To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  He hadn’t thought twice about joining up till that weekend in the big smoke when he bought a serve of chips and potato scallops, wrapped in newspaper. And as he ate the thick potato slices in their crisp batter, he read.

  Doctors bayoneted in Hong Kong when the Japs took the hospital. Nurses bayoneted too. And worse, before they died. He’d moved into the shade, startling a dog sprinkling the dust with drops of gold, and read the article again, and then the pages on both sides too.

  The Japs were coming here. And suddenly it hit him. Those nurses might be Mah and Blue. And something more …

  This was his land. Never mind the wardens at the orphanage, or the coppers. They were merely ants, crawling on top. They’d never trudged towards the horizon, week after week, seeing termite mounds grow to mountains then leaving them to dwindle behind. They hadn’t seen the bunnies cluster, deeper, thicker every night at a drought-shallowed dam, till one day the water had gone and the rabbits had died in the mud.

  Like he and his mates were going to die here. Fred looked at the blood oozing from the rough bandage on his chest. He’d refused to be evacuated down to the dressing station at Templeton’s Crossing. A wound like this meant back to Port Moresby, or even to Aussie. It might mean contacting his next of kin too, or attracting other official attention that might make the authorities look too closely at ‘Fred Smith’.

  Besides, the boys needed him.

  ‘Know what I’d like now?’ The voice next to him was quiet. You never knew where the enemy was in country like this, two yards away or two miles, halfway up the next cliff or twenty ridges away. Bert had been a farm boy, dairying, grew up potting rabbits. Tough feet, like Fred’s, even when his boots rotted. Knew which way was north as well as he knew his own hand, which meant that Bert might even get them back to the rest of the platoon, now that the lieutenant had stopped trying to lead them in the wrong direction.

  ‘Six pints of beer and a roast leg of mutton. Extra gravy,’ suggested Fred.

  ‘How’d you guess?’

  Fred grinned, flapping at the clouds of gnats or whatever the bloodsuckers were, clustering about him. ‘Me too. Make that eight pints of beer.’

  ‘When I get home I’m going to drink me beer out of Jap skulls.’ Big Bob smiled. Big Bob was small, like a bit of twisted fencing wire, and his eyes glowed too blue in his brown face. Big Bob had been smiling when he’d cut the throat of one Jap sniper while Bert had shot the other two. He’d smiled when he’d looked at their bodies too.

  Fred had seen smiles like that before. Hadn’t liked them then. Didn’t like this one now, not in the jungle with the leeches as thick as lizards and the mud waiting to rot your leg off after a single scratch.

  ‘Going to have a whole line of skulls, I am, along the mantelpiece.’

  ‘A skull won’t hold a pint of beer,’ said Fred shortly.

  ‘Tried drinking out of them, have you?’

  Fred said nothing. He’d seen a human skull, back at the circus. Clean, it was, yellow with age. And loved. He’d seen half-rotted skulls along the tracks here, the meat eaten away by what you hoped were animals and insects, not men. But most of the skulls he’d seen were what a bloke in the bush saw: attached to the bleached bones of wombats, roos, or last year’s roast mutton, gnawed by the dogs. He wondered if Big Bob really would try to get hold of a skull, dig one up perhaps, that might be halfway clean and not stink too much, so he could sneak it back on a troopship. No, he thought. They were too close to being skulls themselves just now for even Big Bob to think of that.

  Fred looked at the lieutenant, leaning against a tree, his eyes still closed. Fred reckoned the lieutenant had been trying not to cry since the snipers got Billo and Greg. Probably been trying not to cry all the way up the Kokoda Track too, ever since he left his mum and teddy bear behind.

  But he hadn’t cried yet. Which was good going, Fred reckoned. ‘How about you?’ Fred wasn’t going to call the lieutenant ‘sir’. Fred hadn’t joined up to start calling blokes ‘sir’.

  The young officer shrugged.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Fred. The bloke had been too quiet for too long. ‘Tell us what you really want.’

