‘Did your father go to Australia?’ Taz asked, surprised.
Richard shook his head. ‘No, but an ancestor of ours did. His name was Dr Ludwig Leichhardt and he perished while exploring your country.’
Taz smiled, his eyebrows raised. ‘How about that? I remember learning about Ludwig Leichhardt at school. He disappeared while leading an expedition overland from Sydney to Western Australia. Do you remember reading about him, Frankie?’
Frankie pulled a face. ‘One of them historical explorer blokes, was he? Never had much time for history, myself. Had enough problems in the present to worry about what happened in the past. And who’d be silly enough to try to walk from Sydney to Perth? Why didn’t he just take the train?’
‘There was no train from Sydney to Perth in those days, nitwit! They only finished building the transcontinental railway last year. There weren’t any trains, full stop, back in Ludwig Leichhardt’s time.’
‘Can’t imagine it – a world without trains. I like trains.’
‘I do also,’ said Richard, ‘when they are not full of soldiers. Perhaps I will see Australia by train one day, after the war. After I am released from being a prisoner of war.’
‘I wouldn’t fancy being a prisoner of war myself,’ said Frankie. ‘I’ll never forget when we were up in Flanders. There was a bunch of German prisoners being sent to the rear when they were caught in the open during a bombardment. Poor buggers didn’t stand a chance. Killed by their own side’s guns, they were. At least we had cover in a trench. Remember that, Taz?’
Taz nodded, recalling the memory of the scores of German prisoners who had been cut down by that barrage. ‘It was slaughter,’ he murmured.
‘I actually felt sorry for those poor blooming Jerries,’ Frankie confessed. ‘One minute they were alive, then the next time I looked, they were all lying dead on the ground.’
Taz was thoughtful as the trio lapsed into silence. An idea was forming in his mind. ‘You know what?’ he said after a while. ‘I don’t reckon we should make Richard here a prisoner of war.’
‘What? You want to let him go?’ said Frankie, incredulous.
‘I do not wish to return to German lines,’ said Richard.
‘No, not let him go,’ said Taz. ‘What if we took him back to our lines in Australian uniform? He could stay with us until the war ended and then go to America or wherever he wants to go.’
Frankie looked at Taz as if he were mad. ‘You want him to pretend to be one of us? Of all the crackpot ideas in the world! He’s got an accent, mate, if you hadn’t noticed!’
‘We could say he’s . . . Dutch,’ Taz suggested.
‘Dutch?’ Frankie wasn’t convinced. ‘How many Dutchmen were in our platoon when we started out on this stunt last night, Taz? Not one. He’d soon get found out.’
‘Then we could put a bandage around his neck. We could say he’d been wounded in the throat, like Billy Blizzard was, and can’t talk.’
‘Mate!’ Frankie sounded exasperated. ‘How long do you think he’d get away with that?’
‘Long enough. This war could be over in a few weeks or a month or two. The Yanks are coming. They’ll soon put an end to it all.’
‘He’d have to pretend for months that he couldn’t talk.’ Frankie shook his head. ‘Nah, he’d have to be a flaming good actor. Besides, there are the battalion records. His name wouldn’t be in them. First time there’s a rollcall, he’d be found out.’
Richard had been taking in this exchange with interest, looking from one of the Australians to the other as they argued the pros and cons of Taz’s novel idea. When Frankie’s last remark seemed to scotch Taz’s proposal, Richard looked disappointed.
But Taz hadn’t given up on the scheme. ‘Well, what if we gave him the name of one of the dead members of our platoon?’ he suggested.
‘What, like Billy Blizzard?’
‘Something like that.’ Taz’s mind raced. He could envision smuggling Richard all the way back to Australia with Frankie and himself. But he dared not voice that idea to Frankie. Not yet. One crackpot idea at a time, he told himself. ‘Billy probably wouldn’t be the best choice. He came from a big family. He was one of eleven children.’
‘So? What of it?’
‘There’s a chance Richard might run into a Blizzard relative over here and be exposed as a fraud. I ran into cousin of mine the day we landed in France, and met two neighbours from back home in Beaconsfield when we were in Flanders. No, we need an identity for Richard that’s secure. Someone few people would know.’ Taz smiled to himself as an idea occurred to him. ‘Rait! Yes, that’s the answer. Rait the Rat!’
