My ears were ringing, I could barely hear him. ‘Incredible, sir!’ I shouted back. ‘Now I know what they mean by deafening silence!’
‘You get used to it!’
‘I loved every minute! Thank you, Sir!’
The Lieutenant began a rundown with Ando, suggesting they take a little more slack out of the aileron controls. When Benny asked how the engine was, the Lieutenant replied, ‘Splendid, Bennett. Thank you.’
I wavered a second before I spoke. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir, I think it might be worth checking the valve mechanism. Just sounded a little off when we were coming in to land.’
Lieutenant Smith raised his eyebrows. ‘Ha! Corporal Bennett knows I’m hopeless with engines, so I’m happy to defer to an expert.’ As he walked off he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Good work, Shiers.’
All that day back in the mobile workshop, I felt rather chuffed with myself, thinking about my flight and the Lieutenant tapping me on the shoulder and the three letters I’d sent off that morning. I pictured Fred and Dick meeting up in some little French village or back in London perhaps. Getting to be mates, looking out for one another.
Late that afternoon one of the blokes came by with news of yet another British offensive on the Western Front. And it suddenly struck me that Fred and Dick might already be dead.
PALESTINE, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1917
It’s surprising how quickly you get sick of rain, even after months of wishing the skies would open. By Christmas Eve 1917 we’d endured three days of determined drizzle. Not enough to down tools, but enough to get every man down.
We hadn’t been camped long at El Mejdel in Palestine. Beersheba had been taken in late October, and the British had also occupied Gaza and Jerusalem. The mounted charge into Beersheba by the Light Horse lads was already a legend across the allied camps.
In the skies above, our boys had played an important role keeping Fritz out of the air and off the scent of preparations and troop build-ups below. And every flight for reconnaissance or photography or bombing or strafing Turkish ground forces was followed at the very least by a maintenance ritual—if not an all-night engine overhaul.
Flying was finished for the day and Benny had a few of us getting the planes under cover. Most of us groused as we pushed the wet wooden frames, lamenting the weather and another Christmas at war.
Benny urged us to look on the bright side. He wasn’t a particularly religious bloke, but he appreciated the novelty of being a stone’s throw from Bethlehem on Christmas Day. ‘If you can’t get into the Christmas spirit this year, you’re probably going to hell,’ he said, giving me a wink. When one of the other blokes suggested we might be there already, everyone laughed. ‘Mind you,’ said Benny, ‘I reckon those poor buggers in France might argue the point on that.’
I thought about Fred’s last letter, thanking me for putting Dick in touch. They might have caught up if Fred’s VD hadn’t returned so viciously, sending him back to hospital with ‘a screaming purple scrotum the size of a cannon ball’. Dear old Freddy Houdini. Even with inflamed balls he was counting his blessings to be on the safe side of the Channel.
Late afternoon a breeze picked up, gentle at first. We thought it might move the clouds on for Christmas Day and all cheered up. When the message came through that an officer had gone missing on the way back from a neighbouring British aerodrome, most of the mechanics were sent out to join the search. A few dozen of us stayed back to finish sheltering the aircraft.
As the afternoon wore on, the breeze strengthened into an unpredictable gale that drove stinging squalls of rain.
‘Gotta move it now, fellas!’ Benny yelled over another angry gust. ‘Every plane we don’t get in here is a plane we might lose.’
Wire wing struts began to scream and ping. Wooden frames creaked and cracked. Tarps lifted from cockpits and flew like ghosts into the sky.
‘Keep clear of those wires!’ someone warned. Everyone had heard horror stories of men losing eyes to highly tensioned struts breaking under strain.
Soon we were staggering like drunks against the wind and horizontal rain. ‘Look out!’ Benny yelled, as two RE8s pirouetted on their noses before flipping onto their backs.
We had four planes safely in a hangar by then, and as other blokes returned from the search party we rushed to tether the remaining aircraft with ropes and pegs. But the ground was too soft and pegs wouldn’t anchor. A huge gust caused another RE8 to flip, its linen fuselage splitting with an almighty crack.
