Did a man have a right to take another man’s wife away from him? Or maybe you’re forgetting that, theoretically anyway, wives don’t belong to husbands any more. Maybe it was up to Helen—it was up to her to say yes or no—not for you or him to wonder if you had a right.
Funny thing—you’d known her for years before it happened—never thought of her that way before. It started that leave—she’d been unhappy and lonely and you’d been bored—too much grog and not enough to do. You’d known her since she was a kid—always been good friends—never thought of her like that before.
It started off as just a roll in the hay—and a damned good one, too—but it soon changed. It soon became…Hell! It was hard to put into words, except that it seemed good and right and proper to be together.
Well, the problem was still there and still unanswered. But there was an unreality about it from here—from this angle of the jungle slanting under the brim of a slouch hat—you couldn’t work it out from here…
Janos was shaking him heavily by the shoulder.
‘Come on, boy, come on…Time to move—it’s on for young and old.’
Half-asleep, Pez scrambled clumsily to his feet under the weight of his gear—shrugged the weight of the pack into a more comfortable position, slung his rifle on his shoulder and climbed into line behind Janos. Janos turned and grinned.
‘How you feeling, mate?’
Pez grinned back. ‘Better,’ he said. ‘You know, it’s a good thing we don’t both get dirt on the liver at the same time.’
‘Right, three!’ called Harry Drew. ‘Drop your packs at the “Q” Store as we pass.’
The section filed out and slogged down into the mud of the track.
You lie beside the track and watch them go. You lie with head and shoulders resting on your muddy pack, rifle resting across your body and your legs sprawled—the soldier rests where he can. (See the little red book.)
They come up tall and brush past you in a swish of green as they go. You see them from the dramatic perspective of the ground beneath their feet—the brass studs shining in the soles of the heavy jungle boots—the Yankee gaiters laced round the calf of the leg—the stained jungle-green slacks and shirt open at the neck—the rain-battered slouch hats slanting over one eye.
They come with their rifles slung over the shoulder, their Owens cradled under the arm. They lean slightly forward—their shoulders hooded against the weight of the pack—a cloth bandolier of ammunition slung round their waists—a couple of primed grenades stuck in their belts—a tin of bully beef and a packet of hard biscuits in their pouches.
Identification discs are tied round their throats with old bootlaces or pieces of cord and dangle on their breasts like crucifixes. A soldier’s crucifix—meat tickets they call them: dead meat tickets.
They move along the track in single file, dumping their packs in the clearing on the bend, and pass on, stripped down for the trail.
Cairo Fleming, as he comes up level with you, grins and says: ‘Get off your back, you bludger.’
And you just grin back and say: ‘Good luck, mate—I’ll be right behind you.’
‘Get one for me, too, Fluffy,’ says young Onnie Smith, who is cleaning a Bren gun in the pit beside you.
‘Get one yourself,’ says Fluffy. ‘There’ll be plenty to go around.’
They go past and on—down to the river…
The river should have been clear. We had patrolled it every day.
But you can’t trust the jungle—comb through it if you like, it is clean and safe, you say—but even as you pass, ambush may be gathering behind you, or in the trees above you.
They let the scouts go through and the head of the section reach the bank. They opened up when the body of the section was strung across the river.
Brogan died swiftly in the middle of the stream. He fell and his body was dragged away by the current. Young Griffo, acting stretcher bearer, forgot the bullets, as a man will do, and went to do his job—which was to help Brogan now he was hit.
But the current, as it twisted Brogan’s body around, let his shattered head drift to the surface for a second. Griffo could see there was nothing for him but burying. The time for that was later. He bent again for the bank.
It was a solitary machine gun. The bullets came pattering over the water like recurrent bursts of hail. There was a horrible dream quality about it. You couldn’t, in that moment, imagine that these drops falling in the river, skipping like stones, were really deadly. You couldn’t tie them up with a phantom gun that was beating—stopping—beating somewhere a thousand miles away.
Oh, this is death and fear and ecstasy—and the lungs, and eyes and ears are filled enormous with the colour of it. The drill books don’t provide for this. The instinct for the earth and cover is helpless here. We are caught in the horrible grey catalepsy of the rushing river.
