The Cadet Under-Officer

by Christopher Cummings

  “Get stuffed Anderson, you drongo,” retorted Walsh.

  Roger shook his head. “Keep silent! We don’t want these crooks to find us,” he snapped.

  Margaret looked wryly at Roger then quietly but forcefully told Elizabeth what she thought of her. “You stupid cow! Get your act together! We’re doing this for you. It’s your skin we’re taking the risk for. Now stop crying you bloody sook and have a big drink.”

  Graham walked quickly. The ground was deeply pitted where wild pigs had rooted it up and he was nearly as worried about them as he was about the NORMAC men. As he hurried along he took out the pistol and checked it. He and Walsh moved in silence, not exchanging a single word all the way.

  Where the newly cut track went off into the thicket Graham halted to listen and to get his breath. He had a drink and checked his watch. It was just before 10am. ‘How time flies!’ he thought. He had planned to be at their bivouac site by now. Sweat poured out of him and he knew he was beetroot red from the exertion and heat.

  After resting for a minute he set off along the track, being careful not to stand on dead sticks. But the going was quite easy and a minute later he saw the pack. It was just lying in the vines where it had been left. Shaking his head with annoyance he picked it up, grimaced to Walsh and gestured to him to start back. There were no sounds of anything unusual so he returned the pistol to his basic pouch and followed.

  Eight hot but uneventful minutes of brisk walking had them back to where Anderson and Morrow waited in hiding as sentries. As he passed them Graham told them to follow. To his satisfaction the platoon were waiting silently. He hurried along the line, motioning them to get up. When he reached Elizabeth he handed her the pack without a word and told Margaret to get ready to move. He was angry with Elizabeth and disappointed in her.

  Margaret felt a surge of malicious glee which she suppressed and then regretted. She knew she was performing well and that Graham was well satisfied with her efforts as section commander.

  Cadets stood up and pulled on packs and at Graham’s signal began walking. The track went down along beside a belt of paperbarks on the edge of the bank for a while, then climbed up over a low ridge through more vines. At one point they had to crawl through a leafy tunnel three metres long where the animal pad went under a fallen tree matted with vines. Almost everyone’s pack was caught and dust stuck to sweaty hands and faces.

  For a hundred metres the track went along a fairly open stretch, meandering around small trees and bushes before dropping down through more vines into a dark and gloomy area under large trees beside the river. Here there was very little undergrowth and a thick carpet of rotting leaves.

  “Yaah!”

  Graham watched in amazement as LCpl Halyday, walking just in front of him, caught his foot on a thin vine and somersaulted down the slope. Halyday did a complete flip to land on his feet and it occurred so fast he wasn’t sure what had happened.

  Relieved that Halyday wasn’t hurt Graham laughed. “I’ll bet you can’t do that again,” he commented. Halyday shook his head, hitched his pack up and kept walking.

  Twenty paces further on they came to where a flood overflow channel had scoured out a passage to link with the river. The bottom was dry mud. Cpl Sheehan had halted and Graham allowed the platoon to close up and rest for a minute. He looked back to watch - just in time to see ‘Cactus’ Carleton trip on the same vine as Halyday. Cactus wasn’t as lucky or as graceful, sprawling headlong into the leafmould. This performance drew some muffled cheers and no sympathy. Grumbling and annoyed Cactus got up and dusted off leaves and sand.

  Graham saw that Cadet Lillis was being sick again. Rebecca helped her and he took her pack. Cpl Kenny took her webbing. Graham carried the pack in his hand by its top strap. Cadet Woodhouse looked miserable and kept holding her stomach and complaining. ‘Is she just bunging on an act to get taken to the medics?’ he wondered. It made him worry that he would not be able to keep the secret much longer.

  After Roger had come into sight and halted, Graham allowed two minutes by his watch then signalled move. He indicated Cpl Sheehan should follow the dry flood channel and after fifty paces they came out into a small sunlit glade. On either side were steep sand banks covered in short lush grass, rubber vines and trees. The bed of the channel - about twenty five or thirty metres wide, was also a carpet of grass studded with a few thistles. It was easy walking and quite firm underfoot.

