To Ride the Wind

by Peter Watt

  On the journey north towards Saul’s settlement the former Australian soldier explained that his men dressed as Arab irregulars fighting the Ottomans to disguise the fact that they were actually Jewish settlers. However, he pointed out, two of the men who rode in their ranks were actually Arabs from a nearby village.

  ‘The Moslems have a saying that goes something like this: the enemy of my enemy makes that enemy my friend,’ Saul explained. ‘Or words to that effect. My old enemy Abdullah from the village near our moshava has allowed his sons to ride with us against the Turks as his people have no love for the foreigners occupying their lands from Constantinople.’

  On the evening of the first day they approached a small, squalid township surrounded by sparsely grassed and rocky lands where young boys attended to flocks of goats. Two of Saul’s men peeled away from the column to wave their salutes and ride towards the stone hovels.

  Saul waved back, shouting something in a language Matthew did not understand but presumed was Arabic. For another hour they continued to ride down into a small valley where Matthew was surprised to see a veritable oasis among the arid hills; vineyards and orchards were laid out in neat patterns and a township of fine stone buildings was located at the centre of the valley. Saul and his men broke into a gallop. Matthew followed them into a cleanly laid out street where healthy, well-dressed men, women and children joyously greeted the return of their fighting men.

  Saul slid from his saddle to hug two teenage boys. A pretty young woman wearing a head scarf and in her late twenties stood shyly by holding an infant girl on her hip. She stepped forward and Saul wrapped both wife and daughter in a tight embrace. Tears flowed down the young woman’s face.

  ‘My wife, Elsa,’ Saul said, turning to Matthew still astride his mount. ‘And the princess in her arms is my daughter who rules her two brothers, Joshua and Benjamin, here.’

  Matthew dismounted to stand before two young boys he guessed were about twelve and thirteen years old. The eldest, he noted, had a German rifle slung on his shoulder. Both young men looked Matthew in the eyes and appraised him frankly when he shook their hands.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, boys,’ Matthew said. ‘I am an old friend of your father.’

  Both boys nodded.

  ‘I am afraid that their English is not all that good,’ Saul said, now holding his daughter on his hip. ‘My wife speaks English, but was originally from the Russias, as most of the settlers in our moshava are. We tend to speak Hebrew here rather than Yiddish,’ he explained, although Matthew did not have much idea about the difference between the two languages. ‘Well, I am sure that you will look forward to a soft bed, a good meal and a bottle of excellent wine tonight, and we can talk about old times.’

  Matthew was suddenly reminded of home. Not because of what Saul had just said but because he caught the slightest whiff of eucalyptus on the evening breeze. ‘Gum trees?’ he asked.

  Saul broke into a wide grin. ‘My gum trees,’ he replied proudly. ‘They have helped us reclaim what was useless land and given us the opportunity to turn what our Arab neighbours sold to us into arable soil to plant our grape vines, olive and orange trees. It was one of my first jobs when I came to the settlement after Africa. That, and training the able-bodied to defend themselves against our Moslem neighbours. But that is a long story and I am sure that for the moment you would rather eat, drink and sleep.’

  Matthew nodded and Saul guided him away from the horses now being led away to be brushed down, watered and fed by the young men and women of the village. Saul, Elsa and Matthew walked a short distance, all the time being so warmly greeted by the people in the street that Matthew had the impression that Saul was well respected and liked by those of his community.

  They reached a neat stone house with a tiled roof. What made the house stand out in the street was a large, dustcovered Packard automobile parked in front. Matthew turned with a questioning look to Saul.

  ‘Oh, that is not mine,’ he answered the unspoken question. ‘It belongs to a guest, Miss Joanne Barrington of the New Hampshire Barringtons.’ Matthew sensed just the slightest hint of sarcasm. ‘She’s a Yankee archaeologist – or so she says. Her car broke down outside the settlement and we recovered it. The stupid woman is travelling virtually alone in war-torn countryside with nothing else to protect her than the fact she belongs to a neutral country. She feels that being an American abroad is enough to save her neck from bandits and rogue Ottoman troops.’

