The Long Green Shore (10 page)

Connell looked at him for a long time. ‘Good!' he said.

Janos turned and walked back to Pez and they went together down the track to their Company.

Later when they were gathered around Janos, talking it over, Regan looked at him with admiration.

‘Jeez, you're a cool customer,' he says. ‘Doesn't anything frighten you?'

Janos grinned. ‘I was shit-scared every step of the way,' he said.

We went forward on the fifth morning. We knocked down our tents and loaded our packs. We were to leave them at the ‘Q' Store before we crossed the river.

‘They'll be bunged up to you tonight,' they told us.

‘Yeah,' says Dick the Barber. ‘If we're still around to need 'em.'

Pez folded his tent in half and strapped it on the back of his pack. Janos had his gear ready and was sitting on his pack reading a greasy, much-thumbed edition of
Huckleberry Finn
—a Yankee service pocketbook edition that he had found down at the first camp. Pez checked round the doover to make sure nothing was left behind.

‘This your shirt?' he asked Janos, holding up a piece of muddy green.

‘Yeah,' said Janos. ‘But throw it away. I've got one and that's enough for any man on this trip.'

Pez bundled the shirt up and tossed it away out of sight in the bushes. Suddenly he felt a twinge of irritation.

‘I dunno—I think you ought to carry it—means you haven't got a dry change.'

Janos looked up slowly from his book. ‘How many shirts have you got?'

‘One,' said Pez.

‘Well, what the hell's all the excitement about?'

‘Jesus,' muttered Pez, half to himself. ‘The stuff we throw away—you could outfit three armies on it. Someone's got to pay for it.'

‘Well, take it easy, boy,' says Janos. ‘Take it easy—no need to snap my head off.'

‘Sorry,' grunted Pez.

He struggled into his equipment and pack and lay down on the comparatively dry ground that had been sheltered by the tent. The pack slid high up on his shoulders, under his head, to make a pillow. His rifle was lying across his body and the brim of his hat was pulled down covering his face.

When you slide down on your pack like that you can feel all the weariness and the small aches of your body settle down into comfortable leaden sediment in your bones and it would be good to lie like that forever.

Pez's eyes drooped, half-closed under the hat brim. They were heavy, burning a little, and pebbly from sleeplessness. He could feel his lips hot and dry—there was a taste of blood on them—and he could feel how the skin had tightened over his cheekbones.

But these things helped too, he realised. They were somehow in character, part of the rhythm, and they helped you to play the part of a soldier. That is the only way—to try and identify yourself with the jungle and the pattern of war. To become the animal that steps quietly and is sensitive to the flutter of movement or the whisper of alien sound, that can sleep in the rain and suck enough strength from an hour of sun. Withdraw, conserve yourself. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow. Time is the time of war or the time of peace. Gather your strength for the job in hand and keep just one small core of your brain where you can remember, without urgency and without despair.

There was still Helen and this problem.

Bob should be home on leave now. Would she tell him this time? Would she change her mind about waiting till the war was over, and tell him? How would you tell him? Would you just say: ‘Oh, by the way, Bob, I've been bouncing around with Pez while you've been away. I love him. I've decided to divorce you and marry him.'

And what would Bob say about it?

‘Oh, all right, dear, I'll have my things out by tomorrow night.'

Maybe that would be the way if people were intelligent and civilised—or if they were peculiarly inhuman in their emotions, and decadent. But there is nothing inhuman in the way you feel for Helen—it seems right that you should love and be together.

It's hard to imagine how Bob feels about Helen. Could he feel the same way you do? It always seems impossible that other people's blood should run as warm as ours and their hearts ache as deeply.

Did a man have a right to take another man's wife away from him? Or maybe you're forgetting that, theoretically anyway, wives don't belong to husbands any more. Maybe it was up to Helen—it was up to her to say yes or no—not for you or him to wonder if you had a right.

Funny thing—you'd known her for years before it happened—never thought of her that way before. It started that leave—she'd been unhappy and lonely and you'd been bored—too much grog and not enough to do. You'd known her since she was a kid—always been good friends—never thought of her like that before.

