Smoky Joe's Cafe

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘But the bastards only stop for a moment.

  ‘By now the rubber plantation is just mud and tracer bullets kicking up same, with the rain competing for attention. The VC are yelling blue murder. It’s weird, but you can hear the human voice through just about anything. They’re going ape-shit as they come at us, jumping over low bushes, running straight, keeping formation, firing from the hip. Who was it trained these bastards?

  ‘Our artillery is now coming in real heavy and real close. There’s wholesale slaughter in Charlie’s ranks, but you could’ve fooled me, they’re still advancing, the bastards must be high on something.

  ‘We’ve been going about an hour and a half and finally, we, I mean, our artillery, get the better of them and we bring them to a halt, but the enemy fire is still heavy. By this time, I reckon half our platoon is dead or seriously wounded.

  ‘With the frontal assault halted for the moment I now see a Noggie machine gunner’s got our range. In the heat of the battle I should’ve seen him, but I didn’t. I only see him when he takes out Maloney, who has moved to help out McKenzie, who’s wounded. I crawl over, they’re both dead.

  ‘The VC machine gunner puts a line of tracers no more than eighteen inches ahead of Mo and me, the mud the bullets kick up splattering our greens. I have a rough idea where the firing is coming from, I try to get what’s left of the section to concentrate their fire in the direction. But it doesn’t work. Either I’ve got the direction wrong or he’s got real good cover which gives him the confidence to keep havin’ a go at us.

  ‘The machine gunner has to be stopped or he’ll kill us all. He can be got at from the left but our blokes are all dead or wounded out there. We’re pinned down like bugs in a museum and he knows it.

  ‘Being run over by the Asian hordes, sheer numbers, is one thing. Being taken to the New Jerusalem by a Noggie machine gunner and his mates is quite another. A disgrace. Not on.

  ‘The artillery is still coming in magic. It’s landing so close that the Noggies out the front of us who are not pulverised are putting their heads down as the salvos are about to land. I notice that even the machine gunner stops firing as the incoming salvo screams down and hits and he doesn’t start again for a good few seconds after the blast.

  ‘Just as another salvo hits I shout to Mo, tell him what I’m gunna do and instruct him to stay put, to get the blokes to give me whatever covering fire they can. He nods and puts up his thumb. The racket is something terrible and me throat is hoarse from shouting.

  ‘I’ve spotted what looks like a hollow in the ground. Unfortunately it’s within a small clearing with no rubber trees for protection, but it’s in just the right spot to take out the Viet Cong gunner, that is if I can get close enough.

  ‘I wait for the next salvo. I hear the whistle and the scream as it is about to land. I’m on my knees and elbows digging dirt, into the mud and slush, staying flat to the ground as the salvo lands, moving towards the hollow.

  ‘I hope like hell the machine gunner and his mates have their heads down, I’m expecting any second to be blown apart. The salvo lands. The rain is still pissing down as I slide sideways into the hollow, it’s half filled with rainwater and I send up a huge muddy spray. I’m safe. I’m lying in eight inches of water, but I’m safe. Then the machine gun starts up again. The bastards have picked up my movement and there’s bullets spraying every which way. I’m grinning, old Thommo is safe in his ditch, snug as a bug in a rug. Then I see it’s not me they’ve picked up on, it’s Mo, he’s coming at me, sliding across the mud. The dip in the ground isn’t big enough for both of us and when he sees this and stops his slide he’s more exposed than ever. The machine gun is kicking up mud everywhere. Mo takes up a firing position in the open beside me.

  “Oh, Jesus, no!” I scream, then Mo’s head explodes and isn’t there any more. Warm blood spurts from his neck in an arch, two feet high, landing on my back and neck. It feels warm. The muddy water I’m lying in turns crimson. The rain is still beating down.

  “Oh no! Oh, Jesus, Mo’s dead! The machine gunner! You fucking arsehole! The Nogmachinefuckingunnerrr!” Something slides down my cheek and splashes into the water and bobs up again. It’s Mo’s eye, attached to membrane, floating in the blood and rain-pocked water.

