The Dardanelles Conspiracy by Alan Bardos (best ereader for pc TXT) 📗

long and 40 yards wide. There were thick green sand dunes in the centre, rising into a high bank with a trench along the top. Rusty barbed wire entanglements ran along the waters edged three foot high and three rows thick. The massive naval bombardment had hardly touched it.

They were 100 yards out and still the only sound coming from the beach was the restful crashing of the waves. Johnny looked at the men. Williams was cradling a rucksack and quietly singing ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’. Each man was isolated in their own thoughts, preparing for whatever awaited them. Some just looked back at him with grim determination. Johnny felt a sense of belonging. They were all in it together.

‘I’m sure we’d have had a warmer welcome at Blackpool beach,’ Johnny said, raising a mirthless laugh. ‘But the pasha’s harem will be waiting for you on the other side of the wire.’

A man next to Johnny laughed loudly. Bromley looked at him approvingly. It was an obvious thing to say and what everyone expected.

The boat ground to a juddering halt and a Naval Rating shouted from the tiller. ‘We’ve hit a bank, this is as far as she goes.’

Johnny recoiled at the sound of a loud crack and was sprayed with the blood of the man behind him who’d just laughed at his joke. He realised it was Aubrey. His monocle was still wedged in place, but the back of his head had gone.

Bewildered, Johnny watched as the still silence of the beach exploded with the buzzing of rifle and machine gun fire. The men were shredded by an invisible scythe while the boat waddled and floundered helplessly.

‘Everyone out,’ Bromley shouted and Johnny heard himself repeat the order as he leapt over the side.

He landed in four feet of cold water. The boat began to drift away, the ratings that crewed her were dead. There was nowhere to go but forward.

Johnny flailed towards the beach following the few men who’d made it off the boat, while Turkish bullets zipped through the water.

A jolt of pain shot up Johnny’s leg and he was pulled under, his ankle tangled in wire. He tasted salt and remembered his stepfather, holding his head underwater, teaching him to swim. The same panic set in and Johnny choked and coughed, fighting against the weight of his kit dragging him down.

He felt a hand on the scruff of his neck, pulling his head above the surface. This time instead of the brutal voice of his stepfather he heard the melancholy sound of Williams.

‘Come on, sir, you can’t drown before the Turks get a chance to shoot you. It wouldn’t be sporting, like.’

‘My foot’s caught in something.’ Johnny gasped and brought up sea water.

‘Have you out in no time,’ Williams said, brandishing wire cutters. He ducked down and Johnny shrieked as the wire dug into his leg. Then felt blessed relief as his foot was freed.

Williams burst to the surface blowing like a whale and together they stumbled toward the beach, past the twisted bodies of men who’d died as they’d struggled to free themselves from the wire. Johnny quickened his pace, desperate to be out of this death trap.

Johnny and Williams reached the edge of the beach and threw themselves down next to the men already at the wire, smartly lined up as they’d been instructed, and calling for cutters. The water jumped alive with hundreds of tiny splashes that turned the men to pulp.

Unable to go forward Johnny pressed himself into the coarse sand at the mercy of the enemy, firing down at him from every direction. The Fusiliers struggled with their rifles, which without covers had been jammed by sand. One of the Fusiliers began to pull at a stake holding the wire in place. Shrieking with rage he ignored the gashes to his hands and arms from the barbs, and was thrown back by a bullet, he got up and continued.

A shell from the naval bombardment hit the cliff above them, showering Johnny with grit. A group of men on his left were engulfed in an explosion. Johnny assumed from a mine. The noise was unbearable, he couldn’t move, his uniform felt like it had been weight down with lead. The unreality of everything made him feel faint and he looked away. The sea sparkled like a picture postcard from a tropical resort. Bright blue, blurring into red as it neared the shore.

‘Where are your guts man?’ He thought he heard his Stepfather, but Williams was shaking him. ‘Cutters man, where are your bloody cutters?’

‘Where are yours?’ Johnny asked. Still in a daze, he turned back to the carnage around him.

‘You bloody kicked them out of my hand, flailing around like a donkey,’ Williams yelled. ‘Sir.’

Johnny saw Captain Willis brandishing a cane and shouting, ‘Come on C Company, remember Minden.’

The Lancashire Fusiliers were rallying, wading ashore holding their rifles above their heads, some had managed to find a way to step over the wire, others were cutting through or simply crawling under it, in small groups. Another officer had found a gap in the wire and was leading his men through. Johnny remembered what Hare had said at the briefing. ‘Nothing could stop this astonishing infantry!’

A stronger fear took over Johnny. He was a bloody disgrace, he was letting everyone down. Williams and the men around him, the regiment and the country he loved. Johnny felt his box of charms. They had seen him through so far. When Williams shook him again Johnny fumbled for his cutters.

He managed to fix the square head around a small gap between the barbs on the wire in front of him and somehow managed to stop his hands from trembling long enough to squeeze. It was impossible. He’d have had more luck with a pair of nail clippers.

Johnny felt the