The Cadet Sergeant Major

by Christopher Cummings

  Then a second, fiercer flame engulfed Peter: guilt. He was on an errand for his friend the CSM to see if Goltz was up to mischief- and here he was doing the same thing!

  He became aware that Kate was touching his arm. She stepped close to press against him again. Peter’s nervous eyes probed the darkness but the Control Group had gone,

  “Come on,” Kate whispered. “Let’s go somewhere alone.”

  “Where?” Peter replied, feeling half-stunned and knowing it sounded stupid.

  “Anywhere,” Kate gestured at the scrub-covered dunes. “Somewhere where no-one will disturb us. Not like last time.” She giggled and pulled at his arm.

  “I’m supposed to report back to the CSM,” Peter replied in an attempt to save himself with dignity. ‘I’ve got to get out of this without getting burnt; and without hurting her feelings,’ he thought.

  “Stuff the CSM!” Kate replied, rubbing against him.

  “No,” Peter replied. He swallowed then explained. “He sent me to see if Erika Goltz was in the Control Group camp. He is expecting me back.”

  “Stuff Erika Goltz!” Kate cried. “She’s probably down beside the river having fun. Never mind her. Let’s go somewhere.”

  Peter was shocked. He was also fearfully excited. ‘She wants me to do things alright!’ he thought. He felt suddenly sad as well as frightened. Did she love him or was it just lust? Was she just using him? Would any man do?

  Knowing his actions could start a crisis Peter summoned up his courage and stepped back, holding her away. “Sorry. No. I’ve got to go. We shouldn’t be doing this. After camp, yes.”

  “Stuff you then!” Kate cried. “What good are you?”

  Peter stood trembling with emotion. “It’s wrong. We promised to behave.”

  “Stick your promise!” Kate snapped, the hurt and anger clear in her voice.

  “Kate! Be fair!”

  “Get lost!” Kate shouted. She turned and strode off. Peter stood for a moment wondering what he could do to retrieve the situation. He felt hurt and angry as well- but mostly with himself.

  Peter followed Kate out onto the open river bed, then halted, watching her walk away. He was tempted to try to catch her up; to reason with her; to try to persuade her to change her mind. But he hesitated, sensing it was the wrong time; and half suspecting it would be a humiliating waste of time.

  So he held back, deliberately walking slowly until she vanished from sight. Instead he made his way to 1 Platoon’s fire.

  Stephen met him, the flames reflecting on his glasses so that Peter could not see his eyes.

  “Hi Pete. Have you heard about the body?”

  “Body?”

  “Yeah. Apparently Dimbo Doyle’s section found a body; an arm sticking out of the mud.”

  Peter was astounded. A body! “When? Where?”

  “Last night, during that exercise,” Stephen replied. “Somewhere near where Graham was apparently. Some of Four Platoon were just here talking about it.”

  For an instant an awful suspicion had formed in Peter’s mind but that eased it. ‘No. They were on the other side of the river,’ he thought. He asked Stephen. “What did they say? Is it a murder?”

  Stephen shrugged. “Don’t know. They said the OC took Doyle off to question him. You OK Pete?”

  “Yes...yes...sorry. It’s just a bit of a shock, to think that we might have been that close to a real body last night; and me acting as the ghost of someone who was murdered!” Peter replied. He shuddered. “I was scared stiff as it was and had this horrible creepy feeling.”

  “Probably the real ghost spooking you,” Stephen suggested.

  The concept appalled Peter and he broke out in goose bumps. An awful dread seemed to seize him. “Steve! Stop it! Who was it? Do they know?”

  “No. Just an arm sticking out of the mud,” Stephen imitated the clutching hand. “Don’t know if it was a man or a woman.”

  Peter felt little darts of icy terror run up his spine and into the base of his skull. He shivered. To his dismay he found he was ghoulishly fascinated, as well as worried.

  Stephen continued, “If the arm is sticking out then the person must have been murdered recently, otherwise it would have rotted, or been eaten by something.”

  Peter shuddered. “Do they say it was murder?”

  Stephen laughed. “What else could it be! If it was a normal death they would be buried in a cemetery.”

