The Long Green Shore

by John Hepworth

  The Nips swept a curtain of fire down the hill, and we answered back—it was something to do—it was the only thing we could do. The Nips couldn’t get to him, but neither could we—there was too much open ground. We could only wait for dark.

  Slapsy Paint just lay there, as though he had woken in a strange room after being sick a long while—or being out on the grog. He just seemed to be lying there.

  His flute had fallen in the open and a Nip sniper amused himself smashing it. We could see the little pockmarks springing in the ground around it. One—two—three—four—five—six—the seventh shot smashed it. There was a Banzai! from up the hill.

  Through that long afternoon he lay there. He either couldn’t, or had sense enough not to, move. From some of the pits we could see him—from others, as the afternoon deepened, we could hear him.

  There is nothing more horrible…to be locked into the earth by lead and steel, and hear, through the agony of a dying afternoon, the moans and cries of a man you know. To hear him, to see him, and not be able to move—to know that no heroism and no millionth chance could take you across that burning gulch to bring him to safety.

  He moaned and cried…on and on it went…you couldn’t shut your ears to that sound—it seemed to swell somewhere from inside you, yourself, and ring on and on, horribly, insanely, and for ever.

  In the pit, Regan shivered with pity and shook his head, trying to writhe away from this evil dream: ‘Oh, no!—No!—No!’

  ‘Don’t listen!’ said Harry Drew. ‘Don’t listen, kid!’

  ‘Christ, I could hit him from here,’ said Janos. ‘I can finish him with one bullet. Quick—he’d never know.’

  ‘Might be best,’ said Harry Drew. ‘He looks bad. It might be best.’

  ‘Oh, no…no…no.’

  ‘You can’t do it,’ said Pez. ‘He might live. We can get him after dark. Put the mortars on and we can get him at dark. He might live.’

  Mostly he moaned or cried. The only words we could understand were every now and then he would call out, over and over: ‘Leave me—leave me—leave me—’ over and over and on and on through that long afternoon.

  Pez and Janos and the Laird nominated as three to go and get him when darkness came.

  ‘I know where he is,’ said Janos. ‘I can find him in the dark—I’d best go.’

  ‘I’ll tag along with you,’ said Pez.

  ‘He’s a big bloke,’ said the Laird. ‘I guess I’d better make one to carry him.’

  ‘I want to go, Harry,’ said Regan.

  ‘Don’t be silly, kid,’ said Harry Drew. ‘There’s plenty more to go than you.’

  ‘Harry, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘He’s a big man, kid. It needs more weight than you’ve got to carry him.’

  ‘I’ll carry my end—please, Harry, I’ve got to go.’

  Harry took him by the shoulders—thin shoulders: ‘Don’t try and play it big, kid—a man can only do as much as he can do—that’s all that’s wanted of you. You don’t have to go.’

  ‘I have to go—I want to, Harry.’

  ‘OK, kid—if you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Slapsy’s cries stopped just before sundown.

  ‘He might be dead,’ said Harry Drew. ‘I’m not going to risk men to get out a dead ’un.’

  ‘We’ve got to go, Harry,’ said Pez.

  ‘He’s alive—he must be alive,’ Regan wanted to say, but he didn’t say it.

  ‘We’ll go,’ said Janos.

  The mortars threw everything they had against the Nip emplacements on the hill. The sharp, splitting explosions of their bombs beat along the ridge like hail, until the hill was thick with the thunder of it. From the pits we opened with everything we had—firing on fixed lines to leave a narrow lane of safety for the carrying party to reach Slapsy.

  It was nothing, really.

  Janos and Pez and the Laird and Regan just climbed up out of the pit. Crouching, they followed Janos, who led them swiftly and surely to Slapsy.

  They lifted him onto the stretcher. He moaned a little. They carried him back. He was alive.

  It was nothing—to walk in the darkness of that fiery furnace. Just that it was uncomfortable, the trip back—a man seems heavier lying on a stretcher and Slapsy was a big man, anyway. You can’t crouch to gain the false security of worshipping the earth when you are carrying a stretcher—you can scramble on all fours, lumping the stretcher between you, but that takes longer and is more awkward in the dark. So they stood up—trusting to Janos to lead them straight back—and stumbled as quickly as they could down the hillside to their own pits.

