The Long Green Shore (9 page)

‘Well, this night Bertha and I went out to the dogs at the Park and there was a dog called Poppies Pride in the fourth that she reckoned was a moral. She had a bad trot in the first three races and up comes this Poppies Pride event. She slaps every cracker she's got on this Poppies Pride and borrows a quid off me and slaps it on the terrier as well.

‘Well—the red light's showing and away they go. A broken-down hound that hadn't won a race since Christ was in short pants—a hound by the name of Bigfoot Bill—scarps to the front. And, as they come to the straight and down the field, there's Bigfoot Bill looking a cert and about ten lengths behind him Poppies Pride flat to the boards and the rest of the field nowhere.

‘Well, Bertha, she's jumping up and down and screaming for this Poppies Pride to come on! Come on!

‘Then, of a sudden, she stops and sits down quiet and clasps her hands and looks at Bigfoot Bill and says in a gentle voice, sort of reverently: “Fall, you bastard, fall.”

‘And the next hurdle Bigfoot Bill runs slap bang into it, falls arse over head and breaks his neck. Poppies Pride romps home and Bertha collects and I get my quid back.

‘So, I wouldn't altogether disbelieve in the power of prayer.'

Cairo, the Log and Fluffy sat together on the edge of the end bed, facing into the darkness towards the sea.

‘You won't find it so bad,' the Log was saying, quietly. ‘You'll be frightened—everyone is—but you'll get through it. You go through it with your mates, you rely on them, they rely on you. The worst is the loneliness—not so bad in the jungle, but down the desert—when you're moving forward under fire, strung out in a thin line five yards apart, you get awful lonely. You find yourself edging over to the bloke next to you—it makes you feel better to be close to someone. But that's a bad thing—keep scattered, keep apart all the time, then if they get you they only get one—if you're together, the whole group cops it.'

He nodded his head towards the crowded tent: ‘They'll fight well, these boys…'

‘Hell, there'll always be wars, Harry,' said Janos for argument. ‘It's in the nature of man.'

‘Then change his nature,' said Pez.

‘Is it the nature of man?' demands Harry Drew. ‘Or is it the nature of those who lead him, of those who sell and buy?

‘Is it man's nature to destroy himself? To shut himself away from all the comfort of the world? Think! Think! While ever there are a hundred million people in the world who parrot like you that war is man's nature—that wars will always be—then there's no hope for us. There's enough blindness and treachery in the high places without ordinary people turning to hatred and stupid cant.

‘There's probably not one of you really knows what he's fighting for. You never think! All you can do is parrot that there'll always be wars. It's only by chance that you are fighting this time on the right side. It's just that man is really good at heart, that injustice stirs him to anger of itself, that he will fight for liberty by instinct. Man progresses despite himself—out of a thousand, million blundering years…'

‘But we progress,' insisted Pez. ‘We progress.'

‘Sure, we progress,' said Harry. ‘We have done wonders! We have conjured new life, new states, new miracles of machines from the earth and air since the century turned. But how much faster, how much further, could we go if you and all the other millions like you realised your power and fought for that?'

‘But you can't do without the moneyed man,' said young Bishie evilly.

‘Can't do without the moneyed man!' snarled Harry Drew in disgust. ‘How long will it take you mugs to realise that the moneyed man can't do without you?'

‘Now, now,' said Janos soothingly. ‘Don't do the nana. Take it easy. Keep your shirt on.'

‘I'm not doing the nana!' yelled Harry Drew. ‘I'm trying to drum some sense into your bloody thick skulls.'

‘Gentlemen!' said Whispering John, ducking in under the tent flap.

There was a sudden silence and he looked at them with an important malignant grin: ‘Now you new blokes are going to get your feet in the mud. It's on—we're moving tomorrow.'

Everyone felt that faint thrill of coolness in their hearts. No fear, but a tightening of the nerves, a tension of the breath.

‘Is it the right drum?' asks the Laird.

John gave his cunning little wink: ‘It's on all right; we move to the river, relieve the Fourth and then push on.'

