Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  Celia told me how she had been to see Jack Howe’s wife and had washed her face and hands and brushed her hair and tidied up a bit in the cabin and given her Eno’s Fruit Salts. Of course, give me Eno’s on a rough voyage and you won’t get me to take it — it would be simply asking for trouble — but some appreciate it. Celia was quite upset about Mrs Howe’s cabin. It was one of those inside cabins and they had to have the electric light on all day, and it was pretty stuffy already. What it would be like in the tropics was a nasty thought, especially as the opposite wall was the engine room and mostly too warm to enjoy. Also Celia had had a good old turn-up with the stewardess, which had done her a lot of good.

  After lunch I got Celia tucked up in a chair on deck to enjoy the fresh air while I went down to Colonel Bird, to see how things were below. The men’s quarters were pretty crowded. There was only one decent sized cabin on the deck below ours. It was aft, and was to be used for a surgery for the lower deck. Also it was the storeroom for drugs and bandages and for the food for the babies. There were tins and tins of powdered and condensed milk, and scales to weigh the kiddies. One of the sergeants had done part of his dental training in Melbourne, and he was able to do any emergency dentistry we needed. It was of a rough and ready kind, but if a digger wanted a tooth out, he could always get a couple of pals to hold him down. He couldn’t do much about stoppings, and even less false teeth. Lyon had some false teeth, but one night when he was pretty tight he took them out to show a friend, and then tried to shut them up in his cigarette case. Considerable damage was done all round. The cigarette case was never the same again, and poor old Lyon had to eat with his front teeth, for all the world like a rabbit, all the way from Port Said.

  Our cabins may have been crowded, but the men’s quarters were ten times as bad. There wasn’t a corner where a bunk hadn’t been squeezed in, and how they managed to keep their kit in any kind of order beats me. Also the borrowing habits of the digger came into operation here, and when the officer of the day made his rounds, more than half his time was taken up with complaints about things that had been pinched. It wasn’t so bad while they only borrowed among themselves, for the digger has a great sense of give and take. Our fellows are wonderfully generous and will do anything for a cobber who is down on his luck, and equally they will help themselves to anything they want. It all comes out pretty straight in the long run, and the less notice you take of it the better. But when they began to borrow elsewhere it was more serious, and that was what started the trouble after Colombo, to which we shall come later on. The surgery, being aft, was well lighted with portholes, also with windows on to the deck. I may as well say at once that I am not very accurate as regards the names of different parts of a ship, but shall do my best to make things clear. As you will have already gathered, there was a small boat deck, then a promenade deck with officers and families on the port side and diggers on the starboard side. The lounge, smoke-room and bar were on this deck, if you can call it a bar where you can only get soft drinks, as were a few cabins with bathrooms. On the next deck below, C deck, were the officers’ cabins and the saloon and the first-class surgery. Below this were two more decks. The upper one, or D deck, was officers’ cabins on the starboard side and men’s quarters on the port side, and there was the lower deck surgery and a galley. The lowest deck, or E deck, was also men’s quarters, and here were the cells, so-called. The ship’s crew were forward and the naval ratings aft. You may see that the men were as thick on the ground as sand hoppers at Manly beach.

  The troops had access to the well deck of course at each end of their deck. Where the cargo hatch would normally have been, a great wooden grating had been placed, to give more air to the lowest deck, and by God it was wanted. It wasn’t so bad at first, because the weather was cold, but after we were through the Canal you will hear more of it.

  I spent most of one day going through the surgery stores with Colonel Bird. They were pretty well stocked and the orderly seemed to know his job. I had a good look around the locker where the prepared food for the babies was kept.

  ‘How many kiddies do we feed here?’ I said to the old doctor. ‘About ten,’ he said, ‘and lucky if it isn’t twelve before the end of the voyage.’

  Well, I didn’t know much about babies, but I have a mathematical turn of mind, and I studied up the doses on the tins, and I nutted it out that we weren’t any too well off for patent foods. So I asked Colonel Bird, but he said it was all right. I could have kicked myself later for not standing up to him, but he was an older man, and I had done nothing but my midwifery. If I’d known that he’d hardly so much as touched a kiddie since he left the hospital, I’d have spoken up a bit more. Well, we had no deaths.

  While I was checking over the medical comforts, a fellow came up to me.

  ‘Here, Doc,’ he said, ‘can you come down to a bloke in the cells?’

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘He had a bit of turn-up with the military policeman and stoushed him,’ said the man, who was a corporal.

