The Long Green Shore (11 page)

Harry Drew sends a swift whisper into the silence of the trees: ‘Laird, take over for a while—watch Pez and Janos.'

The whisper goes from tongue to tongue in leaf and branch and fern.

Harry Drew slides round the tree and flops down beside Regan: ‘How are you feeling?'

‘OK,' shivers Regan.

Harry puts his arm around the kid's shoulders—thin shoulders.

‘Come on, kid—everyone feels as bad first time. Will you come with me—stick with me?'

‘Sure, Harry,' says Regan.

Sure, Harry! You are God, here on this muddy track, if you can beat these wasps of wrath away—if you can walk like Christ and unafraid—if you can keep me from death—or, better still, if you can keep me from fear of it showing in my eyes. Sure, Harry!

Harry Drew leaves the tree in the peculiar crouching crab-like run of the soldier under fire. He pauses by a tree, dodges on and falls into the shadows of the shrub. A few seconds later Regan follows him with a valiant imitation of that same run. He pauses faithfully by the same tree, dodges on and falls panting heavily in the shadow of the same bush a few feet from Harry Drew.

‘OK, kid?' says Harry.

Regan manages to grin through his parched lips.

‘Sure, Harry.'

But we must be inconstant to the earth—there's the pity and the terror of it. We must rise—and never more reluctant from a lover's bed. A red cross is drawn on a map and we must go there. The sky is grey and the jungle crouches, bland and waiting. The wet drips incessantly, implacably, imperturbably from the leaf—charting the passage of eternity.

Pez and Janos crouch against the bole of a tree and talk it over. They crouch on their haunches, crouch on their toes—ready. They do not look at each other—they watch the jungle. They whisper from the corners of their mouths. The rifle and the Owen are held loosely in their hands—ready.

‘They might open with mortars,' insists Pez. ‘It'd be a hell of a thing to walk into your own mortars.'

‘They won't,' says Janos. ‘They'd wait for us to call for them—and we've got no line back across the river. They know we're here somewhere. They wouldn't use mortars unless we called for them. We've got to get that gun.'

‘They might just open up.'

‘The longer we wait the less chance we've got!'

‘Where do you reckon the gun is?'

‘About three or four hundred yards down—can't be far from the bank.'

‘They might be strong.'

‘Probably just a gun crew.'

‘They'll know we're here.'

‘We know they're there.'

‘Wait a while—we might get mortar support.'

‘If it doesn't come in thirty seconds, it won't come till we call,' says Janos.

He turns his wrist and glances briefly at the second hand of his watch. He keeps his wrist turned and his gaze goes back steadily to the jungle. Thirty seconds. The leaf drips fifteen grains of eternity.

‘OK,' he says. ‘Bring them forward, not too close. When I give the hand, get them down and let them keep down—less movement the better. They'll probably have a cover man out—you watch him—I'll try for the gun.'

Janos glides away. Pez follows—his hand conjures the patrol from the earth—they materialise, drifting through the grey-green of the undergrowth. Harry Drew leads again, Regan is close behind him.

Here is a ballet and a symphony—here is a dance whose name is Death—whose overture is silence—waiting on the cue for savage strings, the bowel-plucking whine of the bullets. All the earth and yesterday and tomorrow are blotted out in this fierce, relaxed concentration that narrows a burning spotlight on this rain-soaked stretch of mud and jungle. The earth is suspect, save where we stand—the trees are treacherous—the leaves slant like eyes.

Janos drifts…the Owen in his hands loses the stock of metal and plastic and becomes an instinct of life, shifting and probing like mantis antennae…

Pez's hand beats imperatively towards the earth and the furtive life behind him returns to the earth.

Janos drifts on. Pez follows—his dominant hand keeps the earth still and unbreathing behind him…

Janos was right. They had a cover man out. Pez killed him as he fired at Janos, and Janos sprang towards the pit where the two Nips were trying to swing the gun around against him.

