Papua (3 page)

The men of the company accepted the former British officer as their senior NCO because he knew what he was doing. And no one questioned George Spencer’s physical courage on the battlefield. He not only wore a DCM riband on his chest but also that of a Military Medal.

George was a tall and slightly stooped man in his late thirties. He had the fine features of an English aristocrat and always seemed to wear an expression of bemusement as if all that occurred around him was nothing more than a bad joke. But now that expression was gone and his face reflected the terror and relief of the past minutes – minutes that had seemed like years to the men who had survived the attack.

He stood in the trench briefing his company commander.

‘I’ve sent a runner to battalion headquarters to report the situation,’ he said, wiping his face with the back of a grubby hand. ‘We took more prisoners than casualties, Jack,’ he added to reassure his friend who had the blank look of a man not comprehending reality. George knew the responsibility of command ultimately balanced the books between how many would die and how much could be achieved in a battle. He did not envy Jack’s responsibility for the butcher’s bill to be tendered for human lives. ‘Looks like you took a hit yourself,’ he added. ‘I will get someone to look at it.’

‘Thanks, George,’ Jack replied in a tired voice. ‘But I can bind it myself. Didn’t even notice it until now so it mustn’t be too bad. Definitely not a blighty.’

The strain was showing but had held off until after they had taken their objective. Only Jack’s hands shook but he could hide them from an observer. He did not want to bind the wound until his sergeant major was out of sight. To do so now might reveal how badly his nerves were on edge.

‘We hold here until the brigade catches up?’ George queried. ‘Can I tell the men who are not engaged in immediate duties to stand down?’

Jack nodded. ‘Give the order to reinforce this trench in case Fritz decides to counter attack,’ he said as his world of command came back to him. ‘But between you and me, I don’t think they will. They seem to be falling back to their main lines. Guess that’s where they are going to chew us up as we advance.’

‘You realise, old chap,’ George said as the look of bemusement began to replace the expression of battle fatigue, ‘that the men we fought today are amongst the best regiments the Hun have left. And yet we were able to rout them. That has to say something about German morale at the moment. It may be possible that this war is almost at an end.’

Jack made a feeble attempt at a smile. ‘Your British generals have been saying that every year for as long as I can remember. This war is never going to end while their bloody incompetence rules.’

The sergeant major did not reply. Although he had enlisted in the Australian army, the generals Jack disparaged were his by nationality and his loyalty was still primarily to Britain, not to a nation that was only seventeen years old. The mantle of colonialism still hung over the thinking of many in Australia after the Antipodean colonies federated to become a nation but still existed under the British crown.

Along the trench men moaned in their pain and the hostility towards the foe was temporarily put aside to treat those in urgent need of medical attention.

‘I will go and check on the boys,’ Jack said. ‘See how they are bearing up. Tell the platoon commanders I want to see them in twenty minutes for an orders group here.’

‘Sir.’

Sergeant Major Spencer also left to carry on with his duties. There was food, water and ammunition to be brought up and the evacuation of wounded and prisoners to the rear to be organised. He snapped at men who were sitting around smoking to go about their duties of fortifying the trench and made mental notes on the condition of the troops still standing. As the company sergeant major his responsibility to the welfare of the men was no less arduous than that of his commanding officer. The onus for keeping the company supplied with the vitals to wage war rested with him. He would talk to the platoon sergeants who would give him their lists of supplies needed to replenish their stocks. Snapping at the men lounging about reasserted his position in the company as their disciplinarian.

Jack made his way down the trench, stepping over the dead and wounded. He was pleased to see that his company was going about its duties as a professional army should. His attention was drawn to one of his men arguing with a badly wounded German officer. The officer was speaking English, but with some difficulty, and lapsed into German to make his point. The soldier tending the wounded man glanced up at Jack when he approached. ‘You know what this bugger wants, sir?’ he asked.

‘He seems to be concerned about someone, Private Casey,’ he replied. ‘I will talk to him.’ The officer was of the rank of major with a finely chiselled face and intelligent eyes. Jack felt a touch of sympathy for the man. The officer seemed to be around his own age and had the handsome appearance of a German aristocrat. Jack could also see that there was more than the pain of his wounds reflected in his eyes. There was also the pain he himself feared most – to lose a fight and lose your men.

‘I am Captain Jack Kelly, sir,’ Jack said in German. ‘How can I help you?’

