by Jack Twist
Chapter 22
By the end of the next day, back with the convoy, I had decided against Daniels’ venture. I took Al Stanley as co-driver, and even had that been as unbearable for me as it was for Bushfire, I would have told him no.
Abbie Klein was probably back home in Seattle. If not she soon would be. Her father’s health might have improved to a stage where he could take care of the baby and I couldn’t imagine the American Embassy accommodating a non-essential visitor for very long. So I saw no reason to go back to Saigon and so, no reason to make any clandestine roadside deals with the likes of Tran and Tran.
As well as that it seemed most of the army’s Armoured and Artillery Corps were stationed somewhere along the road to Nui Dat. Phouc Tuy Province suddenly looked like an open and unequivocal war zone. So I resigned myself to spending the rest of my active service as part of the evac convoy and not getting back to Saigon. I felt lucky to have come through my time in the jungle and in the big city unscathed, and soon now we would all be home.
Al, however, was cracking. The whites of his eyes seemed larger than ever. He looked nervously at each APC we passed along the road as though they belonged to the enemy and he didn’t seem to know how to talk to me. I decided not to broach the topic of mutiny. He’d gone quieter on the idea since his confinement to barracks. It only inspired laughter and one corporal had threatened to tell Captain O’Brien.
There were times when I regretted having joined in the laughter at Al’s expense. He hadbeen such an easy target, with his almost constant state of anxiety, something to break the boredom. It was never the threat of attack from our enemy, the communists, that frightened Al. It was his comrades-in-arms, us, his digger mates. Anyone could reduce him to a state of overt fear, almost to tears. You only had to look angrily at him to see his eyes widen. Bushfire Daniels liked to sneak up on him and shout just to watch him jump.
Al had filled his days as contentedly as most of us so long as everyone was kind. He had newspapers, political books and history books sent over from home and he borrowed
Time and Newsweek magazines from the hospital library. Any of which could set him off. We were ‘pawns of American imperialism’, at which he could be quickly put in his place, and become the victim. “You’re the only prawn, Al.”
At Captain O’Brien’s recommendation, Al was examined by a psychiatrist at the hospital. Al said the doctor seemed more interested in his sex life than anything and when he was satisfied that Al was heterosexual, deemed him fit to complete his tour.
“The shrink probably fancied ’im,” was Greg Urquhart’s comment. He had hoped Al would be kicked back home in disgrace, with all necessary haste.
We were turning onto the Baria Road when I asked him if he wanted to know what happened to Jefferies. “Everyone else does.”
“Yeh,” he said, without conviction, in a distracted way. I told him, briefly, avoiding the bloodshed. “The poor bastard.” He looked at me. “How are you going to live with that? Are you okay?”
“Yeh. I’m okay. I was the lucky one. Are you okay?”
He turned away, ostensibly to look at another armoured vehicle. “What do you think?”
“Well you look a bit pale and drawn. Like you’re heading into the war or something.”
“We are.”
“Al, they reckon there’s so much hardware kickin’ about here no half-sane enemy soldier would show his face for miles.”
“Yeh, but they go looking for ‘em. Last week a guy was shot and killed. The patrols we take out, search and destroy, they go lookin’ for enemy. It’s crazy.”
“It must be part of the plan. They’re protecting us during the withdrawal.”
“Would you like to be shot during a withdrawal? Think of it. We’re leaving. We’ll be home soon. ‘Cept for that dead bloke. And any others that get killed now. They go home in a plastic bag.”
“That’s the war. You can’t do anything about it.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You can try. I still reckon we should refuse to take any more out.”
“Sorry, Al, but that is crazy. You’d be on CB again. Or worse this time. Refusing to carry out orders. You can’t do that. That’s big trouble.”
“Not with this war now. Not anymore. Anyway, I don’t care. You know? I really don’t care anymore. I’m just so sick of the bullshit. I don’t care what they decide to do with me anymore.”
But for someone who didn’t care anymore he looked tense and troubled, the deceptively quiet, apparently calm kind of troubled. The martyr before the ultimate self-sacrifice? Or was it more the condemned before the ultimate punishment? I turned my thoughts to my own wellbeing, because I had begun to feel genuinely relaxed, looking forward to the evacuation. It meant we really were going home.
I had a look at the laundry shop in Daniels’ Baria side-street. It was back from the road and looked like a deal could be done there quickly but I imagined how tiresome preparations for a march would be, and then the march itself, with Abbie out of the country. And I looked again at Al, who, as co-driver, would be implicated should anything go wrong. Sick-of-the-bullshit Al, wound up so tight already, just performing regular duties, that he looked to me like he needed to see that psychiatrist again.
North of Baria the number of APCs and tanks along the roadside increased. The crews sitting on top of the machines seemed relaxed as they watched us pass but the whole scene looked more seriously war than anything I’d seen before. The paradox of withdrawal. It raised the tension. Al said the armoured display had been brought on by the death of that infantryman, which would have had repercussions at the highest levels. Powerful decision makers somewhere had decreed passionately, “There must be no more.”
“Take it easy, Al. There won’t be any more. Look at these tankies. Like cats ready to spring into action.” He looked at them nervously, unconvinced. “Soon you’ll be Alan Stanley, private citizen, again. Back in the furniture shop.” His family had a furniture manufacturing business in Sydney. “Driving the delivery truck. Is that why you put in for transport, after basic? Your truck driving experience?”