  ‘I’m losing it fast. But somehow I’ve got the instinct to wait for the next salvo coming in. I can hear it coming. It’s like I’m riding the shell myself. I’m riding the salvo piggy-back. I only want to live as long as it takes me to kill the machine gunner. Nothing else matters. The salvo lands with a deafening roar and seems to be right next to me with the shrapnel whistling over my head. “Please God don’t let me get killed before I get to him,” is all I can think. I scramble towards the machine gunner, the rain battering my face. I’m within fifteen yards and his head ain’t up yet. I’ve got a grenade in my hand and I’ve pulled the pin out and used up a couple more seconds before I throw it. I can now see where the machine gun is and I prop and lob it perfectly.

  ‘This is the first time I realise I won’t make it back. Nobody could, leastwise a big bastard like me. I’m flinching as I scramble away, expecting any moment to feel the bullets ripping into me. The grenade explodes, maybe it will keep the enemy from firing elsewhere just a few moments longer. I go for it, crouching, head down, legs pumping, hands clawing the mud. I’m not dead yet, though I should be. The air is full of every kind of deadly shit again, tracers whipping past me. I slide the last few feet, boots first into the hollow. This time a great scarlet sheet splashes up out of the scooped-out earth. The artery in Mo’s neck is now pumping a three-inch arc, a spent pipe. The machine-gun post is silent. I lie in the hollow howling like a dingo. “Gotcha! Mincemeat! Fucking hamburger!”’

  Now my own voice is back and I can feel the shakes beginning. I fight it, I fight back the panic.

  Wendy reaches out and grabs my hand and holds on tight as I start to sob, ‘Mo’s dead.’

  I turn to Wendy, ‘We’ve made this pact, see.’ I pull up my sleeve to show her, though she’s seen it thousands of times. ‘The tat on me arm of the M16 with “Mo” wrote on the butt, he’s got one exact the same with “Thommo” on his.’ I’ve never told her that. ‘Two warriors never to be parted.’ Now I’m blubbing like a kid.

  Wendy pulls me hand up to her lips and kisses it, ‘Go on, Thommo, get it all out,’ she whispers. I can sense there’s tears running down her face but I can’t see them, my eyes are turned inwards somewhere I don’t want to look.

  Now I’m sobbing and out of control. I can’t hold meself together no more. Wendy is standing behind me and has her arms about me. ‘I’m a bloody coward. Oh shit, what am I gunna do? I’m a heap o’ shit. They give me a medal. I let me best mate die, took the ditch for meself and they give me a fucking medal! A lousy medal.’

  Dimly I can hear Wendy shouting my name. ‘Thommo! Listen to me, Thommo!’ She’s kissing me on the eyes and the cheeks and screaming out. ‘Thommo, listen to me, mate!’ Her voice is suddenly hysterical and it cuts through, ‘Hear me, you bastard!!’

  I stop whimpering and I hear her say, ‘You told Mo to stay, to cover you. He disobeyed. It wasn’t your fault. You killed the machine gunner and God knows how many others.’

  ‘The noise, he didn’t hear me. He must’ve thought I said to come, be my cover, me and him together, like always. I should’ve died with him. There was no chance I’d survive, I was good as dead after I’d used the grenade. Oh, Jesus, why didn’t I die.’

  ‘Thommo, I love you, I’m proud of you.’ Now she’s sobbing, her arms around me neck, her head against my back, her shoulders heaving.

  Later, after I’ve had a couple of stiff shots and Wendy, who doesn’t normally drink, has had a nip of Scotch as well, she reaches out and picks up the doll and stands it upright on the table. The little Vietnamese doll dressed in national costume makes it seem like it was a thousand years ago and, then again, like it happened yesterday. She smiles, her eyes are still red from blubbing, but th
ey’re smoky again, then she nods towards the little doll, ‘Anna’s medal, tell me the story again.’

  I try to laugh, glad to come away from where we’ve just been. The doll story is one of the few things I have told her about Vietnam. But now, with the story at the back of my mind, I can talk about the stuff I couldn’t before.

  ‘There’s a whole lot more that happens towards the end of the day. Shorty gives the order to pull out and Animal shouts, “Thommo, get the fuck outta there, we’re moving out.”