The officer looked up at him. He seemed surprised. ‘I am Major Paul Mann and I must say that you speak German very well.’

‘My mother was German,’ Jack replied as he squatted beside the wounded officer. ‘She couldn’t speak very good English so German was my first language when I was growing up.’

Private Casey partly rolled Major Mann onto his side and Jack noticed that the major’s back had been shredded by shrapnel although his thick trench coat had helped absorb the shock of the metal fragments. The major did not complain although Jack could see that he was in great pain.

‘You are also wounded,’ the major said.

Jack shrugged off the observation. ‘Nothing to write home about.’

‘I would ask a favour, Captain Kelly. There is another officer with me. A captain. Could you tell me if he is still alive?’

‘Certainly, Major. What is his name?’

‘He is Wolfgang Betz. He is to marry my sister when this is all over.’

Jack glanced around to see a corporal oversighting the reinforcement of the rear edge of the trench. ‘Corporal!’

‘Sir!’

‘Have a look around and see if you can ascertain the whereabouts amongst the prisoners of a Captain Wolfgang Betz. When you find him, send him down here to me.’

‘Will do, sir,’ the corporal replied.

‘Thank you, Captain Kelly,’ Paul said. ‘I understood what you said to the man.’

‘It can only be for a short time, you understand,’ Jack cautioned. ‘We have to get your lot back behind the lines.’

The major nodded. ‘Were you the officer who commanded the attack against us?’ he asked.

Jack hesitated. This was a question of tactics but he broke the rule when he realised that the question was asked at a personal level, as if they were two prizefighters introducing themselves in the ring. ‘On your section I was the officer who led the attack.’

‘I must congratulate you on your professionalism, Captain Kelly. I have survived this war since 1914. I thought I might just make it to the end.’

‘You will,’ Jack said with the hint of a smile. ‘They will probably send you to England to an officer’s camp as a prisoner of war. At least you are out of it now.’

‘You are not English?’

‘No, I’m an Australian, but I wonder about that as home for me has been up north in Papua for the last few years.’

At the mention of Papua the major gripped Jack’s hand. ‘I was at Finschhafen before the war. I have a copra plantation there although my original home is in Munich.’

‘I’ll be damned!’ Jack uttered in English then switched to German. ‘It’s a small world, Major.’

Paul released his grip and his face twisted into a grimace of a smile. The pain was bad. ‘I wish we were still there, my friend,’ he sighed. ‘I loved the tropics more than Munich itself and so did my wife. We returned to Germany for the birth of my first child and we have not been back since. The plantation was being managed by one of my men until you Australians landed in New Guinea and seized our properties.’

‘My wife chose to stay home in Adelaide when I returned north to find gold after we married,’ Jack said, tactfully changing the subject.

Paul’s expression suddenly took on a look of recognition. ‘You would not be the same Jack Kelly who our police caught in Kaiser Willemsland back in ’12 would you?’

Jack’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘Yeah, that would be me. If I remember rightly your Governor Hahl wasn’t very impressed at the time. Tried to tell him his boundaries were in the wrong place and that we were in Papua and not the territory belonging to Germany.’

‘I heard about the incident from the boys working on my plantation. They said that the Governor went easy on you because of your German blood.’

‘Could have locked us all up but he was a good sport about it. Anyway, that was in a different lifetime when I was pretty young.’

‘Are you going back to Papua when the war is over?’ Paul asked.

Jack had not thought about Papua for a long time. ‘I hope so,’ he said quietly and with some hesitation. ‘All I have to do is convince my wife to come with me this time but that is going to be hard as we now have a son. He was born while I was away.’

Paul could see the pain in his enemy’s face and felt sympathy for the man. ‘You have never seen your son,’ he said. ‘That must be a terrible thing to bear. I have been more fortunate. I once had leave at home in Munich where I was able to see my family again. But that was a year ago and I worry for them. Things are bad in Germany now.’

‘You will see them again,’ Jack said. ‘My sergeant major tells me the war will be over soon.’

Paul looked away and forced back the tears. The man was not unlike himself, although a man hours before he had been sworn to kill. None of what was happening made any sense. All that mattered now was surviving this hell and going home. ‘I hope you make it, Captain Kelly,’ he said. ‘And I hope we meet again one day.’

