A couple of blokes started to cheer, but they were silenced by a look from Copping. Didn’t matter though. I’d done it. I’d shown the bastard good and proper.
I dismounted, hoping no one could see the shaking in my knees.
We trained in Sydney for two months before shipping out to Egypt.
Copping was on my back every chance he got: if I fumbled reloading my rifle; if he couldn’t see his reflection in my boots; if Bobby strayed slightly out of formation. All stupid stuff that said more about him than me. A couple of the blokes took to running a book, offering pretty good odds on how I might set him off next. But hatred’s not so funny when it’s close to home.
Helena came to see me twice, with Freddy Houdini as chaperone.
The first time was when I had leave, which happened to be May 17th, my birthday. They arrived on the overnight train from Narrandera. It was a beautiful day, cloudless skies and a gentle breeze, and I think we were all a bit giddy about meeting in Sydney. There was lots of chatter about the Alfords and my army mates and my block back home—Fred was keeping an eye on it for me.
‘You’re not much of a block owner, Wally Custard,’ he joked. ‘A thousand weeds and not one bloody fruit tree.’
We ate ice-creams for morning tea in Hyde Park then caught the tram to Bondi Beach and sat on the sand for hours. Fred wandered off in search of supplies for a picnic, while Helena and I stayed watching the sea.
‘Bit wider than our river,’ I said, cupping white sand in my hand. It was the first time we’d seen Bondi Beach: the sand and surf and sea and sky. Lots of khaki, too—looked like half the AIF had a sweetheart on the beach that day. Sitting there in my own uniform with my own girl gave me a warm feeling of belonging that I’d never felt before.
Helena scooped some sand and let it fall through her fingers onto the back of my hand, and we watched as the grains trickled away.
‘If only you had to cross the Murrumbidgee to go to war, and not the Indian Ocean,’ Helena said. ‘You could come home every night.’
Then she laughed and said, ‘I realise it’s not quite as simple as that, but you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, watching a steamship move across the horizon.
I lay back on my elbows, taking in the line of her neck and shoulders under her white blouse, and wisps of hair escaping from under her hat. You didn’t see much skin in those days. You didn’t need to. For a long while we were silent, enjoying the sunshine and the drifting voices of nearby couples on the beach. I’d almost dozed off when she asked, ‘Do you ever feel scared, Wally?’
I thought about it for a bit. ‘No, it’s all too unreal. Sometimes in training drills I try to imagine what it’ll be like coming face to face with the Hun, but the picture sort of breaks up before anything happens.’ I reached out and touched my palm to her shoulderblade. The soft cotton was hot to touch. ‘I worry more about you—about being so far away.’
She drew our initials in the sand a few times, still with her back to me, and then spoke in a voice I could barely hear. ‘Freddy Houdini’s going to make himself disappear for a couple of hours when we get to the hotel.’
I twirled a strand of her hair around my finger until her brother returned with the food.
‘Have you got your enlistment papers?’ Helena asked. ‘Your pay book?’
‘For the hundredth time, yes, love,’ I said, patting my kit bag and smiling to compensate for the impatience in my voice.
It was four weeks since our day on Bondi Beach, and despite my protests, they were back in Sydney to see me off.
The wharf was crowded and chaotic—families cheering and crying and cajoling, Red Cross volunteers rattling collection tins, stall holders selling stationery and socks and anything that might separate a soldier from a few bob.
‘Jeez, you’d think it was a sporting carnival,’ Fred said, looking around and shaking his head. He fell forward as he was shoved in the back again by folks from a large, loud family farewelling their boy with speeches and laughter and slaps on the shoulder.
Made our party seem all the more small and sad.
And truth is, I was impatient. I’d spent two months fretting about this farewell and now I just wanted it over. I wanted to put it behind us, to be on my way. I wanted to get caught up in the excitement of the adventure ahead, the mates I’d meet, the places I’d see.
The family beside us started pointing and we looked up to see a horse suspended high above the crowd in a canvas harness.
