While the Moon Burns

by Peter Watt

  David turned to his radio man sitting a few paces away. ‘Corp, get onto BHQ and inform them the company will go after the mortar,’ he said. ‘Tell BHQ we will move out in one five minutes.’

  David turned to his company sergeant major. ‘Sar’nt major, get the message to the platoon commanders for an O group here in five minutes, and find out if we had any casualties.’

  The CSM nodded his head and moved away from the position. David knew that the Japanese had a habit of firing on the Australians, then retreating to avoid a counterattack. Speed was essential if they were to catch the enemy and eliminate him. This was a war where no quarter was asked by either side, nor was any given. The war in the Pacific was a fight to the death.

  David returned his attention to his map, already working out the advance of his company to the forest line in front of the battalion’s advance towards Wewak. The heat of the early evening was oppressive, and sweat constantly dripped from every pore in the body. David reached for his water canteen and took a few sips. While he waited for his platoon commanders to join him he thought how his life had come down to simply surviving by killing as many of the enemy he could. So this was life, he mused, and wondered how much longer he and his men would be caught up before the war truly ended. The good news concerning the surrender of the Nazis hardly meant anything to them in the jungle hell of Northern New Guinea.

  *

  The news of Germany’s surrender reached as far as central Queensland where Tom Duffy sat on the verandah of his homestead, Glen View. He puffed on his pipe as the sun slowly sank over the vast, scrub-covered brigalow plains. The smoke curled away on a gentle breeze and his beloved daughter, Jessica, sat down beside him, nursing a big mug of tea. They both cherished sharing this special time on the ancient plains when the day kissed the night. It was a rarity for them to be together and every moment was precious.

  Tom had been surprised and overjoyed to see Jessica step out of a buggy a week earlier, when up until then all his enquiries into her whereabouts and welfare had been met by a stony silence from the military.

  But it was not the laughing young woman he had raised as a single father that he saw that day. Not the little girl with dreams of serving either God or her country, but a young woman dramatically changed. Behind her beautiful eyes he could see pain. He knew the agony, he had seen it in the eyes of so many young soldiers who had experienced too much horror, death and mutilation. Tom had only asked the question once, and Jessica had turned to him with a sad smile, informing him that she could not talk of where she had been – or what she had done.

  A couple of days after her return to Glen View a telegram had arrived to say Sergeant Jessica Duffy, WAAAF, had been gazetted for the British Empire Medal, and that the Americans had awarded her a Bronze Star for valour. Tom felt a surge of paternal pride, but did not ask why two nations had recognised what she had done. He accepted he had an extraordinary daughter who had, for a short while, been a Catholic nun, renounced her vows, and joined the Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force to work in the top secret world of codes in General MacArthur’s Brisbane HQ.

  ‘I think I’ll take young Patrick for a ride tomorrow,’ she said. ‘He’s a great kid.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ Tom said. ‘I know I’ll miss him when his mother returns. She may hardly recognise him now he is going on eight years old.’

  ‘Have you heard from her lately?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘We got one Red Cross letter a few months ago to say she was still alive in Changi,’ Tom said. ‘God knows how she is, from what I know of the Japs’ treatment of prisoners.’

  ‘The war has to end sooner or later,’ Jessica said. ‘I know from friends in the business that our Aussie troops are browned off at being allocated to mopping-up operations behind the Japs’ main defensive lines, while MacArthur wins all the glory returning to the Philippines and Nimitz chases the Japs to the north in their grand pincer movement in the Pacific. Our troops are slogging it out against a trapped enemy who could have easily been bypassed. Maybe the Yanks will include us in the final campaign when we have to invade the Japanese mainland.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Tom said. ‘I know the Nips well enough to also know they will fight to the last man, woman and child to defend their Emperor.’

