The Turning Tide (10 page)

Our main task was to locate planes, ships and installations so Darwin could bomb them. We signalmen went wherever we were needed, and in early October a few of us were sent to help set up the East Observation Post overlooking the capital, Dili.

On the way there we stopped for the night in a village where a 2nd Company patrol was camped. One of their boys was Jacka, brother of our sniper, Davo. Sitting around the small fire that night, Davo said he couldn’t figure out why the Portuguese weren’t fighting beside us.

Jacka looked amazed. ‘Davo, what did they tell you about this place before they sent you here?’

Davo said, ‘Bugger-all.’

‘Babes at arms,’ said Jacka, shaking his head. ‘Listen, kiddies, you need to know this. It was us who screwed the Portuguese by coming here in the first place. Sure, the Dutch wanted us to stop the Nips nicking West Timor. But the Portos own the East and they’ve been neutral ever since Adolf got unfriendly. They didn’t want a bar of us.’

‘So what happened, Jacka?’ said Davo.

‘The brass sent us to Dili and just about held a gun to the Porto governor’s head, saying we’d help whether he liked it or not. But then that drew in the Japs.’

‘What, they wouldn’t have invaded East Timor if we hadn’t been here first?’ I asked, shaken.

‘You got it in one. They already had all the Dutch East Indies. They didn’t need this godforsaken place. Not till we stumbled into the china shop.’

‘Shit,’ said Davo thoughtfully.

‘Okay. Lesson two, my little chickadees,’ said Jacka grimly. ‘The Timorese have spent forever hacking off one another’s heads, stealing chooks and women and burning down huts. National sport. Keeps them happy, spears, bow-and-arrow stuff.’

He started rolling up a cigarette. ‘But the Dutch treated them like dogs. And the Portos made them work in their plantations. Now the Japs are saying they’ll free the natives from all that colonialism and some think it’s a cracker of an idea.’

‘But don’t the
criados
support us?’ I said.

‘Oh yeah, plenty hate the Japs as much as we do. And things weren’t too bad till about six or eight weeks ago. Then it all went tits-up.’

He lit his little smoke and stared at the glowing end, rubbing his thin face. I realised how desperately tired he was.

‘About a month before you boys got here, the Nips armed a horde of West Timorese and sent them east to hunt us and our
criados
. They haven’t stopped since. Burning villages, taking heads, all the rest. Only now they’ve got guns, not spears.’

‘But can’t the East Timorese fight back?’ asked Davo.

‘With what? Our brass doesn’t want them to have guns. They might turn them on their colonial masters, mightn’t they?’

‘So,’ I said, ‘they stick with us and die. Or they go over to the Japs and get left alone.’

Jacka sighed. No one spoke.

Chapter 10

Late March 1983 – Palm Sunday – and I’m in an antinuclear demonstration marching up Swanson Street, one hundred thousand strong. President Reagan, the senile film star, has restarted the nuclear arms race after it seemed for a blessed year or two that mutually assured destruction was winding down.

I did my share of Vietnam demos, but now we’ve got to get out there again. The thought of nuclear weapons is monstrous, agonising. I walk in the crowd but don’t have a placard. I’m only there to show there’s more of us who care about this than the power-crazed madmen can ever imagine.

I look around the crowd – people holding children by the hand or carrying them in slings. Posters, placards, anti-nuke symbols everywhere. Young people, middle-
aged, old. Children, parents, grandparents. Above all, sane, intelligent, generous people, up against global bloodlust.

Betty, oh, Betty. Your feathered brows, your teasing eyes, the sweet silk of your skin. I miss you so terribly. I wish you were here to see this, to know people are trying to stop the madness even today.

I notice a cluster of my students and wave politely. They wave back, surprised: their professor? Demonstrating? Wow, that’s weird. A little later I see Lena’s red-gold hair. She’s with a girl and boy in hippie gear and one of the engineering post-grads I vaguely know. They’re older kids, more sophisticated than Lena, and I’m surprised she’s hanging around with them.

She sees me and comes over.

‘Isn’t this fantastic, Mike? So many people. The government’s got to pay attention now.’

‘I hope so. But don’t expect it.’

‘You irredeemable optimist,’ she says, laughing.

‘Lena? The people you’re with. Have you known them long?’