Two soldiers appeared with a stretcher and the major was placed on it gently at Jack’s bidding. ‘When we find Captain Betz I will tell him that you are going to be fine,’ he said in parting. But the look of sadness in the major’s face reflected that he had already concluded the young man who was to be his future brother-in-law was dead. Jack watched as the stretcher bearers hoisted the wounded man over the trench and off to a hospital enroute as a prisoner of war to England.

The corporal returned to report his findings. ‘Found a dead Fritz by the name of Wolfgang Betz down the trench a bit, sir. Had these papers on him,’ he said, thrusting a pile of letters into Jack’s hand. ‘Looks as if one of our boys gave him a touch of steel.’

‘Did he have a Luger on him?’ Jack asked with a sudden realisation that it might have been he who bayoneted the dead officer.

‘No Luger, sir,’ the corporal answered in a flat voice. ‘He had a Mauser rifle in his hands.’ Jack felt an unexpected sense of relief. Of all the men he had personally killed in the war this was one that he was not meant to. ‘Thanks, corporal,’ he said as the NCO moved away from his company commander.

The corporal had good reason to depart quickly. The Luger concealed under his trench coat was a valuable souvenir and he was not about to hand it over to anyone else.

Jack turned the pile of letters grubby from the dirt of the war over in his hands. All had been written in the same neat hand, he noticed, presuming rightly that they were from the dead German’s fiancée – the sister of Major Mann. But Jack had many tasks, including a briefing to his platoon commanders for their next set of objectives, so without much thought he thrust the letters into his pocket. The war was far from over and he had yet to get himself and his men home alive.

H
is name was Lukas and he was four years old but to Jack his son was almost a total stranger. They sat opposite each other as the rail carriage bumped and jolted into Sydney, the acrid smell of coal soot filling the compartment.

‘Next stop Strathfield,’ a bored voice cried down the passageway. Jack stood and reached to the rack above to retrieve his old army duffel bag. ‘We get off here, son,’ he said gently to the little boy, who was watching his every move with continuing trepidation. ‘Your Aunt Mary and Uncle Harry will finally get to meet you.’

Lukas slid from the seat and stood silently awaiting the next instruction. Jack placed a hand on his son’s shoulder to steady him as the powerful steam engine hissed its protest at being restrained. The carriage jerked violently as the brakes were applied and faces flashed past the window as the train slowed to a stop. The platform was temporarily covered in a billow of smoke and steam.

Jack held the boy steady until he was sure the carriage would not move again and felt his heart breaking. In the three days of travelling by train from Adelaide to Sydney via Melbourne his son had said little to him. The concept of a father was not something he could comprehend. The people who took care of him after his mother went away to heaven said that his father was coming to fetch him. And suddenly enough the frightening stranger had come into his life to take him away from the home that he had known with his mother, that beautiful, soft creature who had made him feel warm and wanted.

But one day she got sick. She coughed a lot and lay in her bed muttering strange things. The neighbours came and Mrs Roth arrived wearing a mask over her face. With her was a man who was called a doctor. Their murmured voices told him that something was terribly wrong. His mother seemed to be asleep and they ushered him out of the room. Something called the flu had made his mother go to sleep and then go away to heaven, they told him. It was confusing because Mrs Roth said that his father would be home soon but that she would look after Lukas until he arrived.

Now he was in the company of this frighteningly big man who spoke gently to him but was a stranger all the same. Lukas felt a numbness in his life and cried when he tried to go to sleep. He wanted his mother back but the big man said that she was somewhere he could not see her. Now they were in a place of other strangers and the world he once knew was gone forever.

‘Jack!’ Mary screamed in her delight at seeing her long lost little brother step from the train. She rushed forward and enveloped him with a hug fit to crush a response from a man. Jack accepted the assault as something a sister was entitled to inflict on him. He had last seen her the day he set off for the war in Europe. It was now summer of 1919 and he had not seen Sydney for almost four years.

Mary was now in her late thirties. Tall and serene, she had a pleasant face that seemed never to age. Her husband Harry grinned broadly from behind her as he thrust out his hand, welcoming home his brother-in-law. ‘Who is this young fella who looks just like you, Jack?’ he said merrily when handshakes had been exchanged.

‘That, Harry,’ Jack replied, ‘is Master Lukas Kelly.’ Harry Nesbitt extended his hand to Lukas who stood wide-eyed beside his father. The boy was hesitant but accepted the grasp.