  Harry Drew clasped Regan to him like a lost son: ‘Good kid!’ he said. ‘Good kid!’

  So we lay in the earth and waited for our guns to be fed.

  We got word back that Slapsy would be right. Doc Maguire had patched him up fine before sending him back down the line. On the table Slapsy hadn’t come to properly, but from time to time he muttered: ‘Leave me…leave me… leave me…’

  We lost Bishie here, too. He had been wounded with a grenade on the second day. There were half a dozen pieces of shrap in his back, but he kept quiet and refused to go down to the RAP for treatment. But after the third day he was so stiff and sore he could hardly move.

  Doc Maguire got to hear of it and came crawling up to the platoon. ‘Where’s Bishop?’ he said with a grin.

  He went to him: ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, still here?’

  ‘I’m all right, Doc,’ said Bishie. ‘Honest I am.’

  ‘We’ll have a look,’ said the Doc. He lifted Bishie’s shirt gently—it stuck to his back in places. The wounds were shallow, but angry-looking and their blurry mouths cried out.

  ‘Three days ago you got hit?’ asked the Doc.

  ‘Yeah, I think it was about three days ago,’ said Bishie.

  ‘You know, I ought to put you in on a self-inflicted—you should have come to me when you got hit.’

  ‘I’ll be all right here, Doc,’ said Bishie. ‘Just patch me up now and I’ll be all right here.’

  ‘No,’ said the Doc. ‘You’re coming with me, boy—you’ve had it for a while.’

  ‘Let me stay, Doc.’

  ‘Come on, boy.’

  Bishie looked as though he was about to burst into tears when he said goodbye—or maybe it was just not sleeping for three nights. The Nip machine gun was beating over on the left flank. Bishie went to pick up his rifle.

  ‘Leave it, boy,’ said the Doc. ‘You won’t need it for a while—with any luck you won’t need it again.’

  They crawled out back to the track and the Doc’s hand rested lightly on Bishie’s shoulder as they went together down the road.

  After dark that night, Bishie hobbled down to the beach, round past the headland, to meet the barge that was to take him to hospital. He remembered the last time he had waited on such a beach. A long time ago now it seemed…

  After the terror and the flight through the jungle, the terror of waiting—the fear that after all that monstrous effort they should be taken. And then the nightmare journey in the small boat—hugging the shadows of the shore by day—eyes burning and blistered from staring at the sky—watching, watching for the treacherous wings.

  And now his wounds were aching—he was tired—deadly tired. ‘But at least, this time,’ he thought, ‘we didn’t run.’

  On the fifth day our guns opened in strength and the hill flamed and roared and trembled under their barrage. They blasted it like a quarry face—you would have sworn that no thing living could survive in that desolation. We ourselves, when we came up from our safe earth, were blinded and deafened with the insanity of it.

  But there were some left. We used the bayonet—it was a savage, swift, unwholesome fray—we won the hill.

  We took no prisoners. Only one Nip cried surrender—he came out with both hands raised high, crying something in his native tongue.

  The Log killed him with a
savage thrust, and kept on stabbing long after the Nip was dead. We had to drag him away.

  Of course, the Log had a reason—that dazed scatter of shots from the battered hilltop when we started our attack had killed Cairo Fleming…

  The Log sat hunched against a tree on what had been a Nip hillside. He sat with his head cradled in his arms between his knees—his forehead pressed against the rifle in his hands…

  ‘I remember the day that Cairo Fleming died…sure, other men died that day and had died in the days before—but Cairo was my friend.’

  Cairo’s dead, Log—no ghost will rise to speak for him.

  ‘It’s hard to tell you…in my own heart I know my friend, but the things I can put into words maybe won’t sound important or impressive—there’s no drama, no hero stuff in them. Just that we marched and slept and fought together—were broke together and cashed-up together.

  ‘We got our share of strife and we raised our share of merry hell in Alex and Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel Aviv. Remember that leave in Cairo? That’s where he got his name—we acquired a Wog donkey and stormed the front steps of Shepherd’s Hotel, demanding accommodation for man and beast as the law provides!