  “I suppose so. Brrrrr. It’s horrible to think about. We were there nearly all night,” Peter replied. He was intrigued now and wanted to know more. After a few minutes he said goodnight to Stephen and walked back to Coy HQ.

  Only Graham and the officers sat beside the fire. The girls were in the shadows under the nearby trees unrolling their sleeping bags. The boys were not there. Peter sat beside Graham, who was busy making a cup of coffee, and asked, “What’s this about a body?”

  Capt Conkey looked up sharply. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Up at One Platoon sir. Sgt Bell told me.”

  “Blast! I was hoping to keep the lid on it!” Capt Conkey said.

  “Too late,” Lt Maclaren commented. “The old jungle telegraph works too fast.”

  Capt Conkey grumbled. “Bloody rumour mongers!”

  “Is it true then sir?” Peter asked. “About Doyle finding an arm sticking out of the mud?”

  “It seems likely. A whole section say they saw it,” Capt Conkey replied.

  “Do we know if the person was murdered; or who they might be?” Peter asked.

  Capt Conkey shook his head. “No. No idea. We will investigate in the morning. It’s a real nuisance,” he said. “Tomorrow is a busy day with the Patrol Circuit.”

  “Do we know where this body is sir?” Peter asked. He felt compelled to ask.

  “Somewhere near where you and Graham were apparently, either in the Bunyip Billabong or one of the parallel flood channels,” Capt Conkey answered.

  Graham then reminded Peter how Doyle’s section had come in last, instead of third; and from the wrong direction. Peter corroborated this. “I saw their torches,” he said.

  They discussed the mystery further. As they did the HQ boys all came in, very full of the story which they proceeded to relate to the girls in ghoulish terms until Capt Conkey told them to stop it. They began noisy preparations for bedding down. Peter felt weariness surface in a wave which made him yawn.

  “Bed for me too,” he said. He stood up then let out a moan as stiff muscles protested. Graham picked up his torch and stood up as well.

  “Pete, did you see Goltz?” he asked quietly.

  The question jolted through Peter like a sharp shock. He mentally winced. “No. No I didn’t. She wasn’t at either One or Two Platoon, nor with the Control Group.”

  “Thanks,” Graham replied. “I will put the platoons to bed.” He strode off into the night.

  Peter moved to where his gear lay and unrolled his bedding. All the girls were lying side by side in a row on the sand only a few metres away. Peter checked that everyone was present, and that the boys were not beside the girls then sat down to remove his boots. He felt an absolute hypocrite.

  In the shadows he could see Kate’s head but she had her back to him and appeared to be asleep. Peter sighed and shook his head regretfully, then crawled into his sleeping bag. A good wriggle shaped the sand to the contours of his body. He lay back. Again he thought of Kate- and of Goltz. A wave of guilt made him physically squirm.

  ‘Twice!’ he moaned silently. Twice he had been so foolish and so weak-willed as to get himself into compromising situations with Kate. Twice he had betrayed his best friend; and broken the OC’s trust. He stared up at the firelight flickering on the branches overhead, despising himself.

  Peter was still miserably awake when Graham returned half an hour later to report to the OC that all the troops were in bed. Peter glanced at him and saw he still wore full uniform including hat. ‘Good old Graham. Always on duty, like the book says a good CSM
should be.’ He closed his eyes and lay listening to the worried murmur as Graham and the officers talked. Peter marvelled how Graham kept going. ‘He seems tireless,’ he thought. He remembered other camps and expeditions. ‘Graham is good that way. He can go for days and days without sleep and still function!’

  Peter drifted into exhausted slumber, his mind clutching at a shadowy thought.

  The thought surfaced like an electric shock at about 0200. He sat up, sweating and shaking from the nightmare. A glance showed all was quiet- rows of sleeping people and the dull glow of the fire with Lt Maclaren sitting beside it. Peter had a drink from his waterbottle and lay back to grapple with the thought.

  The three men he and Kate had seen, did they have anything to do with the body? ‘They looked the type,’ he considered. Then he shook his head. ‘No. They were on this side of the river. The body is on the other,’ he told himself. Still, it was an uneasy memory and he lay and wrestled with it, along with guilty but arousing thoughts of Kate.