‘Oh God, it’s Bobby,’ I said. We all stared silently as the animal swayed against a sky dark with rain. The Vestalia was a seconded merchant transport vessel, not a defence ship built to carry troops and mounts, so they were hoisting the horses up over the side to be lowered straight into the hull. And I can tell you there’s nothing more unnatural and unsettling than a horse dangling in thin air—the spine curved into a freakish ‘n’ shape, the legs hanging limp, the neck absurdly long and low. Without his feet firmly on the ground, Bobby was a picture of misery, defenceless and dejected. And there was such a sense of pathetic inevitability about it all that for the first time I felt terrified at the thought of being marched onto that ship.
An officer’s whistle sounded and we were called back into line.
Fred and I shook hands and he gave me a half-empty pack of his favourite smokes as a parting gift. ‘No one’s gonna waste a bullet on a little bloke like you, Wally Custard,’ he said. ‘You’ll be back before I’ve got your fruit block clear of weeds.’ Then he reached out and punched my shoulder before stepping just far enough away to stay in sight of Helena while we said goodbye.
Amid the commotion and tears and shouts of a thousand farewells, Helena and I stood silently, hands locked. We’d been together seven months now. There wasn’t much that hadn’t been said.
‘Love you I do, Helena Alford,’ I said, kissing her gently and touching my forehead to hers.
‘Love you too, Wally Shy-ers,’ she said. ‘Now get on that ship. The sooner you leave, the sooner I’ll have you home.’
I squeezed her hand and turned away, weaving through the crowd to get back to the men. I was proud of her for keeping it together. Proud of us both.
I noticed Copping standing over by the wharf’s edge, with a fine-looking older woman and a young lad who seemed to be crooked at the middle. The boy’s legs were twisted and he leaned on walking canes.
Copping had one arm tucked around his wife’s back, and he was using his free hand to wipe his son’s tears as he talked softly to them both. As I passed by I briefly caught his eye, before he looked away, distraught. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen: that mean bastard bent over his crippled kid. There’s a reason for everything, isn’t there?
We marched onto the Vestalia and were directed to our designated area below decks, a narrow mess room with ceiling hooks for hammocks. The air was already thick with the smell of horses and hay and too many sweaty blokes per square foot.
When the ship’s horn eventually sounded our departure, I bolted out of the room, dodging around men and scrambling up stairs to get a good vantage spot at the rail in front of an army of taller blokes. Rain was falling steadily now and the wharf was a sea of black umbrellas and frantic faces searching for men they’d maybe never see again. Just in time I spotted Helena. She was waving madly with one hand and wiping away tears with the other, crying and laughing with Fred and doing her best to put on a brave face. Her eyes locked on mine and she went perfectly still. As the ship pulled away from the dock, I gave her a jaunty salute and she pressed her fingers to her lips.
Chapter 3
ADELAIDE, 1968
‘What was the war like, Wal?’ asks one of my young bar mates like he’s checking on a cricket score. I wink at the other old blokes who know the answer, and tell him, ‘The short answer, son, is that it was bloody hot. Freezing cold. Lonely sometimes, even in a crowd of your best mates. Many days were boring. Many were sad. A few times it was te
rrifying, but for me it was never hell. I’ve spent a lifetime feeling guilty about that.’
AUSTRALIA TO EGYPT, 1915
It took around six weeks to sail from Australia to Egypt. I’d never been on a ship before and I can’t say I enjoyed it. Cruel really, expecting a man to find his sea legs while sailing around Australia’s southern coast in winter. I never did find mine. Some days I’d cling to the rails, almost willing the rolling waves to take me as I surrendered another meal to the sea. Even when we crossed the equator and the sea mirrored the sky, I didn’t come good. The ship stank of men and horses, sick and sweat and shit, no matter how much we scrubbed the decks.
I was homesick for Helena. I hated that I could never get a second to myself. I hated that everyone around me was so chummy while I was so out of sorts and always desperate to be swinging silently in my hammock at lights out. Bobby coped better, bless him. I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d got crook and I had to watch him go over the side. Copping left me alone too, for the most part. Though there was the time he made me stand to attention somewhere near Kangaroo Island and then had to wear my breakfast on his khakis. A small victory for South Australia.
