Brother Fish (14 page)

At first there was only a small group. Then, one by one, truck by truck, they began to come in. Unit sergeants try to make lists of their men, but for some the list is small. The sergeants look at the pitifully few names and mutter: ‘Maybe they'll come in later.'

Hobart
M ercury
, 22 July 1950

Taejon and the other skirmishes and battles the Americans had fought on behalf of the South were a case of too few men, mostly inexperienced, attempting to hold too large an area, with nobody to watch the flanks. This was to be an oft-repeated tale in Korea. Now, with the whole of the 1st Marine Division brought into the war, General MacArthur had every right to be pleased with the American recovery.

If only we'd cared to listen, there was a warning in all this that we might not be entirely ready for combat. While the present assault had been led by the crack 1st Marine Division, the initial tactic in Korea, driven by the urgency of the situation, consisted of dribbling weak detachments of American troops drawn from three divisions of the four doing duty as occupation forces in Japan. These were not battle-hardened fighting men but troops recruited since World War II, most without military experience except for the cushy conditions that prevailed in occupied post-war Japan.

Of course we saw it quite differently. We were, we argued, at least the equivalent of the highly trained, combat-fit American marines. We realised that while our soldiering skills were a bit rusty, they were still there – a skirmish or two would soon see them oiled and polished to their former brightness. Most of the blokes had been under fire at some time or another; we even had some ‘thirty-niners' who'd been with the 2nd AIF from the start of World War II to the very end. You couldn't say they didn't know their stuff now, could you? Some, in fact most of us, had joined the war late but, with a few exceptions, me being one, had seen action in the Islands. Quite a few had held rank, which they'd relinquished in order to sign on for Korea, and there were some among our lot who'd been decorated. Rusty or not, we knew when the time came we would rise to the occasion.

As it turned out this wasn't exactly an accurate summation. For a start, some of the K Force blokes were getting on a bit and we'd all been corrupted by civilian life – you could see this in several of the blokes who hadn't yet managed to get rid of their beer gut and some still huffed and puffed a bit, stopping to hold their knees during a training run. It was a bit presumptuous at this stage to compare ourselves with the crack, super- fit up-to-the-minute marines. On the other hand, as older individuals and as soldiers with a fair bit of past experience, we were well ahead of your ordinary Yank grunt fighting on the peninsula at the time.

In our defence, we'd had next-to-bugger-all training as a battalion and later on when we'd been in a stoush or two and had got our shit together we were happy to compare ourselves with the marines and, for that matter, the crackerjack British permanent army units. Nevertheless, initially going in, it would be fair to say we were just a tad undercooked and overconfident.

Still, we were straining at the leash to have a go at the communist enemy and now the ref had gone and blown what seemed like the final whistle and we were going nowhere but home without having fired a shot at the enemy. I remember someone, I forget who, remarking that if only Rick Stackman hadn't got himself in the mess he was in, he'd be the only cove among us who'd be happy with MacArthur's victory.

We cheered ourselves up with the fact that we were on board the
Aitken Victory
on our way to Korea and we hadn't been ordered to turn back. At least we'd reach our intended destination and be able to claim we'd set foot on Korean soil.

We arrived at the port of Pusan the next morning and, somewhat to our surprise, were met by an American Army band playing ‘If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked a Cake' and a Korean Army band playing ‘Waltzing Matilda' with a distinctly Asian flavour. Not to be outdone and pleased to have arrived, a group of blokes from our battalion returned the favour with a rendition of what had become a ditty much favoured by our company, D Company.

‘We're a pack of bastards, bastards are we,
We're from Aus-tra-lee-a,
The arsehole of the world and all the Universe.
We're a pack of bastards, bastards are we,
We'd rather fuck than fight for lib-er-tee!'

At least the Yanks would know we'd arrived. It was fortunate that at the time of this patriotic choral rendition our commanding officer, Charlie Green, was out of earshot, being smothered in garlands of orchids by an official welcoming party of beautiful South Korean women. We assured ourselves, however, that he was a good bloke and would have privately enjoyed the joke.

