Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Esk paused to drink, waiting as if for Jeremy to say something, and when still he didn’t, went on: ‘Whatever the Jerry’s initial success, he must eventually overstrain his lines of communication. Like all marauders, he’s equipped only for what he calls the Blitz Krieg. Eventually he must stop. By then we are dedicated to putting him back where he belongs. The same old thing. The different thing is with the Japanese. If there’s real conflict in Europe, as I don’t doubt there must be while Fritz is crowing, Japan will have to take advantage of our preoccupation with it . . . or give up the dream of Dai Nippon. The sign for her to go ahead will be the preoccupation of Australia with this war, since that will mean the Commonwealth is not yet properly consolidated, that it’s still a colonial system and has all the weaknesses of such a system, the first of which is that All Roads Lead to Rome, that without Rome there can be no Roman Empire.’ Again Esk paused as if for comment, but got only wary watchfulness.

  He continued: ‘Now, while the Germans have concentrated on the Panzer for the type of terrain he aims to overrun, the Japanese have put their crack troops to training for yet another new type of warfare . . . that of the jungle. Intelligence reports intense activity in the jungles of Formosa. What for? It’s obvious. A vast jungle lies South of him . . . from the back door of China to the front door of Australia. The jungle is a wonderful place to fight in . . . for those trained for it. Who, in all the British Commonwealth, is so trained . . . except a handful of bandits operating in their native lands and who owe allegiance to no one but their chieftains? Isn’t the obvious training for our men jungle warfare, too? We have our own jungles . . . yet not a single man trained to fight in them. I intend to place my Tank Corps handy to the northern jungles. They’ll train in them first as infantry. The tanks I’ve asked for are of the light reconnaissance type. I hope to develop a type of our own, specially suited for use in jungle warfare.’

  When Esk stopped and sipped, he said, ‘You’re too silent, my friend.’

  Jeremy also sipped, answered dryly, ‘I’m waiting for that bit about my going to Malaya.’

  Whiskers pinked. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I shan’t keep you waiting. I’ve been giving you the map, as I said. Now to pinpoint. I’ve been able to justify the training with tanks. Now I have to prove the worth of jungle training and so keep all further Divisions raised from going, as you say, to the Brothels of Alexandria. To do this I have to convince the High Command of the threat from the North and our inability to meet it. First factor in our inability is the weakness of British defence already established in the area. I’ve had Maltravers up there. He’s just back. His report is appalling. Things were bad enough at Singapore when I was there . . . but the war’s made it worse. Everybody wants to go home and fight for Mother England. It’s natural enough. Even your countrymen would want to come home if their country was threatened. Morale is down to zero. The Japs will know that. But if Malaya were to be garrisoned by Australians, things would be very different. First, that longing to get away from their own country would be served. There’s plenty of banditry to keep them militarily busy . . . they could operate right up through Cochin China. Second, and most important, is the fact that the Jap would see that the Commonwealth is truly that, a fraternity of nations, and intends to remain so whatever happens at the presumed centre of it. There is no centre to a Commonwealth.’ Esk met the still demanding eyes. He said, ‘I’m coming to it swiftly as I can. Give me your glass.’

  He continued: ‘I’ve seen the Singapore Base . . . and like everybody else, was impressed. That is, everybody except our Argus-eyed Malters. Of course the guns were placed to meet the threat of Japan as a Naval Power, which she was supposed to be, because most of her population were fisherfolk and she licked the obsolete Russian Navy with ships a degree less obsolescent gifted her by Britain. Malters considered: Why does a pre-eminently Naval Power have five million men in its Army? He asked: Could the guns be turned to meet an invasion from across the narrow Straits of Johore? He was told: No . . . but who was likely to attack from there, except bandits? No one but bandits could negotiate the jungles, he was told. He asked himself: Why are there half a million men being trained in jungle warfare in Taiwan? No good asking that of the people of Singapore. All they want is to be relieved and go home. Now, somebody’s got to do something about this with the War Office. I want to do it, but can’t, because I’m C-in-C Australian Military Forces. I can’t do anything unless I can show that my work here is nullified by the conditions in Malaya. I can show that by sending a responsible officer to the area, and on his report offering to send a Division of first-class troops to help out. In no time the area would extend from Burma to Tasmania, commanded from the natural focal point — Australia.’ Esk stopped, stared at Jeremy.