Frankie scowled. ‘What about the bugger?’
‘Before he died, Rait told me he was practically an orphan. Apart from an aunt he hadn’t seen in years, he had no other relatives in the world. Richard can become Rait.’
Frankie pulled a face. ‘But Rait was older than him. And Rait was English, for God’s sake! We don’t even know his first name.’
‘It was Archibald – Archibald Rait. Look, who’s left from the platoon to say that Richard isn’t Rait? Or that Rait was English, or that he was older? Only you and me, Frankie. And as for rollcall, they only have the names on the list, not ages or nationalities. If Richard doesn’t talk for a month or two, and just nods and shakes his head, I think he might just be able to pull it off.’ He turned to Richard. ‘Would you be prepared to give it a try?’
‘Could I pretend to be an Australian soldier?’ Richard pondered aloud.
‘He’d have to get rid of them German boots of his for starters,’ said Frankie, nodding to Richard’s long leather jackboots. ‘They’re a dead giveaway.’
‘So you think it’s worth a try, Frankie?’ Taz asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Frankie responded, shaking his head. ‘What happens if he gets caught?’
‘The worst that could happen is that he’d be hauled off to a POW camp.’
‘No, what happens to us if he gets caught? Wouldn’t we be hauled before a court martial for . . . for concealing an enemy in our ranks or something? We could be shot!’
‘We’d deny everything. How are they going to prove that we had anything to do with it?’
‘I would certainly not say you were involved,’ Richard spoke up.
Taz and Frankie turned to look at him. ‘You’d better not, mate!’ Frankie growled, motioning with his bayonet.
‘You’re game to give it a go then?’ Taz asked Richard. ‘But you’d have to give us your word that you wouldn’t implicate us if you were caught.’
‘I give you my word, yes.’ Richard had been thinking over Taz’s plan while the two Australians were talking. As far as he could see, he had nothing to lose if he went along with it. ‘I feel as if I do not belong anywhere,’ he said. ‘In Germany, my grandfather fed me, but he was never very interested in me. My grandfather was more interested in his pigs. And when the local mayor wrote the wrong birth year for me on the enrolment records, my grandfather never spoke up to correct the error. He told me that the army would make a man of me. I think he was glad to have one less mouth to feed.’
‘That’s a bit rough,’ said Frankie.
Richard shrugged. ‘My grandfather had never forgiven my father for migrating to America. He only had me returned because my grandmother insisted. And just after last Christmas, while I was at training camp, I learned that my grandmother had died. She alone was kind to me in Bavaria. But she is gone now. ’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Taz. ‘You’ve had a tough trot, between losing your mum and dad and your grandmother.’
‘Yes, I think I am destined to be a nomad. I certainly have no wish to go back to my grandfather in Bavaria. And the war has made Germany an unhappy place. Do you know, on my way to the training camp, I saw the German Army ripping up the lead pipes from the streets of Germany to make bullets. And they had taken all the church bells, to melt them down to make more shells. No longer do the bells ring out from the church st
eeples.’ Wistfully, he shook his head. ‘That is not the gloomy sort of place I want to go back to.’ He looked at Taz and smiled wearily. ‘So I am “game”, as you say, to give your plan a try. Perhaps it will one day get me back to America. I was happy there.’
Taz smiled. ‘Good on you.’ He turned to Frankie. ‘Well, do we go through with it or don’t we? Do we turn Richard Rix here into Archibald Rait or not?’
‘Let me think about it,’ said Frankie, sitting back and brushing away a weary yawn.
Taz jerked awake. The first streaks of dawn were in the sky behind German lines, and fog hung in the shell crater like a thick grey blanket. Exhausted by the night’s battle, Taz had fallen asleep, just as Frankie had beside him, with his head on Taz’s shoulder. In a sudden rush of fear, Taz straightened and looked up to check their prisoner. There was Richard Rix, still sitting in front of him, wide awake with his bound hands resting on his raised knees.
Richard smiled. ‘Good morning. You were asleep.’
‘Only for a moment or two,’ Taz returned, firming his grip on the rifle in his lap.
Richard shook his head. ‘You were both asleep for some time. If I had wanted to I could have reached over there, taken your rifle from you and bayoneted you both to death.’
‘Why didn’t you, then?’ said Frankie, now awake and sitting up and stretching.