There, on the bank, a thousand miles away, is life—there is the earth, our Mother, that we can embrace her—the sweet mud; the sheltering furrow; the strong protecting arm of trunks and trees.
Here we are naked in the empty plain of the river. This is no home—the earth we know, but here we are alien, rejected and exposed to the black rain. Our limbs are held in a leaden dream—we hurl ourselves for the other bank but we go with the horrible slow motion of a dream—and all the time the bright deadly rain is pattering around us in the river.
And yet we are not afraid.
This has been too sudden, too monstrously improbable, for fear to develop. All the chemistry of fear is working for our salvation—the adrenalin of fear shoots in our blood, firing a tremendous strength to fling us to the shore.
Before you feel true fear you must realise, you must be aware. The protecting dream-film disappears and you are seared with the burning brand that sends you screaming and helpless, fleeing—or with the corruption of fear that numbs you and leaves you helpless, trembling, transfixed.
Suddenly this obscenity flops on Regan’s brain and he starts plunging through the water with a horrible bucking motion—like a terrified horse trying to drag itself from a bog.
It’s funny in a way. It’s almost funny.
Fluffy is laughing at him—a shrill, unnatural sound in all this roaring soundless tumult.
Harry Drew is yelling from the bank: ‘Come on! Come on! Come on!’
The innocent, pattering rain runs across the water and patters over Fluffy’s body. He is still laughing—he drops his rifle—it splashes into the river—he is holding his stomach with both hands—laughing or screaming—he staggers on—laughing or screaming. He falls as he tries to run up the muddy bank—his hands still under him, holding his stomach—he twists his head sideways out of the mud—the mud is in his mouth, but he is still laughing—or screaming…it goes on and on. The sound goes on and on for a thousand years and we are caught in the grey nightmare of the river—we are shod with lead and clothed with iron…
Regan has fallen near the bank and Harry Drew is dragging him up from the river. Regan is crying—sobbing. Harry throws him into shelter against the trunk of a tree and turns for Fluffy. But Griffo reaches him first.
He is lying as he fell—his legs dredging in the water, his arms under him, his head turned sideways—laughing out of the mud that mires his mouth. The bank is running red under him—the blood runs down and is licked away in the foam of the current.
Young Griffo is tearing open the first-aid pack as he hurls himself through the water. He seems to move faster than any of us—he is doing a job for someone else.
He turns Fluffy over.
The kid’s still sort of laughing and hanging on to his stomach—his fingers are spread wide and stiff but it’s coming through them—his hands are muddy and bloody—his eyes are open. His face is still sort of laughing but his eyes are open and wide—and they know.
Griffo tears Fluffy’s shirt down and the wounds lie open.
‘Oh, Christ, Christ, Christ,’ Griffo is saying over and over. He scrapes the mud away from Fluffy’
s mouth.
‘You can’t do anything for him,’ snarls Harry Drew.
Fluffy’s laughing turns to moaning and soon he will be screaming.
‘Knock him out!’ snarls Harry Drew. ‘Hook him! Hit him! He’s finished—put him out! He’ll die before he comes to—don’t let him suffer.’
Griffo looks up. He is white.
‘I can’t,’ he says, ‘I can’t hit him.’
Harry scrambles over, snarling at him, but he groans when he looks at Fluffy.
‘Poor bastard—’ he says. ‘Poor kid.’
He smashes his fist against Fluffy’s jaw. The jaw snaps shut. Fluffy’s body slumps. He is silent.
The blood still runs from him, staining the jungle green of his trousers black. It is running into the hostile river—licked up and flicked away in the alien current.
We should all have died in that river but, by the normal miracle of war, we survive.
Brogan is dead. Fluffy is dying. Young Sunny, the drag man, turned back and made the other bank, though with three bullets in one thigh. The Log has a bullet burn across his shoulders—Griffo goes to him.
All the others are safe. They have vanished—blended and gone into the silence and the jungle and the dripping leaf.
