by Gene Skellig
A bird floated in the sky above, part of a dance. Rideout spotted a dog in the distance – a mangy little coyote, he assumed. The dog stopped and looked at Rideout. Rideout stopped and looked at him. Then the critter scampered off, leaving the Marine looking on after him. Good thing it was just him, if he had a gang they could have chewed me to bits, the little buggers, he shuddered. He heard a bird’s cry above him. He looked up and saw the same bird circling around him. It was as if the bird was laughing at him.
Ride decided he’d better head back to the billabong. He turned in a full circle. He couldn’t see any sign of the billabong or where he had come from. He controlled his sudden sense of surprise. Look down, he thought, there should be tracks. But the ground was too rock-hard. What the fuck? Fuckin’ Aussie country, he thought for a moment, reverting to his old Marine mind-set. He turned, slipped on a loose rock and crashed to the ground.
He painfully, slowly got back on his feet. He had fallen hard. That’s hard ground, this could support a tank without making a lot of tracks, he thought. Look where you’re going, called in his head. He stopped cold. Had someone spoken to him?
At that moment the desert flooded over him. It was big, huge, bigger than he was, and it did not care if he fell down or died here. It simply was.
All the training, all the bases, the endless big talk of his fellow Marines, the constant swagger, the drill, the life – out here, it was as if the land spoke firmly to him and said: That is nothing; this is all.
He was alone. No buddies to joke with, no one to back him up. Here it was just him and the land. Sure, he’d been on road trips and been alone in the massive Wyoming plains; hiking in the Rocky Mountains and a hundred other places in the world. But something about the Outback shook him to the core. Its sheer starkness called to him and challenged him. Aren’t so big now, are you, little man?
No, I am not little, he said to no one and everything around him. I can learn if I have the time, and I can survive here. He stood tall and faced the desert before him. I am Man. The thought hung strangely in his mind, as if spoken from his ancestral consciousness.
He would have been lost in his thoughts if he had not been interrupted by the call of that same bird. He looked up at the winged creature that seemed to float away, calling back to him as if to follow. Which he did. He walked steady and sure, not the march of a Marine, but that of a man, like men who had walked across this land for thousands of years. He followed the path the bird was taking, and suddenly, there it was.
The billabong. He had been so wrapped up in this strange trance that he had forgotten that he was lost. But not anymore. That was strange, he thought, Must have been the heat. I better not tell the others. Determined to shake off this experience; he returned to the persona of one Master Sergeant Rick Rideout, USMC.
He made his way back down the slope to the idyllic paradise to rejoin the couple. It was clear to him that they had ‘had a nasty’ while he was away, judging by the bits of twigs and grass in Sergeant Hayman’s hair and the mischievous smile on Dickie’s face.
Ride was feeling great, despite his earlier embarrassment. In spite of the heat and the exertion of his hike, the experience had left him with a strange euphoria.
His mood improved even more when Dickie handed him a cold beer.
“Have a coldie, Toppo!”
“Thanks, Dickie.”
After opening the can and enjoying a few long gulps of the cool ‘4X Gold’ beer, he watched Dickie pull another can of beer out of a long white sock.
“What’s with the sock?”
“You see a coolie around here?”
“Cooler? No, now that you mention it. So how did you keep the beer so cold?”
“Keep it cold? It was warm when we bought it back in Richmond. No, mate, I cooled it here, while you were out on your walkabout.”
“But how did you get it so cold so fast? This is as cold as a fridge.”
“Well, how would you do it in America, if you were out in the never-never without a coolie?” Dickie asked.
Looking around, Ride thought he had the answer.
“The billabong? I would put it in the water to cool it down.”
“Wrongo, the water temp is at least 20 degrees centigrade.”
“So how’d you do it?”
“Old bushman’s trick. It’s really good oil, actually. You just put your can of grog in a sock, pour some warm water on it and set it out in the breeze for half an hour. As the air evaporates the water off the sock, it sucks heat out of the can.”