  ‘I get lucky and scramble over to him, mostly on my elbows and knees, then we’re off like jack rabbits, zigzagging, hoping for the best, Nog bullets stinging the air around us. I suddenly see yellow smoke through the rubber and grab Animal by the arm and pull him over. “D Company!” I shout, “That’s our smoke.”

  ‘But it isn’t, it’s 12 Platoon who’ve been trying to find us and have taken a hiding themselves. Thirteen of our platoon finally make it back to them. We don’t even have time for a fag when the VC come at us again. We get the hell out of there, fighting as we go, and eventually link up with D Company who’ve been fighting pretty hard themselves. The rain is still pissing down.

  ‘Twelve Platoon tell us the company is two hundred yards to the north and they’re going to try to join them. We leave a rear party of seven blokes behind to cover us and taking 12 Platoon’s dead and wounded with us we get the hell out of there. We get to the company position with the rear party making it soon after. We’re home and hosed, but as it turns out it is more like out of the frying pan into the fire. The rest of D Company have been fighting pretty hard and, like us, they’re just about out of ammunition. But at least we’re back together again. There’s a bit of a lull in the battle and we can only hope that the next Charlie assault can be contained.

  ‘But then the VC stop to regroup and something wonderful happens, a Huey helicopter arrives and drops boxes and boxes of ammunition. Even in the rain it must have been seen and heard by the enemy and the miracle is that it wasn’t shot out of the air.

  Yet the VC come again, we’ve got plenty of ammo but we’re outnumbered ten to one and they’re good soldiers one and all. Again, it’s only a matter of time.

  ‘But just like a John Wayne movie when it’s all over bar the shouting, the cavalry arrive, A Company in armoured personnel carriers equipped with 50-calibre machine guns and they come straight into the attack. Then some of B Company come in from the west. By the time darkness comes we’ve driven the enemy off. It’s still coming down in buckets.

  ‘Eventually the whole group moves back to the edge of the plantation and deploys to defend a piece of ground big enough and clear enough for the dustoffs to land. We form a defensive square around it with the APCs at each corner armed with their 50-calibre machine guns.

  ‘The dustoff choppers come in, it’s a night operation and very risky but the fly-boys do the job, taking all the wounded and dead out, that is all except those who were left behind from our platoon. There’s no going back into that battlefield in the dark and finding our dead will have to wait until morning when, I tell myself, I’m gunna go back and fetch Mo Jacka.

  ‘About 1 a.m. the last dustoff leaves and we get the chance to settle down and wait out the night, all of us are pretty certain the Viet Cong and the NVA are gunna be back. But at least there’s time for a brew-up and then, if we’re lucky and our nerves will allow us, an hour or so of shut-eye.

  ‘It’s still raining.

  ‘Next morning the battalion advances in the rubber plantation again, but we’re riding on tracks. The tracks advance real slow, expecting enemy contact any moment. All the boys want to do is reach our platoon dead and I want to get to Mo’s body and cover him with my hutchie before anyone else sees he’s got no head. There’s far worse sights among the enemy dead, but it don’t seem decent somehow for them to see a mate and a member of our platoon like that. I know it’s stupid to say, but it would have embarrassed Mo.

  ‘We’re coming up to our platoon battlefield when we see Ocker Barrett leaning against a tree and in bad shape, he’s got his hands in his lap and from the waist down he’s soaked in blood. His hands look like two lumps of raw meat. “What took you so fucking long?” he asks. I had to fight back the tears but when we reach the platoon battlefield I lose it completely, the other blokes as well. There they are, our dead brothers, lying in an arc, still facing the enemy, most of them holding their rifles in a firing position. They’ve been washed clean by the rain and they look as though an order from Shorty would bring them back to instant life. I pull myself together and then lose it again as I come across Bongface, he’s badly wounded but he’s alive. God’s given us two of our boys back. I call the MO over. “You okay, mate?” I say to Bongface, still crying. It’s a stupid question, but he half opens his eyes and his big smile comes on and I know I love him. The MO takes over and gives him a shot of morphine.