Old Whispering John is there, crouching against a stump, his eyes fixed on Bishie crouching ahead of him. Old John’s dirty teeth are showing in a fixed little grin. The webbing pouches on his chest are riddled, and there are even bullet burns on his shirt. Later he is going to show them and boast about them: ‘How’s that, eh? The old soldier gets through, eh?’
‘Funny,’ he’ll say with ill-concealed gloating. ‘Young Fluffy, his first up and he cops it, and me, the old soldier, I walk right through it with not a scratch. Funny, eh?’
Harry Drew sends a swift whisper into the silence of the trees: ‘Laird, take over for a while—watch Pez and Janos.’
The whisper goes from tongue to tongue in leaf and branch and fern.
Harry Drew slides round the tree and flops down beside Regan: ‘How are you feeling?’
‘OK,’ shivers Regan.
Harry puts his arm around the kid’s shoulders—thin shoulders.
‘Come on, kid—everyone feels as bad first time. Will you come with me—stick with me?’
‘Sure, Harry,’ says Regan.
Sure, Harry! You are God, here on this muddy track, if you can beat these wasps of wrath away—if you can walk like Christ and unafraid—if you can keep me from death—or, better still, if you can keep me from fear of it showing in my eyes. Sure, Harry!
Harry Drew leaves the tree in the peculiar crouching crab-like run of the soldier under fire. He pauses by a tree, dodges on and falls into the shadows of the shrub. A few seconds later Regan follows him with a valiant imitation of that same run. He pauses faithfully by the same tree, dodges on and falls panting heavily in the shadow of the same bush a few feet from Harry Drew.
‘OK, kid?’ says Harry.
Regan manages to grin through his parched lips.
‘Sure, Harry.’
5
But we must be inconstant to the earth—there’s the pity and the terror of it. We must rise—and never more reluctant from a lover’s bed. A red cross is drawn on a map and we must go there. The sky is grey and the jungle crouches, bland and waiting. The wet drips incessantly, implacably, imperturbably from the leaf—charting the passage of eternity.
Pez and Janos crouch against the bole of a tree and talk it over. They crouch on their haunches, crouch on their toes—ready. They do not look at each other—they watch the jungle. They whisper from the corners of their mouths. The rifle and the Owen are held loosely in their hands—ready.
‘They might open with mortars,’ insists Pez. ‘It’d be a hell of a thing to walk into your own mortars.’
‘They won’t,’ says Janos. ‘They’d wait for us to call for them—and we’ve got no line back across the river. They know we’re here somewhere. They wouldn’t use mortars unless we called for them. We’ve got to get that gun.’
‘They might just open up.’
‘The longer we wait the less chance we’ve got!’
‘Where do you reckon the gun is?’
‘About three or four hundred yards down—can’t be far from the bank.’
‘They might be strong.’
‘Probably just a gun crew.’
‘They’ll know we’re here.’
‘We know they’re there.’
‘Wait a while—we might get mortar support.’
‘If it doesn’t come in thirty seconds, it won’t come till we call,’ says Janos.
He turns his wrist and glances briefly at the second hand of his watch. He keeps his wrist turned and his gaze goes back steadily to the jungle. Thirty seconds. The leaf drips fifteen grains of eternity.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Bring them forward, not too close. When I give the hand, get them down and let them keep down—less movement the better. They’ll probably have a cover man out—you watch him—I’ll try for the gun.’
Janos glides away. Pez follows—his hand conjures the patrol from the earth—they materialise, drifting through the grey-green of the undergrowth. Harry Drew leads again, Regan is close behind him.
Here is a ballet and a symphony—here is a dance whose name is Death—whose overture is silence—waiting on the cue for savage strings, the bowel-plucking whine of the bullets. All the earth and yesterday and tomorrow are blotted out in this fierce, relaxed concentration that narrows a burning spotlight on this rain-soaked stretch of mud and jungle. The earth is suspect, save where we stand—the trees are treacherous—the leaves slant like eyes.
Janos drifts…the Owen in his hands loses the stock of metal and plastic and becomes an instinct of life, shifting and probing like mantis antennae…
Pez’s hand beats imperatively towards the earth and the furtive life behind him returns to the earth.
