Then Kate turned and shone her torch directly on him.
“E-e-e-e-e-e-e--i-i-i !”
Kate’s scream was so loud and high pitched that it seemed to echo in Peter’s skull. He jumped in fright again. All the others screamed or cried out as well. There followed a moment of stunned silence. The echo of the screams washed around the valley. Some large animal went crashing away through the undergrowth further along the Anabranches. A dull thunder of hooves told of cattle stampeding somewhere behind Peter. Cockatoos began to screech and cackle in trees beside the billabong.
“Holy shit!” Parnell ejaculated. He shone his torch on Peter. They all did. He was dazzled and blinded. With an effort he managed to speak, aware his heart was pounding furiously.
“I...I am... the ghost of...(of who?)” he stammered. He faltered and raised his notes and the cyalume stick.
Kate shrieked, “Peter! You bastard! You frightened ten years growth out of me.” She was obviously very angry, reacting to the fright.
“I’m sorry,” Peter replied. “It’s in the script.” He waved the notes.
“It’s bloody silly! And I hate it,” Kate screamed. “I don’t like being scared.”
CUO Bates stepped forward. “Calm down Kate. We all got a fright. It is only an exercise.”
Parnell chuckled. “You are lucky she doesn’t scream like that every time you meet her in the dark Sgt Bronsky,” he said. Peter’s mind was stunned. ‘What does he mean by that? Does he know, or is it just a joke?’
Allison interrupted, her voice irritable. “Let’s get on with it. I’m cold and I’m tired.”
“Yes,” CUO Bates agreed, silencing Kate’s grumbles. “What is your message Peter?”
Torches were redirected. Peter read his note sending them to the Mule Driver’s camp. The patrol went into a huddle to set their compasses.
“Donkeys eh!” Parnell said. “You’ll like that Kate.”
“Shut your mouth Parnell, or I’ll scratch your eyes out! Keep your filthy comments to yourself,” Kate spat.
Peter again felt fear grip him; as well as curiosity. Was Parnell making a crude pass at Kate? Did he suspect she might be willing? A lance of savage jealousy speared through Peter, driving out the fear. But he said nothing.
CUO Bates looked up from adjusting her compass. “Stop your innuendos Lance Cpl Parnell.”
“Innuendo?” Parnell quipped. “Is he an Italian?”
“That will do!” Peter snapped. He was quivering with emotion. He wanted to reach out to Kate; to hold her; to comfort her. But he did not dare hint at caring, much less even touch her little finger. In spite of the cool night air he found he was sweating profusely.
CUO Bates nodded. “Thank you Sgt Bronsky. Now, torches off. We will wait a few minutes to get our night vision.”
While they waited they told Peter about some of the incidents earlier on the exercise. It was clearly an adventure to them.
“Alright. Let’s go,” CUO Bates said. “See you later Peter.”
Peter mumbled goodbye, then stood in silent anguish and watched them shuffle off into the gloom towards the river. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes before the next group were due. He pulled off the costume, placed it on his pack and walked quickly down to Graham’s fire.
Graham heard him coming and greeted him.
“Hi Pete. That must have worked well, judging by the screams.”
“They frightened the living daylights out of me,” Peter replied. “I reckon they must have woken every living thing for miles around.”
“All the way to the highway bridge I’d say,” Graham said. He chuckled. “It caused a rare old stampede up the way.”
They sat beside the fire and discussed the incident. Peter’s nerves calmed down slowly and he began to appreciate the funny side of it. He became conscious of a chill on his back as the sweat cooled.
“Do you know who the next group is?” he asked, turning his back to the fire.
“Yes. I asked CUO Bates. She gave me the ‘Order of March’. It is Ten Section, Eleven Section, Twelve Section then the remainder of HQ led by Sgt Griffin.”
Peter smiled. “Who will be following his nose!”
They both laughed. Neither liked Griffin; and Peter thought he was an unco-ordinated dill who gave all the sergeants a bad name.
“Here come the next group,” Graham said.
Peter rose. “See you in a while.” Quickly he made his way back to the ruin. Once there he dug out his field jacket and shrugged it on, then pulled on the costume. He stood behind the tree and wondered how Cpl Scott’s section would react.
