Where the Line Breaks Read online

  The Western Australian contingent of the Australian Mounted Infantry is named the 10th Light Horse.16 Their motto is: Percute et percute velociter (‘Strike, and strike swiftly’).17 They fought on the cliff faces of Gallipoli, defended Suez, forced the Turkish army back at Romani, and marched triumphantly into the holy city of Jerusalem on 9th December 1917.18 The 10th was comprised of almost five hundred men, who left the farms, towns and cities of Western Australia to fight shoulder-to-shoulder on the other side of the world.19 For most, it was the first opportunity to try something new, leaving the world they knew behind and heading off into the great unknown for adventure. It is reasonable to assume that they jumped at the opportunity for something more.20 For Alan Lewis, it was the pivotal moment in a life destined for greatness.

  Alan Lewis was twenty-three years old when he left Australia on board the HMAT Mashobra, bound for Egypt.21 He would never return home. Fortuitously for us, the stories of his bravery and courage came back with his brothers-in-arms, and through the news of his posthumous awarding of the Victoria Cross, the highest individual accolade available in the First Australian Imperial Force.22 He was one of just two members of the combined Light Horse battalions to receive the prestigious honour, the other being Hugo ‘Hu’ Throssell.23

  Alan Lewis’s story is well known.24 Alongside his regiment, he journeyed to Egypt for auxiliary drilling, before shipping out to Gallipoli in May 1915. He fought valiantly at the charge at The Nek, the bloodiest of all the battles in which the 10th were involved, and since made famous by the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, starring a young Mel Gibson.25 Lewis was injured in a shell attack on 27th November 1915 and taken to the hospital island of Lemnos, where he recovered from his wounds, a period he referred to as his ‘Greek odyssey’ in his letters home.26 Catching up with his regiment in Suez, he joined in the defence of the canal from multiple Turkish attacks, before taking part in the battles of Romani and Magdhaba that followed.27 Through 1916, Lewis and the 10th drove the Turks back through the deserts of Sinai, before reaching Gaza, which the Light Horse attempted to capture in March 1917.28 With the famous Charge at Beersheba in October 1917, Gaza finally fell, and Jerusalem surrendered soon after on 9th December. Lewis led his men through the streets of the holy city to accept the surrender.29 It was in the final sweep of the Turkish forces through Har Megiddo, or Armageddon, mentioned in the Bible as the plains on which the final battle for Earth would take place, that Lewis made his final sacrifice, putting himself in the path of danger to save his own men and a family of innocent civilians, and tragically losing his life.

  Lewis’s citation for his Victoria Cross reads: ‘For most conspicuous acts of gallantry in circumstances of great peril.’ The official regimental scrapbook of the 10th Light Horse elucidates further:

  Lieutenant Lewis tracked the retreating Turkish troops through a small village, whereupon he disembarked and examined the nearby well for evidence of Turkish sabotage. Alongside Trooper McRae, he then passed through each house, searching for Turkish soldiers. In the final house, the two men were ambushed, and Trooper McRae was mortally wounded. Lewis fought off his attackers, and managed to pull Trooper McRae to relative safety. Reentering without backup, LT Lewis then saved two young civilians from the building. As reinforcements arrived, LT Lewis re-entered for a third time, whereupon the building exploded. Seven bodies were recovered. Trooper McRae died shortly after.30

  Here is a man who altruistically sacrifices his life for his ideals, who fights valiantly throughout the war, and who is deservedly celebrated as a hero for his actions.31 It may surprise some to note that select commentators have repudiated my proposal that Lewis is the Unknown Digger, maintaining that he is too renowned and his actions too carefully scrutinised for him to be a plausible candidate.32 In fact, the opposite is true: we have thoroughly examined the unfamiliar and unknown candidates – the quiet sidekicks and educated bit-players of history – and found them unsuitable for the role. Alan Lewis is a uniquely promising candidate because he is the lone Australian whose actions are astonishing enough to accommodate the presence of artistic genius within, and it is my contention that the very beating heart of his heroic experiences found their way into his poems.33 Perhaps the reason we have been looking in the wrong place for so long is that one does not necessarily equate acts of derring-do with artistic sensitivity and genius – but by doing so, we are doing both our literary and military heroes a disservice. It takes a brave soul indeed to write the truth, to capture, in poetry, the Australian experience, and to charge headlong into the dangerous world of lyricism. Lewis, therefore, is the one digger in the whole of the 10th Light Horse and across the Australian divisions who has proven himself brave enough to have authored these incredible verses.34

