Beneath the Southern Cross (39 page)

Nellie was grateful. ‘He's a fine man your brother,' she said to Ben when she visited the Kendalls to show them the letter. ‘His own life in the balance and he takes time out to comfort me like this.' She dabbed at her eyes with her ever-present handkerchief, she always seemed to be crying these days. Not sobbing or bawling, but tears streamed from her eyes at the oddest times. ‘A very fine man. I hope he comes home safely, him and young Tim.'

Ben nodded and Norah said gently, ‘Let me get you a cup of tea, Nellie.'

‘That'd be nice, thank you Norah, I'll give you a hand. And don't you worry about this,' she sniffed and dabbed away, ‘I'm fine, lovey, really I am, just can't seem to stop, that's all.'

Ben stepped out onto the back porch whilst the women made
the tea. He didn't want Nellie to see his face, for Nellie's letter was a tissue of lies.

Benjamin too had received a letter from his brother, delivered by a returned soldier in order to escape military censorship. It was several pages long, the first page being a brief note to Norah assuring her that her son Tim was alive and well. The rest of the letter was for Ben's eyes only.

Ben wasn't the only one receiving disturbingly frank news from the front.

There had been no word from Johann since the troops had left the safety of the British base on the island of Lemnos. Then, finally, a full five months after the landing at Gallipoli, Otto De Haan received a letter from his son.

The letter arrived two weeks after the priest's visit. The war office had settled upon a more humane way of informing families of their loss, and a visit from a clergyman now preceded the casualty lists published in the newspapers.

For Otto the knowledge that his son had lost his faith brought a profound anguish. The thought that Johann had died alone, without God's comfort, was agony to him. But he was only one of many who found themselves bereft.

General Sir Charles Munro's recommendation that the peninsula be evacuated, ‘on purely military grounds', resulted in a visit to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps by Lord Kitchener on 13 November. Orders ensued that the troops were to be removed from Gallipoli, and the evacuation of the Anzacs, as they were now known, commenced. The battle had lasted just over six months and the losses had amounted to 7,600 dead and 19,000 wounded.

The enthusiasm with which the declaration of war had first been greeted and the jubilation with which the troops had been farewelled were quickly forgotten as the horror of Gallipoli reached home. No longer did the lackadaisical attitude that ‘it would all be over in a few months' exist. The war was destined to grind remorselessly on, and thousands more were destined to lose their lives.

In August, 1916, whilst the disastrous battle of the Somme still raged in France, the British Army Council urgently demanded reinforcements from Australia. Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes, was presented with a problem. The rates of enlistment had been falling off throughout 1916 and, at the conclusion of the seven-week battle of the Somme, the Anzac casualties numbered approximately 25,000, a statisticwhich would no doubt serve as a further deterrent to prospective volunteers. The only method, Hughes therefore decided, which could guarantee the sustained supply of manpower was conscription.

Billy Hughes was an aggressive bantam rooster of a man. A patriotic militarist, he stood five feet six inches tall, was partially deaf, and commonly known as ‘The Little Digger'. He liked the nickname, it suited his self-styled image as a ‘battler' with a commitment to Australia's fighting men.

Despite opposition from his own Labor Party and from the very unions which he himself had helped form, Hughes forced the issue of conscription upon the people of Australia by popular referendum.

There ensued the most controversial political issue Australia had ever faced. It seemed no sector of the community was left undivided. Even amongst religious leaders there was conflict of opinion. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Daniel Mannix, was Hughes's most forceful antagonist, yet the Archbishops of Sydney, Perth and Hobart strongly supported conscription.

Within the arts, prominent figures lent theirvoices to the cause, both for and against. The great diva, Dame Nellie Melba, appealed to Australian women to vote ‘yes', whilst the flamboyant Melbourne contralto Cecilia John publicly sang the plaintive:

Artists and caricaturists were employed to join the fray, some even plagiarising the opposition's theme. ‘I didn't raise my son to be a soldier,' a mother was pictured saying as she embraced her foppish boy, whilst, beside her, another mother said ‘I did,' her hand on the shoulder of her strong young son in uniform. Above the four, the caption demanded ‘Whose son are You? Enlist today!' The people of Australia were in a dilemma. Who should they listen to?

Strangely enough, the mothers, wives and sweethearts of the men who'd gone to war listened to little of the propaganda, they seemed to have made up their own minds. But, despite their common circumstances, they too held opposing views. There were women who vehemently believed that their men needed backup on the battlefields of France, ‘stand by your brothers!' they cried. And there were others who said ‘too many have died, don't send more of our sons to their death!' The country was in turmoil.

In Sydney, the turmoil found its voice, as it always did, on the Domain. There, in 1916, shortly before the referendum was put to the people, the Labor Party held an anti-conscription rally, the press later estimating attendance numbers as high as 100,000.