‘What he needs is a great big hug – not a handshake,’ Mary chided as she scooped Lukas up in her arms. He did not resist and even experienced a faint, warm memory from the embrace. He liked this new stranger and felt safe in her presence. ‘I am your Aunt Mary,’ she said and suddenly plopped a wet kiss on his cheek which Lukas instinctively wiped at with an exclamation of disgust. Then he did something Jack had not seen the boy do before. He smiled. The tough former soldier who had survived the carnage of the war in Europe quickly looked away lest anyone see the tear that had come to his eye.

‘C’mon, Harry,’ said Mary. ‘Help Jack with his bag and we’ll go home to a big roast lamb dinner.’

Harry Nesbitt attempted to grab the duffel bag but Jack slung it over his shoulder. The four made their way to the exit, Lukas remaining by his aunt’s side. It appeared that she was not about to let her nephew go.

‘I got the news as soon as I disembarked in Adelaide,’ Jack said as the three sat at the table after the promised dinner had been consumed. ‘I survive a bloody war and Annie dies from the flu only weeks before I get home.’

Mary could see that the beer accompanying the meal had loosened much emotion in her brother. She knew his moods well. Growing up, she had cared for him in lieu of their mother who was often bedridden with recurring illnesses.

‘It was a terrible time,’ Harry said. ‘So many dead from the outbreak. We have never seen anything like it. But we are well and it seems the epidemic has run its course.’

‘When was Annie’s funeral?’ Mary asked.

‘Six weeks before I got home. A Mrs Roth looked after Lukas, a nice enough woman. Annie had told her I was coming home so she knew to expect me.’

‘You look worn out, Jack,’ Mary observed. ‘You ought to get a good night’s sleep.’

Jack nodded. He wasn’t all that sleepy but he did want to be alone to reflect on the future. He excused himself and Mary showed him to his room. She gave her brother a short hug and closed the door behind him.

Jack sat on the edge of the bed and removed his boots, looking around the room. The house was a dark red brick building in a neat tree-lined street. Harry had done well out of the war, providing printed documents for the armed forces. He had tried to enlist when the war broke out but was excluded because he owned a small print shop deemed important to the war effort. He and Mary had been married for twelve years but despite their efforts, Mary remained childless. From the way she took to mothering his son Jack could see that his sister was a woman who should have had children.

The boots fell to the floor and Jack sank back against the bed with its soft eiderdown cover. He stared at the ceiling. He was now a widower with a son who may as well have been a stranger. He had no profession other than that of a gold prospector and his future was unknown. He thought about Annie and felt the guilt of a man who has lost a woman he knew he would have returned to as a stranger. Too many years had passed between them with his service overseas. When it came down to it he had to admit he had not really loved his wife. They had married when she discovered she was pregnant. A country girl from a small town outside Adelaide, they had little in common other than the unexpected arrival of a child. But Jack had done the right thing to appease her family. It was a common enough story. He had come home from Papua to attend his beloved mother’s funeral and met Annie at the wake. A short and passionate swirl of events led to a night in the woolshed. Love promised cheaply for the sake of her body and the unappreciated responsibility that followed. But then he had left his pregnant bride immediately after their honeymoon in Adelaide and returned to Papua. When war broke out he enlisted in Sydney and was shipped out immediately. The news that he was a father reached him in France.

Jack sat up and reached for his duffel bag beside the bed. Old army habits died hard and his immediate personal property was always near at hand. He rummaged through the bag until he found the pile of letters. They still had the stains of war. He undid the ribbon that bound them and searched for the small photograph. She caught his eye as she always did. Hers was a noble face with high cheekbones and a thick mass of dark hair tied back and accentuating her deep and enigmatic eyes. ‘Erika,’ he said as he stared at the photo of the woman who had written the passionate letters to her lover. ‘I wonder what you are doing right now.’

Erika Mann was the sister of the German major Jack had met on the Western Front only weeks before the war finally ended. In the turmoil of organising his company for a further advance Jack had forgotten to hand over the letters to the intelligence section. He had later read them out of curiosity and the beauty of the young German woman’s words had entranced him. Having decided that the letters had no significance to military matters, he kept them.