  ‘Tell us what you really, really want,’ mimicked Big Bob, his mocking voice high and feminine. Fred ignored him.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘We really, really want to know,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘A Vegemite and lettuce roll. That’s what they gave us every Tuesday at the school tuck-shop. And then to spend the afternoon teaching Grade Three how to draw a map of Australia.’ The lieutenant’s voice was a challenge: laugh at that.

  No one laughed. Fred said, ‘I want you to promise me something, mate.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If we get captured by the Japs, don’t teach them how to draw a map of Australia.’

  He wanted to make the lieutenant smile. Wanted to make them all smile. It worked. The lieutenant said, ‘I’ll tell them Australia’s next to Africa. They’re in the wrong place. We’re all in the wrong place …’

  The smiles died. Bert said, ‘Yeah, well, you’ve got that right.’

  The flies, mosquitoes, whatever they were, buzzed.

  Fred pushed himself upright, then spoke to the three lads still sitting. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘That way,’ said Bert. They didn’t argue. No point saying, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘That way’ was as good as they were going to get.

  Downhill, now. That was the problem with climbing mountains. Downhill was worse than uphill. Better aching legs from climbing than broken ones. Bush bashing, except this wasn’t bush. Fred was used to trees with decent trunks and leaves that didn’t sprout till they were way above your head.

  A stream half seeped, half flowed along the gully at the bottom. Water stopped hunger pains. For a while. The platoon had been on quarter-rations for three weeks, as no supplies had come up the line. Since they’d been separated from the main group, there’d been no food at all.

  They stopped to drink, taking turns, the others keeping lookout. Though all they could see was more green and more mud, and if anyone had spotted them they’d be dead now, rotting back into this soil like the tree limbs and the vines.

  Suddenly, deeply, Fred did not want to die here. Yeah, he had to die sometime. But he wanted his bones to sit properly in good dry soil, where they’d lie a while before they turned to dirt. Maybe a wombat would dig up his skull and leave it lying so some kid could pick it up, take it to school to scare the girls …

  Fred grinned, then stopped himself. He was light-headed from lack of food. And loss of blood. No proper sleep since, well, he hadn’t counted. No point counting nights now.

  Bert started up the opposite slope. They followed him. Up, up, ankles aching, even though they’d been doing this for three months now. Mist trickled down from the high ridge. Air turned liquid, making Fred’s shirt damp. Or maybe that was blood too.

  The air was white up on the ridge top, mist so thick they could only see each other’s faces, as though they were floating, separated from their bodies.

  Bert pointed. ‘Reckon we need to go over there.’ He shrugged. ‘Or if we wait here long enough, they’ll come to us. The boys have got to be heading this way.’

  Made sense to Fred. Eventually this whole small hell of gullies, valleys and mountains would be crossed and re-crossed by Allies and enemy alike. All they had to do was sit down and put their feet up.

  And starve.

  ‘Along the ridge,’ said Bert. ‘It’ll be easier going.’

  It was — not easy, but not as bad as the terrain they had been walking through. Rocks like flint, no mud, mist that was almost too dense to breathe. No mosquitoes or leeches though, which was a plus. Just silence, not the rustles and squeaks and squelches of down below. No sound at all.

  And then there was.

  Voices, easy sounding, blokes having a chat.

  Four blokes speaking Japanese. Not that Fred could speak Jap, except for three words,
nor even Chinese, for all he looked it, and the locals spoke more languages than you could poke a stick at. But he’d heard enough Jap now to know what it sounded like.

  The others caught it too.

  Bert’s whole body seemed to focus. The lieutenant flinched. Fred pretended he hadn’t noticed. Big Bob’s smile seemed suddenly painted on.

  The mist began to lift, like a giant hand had twitched the curtain. Fred pulled the lieutenant onto the ground just as Bert hissed, ‘Down.’

  A handkerchief of blue shone above, the mist eddying as the clouds sucked it up.

  A hollow in the ridge in front of them, the size of a football field with just enough soil for waist-high grass to grow. The sun glinted on two machine guns, each almost hidden in the trees. If it hadn’t been for the voices, they’d have walked right onto them. Beyond the grass the ground rose in a bald knob, then fell down a slope that’d foil even a rock wallaby, but this route was more passable than any mountain around.