  Before Matthew could ask any further questions about Saul’s intriguing American guest a young lady dressed in a white shirt and riding jodhpurs stepped from behind the car. Her freckled face was covered in oil and she held a large spanner in one hand. Her red hair flowed free about her shoulders and she had what Matthew would call a pretty elfish face with large, emerald-coloured eyes. He could also see that she was barely 5 foot 4 inches in height.

  ‘Mr Rosenblum,’ she called in a happy voice, ‘I am pleased to see that you have come home to us in one piece.’

  ‘My wife likes her,’ Saul growled under his breath to Matthew. ‘Otherwise, she is a pest around the settlement. Always talking women’s rights and them getting the vote. It will never happen.’

  Matthew was aware that the pretty young American was looking at him with a curious expression on her face and smiled. She returned his smile, wiping her grease-covered hands on a rag she pulled from the hood of the big American car which surely would have cost a small fortune.

  ‘Miss Barrington, I should introduce another guest,’ Saul said. ‘Captain Matthew Duffy of the Australian Flying Corps, currently grounded due to the lack of being able to keep his aircraft in the sky.’

  ‘You crashed, Captain Duffy?’ Joanne gasped in her concern.

  ‘Shot down,’ Matthew replied stiffly as she put out her hand to shake his. Matthew was taken aback at the gesture he normally associated with men. But he had also heard stories that American women were very forward and frank. When he clasped her hand to shake it he was close enough to look directly into her captivating eyes. He had not felt that odd feeling for a long time. Matthew released his grip, realising that he was almost holding his breath. There was so much he had read in those large eyes. Both innocence and courage, but in ways he could not find words to explain.

  6

  Captain Sean Duffy, MC, had passed his staff college course for company commanders in England. He was to be granted leave before rejoining his battalion in France and was looking forward to meeting with Colonel Patrick Duffy at Patrick’s exclusive club in London within a few hours. A knock on the door of his quarters in the officers’ mess while he was packing to leave was not unexpected as he had arranged to get a lift up to London with another Australian officer who had also completed the course.

  ‘Captain Duffy, sir,’ the officers’ mess steward said, poking his head around the corner. ‘You are wanted in the orderly room straightaway.’

  Sean frowned. He had signed off his mess chits, accounted for his kit and received his course report. Why was he needed so urgently?

  Sean left his packing, throwing his kit bag on the bed, and made his way to the college orderly room where he was greeted by a British corporal slaving away at a pile of forms on his desk. The corporal glanced up. ‘I will inform Major O’Shea that you are here, sir,’ he said, easing himself away from his desk and disappearing down the long hallway of the old mansion that had been built 300 years earlier but was now a military installation. He returned within a minute.

  ‘Major O’Shea is ready to see you, sir. He is in room 5,’ the corporal said, resuming his duties.

  Sean walked smartly to the designated office, knocked and heard a muffled voice bid him enter. He opened the door, marched in and came to attention, throwing a salute to the officer seated behind a desk. The first thing Sean noticed was that the British officer had obviously lost his left arm below the shoulder and that, from the badges on his uniform, he had been a member of one of Britain’s elite Irish regiments. The
major was a man in his late thirties, with thinning, sandy hair and cold blue eyes.

  ‘Captain Duffy, you may take a seat if you wish,’ the British officer said, glancing down at a file of papers before him on the highly polished desktop.

  Sean took a chair directly in front of the desk.

  ‘Captain Duffy,’ the major said. ‘I am from the War Office, more specifically the section that investigates reports for recommendations for gallantry. I have a report before me from your former CO, Colonel Patrick Duffy. By chance any relation to you?’ he asked, looking Sean directly in the eyes.

  ‘A distant cousin, sir,’ Sean answered, mystified as to why this man would want to speak with him so urgently. ‘We had not met until I was posted to the colonel’s battalion in the Dardanelles.’

