by Judy Nunn
It was late afternoon when Jack heard the concertina. Was he going mad? he wondered. There was no particular tune, just sounds. Mournful sounds coming to him on the wind.
He stood on one leg, pain shooting through his wounded calf, and looked around. Then he saw it. The concertina was twisted up in barbed wire alongside the other contents of Rick’s pack, his waterproof sheet and his gas mask. Even as Jack watched, the sheet took off and sailed across the battlefield like an avenging wraith. But the concertina remained hanging on the wire. Each time a fresh gust blew, it wailed.
Jack sat down once more beside his friend. Rick’s eyelids were fluttering. Could he hear it? ‘Jesus, mate, you won’t leave it alone, will you? Even out here I cop your bloody concertina.’
Rick’s eyes opened. Yes, Jack thought, he could hear it. Rick Gianni was listening to something, of that Jack was certain.
Rick could hear the concertina. But not the mournful wail borne on the wind of the battlefield. He could hear ‘Solange’s Song’. He closed his eyes; soon he’d see her face. He heard a voice. ‘Hang on, mate, not long now.’ He could swear it was Jack Brearley.
There was the sound of popping shells in the air and Snowy Wilson was instantly awake. ‘Gas!’ he yelled, grabbing at his pack.
Jack ripped his own mask from his pack and put it on Rick. Rick’s eyes opened once more. Yes, it had been Jack’s voice he’d heard. He opened his mouth. ‘Thanks, Jack.’ Whether he said the words or just thought them, he couldn’t be sure.
What a nice thing for a mate to do, Rick thought. The sound of Jack Brearley’s voice mingled with the music and the image of Solange, and he was quite at peace as he died.
‘You’re a fool,’ Snowy hissed, donning his gas mask and grabbing Tom’s from his pack. ‘He won’t need that and his mask’s out there blown to buggery.’
‘These blokes use them too you know.’ Jack was feverishly opening one of the dead German’s packs, valuable seconds wasted as he fumbled about.
‘Jesus, mate, hurry!’ Snowy urged, fastening Tom’s mask. ‘Hurry!’
There it was. He’d found the German’s gas mask. But, even as he ripped it over his head, the dense cloud of mustard gas surrounded them.
Jack tried to hold his breath but, in the split-second before he pulled the mask down over his face, the hideous vapour attacked.
He fell, writhing, to the ground. His throat was being torn out, iron hands clutched at his chest—any moment he would choke. Inside his gas mask, he gasped for air. His eyes were burning, the pain was intense. Was he dying? If he was, God in Heaven make it quick! Through his agony, he could hear the concertina. That damn concertina was playing his lament. Was Rick dead? Was he dead himself? Was this where it ended?
There was an echo, Snowy’s voice coming to him from out of a deep, deep tunnel. ‘Jesus, mate, did you cop it?’ Then all Jack could hear was the wail of the concertina as he sank into merciful oblivion.
MIDDLESEX WAR HOSPITAL had been a women’s lunatic asylum, the new patients were informed by the old, and there were jokes about the bars on the windows and the fact that it was hell to break out for a night on the town. Not that anyone ever did; there were few who could leave their beds. After the fierce fighting at Passchendaele, only the severely wounded remained for any length of time at the Middlesex War Hospital; the rest were farmed out to convalescence hospitals to make way for the never-ending stream of severe cases.
Mad Tom Brereton was moved on fairly quickly. He’d been close to death but they’d saved him and, although he’d lost his right arm, he would be returned to Australia once he’d undergone a lengthy convalescence.
Jack Brearley was a different case. His heart had been affected by mustard gas and he was to be transported to the 1AA Hospital at Harefield Park in Essex for special treatment.
Jack had little memory of the field hospital at Poperinghe or the train which had carried the wounded on stretchers to the coast.
He had little memory of the flimsy wood and canvas hospital at Etaples Base.
He had little memory of anything but pain.
He was blind, without the power of speech and in such agony that his conscious moments were spent praying for death.
The drops they applied regularly to his eyes burned like liquid fire, and whatever it was they tried to make him drink from the feeding bottle was impossible to swallow. The mere act of breathing was difficult, as each single intake of air seared painfully through his lungs.
There followed further train travel to Calais and a murderous Channel crossing to Dover while the steamship bucked and rolled and brought on such a bout of seasickness that Jack thought his heart was being torn from his body.
It was only as he lay on his stretcher in the huge iron shed, amongst the rows and rows of wounded awaiting the trip to Middlesex, that the will to live returned. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he had left the ghastly battlefields of France. Perhaps it was the return of his sight, although his eyes were shaded and he could see little more than cloudy shapes. But most likely it was the voices of the English nurses as they wandered amongst the men tending to their comfort and offering encouragement to the downhearted.
How Jack loved those nurses. They were angels, each and every one of them, and they made him aware that life was worth a fight.
After his transfer from Middlesex to Harefield Park, Jack took up the fight in earnest. Harefield Park was an Australian war hospital and it was the voices of the Aussie nurses and doctors that finally inspired him. He determined to get well and strong just as soon as he possibly could. He wanted to go home where he belonged. He wanted to go home to Kal.
Shortly before Christmas, Jack was moved to the convalescent wards at Hurdcott, near Salisbury, but it was to be almost nine months before he was considered strong enough to return to Australia.
By the time Jack Brearley stepped off the ship at Fremantle, the war was well and truly over.