  Graham was very tense now. He expected to meet a NORMAC guard at any moment as they were approaching the line between the vehicle on the rise west of ‘Canning Park’ homestead and the vehicle on the south bank of the Bunyip and it was the logical place for a guard post. ‘If I was Bargheese I’d have someone watching this river bank,’ he thought. He wanted to get outside the NORMAC cordon before the hue and cry was raised. If need be he was prepared to use the pistol to achieve this.

  They passed through a thin screen of trees growing in the bed of the flood channel and came into a similar, sunlit, grassy glade. It was a pleasant change from Black Knoll. Two wallabies which were cropping the grass looked around at them, ears erect, then bounced off along a pad into the thick timber on the right. A third, sleeping in some shade, sprang up in alarm and followed.

  ‘No-one around here,’ Graham thought with relief. Relieved he signalled the scouts to keep going. They plodded on. By this time he was feeling the effort of carrying two packs but stubborn pride kept him to the task. There was another belt of trees a hundred metres ahead. The sand bank on the left was very steep and a good ten metres high, as much open grass as rubber vines, with the tops of trees visible beyond. To the right was a lower ridge matted with vines and tall white river gums, and beyond were another parallel dry flood channel and then the steep, eroded river bank. Having taken part in a patrol exercise in the same area the previous year he was familiar with the layout.

  The platoon trudged through the trees into another glade - 50 metres wide and 200 long. It looked almost park-like. The ridge on the left got lower, dipping to a low, grass covered saddle. A very clear animal pad came across this from the river and cut directly across their channel into the rubber vines and up onto the high bank beyond. Graham recognized it as the area where the unit had camped the previous year and where they were to bivouac for the next two nights.

  Cpl Sheehan looked back and Graham indicated they should climb up onto the low grassy ridge. Some of the cadets were now going very slowly and Graham saw that LCpl Szelag was carrying Cadet Lawson’s pack and that Hodgins had Cadet Woodhouse’s. Graham led them across the small ridge and down to where a dry sandy flood channel led under a belt of large, shady paperbark trees. The river was just beyond them. It took an effort to keep thinking and not to just flop down. They walked through a line of trees onto clean white sand in the shade. There was no sign of footprints and no-one was in sight.

  “Cpl Sheehan, put your section in the trees beside the river there. Sentry on the river bank looking across and upstream to the right,” Graham called. He pointed for HQ to stop beside him. When Cpl Kenny arrived Graham saw that his trousers had much more blood soaked into them. He pointed to the left. “Cpl Kenny, your Section in the trees beside the river, sentry downstream on the river bank looking across and downstream. Then get the medic to look at your leg.”

  Margaret’s Section he stopped in the trees just behind him and ordered a sentry sent back to watch the flood channel they had walked in from. Roger arrived carrying Elizabeth’s pack and Graham noted that Margaret had her webbing. He then noted with approval that Margaret gave her back the webbing, then led Cadet Wallis back up as sentry and ensured she was well positioned out of sight.

  The corporals came in to report when their sentries were in position. Rebecca went to look at some of the sick and Roger did a quick check around the sections. Graham stood waiting, bathed in sweat. When the three corporals and Roger stood in front of him he said: “This is supposed to be our new bivouac site but I think our training plan might be comin
g unstuck. I believe the enemy, I mean the NORMAC people, have possibly discovered what is going on. They know we come from Cairns and now they’ll put two and two together.”

  “So we must be ready to move and fast. I want waterbottles filled from the river. We can’t wait for a vehicle to bring us water in jerry cans. We’ll have to risk some stomach upset. It’s only mud and cow dung anyway.”

  They laughed and grimaced. Roger shrugged, “We’ve drunk worse,” he said.

  Graham nodded and grinned then went on, “I want all boots off and we will do a foot inspection. I’ll look at Eleven Section, Rebecca you do Twelve Section and you take Ten Roger.” They nodded. “We need feet ready to march long and hard. Also give me a list of the sick and the lame. As soon as that’s done we will eat. Pat, I’ll want Halyday and Arthur to do a bit of scouting after lunch.”

