Brother Fish (13 page)

For example, Rick, who'd been a prisoner under the Japanese on the Burma Railway, couldn't come to terms with the locals. I guess he had good reason to hate the Japs. After a few beers he became very difficult and we soon learned to split and leave him on his own. Rick was big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself and you wouldn't want to be around him when he turned nasty. He was a dark-haired, lantern-jawed kind of bloke who looked like he needed a shave only moments after he'd had one. Normally he was easygoing and pleasant though admittedly a bit of a loner, the sort of mate you'd want by your side if you found yourself in a dark alley in a strange city. Back home in Australia, after a bit of a piss-up he'd become a bit obstreperous, but he wasn't the only one and I can't say he ever went completely off the air. Now, in the land of Nippon, he'd become a maniac. He'd start fights at the drop of a hat, taking on three or four Japs at the one time, usually besting them. We'd speculate that one day he'd pick on a noggy who was an exponent of jujitsu who'd clean him up big time, but this never happened. Walking back to catch the bus after a night on the grog he'd deliberately shoulder the locals off the crowded pavements, often knocking several of them sprawling. Then, as some little Jap lay whimpering, bruised and bleeding in the gutter, he'd stab a great stubby finger at him and shout, ‘That's for the Burma Railway, you little yellow bastard!' On three occasions the military police picked him up for creating a public nuisance and he'd been charged and placed in the guardhouse, and eventually he was confined to barracks where he seemed to go so quiet you could scarcely get a grunt out of him.

In later years I would have a great deal to do with the Japanese and when I could speak their language sufficiently well I got a better understanding of their highly structured and complex society, one which, it is my personal belief, the advent of democracy has done little to change. From the war we knew the Japanese had a capacity to be extraordinarily cruel, although this didn't show in their business dealings. Here they proved to be stubborn and patient negotiators, highly intelligent, hardworking, arrogant and, above all, suspicious. They invariably made decisions by consensus, or so it seemed, a process that seemed to take forever and initially greatly tried Jimmy's and my patience. Often, after endless days of negotiation, with every point covered a dozen times or more, we'd go to the airport with a business deal still unresolved. Then just as we were preparing to go through customs they'd nod and produce a contract or they'd try to wring a final concession out of us. But, as happened over the years to Jimmy and myself, many of them became our friends, and in this quite separate capacity they proved to be delightfully humorous, generous and loyal mates.

Jimmy and I found that in dealing with the Japanese, in business as well as at a more informal level, it was just as well to emulate their traditional ways of going about life. Although many of their social structures seem to contradict the very tenets of democracy and the freedom of the individual, they appear to be self-imposed. I guess any culture indoctrinated over hundreds of generations will always bend and twist a new ideology into an acceptable shape. Nothing has changed the notion that the hierarchical and formal structures, originally based on the samurai, are paramount in Japanese society. Democracy notwithstanding, they have only ever elected one party to their parliament. The Emperor, toppled from his celestial pinnacle at the insistence of the West, is no longer seen as divine, nevertheless, a great many Japanese have yet to be convinced, and all things still flow downwards from the throne. Japan is a bilateral society – you either make the rules or you obey them.

The chartered Qantas DC4 landed at Iwakuni where we took the train to the port of Kure, not far from Hiroshima where the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb. From Kure it was eight miles by truck to our barracks at Hiro. K Force arrived in dribs and drabs over the next two days, some even on scheduled Qantas flights. By the 11th of September 1950, 3RAR, previously at half strength, was now fully manned, though not quite ready for combat.

We'd been told that we could be called into action at any time and, while K Force had essentially taken it pretty easy at Puckapunyal, it began to dawn on some of us that we'd soon be fighting for our lives and that a bit of updated training might just come in handy. Added to this, the regular army blokes were a lot fitter than we were so when we headed off to the Hamamura training centre for Exercise Bolero we realised we would need to pull our fingers out if we didn't want to be seen as a complete shambles. The two weeks that followed soon sorted us out. The weather wasn't good. At times the rain came down in bucketsful and we were often up to our eyeballs in mud and slush. If only we'd known, with winter soon to be upon us in Korea, these training conditions were a Sunday-school picnic compared to what lay ahead.

On the 23rd of September, twelve days after we'd arrived in Japan, the call came to pack our gear for Korea. On the 27th we boarded the American transport ship
Aitken Victory
at Kure. We'd stowed our kit and the K Force blokes were leaning over the side of the ship watching the friends and families of the permanent army personnel crying and carrying on at the dockside. Then, John Lazarou yelled out from the opposite side of the deck, ‘Crikey! Come take a squiz at this, fellas!'

By far the more interesting spectacle was on the opposite side of the ship. Across a short strip of water stood the Japanese girlfriends and de factos who'd shacked up with single blokes and had now lost their meal tickets. They were carrying on a treat, crying and clutching each other, some even throwing themselves down, grabbing at the feet of their friends. This was something we'd never seen before, the normally reserved Japanese emotionally overwrought to the point of hysteria. I guess they were not looking forward to returning to the harsh realities of post-war Japan and, I suppose, despite the clash of cultures, some of these relationships may have blossomed into genuine love affairs. Certainly several of the young permanent army coves standing with us seemed pretty miserable.

As we were watching all this carry-on, there was a sudden commotion among K Force and someone was pointing up to one of the dockside cranes. There, 150 feet into the sky, sat Rick Stackman at the very tip of the extended arm of a crane. How a big clumsy bloke like him ever got up there and then crawled on his hands and knees to the very end of the crane is a complete mystery. He'd gone practically mute on us in the final two days we were at the Hiro barracks and now he was perched like an angry gorilla at the end of the dockside crane.