‘Not long. I met Steve at a concert the other night. He’s really nice. He’s in engineering.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘And Angel’s doing biology, she’s amazingly cool. Not sure about Greg, though. He just hangs around.’

‘Yes. Well. Look after yourself.’

‘Okay, Mike. See you later.’ She returns to her friends.

The crowd comes to a ragged halt. There are a few speeches through an unreliable amplifier but the sense is clear. We cheer and applaud and pray that these demonstrations by millions of people all over the world on this
special day will somehow tilt the scales towards sanity and away from premeditated genocide.

I remember the grey wastelands of Hiroshima and feel sick with sorrow.

We set up the Dili observation post in a good spot where we could easily see ship, plane and troop movements. I’d cipher the information into groups of letters, then transmit it to Darwin in Morse code. But we hadn’t gone unnoticed. In mid-October our ridge was buzzed by a Zero, then next day bombed and machine-gunned by three planes. Luckily they missed us. It was the first time I’d been bombed. It was over in seconds but the noise was appalling, the terror unspeakable.

A few days later we could see a lot of troop activity around Dili, then suddenly realised it was heading in our direction. We quickly dispersed into small groups, to rendezvous later. About six hundred Japanese arrived on the mountain with mortars and spread out.

At one stage there were units on ridges either side of us. We – me, Davo and two other blokes – were huddled behind and half-under some fallen trees and I could clearly hear and see the Japanese closest to us. I kept very, very still, my heart pounding.

I could understand most of their conversation – the usual ‘Watch it’, ‘What’s over there?’, ‘Move over’, ‘Be quiet’ (from the corporal), exclamations and swearing. But it was the sight of them surprised me. We’d been told they were tiny men with dreadful eyesight, yet some of these soldiers
were far from short and only a few had glasses. I should have realised it was just propaganda. Some of the men I saw against the skyline were so well built they reminded me of my old friend Ken.

As we lay there, hardly breathing, my mind raced. I hadn’t given Ken a thought for ages; too much had been happening. In any case, I still couldn’t imagine him as one of the enemy, not like these men. But dear God, I hoped we’d never meet.

And Betty, an Australian-Japanese girl, trapped in a country at war with her homeland. If the Allies won – and the odds of them doing so were improving daily as the Americans landed staggering numbers of men and weapons – what punishment would then descend upon Japan? Upon gentle Betty?

Finally the soldiers passed beyond us. We could see their progress from the smoke of the native huts they casually set on fire. When they’d had enough fun they withdrew and returned to Dili. We went back to the observation post and kept reporting.

My
criado
was named Jorges. He said he was twelve but ten was more likely. He was small, sturdy, happy, able to carry his own body weight in gear without breaking into a sweat. And loyal. Frighteningly loyal.

I knew we’d have to be withdrawn eventually. We were holding regiments of Japanese back from New Guinea battlefronts where they could be doing serious damage. We were mosquitoes – irritating, infuriating – and if we hung around for too long we’d be crushed.

The brass had to withdraw us. And then what would happen to Jorges? To his friends who’d thrown in their lot with us because we didn’t treat them like dogs, because we didn’t force ourselves upon their women?

The Japanese raped without mercy, imprisoning Timorese girls in their ‘comfort stations’, to be violated day after day until they couldn’t walk. Australians were far from perfect but at least we were officially ordered to be respectful: survival depended on it. This was not to say there were no women. Some of the Portuguese administrators had demure dark-eyed daughters, but they were untouchable except by officers.

Still, a few of us got lucky too: Timorese women were independent and friendly and some made their interest obvious. Once we were camped overnight at a village and I met a young woman with lovely cheekbones and a teasing smile. Her black hair was in a glossy knot and she was wearing a traditional sarong.

Her name was Aida; a tiny thing, hardly came up to my shoulder. She took my hand and led me quietly into the bush. She spread a cloth on the ground and when we lay down nothing else mattered. She gave me a moment of sweet pleasure, unique in those months of desperate effort.

I wanted to give her something in return. All I could find in my pack was a small mirror, but it seemed to please her. When we left the village Aida waved at me. I waved back, hoping fervently she’d grow old in her own land, with children and grandchildren and a good life, and never, never be hurt by the Japanese. But all I could give her was a mirror.

