To Ride the Wind (6 page)

Tom accepted the tumbler of rum from Kate. For a moment he stared out into the night. ‘I was sent by Wallarie,’ he said. ‘I don’t really know why. He just said that it was important that I meet you.’

At the mention of the old Aboriginal warrior, Kate felt a lump in her throat. Throughout her life he had always been a presence, both physical and spiritual. ‘How is my old friend?’ she asked softly, unconsciously raising her glass to salute him.

‘He was well when I last saw him at Glen View,’ Tom answered. ‘Just a cranky, crazy old blackfella.’

‘Oh, Wallarie is more than that, young man,’ Kate said with a smile, sipping her rum. ‘He is the link between heaven and earth for two families. Do you have any idea
why
Wallarie sent you to me?’

‘Not really,’ Tom answered. ‘As I don’t know how you could help me enlist in the army.’

Kate glanced sharply at the young man beside her. ‘Why would you want to join up, when the Aboriginal part of you makes you exempt from service?’

Tom glared at the dark sky. ‘Maybe it is because the white man tells me that as a blackfella I am not good enough to fight in his army. I just want a chance to prove them all wrong.’

Kate could hear the anger and pain in his voice. ‘Or is it because of your fighting Irish blood that you want to enlist?’

Tom took a long swallow of his drink. ‘I have heard about my Irish family – and the other mob, the Macintoshes.’

‘My son, Matthew, is somewhere flying his aeroplane in this damned war,’ Kate said with a sigh. ‘I dread the sight of the post office boy every time he pedals his bicycle out here to deliver a telegram. I fear that one day I will be informed that Matthew is not coming home.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Tom said.

For a long time Kate did not reply but remained absorbed in her thoughts about Matthew. Finally she turned to Tom. ‘If you truly feel that your destiny is to join the army and go overseas then I will help you. God knows why Wallarie would support your ambitions, considering what Europeans have done to his people in the past. Tonight, sleep well and tomorrow you and I will go into town to meet someone I know who can help you.’

After breakfast, Kate arranged for her car to be chauffeured by one of the gardeners for a trip to town. Tom had bathed and made himself look presentable after the long trek from central Queensland, and as he sat beside her in the rear seat Kate could not help but think how much the boy reminded her of his grandfather, Tom Duffy.

They reached the centre of Townsville where Kate ordered the car to be parked in front of a building with a sign outside declaring that Australia needed men to volunteer. They alighted and Kate strode forward through the doors of the building followed by Tom, hat in hand. They marched up to a desk where a sergeant in the uniform of the Light Horse sat reading a paper. He was in his sixties and from the ribands on his uniform jacket had served in the Victorian days of the Queen’s colonial army. He put down the paper, glanced up at Kate and immediately rose to his feet.

‘Mrs Tracy, how are you?’ he asked respectfully, as if somewhat in awe of Kate. ‘How is young Matthew?’

‘I am well, Clarence,’ Kate replied. ‘And I believe my son is still well.’

‘What can I do for you, Mrs Tracy?’ the sergeant asked, remaining on his feet.

‘My nephew Tom Duffy wishes to enlist in the Light Horse,’ Kate said without further small talk. ‘I expect you to sign him on.’

The recruiting sergeant eyed Tom up and down with a sceptical look. ‘Mrs Tracy, as well as I know you, I am afraid we cannot sign on blackfellas.’

‘I don’t see any great lines of volunteers here today,’ Kate retorted.

‘The bloody . . . my apologies, Mrs Tracy,’ the sergeant said. ‘What I meant to say is that the casualty lists the newspapers publish seem to put a dampener on recruiting. All the boys from around here are already in uniform.’

‘Well, I am sure that you would be more than pleased to have a fine, strapping young man who can ride like the devil and shoot just as well in your ranks.’

‘We do, Mrs Tracy, but I cannot sign on blackfellas.’

‘My nephew is not of Aboriginal blood, Clarence,’ Kate said with just the hint of a smile. ‘He is of Indian heritage.’

‘With a name like Duffy!’ the sergeant blurted.

‘Of the Irish-Indian side of the family,’ Kate replied with a smirk. ‘I believe that those of Indian heritage may enlist. Did I not read an article about a sharp shooter at Gallipoli with the name of Billy Sing?’