  CAMP MENA, EGYPT. APRIL 1915.

  They have a jar or two in Cairo, a glass or three of wine, and finish a bottle of sweet arak between the three of them; him and Red and the Irishman. They miss the last tram back to camp. They lose their arranged ride. They lose track of time. They lose track of space.

  They’re going to miss curfew.

  They cadge a lift from an obliging rickshaw Gyppo until he throws them out, Alan’s vomit down the side of the rickshaw. So they hire a native and his pack of donkeys to take them back – Alan lashed to the saddle so he can’t fall off – and they arrive back late at night, with all the camp asleep.

  So what? They’re young. Invincible. Australian. They sneak back in, somehow, unnoticed, weaselling their way past the guards through stealth or mischief or bluster. Once they’re inside camp, inch by careful inch, they creep past Kelly and the other dozing horses in their long rows, without stirring them, and manage to step their way, without tripping, through the tangle of guidelines holding the canvas tents rigid, and, against all odds, locate their tent in the desert darkness. They slip under the flap and reach out in the murky pitch with groping fingers for the welcoming caress of the bedroll and the sweet lure of sleep.

  The bugle calls reveille five minutes later. Sand crunches in teeth. Red’s snoring hammers against the first newborn wails of a hangover. They will never learn. They laugh about it, staggering home, arms on shoulders, and their stories grow bigger and bolder, like the bottlebrush tree back home, obscuring the sun.

  My love, I hope this letter finds you well and I apologise in advance for the state of my handwriting; I’m writing extremely late at night, or very early in the morning (if you are that way inclined), unable to sleep with nerves. Today we head out on our first live-fire training exercise. To tell you more would be tantamount to treachery, suffice to say my men will fight valiantly to gain control of an incredibly specific area of sand from the bloody and barbaric hordes of thieving scum led by Red. It feels strange to be out of the saddle and building sandcastles.

  Thank you, and your mother, for the letters – I don’t think I can properly convey how joyous it is to hear one’s name called when the post arrives. Unfortunately, despite my various investigations, I have yet to receive the parcel you spoke of – either it is taking a most circuitous route to me, seeing the sights in Cape Town, Suez and Alexandria, or else some lucky native is sitting himself down to a proper feast of chocolate and fruit cake wearing my new shorts. Thieving creatures.

  Do you remember a certain summer day in Perth when you met me at the library as we closed? And we walked down to the bay with a bottle of plonk, and all the baby swans were crowding round their mothers, and you said something like, black swans are simply silhouettes. I find myself returning to that day. There’s a certain moment each morning, before the sun starts doing its thing, where I almost feel I’m home. When we are all silhouettes. When the sun is blazing proper, it’s far too hot to patrol, and we mill about camp like headless chooks. Our new pal Nugget calls it the Farkit Hour. One day I shall write a book detailing everything he says, called ‘Nuggets of Wisdom’. We’ll receive invitations to Government House, to summer balls and the grandest parties, and we shall have the Irishman to thank.

/>   That’s enough mindless chit from me, soon I’ll wake Red – one approaches warily and pokes the beast from a safe distance, careful to keep fingers and toes protected at all times – and we shall eat breakfast, wish each other well and then proceed to attack. Another regular day. I look forward to a letter soon – tell me more about the hospital, if you would be so kind. Write about the gumtrees. Describe, please, the minutiae of your life. I wrap myself in your words when I fall asleep.