 

Billy wished he hadn't come. Marge had been right. ‘You hate crowds, love,' she'd said gently, ‘and they say there's going to be
thousands there.' But he'd felt somehow obliged to attend.

He'd arrived early, the rally had only just started, yet throngs of jostling people seemed deliberately to impede his way as he wove through them in an attempt to escape. And the noise—the screech of the speaker's voice through the megaphone, the rousing cries from the crowd—Billy was getting a headache.

Billy Kendall was one of the thousands who attended the rally, as many a returned serviceman did. Men in uniform were prominent amongst the crowd, soldiers on crutches, or blind, or missing an arm. Many wondered which way such soldiers would vote.

Up on the platform the opening speaker was delivering a stirring speech. Beside him stood fellow Labor Party members and those waiting to lend their voices to the cause. A representative from the Women's Peace Army was present, her placard reading: ‘A vote against conscription is a vote for peace!'

But not all the women amongst the crowd were there to lend their support. A large group had banded together to oppose the rally, and they were shaking their fists up at the platform. ‘Shame!' they were yelling. ‘Our boys need help! Shame on you!'

‘I lost two sons!' one woman was bellowing angrily at the top of her voice. ‘Why should my boys cop it while others stay home?'

Billy recognised the voice. He couldn't see through the crowd to the group of hecklers, but it was Nellie Putman all right. It was her constant theme these days. If she had to give up her two boys, then other women should risk losing theirs. Like the ‘shrieking sisterhood' of women who were dedicated to forcing men into the army, Nellie had become quite a monster. She would accost any physically fit-looking man she saw in the streets. ‘Get into uniform!' she'd demand. ‘Be a man, go and fight for your country!'

As Billy forced his way through the crowd he heard the cries of the women Nellie was whipping into a frenzy. ‘I lost my husband', ‘I lost my brother', and even a young girl's voice, ‘My father died at Gallipoli.'

He had to get away, he couldn't breathe. He'd cut through Woolloomooloo. More and more people were pouring into the Domain from every direction, he'd head home through the backstreets.

Billy breathed a sigh of relief as, the worst of the crowd behind him, he started down the hill. Amongst the many who were
walking up from Woolloomooloo to the rally, he glimpsed a face he knew. He turned away quickly before she saw him, and when he was sure she was safely past, he turned once again and watched her disappear into the crowd. It was Kathleen O'Shea.

Billy hadn't seen Kathleen since the visit he'd paid her shortly after his return from the front. Two months ago now. He'd wanted to offer his sympathy. To Otto De Haan too, whom he'd never met. A tragic thing, both Kathleen and Otto losing their only sons. But then it was a tale all too common these days. Billy knew one family who had lost all three of their sons.

She hadn't recognised him at first, then it had slowly dawned. ‘Billy Kendall?'

She's as beautiful as ever, he thought. She would have had to have been over forty, but even the dark circles of grief beneath her eyes couldn't mar her beauty. He wanted to embrace her. He'd always been a bit in love with Kathleen O'Shea, but then, he supposed, what man wouldn't be?

Kathleen put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek, horrified at how much he'd aged. He couldn't be more than thirty-one, thirty-two, and yet he looked fifty.

‘Come in, Billy, come in, come in.' She ushered him into the front room and sat him on the sofa. ‘I'll put the kettle on and fetch Otto. You haven't met my husband, have you?'

‘No. I've heard a lot about him though. From …' he gave a quick jerk of his head which seemed to indicate the war was just behind him, ‘… from over there.' They both knew that he meant from Johann.

Kathleen nodded. ‘I'll fetch him, he's just home from church.'

Aggie was in the kitchen, rocking baby Caroline's cradle, and as Kathleen walked through to the porch she asked, ‘Would you put the kettle on for me, Aggie? We have a visitor.' Out on the back porch she said to Otto, ‘Billy Kendall's come to see us.' He didn't appear to hear her. ‘He's young Tim Kendall's uncle,' she explained.

Otto nodded vaguely, still staring into space, as he did so often lately.

‘He knew Johann and Robbie,' Kathleen prompted. ‘He's just come home from the front.'

‘Oh.' Otto put his arm around his wife as he rose. ‘I am sorry, I do not mean to be rude.'

‘I know. Come in and say hello.'

Billy jumped to his feet as they appeared, and Kathleen made the introductions. When Otto extended his right hand, Billy clumsily shook it with his left, and it was only then that they realised.

‘Oh Billy,' Kathleen said, ‘I'm so sorry, I didn't know.' The cuff of his right sleeve was neatly tucked into his jacket pocket and she'd not noticed that the pocket was flat.

Billy loathed introductions. Daily he cursed the fact that he'd lost his right hand and not his left. If it had been his left, he might have been able to talk to people for a while before embarrassing them, or seeing pity in their eyes. For a while he might have been normal, just like them.

