Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  ‘See here, Tom,’ he said, ‘this is serious. Picking is in command of this boat.’

  ‘Well, thank God it isn’t his brother,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll be praying that it was before long,’ Jerry said. ‘Of all the incompetent old foozling rotten-gutted …’ well, he went on like that for quite a time, but not so that you could repeat it. It seems Jerry had been on a job with him in France, and anything this Picking could do without being actually cashiered, said Jerry, he did. It wasn’t so much that he had any actual vice in him, as that he hadn’t anything at all. He was just one of those born scrimshankers that get boosted up the army because they take good care to keep in with H.Q. I must say all this didn’t sound any too good. If the O.C. troops is all right, everything is right. If he isn’t, God help the poor digger. However, it’s no use meeting trouble halfway.

  It seemed hours before we got to Devonport. The train drew up just outside the station and we waited there for ages. When we did get up to the platform it was bitterly cold and raining a bit. Our little party all stuck together and followed the crowd, and got on to a sort of platform where there was a gangway to a steamer. Of course the kiddies began to jump and shout: ‘That’s our boat, Mummy.’ Mrs Jerry took one look at it and she fairly jumped on the old Colonel.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me we had to go out in a tender?’ she said. ‘We shall be drenched and the children will get colds. Oh, how like you.’ The old Colonel showed great tact, I thought. He said: ‘Well, old girl, it’s an English port and an English ship. Don’t blame it on me.’

  Somehow we got on to the tender and I found a fairly sheltered place for the Fairchilds and Celia, while I went round to prospect a bit. Luckily it had stopped raining by this time, though everything was damp and beastly. I found a fellow I knew in the infantry, Jack Howe, one of the best, and he had his wife with him, a pretty dark girl. She was English too. Presently she said:

  ‘If you want to see the last of old England, Major, come and look at the luggage.’

  They took me along to where the luggage was being put on board. Well, I saw the bad quarter of Cairo after the diggers had been through it, but it was nothing to the mess on deck. I’ve worked a bit in mines and out on the back-blocks to earn money in my University vacations, and I’ve met some pretty tough cases, especially among the miners, but I can honestly hand it to the English stevedores and porters that were lumping our kit on the tender. All that stuff that had been packed in so neatly at Paddington was being torn out and chucked on board anyhow. Those fellows seemed to be taking pleasure in doing all the damage they could. If one or two of them were handling a good strong packing-case with iron bands round it, they just seemed to take a pride in chucking it on the top of a pile of trunks. I saw one great wharf-lumper pitch a great wooden case right onto a cabin trunk, so that the corner stuck right into it. The alphabetical order had all gone by the board by then. You’d have thought they were the salvage corps throwing things out of windows to save them from being burnt. If they’d had axes they’d have used them too. I reckoned at this rate we could count ourselves lucky if we ever saw our stuff again. Here my sense of humour got the better of me, as I had to go and fetch Mrs Jerry, to show her what the English were doing. I wished afterwards I hadn’t, because when she saw one of her trunks being pitched down on deck and the end bursting open, she fairly hit the roof. She blamed it on me, and she blamed it on the old Colonel, who had come up, and she blamed it on the whole A.I.F.

  ‘Have a heart, Mrs Jerry,’ I said. ‘It’ll be all right when once we get on board, and you’ll find our men will look after you all right.’

  But she gave me a sour kind of look and walked off. The old Colonel stayed behind.

  ‘I’ve heard something, Tom,’ he said.

  ‘Pass it on, Jerry,’ I said.

  Well, he told me one of the sailors on this tender told him they had taken on a load of prisoners on board the day before.

  ‘Well, they’ve got a guard, I suppose,’ I said.

  But the Colonel said he didn’t like it. And he liked it much less as time went on, and indeed so did we all, as you shall hear.

  By this time they had done all the damage they could to the luggage, so we got under way. One or two of the diggers had been having a scrap with some of the railway porters and got pushed into the water just then, but we easily fished them out and all their friends who had flasks gave them a drink. Up came a padre, one of those little men you wouldn’t know again if you saw him, if it wasn’t for his dog-collar. It is strange; our fellows have a wonderful amount of tact and common sense as a rule, but put them in a dog-collar and they will act just like other padres. This little fellow, Dart his name was, seemed to be just like the rest, though I daresay as a bank manager he’d have seemed quite a decent chap. The moment he saw those poor fellows getting a drink he went off the handle.