I grabbed Benny’s arm and yelled into his ear: ‘What if we used lengths of tarp as tethers and our own body weight as anchors?’
He thought for a second and gave a thumbs-up. We ran into the hangar to grab the longest lengths of tarp, yelling at other men to follow our lead as we struggled into the gale toward the remaining planes. In the last of the light, Benny and I twisted our length of tarp to strengthen it, lashed it over the fuselage near the tail and each wrapped an end around our waist. Then we hunkered down back-to-back in the mud to hold the plane firm. Two pairs of blokes followed suit to help anchor our aircraft, while others took care of the remaining machines. As everyone settled into the mud, I buried my face in my knees to rest my eyes from the stinging rain.
‘T’was the night before Christmas,’ I thought as I sat catching my breath, drenched to the skin, ears ringing. It was three years since my first and only Christmas Eve with Helena, but I remembered it like yesterday. Sitting in the sixth pew of St Thomas’s on Larmer Street, down the road from the Narrandera Hotel where I’d spent a drunken lonely night the year before. I was tired from fitting electrical wires in one of the new houses over in Leeton and only half listening to Rev Rawling’s sermon—something about war and sacrifice and God’s will. Then Helena rested her fingers on mine on the wooden pew between us, shifting slightly in her seat so the folds of her skirt fell over our hands. It felt like a bolt of electricity had passed between us, and when I gave her a sideways glance she was staring straight ahead with a face of pure devotion.
For hours, Benny and I huddled there in the pitch black, mud rising against our legs as the wind and rain howled and the plane strained and screeched to get free. It was miserable. I played the Helena game, blocking out everything but memories of our time together. There was our first ride on the Triumph motorcycle I’d bought in pieces from a bloke who’d crashed it. The night we played euchre past midnight, when me and Fred paired up and used an elaborate system of winks, throat clearings and head scratches to steal tricks. Clearing the back fence line of thistles and sour sobs one Sunday afternoon to plant Helena’s vegetable seeds for summer.
I must have fallen asleep, because when Benny nudged me in the back, it was deathly still. The wind had died, the rain had stopped and to the east a tiny sliver of light marked the horizon. Tired blokes stood and stretched around us. We’d saved a few planes, but the tarmac was still a forlorn sight, with aircraft tossed about and torn apart.
We dragged ourselves up and made the long trek to the tents. ‘Christ almighty,’ groaned Benny at the site of our collapsed tent.
‘Worry about it later,’ I said. ‘Right now brandy, sleep.’ So we trudged over to the mess and cajoled a swig of brandy from the cook. ‘Merry Christmas lads,’ he said, pouring two generous shots.
Then we walked back to the hangar and curled up under canvas to grab a couple of hours’ sleep.
The mess was near silent when we walked in for breakfast. Blokes all exhausted, dishevelled, starving. ‘Did we find Lieutenant Matheson?’ I asked, remembering the search party.
No, he hadn’t been found. The flooded wadis—what the Arabs called the desert creek beds—made the hunt too difficult. A search party was headed back out after breakfast.
I collapsed into a chair as someone put a tray of sausages and eggs and strong coffee in front of me.
‘And here’s your Christmas post, Wal,’ said one of the lads. ‘Postie made a special delivery.’
I shoved a wh
ole piece of toast in my mouth and gave him a noise of thanks and two thumbs up, as he placed a small pile of envelopes and a package in front of me.
Over breakfast I quickly read the cards from my brother Jack and sisters Liz and Mary. Jack was proud as punch because two of his sons had won footy premierships in the junior colts in Broken Hill. Liz sent a message from Dad, too. He was still living in a boarding house in Adelaide; had crook hands from all those years working with wet plaster, but was happy enough. Loved talking about my promotion to the Flying Corps, apparently.
I saved Helena’s package for later. And it was many hours later. First we had to clear away the wreckage and salvage what parts we could, fix up the camp and hang our belongings out to dry in the hangar. Lieutenant Matheson had been found dead. He’d wandered for miles and died of exposure. He was a great bloke. So polite. So bloody young.