He killed them both in the pit. One fell forward over the gun. The other—a big fellow with a square face—was trying to clamber out, trying to run. He fell against the edge of the pit, his crucified arms stretched up over the mounded earth, his fingers clawing, and he was biting in agony into the red clay of the edge of the pit when Janos fired again—and passed swiftly on, to drop, crouching, into the shelter of a further tree, his eyes swift and steady on the jungle as he snapped another clip into his Owen.

In a few moments Pez joined him.

‘I went through these two Nips in the hole,' said Pez. ‘Nothing on mine at all. Three pens, a watch and a bundle of yen notes—take what you want.'

‘Not for me,' said Janos. ‘Thanks for getting that first one—he'd have got me.'

‘I didn't,' said Pez. ‘I just nicked him. He tried again when I came up to him. I brained him with the butt.'

The lobe of Janos' right ear was a bloody smudge. Pez saw it as he rose. ‘I'll fix that for you,' he said.

Janos rubbed a quick hand against it; stared for a moment at the smudge of blood on his palm; then rubbed it off on his trouser leg.

‘She'll do,' he said. ‘Let's wander on.' He took two short steps, vomited briefly and spat with a wry mouth. He glided off into the trees.

Pez looked for a moment at his loot from the bodies. He stuck the watch in his pocket, tossed the notes and fountain pens back into the pit and followed Janos.

Behind him, the patrol materialised through the trees.

The rest of that day we see nothing of the enemy—but that is no safety when with every step he may appear. We pass down the track. We reach a spot on the map, marked with a cross in red. We camp.

We eat a mouthful of bully before dark. Our water bottles we have filled on the way. The rest of the Company is following behind us, spread in a thin line down the track back to the river. We dig ourselves in before dark and a quick patrol clears our front without finding anything. We make ourselves beds of grass and branches, and huddle under the thin shelter of our waterproof capes—but the rain comes through. It is impossible to stay dry or get warm. Hour on, hour off, we are on guard. When your turn comes, your mate nudges you and you open your stinging eyes, hold your rifle a bit closer and crouch, listening for sounds you could never hear. It is impossible to see. No one sleeps much that night—or the next—or the next.

That first night, before dark, Connell had come up the track to see us in our forward position.

Janos stepped deliberately onto the track in front of him.

He held up two fingers. ‘Two more makes three,' he said.

‘Good,' said Connell. But he paused before he said it.

‘Good work, boys,' he said to the rest of us. ‘Damn good show. I'll try to get you up a hot meal sometime tomorrow.'

He went back down the track.

Janos stood by the side of the track, his arms folded, and watched him go.

Days and weeks followed—quietly enough, but never with peace. The enemy is unpredictable. For days we probe through country where a handful could hold up an army—but never a hostile shot is fired against us. Then, suddenly, we will stumble on a machine-gun nest, or a sniper in some hopeless position where the only retreat is death.

But always, whether we are forward or in reserve, there is that small fraying—continuous and never ceasing—on the nerves.

You who know war in a romantic dream, or in the sob stories of newspapers, might imagine that it is only the thunder of bombardment or the terrors of the charge which breaks a soldier's will and manhood; but the slow-burning acid of monotony and sterile days can be as bad, or worse. You live constantly with a small fear that can never be spoken, and never become real, but can never be dispelled.

You might know you are safe—you are behind the lines—there are no Nips within a quarter of a mile. You might know that, but the knowledge can never fully soothe the nerves or stop them from trembling as antennae to probe the blind bank of the jungle to the side of you, and the edges of the clearing where the jungle path turns. Too often, death has come out of the silence and the unliving jungle. Though you might know there is no danger, it is no use telling your body and your nerves and the dark places of your brain so long schooled and skilled for the task of being ready for death and violence, when all is still.

So you have no rest. The shadow and the smell and the texture of death is always real and tangible about you. Walk ten yards into the scrub and the nightmare closes around you.

