The Cadet Corporal

by Christopher Cummings

“Yes it does,” Graham agreed. He turned to Carnes. “Are there any reports on the radio?”

  Carnes just looked at him. Graham leaned closer. “Cadet Carnes, are there any reports on the radio?”

  Carnes shook his head. At first Graham thought he just meant no but then he realised Carnes did not have the radio. “Carnes! Where is the bloody radio?” he cried. Not only was the radio important for safety but Graham knew they cost a lot of money and he didn’t want to get into trouble for losing one.

  Carnes suddenly burst into tears. Only after a couple of minutes of sobbing did Carnes calm down enough so that Graham could get the gist of what he was trying to say. “I left it back at the road,” Carnes said.

  “Bloody hell!” Graham groaned in vexation. But what to do? Go back and get it, or go on without it? He knew he could call on his hand-held radio but also knew that because it was a ‘CB’ the enemy would almost certainly detect the transmission. After some anguished thinking he decided to go on. “We will get it on the way back,” he said. Carnes kept sobbing and that wore Graham’s patience thin. “Oh shut up for Christ’s sake! We don’t want the enemy to find us because you are making a noise.”

  Carnes lapsed into shuddering, wracking sniffles. Graham noted the looks of astonished disgust and contempt on the faces of the cadets near him as they stared at Carnes. He felt that way himself but tried to hide it. He gestured to Halyday to keep moving.

  Then Graham realised he had miscalculated again. ‘We are right on top of the river bank,’ he noted. He had meant to keep a hundred metres or so from it but now found they were following a fence only ten paces from the edge of the steep bank. Worse still, the ground on the right opened out to a bare, grassy field. The best option seemed to be to move among the thorn bushes on top of the bank.

  To that end he had the patrol roll under the fence then begin moving slowly from bush to bush. The whole area seemed to be devoid of undergrowth and the grass had been cropped to stubble. For 200 metres they crept slowly along.

  Then Graham heard what he had been dreading: movement coming the other way. He gestured them to get down but Halyday and Andrews had already done so, crawling in under thorn bushes. Graham slithered in under another thorn bush, although it seemed to be pitiful cover; too high and with bare ground under it. And goat dung! Then Carnes huddled in against him.

  Ignoring Carnes Graham began to consider the options: over the bank into the thick growth of vines and thorn bushes, out into the open field, or lie still and hope. Then he realised it was too late and he was committed to the ‘lie still and hope’ option. Into view about thirty metres away had come two cadets. They were walking along beside the fence. Three more appeared behind them. They were moving slowly and obviously searching. ‘They will see us for sure,’ Graham thought despairingly. He tensed ready to ‘open fire’.

  Suddenly a small battle erupted a few hundred metres to the right, on the other side of the open paddock. ‘Either the decoys or the Hutchie Men,’ Graham thought. The enemy patrol, now almost beside Halyday, went into a crouch and stared towards the sounds. Then their commander said, “Let’s

  get them!” To Graham’s relief the enemy patrol stood up and ran off across the open field. Only then did Graham realise they had been on the other side of the fence. He crawled out and gestured to Halyday. “Move!” he hissed.‘There won’t be another patrol in this area for a while,’ he thought. Halyday and Anderson got up and began moving at a quick walk.

  After checking the remainder of the patrol were following Graham hurried after the scouts. By then the ‘battle’ to the right had died down but there were still people yelling, apparently co-ordinating a pursuit.

  Out in the darkness one of the enemy yelled, “We’ve caught one!”

  ‘Drat!’ Graham thought. ‘I hope whoever it is doesn’t blab his big mouth off and let the enemy know we are here somewhere.’ He tried to visualise Pigsy or Waters standing up to questioning. ‘No, it will be Franks who is the weak link,’ he decided. Not knowing who had been captured did not help. Nor did the knowledge that he had lost one of his patrol to the enemy. That hurt his pride.

  Another much larger battle erupted on the other bank of the river, almost directly opposite them. Graham stopped to study the situation. He could see torches flashing and a powerful spotlight came on and swept the river bank and then the trees and sand in its bed. ‘That is the enemy HQ,’ he deduced when a vehicle’s headlights were added to the illumination. He saw tiny figures running and heard them yelling but could not tell which side they belonged to.