At the time he had wondered more about the young German woman than he had about his own wife. Even now he felt the guilt return. Annie was dead but their son remained in his life as a reminder. She was in the little boy’s eyes – and in his sad smile. He wanted to love his son, as he knew she had, but for now they were still strangers.

He carefully placed the photograph inside a letter and returned them to the duffel bag.

That night Harry and Mary woke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of Jack’s whimpering and his shouted commands to soldiers long dead. But Jack was hardly aware of the commotion. He was in a sleep filled with nightmares of exploding shells and men screaming as they died in a sea of blood.

Neither Harry nor Mary made mention of Jack’s disturbing behaviour during the night. They had heard stories from friends of men who had served on the front acting that way in their sleep. Shell-shock, some called it. Mary hoped that Jack’s nightmares would fade with time and the happy young brother she remembered from their childhood would return. What she saw now was a man haunted by his immediate past. It was as if he fought to control his very body at times. His hands sometimes shook and he often seemed to be teetering on the edge of an explosion.

‘What do you have planned for today, Jack?’ Mary asked as she spread jam on bread for Lukas, who was sitting quietly beside her at the kitchen table. He seemed to be avoiding his father who had terrified him one night on the train trip when he started yelling when he looked as if he were asleep. He’d been yelling things about ‘fix bayonets’ and warning invisible people to ‘look out for the bombs’.

‘I had planned to see some of the blokes in town,’ he replied, sipping a cup of tea. ‘You think you could look after Lukas for me?’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ she said, placing her hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Give us a chance to do things around the house together.’

Jack glanced up at his sister. ‘I think he would like that,’ he said. ‘I think a woman’s company is what he needs right now considering everything that has happened.’

‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Jack,’ Mary said with a wan smile. ‘Just want to know if you will be home for dinner with us.’

‘I don’t know. Depends on how things go with the boys.’

He finished the tea and excused himself. The short walk to the train station and the trip to Central in Sydney gave Jack more time to think about the future. George Spencer had elected to return with the battalion to Sydney and he had kept in touch with his commanding officer, agreeing to meet in Sydney after they were demobilised.

The hotel was crowded. Men in uniform jostled with young men in smart suits. It was lunchtime and the weather warm outside. Jack found the tall Englishman easily enough. He stood aloof in a corner of the bar holding a large cold beer in his hand. George looked different in his smart suit and Jack felt just a little shabby in his working man’s open-necked shirt and baggy trousers. They were his from pre-war days and he was relieved the moths hadn’t got to them.

‘George, you old bastard,’ Jack greeted his friend. ‘Good to see you again.’

George Spencer offered out his free hand and the two men shook enthusiastically.

‘I’ll get you a beer. Here, hold mine and make sure some son of a convict does not purloin it.’

Jack grinned and took the beer. The others in the bar were strangers. As a South Australian he could not talk football to those around him. They followed the English code of rugby whereas he was a former Australian Rules football player. His only real links in this city – other than his sister – were with a handful of men he had served with. George returned and both men raised their glasses in a mutual toast.

‘The old battalion.’

For the first hour they exchanged as much news as they could on the whereabouts of the men of the battalion since their arrival home. It was a conversation many around them were having, as the scars of war were not yet a year old. Jack also talked about his son and how he seemed to be settling down in the care of his sister. It was not normally a subject he would discuss but George was a man with whom he had shared three traumatic years of his life.

‘When are you going back to Papua?’ George asked across the top of his fourth glass.

‘Don’t know if I can,’ Jack reflected. ‘I have responsibilities now and my brother-in-law has offered me a job at his printing business. Besides, I’m broke. Not enough to put together the gear I need to go prospecting again.’

George gazed across Jack’s head at the open door. Outside the sun shone with the pale but warm blueness that the Englishman had come to appreciate. ‘You are not the kind of man who would be happy working in a factory for the rest of his life,’ he said, as if speaking to the sunlight outside. ‘You would come to resent your son for tying you down to a life that you are not suited to.’

Jack wanted to protest his friend’s observation but knew that he spoke the truth. ‘I just can’t dump my boy on my sister,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be right. The boy and I are meant to be together.’

George looked back at Jack. ‘Might he not be better off with your sister?’ he asked gently. ‘From what you have told me the boy is missing a woman’s touch this early in his life.’

Jack thought about the Englishman’s statement. What he said made sense. Given the chance to return to Papua he might find enough gold to set himself and his son up for life.