  ‘I believe that Colonel Duffy may have mentioned to you in Belgium that he was submitting a report recommending you for a medal for your bravery in silencing a German machine-gun crew at Fromelles,’ O’Shea continued, leaning slightly back in his chair.

  ‘He did, sir,’ Sean answered, sensing that something was wrong. The demeanour of the man interviewing him was like that of a police investigator clarifying evidence.

  ‘Well, according to your report,’ O’Shea said, fingering a thin folder, ‘you make no mention of your part in the incident. Why is that?’

  Sean frowned. ‘Sir, I was hardly aware that I had killed the Germans. Corporal . . . Sergeant Kelly was with me and he informed me that at the time I was suffering concussion from a shell burst.’

  ‘Surely you would remember that singular act of putting the Hun gun out of action?’ O’Shea questioned, leaning forward. ‘It is an act worthy of recognition by way of the award of the Victoria Cross.’

  ‘Sir, I don’t remember,’ Sean replied. That terrible day when he had broken down was still a blur in his memory. ‘I think that someone else may have put the Huns out of a ction.’

  Sean noticed a change in the almost hostile demeanour of the British officer interviewing him. O’Shea seemed to relax.

  ‘I am glad that you have recognised it may have been someone else, Captain Duffy,’ he sighed, leaning back. ‘Other wise, I may have had to recommend from my interview with you that you be court-martialled for conduct unbecoming an officer of his majesty’s forces. Claiming another man’s courage is a serious breach of an officer’s honour.’

  ‘Sir,’ Sean said, leaning towards the British officer. ‘I have admitted to being confused on the day.’

  ‘I lost my arm at Mons,’ the major said, ‘But worse, I lost my company to overwhelming Hun artillery.’

  Between the two men an unspoken message passed and Sean realised that he had indeed made his point to a colleague who no doubt had also experienced the terror of leadership under fire; an officer must not be seen to lose his grip when so many others looked to him for courage. It was easier to act brave than feel it.

  ‘I am satisfied that you have not deliberately set out to hoodwink the War Office,’ O’Shea said. ‘You see, we have another report in your file from a company commander in the battalion on your flank in the attack. He says that his men witnessed an NCO killing the gun crew that had them pinned down. As the only NCO at the time was with you, it must have been Corporal Kelly, mentioned in our report. I strongly suspect that he has not reported his role in the act of valour in order to cover you, Captain Duffy. I consider that your CO, Colonel Duffy, may have been just a bit eager in getting gongs shared out in his battalion, and acted somewhat in haste with his report on your part in the attack.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Sean answered, his face reddening with shame for what he knew he had to be covered for. ‘What is going to happen now?’

  ‘I will be passing the report to the appropriate people and recommending that Corporal Kelly be recommended for his act of extreme bravery. I suspect that he will be awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. In other circumstances, ones that had not been muddied by contradictory reports, the soldier may have received the VC had you been more in charge of the day. However, I am sure he will be pleased to receive any kind of award, but you will not be returned to your battalion as a company commander, Captain Duffy, Instead, you will fill the position of company 2IC. Let us say that you will do your penance for a time, until you prove you are fully in control of your duty to your men.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Sean replied glumly. He had so desperately wanted command of his own company and now it had been snatched from him because of what the army had deduced was a temporary lack of leadership under fire. The command of the company would have led rapidly to recognition in the post with the rank of major. Now, he would remain a captain and Sean knew well how the army would have a cloud over his head. Had Sergeant Jack Kelly blurted to everyone of his lapse in the trenches? If so, then his role as a leader was over in the eyes of the men who had trusted him.

  ‘If there is nothing else you want to add to our conversation, Captain Duffy, you are free to take your leave in London,’ O’Shea finished.

  Sean rose to his feet, snapped off a formal salute and left the room. The trembling he experienced in the trenches had returned. But this time it was not from fear but out of shame for what lay ahead of him in his old battalion.