“That really works?”
“Too right. Works like a charm. Dirty pond-water, even piss works well on the sock. As long as you have a breeze you can get your beer to cool down to about five degrees centigrade in about half an hour. Even in a hot breeze like today you don’t need a Freemantle Doctor, just air moving across the wet surface of the sock and physics takes over.”
“Latent heat of evaporation,” added Wendy, “for the water on the sock to evaporate, it has to suck energy out of the can.”
Looking up at the hot sun and enjoying another long sip of cool beer, Ride thought about the physics of it.
“So would it work on bottled water too?”
“Sure. But maybe not as good as for an aluminium can.”
“You mean ‘aluminum’.”
“No, mate, we say ‘al-you-min-i-um’, cause we speak the Queen’s English. But the technique works on plastic water bottles just fine. You see it every day on the highway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember that pack of banana bender cyclists we saw yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you see the socks on their water bottles? All the cyclists use this technique. They generate their own wind by cycling, and always have cold water close to hand.”
“Got any more warm ‘grog’? I’d like to try it for myself.”
“Sure, in the Rovie. Help yourself, Toppo. The breeze is dying down, so you might want to tie them up in the trees to get more air flow.”
Refrigeration technology, Ride laughed to himself as he sat back against a tree after setting up a few wet socks with beer cans in them, hanging from a tree. How long will we have to wait for the beer to cool? he asked in his head. Who cares, he answered himself, and laughed out loud. What a day, he thought as he rolled his head around and looked at the sky above him, What a country! He was alive, here in this place and he was glad.
Half an hour later, Ride retrieved the cans of beer that he had hung. They were nice and cool.
As he helped Dickie set up the small portable BBQ rig from the Range Rover, Rick felt at ease with the young man and not the slightest bit embarrassed about his earlier gaffe.
But he did have some unfinished business with the man.
“That was quite a stunt you pulled, scaring the crap out of me like that!” No one but no one scares ‘Ride’ Rideout. This was a major deal to a proud Marine.
“That’s how we do it in the outback, Mate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Initiation. We don’t’ share our secret places with just anybody. And this one is one of our favorites. It’s something of a tradition to only share these sacred places with people of good character.”
“So you’ve decided I’m of good character?”
“Yes, Mate, you’ve passed the test.”
“What test? What did I do to pass it?”
“When you stopped being such a Root Rat, and just relaxed and enjoyed yourself like a regular bloke, you became human again.” For a moment Ride felt awkward that he’d let the “proud Marine” in him slip back in at the start of the conversation. Dickie did not seem to notice this, and continued. “But we knew it would be tough for you, cause you’re doubly cursed.”
“How so?”
“Well, first of all, you are a Seppo.”
“Seppo? I think I heard that a few times in the bars down in the dockside area, in Darwin. What’s it mean?”
“The
sailors were taking the piss out of you, Mate. They were calling you a ‘Septic Tank’ – rhymes with ‘Yank’, get it? Septic Tank – Yank: ‘Seppo’.”
Turning a bit red at the thought of not having knowing that he was being insulted, Ride got his hackles up a bit: “What’s wrong with being an American?”
“Oh, nothing. ‘S’truth. But your American way of life makes you see things, and act on things, as if you are in a great big rush to get somewhere, to do something. That makes you less receptive to just being.”
“Sounds very philosophical. Are all Aussies like you two?”
“Well, it’s not as if we are Buddhists here, but we have inherited a close connection with the land.”
“Inherited? From whom?”
“First of all, from the abos – the aborigines, Mate. You have your native Americans and Spanish: we have the aborigines. Their culture reverberates in the Australian soul, and it is a constant reminder to us that we may walk on this land but our footprints here are ephemeral. That sort of puts it all into perspective for us.
