak of …’

  The cold was being felt by men of both sides, of course. Jim went on to tell them at home of reports from a Turkish officer who had surrendered to the Anzacs. The Turks were being very badly treated by their German advisers, he said, and were only getting one meal a day – in the evening.

  This officer wasn’t alone.

  ‘There was one Turk who tried to give himself up the other night,’ Jim wrote, ‘and got shot by the sentry. We dragged him into our trenches to bury him in the morning, and you ought to have seen the state he was in. He had no boots on, an old pair of trousers all patched, and an old coat. The pioneers took him down the gully to bury him, and one got shot in the thigh by a sniper …’

  It was the first time Jim had seen his Turkish enemy close up: face to face, one human being to another. He was an older man, with sons of his own, no doubt. Bearded and dirty, his face shrunken and showing all the surprise of unexpected death, the name of Allah still half-uttered on his cold lips. Jim looked with equanimity upon this man’s corpse. However young, Jim had seen death before, and it came to them all eventually.

  ‘We are not doing bad for food,’ Jim said in his letter, telling Mum what she’d want to hear. White lies for home consumption. And he went on to tell Amelia and Dad about the treat from Lady Ferguson. But it was cold, and he was tired, and he was getting to the end of the page.

  ‘I think I have told you all the news so I must draw to a close with Fondest love to all, Jim.’

  Again, he scribbled the familiar postscript. ‘Write soon, Jim. I have received no letters since I left Victoria and I have been writing often.’

  He made another copy of the letter, filling in a few gaps, before putting it in the battalion post to be read and passed by the military censors. It would seem that this was his last.

  The soldier boy lying so ill with typhoid on board the hospital ship Glenart Castle, anchored out there off Anzac, stirred fitfully in his slumbers.

  He was dying.

  The images began to fade. It seemed, in these past few minutes, he’d lived again all that had happened since they had left Port Melbourne in June. Now, like a silent picture show when the projector breaks down, the light in his mind started to flicker and waver. His consciousness began to stall and wind down. The scenes became slower, more broken and distant, until, at length, there were only fragments of memory sputtering in the darkness, and the rest of the screen was blank.

  Jim Martin’s heart, weakened by fever, beat ever more feebly. His blood, poisoned with typhoid bacteria, pumped more slowly through the veins and arteries and into his darkening brain. The morphine had helped. But not enough. His nervous system and bodily organs, one by one, were shutting down.

  Yet Jim was still young. Only fourteen. And soothed by the motion of the ship lying at anchor, life and mind sought briefly once more to assert themselves.

  It wasn’t long after writing this last letter that Jim Martin began to feel sick. Nothing serious at first. Just a feeling of lethargy in his arms and legs when he woke one morning. A few aches and pains. Things had been very quiet all along the front for some days. Perhaps he was getting used to it. Growing a bit soft.

  Yet the feeling of malaise persisted. A dull, throbbing headache started and wouldn’t go away. He began to cough. A dry, hacking cough, like bronchitis.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked his mate, Cec Hogan. Cec was not long back from his week in the Casualty Clearing Hospital, and was alert to other people’s symptoms.

  ‘Right as rain. Just a bit cold.’

  ‘Good-oh.’

  But Jim wasn’t all right. His coughing got worse. His nose bled once or twice for no reason. And although his stomach began to ache, his bowels seized up. He’d go down to the latrines and squat on the boards over the pit, reeking of filth. Yet nothing would happen.

  ‘You sure you’re not crook?’

  ‘Just a few pains … like you had.’

  ‘You oughta see the medics …’

  ‘Look! I’ll get over it! Just like you did.’

  ‘Keep your shirt on! I’m only saying …’

  Cec was standing next to Jim in the firing line. It was 0400, and the brigade was giving Abdul another demonstration. Artillery boomed. Rounds of rapid fire were directed up and down the line. Dummy figures were raised above the parapets, the men cheering and officers shouting bogus orders.

  ‘First assault party, mount the firing step!’ As if they were about to launch an attack on the Turkish trenches.

>   But Abdul didn’t respond in his usual way. The demonstration drew little enemy fire. It was as if he knew it was just a demonstration, without serious intent, and his heart was not in it.