  So I got some things together and went down. It did strike me that the man who was stoushed might need some attention too. It was the first time I had been on to the lowest deck. I spent plenty of time there later, and I disliked it just as much the more I saw of it. The ports had to be kept shut as often as not when there was a bit of a sea, and the only air they seemed to get was along the passage from the doors on to the well deck, and even then the air had to come down through the grating I told you of. And if it was rough the waves would sometimes come slopping through that grating and the doors haul to be kept shut. Talk of the monkey house. I’ve had a good many smells to put up with in my time. Hospital ships and clearing stations soon kill or cure you of any squeamish feelings, but that lower deck was the limit. I felt really sorry for the diggers, some of them quite decent chaps, shut up in that stinking hole. No wonder they wanted a bit of the promenade deck where they could see some sky and breathe a bit. They ought to have had the whole boat, except just for officers’ quarters. The people who were to blame were the dod-blasted buggers at Horseferry Road who put families and troops together on a small ship, unsuitable for a long voyage, with a lot of officers who didn’t know the first thing about troops. Mind you, I’ve never yet met the men I couldn’t handle. To begin with I’m six foot two and pretty good with my fists, and though I have a wonderfully quiet way with the men, they soon know who is top dog. But except for Jerry and Jack Howe and three or four others, you might as well have put a special constable in charge of Flemington on Cup Day. Half the troops were the biggest crooks and toughs in the A.I.F., and it didn’t give the decent ones much of a chance. Some of them stuck to us. If they hadn’t the ship would have been even worse than it was. The sergeants were just as bad, except again for the few exceptions. Somehow a bad sergeant is one of God’s nastiest creations.

  I can only say that I wouldn’t have shut a dog up in the places they called cells. If the men who were shut up there had been sensitive kind of chaps, they would have gone right off their nuts, but luckily for them they weren’t. If you’ve ever been over Port Arthur, or read ‘For the Term of his Natural Life’, you’ll know a bit about the way convicts were treated in those olden days. You might have thought you were on a convict ship the way these poor fellows were in close confinement in holes you could hardly turn round in, hardly lighted, and with no fresh air. They were supposed to be taken out for exercise regularly, but as you will see, they didn’t all appreciate it, and a lot of them refused to go out at all. They had the wind up the guards from the start, and by the time we were in the Red Sea, the guards jumped to it every time a prisoner opened his mouth. Of course I didn’t know all this at the beginning, but it began to be clear all too soon.

  The corporal took me to one of those Black Holes and unlocked the door. We were only three days out, but the stink fairly caught me.

  ‘Well, what’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘Bust me bloody thumb,’ said the man inside. He was si
tting on his bunk smoking, and where he got the cigarettes from you could have searched me, but there was nothing those blokes couldn’t get. They reminded you of the Kelly gang in many ways, the way a few of them got to terrorize practically the whole of the ship’s company.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked, being rather curious.

  ‘Bloody M.P. came to take me for a walk. I told the bastard I wasn’t going, and he started in arguing, so I stoushed the bloody sod in the jaw and bust me thumb,’ said the man, spitting in a nasty way.

  Well, I may as well say here that I shall not repeat the word bloody as often as I heard it, for it is not a literary word and does no good. But you may take it that those fellows just used it and other similar words in one long sweet song. I don’t know if you know a poem called the ‘Australaise’, which I think is by C. J. Dennis and begins somewhat as follows:

  Fellows of Australia,

  Blokes and coves and coots,

  Get a — move on

  Shift your — boots

  Gird yer — loins up

  Get yer — gun

  Set the — enemy

  And watch the — s run

  and is of course sung to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Well, if you do, you will know what I mean. And if you don’t, it will give you some idea. I am wonderfully wide-minded in many ways, but I do think there are times when you should not use bad language. Old Jerry could hold his own against any two diggers, but he reserved it for suitable occasions and didn’t just leave the tap running as you might say.

  ‘You come along to the surgery,’ I said. ‘I can’t see down here.’

  The corporal started in to interfere and said he daren’t let the prisoner out.

  ‘You’ll damn well do as I tell you,’ I said. ‘Where’s the sergeant?’

  The fellow went along to get the sergeant. I can size people up pretty quickly and one look at that sergeant told me he was the right sort.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Higgins, sir,’ said he, and saluted smartly.

  ‘Bring O’Donovan here to the surgery,’ I said.

  ‘Aw, spare me days,’ said the prisoner, ‘my moniker’s Cavanagh.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, ‘and whenever there’s trouble in poor old Aussie your family and friends are at the bottom of it.’

  Cavanagh was starting in to argue, but Higgins shut him up quick and lively and marched him off to the surgery, with the corporal on the other side. When we got up there I had a look at his thumb. He had dislocated it.

  ‘I’ll have to pull this straight, Cavanagh,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to stick it.’

  ‘Aw, I’ll stick it, Doc,’ he said. ‘Only tell that son of a bitch of a corporal to stand off, or I’ll spoil his dial with me other hand.’ As he seemed to have a prejudice against the corporal I told the sergeant to stand by while I got Cavanagh’s thumb in place. He never seemed to feel it, but just went on cursing all the time. There is something about swearing that seems to take the place of an anaesthetic sometimes. When I’d finished and got his hand strapped up I said:

  ‘What happened to the M.P. you stoushed?’

  ‘He’s crying for his mammy,’ said Cavanagh, and it was the first time I had seen a pleasing expression on his face, ‘and serve him right, the bleeding Protestant.’