“But that’s not the end of it. Our connection with the land goes much deeper than what we learned from the aborigines. You see, today, our connection is more with our forefathers, who broke their backs taming this unforgiving land. You have your cowboys, and we have our pioneers. You cannot imagine some of the horrible conditions they faced, disease, drought, starvation and the ever-present scorching sun. Yet they persevered, and transformed this land into the bread-basket of Asia, second only to your California in terms of the diversity and quality of our agricultural output. So our connection with this land, what makes it sacred, is very close to home. It’s quite literally in our blood.”
Ride thought about that for a while, and how different he felt just sitting around and ‘being’ at the billabong. He remembered how insignificant the desert had made him feel, yet at the same time was inspired enough to rise to its challenge.
“What’s the second curse?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t mean to offend, but you are a Marine.”
For just an instant, Top Sergeant Rideout, USMC, felt provoked, but he did not say anything. As he reflected on it, he thought the comment might have something to do with the way that a Marine is ‘always on’, always hyper-aware, and ready for anything. Maybe that’s the point here, he thought. As he let himself relax again, he felt the wires that held him together as a Marine, the ever-present tautness, fade into the background. It was almost mystical.
It made his real life, as a Marine with the 3rd Marines, seem very far away, and yet he knew that it was still there, at the core of who he was. As though he were on a well-deserved vacation, getting some much needed down-time, ‘decompressing’ as they say in the Marine Corps. He felt that he was being restored somehow. But there was more. The desert had broadened his own definition of who and what he was. It was as if the Outback had welcomed him with its mysterious, silent call.
“I think I understand, Dickie,” he said, looking slowly around at the magnificent country and the bright, blue sky overhead. It all seemed to take him into a one-ness and give him a feeling of belonging. He thought to himself, I’ve got to remember this moment in my mind, like a photo in an album – I don’t ever want to forget this. He turned to Dickie and smiled. “Thanks for sharing this sacred place with me. I can feel it, you know.”
“I know. This is the sort of thing that makes Australia so magical. You don’t have to be a greenie to know it. The land is alive here, that’s ‘London to a brick’. And if you treat it with respect, interact with it like a loved one, it will protect you.”
Such feelings were strange to Ride. After all, he was a kick-ass Marine. If he let these strange thoughts take over, he wondered if he’d float away like that bird that had led him back to the billabong. But he shook himself back to his old self.
Putting back on his USMC persona, Ride spoke to Dickie with newfound respect.
“This Australian thing with the land, how does it affect you as a soldier?”
“Good on ya, Toppo! Bulls –eye!” said Wendy, who had been hanging back while the boys had had their conversation. “Now you’ve got it. This is what I was tasked with getting across to you.”
Ride spun around to face her. “Tasked? By your higher headquarters? Are you kidding me? Your chain of command is that philosophical?”
“No, Toppo, they’re as figjam as any other chain of command. Once you get to those lofty rank levels you’re far removed from the trenches. That’s universal in any military. No, Mate, Captain Thorne, from 1 Commando, set this up. He figured that we need to reach a few of you senior NCOs on account of your role in herding kittens in your MAGTFA unit. We’ve had trouble in the past with your mob not treating our land, and our civilians, with the required amount of respect. So for our diggers to work with your lot, we have to get this through to you.”
“So the message is, treat Australia with respect?”
“That’s right, mate,” she said, seriously, “Make sure your boys understand that they are welcome guests here, abide by the Robertson Barracks Post Standing Orders – especially regarding the constraints and procedures for the exercise areas, weapons ranges, and interactions with our civilian population.” She was suddenly the serious, professional again, speaking with purpose.
“So all of this, this grand tour of your facilities, this initiation to your sacred billabong, this was all about having us understand and abide by your rules?” he said, incredulously.
“Maybe now would be a good time to cut out the bush-talk, Wendaye,” Dickie said, over-emphasizing the “AYE”, saying her name, Wendy, with an over-the-top Australian twang.