  Nor was Jim Martin’s. Standing in the trench, he found it hard to make much sense of what was going on or what he was supposed to be doing. His gut ached. He couldn’t hold the rifle steady. He shouted as they were told, but all that came out was vomit.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not crook?’

  ‘I told you! I’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Then leave me alone …’

  A mail from Australia arrived the next day. Cec got a letter from his sister, Kath. He wrote his reply that very afternoon, having a rest from digging mines.

  Once again, it appeared, there were no letters for Jim Martin. He could no longer hide his disappointment. That night, in the privacy of his dugout burrow, tears welled up in Jim’s eyes. What were they doing? Why didn’t they write? He was putting the correct return address on his own letters.

  Gallipoli

  1553 A Coy 21st Bat.

  6th Brigade

  What was the matter with them? Things were so unfair. From a long way off, Jim heard his words again to his mother and father in the kitchen at Forres.

  ‘If you let me go, I’ll write to you and stay in touch. But if you don’t, I’ll run away and join up under another name, and you won’t hear from me at all.’

  Well, he’d written to them almost every week. Now, as it turned out, it seemed they weren’t writing to him!

  It rained for most of the night. But Jim woke up feeling hot and feverish. He was ill again that day on duty, and the following day as well.

  ‘You should report to sick parade, Private.’

  ‘I’ll be all right Sergeant Coates. It will pass.’

  Though it didn’t pass. In the second week of sickness, Jim’s fever rose. The cramps in his stomach got worse, until it seemed as if the pain was eating through him. He could hardly drag himself along the sap. And in the trench, when it was his turn to man the periscope, he had trouble focusing upon the image in the mirror. He wasn’t always sure where he was.

  Sometimes in the fractured light it seemed he was back at Tocumwal … or was it the practice range at school …? No … surely those brown and olive hills were the landscape around Maldon …?

  POW!

  A bullet rang out.

  What was that? Where did it come from? Were they out rabbiting? Trying to pull his mind back …

  ‘Bit slow responding there, Private! Sharpen yourself up.’

  ‘Yes, Corporal. Sorry Corp.’

  As if from a great distance.

  A day or two later the dysentery started. His bowels, cramped and constipated before, let loose. Jim could scarcely haul himself to the latrines before he seemed to void half his innards down the pit. Every half hour or so the searing pain returned, until it was easier to lie wrapped in his blanket and his own faeces on a groundsheet by the dunnies than go back to his dugout; until the cold and rain returned in the third week of October and drove him underground. Then he was like one of the 8th Battalion shadows he’d seen shuffling to and fro that first day they came up to Wire Gully. And like them, he refused to go down. Tenacious in his refusal to surrender anything.

  May coward shame distain his name

  The wretch that dares not die.

  Jim Martin was no coward.

  ‘Jim, you’ve got to go to the medic!’ Cec Hogan pleaded with him. ‘You’re crook. Real crook.’

  ‘No. I told you …’

  ‘There’s no shame in it, mate. No one will think any the worse of you. I got sick. Twice. I went down to the tent hospital. They fixed me up good, and sent me back …’

  ‘I’ll be all right I reckon. Just some water …’

  His throat burned.

  Jim’s water-flask was empty. Cec unscrewed his own and held it to his friend’s lips. Yet as soon as Jim took a swig of the precious water, he spewed it up again. He could keep nothing down, and nothing would quench the fires inside.

  The next day he could scarcely move when it was time to get up for duty.

  ‘Jim, you’ve got to report to sick parade. You’ve got to see someone …’

  ‘Please. No. Just tell Sergeant Coates …’

  ‘But why, mate? Why?’

  How could Jim Martin say why? How could he say that deep down, beneath a soldier’s bravery and chosen duty, lay dread? His dread that if he did go down to the doctors they’d soon discover his true age. They’d see he was just a boy. And what then? He’d be stripped of everything by the army, and sent home in disgrace.

  No shame? How could Cec Hogan know that? They were both under-age. But Cec didn’t know how young Jim really was.

  ‘I’ll be right as rain tomorrow.’

  But he wasn’t. He lay sweating and shivering by turns, tormented by thirst and calling for water. He couldn’t sleep for the pain in his gut, and night became indistinguishable from day.

