The Long Green Shore (14 page)

Pez had Darby by the shoulders and he could feel him sort of laughing: ‘Ride her, ride her,' he was mumbling through the bandages. ‘Drop me and I'll bloody sue you.'

They lifted him back and went on to the other bank.

*

The Nips were dug in solidly at the bay.

For a week we were locked in battle with them on the hill—close, bloody fighting filled with steel and thunder.

The first three days our guns were still too far behind to support us. The fourth day the guns opened up and the moaning they wove into the sky and the shattering explosions in front of us that shook the earth were sweet music. But ammunition was light on—our attack failed—we had to wait another day for the full strength of our guns.

It was about this time we noticed that Slapsy was going a bit odd. He came crawling round the pits. He seemed to want to talk about something—and seemed to have forgotten exactly what it was. He asked odd questions—how we got our nicknames, were our mothers living—and when we asked him how things were going—when the guns could be expected, whether food was coming up to us—he didn't know.

Pez and Harry Drew talked it over.

‘I think old Slapsy's going a bit queer,' said Pez. ‘Have you noticed him?'

‘Might be,' agreed Harry Drew. ‘We'd best watch him. He's a big man—it could be awkward here if he got violent.'

‘What can you do, Harry, if he goes off his nut?' enquired Regan, who was hunkered down beside him in the pit.

Harry Drew looked at the thin, battered, grimy kid and grinned: ‘Stop him the best way you can. If you happen to be around, kid, you'd best use a rifle butt to make sure.'

So we watched him. But it didn't make any difference—it was so odd, so unexpected, the way it happened—it was funny, almost.

Things had been quiet most of that morning—both the Nip and us locked in the earth on that hillside—an occasional sniping shot or burst of automatic fire sweeping the ground. And suddenly, incredibly, the sound of a flute broke the baleful air—sweet and off-key, as always, the Brahms Lullaby. And, fantastically, Slapsy Paint rose up out of the earth—naked except for the grimy towel round his middle—walking in some calm nightmare of faraway—earnestly and absently playing on his flute.

None us saw him until it was too late. It was so unreal, so incredible—he walked calmly up the hillside, playing his flute—up towards the Nips, playing his flute—pausing and starting over again, as he always did, on that piece in the second bar.

Only one of us found a voice. The Laird was shouting: ‘Get down! Get down!' when they fired and we saw Slapsy fall—and you could feel the shock, the incredulous surprise in him, as he fell.

The earth saved him—the solid Mother Earth. He fell into her shelter as a drunk can fall safely down the stairs. We could see he was hit—it looked pretty bad—in the legs and somewhere in the jaw or throat.

The Nips swept a curtain of fire down the hill, and we answered back—it was something to do—it was the only thing we could do. The Nips couldn't get to him, but neither could we—there was too much open ground. We could only wait for dark.

Slapsy Paint just lay there, as though he had woken in a strange room after being sick a long while—or being out on the grog. He just seemed to be lying there.

His flute had fallen in the open and a Nip sniper amused himself smashing it. We could see the little pockmarks springing in the ground around it. One—two—three—four—five—six—the seventh shot smashed it. There was a
Banzai!
from up the hill.

Through that long afternoon he lay there. He either couldn't, or had sense enough not to, move. From some of the pits we could see him—from others, as the afternoon deepened, we could hear him.

There is nothing more horrible…to be locked into the earth by lead and steel, and hear, through the agony of a dying afternoon, the moans and cries of a man you know. To hear him, to see him, and not be able to move—to know that no heroism and no millionth chance could take you across that burning gulch to bring him to safety.

He moaned and cried…on and on it went…you couldn't shut your ears to that sound—it seemed to swell somewhere from inside you, yourself, and ring on and on, horribly, insanely, and for ever.

In the pit, Regan shivered with pity and shook his head, trying to writhe away from this evil dream: ‘Oh, no!—No!—No!'

‘Don't listen!' said Harry Drew. ‘Don't listen, kid!'

‘Christ, I could hit him from here,' said Janos. ‘I can finish him with one bullet. Quick—he'd never know.'