  ‘All right, you dirty Mick,’ said the corporal. ‘I’ll smash your bloody crust for you when we get to Sydney.’

  ‘I expect his jaw is broken, sir,’ said Higgins quite quietly. And then he jumped on the corporal and roared him up well and truly, and sent him off to find the military policeman. He wasn’t long. The man’s jaw wasn’t broken, but he had lost three teeth and would have a face like a bit of bad meat in a few hours. Well, I talked to them all like an uncle from Holland, and I ordered Cavanagh back to his cell under guard, and told Higgins to report to me again.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give me some medical comforts, Doc?’ said Cavanagli.

  ‘The Major is not,’ said Higgins.

  ‘To hell with the pope,’ said the corporal, and they ran Cavanagh out of the surgery before he could say any more.

  ‘I tell you honest, Doc,’ said the man who had lost three teeth, ‘this job gets the wind up me. These prisoners are fair demons. I’d rather be back on the Peninsula, or on a Saturday night down Little Lon.’

  So we got yarning about old times, as I had done a bit of prospecting down Little Lonsdale Street, to give it its full name, myself, though it had never had much appeal for me. The way the Janes sit at their doors waiting for you takes away all the romance. When he found I’d been on the Peninsula he brightened up and I told him to keep his head and let me know if there was any trouble.

  ‘Right oh, Doc,’ said he, ‘but I’ll not go near that Mick again without the sergeant.’

  So he went off and Higgins came in.

  ‘Now, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘let’s have the dinkum oil on this.’

  It turned out that Higgins had been in the old New South Wales Mounted Police and in the South African war. He was quite a middle-aged man and he knew what discipline was. My oath, when I think what Higgins did for us later. He was a decent little chap, and I am glad to say he is doing quite well up Goulburn way.

  ‘I don’t like this rough house, Sergeant,’ I said.

  ‘Nor me, sir,’ said Higgins. ‘From what I’ve seen of these fellows we’ll have a good deal more. They have got the wind up the guards good and proper and threaten all sorts of things. You know, sir, the way I look at it, lots of these fellows haven’t seen much service and they get scared easily. We’ve a number of old-timers among us who were through the Peninsula and France, but they don’t want to come back to their wives as casualties after getting away with it from the Turk and the Hun. It isn’t in human nature, and if those men are on guard they aren’t going to take any risks. Take my word, sir, the officers will get very little backing from the men. I don’t like to say it, for I’m an old soldier myself, but there it is.’

  ‘And let me tell you, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘that as far as I can see, the men are going to get damned little backing from the officers.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Higgins. ‘We all know old P. and S., if you’ll excuse me saying so, sir, and most of us know all we want to know about the adjutant.’

  I could see Higgins was a white man, and though none is more strict on military discipline than I am, I could see that this was one of the times when human feelings would have to come first. I had a long yarn with Higgins, first shutting the windows and putting a notice on the door to say the surgery was closed for half an hour, and trusting to luck that neither Bird nor Lyon, who was not yet in disgrace, would come down. We nutted it all out like this. I knew four or five officers besides myself whom I could thoroughly trust, and hoped there might be a few more. Higgins said half the troops were ordinary decent felows, but would follow the hot-heads. About twenty were real bad eggs, ready for anything, and to them we must add the prisoners who had been set free on board, and those — mostly murderers — who were still in the cells, but had frightened the guard into letting them talk to their friends and get cigarettes and drink, and were practically free men. And the rest, he said, would go with the bad lot just for the lark. As for the N.C.O.’s, they were much the same. A few trustworthy men, some crooks, and a lot that would follow the crooks from fear, or for the fun of the thing. There was nothing to be done about it, but Higgins said he would pass the word along to me if things looked any worse.

  It was a great disappointment to all that we didn’t put in at Gibraltar, nor Marseilles, nor Naples, nor Malta. I had quite looked forward to a trip ashore, but we went right on down the Mediterranean. I must say there is something wonderfully impressive about the African coast as seen from the sea. The sun began to come out and all sorts of people came up on deck that we had never seen before. Most of the wives were English girls, and there were two French ones. Ten of them had young babies and t
he fathers were wonderfully good in looking after the kiddies and carrying them about on deck when the mothers were too sick to look after them. Every day I had a kind of nursery party in the surgery when the babies were brought down for their bottles. I became quite handy at mixing the food and warming it on a spirit lamp, and often I used to give some of the kids their bottles. It was all good practice, I thought at the time. Well, things don’t always happen as we mean, and anyway my time on the ‘Rudolstadt’ taught me something about kiddies, so I have that to be thankful for, even if it is other people’s kiddies. They were rum little beggars and I got to be quite fond of them and quite took it to heart when they didn’t put on weight. Mostly they did pretty well on that part of the trip. There was one baby girl I had a special fondness for, a jolly little kid of five months who always had a laugh for me. The diggers used to crowd round the surgery to see the kiddies, and would take turns at nursing them if the mother was busy.