  ‘If they are ours they are in trouble,’ he considered. Then he looked around and breathed out with satisfaction. There was the rail bridge! He could see the massive concrete pylons in the sandy bed of the river and the criss-cross steel girders against the stars. ‘Not far now,’ he thought. Perhaps 300 metres he decided.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was 2110. ‘Only twenty minutes to H Hour. We had better get a wriggle on,’ he thought.

  He got the patrol moving, walking at a steady pace along the top of the steep bank. Down behind to his left fierce skirmishing broke out in the river bed. ‘That must be our platoon,’ he thought. It did not sound good. There was a lot of yelling and arguments and he glimpsed torches from time to time. ‘It sounds like our people aren’t even getting close to the rail bridge,’ he thought.

  More running battles across the river and along the top of the opposite bank confirmed this. The most hopeful thing was there did not seem to be any more patrols in front of him. His patrol moved steadily closer to the bridge. Graham kept counting down the distance: 250 metres, 200 metres, 150 metres.

  At that he stopped the scouts and went forward to them. “There are sure to be guards at the bridge so start creeping really carefully,” he whispered.

  They nodded and went down into a monkey run. Graham copied them, relieved to find there did not seem to be many burrs. The other cadets followed. The scouts moved one at a time, crawling from bush to bush and Graham was very pleased with how well they did it. ‘Halyday has turned into a really good scout,’ he told himself.

  They came to an area where the thorn bushes thinned out. A few cattle pads went down through the thicket towards the river bed. For a moment he considered going down one, in the hope that the cover might be better. He decided not to. ‘We might clash with our own platoon,’ he thought. He hurried the patrol across the open areas. After that the thorn bushes grew in a real thicket and were hard to get around or even under.

  The most annoying thing was that Carnes kept glued to him like a shadow, bumping him frequently. Graham hissed at him to spread out several times but Carnes ignored him. Then Graham paused to listen. Above the yelling and banging in the river bed sounded a vibrating, rumbling noise. It took Graham a minute to realise what it was: the sound of a train. It was a big freight train, coming from the direction of Charters Towers. He saw the locomotive’s headlight come onto the long embankment out to his right. That sent them all to cover as it bathed the whole area in light.

  As the engine went onto the actual bridge the noises were all magnified enormously, the throbbing roar of the huge diesels and the rattling, shrieking, clanging thunder of hundreds of steel wheels and couplings. The train’s headlight flickered impressively among the steel girders and threw weird moving shadows into the sand of the river bed. ‘Just what we need to cover our movement,’ Graham thought. He gestured to Halyday and Andrews to move, then quickly rose and hurried across to the next bush himself.

  Confident that the terrific roar of the kilometre long train crossing the kilometre long steel bridge would cover any noises they made he urged the scouts to hurry. They quickly scuttled to the next couple of bushes. Graham hurried on to join them, then glanced back to check the others were following.

  But there was no-one behind him!

  ‘Where the hell is Carnes?’ Graham wondered. He paused and kept looking back in hope. After a minute no-one had appeared and the scouts wer
e now nearly out of sight. They would have been except for Halyday looking back and stopping Andrews. Graham hurried forward to them. He was anxious now because the H Hour, the time set for all the raiding parties to attack at once, was now only about ten minutes away.

  “The patrol has broken in half,” he whispered. “Wait here while I go back and find out what has gone wrong.”

  Halyday nodded. Graham turned and walked quickly back the way he had come. Thirty metres back he found the problem: Carnes had not moved when he did and all the cadets behind were waiting for him to go. Anger boiled in Graham and he crouched next to Carnes. “Come on Cadet Carnes, get moving,” he hissed.

  Carnes made no move, remaining crouched on all fours, his head up and eyes staring. Being disobeyed set Graham’s temper flaring. “Carnes! I said get moving!” he hissed.

  Carnes made no move of any sort, did not even turn his eyes, never mind his head. A peculiar sensation, a mixture of fear and astonishment swept over Graham. “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  No response. Graham bent and looked closer. Carnes had his eyes open and seeing them scared Graham. In the light of the spotlight across the river he noted that they were wide and not moving. Carnes seemed to be staring at the rail bridge, which was now close enough to tower over them. Anger gave way to anxiety.