The battalion was marched to the local station where we boarded an ancient train bound for Taegu where we were to be a part of the 27th Commonwealth Infantry Brigade. At Taegu we were joined by 1st Battalion, the Argyll and Southerland Highlanders and the 1st Battalion, the Middlesex Regiment.

Our first assignment was a behind-the-lines mopping-up operation in an area known as Plum Pudding Hills, which pretty well summed up our despair. A man would never be able to admit that he'd gone to Korea to fight the communists and had ended up doing what essentially amounted to military housework at, ferchrissake, an area named Plum Pudding Hills!

MacArthur, with his rapid victory, had done the dirty on us and we were far from happy little Vegemites.

CHAPTER THREE

A Member of the Club

Plum Pudding Hills was well named, being plumb in the middle of nothing much happening. Our job was supposed to be rounding up North Korean stragglers, which involved traipsing around aimlessly in the late-autumn sunshine – not bad if you like walking uphill all day carrying your haversack, rifle and full ammo. Maybe some of the other units caught one or two stragglers, but all we came across was a dead enemy soldier already pretty flyblown and high on the nose. We buried him and stuck a stick on his grave and placed one of his canvas boots on the stick. It was the best we could do – noggies aren't Christians so a cross wouldn't have made any sense, and at least the boot would tell anyone interested that a North Korean soldier lay under the little pile of windblown rock.

I guess we were pretty disillusioned – the morning radio was squawking the latest MacArthur pronouncement, and it was obvious that game, set and match wasn't far off. His 1st Cavalry Division was waiting on the border for UN permission to cross, where, if the broadcasts were to be believed, it would be all over in a matter of hours – well days, anyway. The bulletins told how the US Air Force was bombarding the hills on the far side of the 38th parallel where the enemy was in complete disarray.

We were sitting outside our tent attending to our blisters and generally feeling sorry for ourselves when Johnny Gordon suddenly up and said, ‘This is bullshit, why don't we go AWL?'

We all looked up in amazement. ‘What? Where? You got the urge to go walkabout, Johnny?' Ernie Stone joked.

‘Go to the front, see some action. No good here,' Johnny replied.

‘What, join the Yanks? Go missing, just like that? Yer mad?' I said.

Then Rex Wilson chimes in, ‘Why not!' He turns to Johnny, ‘Count me in, mate, bloody sight better than hangin' around this shithole.'

‘Hey, whoa, wait on! That's desertion – we'd be court-martialled!' Lance Corporal John Lazarou says, trying to exert his ever-so-trivial rank.

‘Yeah, that's if we were doin' a bunk like, you know, cowardice. But that ain't it now, is it? We'd be doin' the exact opposite. Who's ever heard of going AWL to get
into
a stoush with the enemy?' Ernie argued.

At the time Ernie's logic seemed totally compelling. We agreed we'd probably be docked a bit of pay and spend a few days in the guardhouse, but that was a small price to pay for being the first in the battalion – even the first diggers – to get a crack at the enemy.

‘Let's do it for Rick Stackman,' Johnny Gordon now volunteered. This was nothing less than a stroke of genius and clinched the matter once and for all. There seemed to be little purpose in pointing out that Rick's problem was with the Japs and we would be fighting North Koreans. I guess, in our minds, we lumped all noggies together and, anyway, it was common knowledge that the Japanese had used Koreans as guards in the POW camps of World War II and that they'd been the cruellest bastards of all. We now had a purpose, you could say, in fact almost a duty to desert to the front. If the army was going to lock Rick up like a common criminal his mates were going to see to it that justice was done and that he was suitably avenged for what the Japs had done to him on the Burma Railway.

