The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  The following morning I checked out of the boarding house and said a fond farewell to Mrs Kelly, who smelled of fried onion and fatty bacon. She hugged me and gave me a sweaty, powdery kiss. ‘Nick, we loves yer. Yer come home to Mary when yer get back from England, yer hear? Mary says you’re an Anglican, high church — that’s almost the same as us, so you’ve got our blessin’, providin’ you bring up the kids Catholic. But don’ ya leave it too long, mate. She’s not the sort to become a nun, nor to wither on the vine.’

  From the boarding house I took the tram to South Yarra to report as instructed to Airlie, the headquarters of the Allied Intelligence Bureau on the corner of Punt and Domain roads. It was a large Victorian house on the top of a small hill that rose steeply from the slow-flowing Yarra River. One of four military guards at the gate stopped me to examine my papers, made a phone call and told me to report to a dark-green door on the side entrance, to press the bell and wait until somebody came for me. ‘Private Rawlings here will escort you, sir,’ the guard said.

  I was ushered into the office of an overweight army colonel with a bristling moustache who required me to stand, though admittedly at ease, while he interviewed me. He asked, on three separate occasions, ‘Do you have guts?’ Fortunately he didn’t wait for a reply before putting up his hand to indicate silence as he continued reading my dossier. ‘Ferchrissake! Butterflies!’ He looked up at me in some bewilderment. ‘You collect butterflies?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Those things with wings that land on flowers?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you say you had guts?’

  ‘Well, no, sir. I mean I didn’t say, sir.’

  ‘Well, do you? Speak up, Duncan!’

  ‘Yes, I think so, sir.’

  ‘Navy, eh? Butterflies! Do you have accommodation for tonight, Sublieutenant?’

  ‘No, sir. I checked out of my boarding house this morning.’

  ‘Sergeant!’ he yelled. ‘Give the butterfly collector from the navy an accommodation slip for a bunk in the hut tonight. He can eat in the officers’ mess.’

  The following morning I was given a priority movement order to Hervey Bay. This involved a trip from Essendon by Dakota for the seven hour flight to Sydney, where I stayed in the nearby airport accommodation overnight. Late the next morning I flew to Brisbane, another five and a half hours, stayed overnight there and then flew on to Hervey Bay, where I arrived in the midafternoon. In all, the trip took the best part of three days. From Hervey Bay I was taken by launch to Fraser Island, where I was to receive further training.

  Fitness, fitness, fitness, until I felt I was jumping out of my skin. No letters allowed to Marg or Mary. No letters to be received. I had simply disappeared from the planet. Unarmed combat followed, especially the use of knives, then the required training in wireless, map work, basic coding of messages, morse code, security, malaria treatment: all the standard skills required for small élite forces being trained to act independently behind enemy lines in tropical jungle conditions. Some of the training was exciting, although most of it consisted of tedious repetition. In the months that followed the tedious bits were to prove the most important.

  Finally, when I was about two weeks short of completing my training, after lunch one day Sergeant Major Wainwright, who’d become my mentor on Fraser, turned up. ‘CO wants to see you, Duncan, in his office at 1500 hours. I’ll escort you myself.’

  ‘What’s it about, Sergeant Major?’ I asked him.

  ‘Can’t say, Sublieutenant,’ he replied.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘Not for me to comment,’ he said, closing the conversation. He was our chief weapons instructor, tough as old boots. He’d been in Malaya and Singapore for more than a year before the war started, and had been a member of one of the first commando units that was formed in England in 1940. He’d been sent to Singapore to train small stay-behind units to work as guerrillas if the Japanese should attack. He was an expert in harassment and survival in the jungle. You don’t find too many blokes like him, even in the army, and I admired him greatly. Fortunately, he’d been sent back to Australia before Singapore collapsed. His speciality was the Owen submachine-gun, but there was nothing he couldn’t do when it came to dirty fighting. He trained us in the use of an Owen, amongst other things, and I took to the weapon like a duck to water.