He need not have worried. At the edge of the ruins they spread into line and all turned their torches on. The ‘ghost’ was seen before they discovered the ‘body’.
“You are supposed to read the note first,” Peter said, pointing at the dummy.
“Yeah, OK,” Cpl Scott replied, walking over to it.
Cadet Bragg shone his torch on Peter. “Are you supposed to be a ghost?”
There was a chorus of jeers from the rest of the section. “No Braggy, he’s supposed to be a fairy!” one said.
The patrol seemed to take it all in their stride. Peter read them his information and Cpl Scott copied it down. They vanished into the night, Bragg asking what a mule was.
Peter returned to Graham’s fire. Graham was heating water for coffee. “This is for you if you want it,” he offered. Peter gratefully accepted the warm drink. The air was now quite cold. Graham was disgustingly cheerful. He cracked three donkey jokes in a row. Peter wasn’t amused.
“Cheer up mate,” Graham said. He checked his watch for the tenth time. “This next lot are taking a long time. It’s been over half an hour now.”
“Who are they? Eleven Section didn’t you say?” Peter asked.
Graham groaned. “Oh no! Bloody Dimbo Doyle. I suppose the silly bugger has got lost. Bloody hell! How could you get lost following those instructions!”
They discussed Dimbo’s more famous navigational feats for a while. Then, to Peter’s consternation Graham asked, “Pete, do you like Kate?”
‘Here it comes!’ Peter thought. ‘He’s heard something and he wants to check.’ “Yes. Yes I do,” he admitted, bracing himself for worse to come.
“She is pretty alright,” Graham said thoughtfully.
‘Get it over with!’ Peter’s mind cried. ‘Shoot me now! Don’t drag it out!’ He managed to mumble, “I think she is beautiful. I’ve been thinking of asking her for a date after camp. But I’m not sure if she is the right girl for me.”
Graham nodded and stared into the fire. “I know how you feel. I’ve been thinking the same thing about Allison.” He then discussed whether he and Allison were compatible; and what his chances were.
“It’s none of my business really,” Peter relied after listening for ten minutes, “But I don’t think she is the girl for you. I reckon Margaret is the one. She is just right for you. And she loves you.”
Graham squirmed and made a face. “I know. She is a grand kid. I’d hate to hurt her.” He changed the subject as they heard distant grunting away to the west. Peter shuddered and gave an internal sigh of relief. He wiped sweaty palms. Then felt awful. He hadn’t been discovered- and wished he had been- just to relieve the stress. He felt a real fraud.
Graham looked up. “Here come some torches now,” he observed. “Nearly an hour late.”
Peter made his way back to the ruin and prepared. But it wasn’t Dimbo Doyle’s section that arrived half an hour later. It was Cpl Laidley’s 12 Section. Peter did his act, this time successfully. He got some gratifying howls of fright. After he had passed on all the information he asked, “Wasn’t Cpl Doyle’s section supposed to be ahead of you Cpl Laidley?”
“Yes Sarge. He was back at the bridge, but the CSM said he hadn’t seen him.”
Peter groaned. The thought of searching the Anabranches at night was not appealing.
LCpl Kenny gesticulated gloomily into the darkn
ess. “He will be lost in this tangle,” he offered.
Cpl Laidley shook his head. “Bloody hell! We won’t see him till daylight then,” he replied. “Do you remember when he got lost last year on that exercise down towards Bowen when those guys kidnapped some of the girls?”
“Don’t remind me,” Peter said with a shudder.
Laidley led his section off into the night. Peter made his way back to Graham’s fire.
“Bloody Dimbo Doyle!” Peter cried, waving his arms at the black tangle of rubber vines beyond the Bunyips Billabong.
“Be no fun looking for him,” Graham agreed. “But I don’t think the OC will stop the exercise just to do that. They will be safe enough till morning.”
No sooner had he said this than the bull let out a mighty bellow somewhere near the Wild Boar Wallow. They both laughed. “That will hurry the buggers along,” Graham added. The sat and talked. Time crawled. A night bird flapped overhead. There was distant crackling in the undergrowth upstream. The roar of a train crossing the river came clearly to them on the still night air.