  Jeremy said, ‘You’ve just sent a responsible officer into the area, you said.’

  Esk shrugged. ‘With all his virtues, old Malters is a Pommy. You may think we Pommies believe we are the anointed. It isn’t so. I’ve hinted to you several times that we should admire our colonial brethren beyond all other men, but for their awful weakness for denigrating themselves. To call you Great Soldiers but Impossible as Gentlemen was, in our opinion, to praise you as something somehow better than ourselves. You can’t see it. But the High Command will. The report of Brigadier Delacy, my right-hand man as they already know, will do the trick. I’m positive.’

  Jeremy said thickly, ‘The arrangement between us was that I was not to be sent out of the country.’

  ‘As a commander. I would gladly give you command of the Division I hope to God I’ll have in Malaya within six months . . . because no man could handle it better, or deal with the British Brass you’d have to take over from more effectively. I also hope to God that what you see as my special intelligence officer may make you want to take that command. Still, I made that pact with you. You will not be required even to wear uniform there. In fact it’s better that you don’t. We don’t want any clashes with the Brass there until the deal is signed and sealed. A special branch of British MI will look after you while you’re there.’

  Esk waited. Jeremy simply stared. At last, sounding nervous, Esk asked, ‘Well, Brigadier?’

  Jeremy drew a deep breath, exhaled it with a rasping sigh: ‘What can I say but Very Good, Sir?’

  Esk pinked: ‘I’d like it put better than that.’

  Jeremy went red. His broad breast heaved. He said shortly, ‘Not being in uniform, I can’t salute you, Sir. Shall I get up and bow?’

  Esk frowned. ‘Don’t be foolish, man. If you wish to refuse, you’re quite free to do so. I’m not asking you to do something against your conscience. Even if my motive is primarily to serve my Commonwealth, if effective it will save the rest of the hundred thousand or so of your countrymen who are going to offer themselves for service overseas from going to be butchered through their own recklessness and the heedlessness of their immediate leaders. I ask you again . . . this time as my friend Jeremy Delacy. Jeremy . . . will you go?’

  Again Jeremy breathed deeply, but answered in a different tone, ‘Yes, Mark.’

  He reached for his glass. Esk beat him to it, filled it, offered it, saying, somewhat breathlessly, ‘Let’s drink to it.’

  But as their eyes met over the glasses they were stuck for a toast. Jeremy relieved the situation, raised his glass: ‘L’chaim!’

  Esk chuckled, as if in relief, responded: ‘L’chaim!’

  When they had drunk, General Esk said, ‘There are some preliminaries to go through. I’ve had to talk about this assignment of yours with the opposition . . . of course without mention of the immediate intention to divert a Division. They’re compliant enough, seeing it as something that draws my attention away from them, and also, in spite of the sycophancy, a laugh on their betters out of Sandhurst. As for its military significance, they don’t care a hang. Anyway, you must meet them. We have a Staff Corps meeting tomorrow for your presentation. However, I know these laddies by now. Anyone not met at a bar or
party is never quite accepted. Therefore, I’ve arranged an informal meeting at a dinner-party tonight . . .’ Esk broke off when Jeremy frowned. He added with haste, ‘This’s quite a decent affair, I assure you . . . our hostess a titled lady. There’ll be other important people there . . . Prime Minister, most likely . . . for certain Minister for Defence . . .’

  Jeremy cut in sharply: ‘You know I don’t go for that social sort of thing, Mark.’