‘I want to go back to Australian lines with you, as we discussed last night.’ Richard looked at Frankie. ‘Perhaps now you will trust me?’
Before Frankie could respond, they all heard voices nearby, made dull by the fog. ‘Christ!’ Frankie whispered, tensing. ‘Your Jerry friends are back!’
‘No, wait,’ Taz cautioned, keeping his voice low. ‘They’re speaking English.’ He listened intently. ‘And those are Australian accents!’
‘Bugger me!’ Frankie exclaimed in astonishment. ‘We’re saved! And I thought we were goners.’
‘So do we go forward with your plan, Taz?’ Richard asked anxiously, leaning closer to them and keeping his voice low. ‘Do I pretend to be this Archibald Rait? Or will you turn me over as a prisoner?’
Taz looked at his mate. ‘It’s up to you, Frankie. Is he Rait or isn’t he?’
Frankie hesitated before breaking into a grin. ‘Ah, what the heck! This’ll be more of an adventure than anything else I’ll do in this war.’
Taz smiled. ‘Good for you, Frankie. Come on then, we’ll have to be smartish. You get his boots off, I’ll untie him.’
As Taz hauled himself to his feet, he felt a jab of pain in his left calf. With a wince, he looked down and saw that the upper part of his left trouser leg was soaked in blood. ‘I’ve been wounded!’ he exclaimed.
‘Where?’ Struggling to haul off Richard’s right boot, Frankie glanced over at his friend’s bloodstained trousers. ‘Looks like the blood’s dried, Taz. It’s stopped bleeding. That’s good.’
‘Hurts like hell now, though,’ said Taz, grimacing. He knelt beside Richard and set to work unbinding the German boy’s wrists. ‘Never felt a thing last night.’ For the first time he looked at his friend’s face in the daylight. ‘You’ve been hit too, Frankie.’
‘Have I? Where?’
‘Your face is covered with blood.’
‘Really?’ Frankie wiped the back of his right hand over his cheek then brought it away to look at it. His palm and fingers were thick with congealed blood. ‘Where’d that come from?’ Dragging off his helmet, Frankie felt his forehead.
‘Yoicks!’ Taz exclaimed. ‘Something’s carved its way across your forehead, mate. It’s a real mess.’
‘I felt something hit me last night.’ Frankie looked at his fingertips, red with his blood. ‘What the heck, I’ll live!’ Returning the helmet to his head, which now began to throb with pain, he resumed tugging at Richard’s boot.
Between them, the pair soon had Richard’s hands free and his footwear removed.
‘This won’t do,’ said Taz, gesturing to Richard’s shirt. The blood soaking it wasn’t the problem, but its colour – German Army grey – was. ‘Get it off, Richard!’
Richard hastily ripped the shirt off, bundled it up and threw it away. As he sat there, naked from the waist up, he began to shiver in the early morning chill.
‘Here!’ Laying aside his rifle, Frankie unbuttoned his khaki tunic and stripped down to his sweat-stained white undershirt, then handed the tunic to Richard. ‘Quick! Put it on!’
Richard did as bidden, but he had broader shoulders than Frankie, and the tunic was a little too small for him. ‘I cannot fasten the buttons,’ he said, struggling to make a button reach a buttonhole.
‘Doesn’t matter, it’ll do the trick for now,’ Frankie returned. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Taz, who had briefly limped away, returned carrying a helmet and bloodied bandage. ‘Put the helmet on and tie this around your neck,’ he said, handing both to Richard. ‘And remember, you were wounded in the throat, so you can’t speak.’
Richard nodded, donning the helmet. ‘I understand.’
‘Where’d you get that bandage from?’ Frankie asked, using his rifle to bring himself to his feet.
‘Billy Blizzard,’ Taz replied, sounding a little guilty.
‘Well, he won’t be needing it,’ said Frankie matter-of-factly.
With a pensive expression, Richard looked at the bandage, turning it over and inspecting it.
‘That should do the job,’ said Taz, wincing in pain as he turned towards the Mephisto crater.
‘But as soon as the bandage is removed,’ said Richard, ‘the doctors will discover that I am not wounded.’ He paused, then looked up at Frankie and Taz and held out a hand. ‘Please, give me a bayonet.’
‘Not in a month of Sundays!’ Frankie exclaimed. ‘You’re not getting my bayonet.’