  Fred heard his breath, tried to silence it. They were sitting ducks here. Make that lying ducks, pressed to the ground.

  Those four Japs were waiting. Waiting for the rest of the platoon to come up one of these slopes. Waiting above them, to pick them off. Two machine guns could get the lot of them, if they had enough ammunition.

  Were they a lookout? An ambush? Were more Japs heading their way? Possibly not, he thought. The Japs they’d come across had been starving, in a worse state than them. Were these scouts or snipers? Maybe like them they’d been separated from their platoon.

  It didn’t matter. Two machine guns in the right spot could pick off fifty men. Hundreds maybe, taking down one lot, then waiting for the next to come along unawares. Impossible to tell where shots had come from in country like this. The echoes bounced from one crag to another, each echo repeating a dozen more.

  He flicked his eyes towards Bert, the lieutenant, Big Bob. If any one of them moved, they’d have them all.

  He felt his heart rate slow as he began to think. That’s what living hand to mouth did for you. He was at his best in a tight corner.

  Two options. They could wait till dark, or for the mist to fall again, and creep off, the way they’d come. Or they could fight it out.

  He reckoned the lieutenant was frozen with terror. Chances were he’d make it till dark without giving them away. Bert could sit like a stone for hours, waiting for a bunny for his pot. So could Fred, for that matter. Big Bob would be right too. They could slink off through the trees, down the ridge, back to the gully. Hide among the trees. Wait for reinforcements to make it as far north as them, because eventually the Allies would have to beat the Japs. Another week or two of going hungry and then …

  No, he thought. Another week or two of hearing machine-gun fire, the screams of dying men. A week or two of knowing they had let their own blokes climb up a hill and die.

  Which left fighting it out.

  Fred considered that too.

  Four blokes versus four men. Fred reckoned he could take down two himself, with his bare fists, even if he hadn’t had his knife. But it didn’t work like that. It wasn’t man versus man up here, but two machine guns facing three Lee-Enfield .303s because the lieutenant had lost his.

  Back in Australia they said that one Aussie was worth six of the enemy. They didn’t say that on Kokoda. Here the greatest enemy was the land itself, and if you survived that, well, the Japs had survived it too. They’d been at war for more than ten years now. He and the others after their few weeks’ drilling were powder puffs compared to that.

  Stop right there, he told himself. Think defeat and we will lose. Back in the golden circus days, Mrs Olsen had told him how you kept smiling up on the trapeze. You don’t let yourself think that you can fall, she said. Your body obeys your mind.

  So. Four Aussies. Three rifles. If they stood suddenly, all together on the command, they’d …

  He tried to think of four Japs falling as the bullets flew. It wouldn’t work. The circus taught you realism too. Those four were behind the trees. They might get one, or two if they were lucky. Then they’d be in the open with no cover. Dead.

  Two snipers with machine guns could do almost as much damage to troops below as four.

  Something niggled at him. Circus, he thought. Madame, the old woman who had taken in a fourteen-year-old boy with his armful of stolen gems, the blind fortune-teller who had told fortunes and created them too. He could hear her voice in the whisper of the trees in the valley, the cry of some unknown bird. ‘Think circus,’ the air about him breathed. ‘The punters see what they want to see. It is up to us to make sure they do.’

  Think circus.

  What did the snipers want to see? Mates, he thought. Reinforcements. Japanese men like themselves, short, wiry, bodies all bone and sinew from climbing up and down cliffs and starvation. Dark hair. Like his. What most Aussies called ‘slant eyes’, but which weren’t really slanted. Eyes like his, inherited from the Chinese father he’d never known.

  He’d kept his hair dyed blond, mostly, so as not to look Chinese. It had been cut short and had grown out black now. He had his mother’s build, short but stocky. He reckoned he was starved enough to pass as Japanese now.

  Uniform? His boots were Aussie boots. Some of the Japanese wore them after they had pulled them off corpses, as their own boots had rotted, but best to take them off. He used the other foot to ease them over his heels and toes, and then socks. Then the shorts. What did Jap soldiers wear under their uniforms? He reckoned not white cotton underpants. He slipped them off, felt Bert’s glance, and a lifted eyebrow. The lieutenant was still hugging the ground, Big Bob lying relaxed, saving his strength for creeping out tonight.