  Whereas Captain Sean Duffy, MC, was sitting in Patrick’s exclusive gentleman’s club in London while a cold, sleeting rain fell outside, on the other side of the world a policeman wearing a suit sat in a simple wooden office belonging to the commandant of the Holdsworthy internment camp for enemy aliens. Inspector Jack Firth, an officer in the government’s counterespionage department, reflected on what a miserable place the camp was: bloody cold in winter and stinking hot in summer. He wished he were back in his office in Sydney where he could duck around to his corner pub for a decent lunch and a cold ale well away from this small town of tents and corrugated iron–roofed huts housing those enemy civilians who had been arrested and put behind the tall wire fences on the outskirts of Sydney.

  His duties had forced him to travel to the camp to audit the movements of people visiting those interned. The government suspected that in the camp were German nationals still working for their Fatherland, despite being held as prisoners. It was only natural that they would; patriotism was not the domain of British citizens alone. However, Inspector Jack Firth felt that his visit to the camp was not a complete waste of his time. One name in particular had cropped up in the military logs of visitors. That of Frau Karolina Schumann, who had been meeting with Pastor Karl von Fellmann.

  Before the war, Jack had been a detective sergeant investigating serious crime on the streets of Sydney. He had gained a reputation among the toughest and most dangerous street thugs as a man to be feared and respected. Jack had loved his image. He had been a king of the streets but after the war had broken out, even with the promotion, he had found himself stuck away in an office overseeing tedious files on suspected spies. And because most Australians were concerned every person of German heritage was a potential spy, Jack’s job of sorting wheat from chaff was far from easy.

  Jack knew that Karolina Schumann was the mother-in-law of one Captain Alexander Macintosh. He and his brother George were the brothers of Fenella Macintosh, his chief suspect in an unsolved case two years old that had captured the interest of the public. A well-known Australian film actor, Guy Wilkes, had been shot to death in what the former homicide investigator strongly suspected was a crime of passion. Fenella Macintosh had conveniently fled to America on a ship out of Sydney only hours after the event. He had almost caught up with her in Hawaii via the cable but she again fled the long arm of the law. From what he had come to learn since, the famous American actress of supposed Welsh origins, Fiona Owens, was in fact Fenella Macintosh. Because of his current posting he had been actively discouraged from pursuing his suspect in the Wilkes case. His superiors had explained that Colonel Duffy and the Macintosh family were too important to the war effort for the matter to be followed up in these troubled times. The murder of a drug-using a
ctor of dubious moral standards was not of great concern when thousands of young Australians were being killed and wounded every month on the battlefields.

  But Jack Firth was not a man who took well to being told anything. His love was the world of real crime – murder, rape and robbery – not the shadowy world of suspected spies. He would bring someone to justice on the Wilkes murder, despite the war, and now he was seeing interesting coincidences in his work. That Karolina Schumann should be tagged as a person of interest for her many visits to the internment camp was intriguing to the police inspector because of her links to the Macintosh family.

  With a deep sigh, he flipped open the pile of reports compiled on the inmates by the prison staff. His first was that of the Lutheran missionary, Pastor Karl von Fellmann. Jack read through the details of the man who had been born in Germany but lived in Queensland for the past sixteen years. He had been married but his wife died on the mission station they had set up to cater to the spiritual and pastoral needs of the Aboriginals of central Queensland. The mission was located on a property called Glen View, belonging to the Macintosh family. According to the commandant’s comments the pastor had proved a model prisoner tending to the spiritual needs of the sizeable Lutheran population of the camp. Informants had noted that he did not appear to have any political leanings towards the Fatherland but tended to identify himself as neutral in the conflict, stating that his ministry put him beyond the evil work of men in war. His constant visitor was a former inmate, Frau Karolina Schumann, and some of the informants had suggested that there may be a romantic interest on the pastor’s side. Jack Firth was interested to see that the Lutheran missionary was the twin brother of a well-known, high-ranking German officer who had visited Australia just before the outbreak of hostilities.

  The policeman continued to read the file, swatting at the clouds of flies attempting to settle on his sweatstained face. The pastor had a keen interest in playing chess and his main chess companion was one Herr Maynard Bosch . . .