  The NCOs scattered to their sections. Graham dropped his pack on the sand and had a big drink, emptying his third waterbottle. He then walked over to where Rebecca was sponging Cadet Lillis’s brow to ask how she was. ‘There seem to be a lot of sick ones,’ he thought. ‘How can I lead an escape with all them slowing us down?’ Puzzling over his next move he made his way through the trees to the river.

  There was a drop of a couple of metres of short grass and mud to some rocks. The river flowed relatively clear and shallow over a sandy bottom. Graham crouched and began filling his waterbottles. As he did the sound of a vehicle door being slammed came clearly to him. He froze and looked but could see nothing. ‘It must be the NORMAC vehicle at the top end of Ruin Island,’ he decided. He was just upstream of the huge expanse of flat open sand they’d slogged along the night before. He could see it down to his left, the heated air shimmering above it, but further upstream there were clumps of rocks and small twisted bushes in the river bed and these hid the far bank. While he was crouched there a small black snake swam past and vanished among the grass and flood debris caught on the trees further downstream.

  Graham eyed the reptile. ‘Only a “Yellow Belly”,’ he noted. No-one would die from its bite. He had another big drink and finished refilling his waterbottles. Then he went back to Pl HQ. All the cadets were pulling off their boots.

  Roger looked at Hodgins’ feet. “Gawd Hodgins you’ve got ugly feet! Look at the size of those big toes! They’re all misshapen,” he said, wrinkling his nose with distaste.

  Hodgins grinned. “They’re nothin’ Sarge. You oughta see Cadet Tully’s. His feet are whoppers and he’s got big toes like a bloody giant sloth.”

  Tully heard this and grinned, holding up huge feet. “Gives me a better grip on the country!” he boasted.

  Graham grinned. Both of them were alright. “Roger, I’m just going along this animal track to have a look on top of the bank. I want to see if I can locate that NORMAC vehicle.”

  He set off up over the low grassy saddle, nodded to Debbie Wallis who was lying on guard in the shade behind a bush and went down into the grassy flood channel.

  The track led into a belt of rubber vines on the next low sand ridge and although he was only a hundred metres from the platoon Graham felt very lonely as he went out of sight of the sentry. Twenty metres further on the animal pad dipped down into the next grassy flood channel. This was much narrower and not as open. A second animal pad followed the bottom, meandering through clumps of rubber vines. Graham stopped at the bottom and looked carefully around.

  There were boot prints in the dust. At least two men. NORMAC? Not long before either, certainly that morning as the animals came down the pad during the night to drink. The boot prints didn’t seem to go beyond that point and had come down the bank. Graham looked at the ten metre high bluffs. They were like a wall of miniature cliffs coated in vine scrub and topped by tall white gums.

  Graham puffed his way up the animal pad, which was eroded into a deep gutter, his boots raising a cloud of fine dust. As he reached the top he slowed and cautiously raised his head behind a rubber vine.

  The transition was abrupt and remarkable. Behind him was a thick green tangle. Ahead was a bare, open flat. There were a few isolated clumps of rubber vines and a scattering of eucalypts but most of the area was short grass scattered with a few straggly looking iron barks. A heat haze shimmered over it. Flies buzzed.

  500 metres away stood a white NORMAC utility where the track to Brendan Creek branched off the Canning Road. Beside the vehicle in the shade of a tree a man was busy boiling the billy. Another man sat in the vehicle. Neither seemed very alert or particularly on watch.

  Satisfied, Graham turned and went back down the pad. As he reached the bottom he got a real fright. There was the sound of enraged snorting and snuffling in the rubber vines just off to his left and the rubber vines crackled and heaved. A big wild pig came charging down into the flood channel only twenty paces away. It was a black boar with wicked looking tusks, a real ‘Razorback’, and it sounded grumpy.

  Graham didn’t hesitate. He fled! He raced up the track and began to scale the first tree he came to, boots and webbing and all. He knew he had no chance in a fight with such a creature. It would flatten him in an instant and could easily rip him to shreds. The pistol would be useless against its thick skull and tough hide and he was too much of a realist to imagine he could hit it anyway, let alone in a vital spot.