  Colonel Voight was a laid-back Queenslander, formally a grazier, popular with just about everyone but nevertheless a pretty forthright sort of cove, the quiet-voice-with-big-stick type. ‘You’re still a couple of weeks short in your training, Sublieutenant Duncan, but I’m afraid you’re needed elsewhere. You’re being seconded to the Yanks,’ he said, straight off.

  ‘Americans, sir?’ I replied, surprised.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve drawn the lucky or unlucky straw, but they’re desperately short of people who are trained as coastwatchers and can speak Japanese — in fact you’re it. You’re off to the New Hebrides, to Luganville, to be precise.’

  I’d heard that the small town of Luganville on the southern coast of the island of Espiritu Santo was where the US forces had established their major Pacific base. They’d turned a sleepy Anglo-French coastal village into a virtual city that stretched for five miles along the magnificent natural harbour. It could house a hundred thousand American troops and their support personnel, possessed six telephone exchanges, hospitals, cinemas, several dozen mess halls that could feed a thousand men at a time, and major ordnance repair facilities. I wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of being a translator in a makeshift city that was a long way from the war zone.

  ‘Luganville, sir? It’s not exactly what I was trained for,’ I said, openly showing my disappointment.

  He shrugged. ‘Ours is not to reason why but to do as we’re told. The message to get you to Luganville brooked no contradiction. Oh, and by the way, congratulations — the order included a promotion to lieutenant. Somebody in HQ Intelligence understands that the Yanks respect a bit of extra braid. Cheer up, Duncan, you’ll be the youngest lieutenant in the Australian Navy.’

  ‘Sir, I’d much prefer to stay a snotty and do the job I was trained to do.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’ve drawn the short straw.’ He glanced down at my training reports. ‘Hmm, I see you’ve excelled in unarmed combat and close-quarter knife fighting.’ He grinned. ‘You may get to use a paper knife to open envelopes. Bad luck, son — afraid it happens to the best of us. Now get your arse into gear, pack your kit; you’re catching the two o’clock launch to Hervey Bay and taking a night flight in a B-17 to New Caledonia. They’ll fix you up with your extra braid in Hervey Bay.’

  ‘Sir?’

  His hand shot up to deny me. ‘Don’t ask me any more questions, that’s all I know, Lieutenant.’

  I saluted. ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ then left his office. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ I yelled once I was outside. I could see it all. I’d be stuck in an office in Luganville, translating Japanese radio broadcasts for the Yanks for the duration of the fucking war. So much for the intrepid boy coastwatcher rescuing his dad from the clutches of the evil Japanese invader! That’s the trouble with the Saturday matinee, you still have to go home and mow the lawn.

  I PACKED MY KIT: three white shirts and shorts, socks, white tropical shoes, underpants and toiletries. All kept to a minimum so that I could stow the unassembled parts of an Owen submachine-gun, some spare magazines and three hundred rounds of ammunition. I admit that taking an Owen with me must seem like a pretty stupid thing to do but I was trained to be very efficient in its use. It was an Australian invention, not a weapon the Americans used in combat, hence the ammunition. The Owen submachine-gun competed with the Austen, the Australian-made British Sten gun, as the utility weapon in both armies, but there was a big difference between them. The Sten gun, while light, was essentially a piece of water pipe with a butt, crude magazine a
nd trigger, a hastily welded-together piece of crap that was prone to jam and overheat, often failed to work in muddy conditions or after being submerged, and couldn’t be effectively aimed at anything beyond fifteen yards. You could almost spit more accurately. On the other hand, the Owen was reliable, seldom if ever jammed, didn’t overheat, worked in all combat conditions and in well-trained hands was reasonably accurate up to fifty yards. But it was heavier — and this was often the reason why troops preferred the Sten gun, reasoning that they were unlikely to find themselves in close combat conditions and resenting every bit of weight they had to lug around. The bureaucrats in Defence Headquarters in Melbourne, who counted numbers, not bodies, saw the Sten gun as cheaper and quicker to manufacture and therefore easier on the war budget.