  ‘Then I run ahead, I’ve got my hutchie out and it’s flapping as I run, I can see where Mo is lying and come up to him and spread the hutchie on the ground beside him and roll him onto it. Rigor mortis has set in and one leg sticks out and I take off my webbing belt and wrap it around both legs and pull the stiff leg against the other and tie it down. I wrap Mo up and tie him tight and now only I know what’s underneath as the chopper lands to take him away forever. I’m bawling like a kid now. I can hear the dustoff coming in to take our dead and wounded. It’s right above me. It’s going to land in the same clearing as Mo and me. A single yellow bamboo leaf, shaped like the head of a Zulu spear, was stuck to the heel of Mo’s left boot. I rushed forward as the dustoff lifted him up from the ground, the chopper blades above my head a wind-rush of cool air in the humidity, and grabbed the leaf off his heel and shoved it into the pocket of my greens.’

  Wendy is hugging me and comforting me. ‘It’s okay, mate, it’s okay, let it all come out,’ she soothes me. She’s kissing me and I can feel her soft lips on my wet cheeks.

  After a while I pull myself together and go on. ‘D Company lost seventeen men, thirteen from our platoon. But Charlie paid a bigger price, we buried 245 of their dead on the battlefield and we captured three wounded. Later VC records taken by the US Forces showed that the total enemy losses at Long Tan were 500 dead and 750 wounded.’

  I look at Wendy, ‘Which, I admit, is a long way around to get to the story of the little Vietnamese doll.’

  ‘No, Thommo, you’ve no idea how much it helps. Do you want to talk about Mo?’ Wendy asks gently.

  ‘Nah, I’ve said all I can. No sense goin’ further.’ I point to Anna’s medal, ‘Now, about the doll.’

  ‘Yes, the doll,’ Wendy smiles, encouraging me, ‘Tell me the story again.’

  I’m on a bit of a roll and I want to get all the shit off my liver in one go. ‘Are you sure? I mean, I’ve told you the doll bit before?’

  ‘Never like today, Thommo. The doll is now a part of the whole story. I see it quite differently to before.’

  I laugh at the thought of the doll. ‘Righto, then.’ I blow my nose and take a breath to get started again, crying is no good for a bloke’s self-respect. ‘Lemme see now. Okay, we’ve done a pretty good battle and the South Vietnamese government want to give some of us who fought at Long Tan one of their medals for gallantry. So back at Nui Dat a medal parade is organised with all the top brass to be in attendance. Then, at the last minute, the Australian government puts the kybosh on the medal. They point out that no Australian combat soldier may receive a foreign military decoration without approval from the Queen. Bloody stupid I know, but there you go.

  ‘Now it seems because of this decision the South Vietnamese government are about to lose face, which, in Asia, is a very big deal and to be avoided at all cost. It’s your classic Mexican stand-off. The parade can’t be cancelled and the medal ceremony can’t be conducted.

  ‘Then someone in their government comes up with the dolls, the Vietnamese dolls. Buggered if I can see the logic, but then who knows how the Asian mi
nd works. We’re to get one of these dolls instead of a medal, though some of the heroes got cigar and cigarette cases. We discover there’s some sort of pecking order goin’ on here. The medal we’re supposed to receive is called The Cross of Gallantry, which, it turns out, has three orders, Palm, Silver Star and Gold Star. The palms get a cigar case, the silvers get a doll and the golds get a cigarette case. We’re expected to take all this dead serious, like it’s a huge honour, a group of warriors back from hell, most of them clutching a child’s doll. Then Animal shouts from the back. “The least you lousy buggers could’ve done was make it a blow-up!”’

  Wendy and me have a bit of a laugh together. Then she’s dead serious. ‘Thommo, you’re to take the doll with you, take Anna’s medal today. Tell Shorty you’ve got a female in your presence, whether the boys like it or not, that she’s been with them since after Long Tan. Then hold up Anna’s medal for them to see. If they say no to The Baker’s Dozen, to me coming in, then don’t bring the doll back.’ Wendy stops and looks directly at me. ‘And don’t come back yourself, you hear, because that will mean you’re married to the wrong doll.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Now I can’t exactly say the excrement hit the rotating blades when I attend Shorty’s preliminary meeting. The hangover factor comes into play and I don’t think the audience can take in the implications all that well. Shorty, as usual, opens the proceedings without too much pre-chat.

  ‘Thommo wants his wife, Wendy, in on the act,’ he announces.