  Jessica gazed across the dusty yard at an old bumbil tree where it was said that Wallarie would sit in the latter days of his life, back in the 1930s. He was virtually blind then, but would still go on a walkabout, only to return for his supply of tea, sugar, flour and his precious pipe tobacco. She still had vague memories of him, and her father had told her how she shared his blood through the family tree.

  As she grew older Wallarie seemed to haunt her life, in a nice way, and she had heretically placed him in a pantheon of saints as her protector. Jessica had never been able to shake her belief that he really was a spirit man, and this had caused problems with her religious Catholic beliefs. Wallarie had never really been a Christian – not even with the close friendship he’d had with the Lutheran pastor on the mission station on Glen View many years earlier. They were all gone now. Only some tin and mud-brick ruins were left, a few miles from the homestead.

  ‘You know, Dad, Patrick should be going to school,’ Jessica said, returning her attention to life’s practicalities. ‘He is a bright child who needs a formal education. I know Abigail has done a wonderful job but he is at an age when only a school can provide an advanced education.’

  Tom winced at his daughter’s observation. The boy had been sent north to Glen View and had quickly adapted to life on the Brigalow plains. He had learned to ride a horse, and even learned the local dialect spoken by the Aboriginal stockmen. Patrick’s best friend was Terituba, an Aboriginal boy his own age. Terituba had told him he got his name from one of his relatives who had been a great Kalkadoon warrior many years ago, and who had come to Glen View after a big battle with the whitefellas. The boys would often disappear into the scrub to hunt goannas and small wallabies with spears they had made.

  Terituba had walked with his parents from the Gulf of Carpenteria. Terituba’s father, Billy, had served with Tom in the Nackeroos – the North Australian Observation Unit – and had turned up at Glen View one day, simply saying that Wallarie had come to him the night and said that he must go south on walkabout to look after Tom and his family. Tom had immediately put Billy on as a stockman, and Terituba and Patrick had quickly become firm friends.

  ‘I have thought about sending Patrick south to Sydney,’ Tom said. ‘Sean Duffy has said he is more than happy to look after him for the school terms, and to have him return to Glen View for the school holidays. I know Sean will see him right.’

  ‘Great idea, Dad,’ Jessica said. ‘I know Uncle Sean is very fond of Patrick, and we have the money to get him the best education. Maybe he could be enrolled at St Ignatius? The Jesuits are wonderful educators. He could even board there.’

  Tom tapped his pipe on his boot. ‘Everything points in that direction for the lad,’ he sighed, not really wanting to give up the boy he had come to love as his own son. ‘Poor little bugger has been shifted from pillar to post in his short life.’

  Jessica saw the pain in her father’s face. She knew what a great father he had been and still was to her. He and his new bride, Abigail, had to all intents and purposes adopted the boy since his mother’s imprisonment in the notorious Singapore jail.

  Unknown to Jessica and Tom, young Patrick was only a few feet from where they sat. He had been playing hide-and-seek with Terituba, and overheard the conversation about him going south to school. Distressed at the idea of being sent away from the place he most felt at home, he sought out his best friend.

  ‘They are going to send me away,’ Patrick said in Terituba’s dialect, as the two boys squatted in the dust behind the sprawling homestead.

  ‘That is not good,’ Terituba commented in English. ‘Whitefella school they gi
ve you the cane, and you have to sit in a classroom all day.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Patrick asked, also in English.

  ‘The whitefella send away kids to mission schools. I hear things about schools. They are bad places where you have to wash, and do what you are told.’

  ‘Then I’ll run away,’ Patrick said. ‘If they can’t find me then I won’t have to go to school.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Terituba said. ‘I know the bush better than you.’

  ‘Where would we go?’ Patrick asked.

  For a moment Terituba pondered the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally answered.

  ‘Why don’t we go to the hill?’ Patrick said. ‘There’s a creek nearby.’

  Terituba looked at his friend in horror. ‘Ghosts live there,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘Place baal – bad. My mother tells us about the lights that glow in the bush at night. They are the old ones who are dead, and come back to grab us kids, and take us away if we’re out there at night. Not even the stockman will go there at night.’