  ‘Yes . . . but I’ve told you its purpose. All you need do is suffer introduction. They know you for a bushman, the strong silent type. They’ll be all the more attracted because of your difference . . . especially in uniform . . .’

  Jeremy, crimson, barked, ‘I won’t wear uniform.’

  The General pinked again, but answered mildly enough, ‘Deah boy . . . you’re on active service, which requires you to wear uniform at all times . . .’

  Jeremy’s voice was thick again: ‘Regulations, as I know them, require a soldier only to wear field-dress in wartime. I’ll put on nothing but what’s issued to any soldier at a Quartermaster’s Store.’

  ‘Jeremy, old boy!’

  ‘I mean it, Mark. Besides, your first instructions were that I am to go to Malaya ostensibly as a civilian. Regulations, as I know them, make that allowance regarding civilian dress, if ordered by a superior officer.’

  Esk sighed, sipped, then, with a slight smile, said, ‘Failing giving you a Division, I might appoint you Judge Advocate . . . with your knowledge, so long retained, of MR and O’s.’

  Jeremy remained grim.

  Esk said, with a note of pleading, ‘Dear boy, bear with me. I’ve explained the reason for the affair tonight. You can’t very well go wearing field-dress . . . and since the idea is to meet them on their own terms, as it were, civvies are out of the question . . .’

  ‘With all due respect, Sir . . .’

  Esk snapped, ‘Oh, cut that out, Jeremy!’

  Jeremy swallowed. ‘Excuse me from the party, Mark.’ When Esk only stared, he added sharply: ‘Look, I’m not dealing with anyone on any terms but my own. I’ll meet whoever you present me to in the course of my duty, treat them with proper deference . . .’

  Esk sighed wearily. ‘Very well, Jeremy. You’re excused the party. It’s only that I’m counting on you to help me beat these people. Your countrymen are at the mercy of them. A little tact . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark . . . but I won’t truckle or use guile. You suggest that the Prime Minister is hand-in-glove with the others. He happens to be the representative of the people. You say he appeals to the Nation because of his subtle larrikinism. Likewise, I believe, does military Brass he favours. Generally, my countrymen aren’t at the mercy of anyone. Whatever the faults of this Nation, it is a true democracy. If what stinks is tolerated, it’s either because the majority have no sense of smell or like stinking things. It’s only people like myself who suffer . . . and our suffering, for the want of decency and honesty in the land, only makes the others laugh.’

  Esk dropped his narrow aristocratic head to hands, muttering, ‘Jeremy, Jeremy . . . we’ve been such good friends. I want to keep it that way . . . even with this damned war . . .’

  Jeremy rose. ‘They used to say in the Last Turn-out . . . as the fools are now calling the last blood-bath, as if it’s been a bloody picnic . . . that you don’t have friends in the Army . . only comrades . . . because it hurts too much to see your friends die. I’ll help as much as I can, Mark . . . and be as friendly as I can. But you’re a real soldier . . . and I . . . well, my country’s involved, and so am I . . . but very much against my will. May I go? I’d like to do a bit of thinking.’

  Esk looked up at him, haggardly. He nodded, but rising himself, added: ‘Give me your hand first.’ Wringing the hand, Esk said earnestly, ‘On your terms, Jeremy.’

  ‘Thanks, Mark.’

  The General put a hand on his shoulder and turned him towards the door, murmuring, ‘If only all Australians were like you, dear boy.’

  Jeremy did not answer till he was going out, when he turned: ‘If they were, Mark, you wouldn’t be here . . . except, maybe, as an immigrant.’ He went.

  Outside it was quite hot. A battering nor’wester was blowing, a wind known locally as a Brickfielder, a name betraying how tenuous was the grasp of these people on the Continent they had presumed to have won. The wind, from desert perhaps a thousand miles away, was the Continent’s panting under heat that would kill such people as these. Yet they, though native born for several generations knew it only as some uncomfortable condition of the locality, a mere intrusion of the heat of brick-kilns that, without their realising it, converted Terra Australis into a form in which it was possible for them, for ever alien, to live.