You probably think I ended up in Gallipoli or France. Most people assume that. But I never got far from Egypt.
We arrived in late July 1915 and spent the first couple of months in a camp near Heliopolis, north of Cairo—not quite in the shadow of the pyramids, but close enough to see them on a clear day.
Huge British and allied camps ringed Cairo. They were like bustling cities, with each division assigned its own suburban block of golden sand. We had our own mess tents and latrines, and whitewashed stones lined the streets. Egyptian hawkers set up any place they weren’t kicked out—you could get your hair cut or your photograph taken or buy a cheap souvenir or tobacco for the price of peanuts.
We slept in round, conical bell tents, eight to a tent like spokes in a wheel. The horses were always lined up just out back. Now I think about it, everything around us was meticulously designed and planned, but us troops looked like tramps a lot of the time.
We trained eight hours a day, six days a week. Marched into the desert for miles, teaching our bodies to handle the heat and our eyes to spot the enemy in the flat white haze. Because there’s no cover in the desert, we taught the horses to lie down in front of us for protection. We’d even shoot over their prone bodies; I’d hum Keep the Home Fires Burning to keep Bobby calm as I fired my Lee-Enfield at targets 100 yards away. Every instinct must have told that horse to bolt, but he always stayed put. Loyalty on four legs, he was.
After the disastrous Gallipoli landing in April, the campaign dragged on for eight months. Us reinforcements in Cairo were there to top up the numbers as the casualties mounted on the other side of the Med. In August alone, over 2,500 Australians died, and that’s when they tapped my regiment for volunteers.
One of the officers who’d seen me feeding the fish from Sydney to Cairo laughed when he saw the look on my face. ‘Am I right in thinking you’d prefer to keep your feet on dry land, Shiers?’ he asked.
‘I’ll go where I’m needed, sir,’ I said.
But they had too many volunteers in the end. Besides, I was aiming to be promoted to driver, and there wasn’t much call for lorries on the beach and cliffs of Gallipoli. There was no call for horses either—they all stayed in Egypt.
Must have been around then that I first climbed the pyramids. I remember it well, because young Bernie was still there. A whole gang of us caught a tram and then rode donkeys to the base of Cheops, where archaeologists fussed over ruins and Egyptian cameleers shouted ‘You ride, Aussie good!’
After the climb we sat up there for a bit, looking down on the chaos of Cairo beside the orderly training camps, and the Nile River with its strange cloak of green. Felt like we were up with the pharaohs.
‘Makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it?’ said Bernie. He was a teacher back home, not long out of training college. Always had his gangly neck bent over a book.
I touched my palms to the giant limestone block beneath me, trying to get my head around the mechanics and the manpower needed to create something so substantial in the sand, thousands of years before.
‘Ever stopped to think that maybe we’re the slaves of today?’ Bernie asked, nodding his head toward the hundreds of troops marching in perfect formation in the distance.
‘Fair go, Bernie,’ said one of the other blokes. ‘No one put a gun to your head. How’s that pay in your pocket?’
‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ Bernie said. ‘Just makes you wonder, is all.’
I gave him a little bump with my shoulder, kept my voice low. ‘You’ll be fine, mate. Me and Bobby’ll look after Patch till you get back. Just do as you’re told. Don’t be a hero.’
‘Ha! Not much danger of that,’ he said. I knew he was fretting about leaving his horse. About the horror stories we’d heard.
They left for Gallipoli the following week.
The rest of us in the ammo reserve stayed camped in Heliopolis, marching out to endless training drills, target practice, desert trench building. When our mates arrived back from the Dardanelles after the Gallipoli evacuation, Bernie wasn’t with them. Shot dead by a sniper a week before the withdrawal. He was left behind on that desolate stretch of peninsula with over 8,000 other Australian lads.