  Fred glanced up. Yes, the mist was falling again. Good.

  ‘What you plannin’?’ Bert’s voice was an almost breath.

  Bert would come with him. The lieutenant couldn’t. Big Bob wouldn’t. He’d enjoy the killing, risk his life to do it. But he wouldn’t put himself in the way of certain death.

  Certain. Death. ‘Nothing is certain,’ came Madame’s voice. ‘Yes, death, perhaps, but when? And love lives after death. I know.’

  Love. His love for Marj. Another sort of love for Blue, the kind you keep in your pocket and look at wistfully and it makes you think, what if? And something for the land he’d walked on, so deep and so diffuse he wasn’t sure if it was love at all.

  He wasn’t letting these bastards put their feet on it. If he could saw his sister in half four times a week for nearly a year, he could do this.

  He moved one hand, slowly, slowly. Undid his shirt, smeared blood across his hand and then his face. Slid the knife up his sleeve, holding it by the hilt, blade hidden. His rifle rested in the dirt. He hated to leave it there, but it too would give him away.

  A drop of water slid down his face. For a moment he wondered if he was crying without realising it, then realised it was the mist again. A clammy, wonderful shield of mist.

  Sound carried in mist. He made his voice softer than a breath. ‘Don’t move. No matter what I do, don’t move.’

  Big Bob looked at him. He mouthed, ‘Yeah.’ The lieutenant managed a puzzled nod. Bert whispered, ‘I’ll go round behind.’

  Bert’d worked out what Fred planned to do. Maybe Big Bob had too. ‘Ain’t no behind to go round, mate. They’d see you. Give the game away.’ He took a breath, felt its sweetness in his throat, then said, ‘My sister’s Marjory McAlpine, Drinkwater Station, Gibber’s Creek. Give her my love, and Blue, and Sheba.’

  Bert gazed at him for ten heartbeats. He said, ‘Yep. Good luck, mate.’

  ‘Yeah,’ mouthed Fred. He shut his eyes, imagined himself yelling one of his three words of Japanese, then opened them. Time to give the punters their show. ‘Here I come, Madame,’ he whispered. ‘The biggest Galah of me life.’

  The scream came from the mist: ‘Tasukete!’

  A figure staggered through the white: a man of mud and blood. ‘Tasukete!’ he screamed. ‘Tasuket
e!’ Help. Help.

  The Japanese soldier held his machine gun ready, waiting for other figures to appear too, enemies chasing, shooting the staggering, blood-streaked man. The seconds passed, two, three …

  But there were no shots, no chase, just the staggering figure, his hands clawing at his face. Mutilated? Bitten by a tree snake …?

  The soldier stepped out, reached to help. The stranger’s knife thrust in and upwards. He managed a gurgle, lost in the bloody figure’s cries of ‘Tasukete! Tasukete!’ Saw the stranger strike his companion, another quick blow in and up. The mist filled his body.

  Then the black.

  Two down, thought Fred. Could he reach the second machine gun before they worked out what had happened in the mist a short distance away? Already the soldier across the rocks was yelling, jabbering stuff he couldn’t understand, him with his three words of Japanese. He used one of them again, ‘Tasukete!’ and ran forwards.

  The men were wary now, peering into the mist. One of them ran towards him, bayonet in hand. Then Fred was on him.

  In. Up. Old Jim had taught him this, back when he was riding the rattlers as a kid. Jim said he’d learnt the technique up on the Somme, but more like in some back street.

  This one did not die cleanly. He called out, even as the blood bubbled from his mouth, was mumbling even as his eyes opened, never to close again.

  Fred let the body slump onto the ground. The fourth man must have heard it. Where was he?

  Trickery would not work now. He pinned himself against the tree, hoping it would absorb the bullets. They didn’t come.

  Bastard was waiting then. Waiting for a clear shot.

  Let him wait.

  A bee stung his leg. The venom trickled down; no, not venom: blood. He looked at it with curiosity. No fear. He had said goodbye to his body, to his life. This was just a leg that must be used. He’d better use it then, before it gave out.