When I finally tore the package open I found a sprig of lavender, another balaclava from Mrs Alford, a light blue handkerchief embroidered with a tiny gum tree in the corner and a small, slightly crushed box of Cadbury chocolates.
All lovely, but it was the letter I craved. Words from home. Sweetness from my girl. And it did start sweetly enough, saying how thrilled she was about my upcoming promotion to 1st Class Air Mechanic, throwing in a bit of gossip about her sisters and news that John was trialling a couple of citrus varieties on the block for me. But there was an edge to her words I’d never noticed before, and by the end there was no hiding her feelings.
… I know it’s my job to write letters of sweetness and light, dear Wally, but I just can’t pretend today. I can’t bear that you’re away for another Christmas. I can’t bear the thought of another year like this. And Fred could be dead for all we know. The only news we get of him is from you now. Why is it that he can confide in you but not his own sister? But perhaps you’re glad to still be away, Wally, conquering the Holy Land with all your new friends. Swimming in the sea on your days off, climbing pyramids, visiting exotic places. You certainly seem close to Lieutenant Smith these days. Your letters are filled with more of his news than your own. There, I’ve said it. Aren’t I ghastly today. I can’t stand myself like this. Come back to me. Merry Christmas. I’m sorry.
Love you I do,
Helena
We’d just got the tent cleaned up, and it was all I could do not to tear it down again. How dare she! Sitting in her pretty little room, with her fine little stationery set. She had no idea.
The officers had invited us all to Christmas dinner, as was the tradition, so I put on a cheery front as we walked across to their mess.
‘Congratulations on the promotion, Captain Smith,’ I said as I entered. He was already nursing a large glass of whisky. Slapping me roughly on the back, he wished me Merry Christmas and loudly told the officers around him that it had been my idea to use human weights to anchor the aircraft in last night’s storm. With Helena’s words in my head, his praise and camaraderie embarrassed me to my core.
I sat quietly, resenting her more with every mouthful of tomato cream soup and roast beef and plum pudding dessert. Through beers and smokes I replayed those sentences in my head. And when the boys started singing Silent Night, I took a generous glass of whisky back to the tent, tore some pages from an unused diary and said what I thought.
25th December 1917.
My dearest Helena,
Well that’s a Christmas letter I won’t soon forget. I’m sorry you’re unhappy my sweet girl, but it’s hardly peaches and cream on this side of the world either. I can only hope you’re feeling more like your old self by the time you read this letter.
To Fred first. He writes to me because he thinks I understand what he’s going through. I don’t, of course. I can’t even begin to imagine what life in the trenches is like for him, or my own brothers who haven’t already been killed in that hell hole. I eat three cooked meals a day, surrounded by my ‘new friends’. In France, their friends rot beside them, the same corpses blown up again and again, night after night in no-mans land. I feel guilty every day for being here and not there. We all do. But we’ve been asked to do a job and that’s what we do. That’s all we do, except the odd Sunday when, yes, I go for a swim to break the monotony, or ride a donkey to the nearest town to look for some little souvenir or trinket to show I’m thinking about you. And as for Lieutenant Smith, he’s actually a Captain now. Just been promoted to Commander of C Flight. And rightly so. I write about him because there’s nothing else to write about, unless you want me to fill the pages with how I’ve been grinding valves or cleaning spark plugs? My life is boring. His life is not. The top brass down here say he was the best aircraft observer they’d ever seen before he trained for his wings. He got the Military Cross for helping to rescue a British pilot behind enemy lines, actually stood up in his observer’s cockpit and knocked off the Turks one by one with his revolver to hold them back. He got shot in the face over Beersheba, needed three weeks to recover from the bullet that went right through his cheek and knocked out some teeth. The man’s a hero, the first pilot in the entire Australian Flying Corps to score a victory against the enemy, and you people back home don’t even know his name. You all know Manfred von Richthofen though, I bet. Makes me sick. Captain Smith’s younger brother Colin died recently at Passchendaele. Did I tell you that? You’re free to cry and grieve about death back home. We’re expected to keep a stiff upper lip. The Captain heard the news and got back in his plane to take aerial photos. So forgive me for writing about my friend. At least, I assume we’re friends because in the middle of everything, he sometimes stops to ask how I am, or to ask about your work on the conscription referendum. Would you prefer I had no friends, Helena? Would you rather I sounded miserable and bored to make your life more bearable?