And then he got it. What had been gnawing at his subconscious for the entire trip. Now it made sense. He thought back to a number of times when he had been introduced to the Australian Army and Special Forces units they had paid a visit to in their tour. Each time, Wendy would start with some incomprehensible slang that now seemed to be a cue for the local Aussie soldiers to speak the same way. It now dawned on Sergeant Rideout that the bush-talk was part of the charade, part of the entire exercise. And now Dickie wanted her to cut it out, as if the job had been accomplished. But what job?
“Good on’ya – er, good idea, Dickie. Time to cut the crock-talk,” she said, and then continued with a different air about her, far more serious: “Yes. We have a problem here in Australia, and this MAGTFA experiment with your lot simply must succeed,” she explained, in what seemed to be another language altogether, English! To Ride, it was like one of those seamless transitions in a movie, when the character switches from some foreign language to English, without skipping a beat.
Wendy continued in normal English, with only a mild, and easily understandable, Australian accent. “The majority of our civilians don’t want Americans basing here in Australia, especially you hard-charging, hard-drinking, womanizing Marines,” she said, winking at Rick with a smile. “When your guys have leave, and get off their faces and beat up our prostitutes, they demonstrate that they simply don’t get it. Take for example that serving wench from the meet-and-greet we were at with the zoomers of the R-Double-A-F over in Tindal; you remember her?”
Top Sergeant Rideout grimaced with the recollection. “Yes. I had to staff the paperwork on the expatriation of one of my men for that mess.”
“Well, that ‘mess’ is a perfect example. She may have been a simple serving wench, and proud of her tits, but when she wrote “407” over her tits, she was just being hospitable to that Canadian P-3 Crew. And even if she was pissed as a parrot and gave your man a welcoming kiss, it was not an invitation to be raped.”
“It was not a rape…”
“Bullshit. The Wing Commander may have been able to make the civilian charge go away so as to avoid another diplomatic incident, but it was a persistent, unwanted sexual advance resulting in unwanted and fairly rough sex I might add. And the way she was simply tossed out of the barracks like garbage after all, with nobody watc
hing out for her, was quite frankly, disgraceful. And to make matters even worse, the girl was a Lemon, so having unwanted sex with a man was even that much more offensive to her.”
Ride sighed, knowing that what she said was essentially true. The young private had gotten her extremely drunk and then screwed her, in what he later bragged to the men of his platoon as a state of near unconsciousness. Back home in the US, it would have been described unequivocally as a rape.
“You know as well as I do how bad it would have been if a journalist had gotten wind of that,” continued Sergeant Hayman. “So what we have here is a cultural problem. Our women are comfortable with their sexuality. Maybe it goes with our men being a bit more crude and loud-mouthed than you Americans are, but when our women show off their breasts, they are still decent women who must be treated with respect. Our diggers – our soldiers - they know this, and they know where the line is drawn, but you Yanks don’t seem to get it. And as for our sex-trade workers, your lot treat them as whores, whereas here in Oz, at least in Queensland and the Northern Territory, prostitution is legal and our sex trade workers are protected by the law, so when your men bugger off without paying, or they mistreat the prostitutes, they offend all of Australia. These little incidents on their own are not all that important, but when they interfere with the strategic picture, they become immensely important. I don’t need to remind you of your 3rd Marines’ litany of problems at Okinawa,” she said, seriously, and then lightened her tone as she continued. “But those of us in the military, we understand why you are here, and we appreciate you more than you can imagine.”
The reference to Okinawa hit Top Sergeant Rideout in the gut. It had been one of his mentors, Colonel Rogers, a man he deeply respected, who had fallen on his sword in the interests of the 3rd Marines. Rogers had been stripped of his command for the depraved actions of one of his men. The disproportionate punishment of the CO had been meant as an example, so that there would be zero tolerance for misconduct by Marines in Okinawa, and provide a foundation for a concerted effort to regain the trust of the local Japanese population who had been on the brink of kicking the 3rd Marines out of their home base.