Deacon slowly closed his pad. The page had his number, rank, name and unit at the top. Then ‘Beloved Margaret,' and the rest was blank. It was a hell of a hard job to write, that letter.

Everyone was very casual about it—carefully laconic. For the old soldiers it was another move—there had been plenty like this before, they knew what was coming.

But the new men could sense the breath of the unknown and mysterious enemy—the shadows of the long green shore—and violence and death they did not know but had often dreamed about.

Everyone was very careful—the cards fluttered over the spread blanket—there was time for a hand or two of poker yet, and it was not till tomorrow that they started down the long green shore.

We took over from the fourth battalion and camped that night on the banks of the river. The sections were ringed out in perimeter.

We cut poles and erected our tiny two-man doover tents—straight, strong poles for the stretchers we carried, and these frames lashed onto the bearers with jungle vines.

‘These are the best damn thing the army ever got out,' said Dick the Barber. ‘Remember how it was the last time—sleeping on the ground in the rain?'

‘Yeah,' said the Log. ‘That first night at Templeton's Crossing I slept sitting up in a hole with my groundsheet wrapped around me. It rained all night and the water was up to my waist. And my Christ, I was hungry.'

It was a complete blackout that night, of course—no fires, no smoking, no talking after dark. Though you could get a smoke by crouching under a blanket to light the match and you could puff away safely if you shielded the glow of the cigarette at the bottom of the slit trench.

We stood to in the shallow, hastily dug weapon pits at sunset—stand down half an hour after dark. Fifty per cent security—two hours on guard, two hours off.

In the two hours in the pit your eyes ache from the strain of darkness. The night is alive with nerve-sharpening rustlings and cracklings and a million cicada voices of insects, whistling and chirruping and strumming.

There was a sudden, terrifying flapping of leathern wings from the branches above.

‘Flying fox,' whispered Harry Drew to young Griffo who was on guard with him. ‘Pigs!' he whispered a moment later as there came a steady, stealthy crackling from the bushes in front. ‘You've got no chance of really seeing or hearing anything unless they walk right on top of you.'

Occasionally, during the night, there was a shot from further down the line. ‘Just nerves,' Cairo Fleming reassured Regan who crouched beside him.

Once there was the heavy boom of a grenade and a long burst of machine-gun fire.

About two o'clock the rain started dredging down. Some of us had not yet learned the tricks of making a dry bed in the jungle. The rain came in and filled up the canvas of our beds like a bath.

The Log squelched as he turned over in his bed. ‘Christ,' he said. ‘I'll be glad when it's day and a man can get up out of this.'

‘Tomorrow we go over the river,' whispered Regan from the bottom bed. ‘The Nips are on that side. I don't care if it never breaks day myself.'

‘Forget it till tomorrow,' said the Log. ‘Get your sleep in, boy—you'll be needing it.'

It was that night after the rain started, remember, that young Darky was killed over in ‘B' Company—his mate, Big Brown, killed him.

Big was on guard and Darky, coming to relieve him, missed his way in the darkness and came up on the wrong side.

Big was taken by surprise and swung the bayonet before Darky could speak. It took Darky in the throat and he was dead in a couple of minutes.

They had to tie Big Brown with ropes to keep him down—he was crying and screaming all night—and next day they had to pump him full of morphine before they could move him back.

Four days we stopped there—expecting every morning to cross the river. We learned a number of things in those four days. We learned to fix our doover tents so that the rain stayed out—or most of it, anyway. We learned what saplings were best for bed poles and which would crack suddenly in the middle of the night and flop you into the mud. We knew now for certain the sounds of the flying fox and the pig in the darkness. We learned to wake the instant a comrade's hand touched our shoulder to take over guard. We learned to drop back to sleep immediately we crawled back into bed.

On the second day the sniper fired from across the river.

It was such a matter-of-fact thing—just a flat report from the trees across the river and half an ounce of lead smacking into the trunk of a sago palm near Captain Baird's head.

Such a small thing, but its effect was swift and vast and subtle. It was the final catalyst that changed the chemistry of our brains.