  Yours, yawningly.

  The trenches on the rock won’t be like this though, with the wooden slats reaching up above his head, and little rivulets of sand, like tiny waterfalls, bursting through the gaps with the slightest movement up above. They’ve heard the ground is much harder, tree roots and rocks and various bits and bobs to get in the way of their shovels. Furphy has it they won’t need these trenches though, they’ll be in Constantinople by mid-year and home by Christmas – but they have been ordered to practise, to show off their acquired skills, and so the trenches have been dug.

  Heavy mortar shells fall from the sky yards from their make-do frontline. White-hot metal. Screaming ghosts. The brass hats have deemed it wise to use live ammunition. The brass hats are watching their progress, from a safe vantage point several miles away.

  The objective, a large dune the same as every other dune, lies before them, defended by Red and the Second Division. Between them and him is open desert.

  Alan peers around at the men crammed into the trench with him, like row on row of juicy tomatoes jammed into crates at the Italian grocers in Fremantle, ripe and ready to burst. He risks a quick glance at his watch: three more minutes and the barrage will start to creep forward, and he’ll have to jump up and out of the trench, advancing in the wake of the exploding shells. If there was room to pace he’d be pacing. The men look bored.

  ‘Three minutes, boys.’

  Two of the closest men glance his way, the rest stare straight ahead or up at the sky, or at their hands, at the sweat-buffed handles of their rifles. He is younger than half the men in his charge. They look at him like his brothers did when he was young. Sheep shearers and cattle drovers, men twice his size with shoulders like doorways. All placing their lives in his hands. Red is able to joke and laugh with them, so they respect him, but Alan can’t think of what to say. There are fresh blisters on the pink skin of his palms.

  He wipes the sweat from his brow. Two minutes. Sand between his toes, scratching back and forth with the sweat, bites into the soft webbing. There is dust in his mouth. He adjusts his stance, remembering his training; but the training never mentioned the gritty yellow sand, the coarse pebbles and jagged shards, caked on by sweat, stuck between his arse cheeks.

  One minute. He glances down the line at the faces of his men, catches the eyes of those who look back at him. The cheap Egyptian cigarettes pursed between lips. Stubble on quivering chins. Someone further down the line is singing a song about someone else’s sister, but the explosions and whines of the shells make it hard to hear. Close enough to feel the heat of the explosions on his nose. And they must advance into the storm.

  He takes a deep breath, places the whistle between his lips and mouths a silent prayer to whatever it is he believes in. The shelling has moved away from them, the pressure dropping, his ears popping as he swallows hard. The man closest to him turns, but he’s already blowing three long blasts on the whistle, pulling himself up and over the sandbags, turning to grab the hand of the man behind, to pull him up, and the man behind him too, wave after wave, into the morning light.

  One infamous night, arriving back to camp after curfew, they lie in the sand observing the entrance to camp as the guard on duty walks back and forth. Nugget has a trail of vomit down his shirt sleeve. Alan doesn’t feel too flash either.

  Nugget has an idea, which is dangerous in itself.

  ‘Follow my lead,’ the Irishman says, and stands up. He starts walking backwards towards the camp. Alan and Red jump up and follow him. Red burps.

  Alan starts to giggle.

  The guard has finished his pass, and turns back towards the entrance. He sees their backs in the distance, and thinks they’re trying to leave.

  ‘Halt!’ he cries, running towards them.

  Alan can’t stop giggling.

  ‘Alright, back to camp.’ The guard lays a warm hand on Alan’s shoulder. He almost stumbles. Red is nodding too much, talking too loud. Nugget murmurs something in his Irish lilt that defuses the situation, and the guard is smiling.

  The camp spins.

  Nugget sings an Irish song about the Egyptian girls; their bonny sweet faces, he sings in his gravelly tenor. Nugget’s words lull Alan to sleep.