  Jeremy removed his coat as he walked the street, causing the passing sweating overclad mob to stare at him as a freak. He went to the Art Gallery. There he had to don the coat again, for a start because the attendant, doubtless thinking he intended to sneak out something wrapped in it, wanted to take it from him, and then because the usually chilly climate of these parts was trapped eternally in the mass of the place. Here again was the sun-loved substance of the land, its granite, torn out to make igloos for the cold-blooded aliens.

  Whether because of his mood of the moment, or the fact that the pictures of battle were the biggest and most spectacular and he no connoisseur of art, he gave most of his attention to these. Surely the artists who had painted them had never seen actual warfare, since even while exposing homicidal mania with skilful depiction of facial expression, they showed nothing of the filthy reality: the burst intestines, clotted severed limbs, agony so frightful that there could be none of the final courage implied by the nobility of the faces of the dead. Maybe true artists don’t go to war, or going, don’t return. Maybe you couldn’t get your picture hung in an art gallery if you painted the truth. That seemed to be what Jeremy was thinking, as, with quizzical expression, he went from one handsome lie to another. Occasionally his lips moved, perhaps repeating those recent words of his: ‘You don’t have friends in the Army. It hurts too much to see them die.’

  He came out in mid-afternoon, to find things drastically changed climatically. It was still hot, but, as the locals would probably say, with the heat of a boiler-room as compared with that of the kiln. A vast black cloud filled the northern sky, looking rather like a hugh black face — the Spirit of the Land in vengeful mood. There seemed to be guilt now in the haste of the crowd.

  Then a wind came whistling in from the South. People hanging on to their hats and dodging the flying rubbish, bawled at each other, ‘Southerly buster!’

  The black face above suddenly showed features with a glowing within — great fiery eyes, great cavern of mouth out of which fire belched with sound like booming sardonic laughter — BOOM, BOOM, BOOM-a-BOOM — CRASH!

  The black air rocked. The wind howled. The rain from the South came bucketing, soup-warm for a moment, then chill as the ice it soon turned into. Black air turned white with hail.

  Jeremy, jammed in a doorway with fifty others who growled about having neglected to bring umbrellas and things, watched the storm with evident interest, perhaps wondering what the Snake Men he knew, particularly a certain young one, would think of this other weapon of the Old One’s, which in their locality they never would have seen, this hurling of great chunks of the stuff the kuttabah made in the fridge, with such force as to dint the steel of cars and shatter glass. Anyway, it was good to see they hadn’t destroyed Old Tchamala, with all their bent and power in destruction of what was alien to their immigrant ways.

  When the hail ceased, the rain took over, now coming in chill sheets from the Antarctic, of which these denizens of London, Limerick, Naples, Nicosia, even unto the third and fourth generation removed, were scarcely more aware than of the desert. The deserts of the Sahara were nearer to them, the icebergs of Greenland. Jeremy took refuge in a picture show, viewing the deserts of Arizona.

  He returned to the hotel to din
e, found awaiting him a note from General Esk asking him to take breakfast with him tomorrow in his suite. He retired early.

  Next morning the military flunkey came to march Jeremy to the General’s suite. Whiskers looked his suave self again. He told of a successful social evening, of having impressed the Larrikins by telling them of the Absent One’s social reserve. ‘They liked that,’ he declared. ‘Having no reticence themselves, understanding nothing but self-assertion, they take it for weakness in others. You’re the kind of man they want . . . who’ll hide his brilliance under a bushel and so not outshine their own merely ugly glare. However, I’m still of the opinion that your first dealings with them should be as informal as possible. You can be rather intimidating acting formally, don’t y’know. Therefore, I’ve changed the order of the day. You meet them not in stiff conference, but over a drink and lunch in the Staff Corps Mess. Any objections?’ Jeremy agreed readily.