Janos drifts on. Pez follows—his dominant hand keeps the earth still and unbreathing behind him…
Janos was right. They had a cover man out. Pez killed him as he fired at Janos, and Janos sprang towards the pit where the two Nips were trying to swing the gun around against him.
He killed them both in the pit. One fell forward over the gun. The other—a big fellow with a square face—was trying to clamber out, trying to run. He fell against the edge of the pit, his crucified arms stretched up over the mounded earth, his fingers clawing, and he was biting in agony into the red clay of the edge of the pit when Janos fired again—and passed swiftly on, to drop, crouching, into the shelter of a further tree, his eyes swift and steady on the jungle as he snapped another clip into his Owen.
In a few moments Pez joined him.
‘I went through these two Nips in the hole,’ said Pez. ‘Nothing on mine at all. Three pens, a watch and a bundle of yen notes—take what you want.’
‘Not for me,’ said Janos. ‘Thanks for getting that first one—he’d have got me.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Pez. ‘I just nicked him. He tried again when I came up to him. I brained him with the butt.’
The lobe of Janos’ right ear was a bloody smudge. Pez saw it as he rose. ‘I’ll fix that for you,’ he said.
Janos rubbed a quick hand against it; stared for a moment at the smudge of blood on his palm; then rubbed it off on his trouser leg.
‘She’ll do,’ he said. ‘Let’s wander on.’ He took two short steps, vomited briefly and spat with a wry mouth. He glided off into the trees.
Pez looked for a moment at his loot from the bodies. He stuck the watch in his pocket, tossed the notes and fountain pens back into the pit and followed Janos.
Behind him, the patrol materialised through the trees.
The rest of that day we see nothing of the enemy—but that is no safety when with every step he may appear. We pass down the track. We reach a spot on the map, marked with a cross in red. We camp.
We eat a mouthful of bully before dark. Our water bot
tles we have filled on the way. The rest of the Company is following behind us, spread in a thin line down the track back to the river. We dig ourselves in before dark and a quick patrol clears our front without finding anything. We make ourselves beds of grass and branches, and huddle under the thin shelter of our waterproof capes—but the rain comes through. It is impossible to stay dry or get warm. Hour on, hour off, we are on guard. When your turn comes, your mate nudges you and you open your stinging eyes, hold your rifle a bit closer and crouch, listening for sounds you could never hear. It is impossible to see. No one sleeps much that night—or the next—or the next.
That first night, before dark, Connell had come up the track to see us in our forward position.
Janos stepped deliberately onto the track in front of him.
He held up two fingers. ‘Two more makes three,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Connell. But he paused before he said it.
‘Good work, boys,’ he said to the rest of us. ‘Damn good show. I’ll try to get you up a hot meal sometime tomorrow.’
He went back down the track.
Janos stood by the side of the track, his arms folded, and watched him go.
Days and weeks followed—quietly enough, but never with peace. The enemy is unpredictable. For days we probe through country where a handful could hold up an army—but never a hostile shot is fired against us. Then, suddenly, we will stumble on a machine-gun nest, or a sniper in some hopeless position where the only retreat is death.
But always, whether we are forward or in reserve, there is that small fraying—continuous and never ceasing—on the nerves.
You who know war in a romantic dream, or in the sob stories of newspapers, might imagine that it is only the thunder of bombardment or the terrors of the charge which breaks a soldier’s will and manhood; but the slow-burning acid of monotony and sterile days can be as bad, or worse. You live constantly with a small fear that can never be spoken, and never become real, but can never be dispelled.
You might know you are safe—you are behind the lines—there are no Nips within a quarter of a mile. You might know that, but the knowledge can never fully soothe the nerves or stop them from trembling as antennae to probe the blind bank of the jungle to the side of you, and the edges of the clearing where the jungle path turns. Too often, death has come out of the silence and the unliving jungle. Though you might know there is no danger, it is no use telling your body and your nerves and the dark places of your brain so long schooled and skilled for the task of being ready for death and violence, when all is still.
The Long Green Shore Page 8