All their drill and preparation had turned to this—all the hours spent round the sand table and Connell's plain words and lectures on malaria and typhus and booby traps and cover and concealment all fused now into a tangible thing. The jungle became hostilely neutral—we couldn't see where the Nip was. This ground, these trees, this river, was no longer our encampment and our home. We were here on sufferance only—we walked only where we could, by chance or force of arms. Without any words being spoken we were drawn together and became brothers against this first shot fired on us—we were on the trail.

Pez and Janos were sitting beside their doover tent on the lip of the river bank when the shot was fired. They rolled into their weapon pit—instinct throwing them there before reason—and in that same scrambling moment all other movement along the bank was gone. Not a man was to be seen—but the jungle held its breath and the leaves of the trees had a thousand eyes.

‘I think I know where he is,' said Janos after a bit. ‘See that small light green bush against the dark green? He's somewhere about there.'

‘Seemed about there,' agreed Pez. ‘You can't see him?'

‘Think I'll go and get him,' said Janos after a while.

‘They'll send out a patrol,' said Pez. ‘Don't be a fool.'

‘I'll go by myself,' said Janos. ‘I got reasons.'

Pez turned to him: ‘You haven't got any ideas…because of Mary?'

‘Hell, no,' grinned Janos. ‘She's not troubling me—it's the other reason.'

‘I'll come with you.'

‘Because of the reason, I want to go alone.'

‘Greta bloody Garbo,' said Pez. He thought for a moment. ‘OK. But be careful, boy.'

‘Sure,' said Janos. ‘I'll be careful.'

They wriggled back out of the pit and slipped round the back of their doover, squatting near the head of their beds.

‘We'll move this doover back a few yards, later on,' said Janos. ‘She's too open. Lend me your rifle, will you? An Owen might be too short for this job.'

He took up Pez's rifle, snapped the bolt and checked the loading of the magazine. He tied a cloth bandolier of ammunition round his waist and picked up a couple of primed grenades. He straightened the pins so they could be pulled more easily and stuck the grenades in his belt.

‘I'll cut down the back and around to cross the river,' he said. ‘Give me three minutes and then tell Bairdie I've gone. He'll tell Company and Battalion so they'll know I'm over there.'

‘Good luck, boy—you bloody fool. Be careful,' said Pez.

‘Sure, I'll be back,' said Janos.

He moved away through the trees. The rifle was tucked under his arm as though he was going duck shooting. Pez watched until the trees hid him, then went and told Bairdie. Bairdie cursed and rang Battalion.

For three-quarters of an hour Pez lay in the shallow weapon pit where he had lain with Janos. Janos' Owen gun, loaded and cocked, lay in his hand; its nose poked through the bamboo camouflage. He watched the other bank, as two hundred other pairs of eyes watched through the leaves.

His eyes were fixed on the light green bush—but the jungle was blind and still. His ears were tuned to catch impossible sounds—a jungle boot cat-stalking five hundred yards away, or a green shoulder brushing like a shadow through the green tracery of the undergrowth.

It came suddenly and the sound of it was anti-climatic to the drama: a single heavy report and then, a few seconds later, as though the hunter had paused to take careful aim, another report from the same rifle.

‘That was ours,' said the Laird.

‘Both of them,' said Dick the Barber. ‘Both ours.'

‘I'll lay a spin that was Janos,' said Regan, as though his wager could intimidate the gods of chance and his own fear. ‘A spin that was Janos—I'll bet he gets back without a scratch, even.'

Twenty minutes later Janos re-crossed the river. They were all there to give him a hand up the slippery bank. Pez could only say: ‘You bastard—you silly, dumb bastard!' over and over again.

‘I'll be back in a minute,' said Janos.

Pez went with him down the track to Battalion.

Lieutenant-Colonel Connell was standing near his tent talking to the Egg Eater—the red-headed Major, and the Adjutant—Winnie the War Winner. Pez stopped on the edge of the clearing and Janos went on. Winnie and the Egg Eater seemed to withdraw as Janos walked casually across the clearing and it was as though he and Connell met alone.

‘There was a sniper across the river,' said Janos quietly. ‘I got him.' There was the faintest possible emphasis on the ‘I'.