  I told myself that if ever I went to work behind enemy lines as a coastwatcher, I wanted a weapon with which I was thoroughly familiar and, more importantly, one that was reliable and wouldn’t let me down in a crisis. I had won this particular Owen at Fraser Island in a shooting competition. The butt had been varnished and carried a small polished brass plate that read:

  Sublieutenant

  Nick Duncan

  ‘Mr. 98%’

  Fraser Is. 1942

  The 98 per cent was the score I’d achieved in the comp. While this may seem remarkable by ordinary army marksman standards, I was being trained by Z Force and 90 per cent was the required competence, and that with a double tap — the ability to hit the enemy at around twenty-five yards in the chest and above the bridge of the nose in two single, near-simultaneous shots. On the afternoon the CO told me to pack up, Sergeant Major Wainwright appeared with a standard skeleton wire buttstock he’d personally painted in camouflage colours. ‘Leave the nice one with me, boyo, this one is lighter. Take the brass plate for luck, keep it in your breast pocket over your heart. Legend has it a pocket Bible once saved some Christian git in the Boer War — never know when your luck might run out, boyo.’

  On the 26th of August 1942, lugging an overweight kitbag, with my naval uniform carrying more rank than the person wearing it was entitled to, I climbed into a B-17 for the night flight to New Caledonia.

  I couldn’t help wondering what the Yanks would think of an eighteen-year-old naval lieutenant. I knew that, unlike us Australians, they admired success and didn’t set about cutting down tall poppies, but even so, I felt they’d be more than entitled to question my navy credentials — a young snotty does not easily earn the right to wear a lieutenant’s braid in any man’s navy. The path from midshipman to full lieutenant is often said to be the hardest in a navy career. Someone at Naval Intelligence HQ obviously hadn’t looked at my date of birth. They’d been thinking protocol, not wishing their man (who would be working alongside our Allied friends) to be disadvantaged by the lowest officer rank in the navy.

  Fortunately, at six feet three inches and fourteen stone (or, as the Americans would have it, one hundred and ninety-six pounds), I looked a bit older, maybe twenty-two, even if I only had to shave twice a week. Even twenty-two is a bit young for that sort of rapid promotion. I decided if anyone asked, apart from those who could check my official documents, I’d claim to be twenty-five and that I was slow to mature. Lying about your age is a long-established military and naval tradition. The youngest soldier who fought at Lone Pine in Gallipoli turned out to be fourteen years old and eleven-year-old boys fought with Nelson at Trafalgar.

  Still sulking somewhat, I reached New Caledonia just after sunrise. After refuelling and a change of aircrew, a cup of coffee and a cold croissant, we resumed our flight to Luganville, where I was met on the tarmac by a US lieutenant, whom I immediately saluted, momentarily forgetting I’d been gratuitously promoted. He saluted in turn, but looked a bit confused, thinking no doubt it must be something we do in the Australian Navy. I could feel myself colouring, the prickly heat spreading up my neck and into my face with embarrassment. If only he knew how undeserved my new rank was, he might have understood. He introduced himself as Marty Kellard of the US Army Air Force.

  ‘Nick Duncan,’ I said. ‘Australian Navy. Sorry about the salute — I’ve just been made lieutenant, a thoroughly undeserved promotion, and I forgot I was no longer a snotty.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s a long trip, Nick.’ Then he said, ‘Afraid there’s a bit more to come, we’re pushing you straight through. We have to get you to Guadalcanal and we only fly there while there’s sunlight; Henderson Field doesn’t have night-landing equipment.’

  ‘Guadalcanal?’ I repeated, just to be sure, my heart suddenly beating faster.

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant. They urgently need your Japanese language skills. You are trained in radio, morse code, are you not?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, then couldn’t help myself. ‘Whacko!’ I reckon my smile would have covered half the runway.

  ‘I can’t even offer you a cup of java — the next B-17 leaves in fifteen minutes.’ He pointed at an aircraft some way away. ‘They’re already warming up the engines, so we’ll need to hurry.’

  I slung my kitbag over my left shoulder and we began to move at a fairly rapid pace towards the waiting B-17. ‘Guadalcanal, hey? Fancy that! I thought I’d drawn the short straw and was going to be consigned to a translator’s job here in Luganville.’