  “Carnes, are you alright?” Graham asked.

  No answer. Not even a flicker. Graham reached under the thorn bush and touched him. Carnes did not react. Graham shook the boy’s shoulder and again asked if he was alright. To his surprise Carnes’ muscles were all tense. The boy was rigid. Graham felt another prickle of anxiety. ‘Is he having some sort of a fit?’ he wondered, remembering Peter’s story about the bridge. To test this idea Graham moved his hand close to Carnes’ eyes.

  Not a blink. Graham was both astonished and afraid. ‘I wonder if I should get him medical aid,’ he thought. That at least started him moving. He signalled to Cadet Milson who scurried over. “Get the medic,” Graham instructed. Milson nodded and went back to call up Slim. While he waited fro him Graham fretted about the lost time and about what to do. He tried to remember what he had been taught on his First Aid course about epileptic fits. To be sure he checked that Carnes was breathing normally and put his fingers on his throat to check his pulse. Even at that Carnes made no move. The pulse was rapid but strong.

  Slim arrived and Graham explained the problem. Slim looked very worried and said, “I think we should just leave him to come out of it naturally Kirky, then get the officers.”

  Graham bit his lip in indecision. He wanted to get on with the exercise. At the same time he was feeling really stressed in case something serious was wrong. ‘Why me?’ he thought, then shook his head, ‘This is what would happen in a real battle, unexpected casualties. But what should I do?’ For a moment he fingered his hand held radio, thinking to call CUO Masters. ‘He should be just down in the river bed a few hundred metres away,’ he reasoned. But he did not want to call if it was not serious so he hooked the radio back on to his shirt. His frustration moved him to act. He shook Carnes firmly by the shoulder. “Carnes! Snap out of it!”

  To his enormous relief Carnes gasped, blinked and turned his wildly staring eyes on Graham who thought, ‘Bloody hell! He’s gone bonkers!’

  “Wh...what....what?” Carnes gasped. He broke into a bout of shivering and Graham saw sweat beading his face. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  Carnes nodded, then sobbed. “Ye..ye.. yes. I’m j..ju...ju...just sc..sc.scared.”

  Carnes had great difficulty speaking because his teeth were clacking and chattering together as he shivered. Graham had heard about people’s teeth chattering when they were frightened but actually seeing it made him come out on goose bumps. “What are you scared of?” he asked in astonishment.

  “G..g...gh...ghosts, and d..d....d...death!” Carnes croaked. Graham was astonished, and annoyed. “Bloody hell! It’s only a cadet exercise. It’s not as though anyone is shooting at us!” “And the b..br..bridge,” Carnes added.

  Graham had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes the bridge,” he agreed. “That is our objective. So, if you are alright we will get moving.”

  He made to go but Carnes shook his head and stared at the bridge. Graham was really agitated now. He bent down and hissed, “I said, let’s go.”

  “No,” Carnes replied.

  ‘He is scared stiff!’ Graham observed. He found it hard to believe. He was also aware that the minutes were ticking by. “Listen Cadet Carnes, I gave you an order. Get moving.”

  Carnes shook his head. “No! I won’t go.”

  ‘Oh no!’ Graham thought. ‘Not another disciplinary battle of wills!’ He bent close and pointed to his sleeve. “See these stripes? They say I can give you orders. Now get up and move!”

  Carnes refused. Being defied really sparked Graham’s anger. He shook his fist in Carnes’ face. “Oh, get bloody moving before I thump you!” he cried. Even as he said it he knew he was in the wrong. In desperation he groped in his mind for a strategy to deal with the situation. Carnes now crouched in a shivering ball and burst into tears.

  Then a great outburst of shouting in the middle of the river bed, but downstream of the bridge, indicated 4 Platoon must be attacking. At once the other platoons began their attacks, although most seemed to be still a long way from the bridge. ‘Oh bugger!’ Graham thought. ‘We are late.’ That decided him.

  “Ok Slim, you stay here with him while we raid the bridge,” he said. Slim looked distinctly nervous and licked his lips. Graham pointed to the embankment, now only about a hundred metres away. “We will be just there. There is a safety vehicle there too. If there is a problem you can just yell out and we will bring help.”