That night ten of us got our gear together, grabbed our rifles and slipped out of camp some time after midnight. It didn't take long to hit the main supply route from the port of Pusan to the front. I don't know about the others, but finding myself out on the road knowing I was AWL was a bit scary, but I kept telling myself that I was buggered if I was going to end up fighting in two wars in which I had never seen the enemy or fired a shot in anger. The army owed it to me to give me a chance to go into combat. If they weren't going to do the right thing then I had no option but to take the law into my own hands.

Vehicles of every description clogged the road. If the calibre of Yank soldiers at the time wasn't all that impressive their ordnance sure was: they had more firepower mounted on wheels or tracks than I'd ever seen in one long line. After a while it became apparent that the ten of us hitching a ride were too many in one group so we broke up into two threes and a four and I found myself with Johnny Gordon, Rex Wilson and Ernie Stone, all good blokes to have beside you. We walked for a couple of hours, often outpacing the slow-moving convoy. The dust was awful, almost choking us, clogging our mouths and ears and burning our eyes. We finally managed to get a ride in the back of a five-ton truck. We'd been out looking for stragglers the previous day and I guess the emotion of having gone AWL just after midnight plus the three hours on the road meant we were exhausted and soon fell asleep. Next thing the driver was tapping me on the shoulder to say he'd reached his destination.

‘We at the front?' I asked, looking out at a hot dawn sky.

‘No, buddy, fifty miles short.' He paused, ‘What the hell you guys doing here, anyways?'

‘Same as you,' I replied. ‘We've come to fight.'

He laughed. ‘You're kidding me?'

‘Nah, we were getting impatient waiting behind the lines – thought we'd come forward a bit.'

‘You guys AWOL?' I guessed he meant AWL.

‘Well, yeah, sort of.' It was Rex Wilson who'd just woken and I noted that his face with yesterday's dust was almost as black as Johnny's, and mine must have been the same.

The driver pointed to my slouch hat. ‘Regular cowboys, eh?' Then, ‘Say, you wouldn't like to sell that hat?'

I was embarrassed, he'd given us a lift and seemed a nice enough guy. Then Rex Wilson chirped up, ‘Mate, we're Australians. I'd gladly sell you my wife but not my slouch hat. A digger can't do that.'

‘Sure. Well, good luck.' He shook his head, clucking to himself. ‘Crazy. You guys are plumb crazy.'

We got our gear together and hopped out of the truck and, in turn, shook his hand and thanked him. ‘Wait on,' he said suddenly, and went to the cabin of the truck to emerge moments later with four cartons of Lucky Strike and handed one to each of us.

On a sudden impulse I removed the pin and took the sunrise badge from my slouch hat. ‘A keepsake,' I said, handing it to him.

‘Crazy, man,' he said, pleased with the small gift. Then, not to be outdone, he removed the badge from his cap and handed it to me. ‘Fair exchange – I'll wear yours with pride, buddy.'

‘Me too,' I replied as we finally took our leave.

Quite soon after hitting the road we got a lift from another truck that dropped us twenty miles short of the 38th parallel. Here we found ourselves in a bit of a quandary. While there were plenty of trucks going to the brigade headquarters and even one or two going all the way to the forward battalions, reaching either destination and ending in a truck pool where questions would be asked wasn't all that smart. We were likely to run into an officer or even a senior non-commissioned officer who might not take too kindly to four soldiers appearing in their midst wearing the uniform of a foreign army.

‘What you reckon we should do?' Johnny asked.

Rex didn't volunteer an opinion. I turned to Ernie, who merely shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let's try to get as far up front as possible. They'll be reluctant to kick us out if we've made it all the way.' Then I added, ‘The sharp end always needs men. We're four extra rifles, and they can't say no to that.'

There was a sudden roaring, clanking and squealing accompanied by a deep rumble that shook the ground under our feet. Moments later a tank hove into sight over a small rise. We nodded to each other, then removing our slouch hats we waved furiously. Like some great behemoth the tank came to a halt several yards ahead of us and turned its engines off. The commander, perched on the turret, grinned and shouted down at us, ‘Last time I saw one o' them hats was in '45 in New Guinea. What can I do for you, boys?'