‘What do you intend to do with it?’ Taz asked.
‘I will have to cut myself. Please, we have little time.’
Slotting the bayonet from the end of his Lee-Enfield, Taz handed it to Richard. All the while, Frankie stood poised with his rifle and bayonet at the ready.
Richard put the edge of the bayonet to the left side of his neck. Pausing to pluck up the courage to injure himself, he then slid it along his neck, creating a gash several centimetres long beneath his ear. Even though the wound was not deep, it immediately oozed blood. Richard handed the bayonet back to Taz, then tied Billy’s bandage tight around his neck.
Frankie, relieved, turned to Taz. ‘Can you walk far on that leg, mate?’
‘I’ll have to,’ said Taz, returning the bayonet to the end of his rifle.
‘You lead the way. “Archibald” here can follow you. I’ll bring up the rear.’
Up out of the shell hole Taz struggled, before standing and looking around for signs of German troops in the vicinity. Richard went next, unarmed. The bandage around his neck was now soaked with his own blood. Once he was up on flat ground, Richard turned and offered his hand to Frankie. For a moment, seeing the young German smiling down at him, Frankie hesitated before accepting the offer.
Carrying his rifle in one hand, Taz limped towards the crater that held Mephisto. Frankie motioned for Richard to go next, and the German complied, departing the shell hole where his comrades had died without a backward glance. Frankie walked three or four metres behind him, rifle in both hands and ready for use in case Richard did anything untoward. Despite agreeing to this subterfuge, Frankie still didn’t entirely trust him.
‘Aussies coming in!’ Taz called ahead as the trio came up to the Mephisto crater. ‘Don’t shoot! Aussies coming in!’
In the crater, Lieutenant Andrew Scott of the 50th Battalion turned and drew his pistol. Around him, the dozen men of his patrol nervously aimed their rifles in the direction of Taz’s voice. ‘What unit are you with?’ Scott called warily.
‘D Company, 52nd Battalion,’ Taz replied, reaching the crater’s lip and looking down at the Australians beside the tank. ‘Are we pleased to see you!’
‘Come on down, son,’ said Lieutenant Scott, satisfied by the sight and sound of him.
First Taz, then Richard and Frankie came scrambling down. The three of them were soon standing in front of the lieutenant and his men.
‘Jeez, you three look done in!’ exclaimed one of Scott’s men as the others surveyed the trio with a mixture of pity and admiration.
‘You’ve been out there all night?’ the lieutenant asked Taz, his eyes drifting to Richard.
‘Yes, sir, we have,’ Taz acknowledged. ‘Lieutenant Blair ordered us to stop the Germans from getting hold of this tank.’
‘Until we were relieved, that is,’ Frankie quickly added.
‘Looks like you did a pretty good job, lads,’ said Scott. He was still looking at Richard. ‘Lose your boots, son?’
‘Lost his boots and had to ditch his trousers too, sir,’ said Taz.
‘Poor bugger shat himself,’ Frankie lied with a smirk.
‘That’s understandable,’ Scott remarked with a wisp of a smile.
‘So he borrowed a pair of daks from a dead Jerry, sir,’ Frankie continued. ‘Not that the Jerry will be doing any complaining.’
‘Can’t this bloke speak for himself?’ The officer nodded Richard’s way.
Richard smiled weakly and glanced at Taz for help.
Taz hurriedly replied on his behalf. ‘No, sir, he can’t.’
‘Throat wound, sir,’ Frankie added.
‘Ah.’ Lieutenant Scott turned his gaze on Frankie, taking in his grimy undershirt. ‘Had it pretty rough last night, did you?’
‘Too right we did, sir,’ Frankie answered.
‘We’re all that’s left from our platoon, sir,’ said Taz.
‘Just the three of you?’ Scott raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s tough. All right, you’d better get yourselves back to an RAP. Well done, lads.’
‘You’re relieving us, sir?’ Frankie asked hopefully, just to be sure.
‘I don’t know about relieving you, son,’ Scott replied. ‘This Fritz tank is in No Man’s Land, between our new lines and Fritz’s new lines. I don’t plan on staying long. My patrol and I are here to see what’s what before I report back to our company commander. But you three clearly need to get yourselves back to our lines to find medical attention, so away you go.’
Tank Boys Page 15