  ‘Maybe we never saw the pyramids, but we saw plenty else—lights and shadows—alleys and arak. Anything can happen in Cairo—and when you’re young—and a soldier—and the world’s your oyster—it usually does.

  ‘Then came the desert—Cairo and I were there—then Greece…We were there when they tried to hold the Hun on the river at Larissa. But he broke us and the cry was: “Get out as best you can!” Cairo and I took to the hills together.

  ‘After a long time, a dangerous time—through dark nights, by small ships threading through the islands of the Dodecanese—we came out of Greece together.

  ‘Maybe you can imagine what those words mean—We came out of Greece together.

  ‘Then we came home—came Kokoda and the Trail—came the long rest—came this.’

  We know him, Log. We know him. They pinned no medals on him, they made no speeches—we need no medals or speeches—we know him and remember. He was just a good, ordinary bloke—that’s a point—that’s an important thing—he was an ordinary bloke like you or me—maybe a bit better than you or me.

  Because, you see, Cairo was an Australian—a blue-blood—an Australian of the oldest, proudest stock. His ancestors didn’t step ashore with Phillip; nor were they chained below decks in the prison hulks. They were here before Cook—before de Quiros—before the ancient eyes of Polynesian and Egyptian mariners may have seen these shores.

  ‘Cairo was my friend.’

  Come, Log. That stinging of your eyes comes from the long weariness of battle—it nestles beneath all our heavy lids. Come, Log. We will bury him on the hill he died for. Come, Log. Let us lay our black brother in the black earth. Mourn not the dead—but always remember: He was black—he fought and died—he was a good man—he was an Australian.

  So we possessed the bay.

  As we took our hill, the barrage had lifted onto the next. Another Company passed through us and they in turn took their hill and so on.

  We possessed the bay.

  6

  Connell was on the phone: ‘But my boys don’t want it, sir,’ he said. ‘We can push on tomorrow—they’re in the pink of condition.’

  ‘Listen, Connell,’ said the Brig. ‘We’re not in that much of a hurry. They’re going to rest whether they want it or not. You’ll be relieved tomorrow.’

  Connell slammed the handset down and strode outside his tent. He stood glaring around for a moment and then yelled: ‘Sergeant Hino! Sergeant Hino!’

  The little fat RP Sergeant came scrambling up through the trees and stood saluting agitatedly: ‘Yes sir! Yes sir!’

  ‘Get a party and clean the scrub away from around my tent,’ said Connell. ‘It looks like a brothel.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tubby Hino tells us later, ‘I thought of an answer to that one—it was on the tip of my tongue to say it too…’

  The Second Battalion came through and relieved us. We rested ten days at the bay.

  Sickness and battle had thinned us down. That hill had cost our own group Slapsy Paint, Bishie, Cairo—young Griffo with a smashed leg, Dick the Barber with a stomach wound. Old Whispering John had a long, shallow knife slash down his back from the attack on the hill—but it was only a scratch. He sniggered about it with great satisfaction: ‘The old soldier gets through, eh?’

  Once we stopped the malaria struck us. The Atebrin hadn’t stopped it much, though we took the little yellow tablets faithfully twice a day. Harry Drew went down, Regan followed him. We met the Log one afternoon coming down from the hill—he was shivering violently from cold and the sweat was beaded on his brow. Back he went.

  The surf was good and Pez and the Laird swam slowly about a mile out to catch a big shoot.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Janos said. ‘I wouldn’t go out there for a thousand pounds—it’s too dangerous.’

  Pez and the Laird swam slowly—climbing up the great, long swells and bursting through the smother of foam at the top. Every now and then when the wave carried too much white on top they duck-dived under it and were dragged down—pounded and smothered joyously under the broken waters.

  Out in the deep swell they lay rolling slowly with porpoise delight in the great depth of cool, clean water. There is an odd sense of comfort mixed with loneliness, swimming so far out. It is as though a man drifts in an alien—but not hostile—environment and really only a small grey ghost of fear and loneliness can rise in his mind.

  The Laird called softly: ‘Hey, Pez! Look over there—do you see what I see?’