‘Might be best,' said Harry Drew. ‘He looks bad. It might be best.'

‘Oh, no…no…no.'

‘You can't do it,' said Pez. ‘He might live. We can get him after dark. Put the mortars on and we can get him at dark. He might live.'

Mostly he moaned or cried. The only words we could understand were every now and then he would call out, over and over: ‘Leave me—leave me—leave me—' over and over and on and on through that long afternoon.

Pez and Janos and the Laird nominated as three to go and get him when darkness came.

‘I know where he is,' said Janos. ‘I can find him in the dark—I'd best go.'

‘I'll tag along with you,' said Pez.

‘He's a big bloke,' said the Laird. ‘I guess I'd better make one to carry him.'

‘I want to go, Harry,' said Regan.

‘Don't be silly, kid,' said Harry Drew. ‘There's plenty more to go than you.'

‘Harry, I've got to go.'

‘He's a big man, kid. It needs more weight than you've got to carry him.'

‘I'll carry my end—please, Harry, I've got to go.'

Harry took him by the shoulders—thin shoulders: ‘Don't try and play it big, kid—a man can only do as much as he can do—that's all that's wanted of you. You don't have to go.'

‘I have to go—I want to, Harry.'

‘OK, kid—if you're sure.'

‘I'm sure.'

Slapsy's cries stopped just before sundown.

‘He might be dead,' said Harry Drew. ‘I'm not going to risk men to get out a dead 'un.'

‘We've got to go, Harry,' said Pez.

‘He's alive—he must be alive,' Regan wanted to say, but he didn't say it.

‘We'll go,' said Janos.

The mortars threw everything they had against the Nip emplacements on the hill. The sharp, splitting explosions of their bombs beat along the ridge like hail, until the hill was thick with the thunder of it. From the pits we opened with everything we had—firing on fixed lines to leave a narrow lane of safety for the carrying party to reach Slapsy.

It was nothing, really.

Janos and Pez and the Laird and Regan just climbed up out of the pit. Crouching, they followed Janos, who led them swiftly and surely to Slapsy.

They lifted him onto the stretcher. He moaned a little. They carried him back. He was alive.

It was nothing—to walk in the darkness of that fiery furnace. Just that it was uncomfortable, the trip back—a man seems heavier lying on a stretcher and Slapsy was a big man, anyway. You can't crouch to gain the false security of worshipping the earth when you are carrying a stretcher—you can scramble on all fours, lumping the stretcher between you, but that takes longer and is more awkward in the dark. So they stood up—trusting to Janos to lead them straight back—and stumbled as quickly as they could down the hillside to their own pits.

Harry Drew clasped Regan to him like a lost son: ‘Good kid!' he said. ‘Good kid!'

So we lay in the earth and waited for our guns to be fed.

We got word back that Slapsy would be right. Doc Maguire had patched him up fine before sending him back down the line. On the table Slapsy hadn't come to properly, but from time to time he muttered: ‘Leave me…leave me… leave me…'

We lost Bishie here, too. He had been wounded with a grenade on the second day. There were half a dozen pieces of shrap in his back, but he kept quiet and refused to go down to the RAP for treatment. But after the third day he was so stiff and sore he could hardly move.

Doc Maguire got to hear of it and came crawling up to the platoon. ‘Where's Bishop?' he said with a grin.

He went to him: ‘What the devil do you think you're doing, still here?'

‘I'm all right, Doc,' said Bishie. ‘Honest I am.'

‘We'll have a look,' said the Doc. He lifted Bishie's shirt gently—it stuck to his back in places. The wounds were shallow, but angry-looking and their blurry mouths cried out.

‘Three days ago you got hit?' asked the Doc.

‘Yeah, I think it was about three days ago,' said Bishie.

‘You know, I ought to put you in on a self-inflicted—you should have come to me when you got hit.'

‘I'll be all right here, Doc,' said Bishie. ‘Just patch me up now and I'll be all right here.'

‘No,' said the Doc. ‘You're coming with me, boy—you've had it for a while.'

‘Let me stay, Doc.'

‘Come on, boy.'