All seems still and silent. Then, as you stand, you are aware of interminable life—a vast, corrupt writhing as of slimy sea-flowers and forest washed forever by a drifting ocean. Nothing is still. Every leaf and twig and branch and bud writhes and quivers with some secret, malignant life of its own. Everything crawls and curls on the stem. Nothing is silent; that hush you heard when you stopped you now find is made up of ten million tiny, rasping, whittling, evil sounds—all of deadly portent if you listen—

Did the twig break, or was it broken? Did the bush rustle, or did the stealthy footfall brush it?

There is an eternal smell of death and decay. The silt of centuries of corruption is trodden moss-like underfoot. You grasp a branch and it crumbles in your hand like mushroom. The leaf and the plant and the limb are always dying and are swiftly eaten by the savage and unhealthy organisms that live.

The earth itself is vile and stinks with the essence of corruption long distilled into it. And for this desolate and savage and unwholesome earth, men died…their blood stained it and the sickly sweet smell stained its vileness deeper.

‘Why are we fighting for this?' the Laird boomed. ‘For my part, let the Nips keep it—serve the bastards right!'

Deacon asked Connell one day when he met him, ploughing down a track ankle-deep in mud.

‘I was here before the war,' said Connell. ‘There's an old saying—where there's mud there's money.'

There is only the time of war and the time of peace—this is the time of war.

We are forward section for days. We drop back and another platoon moves forward through us to take up the spearhead. We go forward again.

There is a rhythm about the track—a material music about the ache of the pack on your shoulders and in the pulsing muscles that go on labouring long after they are exhausted beyond the point of normal human endeavour.

There is poetry in the feeling of the rifle stock under your hand, or the Owen cradled over your arm. There is kinship between you and these finely machined pieces of walnut and steel; there is strength in them. A man who, unarmed, would scratch the earth, can face the enemy like a knight of old with a lance couched on his arm. As a musketeer felt for his sword, so we feel for our guns. Not that we love them as individuals—one gun is just like another—it's just the feeling they give you.

You get sensitive to the feeling of the earth under your feet. There is the slide and dragging weight of the muddy track and the lightness of firm, sun-baked earth when you strike a hard patch.

Your skin runs oily with the drenching sweat of your body and there are those incredible moments when, by chance, passing through a glade or coming out on the side of a hill, a blessed breeze comes for a moment and the sweat freezes on your body in ecstasy.

The body is a good machine and will keep going. The knees are the worst. They tremble violently—‘laughing knees' we call them. When you are moving it's not so bad; but when you stop you find your knees are giggling and you stand under your pack, shivering like a beaten animal…

So the days go on. We march—the dull slog through the mud or sand, when the only horizon is the earth and the heels of the man in front of you, and the weight of the pack bows you down as a load of sorrows. We carry—returning swiftly and lightly over the track we have taken and dragging crates of ammunition and cases of food back with us to the front. We advance—stripped down to the ultimate burden of hard rations, ammunition and weapons—armoured with the sensitivity of fear—holding chance as a talisman against mortality. We fight—occasionally the scattered or the single shots—the body falling, the scream of pain or the frightened whimper; sometimes under the thunder of big guns, locked in combat on a savage hill.

Old Whispering John gets thinner and darker each day. His little bright blue eyes burn deeper into his skull-like face. He never loses his little grin—but it seems fixed, as something apart from himself.

Younger men and tougher men physically than old John have cracked up and been sent back sick, but old John goes on. Each one that goes, he sniggers with evil satisfaction: ‘Another one gone, eh? Another of the young colts cracked up and the old soldier still going, eh?'

Sometimes he hobbles and falls back a bit on a long march—but he always catches up. He's never in the front, he never leads, but he's never exactly behind; and all the time he sniggers with satisfaction: ‘The old soldier keeps on going, eh? The young blokes crack up and the old soldier keeps on going, eh?'

John's darkening complexion doesn't come altogether from the sun. He gave up washing the day we moved up to relieve the Fourth and the nearest he's come to it since we crossed the river is when it rains extra heavy. John gave up cleaning his teeth, also, and it gets so that we avoid him when he comes up and tries to buttonhole us confidentially.

‘Stinking Jesus,' Deacon calls him privately.

‘Even his best friends won't tell him,' says Dick the Barber.