  A shark was cruising slowly about fifty yards away—the triangular fin cutting smoothly towards them—tacking away—then cutting back.

  ‘Nothing we can do,’ whispered the Laird. ‘Keep still—and if it comes, splash like hell.’

  They watched and waited—the fin cutting away and tacking back—then it disappeared.

  They waited—it seemed a long time…

  ‘Come on, boy,’ said the Laird. ‘Let’s catch a shoot in.’

  They swam with painful slowness back into the line of breakers. They waited three or four waves until they caught one that broke at the right time.

  Like seals on that foaming crest—the wild exultation of speed and foam and spray—the swift rush of swimming to catch the weight of the wave—the gradual balancing of power as you reined on to it and the swelling, roaring rush; flung a long age down the cooling, soaring breast of the wave—closer and closer and closer to the shore where it destroys itself on the broken mouth of the rock—they slide off before the thunder.

  Connell went down to the RAP and found Maguire. ‘Come for a walk with me, Mag,’ he said.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the Doc. ‘Try the sulpha on that one,’ he told his orderly, ‘and make sure he gets back early in the morning to have it dressed again.’

  He came out of the tent. ‘Where do you plan to take this constitutional?’ he asked.

  ‘Let’s go along the beach,’ said Connell. ‘I want to get away from it.’

  ‘From what?’ enquired Maguire mildly.

  ‘From this—from everything!’ said Connell.

  They went down the track through the trees and onto the white sand of the beach.

  ‘This damned sitting still gets on my tit,’ said Connell. ‘Brig’s orders—silly old bastard.’

  ‘Relax, Cliff,’ said Maguire. ‘You can’t keep going all the time—why, anyway? What makes you want to run all the time?’

  ‘We’re here to do a job—let’s get on with the bloody thing!’

  ‘You’re not fighting the war by yourself. Something troubling you, or are you just leading up for me to prescribe a mild sedative?’

  ‘I don’t want your pills!’

  ‘What are you afraid of, Cliff?’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what’s worrying you—what�
��s the trouble?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  They walked on some distance over the sand in silence.

  ‘What do you want from life, Cliff?’ asked the Doc.

  ‘I don’t know, Mag,’ said Connell after a moment.

  The Doc nodded his head and murmured aloud, but to himself—‘Sad people.’

  When you are sitting still you have time to think—when you think your brain rusts and sheds flakes of despair. It is blind ahead—discontent and self-disgust—run, run—it’s no fiend that close behind you treads—it’s yourself.

  ‘Most people,’ said the Doc, ‘are running from something—from the past, the present or the future.’

  ‘I don’t need a psychiatrist,’ said Connell. ‘Save it for a thesis.’

  Remember how the old house had stood back deep in the grounds, and the long, gravelled drive that had been a coachway when the house was built? A wonderful drive where a boy could come in through the big iron gates coming home from school at the end of term—drop the suitcase on the grass and run—a long wonderful way with the gravel crunching and splattering under his flying feet—wonderful running with the wind in his face—and there would be Mother standing on the porch waiting, as she always was for him when he came home, laughing and crying and holding her arms out to him as he ran…

  There was that soft, secret thing between them—something that instinctively was hidden from Father. Remember those slow solemn walks around the grounds, with Father all sober black and gold watch chain—the Sunday morning walks after Church—with Father discoursing ponderously on Life and Responsibility and the Things a Man Did and Did Not Do. He would talk interminably overhead—pausing now and then to snip a dead flowerhead or pinch off a withering twig. And always during the walk Father would pick a single bloom, the most perfect he could find, and at the end of the walk he would take it in and present it to Mother with the same ritual phrase every Sunday morning, year after year: ‘For you, my dear. Clifford and I have been talking.’

  Father was inordinately proud of the two elms that grew at the entrance of the drive—they had been planted by his father before him and he often spoke to the boy about how he must care for them—as though in some way they were the living symbol of the House and the Family, and Life and Responsibility and the Things a Man Did and Did Not Do. The elms had begun to die in the year that he died…It was raining when he died—the Melbourne skies had wept for many days before he died. The boy had had to walk down the long stairs in the grey light of the afternoon and stand beside the open coffin and look at the terrible loneliness of the dead.