  ‘I must protest, Major,’ he said, ‘against our brave fellows using stimulants on every occasion.’

  ‘Well, Padre,’ I said, ‘you chuck the bottle in the sea and the diggers will chuck you in, and then you’ll both get pneumonia and we’ll give you a nice cup of cocoa.’

  I oughtn’t perhaps to have said this, but I am well known for my quiet sarcastic way and I couldn’t help taking this opening. Besides which, I didn’t want to start in with a pneumonia case on my hands in the Bay. Some of the diggers had heard me, and they passed a few remarks about Dart.

  ‘Well, let me tell you men,’ he said, all red and flustered, ‘this is a dry ship, and the sooner you learn to do without that poison the better.’

  The men, who were a tough looking lot, began to laugh.

  ‘My oath, it’s dry,’ one said. ‘Seen the parson’s case of medical comforts go aboard?’

  Of course this made Dart angrier than ever and then something was said about communion wine that got him fairly wild. I do hate padres — always with exceptions of course and you will hear of one later — but I couldn’t have the poor little runt made fun of in public. After all he held officer’s rank. So I said a few kind words to the diggers and they melted away. Then I said a few kind words to Dart, and told him that if those fellows that were wet got pneumonia and died, he would have to answer for it if he stopped them getting a drink. So having made everybody happy and comfortable I returned to my party. The tender was rolling a bit and Mrs Jerry didn’t look too good. Luckily Celia is a splendid sailor and she and the kiddies were all right. Just before we got to the ‘Rudolstadt’, which was lying some way out, the nurse, Gladys Barnes, came up to Mrs. Jerry.

  ‘Could I speak to you, Airs Fairchild?’ she said.

  ‘It’s no good giving notice,’ said Mrs Jerry, all weak and green, ‘unless you want to swim back.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that, Mrs Fairchild,’ said the nurse, ‘but I want to ask you and the Colonel to call me Gladys instead of Nurse. Some of those common soldiers heard you call me Nurse, and they have been extremely rude and impertinent, calling out to me to come and put them to bed and tuck them up.’

  The Colonel and I looked at each other, for the nurse was one of those very refined prim young women that give you the faceachc.

  ‘Leave Mrs Fairchild alone,’ said the Colonel. ‘You can be called Mary Pickford if you like, but wait till we’ve got olf this damned Luna Park business.’

  Luna Park, I will explain for such as do not know Melbourne, is an entertainment park where you go on switchbacks and slide down chutes sitting on a mat, and visit the Home of Horrors, etc. I imagine the old Colonel was thinking of the kind of sideshow where you sit in a boat and get bumped about by electricity, which never appealed to me.

  Well, we now got to the ‘Rudolstadt’. A lot of diggers were already on board and were chiacking their cobbers on the tender. Luckily I’ve been about a good deal on the interstate boats, and on the P. & O. and Orient liners before those government fools started tightening up the shipping laws and preventing you travelling except by interstate boat, and I
know my way about a ship. I got Celia and her cases up the ladder and on to the deck before the others had begun to get a move on. Looking down on the tender I saw there was trouble ahead. There were two ladders, one for officers and families and one for diggers, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there to keep order, and the diggers just made one rush for the ladders, and the officers and families had to wait till things weren’t quite so thick.

  You never saw such a sight as the deck. The luggage was all coming aboard and being dumped down anywhere and anyhow. The deck was one mass of trunks and suitcases and kitbags and holdalls, all strewn about anyhow and lots of them burst and broken. The diggers were all over the place, singing and chaffing the new arrivals. Stewards were running about like rabbits. I saw a few ship’s officers looking as if they had discovered a bad smell. The only people who seemed to know their job were a couple of dozen naval ratings with two or three English naval officers. It was a treat to see the way they marched on board, piled their kit and stood waiting for orders. I can tell you we have had a great respect for the British navy ever since the Dardanelles. You’ve no idea how much safer we felt if the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ or the ‘Majestic’ was putting it over with the fifteen-inch guns or the six-inch shrapnel, and it was wonderful the sense of security the searchlights gave us. The effect of a searchlight, either in defence or attack, on one’s mind is very considerable. Also the work of the midshipmen handling the tows of boats and lighters at the Gaba Tepe landing was very inspiring, these boys displaying great courage. I heard afterwards some of the naval officers say that our landing was one of the finest things ever done, and nothing but our fellows’ language could do justice to it.