“Remember last year’s exercise when we raided the rail bridge?” Graham asked. Peter knew the story well, but he also knew it was an important one to Graham so he was content to talk it through again. Graham told how, the morning before the exercise his section had been dismantled and he had been give a new section made up of all the ‘bad eggs’ in the company.
“I reckoned that if the OC had made up a special section made up from the worst cadets, then that must make me the worst corporal. I was pretty depressed. Then, when I saw we were the only patrol on this side of the river I thought, ‘We must be the decoys; expendable; designed to draw the defenders away from the main strike’.”
Graham looked thoughtful then went on, “So I used the same tactic; sent the four worst trouble makers to create a diversion. They got captured. So did that drongo Bragg. But we made it. When I got home after midnight with only half my patrol I felt a real failure. I was sure I would be demoted on the spot.”
Graham again paused for a moment, remembering, then said. “The OC just listened, then made me fill out my Patrol Report and sent me to bed. I don’t think I slept at all. It was a miserable night. Next morning the OC called me over and asked me if I wanted to stay in the cadets. I thought, ‘He’s going to chuck me out!’ I’d also had a bit of a cuddle with a girl cadet named Kirsty you see.” He stopped and met Peter’s horrified gaze.
Graham nodded. “I thought he had found out. I replied ‘Yes’; and then he asked me if I wanted to be CSM next year. I tell you! It floored me. For a long time I wondered if he had taken all the trouble-makers and given them to me as a test; or to give the other sections a better chance.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Peter suggested.
“I did. When he was tearing strips off me for those unauthorized commando exercises we did earlier in the year. He told me that he had deliberately given me the trouble-makers because he thought I could handle them.”
Graham met Peter’s eyes. There was quiet pride in his voice. What he said next shocked Peter.
“Capt Conkey also said that he did it to save me from myself. He made sure I had a section with no girls in it so I would not be tempted. He gave me some hard advice on what effect it could have on my future if I played around. I am sure he knew about Kirsty, but I’ve never been game to ask him that. He said he thought I had a lot of potential and he didn’t want to see me wreck my future because I had gotten into trouble over girls. I owe that man a lot.”
Peter listened with intense interest. His mind turned over what Graham had said. ‘Is he trying to warn me?’ he thought. He couldn’t decide; and dared not ask.
More lights appeared. “Here comes the next lot.”
“I hope it is Doyle,” Peter said as he retreated to the ruin.
It wasn’t. It was Sgt Griffin with the remainder of HQ. Peter got a scream out of Kellie Jones nearly as good as Kate’s. She and Leah clutched each other in fright. Denton burst into tears, then got angry and hit at him. Once they had been calmed down and sent on their way Peter checked his watch. 0220hrs! Peter was surprised. He pulled his jacket up around his ears against the chill and set off down to discuss with Graham what they should do about Doyle.
He never got there. As he got closer he saw torches coming in from his right. ‘The right!’ he wondered. That was the opposite direction to everyone else. ‘Must be Dimbo,’ he concluded. He was correct; it was Doyle’s section. Peter watched them arrive at Graham’s fire, then returned to the ruin and got ready.
CHAPTER 24
A TEST OF LEADERSHIP
“Where the hell have you been Corporal Doyle?” Graham snapped as the section straggled into the firelight.
Doyle opened his mouth but his 2ic, LCpl Melchert spoke first. “Where haven’t we been!” he snarled.
“Where haven’t we been Sir,” Graham growled back. Melchert opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked sullen.
“Speak when you are spoken to,” Graham continued. “I asked Cpl Doyle.”
Dimbo Doyle flapped his hands and gestured at the surrounding darkness. “Not sure Sir.”
“You were supposed to come in that way, from the south,” Graham pointed, “Yet you arrive from the north. You must have skirted right around the Bunyip Billabong.”
An angry cadet stepped forward. “We floundered through the bloody thing,” he cried. Graham fixed a hard eye on him, trying to remember the boy’s name, till the cadet added “Sir.”