‘It's only the hand,' he said. ‘They took it off at the wrist, I've got the rest of the arm.' It would only have been two fingers, the doctor had said, if they'd got him to the field hospital quicker. But he'd been stuck out in no-man's-land for two days and gangrene had set in. Just his luck.

‘Would have been better off losing the whole arm,' he said with false bravado. ‘They pay better compensation for an arm.'

He was clearly in a nervous state, talking too loudly, too quickly, and Kathleen tried to calm him. ‘It's good to have you home, Billy. Sit down, please. Aggie's getting us some tea.'

Billy sat on the hardback chair beside the table, leaving the sofa for them, and fought to calm himself. He got the jitters a lot lately. For no apparent reason he'd get jumpy and tense. He hoped he wasn't about to have one of his turns.

‘I wanted to offer my sympathy,' he said. ‘To you both.'

Otto nodded, and Kathleen said, ‘Thank you', and Billy wasn't sure what to say next. ‘Johann spoke about you a lot, Mr De Haan.'

‘Otto, please.'

‘Otto. He was a good soldier, Johann was. Popular too. You would have been very proud of him.'

‘I am. Thank you.' Otto's reply was brief but his gratitude was evident.

There was an awkward pause before Otto rose saying, ‘I go to help Aggie with the tea.'

When he'd gone, Kathleen asked, ‘And Robbie? How was Robbie when you saw him?' She wanted to ask how he'd died,
whether it was quick, whether he was in pain, but she couldn't. She didn't know whether she'd be able to bear the answer.

Billy knew exactly what she was asking. ‘Robbie handled the war pretty well,' he said, hedging. ‘Both him and Tim. Strong young blokes. Good mates too, just like when they were kids.' Her eyes still begged the question. ‘I wasn't with him when it happened, Kathleen.'

‘Ah.' She looked away, both disappointed and relieved.

‘Tim was, though. It was Tim who told me that Robbie had been killed, when he visited me at the field hospital. It was about the same time as …' Billy gestured at his missing hand.

‘Was it quick?' Kathleen had blurted it out before she could stop herself.

Billy felt a surge of anger. What did the woman expect him to say? ‘No, your son lay in the stinking mud for days, helpless, in agony, listening to death rattling in the throats of his nearby mates, knowing it'd be his throat rattling next?'

Billy didn't actually know how Robbie had died, Tim had not gone into detail. ‘You just get yourself better, mate,' that's all Tim had said when he'd asked. But no death on the boggy battlefields of France was pretty. What the hell was he expected to say?

Tears glistened in Kathleen's eyes. She was holding her breath, Billy was sure, and he could see the artery in the side of her neck throbbing.

‘Yep,' he said brusquely. ‘It was quick. That's what Tim told me. “Robbie never even knew what hit him”, they were Tim's exact words.'

Brutal as they were, those were words Kathleen was longing to hear, and she put her hands over her face, surrendering to the tears of relief which rolled down her cheeks.

Billy himself was not lying, but he believed that Tim had been. Why should he have to lie? Why should any of them have to lie? Countless men were dying hideous deaths and all people wanted were lies. Then Kathleen looked up at him and whispered, ‘Thank you', and the anger drained from Billy to be replaced by an overwhelming despair. It was the deaths not the lies that were wrong.

‘Are you feeling all right, Billy?' Kathleen leaned forward and put a hand on his knee.

Billy rose from his chair, agitated. ‘This killing, it has to stop.'
The images crowded his brain as they always did when he was about to have one of his attacks. There wasn't enough room in his brain for all those mutilated bodies. He tried to will them away but they kept pouring in. ‘It has to stop,' he said over and over, ‘it has to stop.'

‘Billy, please. Sit down. Please. I'll get you a glass of water.'

She ushered him back to the chair, her arm was firmly around him. Briefly, Billy regained his senses. ‘I'm sorry, Kathleen. I'm fine. I'm fine.' Any minute the images would be back, he had to get out before he made a scene. ‘Yes, I'd like a glass of water, thank you.'

The moment she had disappeared into the kitchen, Billy had dived for the door. He had to get home. Kathleen mustn't see him having one of his turns. No-one, least of all Kathleen, must be witness to his humiliation.

Billy's head was throbbing now as he watched her disappear into the crowds at the rally, her huge husband by her side. He would have liked to have said hello and to have apologised for his rudeness in disappearing that day. But he didn't dare, not with his head throbbing the way it was. A headache like this was precursor to an attack; he must get home to Marge.

When he got home he knew what would happen. He would bawl and blub like a baby and Marge would cradle him in her arms and rock him to and fro until the sobbing subsided and he was left drained and exhausted. Then he'd hate himself for his weakness, and he'd hate Marge for having witnessed it and, no matter how many times she told him that she loved him and that it didn't matter, Billy would remain convinced that his wife must surely despise him.