“That and I thought it might keep me away from this place.”
“I asked for clerical, hoping it’d keep me away from this place. I put transport second choice. They must’ve needed drivers for the civil aid program.”
The convoy swung onto the dirt road that led into Nui Dat. We were wet with sweat already. The vegetation around us looked bursting with rich, green life, trees and long grasses clambering for dominance.
I spoke in what I thought might be a kind of therapy, to keep Al talking. “I wonder how long this road will last after the Dat’s all packed up and gone. The way everything grows here.”
“The Americans have a program for killing off the vegetation. Shows how desperate they are.”
I changed the subject. “How big’s your factory, at home?”
“It’s small. We have a couple of cabinet makers and it’s custom made stuff. My father makes a lot of the furniture himself.”
“Quality furniture, I’ll bet. And soon it’ll be Stanley and Son, quality furniture. This’ll all be a fading memory.”
He was quiet again before he said, “Stanley’s not our real name. Not originally.”
“No? What is it then?”
“Stanislowski.”
“Really?”
“Yeh. And Alan’s not my real first name.”
“What is?”
“Alexi.”
“Alexi?”
“Yeh.”
I laughed. “Alexi Stanislowski.”
“Don’t tell anyone. My father had it changed by deed poll. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Specially Urquhart.”
“I thought you didn’t care anymore.”
“Urquhart is different. He still scares me. Promise you won’t tell.”
“Where’d your father come from?”
“Poland. Both my father and mother came out to avoid the Nazis.”
&
nbsp; “How do they feel about you coming to this war?”
“They worry. They’re worriers. But they’re pleased to be in Australia and they’ve worked hard and done okay. You know. They want me to do what I’m told. Be a good Aussie, and all that. They’re glad I didn’t get infantry or something like that.”
“Alexi Stanislowski.”
“Promise you won’t tell.”
I promised.
Like me, Al Stanley had no one special to go home to, outside of family. A former girlfriend from school days had eventually found him too intense.
“Fancy that,” I said.
His parents, and the girlfriend, had been disappointed when he failed to matriculate into university. Too much of his own choice of reading at the expense of school requirements. Even as a kid he was marching to the beat of a different drum, in his head at least. When the call-up notice arrived, his parents’ worries increased visibly. They didn’t say so but they knew their boy was no soldier. And war appalled them. It was a part of the Europe they’d left behind.
“I made the mistake of telling them about my bit of trouble recently. Their last letter was a real nag and they won’t send any more books. And they’ve told my cousin to stop sending them too. I shouldn’t have told them.”
I thought about my letters home, hoped I wasn’t whinging too much. Tony Carmody was wondering if he’d said the wrong thing to his fiancee recently, and caused worry. Mail was so important, our only link with the real world, the world of our futures, of our loved ones.
Not that mail was always so serious, especially to some. Bushfire Daniels came to mind, sealing an envelope joyfully one Sunday evening a couple of weeks earlier. “Now that’s a love letter. That’s got everything in it but the spoof.”
Barry Love’s appreciation had bordered on hysteria. “Put some in!” he shrieked.
But a few days later Barry was not so happy, thanks to a letter.
Joe Bartolino had followed us into the hut at the end of that day, and, as usual, tossed letters around like confetti.
“Carmody, Carmody, Carmody.”
“You don’t need that many, Tony. Give us one.”
Until Barry exploded. “Fuckin’ bitch!”
“What?”
We all turned to hear. Even Joe stopped delivery. Barry was upset. “Slut! Fuckin’ …”
“What?”
“Me girlfriend. Me ex girlfriend. She’s doin’ it with me mate.”
“Who says?”
“She does. She reckons ...” he was reading. “Fuck me! She reckons they were pissed and she was sayin’ how much she missed me and everything ... and he says why doesn’t she try doin’ it with him while she thinks of me.”
“How thoughtful of him.”
“Lie back and think of Barry.”
“She didn’t used to drink. And ... fuckin’ bitch! She reckons ... listen to this. ‘Only. I’m so sorry, Baz. It worked the first few times but then I started thinking of him’. Fuckin’ prick! I always knew he fancied her. Bad enough he’s got me car.”
Barry’s FC Holden. We’d seen the picture. Deep-polished, British racing green, cream, vinyl upholstery, cream spats over the wheels, chrome grille and fluffy dice. It had been his CV for his job and he’d left it for his mate to look after.
He went back to the letter. ‘Sorry, Baz. I can’t write any more for crying. ’Cause I know this is gunna be the end of a beautiful relationship.’ My oath it is, bitch!” Barry threw the letter to the floor.
“Forget it, Baz. Look at it this way. You’re a free man again.”
“Yeh, Barry. And it sounds like your girl was easily distracted.”
“Shut up, Al! You crazy shit. What the fuck would you know about it?”
We all shut up. Whatever the circumstances a ‘dear john’ was no laughing matter and the empathy in the room, for the moment, was as real as Barry’s anger. He cursed again and threw one of his boots at the hut wall. “Bush,” he said. “Let’s get pissed tonight.”
The temporary solution. Letters, for better or worse, could make a big difference to how we handled our time.
From now on, Al said, his letters would be all about the good news of coming home.