It started off as just a roll in the hay—and a damned good one, too—but it soon changed. It soon became…Hell! It was hard to put into words, except that it seemed good and right and proper to be together.

Well, the problem was still there and still unanswered. But there was an unreality about it from here—from this angle of the jungle slanting under the brim of a slouch hat—you couldn't work it out from here…

Janos was shaking him heavily by the shoulder.

‘Come on, boy, come on…Time to move—it's on for young and old.'

Half-asleep, Pez scrambled clumsily to his feet under the weight of his gear—shrugged the weight of the pack into a more comfortable position, slung his rifle on his shoulder and climbed into line behind Janos. Janos turned and grinned.

‘How you feeling, mate?'

Pez grinned back. ‘Better,' he said. ‘You know, it's a good thing we don't both get dirt on the liver at the same time.'

‘Right, three!' called Harry Drew. ‘Drop your packs at the “Q” Store as we pass.'

The section filed out and slogged down into the mud of the track.

You lie beside the track and watch them go. You lie with head and shoulders resting on your muddy pack, rifle resting across your body and your legs sprawled—the soldier rests where he can. (See the little red book.)

They come up tall and brush past you in a swish of green as they go. You see them from the dramatic perspective of the ground beneath their feet—the brass studs shining in the soles of the heavy jungle boots—the Yankee gaiters laced round the calf of the leg—the stained jungle-green slacks and shirt open at the neck—the rain-battered slouch hats slanting over one eye.

They come with their rifles slung over the shoulder, their Owens cradled under the arm. They lean slightly forward—their shoulders hooded against the weight of the pack—a cloth bandolier of ammunition slung round their waists—a couple of primed grenades stuck in their belts—a tin of bully beef and a packet of hard biscuits in their pouches.

Identification discs are tied round their throats with old bootlaces or pieces of cord and dangle on their breasts like crucifixes. A soldier's crucifix—meat tickets they call them: dead meat tickets.

They move along the track in single file, dumping their packs in the clearing on the bend, and pass on, stripped down for the trail.

Cairo Fleming, as he comes up level with you, grins and says: ‘Get off your back, you bludger.'

And you just grin back and say: ‘Good luck, mate—I'll be right behind you.'

‘Get one for me, too, Fluffy,' says young Onnie Smith, who is cleaning a Bren gun in the pit beside you.

‘Get one yourself,' says Fluffy. ‘There'll be plenty to go around.'

They go past and on—down to the river…

The river should have been clear. We had patrolled it every day.

But you can't trust the jungle—comb through it if you like, it is clean and safe, you say—but even as you pass, ambush may be gathering behind you, or in the trees above you.

They let the scouts go through and the head of the section reach the bank. They opened up when the body of the section was strung across the river.

Brogan died swiftly in the middle of the stream. He fell and his body was dragged away by the current. Young Griffo, acting stretcher bearer, forgot the bullets, as a man will do, and went to do his job—which was to help Brogan now he was hit.

But the current, as it twisted Brogan's body around, let his shattered head drift to the surface for a second. Griffo could see there was nothing for him but burying. The time for that was later. He bent again for the bank.

It was a solitary machine gun. The bullets came pattering over the water like recurrent bursts of hail. There was a horrible dream quality about it. You couldn't, in that moment, imagine that these drops falling in the river, skipping like stones, were really deadly. You couldn't tie them up with a phantom gun that was beating—stopping—beating somewhere a thousand miles away.

Oh, this is death and fear and ecstasy—and the lungs, and eyes and ears are filled enormous with the colour of it. The drill books don't provide for this. The instinct for the earth and cover is helpless here. We are caught in the horrible grey catalepsy of the rushing river.

There, on the bank, a thousand miles away, is life—there is the earth, our Mother, that we can embrace her—the sweet mud; the sheltering furrow; the strong protecting arm of trunks and trees.

Here we are naked in the empty plain of the river. This is no home—the earth we know, but here we are alien, rejected and exposed to the black rain. Our limbs are held in a leaden dream—we hurl ourselves for the other bank but we go with the horrible slow motion of a dream—and all the time the bright deadly rain is pattering around us in the river.