Only then did Graham notice they were all soaked from the waist down and plastered with mud.
“Alright, warm up around the fire. Cpl Doyle, get your notebook out.”
Doyle thrust his hand down to his map pocket and the changing expression on his face told Graham the story. He had to suppress a smile. Doyle had forgotten to take his notebook out of his pocket when he had waded the swamp; and did not keep it in a plastic bag.
“Here, use mine. Tear the pages out,” Graham said, passing it across to the crestfallen corporal. He then dictated the information. Doyle wrote with laborious slowness which irritated Graham:-big block letters, which was good, but with a hesitation about which way an ‘S’ went, or as though the exact difference between an ‘E’ and an ‘F’ escaped him.
Graham let them try to work out the word but quickly lost patience. They were already behind time. The section was not a team, just a collection of disgruntled individuals. At least half were taking no interest. He gave them the word ‘Treasure’ then sent them off towards Peter, carefully checking they were headed in the right direction. As they trampled off up the slope they began bickering and several torches were turned on.
Graham bellowed after them. The arguing died down to surly murmurs and the torches went out. He shook his head and sighed, then checked the time. 0250hrs. He began to fret. ‘We will have to move if we are to be on time for our second act,’ he thought. For five minutes he stood and nudged the ends of sticks into the fire, letting it consume itself.
Loud cries of fright made him smile. At least they had found Peter! He prepared to move. Another fifteen minutes went by before he saw Peter’s torch approaching. Peter was carrying the kitbag and dummy.
“Bloody Doyle! What a drongo,” Peter grumbled. “He couldn’t even go straight for two hundred paces. He would have missed the ruin by fifty metres if I hadn’t walked out and spooked them!”
“Come on. It’s quarter past three. We will have to run,” Graham said. He tossed several of the larger burning sticks into the billabong where they sizzled and steamed. Peter trampled on the embers. Within a minute they were moving. They used their torches for safety and speed. Graham noted that thin wafts of mist clouded the beams.
Away from the fire the chill hit them. Down in Wild Boar Wallow it felt frigid. Graham scooped up the dummy and strode on. His torch showed up the cattle pad clearly and he looked neither left nor right. At the Cowboy’s Camp the fire was out. It took only two minutes to dism
antle the camp. They proceeded at a forced march pace; Graham because he wanted to be on time and Peter because he wanted to be out of the Anabranches.
By 0330 they were at the highway bridge. Lt Hamilton was asleep beside the glowing coals of his fire. Graham noted that the OC’s Rover was parked beside the QM’s but Capt Conkey was not there.
“We are late,” Graham said. “Dump all this beside the Rover. And our packs. We have to hoof it, and fast.”
Peter did as he was told. In less than another minute the pair were trudging out onto the open sand of the river bed. The sand glowed silver-grey in the faint light of the rising moon. Wraith-like tendrils of mist met them. They no longer used their torches as it was quite light enough to see.
The sand was mostly soft and piled in uneven hummocks which made walking an effort. Graham began to perspire. Neither wasted breath on talking. A bird swished low overhead. A curlew uttered its dirge. A truck roared across the bridge behind them. Graham knew the way. He had been shown by the OC. Their course led them diagonally across the open sand to the tree-covered dunes near the water half a kilometre upstream.
They skirted the dunes on the side closest to the river and followed a vehicle’s wheel ruts in under the trees. They passed the Fisherman’s Camp, now just a mound of sand over the remains of a fire. Another two hundred paces led them between two dunes and into a sandy hollow surrounded by overhanging trees.
A small fire flickered. Beside it sat two figures, well muffled against the cold: the OC and Cpl Bert Lacey. Nearby lay the sleeping shape of Cpl Bax. Capt Conkey looked up as the pair trudged into the hollow.
“Good. Well done. I thought you weren’t going to make it in time.”
Graham checked his watch in the firelight. 0350. “Corporal Doyle’s section got lost sir. They came through last and late.”
Capt Conkey nodded and made a face. “You don’t have to include that ‘I told you so’ tone in your voice CSM.”
The Cadet Sergeant Major Page 27