Someone must have called the military police, as they soon arrived and tried to persuade Rick to come down. We all did the same, shouting up our pleas and reassurances for him to join us on deck. ‘Bugger off!' he yelled down at them and then at us, ‘I ain't goin', I've had a gutful!'

Johnny Gordon, the Aborigine from Condabri who'd fronted me over my reasons for joining up, eventually climbed onto the ship's rail and, taking a flying leap, landed spider-like onto the side of the crane and then clambered up to the beginning of its extended arm to try to persuade Rick to come back down. ‘Come down, Rick, we're your mates, I'll look after you personal!' we heard him yelling. By this time Rick was sobbing and shaking his head like a small child who, punished by his parents, has climbed a tree and is too upset to come down.

The poor bastard had finally broken. He'd survived three and a half years of torture and starvation in the Japanese death camps and now, five years later, he could take no more. I guess his personal agenda for joining K Force must have been to get even with the enemy. But two weeks in Japan had brought all the memories back and cracked him wide open. We were eventually forced to sail without him. Later we heard he'd been flown back to Australia where he was court-martialled and given six months in the Military Corrective Establishment at Holsworthy before receiving a dishonourable discharge from the army.

In those days the military and the government still hadn't accepted the idea that war can damage men's minds and sometimes destroy them more permanently than any physical injury. Big Rick Stackman had a chest full of ribbons gained from honourable service to his country, but his record in Japan showed three arrests for being drunk and disorderly.

All the army cared to see in him was a troublemaker who'd delayed the ship's departure by an hour and a half and had effectively deserted his post while on active duty. Today, of course, we know he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and should have been declared TPI (Totally and Permanently Incapacitated) and given an honourable discharge and a disability pension. I've often wondered what happened to him, whether the army eventually relented and came good. He was a salt-of-the-earth type of bloke, the sort you come to think of as the backbone of the Australian army.

However, while Rick Stackman not coming with us had troubled us somewhat, we had another immediate anxiety to occupy our minds. On the 15th of September, a week before our date of departure for Korea had been announced, General MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the UN forces, launched an amphibious landing at Inchon, halfway up the Korean peninsula where the 1st Marine Division immediately struck out for Seoul. By the 21st of September, while we were still training in the mud and slush, his troops were threatening the North Korean Army's lines of communication. The communists were caught between a rock and a hard place, and they didn't know whether to continue to attack the UN forces desperately defending the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, or to turn and fight the marines. In any event they left the decision to turn and fight too late and scores of thousands of the communist troops were trapped. Our greatest fear now was that by the time we arrived the war would be all over bar the shouting.

The
Aitken Victory
set sail for Korea at about eight at night, and during the crossing we heard a news broadcast by General MacArthur announcing the North Korean Army had been routed. The communists had retreated across the 38th parallel with the South Korean Army in hot pursuit, and the Americans were champing at the bit on the border waiting for the word from the UN to go after the Reds to finish them off.

However, it seems they need not have worried, for the communist army by now was a spent force, thirteen of their divisions having disintegrated in the panic that followed the American landing and many thousands having been taken prisoner. MacArthur, in an effort aimed to influence a hesitant United Nations General Assembly, announced to the world that, given the opportunity, his army would make short work of the demoralised North Koreans and quickly unify the country.

Which was all very well, except for the fact that we were in this war as well. It looked to me as if, for the second time, I would be going home without having fired a shot in anger. I still wouldn't qualify as a returned serviceman and I'd go home still wearing my meaningless medal. Of course, by now I'd quite forgotten my secretly professed sympathy for communism. MacArthur was jumping the gun and we didn't find this at all amusing, him hogging all the glory for the goddamn marines.

After all, we'd gone to a lot of trouble to volunteer and now this Yankee blow-hard was going it alone, soaking up the glory. This time he wouldn't have to say ‘I shall return', as he did when the Japs kicked him out of the Philippines. Korea was turning out to be an anticlimax. It was all very well for MacArthur to be the surrogate Emperor of Japan, but, fair go, that didn't mean, with the help of the marines, he would again emerge as the all-conquering hero while we were still in Japan training, splashing around in the mud and the rain.

This wasn't entirely fair, of course. Throughout July, while coming to the aid of the South Korean forces, the Yanks had taken a fair old belting, notably at a town named Taejon on the mountainous Korean peninsula. It seems the North Koreans hadn't yet understood that they ought to be afraid of America's might. Unfamiliar with the communist method of maintaining a strong frontal attack while, at the same time, by means of infiltration, initiating surprise attacks from the side and rear, the Americans had come off second best on their first encounters with the enemy.

The Australian papers at the time were full of the hiding the American occupation forces, rushed into battle with little preparation, were taking trying to expel the communist invaders. Even before the special K Force recruitment was announced, my interest in the new war must have been obvious to Gloria. She handed me a clipping from the newspaper, dated 22nd of July 1950. ‘Before you go getting any ideas, Jacko, take a look what the communists are doing to the Americans.' It was the first of many clippings she was to cut out and paste into her ‘war journal', which I've kept all these years.

Young Americans, tired, shocked,
straggle to safety

A
dvanced us headquarters in korea
, Fri. –
Filthy young
Americans with muscles crying for rest, and fear deep in
their eyes and bellies, are straggling into this rear area today
for what the Army calls ‘regrouping', says the United Press
correspondent, Gen. Symonds.

They haven't eaten for hours. The only possessions they have are their powder-grimed rifles and carbines, clutched tight in their hands.

Hungry as they are, many of them don't have time to eat the rations waiting for them, but flop down in the dirt with a steel helmet for a pillow and fall into an uneasy sleep punctured by dreams of the ‘nightmare alley' they had to travel to get here.