And yet we are not afraid.

This has been too sudden, too monstrously improbable, for fear to develop. All the chemistry of fear is working for our salvation—the adrenalin of fear shoots in our blood, firing a tremendous strength to fling us to the shore.

Before you feel true fear you must realise, you must be aware. The protecting dream-film disappears and you are seared with the burning brand that sends you screaming and helpless, fleeing—or with the corruption of fear that numbs you and leaves you helpless, trembling, transfixed.

Suddenly this obscenity flops on Regan's brain and he starts plunging through the water with a horrible bucking motion—like a terrified horse trying to drag itself from a bog.

It's funny in a way. It's almost funny.

Fluffy is laughing at him—a shrill, unnatural sound in all this roaring soundless tumult.

Harry Drew is yelling from the bank: ‘Come on! Come on! Come on!'

The innocent, pattering rain runs across the water and patters over Fluffy's body. He is still laughing—he drops his rifle—it splashes into the river—he is holding his stomach with both hands—laughing or screaming—he staggers on—laughing or screaming. He falls as he tries to run up the muddy bank—his hands still under him, holding his stomach—he twists his head sideways out of the mud—the mud is in his mouth, but he is still laughing—or screaming…it goes on and on. The sound goes on and on for a thousand years and we are caught in the grey nightmare of the river—we are shod with lead and clothed with iron…

Regan has fallen near the bank and Harry Drew is dragging him up from the river. Regan is crying—sobbing. Harry throws him into shelter against the trunk of a tree and turns for Fluffy. But Griffo reaches him first.

He is lying as he fell—his legs dredging in the water, his arms under him, his head turned sideways—laughing out of the mud that mires his mouth. The bank is running red under him—the blood runs down and is licked away in the foam of the current.

Young Griffo is tearing open the first-aid pack as he hurls himself through the water. He seems to move faster than any of us—he is doing a job for someone else.

He turns Fluffy over.

The kid's still sort of laughing and hanging on to his stomach—his fingers are spread wide and stiff but it's coming through them—his hands are muddy and bloody—his eyes are open. His face is still sort of laughing but his eyes are open and wide—and they know.

Griffo tears Fluffy's shirt down and the wounds lie open.

‘Oh, Christ, Christ, Christ,' Griffo is saying over and over. He scrapes the mud away from Fluffy's mouth.

‘You can't do anything for him,' snarls Harry Drew.

Fluffy's laughing turns to moaning and soon he will be screaming.

‘Knock him out!' snarls Harry Drew. ‘Hook him! Hit him! He's finished—put him out! He'll die before he comes to—don't let him suffer.'

Griffo looks up. He is white.

‘I can't,' he says, ‘I can't hit him.'

Harry scrambles over, snarling at him, but he groans when he looks at Fluffy.

‘Poor bastard—' he says. ‘Poor kid.'

He smashes his fist against Fluffy's jaw. The jaw snaps shut. Fluffy's body slumps. He is silent.

The blood still runs from him, staining the jungle green of his trousers black. It is running into the hostile river—licked up and flicked away in the alien current.

We should all have died in that river but, by the normal miracle of war, we survive.

Brogan is dead. Fluffy is dying. Young Sunny, the drag man, turned back and made the other bank, though with three bullets in one thigh. The Log has a bullet burn across his shoulders—Griffo goes to him.

All the others are safe. They have vanished—blended and gone into the silence and the jungle and the dripping leaf.

Old Whispering John is there, crouching against a stump, his eyes fixed on Bishie crouching ahead of him. Old John's dirty teeth are showing in a fixed little grin. The webbing pouches on his chest are riddled, and there are even bullet burns on his shirt. Later he is going to show them and boast about them: ‘How's that, eh? The old soldier gets through, eh?'

‘Funny,' he'll say with ill-concealed gloating. ‘Young Fluffy, his first up and he cops it, and me, the old soldier, I walk right through it with not a scratch. Funny, eh?'