  Although we had left London so early, what with the delays on the journey and getting us all on and off the tender, it was now beginning to get dark. I grabbed a steward and told him the number of our cabin and asked him where it was. He said we weren’t in his section, but he would find our steward.

  ‘Not on your sweet life,’ I said. ‘You just take me to my cabin and then you can go and get my steward.’

  I am very determined in my quiet way, and the fellow saw I meant what I said, so he took us below. In the passage we collided with a steward coming out of a cabin.

  ‘Here is your man, sir,’ said the first steward. I gave him a tip and he looked quite pleased as he went away. Mind you, I think tipping a degrading practice, but it always makes things run smoothly. Our fellows are wonderfully independent and don’t like it if you offer them money, but sooner than make trouble they’ll usually take it. Our steward showed us into the cabin. It certainly was a fair size, but it was the most bare and depressing I have ever seen. There were two bunks, one against the passage wall and one against the partition, and there was a kind of couch under the porthole. It all looked very bleak and not at all homey. I missed the nice bright curtains and cushions you get on a liner.

  I asked the steward his name.

  ‘Catchpole,’ he said.

  ‘All right, Catchpole,’ I said. ‘Now, old man, I want us to understand each other. I am a major and you’ll say “sir” to me every time. Also I am senior medical officer on this ship, and if you don’t jump to it, I’ll have you certified insane. If you look after me properly you’ll get a fair deal from me.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.

  As a matter of fact it was all bluff about my being senior Med., and anyone knows an army doctor can’t certify one of the ship’s crew, but I have a great natural turn for poker, and luckily my bluff wasn’t called. As a matter of fact there was one senior to me and one junior. Colonel Bird was a fine old bird and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about surgery, but unluckily none of us were too good on kiddies. Of course I’d done my midwifery, but apart from that I knew no more about babies than a little common sense and some younger brothers can teach you. It’s different now, because I seem to have a kind of understanding of babies, and since I’ve been in practice in Sydney I’ve had a certain amount of luck in treating some difficult cases, and in fact I’m shortly going to specialize. You may really say it was those weeks on the ‘Rudolstadt’ that got me going on the job. Old Dr Bird was a hero with the kiddies, but after all abdominal surgery was his line, and as the other doctor, Captain Lyon, was really a mental specialist, not to speak of as often being sozzled as not, I had to get down to it. You might have thought that with a boatload of officers’ families they’d have an experienced kiddies’ doctor in charge, but that’s where you would have thought wrongly.

  So I told Catchpole to wait while I had a good look round the cabin, and then I told him we’d want some more pillows and blankets and another carafe and few more things.

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ he said, ‘but we’re a bit short.’

  ‘That’s no reason I should do without,’ I said. ‘I’ve never yet had a batman that didn’t learn to do a bit of scrounging for me, and it isn’t too late for you to learn. Now jump to it, and you can collect my luggage off the deck and bring it here right away.’

  And I told him exactly what we had and passed him a quid.

  ‘All right, sir,’ he said, and I could see he had got the spirit of the thing. ‘And dinner’s ready whenever you want it.’

  So we went off to the saloon. I must say I had expected little tables, the way you get them on the big liners, but this was no better than the ‘Karoola’ or the ‘Oonah’ or any interstate boat. There were three or four long fables down the middle of the saloon and shorter tables sticking out from the wall under the portholes on each side. I was disappointed, because I had counted on a table for my little missis and me, and perhaps a couple of pals. However, it seemed to be first come first served at the moment, so we just sat down in the first place that came handy and started our dinner, when who should we see opposite to us but Larry Sievers.

  ‘Cheerio, old son,’ I said. ‘Are you coming on this trip?’

  But he said no, he was only down there as shipping officer, seeing everything was straight before we left.