  Slim nodded at that and agreed. Graham took another good look at Carnes, saw that he was still crying and shivering, then waved the others to follow him. He didn’t feel good about it but reasoned he could tell the St Michael’s officers as soon as they reached the bridge. Hurrying to make up for lost time he led the tail end of the patrol forward to where Halyday and Andrews waited.

  By then the battles all seemed to have fizzled out. “Sounds like our people have been driven back,” Halyday suggested.

  It sounded that way to Graham too and fuelled his desire to succeed. “Keep going, but be careful,” he instructed.

  It was only then that Milson touched his sleeve. “I don’t know where Braggy is,” he said.

  Graham looked around and did a quick count. Halyday and Andrews, Milson and then Slim with Carnes, plus The Four. ‘Count yourself,’ he reminded himself. Then he swore quietly but vehemently. One missing: Bragg. ‘Oh bugger it!’ he thought. ‘My patrol has unravelled on me at the crucial moment!’

  CHAPTER 31

  UNDER THE BRIDGE

  Graham felt sick. Then his anxiety level rose almost to panic ‘Oh bloody hell! I started with eleven and there are only four left! And we’ve lost one, and had another captured, and we have lost the army radio. What will Capt Conkey think?’

  For a minute or so he was gripped by black despair. ‘I’m a failure as a patrol leader,’ he thought miserably.

  Then the battle flared up across at the other end of the bridge. Hearing it got his blood up. ‘Beaten without firing a shot!’ he thought. Then he shook his head. ‘No! Like bloody hell! We are almost there. We will do our bit then look for Bragg.’

  Gritting his teeth with determination he turned his back on Halyday. “Get the bomb out of my combat pack,” he ordered. Halyday did so, handing it to him. “Now keep going,” he said.

  Halyday grinned and set off. Graham gestured Andrews to go behind him. With such a small patrol he reasoned he did not need two scouts. ‘And I don’t want Andrews stuffing things up either,’ he thought. Having made the decision to go on he was determined to see it through.

  Twenty metres further on they came to the base of a huge steel power pylon. Graham carefully studied the bushes on the other side of the clearing till he
was sure there were no guards then sent Halyday across. This time they went down on their stomachs in the short grass, leopard crawling.

  There were a few prickles and burrs but Graham ignored them, hissing angrily at Andrews when he yelped with pain. They reached the thorn trees on the other side and kept crawling on hands and knees. Under the thorn trees there was no grass, only a deadfall of leaves and twigs- thorny twigs. By this time they were within 50 metres of the massive concrete bridge abutments and the whole gigantic structure loomed above them.

  They came to a dirt vehicle track which went off down to the river bed. Halyday crossed by crawling. Graham edged up, ready to follow. ‘We are really close now,’ he thought ‘Where are the guards?’

  As though in answer to his question voices spoke along the track to his right. Graham stretched out flat, his heart beating rapidly. Two enemy cadets came into view only ten metres away. They were walking slowly along the track, peering into the shadows under the thorn trees. Graham was only three metres back from the edge of the track and knew he had no real cover. He lay flat, hardly daring to breathe. Across the track he could see the dark, lumpy shape that was Halyday.

  ‘They will spot us for sure,’ Graham thought. In his mind he rehearsed racing for the end of the bridge while the others fought the defenders. The two enemy cadets came closer and closer, until they were almost directly between Graham and Halyday. One of them bent to peer more closely at Graham. Graham tensed, ready to shout and run.

  Suddenly Bragg’s voice sounded clearly from down in the river bed to the left.

  “Cpl Kirk! Cpl Kirk! Where are you?”

  ‘Bloody Bragg!’ Graham thought. ‘They were right! The only thing he has going for him is his sister!’

  The two St Michael’s cadets stared down the track towards the voice. Bragg called again, his voice quavering with fear.

  “Cpl Kirk, where are you?”

  “Up here!” called one of the St Michael’s cadets. He was a big lad. Graham thought he recognized him from the promotion course; did he do the sergeants course? The lad snickered and said to his mate, “That smart-arse, know-all Kirk must be somewhere around here.”