  Fear came. Not just fear he’d be found out. But also fear that perhaps he might not be all right. Fear that he might die. As others had died. The whitened face of the drowned steward from the Southland, his head wound seeping blood, rolled in the waves of Jim’s fevered consciousness. The terrified eyes of the cabin boys sank beneath the sea.

  Jim tried to pray, as he had been taught.

  Our Father which art in Heaven…

  Or was it who art…?

  He couldn’t remember or shape the words. For the dead Turk watched as they dragged him down the gully for burial, calling on his God. And from afar, Jim heard the agonies of the two-up player, clutching his guts and crying:

  Tell the missus… tell me kid…

  Thoughts of home came into Jim’s mind. Of his bedroom at Forres when he was sick with a cold, and Amelia coming up the stairs with a basin of hot balsam … Mum bending over him and soothing his brow with such soft hands and words …

  Gentle Jesus, meek and mild…

  The night-time prayer from his childhood.

  Until Jim pushed all such thoughts away. Forcing them to leave him alone, because he would not – he could not – give in.

  That evening, Sergeant Coates came to see him.

  ‘You’re a good lad, and a brave one. But unless you’re better tomorrow I’ll send you down to the doctors whether you like it or not. We don’t want to lose you.’

  So on that next cold, quiet day, 25 October, Jim made himself join the platoon in the firing line at midday. He was thin and pallid, and had lost almost half his body weight. His head throbbed and his gut ached to hell, though he said he was fit for duty.

  He stood with his section in the raw afternoon. The light shifted and ebbed along the ridge line, as though it were already dusk. Shaking.

  ‘How are you feeling now, Jim?’ asked Cec Hogan.

  ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘I could do with a hot brew myself,’ said Cec’s mate from Benalla, Bob Briggs. ‘You want something?’

  Water. Just some water.

  The voices receding and disappearing as the pain burst again from his inner darkness.

  ‘Mum …’

  This time Private Martin wanted only to go home.

  He collapsed on the floor of the trench. Excrement and blood and vomit flowed from his body.

  He lost all consciousness.

  They took Jim by stretcher down the hill, down to the ambulance station in Rest Gully. He was far gone; and the medical officer, after only one look, knew that he had to get to hospital and have proper care immediately if he was to be saved.

  ‘Do what you can for him. Clean him up a bit. Give him some water. Then move him at once to the beach and put him on the first transport available out to the hospital ships.’

  So Jim was carried down to Anzac Cove and laid in an open barge that was taking that day’s cargo of sick and wounded soldiers to the Glenart Castle, anchored offshore. Far more sick
than wounded. With the coming of cold weather, the swarms of Gallipoli flies with their arsenal of disease had begun to disappear. But for many soldiers it was too late.

  Thus the barge was towed out to the hospital ship and Jim Martin, in his turn, was lifted aboard by the orderlies and taken down to the crowded ward. His filthy clothes, once so new and proudly put on, were cut away. His wasted body was sponged clean. He lay in a bed and the first cool sheets he’d known for months.

  ‘Water … please, water …’

  A nurse helped him drink – such sweet water – and gave him an injection of morphine to help ease the pain.

  Jim lay there, borne upon the tide. Images of home and of himself floated on the slow currents of his mind. The river at Tocumwal, eddying past the sandbanks … rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the drum beating as Mary and Annie hurried the last few steps to school, hair ribbons flying … the faces of those boys as they marched down Spring Street that day he stood and watched with his father … If you let me go, I’ll write to you and stay in touch…

  ‘Please … more water …’

  Calling weakly. And then the woman’s face, with a voice like his mother, from out of the misty veil.

  ‘Am I going to get well …?’

  ‘Of course you are, my boy …’

  So that was all right. Right as rain.

  ‘Thank you, sister. I feel better already.’

  Jim Martin settled down. Comforted. The ship rocking. Was it the Berrima… the Southland… the Abassieh… carrying him to new and distant lands?

  He felt himself slipping through the waves. The paper streamers, red-and-white, breaking one by one. No longer holding him to shore …

  The currents flowing.

  Slowing.

  Gathering in pools of darkness.

  And silence.

  Mum …

  Ever deeper.

  And slower.

  Then nothing.

  14: AFTERWARDS

  The morning after Jim died, Matron Reddock sat down to write her letter of condolence to his mother.