IN SEARCH OF MY GRANDFATHER’S GRAVE

I didn’t find my grandad’s grave at Cape Helles, but then he was never found after his death and in the absence of remains, all that is left is his name on a stone wall, amongst many fellow members of the Manchester Regiment and hundreds of others from all parts of Britain, Ireland. New Zealand, a few Aussies and even Indians, who died in the vicinity but have no known grave. Now, for a while, he stands out because of the small commemorative cross that I drove into the turf at the foot of his name-a distinctive necessity on a war memorial when one’s name is Smith or even Schmidt, as I discovered on Austrian memorials.

But then later, he found me. As the sun set broodingly behind the Cape Helles light house and tired Turkish women farm labourers trundled home ın tractor drawn trailers, I felt a turmoil of conflicting emotions, with the brakes of that cultural suppression of feeling that is the birthright of the English, firmly applied.

Driving back in the dark on unlit, virtual one lane roads (the regular ones were under repair- perhaps a Rudd infrastructure policy at work already?) was a challenge to occupy my mind especially as the ghostly white headstones of all those dear clog dancing, black pudding making, fathers, sons, brothers and pals from Bury, in Lancashire Landing cemetery, swept by. They won six VCs before breakfast on that fatal shore. Not nearly so demanding, however, as guiding a left-hand drive manual hire car on to a Turkish ferry from an unlit Quayside without guard rails (no health and safety Directorate here) Whilst backing and filling into line, reliant on trust in a local guiding me to the very edge of the watery abyss (my mobile phone rang!!) my efforts were variously, cheered, jeered and applauded by a raucous crowd of Turkish male onlookers. But when I had missed by a shave scraping Ali’s new Renault and avoided backing over Mehmet’s prized motor bike, I was greeted with fierce handshakes and slaps on the back (what they were really thinking inside-another bold but useless foreigner invading our territory?) I was so relieved not to have the stonemason summoned to add another inscription to the vacant space on the Helles wall-Smıth B-Believed to have been lost at sea!

Getting off was easier than getting on but not so simple was finding my resort hotel ten klms out of town-at petrol stations no English was spoken nor French, nor Russıan, but, finally, some German, by a cop having a smoko (IN A PETROL STATION!) It was then in the night that the ghosts of Smith’s past, including mam and dad, came out to dance and ‘killed my sleep’, until I arose at six am. But then, the wonders of cell phone technology sent reinforcements in the shape of virtual hugs and the soft caresses of Indian ocean waves from my love on a WA, beach, filling the cracks in the thin red line.

Tomorrow it’s a day with the Anzacs, amongst whose descendants I have spent the most meaningful forty years of my life.