I went out to Patch when I heard about Bernie, whispered the news, scratched behind his ears while I smoked my pipe and watched the stars. I should have been there, helping Bernie keep his head down.
I was still with Patch half an hour later when Copping found me. He stood there staring with his usual look of contempt, and just when I thought he was going to say something foul he reached into a sack and held out an envelope.
‘Here’s the post, troops!’ he yelled. ‘Come and get it!’
I held the envelope and the faint smell of lavender almost made me weep. Still does to this day, after all the scented letters Helena wrote to hurry me home to her front verandah.
I rubbed Patch’s muzzle and wandered over to the light of the mess tent to read. ‘To my darling Wally’ is how they always started. ‘Love you I do’ is how they’d end. In between was everything and nothing—a weekly roundup that always left me as sad as it did happy.
Patch was allocated to a young cavalryman in need of a new horse. He was a nice lad, a jackaroo with a ready smile from Western Australia. Bernie would have liked him.
By the end of January 1916 we were attached to the 1st Light Horse Regiment, headed south down the Nile Valley in search of Senussi tribesmen armed by the Turks to cause strife out of Libya.
Action at last, or so I thought.
Imagine riding a hot, tired horse into white, blistering nothingness, and that’s what the next four months of desert patrols were like.
Some days the temperature got upwards of 110 degrees, so we did a lot of our patrols by moonlight. I didn’t fire a single shot at a Senussi Arab—didn’t even spot one before we were hauled back up north to Kantara, east of Cairo.
Our next job was helping to defend the Suez Canal. Didn’t fire a shot there either, not even in the Battle of Romani where the Light Horse turned back a major Turkish advance on the canal. Not much of a soldier, eh? But I drove a lorry that resupplied ammo, and also managed to get a lot of shot-up and shattered lads out of harm’s way. One bloke had both legs torn off in a blast—kept crying out that his feet were on fire.
After that battle there was a big sale of deceased officers’ clothing. All of us stood around haggling over dead men’s stuff to raise money for their relatives. Death gets impersonal in wartime.
It wasn’t long after that I got a really good look at my first warplanes. Mesmerising, they were—two tiny Fokker monoplanes like the ones that caused the deadly Fokker Scourge in the skies over the Western Front. They were the first aircraft with the machine gun synchronised to the propeller, so the pilots could shoot out in front.
I heard them before I
saw them—a hum far off in the distance, and I didn’t think much of it because the Brits were often out that way doing reconnaissance. The hum became a loud buzz and you could see the afternoon sun glinting off something on board. Too late we realised they were headed straight for us, and there was a great panic and cries of ‘Take cover!’ as bullets strafed the camp. I dived onto the sand, praying not to be hit, and within what seemed like seconds the planes were making another pass. Two bombs hit within moments of each other: huge blasts that roared in my ears before a shock wave smashed over me. For a split second, nothing, and then sand and stones and God knows what else rained down. I stood groggily, scraping blackened sand from my face and almost gagging on the foul, burning stench in my nostrils and the back of my throat. Men were running in all directions and yelling and I saw scores of horses strewn across the sand. Bobby was one of them. I sprinted and found him on his side, a huge gash from his shoulder to his flank, bits of rib sticking out.
‘Bloody hell, Bobby,’ I said, sinking to my knees beside him. I knew I had to get my rifle, but his eyes were so wild and terrified I couldn’t leave him.
‘That Waler’s been fucking good to you, Croweater—he deserves a quick send-off.’ It was Copping. I didn’t look at him. I forced myself to get up.
‘You want me to take the shot?’ he asked.
I nodded, and as he raised his .303 to take aim, I knelt and hummed Keep the Home Fires Burning one last time to my old mate. The crack of the rifle was so close, felt like it went straight through me. Copping reached down and roughly squeezed my shoulder before he walked off to silence other splintered animals.
Chapter 4
EGYPT, 1916
‘Good night, lads. God bless.’ The padre strolled along the line of bell tents, and as he passed the glow of each tiny crackling campfire his face was briefly lit up in the darkness.
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