  There was loud snorting and grunting and Graham looked back as he tried to climb and saw with relief that the pig was also running away, off along the flood channel downstream. He waited till it vanished - at a frightening speed- then slid down and stood with trembling legs, one hand still on the tree. It was a full minute before he moved.

  Graham walked as quickly as his dignity would allow back through the rubber vines to the grassy glade. Before venturing out into the open he looked carefully around in case the pig was there as he knew it could run 200 metres while he ran 50 and there weren’t many trees. To his embarrassment he saw that Roger and Margaret were on the next sand ridge with Cadet Wallis, watching him and grinning.

  “You annoying the local fauna again sir?” Roger asked with a grin as Graham climbed the grassy bank to join them.

  “Bloody local fauna was annoying me. Big bugger of a pig,” Graham replied.

  “We thought that was you we could hear,” Roger quipped. He and Margaret both laughed. As cadets and North Queenslanders they accepted such risks as everyday events. They walked back down to the platoon.

  As they reached the trees Hodgins got up, holding the radio handset.

  “Sir, it’s the CSM and she says it’s urgent. She wants to speak to you!”

  CHAPTER 25

  A TRICK AND A TRAP

  Graham took the handset, the hairs on his neck prickling with premonition.

  “Hello Four, this is Sunray Four Four, over,” he said. Then he stood and listened, the others aware by his stance and face that it was important. ‘God he’s handsome!’ Margaret thought.

  The CSM was very brief. She gave the code word ‘Black Pig’ (they were discovered and Bargheese was there). Then she went on: “They have captured Lt McEwen and are holding her a hostage at their base. They are going to force the OC to lead them to you, over.”

  Graham felt his stomach tighten with apprehension. ‘Miss McEwen a captive!’ “Roger, over,” he replied mechanically, his mind now racing with options and awful possibilities.

  Barbara’s voice came back, “That's all. I will try to keep you up-dated, out!”

  Graham replied automatically to end the call, then passed the handset back to Hodgins, who then got a call from Four Three (Stephen’s Platoon) asking what that call was all about. Graham shook his head: “Don’t reply.”

  For half a minute the young CUO stood almost numbed by the import of what he had heard. Roger came over and asked him what the message was. For a minute Graham said nothing. Then he explained, “Sorry Roger; thinking. Bargheese is at Company HQ. He knows Elizabeth is with us and he is coming to find us now, forcing the OC to lead him. Bargheese has Miss McEwen a prison
er and is using her as a hostage.”

  “But how?” Roger was aghast at the last item. How had she fallen into their clutches? “What will we do now?”

  “Let me think for a minute Roger. We have about half an hour yet. Get the platoon ready to march and have a list of sick ready in five minutes. Orders here in ten minutes,” Graham replied. He then stood staring off along the dry sandy flood channel.

  Having passed the instructions on to the corporals Roger came back and stood next to his friend. Graham began talking quietly. He had reasoned out the options but now knew that the crisis of his life was upon him. ‘I have to make a decision which could involve life and death and I have to do it within five minutes,’ he told himself. He knew he could pass it on by just calling the OC on the radio but he wasn’t prepared to shirk what he saw to be his own responsibility. Nor would he burden his friend who stood watching him and who was more than willing to be burdened.

  “It’s like this I think Roger, we can call the OC and he can say ‘surrender’ but it will be under duress. Or we can just give up and I will hand over the brown notebook. I think that is mainly what they are after. However I don’t think it’s that easy. These crooks know their game is discovered and they’ll be wanting to escape so they may well take hostages to help in that. They already have Miss McEwen. They might even take revenge - not on you or the other cadets but possibly on Elizabeth, or me. It’s the girls we have to keep safe.”

  Roger nodded. That made sense.

  Graham went on: “That’s the main reason I don’t think we should just give up. There are four other options. We could scatter into small groups and each group could try to reach the police, or the army camp. A second option is that I take Elizabeth, and possibly one or two others, the fit ones, and we make a run for it while the rest of you stay. I reject that as it leaves you and the rest of the platoon to face the music.”