  Sleep would not return. Ghastly images of death rose to chill Peter and make him stare uneasily into the darkness. The moon rose, casting a dapple of light and shadows which seemed to make it worse. At every curlew’s cry he shivered. He felt exhausted and miserable but sleep would not come. Hours dragged by with no respite other than a fitful slumber from which he woke tired and drained when Graham roused him at a quarter to six.

  Check Parade was carried out on the sandy flood channel near HQ. Peter did all the checks feeling like a zombie: roll call, radios, First Aid Kits, stretchers. “All present and correct Sir,” he reported. When he met Kate’s eyes she looked away. His fragile spirits plummeted. Later, while they were having breakfast, she avoided even facing his way.

  This rejection made Peter feel even worse but there was no time to wallow in self-pity as there was too much to do. By 0730 all the people involved in running the patrol circuit were gathering at the HQ fire.

  “Hurry up Sgt Griffin,” Graham called impatiently. “And Headquarters!”

  Peter burned at the rebuke and turned to follow Graham’s gaze. Marcia Denton was still fiddling with her pack and Parnell was filling a waterbottle.

  “Hurry up you two!” he snapped.

  When all were there Capt Conkey described the activity. Having all done it one or more times they understood how it worked. The course was a circular track with incidents placed along it amongst the dunes and rubber vines.

  Capt Conkey said, “We will walk quickly round once so you all know the route, and where the control points, waiting areas and water points are. After that the CUOs and Sergeants can go off to inspect their platoons and to observe while the corporals give their Verbal Orders. While they do that the people on the stands will be positioned.”

  Capt Conkey looked at Peter. “Sergeant Bronsky, I will allocate some incidents to HQ. You decide who the people are to go at each. All ready? Let’s go.”

  The course was set out in a rough oval shape and was about 4km in length. A waiting area was designated beside the first large dune. 1 Platoon would start there with Stephen as the controller. All patrols would go counter clockwise, with a 20 minute time separation.

  Over in the main flood channel near where Pancho was captured the OC said he wanted two from HQ to pretend to be two lost enemy puzzling over their navigation. The first thought that sprang to Peter’s mind was that he could organize things so that he was alone with Kate for most of the day. A fleeting hope of being able to convince her shimmered tantalizingly- before he resolutely banished it. ‘I will make sure she is nowhere near me!’ he decided.

  He pencilled a note and looked around, to be sure he would recognize the place again, then followed the others. Further down the flood channel, near where it curved to rejoin the river, the OC indicated an Immediate Ambush site.

  “Three people. CUO Sherry and two from HQ,” he said. Peter at once nominated Allison and Marcia Denton.

  The course then followed the track along the river bank through scrub and rubber vines. CUO Grenfell was named for a ‘Contact Front’ incident. “I want the CUOs to act as enemy,” Capt Conkey explained. “It is an ideal opportunity to observe how both the corporals and cadets perform in a crisis.”

  Another 50 metres on was a second Control Point. This was also the start point for 2 Platoon so Sgt Copeland was stationed there.

  “Plenty of trees, Gwen, if a wild pig attacks,” Graham pointed out with a laugh as Gwen looked dubiously around the gloomy glade.

  “You will have a radio and there will be other people within call,” Capt Conkey reassured her.

  As he said that Peter had a sharp flashback to the three men and the thought crossed his mind that Gwen might be in danger if they came along. He opened his mouth to say so but then realized he would have to then explain how he knew about such people. So he closed his mouth and experienced another wave of shame.

  The course then cut through rubber vines away from the river, across two low ridges to the overgrown flood channel below the high bank. In an open hollow Capt Conkey indicated where he wanted two people in an ‘Enemy camp’ with hutchies and a smoky fire.

  “Two medics,” he insisted. “With their First Aid Kit and stretcher.”

  Peter ticked off his list: Kellie Jones and Leah Allen. They were happy with the task.

  The course now went back upstream along the flood channel at the base of the bluffs. The area was a jungle of rubber vine with animal pads through it. One of these had been cut wider to make an obvious track.

  “Three here in an ambush- with a booby trap across the track, a trip wire with a ‘Party Popper’,” Capt Conkey pointed.