‘Yes, Mrs Tracy, but Billy is not an Indian,’ the sergeant answered, shrugging his shoulders in defeat. ‘I will sign on your nephew, and record him as non-Aboriginal.’

He sat down and rummaged in a drawer for the relevant enlistment papers, which he retrieved and pushed across the desk to Tom. The recruiting sergeant was fully aware that the formidable woman who claimed the half-caste across the desk from him was her nephew not only had a vast financial empire but her power reached to the highest levels of government. If the blackfella wanted to die for his country then so be it.

‘I will leave you with my nephew, Clarence, and bid you a good day,’ Kate said. ‘Please pass on my regards to your family. Tom, I will meet you at the milliners when you have finished your business here.’

‘Thank you, Aunt Kate,’ Tom said with a cheeky grin. ‘I will not be long.’

The recruiting sergeant sighed, passing a pen to Tom. ‘Can you read and write?’ he asked in a tired voice, accepting defeat.

‘Somewhat well, old chap,’ Tom answered in an affectation of a foppish English gentleman, causing the older man to look sharply at his new recruit. Bloody uppity blackfellas, he wanted to say, but wisely kept his mouth shut. Soon Tom Duffy would be Trooper Duffy, of Irish-Indian heritage in the Light Horse Division.

It was a place of death Wallarie had avoided for over a half century. But in his dreaming hours the ancestor spirits had bid him return to the creek where the Native Mounted Police under Lieutenant Morrison Mort had slaughtered his clan, riding down and trampling old men, mothers and children. Shooting, stabbing and clubbing those too slow to flee the massacre.

This was a place of spirits best avoided and now Wallarie sat under the night sky filled with a myriad of stars. In this forbidden place by the once-sparkling river course, the waters were now muddy from the hooves of the Glen View cattle, and the bleached bones of the slaughtered trampled into the red earth hid the horror of the atrocity ordered by the long-dead Scottish squatter Donald Macintosh.

Uneasy, Wallarie had lit a camp fire. He waited in the flickering light for another sign from the ancestor spirits. In the moonless night a curlew wailed its eerie song, causing the old Aboriginal warrior to clutch his hardwood nulla for protection.

He waited but nothing happened. He heard only the splash of a fish in the muddy waters and the night sounds of the bush creatures all around him.

Wallarie began to sing in a low chant, words in a language that only he now knew. When he was gone the language would disappear forever from the earth. As he sang his trance-like song, he was aware that the stars had cast a light on the creek and when he gazed into the waters he saw what the ancient peoples who had roamed the land wanted him to see. Wallarie smiled, just as the stars above turned in a slow circle overhead to herald the coming dawn. An act had been played out in the great wheel of life. A young man of mixed blood related to his own was on the path to close the circle. Wallarie knew that Tom Duffy could not see his future but through the eyes of the ancestor spirits Wallarie could. Little did the Macintosh and Duffy clans know it but the young man in far-off Townsville was being guided by the ancient ones.

3

C
aptain Sean Duffy huddled beside the shrapnel-torn body of a young Australian soldier at the bottom of the forward trench. They had not even commenced their assault on the German lines and already the casualties were piling up as both enemy and their own artillery shells ripped through the heavily congested jumping off trenches occupied by the Australians. He had experienced artillery bombardments before at Gallipoli but nothing to the extent he was now enduring. The sound was deafening, muffling the screams of helpless men being torn apart by red-hot shrapnel balls and shards of exploding shells.

Beside him crouched Corporal Jack Kelly, clutching his bayonet-tipped rifle. Sean had forgotten the itch of lice and the ever-present stench of the clay trench. He realised that he was terrified, and fought with the last of his sanity to retain control. He was aware that he had wet himself and was close to defecating with fear. His hands shook when he removed his fob watch to check the time. It was 1530 hours but, in the European summer, a long way from nightfall.

‘Over the bags in ten minutes.’ The order was shouted in Sean’s ear and when he glanced up from his huddle he saw the face of his commanding officer, Patrick Duffy, who placed his hand on Sean’s shoulder reassuringly.

An artillery shell exploded on the lip of the trench, showering the men below with clods of earth. Men fell back screaming in agony as the shrapnel shredded their bodies. Sean was aware that Patrick was staring down at him with an expression of concern. ‘Get your company ready, Captain Duffy,’ he yelled. ‘They need you.’