  ‘Then if we go there to hide no one will think to look for us on the hill,’ Patrick reasoned. ‘I’ll get a bag and put some food in it until we can catch our own.’

  Terituba shook his head and stared at the ground. Patrick sensed that his friend was fighting with his fear. Finally, he looked up at Patrick. ‘I will go with you, but if the ghosts get us I will blame you.’ Friendship had won over fear.

  It was time to take provisions and make their escape as soon as all were asleep in the homestead. The boys arranged a meeting spot at the bumbil tree. After that they would set out on foot in the dark to trek to the sacred hill. It was a simple plan, and Patrick figured nothing could go wrong.

  TWO

  The two boys trekked through the starlit night, stopping occasionally to sip from the canvas waterbag Patrick had taken from the tank stand, and nibble on the Anzac biscuits Abigail had made for the stockmen’s morning tea.

  Neither boy had really travelled in the night before. Terituba had often told Patrick that it was a time when the spirits roamed. The prospect of being sent south to school was enough incentive to overcome those fears. Every sound of the nocturnal animals in the dark scrub made them freeze in fright – the howling of dingos, the occasional eerie cry of bush curlews that Terituba said were the voices of the dead. Patrick had often heard them from the safety of his bedroom and would pull up the sheet lest they enter the room and snatch him away.

  By sunrise they were exhausted and neither knew exactly where they were. Terituba climbed a spindly tree and called down to say that he could just see the summit of the sacred hill. Patrick was relieved and the boys decided to stop and eat.

  They had a good supply of the sweet biscuits made from baked treacle and oats. The water supply was dwindling as Patrick had only been able to carry one of the waterbags. However, Patrick knew from the stockmen that the old creek bed still had pools of brackish water, which would be enough for them. Both were armed with their spears and confident that they would be able to find a goanna or small wallaby to kill, roast and eat.

  They napped on the sandy soil as the sun rose to warm them and when they felt strong again they set off in the direction of the only high point on Glen View – the ancient volcanic plug that was a sacred place for Wallarie’s people.

  *

  ‘Patrick’s gone!’

  Abigail’s cry brought Tom hurrying to the boy’s room, where he could see that the bed had not been slept in.

  ‘Maybe he got up early to play,’ Tom suggested with a shrug.

  ‘All the biscuits I baked for the men have gone from the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I strongly suspect that Patrick took them.’

  ‘I had better organise the lads to ride out and make a search of the property,’ Tom said, hitching his braces over his shoulders with his one remaining arm – a snake bite and amputation a couple of years earlier had taken the other.

  Within a matter of minutes Tom had roused his stockmen.

  ‘My boy, Terituba, he gone too, boss,’ Billy said. ‘I can track ’em.’

  ‘You lead the boys after them, Billy,’ Tom said. He had witnessed Billy’s tracking abilities first-hand when they worked together in the Gulf country during Tom’s last posting in the army.

  Billy gazed around the dusty yard. ‘They go that way,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the sacred hill. Billy led his horse whilst the other stockmen followed astride their own, with calls back to Tom that they would find the boys. Tom was confident that they would: he had an instinct the boys would be found safely.

  *

  Patrick and Terituba had reached the old sandy creek bed that meandered amongst stands of scrub and stunted trees. What struck Patrick was how silent the bush was in this place. He felt a growing apprehension.

  ‘Place baal,’ Terituba said, gripping his spear firmly in his hand. ‘My people say a place no one should go.’

  ‘We need to drink,’ Patrick said, glancing around fearfully. He had an eerie feeling that they were being watched. ‘We can dig here to see if there’s water.’

  Tom had taught Patrick bush survival skills and had even shown him how to find water in dry water courses. Terituba also knew of the method of searching for water and both boys began to scrape away holes with the ends of sticks.