In late October I was sent to fix a C Platoon radio in Atsabe, an outpost in the mountains. Bullock came with me as escort. We’d been great friends since our fight at the Prom. He’d often joke about the terrible scar I’d inflicted on his brow, which was almost invisible, unlike the one on my poor knuckles.

Our
criados
, Jorges and Lilimo, came along too. We had a pony to carry our gear, and after a day of mountain-bashing we trudged into camp in the late afternoon. It was outside Atsabe village, halfway up a rocky hill.

I was chuffed to find Johnny there, sitting against a tree, smoking some of the foul Timorese tobacco we used for lack of anything else. We hadn’t met up since the landing, so had a good time rabbiting to each other about actions and patrols and what had happened to various friends. Johnny told me Alan was over at Alsai, a platoon HQ only a few miles away.

Later we sat in a thatched hut eating a scanty meal of maize and a few small pieces of chicken. Johnny’s fair hair was longer now and he had a smooth golden beard. Mine was all russet curls (which gave joy to the blokes who thought comparing it to pubic hair was a real stroke of insight). His smile was easy and he looked well; thinner, like all of us, but not struck down by illness so far.

Sadly, the same couldn’t be said about me. For two months I’d been fairly lucky: I’d had dysentery of course, fleas and lice and a few small tropical ulcers, but I’d avoided anything worse. That night I began to feel light-headed, then painfully cold.

Johnny got me a mug of hot tea but soon I was shivering so much I couldn’t hold it steady. I got into my sleeping bag
and he found more blankets but they didn’t help. My bones throbbed, I couldn’t think, the cold was agonising.

‘It’s okay, Mike. Malaria, I reckon,’ Johnny said. ‘I’ve see a lot of men with it. You’ll be all right in a few days.’

‘But, Jesus. Johnny. This is. Hell. What if. Japs come?’

‘Don’t worry, just rest. I’ll look after you.’

A few hours later the cold ebbed but then I got hotter and hotter. I threw off the blankets and lay on top of the sleeping bag, trying to mop up my drenching sweat with a towel. Gradually everything faded away into heat and pain.

Seemingly moments afterwards, though it was really the early hours a day later, I heard a loud noise. Then more loud noises. Johnny leapt out of the hut. More noises. I slowly sat up and fumbled my boots on.

Johnny dashed back and pulled me to my feet. My knees gave way but he threw my arm over his shoulder and we somehow hobbled from the hut and started up the hill in the pre-dawn greyness. There was running nearby, voices, firing.

I heard Bullock say, ‘Got him, Snow?’ and somehow I was half-walking, half being dragged up a path behind boulders. Guns were firing, whining noises whipping past my ears, chips of rock flying. The sky to the east was white-pink and gold.

We collapsed behind a large boulder. The firing eased off. Someone threw a couple of grenades down the hill. Explosions. A few more bullets. Silence. I heard Bullock breathing heavily near me. His big good-natured face was creased with laughter. ‘Jeez, Broome, don’t think your feet hit the ground once.’

I tried to say something but Johnny said crisply, ‘Quiet, everyone.’ I leant back against him, noted with
interest the sky was now an attractive shade of blue, and lost consciousness.

I came to a day later in the hut again. I drank some water and lay there, weak as the proverbial kitten. I could hear people moving about outside. Johnny came in.

‘Good, you’re awake.’

‘What happened?’

‘Just a stupid little raid, nuisance value. The Japs burnt part of the village further down. A few shots came this way. They ran off when we shot back.’

‘Thanks for getting me out, Johnny.’

‘Nah, you practically trotted up the hill by yourself.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘How much longer? Can hardly move. Feel like a piece of paper. All ripped up.’

He smiled. ‘Probably another day. Sleep if you can. Don’t worry, there won’t be any more trouble.’

‘You said that last time.’

‘Call that trouble? You must’ve led a sheltered life. Go to sleep.’

Next day Alan arrived from Alsai with a sig I hadn’t seen for ages, little sharp-faced Whippet.

‘Heard you brought the wrath of Nippon down on everyone’s heads,’ Alan said. ‘Trouble just follows you round, doesn’t it, mate?’

‘Johnny tells me that wasn’t trouble. You must have led a sheltered life too, mate.’

I was sitting back against a tree, enjoying the sun. Alan grinned and squatted down beside me. With his dark beard he looked like a thoughtful pirate.