  They’d first met McRae on the Mashobra, bedding down with the men in the triple-tiered bunks. The Irishman had been living in Albany for five years when he signed up, the smallest man in the regiment, turning his Irish charm on to scrape his way through the medical. When Alan had boarded at Fremantle, and headed below deck to find his assigned bunk, he’d discovered it strewn with papers, various items of uniform, and an impressive collection of pornography. He’d promptly removed the offending articles to a better home, and dumped them on the floor.

  An hour later, as the men returned to their bunks, he was woken from his nap with startled alarm by a pile of his own books hitting him squarely in the stomach. From his bunk he could only make out the top of a head of dark brown hair, the voice that followed issuing forth from below with a thick Irish accent.

  ‘You the eejit that moved my things?’

  ‘You the bastard that put them on my bed?’

  Silence for a moment.

  ‘Touché.’ Only the voice pronounced it off kilter, made it sound like ‘tooshee’.

  The shells are two hundred feet ahead of them, and out of the safety of the trench, the whole wide field of cratered sand and dark shadowy dunes stretching out for miles looks like the fabled fields of fire and brimstone. He can’t move, caught in the light of the flames. The terrible beauty of destruction.

  ‘C’mon, you lazy bastards!’

  Halfway down the line someone else calls them forward, striding out ahead of the rest of the pack, turning back and beckoning to them. Doing his job better than him. He blows his whistle, shrieking over the roar of the shells, and the men turn, the flames dancing in their eyes.

  He walks forward, boots sinking into the warm sand. The shells are screaming their final descents, and alongside him the boys are whooping and hollering, rifles held like babies, bayonets glinting. Another game to be won. Another adventure. As they move forward, the wall of fire moves further back, another hundred and fifty yards, concealing their movements behind the smog, maintaining the safe distance from their slick skin, their burnt forearms, shielding their advance on the huge dune marking Red’s defensive line.

  A footy field away from the objective, he walks straight into a cloying wall of smog that has yet to settle, which coats his lungs, powder dry on his lips, the limestone taste of zinc cream. The powdery residue is in his eyelashes, and tears spring from the corners of his eyes, attempting to wash away the dirt, but with each blink it grows worse. He closes his eyes but no matter which direction they roll the tiny grains push into the soft wet whites, caught beneath the thin skin of his eyelids, pricking and tearing. Trying to wipe his eyes introduces the acid sting of the sweat that drips down his forehead.

  He lowers his head against the onslaught. On either side his men are doing the same, heads down, walking straight into the path of the bombardment. On his right flank the line threatens to break, one small group out ahead of the rest. The men around him stop as he blows his whistle to call a halt, but the forward group marches on, too far ahead to hear. He runs forward alone, tripping in the sand. The brass hats will be judging him. The men behind him laughing. The shells shriek down on top of him, boxing him in.

  Suffocating.

  He grasps the shoulder of the trailing trooper, swings him around, sends him back towards their line. M
ust stay together. He screams at the other men to fall back, to advance as a group, a fluid, perfect killing machine – but the shells are too loud. He grabs the men one by one and shoves them back towards the main group – like herding cattle.

  In Egypt, after only a week on their horses, the entire regiment was demounted and taught to fight in trenches, and McRae was assigned to Alan’s division. Alan had worried that he might question his decisions, or backchat him in front of the other troopers, or simply keep him awake all night with his incessant chatter, but McRae just smiled his lopsided smile and backed him up, every time. When they needed a third man for their tent, Alan suggested the Irishman.

  Red and McRae immediately hit it off, like long-lost brothers, and Alan had followed, eager to impress.

  ‘We’re going into town for a jag, care to join?’ Red’s head had appeared at the door of their tent, his uniform pressed, buttons gleaming. Alan had been napping in the afternoon heat.

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Nugget, me, couple of Gyppo sheilas, General Birdwood. Who do ya think?’

  ‘Who’s Nugget?’

  Red gave him a hard stare. ‘Sergeant McRae, Al. Everyone calls him Nugget.’