  They dug for some time without success and eventually decided the task was futile.

  ‘Maybe we go further up the creek,’ Terituba suggested. Patrick followed him out of the stand of small scrubby bushes where he could have sworn he heard the echo of children at play, laughing and shouting in a language he did not understand.

  Eventually they reached a section of the creek that looked more promising, and began to dig again. This time they unearthed a small trickle. They scooped their hands in the small pool to raise the water to their mouths. When they were sated they climbed the bank of the creek to sit as the sun slowly disappeared over the horizon. They had been travelling now for a night and a day.

  ‘I think maybe we should go back,’ Terituba said. ‘We’re too close to where the spirits roam. They’ll get us when it gets dark.’

  Patrick tended to agree. Not only because of his fear of the ghosts that haunted this part of Glen View but because he was starting to miss the company of his adopted family, Tom, Abigail and now Jessica.

  Patrick knew he would be in trouble with Tom but life in the scrub was growing tedious and today was the day Abigail cooked a haunch of beef with baked potatoes, pumpkin, gravy and peas. He could almost smell the roasting meat, he was so hungry.

  He placed his hand on the bank to push himself to his feet and felt something hard under his fingers. Curious, he looked down to see a half-buried old tobacco pipe. What he saw next caused him to shriek in fear; spectres rising as if growing from the ground.

  Patrick was on his feet and running. Terituba, also seeing the vision of horror, ran as fast as he could away from this place of ghosts.

  It was then that they ran into the small party of mounted stockmen. In their terror they did not notice the search party until they were right on top of them.

  ‘Hey boy, why you runnin’?’ Billy asked his wide-eyed, son scooping him up as he ran past.

  Terituba hardly recognised that his father and it took several minutes for him to calm down. A short distance away Patrick stood trembling as one of the stockmen dismounted and handed him a canteen of water.

  ‘What’s up?’ the stockman asked Patrick, who only stared at the man in silence.

  Finally he said, ‘I want to go home.’

  The stockmen looked at each other and glanced around at the scrub. It had a long-established reputation as a place of the dead, where a massacre had occurred many years earlier. The Aboriginal riders muttered amongst themselves, and the Europeans felt uneasy.

  The two boys were pulled up behind the
mounted men. It was after midnight by the time they returned to Glen View. Despite his apprehension, Patrick was not punished when the men brought him. Instead, Tom, Abigail and Aunt Jessica were kind to him before leaving him to his comfortable bed.

  But Patrick had trouble sleeping as the memory of what he had seen haunted him. It was something he did not want to tell anyone. He knew that Terituba was not about to speak of the terrifying experience they had shared in that terrible place either. He hated the thought of leaving Glen View, but he also now knew that there were things more terrifying in this world than going to the city for his schooling.

  *

  Just on dusk Major David Macintosh was driven to battalion HQ outside of the port township of Wewak for a briefing. After passing through roadblocks his driver was directed to park the jeep a distance from BHQ. He was guided past cooks preparing a hot stew for the soldiers already in place for the attack on the fortified Japanese positions around Wewak, then through a zigzag tunnel which led underground to the CO’s HQ. Here he was welcomed by the smiling Lieutenant Colonel sitting behind a table with nothing more than a field telephone and blazing pressure lamp on it. Behind the CO was his cot, and on it lay a map case, binoculars and a pistol.

  Facing the camp bed was a sand model of the area around the town, showing the all-embracing mangrove swamps, a single, skinny track running beside the beach, a plateau of coral cliffs within the fortress, and most importantly, the enemy positions so far detected. David gazed at the model and knew that there would be other well-hidden positions, ensuring deadly consequences for the attacking force.

  ‘Ah, Major Duffy, good to see you were able to make it,’ the Colonel said, rising from his table to extend his hand in greeting. ‘I was informed that your company were able to neutralise the Nips’ mortar this afternoon. Good show.’