I was just getting started when Benny burst through the flap of the tent. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s Christmas mate! What the hell are you doing writing letters when the officers have opened their liquor cabinet?’
I looked down at the letter, words swimming.
‘Put it away Wal,’ Benny said, stumbling roughly against my shoulder. ‘If it’s worth saying, save it for tomorrow. We’re bloody crusaders in the Holy Land. Tonight we drink.’
PALESTINE, BOXING DAY, 1917
I woke up face down and fully clothed under my blanket, with a throbbing headache and a vague recollection of writing to Helena. The tent reeked. Mouldy socks, cigarette ash, stale alcohol. I turned my head on the pillow, groaning with the effort, and saw everyone else still asleep, snoring. Groping around on the ground beside my camp bed, I found the loose diary pages. And as I struggled to decipher my own sentences, one thought kept coming to mind: thank God I hadn’t sent it.
I rolled onto my back, laid an arm across my eyes to dim the light. That’s the worst thing about tents—always light from first dawn. Helena deserved better than this. She just wanted the war over and me home. How could I blame her for that? And she wasn’t stupid—she’d know I wasn’t hating this war. She’d know I wasn’t desperate to get home.
Jesus, two and a half years, and I was enjoying myself more now than when I left. What did that say about me? About Helena and me? Did I love her? Yes. Never looked at another woman. But could I go back to life in Narrandera? Probably not, in truth.
I groaned into my arm. Shit. I thought about all those new houses I’d worked in before the war, fixing the electric wiring to new bare walls. It churned my guts. I wanted to be up to my elbows in engine grease, standing by as an aircraft roared to life. Maybe get my wings one day. Helena knew I wasn’t the same man who left in 1915. She worked it out before I did, bless her.
I slowly rubbed my temples, then propped myself up on one arm and grabbed the diary and pencil, writing across a single blank page.
26th December 1917.
Dearest Helena,
Love you I do, my darling girl. The war will be over soon and our life will begin. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Promise. Get that wedding dress ready.
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Your Wal
Chapter 7
ADELAIDE, 1968
One of my young friends leans forward on his bar stool. ‘Smith—I know that name,’ he says, looking pleased with himself. ‘Smithy, wasn’t it? Smithy and his Southern Cross?’ I sigh and drink the last of my beer, placing the empty schooner on the bar for a refill. I look across to the small television in the corner. The news is on, and they’re showing pictures of an Apollo spacecraft, the kind the Yanks want to land on the moon. Makes me wish I was 50 years younger, but lots of things make me wish that. I turn to the young lad, and shake my head. ‘No son, you’re thinking of Charles Kingsford Smith,’ I say. ‘I’d be a rich man if I had a quid for every time I’ve heard that. I’m talking about another bloke entirely. Captain Ross Smith. Just so happens he was cursed with the same surname.’
PALESTINE, 1918
Captain Ross Smith. He was fearless in his Bristol Fighter that final year of the war. Peerless too. Just ask anyone. Scored 10 of his 11 victories in that one machine. If the ground forces were under fire from above, they’d raise their fists to the skies and shout, ‘Ross Smith’ll get you, bastard!’
And those same blokes would always ask ‘What’s Ross Smith like?’ when they heard I was with No. 1 Squadron.
‘Nice bloke,’ I’d reply, trying to sound casual. ‘Takes you up to his rank when he’s speaking to you, if you know what I mean. Maybe because he started out at the bottom like the rest of us.’
But he was nothing like the rest of us, and everyone knew it from the top brass down. When aerial photos were needed before some new advance on the Holy Land, he was usually the bloke they tapped on the shoulder. He said growing up in the South Australian outback helped to sharpen his eye on the terrain.
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