Sean shook off his fear for the moment. He could see a corporal watching him, ashen-faced, and understood that he was not the only one experiencing the crippling fear as they huddled helplessly under the terrible barrage. Despite his terror he knew that three young platoon commanders and their respective men looked to him for leadership. This alone forced Sean to rise to his feet. ‘Ten minutes before we go over the bags,’ he yelled at the top of his voice, and the word was passed down the trench, amid the earth shaking of the barrage on their lines.

And then it was time.

‘Over you go!’ Sean bellowed, and his men rose from crouching positions to scramble over the sandbags with bayonets fixed. Between them, his men carried sacks full of hand grenades, picks, shovels and even scaling ladders for the assault on the heavily entrenched enemy. Sean found himself on his feet, gripping his revolver at the end of its lanyard and glancing to either side to ensure his men had come out of the trenches. They had. ‘Follow me!’ he called out.

He had placed himself with his forward platoon and was accompanied by his company sergeant major and Jack Kelly. Corporal Jack Kelly was still beside him as he had the task of remaining with company headquarters to act as an interpreter for any Germans they may capture. Now there was no going back, Sean thought grimly. They had a job to do and it lay a mere 200 yards away across a field of tall grasses being thrashed by bullet and shrapnel. If hell had a French name it must be Fromelles, Sean thought as he staggered forward.

From the dominating feature known to his enemies as the Aubers Ridge, General Major von Fellmann watched the Australian and British troops spill out of their trenches. From intelligence reports, he knew that his distant relative Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Duffy would be leading one of the battalions. The major scanned the churned-up no-man’s-land between the lines. He could see tiny figures advancing bravely through shell and machine-gun fire.

‘Australians,’ he murmured, but loud enough for the clutch of officers beside him to hear.

‘How will they perform?’ he was asked by the less senior officer who was also watching the advance.

‘I suspect as well as the Canadians and South Africans we have faced in the past,’ Kurt von Fellmann replied. ‘The British colonials are all volunteers and have a character that makes them adapt to war very well.’

Kurt turned to the officer. ‘Ensure that communications with our reserves is kept intact at all costs,’ he said, knowing that they may be critical in any possible breakthrough of his forward defensive trenches. ‘Even if you have to crawl out there and check the telephone wires yourself.’

The officer saluted and hurried away to organise a party to check the buried telephone lines had not been cut by artillery fire from the enemy positions, leaving Kurt alone to resume surveying the assault on his lines.

‘Colonel Duffy,’ he whispered under his breath. ‘I pray that God will spare you in your foolish venture.’

But God was asleep that day and the carnage had begun as if orchestrated by the devil.

The German staff officer located the regimental runner behind the lines and passed on the message to their signalmen to keep a check on the lines, ensuring that they remained intact. The staff officer did not know the runner but history would one day record him as the devil incarnate. His name was Adolf Hitler and although many of his countrymen were soon to die, he would survive the terrible battle of Fromelles.

The machine gun firing from high ground tore through the ranks of Sean’s company. His company sergeant major, a former British army NCO, had bullets rip through his legs, chest and jaw only a few yards from Sean. In the blink of an eye the CSM shuddered, fell and remained still. The loss of the man who had survived the Dardanelles campaign came as a shock to Sean, who had convinced himself the strong, solid professional soldier could never die. All around him others fell; some screamed, some died silently as bullets cut through them. The 200 yards might well have been two miles. Time lost meaning and the rapid beat of his heart and laboured breathing of his lungs were the only sounds Sean could hear as they advanced at a rapid walk.

He could now actually see the enemy standing at their parapets, firing rifles and tossing the long-handled grenades in swirling arcs through the air towards the clusters of soldiers attacking them, and he felt numb from the tension of waiting for the bullet or shrapnel meant to kill or maim him. His company headquarters was now reduced to himself, Corporal Kelly and a private who was also his runner. In a brief lucid moment he attempted to assess the situation and became aware that he could no longer see the platoon that he had attached his company HQ to. Even his runner seemed to have disappeared, leaving him and the South Australian corporal alone, facing the zigzag of German forward trenches. Sean was hardly aware that he had not fired his revolver although he could hear and see Corporal Kelly stopping to aim and fire at the head and shoulders of the German infantry on the parapets before them. His accurate fire appeared to be telling as men disappeared whenever Jack Kelly fired.