Gallipoli Memories by Compton Mackenzie

Author:Compton Mackenzie [Mackenzie, Compton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII - TENEDOS FOR THE THIRD TIME

With affectionate gratitude to the genius of the place I stepped ashore on the island of Tenedos for the third time. In a moment the War was miles away, though when I looked up to the shimmering windmills on the slope behind the red-roofed town there were shadows of it here, for I could see beside them Moslem women in black sitting with bowed heads and pondering a hopeless future.

That afternoon the Governor and I rode over to the Marines’ camp on the Asiatic side of the island where trenches had been dug to resist a sudden foray by the enemy. And here to my immense gratification I managed at last to secure some badges of my Corps, though, alas, none of the coveted buttons, for there was not a spare button in the camp. We had a jolly tea with the Doctor and then rode inland to visit the Mayor who lived in a delightful ancient house surrounded by a large garden full of flowers. We sat in an arbour of myrtle and honeysuckle and drank a very old sweet wine of the country, while the Mayor’s pretty niece brought us bunches of damask roses crimson-pied and rapturously fragrant. She brought us musk roses, too, the colour of old ivory, and scattered aromatic herbs on the ground for our feet. To loiter there in the honied calm of early evening and look back from that perfumed arbour to the adventures of the morning with shells and the hot stale deck of a trawler in a rolling southerly sea was to believe either that I was dreaming now or that I had been dreaming then, but that not both experiences could be real. We sat there laughing and joking with the Mayor for a long time, and it was not until the first orange streamers of the sunset began to float across the tender evening sky that we said farewell. Then we rode off home into the spangled air through which high overhead a monoplane was thrumming round and round in lazy circles, its wings glittering like a buzzard’s. While we were trotting along between high green banks a motor-bicycle swept round a corner in front with one of the French aerodrome mechanics in the saddle. My pony shot sideways into a ditch, stood on his hindlegs, pawed the bank for a moment or two, and then made an attempt to climb it. I can hear the echoes of my companion’s laughter now. However, I managed to keep my seat, and induce the absurd animal to believe that it was less likely to be damaged on four legs than if it remained on two. Soon afterward we reached the starting-point of our mile race and galloped past green banks and Turkish tombstones to reach the outskirts of the town in a dead heat. The wake of our course was marked by a trail of rose-leaves scattered from the bunches we had tied to our saddles.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.