Bishie looked as though he was about to burst into tears when he said goodbye—or maybe it was just not sleeping for three nights. The Nip machine gun was beating over on the left flank. Bishie went to pick up his rifle.

‘Leave it, boy,' said the Doc. ‘You won't need it for a while—with any luck you won't need it again.'

They crawled out back to the track and the Doc's hand rested lightly on Bishie's shoulder as they went together down the road.

After dark that night, Bishie hobbled down to the beach, round past the headland, to meet the barge that was to take him to hospital. He remembered the last time he had waited on such a beach. A long time ago now it seemed…

After the terror and the flight through the jungle, the terror of waiting—the fear that after all that monstrous effort they should be taken. And then the nightmare journey in the small boat—hugging the shadows of the shore by day—eyes burning and blistered from staring at the sky—watching, watching for the treacherous wings.

And now his wounds were aching—he was tired—deadly tired. ‘But at least, this time,' he thought, ‘we didn't run.'

On the fifth day our guns opened in strength and the hill flamed and roared and trembled under their barrage. They blasted it like a quarry face—you would have sworn that no thing living could survive in that desolation. We ourselves, when we came up from our safe earth, were blinded and deafened with the insanity of it.

But there were some left. We used the bayonet—it was a savage, swift, unwholesome fray—we won the hill.

We took no prisoners. Only one Nip cried surrender—he came out with both hands raised high, crying something in his native tongue.

The Log killed him with a savage thrust, and kept on stabbing long after the Nip was dead. We had to drag him away.

Of course, the Log had a reason—that dazed scatter of shots from the battered hilltop when we started our attack had killed Cairo Fleming…

The Log sat hunched against a tree on what had been a Nip hillside. He sat with his head cradled in his arms between his knees—his forehead pressed against the rifle in his hands…

‘I remember the day that Cairo Fleming died…sure, other men died that day and had died in the days before—but Cairo was my friend.'

Cairo's dead, Log—no ghost will rise to speak for him.

‘It's hard to tell you…in my own heart I know my friend, but the things I can put into words maybe won't sound important or impressive—there's no drama, no hero stuff in them. Just that we marched and slept and fought together—were broke together and cashed-up together.

‘We got our share of strife and we raised our share of merry hell in Alex and Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel Aviv. Remember that leave in Cairo? That's where he got his name—we acquired a Wog donkey and stormed the front steps of Shepherd's Hotel, demanding accommodation for man and beast as the law provides!

‘Maybe we never saw the pyramids, but we saw plenty else—lights and shadows—alleys and arak. Anything can happen in Cairo—and when you're young—and a soldier—and the world's your oyster—it usually does.

‘Then came the desert—Cairo and I were there—then Greece…We were there when they tried to hold the Hun on the river at Larissa. But he broke us and the cry was: “Get out as best you can!” Cairo and I took to the hills together.

‘After a long time, a dangerous time—through dark nights, by small ships threading through the islands of the Dodecanese—we came out of Greece together.

‘Maybe you can imagine what those words mean—
We came out of Greece together.

‘Then we came home—came Kokoda and the Trail—came the long rest—came this.'

We know him, Log. We know him. They pinned no medals on him, they made no speeches—we need no medals or speeches—we know him and remember. He was just a good, ordinary bloke—that's a point—that's an important thing—he was an ordinary bloke like you or me—maybe a bit better than you or me.

Because, you see, Cairo was an Australian—a blue-blood—an Australian of the oldest, proudest stock. His ancestors didn't step ashore with Phillip; nor were they chained below decks in the prison hulks. They were here before Cook—before de Quiros—before the ancient eyes of Polynesian and Egyptian mariners may have seen these shores.

‘Cairo was my friend.'

Come, Log. That stinging of your eyes comes from the long weariness of battle—it nestles beneath all our heavy lids. Come, Log. We will bury him on the hill he died for. Come, Log. Let us lay our black brother in the black earth. Mourn not the dead—but always remember: He was black—he fought and died—he was a good man—he was an Australian.

So we possessed the bay.

As we took our hill, the barrage had lifted onto the next. Another Company passed through us and they in turn took their hill and so on.