  “Staff Sergeant Costigan, Corporal Lacey, Corporal Parnell,” Peter said. They uttered enthusiastic sounds and nodded. Peter was now worrying. He had given all of HQ a job except himself, Kate, Henning, Martin and Ramsey. That decided him. Kate could go with Ramsey as the ‘lost navigators’.

  He took the next job himself with LCpl Martin- the ‘Body and the Sniper’- in a nice little dell with a shady tree with soft, green grass under it. The body was to be there, in the open so the patrol could see it as they approached. Several thickets of weeds and rubber vines provided ample cover for the sniper.

  “We can take turn and turn about,” he said to Martin, who grinned happily at the prospect.

  Fifty metres further on Henning was stationed as the ‘Unexpected Prisoner’. He was to wait till the scouts were close, then step out with his hands up. A hundred metres further along CUO Bates was positioned for another frontal contact. After two hundred more they reached the well-worn cattle pad which went led from the bivouac area up to the safety vehicles.

  “Three Platoon Start Point,” Capt Conkey said. “Sergeant Rankin, you will be here with a water point. Keep moving full jerry cans down from the vehicles and empty ones up.”

  On along the vine-choked depression for another 150 metres- Cpl Brown for a contact front. Then a trip wire across the track. They came to the junction with Quilp Creek. The creek cut across the flood channel in a deep erosion gully where it had breached the high dunes. The sandy bed led under several very large overhanging trees.

  CUO White with Clyde, Fisk and Bax were to go there in another camp. This was easy as it was in fact 4 Platoon’s bivouac area. In the dell beyond it, where Peter had embraced Kate, the OC indicated 4 Platoon’s Waiting Area.

  “Sergeant Griffin will be here,” he explained. “Now, it will work like this. The platoons will all move to their waiting areas at the same time, at zero nine hundred. The sergeants will move them there by a route which avoids the course. Sergeants you will all have a radio. When you are in position let us know. Lt Maclaren will be running the activity and he will tell you when to send off the first patrol. They go counter-clockwise at twenty minute intervals. When a section reaches your checkpoint note the time. If need be hold them until twenty minutes after the previous one. Have you all got that?”

  They assured him they understood.
<
br />   “Where will you be sir?” Sgt Griffin asked.

  “To begin with the CSM and I will be going with Cpl Doyle to find this arm,” Capt Conkey replied grimly. “After that we will just walk around the course observing.”

  Peter felt a sharp chill. It was as though a cloud had suddenly covered the sun, yet he knew it was shining brightly from a clear blue sky. He looked at Kate and around the dell and bit his lip.

  ‘If only!’

  The group walked back downstream along the main grassy flood channel. Crane and Nellis were to provide an incident there, a ‘contact rear’ where they would stroll along behind the patrol until noticed. By then Kate was giving Peter questioning looks.

  “You and Cadet Ramsey will be the lost navigators,” he said. Then he wondered: ‘Was that relief on her face?’ Or did she despise him for not organizing it so they could be together?

  It was a very unhappy Peter who followed Capt Conkey back to the bivouac area.

  CHAPTER 29

  A SHOCK FOR PETER

  Back at Coy HQ the OC faced the group. “Lt Maclaren will be running this activity. I will be going with the QM, CSM, Cpl Doyle and his 2ic to investigate this story about an arm sticking out of the mud.”

  That started a wave of murmuring and curious glances. Capt Conkey held up his hand for silence. “CUO Bates, send Cpl Doyle and LCpl Melchert to me at once. The remainder of his section can wait at the control point until we return. I am hoping we will only be a couple of hours.”

  Stephen interjected. “Don’t forget you will be following Corporal Doyle sir. It could be much longer.”

  There was a ripple of laughter. Capt Conkey gave a wry grin. “Thank you for that advice Sgt Bell. Let’s not be too unkind. Now, platoon commanders and sergeants go and inspect your people. Sickies to the medics. Off you go.”

  The group dispersed amid a loud buzz of conversation, mostly speculation about the body. Graham caught at Peter’s sleeve. “Pete, you will have to inspect HQ. But make it quick. You need to have them in position by nine.”