  ‘Look, Tom,’ he said, ‘I can’t talk to you now, because I’m having hell’s own delight over this business and I must buzz off as soon as I’ve swallowed this. But I’ll come down to your cabin before I go and have a yarn. There are one or two things I want to put you wise to.’

  Then he went out and Celia and I finished our dinner. There were kiddies everywhere, all ages, and presently I saw young Dick and Mary. Their father and mother didn’t seem to be with them, so when I had finished I went over to them.

  ‘Hullo, Uncle Tom,’ said young Dick. ‘I’ve eaten everything on the menu.’

  ‘Well, son,’ I said, ‘you’ll probably be for it in the night. Where are Dad and Mum?’

  ‘Mum’s unpacking,’ said Mary, ‘and she told us to go and get some dinner, and we didn’t know which things to have, so we had them all.’

  ‘Dad’s on deck,’ said young Dick. ‘He couldn’t find his suitcase, the one that had his German souvenirs, and he’s awfully waxy.’

  So I told the kids to come along to my cabin if they wanted a dose in the night, and that made them laugh, and I set them spinning round and round on those fixed chairs, much to the annoyance of some of the women in the saloon. Then I went down to the cabin and found Celia unpacking and Catchpole there talking to her.

  ‘I got all your things, sir,’ said Catchpole, ‘but it was a job, I tell you, sir, some of the Australian soldiers are a deal too free with other people’s property. I had quite a business to get your kitbag, I can tell you. There was a big chap trying to get it open, saying he thought there was beer it it.’

  That struck me as very humorous, because the contents of my kitbag were as a matter of fact chiefly bottles. I wished that big chap, whoever he was, had got it open and taken a good swig of iodine. That would have taught him to respect property.

  ‘You didn’t happen to see a suitcase of Colonel Fairchild’s anywhere about, did you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Is Colonel Fairchild a t
all big officer, sir, with the baldish head?’

  ‘That’s the bird,’ I said.

  ‘Well, sir, I saw him engaged in an argument with some of those Australian soldiers. It seems, sir, they thought there was beer in his case.’

  ‘They seem to be thinking of nothing but beer,’ said Celia. ‘I thought this was a dry ship.’

  ‘That’s why,’ I said. ‘A dry ship means beer in the men’s quarters and beer coming on board at every port.’

  ‘They say, sir, in the stewards’ quarters,’ said Catchpole, ‘that those Australian soldiers have brought dozens of cases of beer on board. In fact there was quite a commotion before your train arrived because some of the men who were loading up the tender smashed a couple of cases, and there was a free fight on the wharf. One of our men who happened to be ashore was in it, and he says those Australians are fair terrors with their fists. It made a good deal of ill feeling, sir.’

  ‘Catchpole says it will be all right so long as the prisoners don’t get out,’ said Celia, who had nearly finished unpacking and had got the cabin wonderfully tidy.

  ‘What do you know about prisoners, Catchpole?’ I said.

  ‘Prisoners below in the cells, sir.’

  I wanted to find out how much he knew, so I only asked if they had had to crime some of the diggers already.

  ‘Couldn’t say as to that, sir. These prisoners came down yesterday by a special train with a guard and were taken straight to the cells.’

  ‘Cripes!’ I said.

  I had to hear some more about this, so I told Celia to get into bed, for the poor kid looked quite dead to the world, and I’d go up on deck and see what was doing. And I told Catchpole to keep his eyes and ears open and pass me the word if he heard anything among the stewards. Up on deck it was worse than ever. The diggers weren’t drunk, but they were a cheery lot and they’d got the beer from somewhere all right, and no one seemed to be keeping any discipline. Some of them were going through the suitcases that had got smashed in the tender, and borrowing anything they wanted. I judged it wasn’t the moment to interfere, and anyway Colonel Picking was in command and it was for him to give orders. So I caught a steward and asked for Colonel Fairchild’s cabin. He had a bonzer suite on deck for him and his missis and the kiddies, two cabins and a bathroom. Luckily it was on the port side, and when I explain what I mean, as I shall later, you will see why I say ‘luckily’. I knocked at the door and Mrs Jerry said ‘Come in’, so I went in. She was just putting Dick and Mary to bed, so we had a bit of a game, and then I asked her where Jerry was.