  ‘We’re learning fast.’ He was beginning to shout as we approached the plane and the noise of the engines made it difficult to hear. ‘If it hadn’t been for one of your coastwatcher guys, Martin Clemens, sending in one of his men to warn us of the Japanese attack at the Alligator River four days ago, we’d have been unprepared. Most remarkable story! A Jap patrol captured the messenger, Sergeant Major Vouza…’ Marty Kellard couldn’t continue above the noise of the props. He smiled and deliberately came to attention and saluted and I laughed and gave a wave before entering the plane. Nice bloke.

  After another four hours’ flight we came over the island of Guadalcanal. I knew enough about this kind of Pacific island to know that fighting on it would be a bloody nightmare for soldiers, though it was almost perfect for a coastwatcher. The island is bordered by a narrow coastline plain that varies from a few hundred yards wide west of the Matanikau River to a width of several miles. The flat land is covered in kunai grass that cuts the flesh when you brush past it, whereas the peaks, up to six thousand feet, are densely covered with brooding, dark green jungle.

  The best way to describe the landscape that was below us is to imagine a giant hand reaching down and grabbing the island as if it were a swatch of fabric, then pulling it to a point and letting it fall again to create a series of incredibly steep ridges and valleys. It was the type of country I knew and, strangely, one I loved. I could anticipate the fetid jungle smell brought about by everything seeming to drip and rot as you watched. This was where the perpetually dark, wet, twisted labyrinths of vines seemed to eventually choke everything, and where the most dangerous element is one of the smallest — the malaria-carrying anopheles mosquito.

  I was completely whacked when we finally made a quick and dirty landing on the metal airstrip. I’d been in the air, or waiting to reboard, for the best part of twenty hours. During the flights I’d been cramped into what was little more than a few canvas straps that pass for a passenger seat on a B-17. Apart from a cold croissant and a tepid cup of coffee in a paper cup, I hadn’t eaten since the lunch on Fraser Island.

  But the Americans, as ever, were friendly and hospitable. The marine sergeant sent to meet me saluted and introduced himself as Joe Polanski. He had a jeep waiting at the edge of the runway. When I remarked on the strange construction of the runway he explained it was made with marsden matting. This was an interlinked, metal-strip system made from high-tensile steel; hundreds of thousands of small sections were clipped together to make a firm, safe surface for the heaviest of loads, spreading the weight of an aircraft landing or taking off evenly throughout its surface. This unique landing strip or runway was an unsun
g American innovation that made all-weather flying possible in the rain-sodden Pacific.

  On the way to the marine base, upon hearing I hadn’t eaten in a while, Sergeant Polanski immediately suggested he take me to the sergeants’ mess when we arrived. ‘I can take you to da officers’ mess, sir, but da grub it’s better at ours. The ingredient, dey da same, but we has got us a better chef who, by da way, work at da Waldorf Astoria in Noo York before he joined up after Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘Sergeant, you don’t happen to come from Chicago, do you?’ I asked.

  He looked surprised. ‘How you know dat, sir? Dat’s me, sirree, Chicago born an’ bred.’ I was being escorted by a Polish version of the little bloke, except that Polanski was a big bloke — maybe not quite my size, but Kevin Judge would have almost fitted under his armpit.

  Arriving at the base I saw that Guadalcanal was no Luganville. It comprised a few scattered quonset huts, together with hundreds of tents and hastily thrown-together shacks, each with a dugout or slit trench beside it. The whole lot was built on a large copra plantation so that the tops of the coconut palms, together with the camouflaged material of the tents, would have effectively concealed it from Japanese aircraft.

  The sergeants’ mess was a large tent that was open at the sides to let the breeze through (what breeze?), with the kitchen in another similar tent abutting it. Food smells pervaded the air and I could feel my mouth beginning to salivate. That’s one thing about the Yanks, they look after their men in the field. Sergeant Polanski was right — the food was excellent. He waited until I’d had a second cup of coffee before saying, ‘Colonel Woon, he be waitin’ ta see you, sir.’

  ‘Shit! I’m sorry,’ I apologised, rising quickly from my chair. Then glancing at my watch I saw it was five o’clock. ‘Sergeant, why didn’t you mention it before? We could have gone directly to see him.’