At Anzac Cove
pebbles disorder the shore,
a bright ghosting
of overexposed photos,
too much light
hitting the lens of my eye
or is my mind
providing a comminuted* fracturing?
Stones grow in size, then slide into Aegean,
a steep descent
shadowed by wet, raw-clawing tide-fingers.
Easy
to overlay puttee-clad legs
floundering foundering failing to ascend.
Above the tideline
wan, grey gravel converts to biscuity sand,
Huntley and Palmers*-hard.
We amble, humbled, reluctant
to invade
below, where once
troops scrambled - jostled, snarled, stumbled
and bled,
and bled,
thigh-deep in saw-toothed water,
Mauser*-mauled, Maxim-mowed.
To be walking here -
to impose
our sweat-shop-footwear seems -
anachronistic -
soft-shoe treading upon deep, dark dreaming
and yet,
someone has been swimming,
that glacial-flow of Gascon*-grey -
half-beached, half-drowned breech-flapping
is an abandoned lilo.
For the briefest of moments, I am enraged,
cable unreeled at Dead Man's Patch,
bitterly strafed, shrapnel-struck — then,
just as suddenly, utterly
sapped.
Who am I to judge?
Didn't our men also swim,
gamble* exposed at Gelibolu* -
what could be more
Australian?
Comminuted fractures are fractures where the bone is sharded and splintered even pulverised. I am implying the colour is bone-grey as old bones.
Huntley and Palmers — A hard dry biscuit that was a staple at Gallipoli
Mauser — a rifle supplied to the Turks by their German allies
Maxim — The Maxim machine gun. It has been called "the weapon most associated with British imperial conquest" — ironic, no?
Gascon — Hospital ship lying off Anzac Cove. By the evening of 25 April, 557 wounded had been taken on board Over the next nine months the ship ferried over 8000 wounded and sick soldiers between the Gallipoli Peninsula and the hospitals on Imbros, Lemnos, Salonika, Alexandria, Malta and in England.
gamble — Aussie 'diggers' at Gallipoli gambled against the chances of getting shot while swimming. If you were hit, you got paid.
Gelibolu — The Turkish name for Gallipoli meaning 'beautiful city'.