The streets of Kalgoorlie were festooned with flags and it was bedlam at the railway station as the trains pulled in—the goldfields boys were home from the war.
Brass bands played, there were parades in the streets and jubilation abounded. But the lads who’d returned were vastly outnumbered by those who had not, and the seemingly endless parade of injured—the limbless, the blind, the shell-shocked—was a sobering reminder that a generation of young men had been virtually wiped out.
Other injured diggers were amongst the welcoming hordes, diggers who had been wounded earlier in the war, treated, and sent home to their families. Amongst them was Tony Prendergast.
‘Tony!’ With his one arm, Mad Tom Brereton embraced the Welshman. ‘We thought you’d kicked the bucket! The medico on the beach told Jack you wouldn’t make it. Jesus, mate, you copped it bad.’
‘So did you, by the look of it,’ Tony said and actually raised a smile, a rare thing for him these days.
‘G’day, cobber.’ Snowy tried to steady the Welshman as he shook his hand. Mad Tom had nearly knocked the poor bloke off his crutches. Christ, but Tony looked crook.
‘So how’s Jack then? Did he make it?’
‘Dunno,’ Snowy said, shaking his head. ‘Mustard gas. He was pretty bad when they carted him off. Rick Gianni copped it.’
‘Yes, I heard.’ Like all of Kalgoorlie, Tony read the casualty lists which the newspapers published regularly. ‘Heard you three got awarded DCMs too.’
‘Yep.’ Mad Tom nodded proudly and jabbed at the medal pinned to his chest. ‘And bloody old Jack got the VC. Captain Bob saw to that, just like he said he would, didn’t he, Snow?’
Snowy nodded. ‘Hell of a price to pay though—they say you’re never the same after mustard gas.’ He slapped Tony on the back. ‘Come on, it’s time for a beer.’
They walked to Maudie’s pub at a snail’s pace, Tony slow on his crutches, Snowy worrying all the while that the Welshman would fall. Tony was obviously not used to walking far, he could barely stand for any length of time. Struth, he looks aw
ful, Snowy kept thinking. Skinny and gaunt-faced. But the eyes were the worst. The eyes were hollow, devoid of hope.
Tony Prendergast was the worst type of war casualty. He’d lost far more than his leg; he’d lost his spirit and his will to live. It was strange, because he’d certainly had it on the battlefield.
Tony could remember vividly the days and nights amongst the bodies in No-Man’s-Land, fighting to stay conscious, tightening and easing the tourniquet on his thigh, losing the battle with the blowflies and watching the maggots feed on his flesh. He’d heard men say that the maggots ate the gangrene. The maggots were his friends, he told himself; that way he could watch them at work and not be sick.
The only thing that had kept him going was the thought of his three children. If he gave in now, he kept telling himself, he’d never see them grow up. He fed himself from the packet of nuts and raisins in his kitbag, the last of his Red Cross parcel, rationing himself to a handful a day and sipping carefully from his water bottle. Never once did he think of giving in; he willed himself to stay alive.
Even during his hospitalisation, when his life had hung in the balance and every day was racked with pain, Tony had never given up the fight. And, when he came home to Kal, he’d fooled himself for a while that things would be all right.
Giovanni Gianni had pulled strings to get him a job as a filing clerk in the accounting office at the Midas. ‘A man there owes me a favour,’ Giovanni had said and Tony was grateful, knowing that it was out of character for the Italian to call in favours. But when Giovanni had been taken ill and had left the Midas, the man in the accounting office forgot the favour and Tony was out of a job.
He’d swallowed his pride and applied for whatever menial work he could get. He was a man with one leg and three children—pride was a luxury he could not afford. He begged favours of friends and borrowed money where he could. But when the favours and friends ran out, the hopelessness set in.
He would look at his wife, still an attractive woman. If he hadn’t come home from the war, he’d think to himself, Megan could have found herself another man. It was then that Tony wished he’d lost his battle for life out there on the heights of Gallipoli.
It showed in his eyes, and it broke his wife’s heart. Didn’t he know that she loved him? Times were hard, yes, but they would manage on his war pension and she could take in washing. Daily, Megan Prendergast tried to raise her husband’s spirits but he sank deeper and deeper into despondency, until she too was reduced to despair.
Tony Prendergast was the worst type of war casualty.
WHEN THE HYSTERIA of welcome had died down and the homecoming heroes sought to pick up the pieces of their lives, a rude shock awaited them. Many found that they were not needed, that jobs were few and far between.
It was something they had not anticipated. The women had been the workforce in their absence, or so they’d been told, manning the factories and the farms. And the women would be only too happy to return to their homes when the men came back from the war. But the workforce in Kalgoorlie had not been drawn from the female ranks. A woman miner was unheard of. The jobs had gone to the migrants.
‘A bloke goes off to war and comes home to find a foreigner’s got his job,’ Snowy complained loudly. Most of the others were saying the same thing.
Even Mad Tom Brereton, who refused to accept his amputee status as any form of handicap, joined in the whinge. He’d decided to settle in Kal. There was more money in the mines than there was in the railways.
‘Give a digger a go, mate,’ he said to the underground boss at the Midas. ‘Chuck out the foreigners and give the diggers back their jobs.’
Big Pete Grainger was a little taken aback. A miner with one arm? He wasn’t sure what to say.
‘But you’re a timbercutter.’ He hedged. ‘You worked for the railways, that’s what you said.’
‘Too right,’ Tom answered, ‘and they finished the Transcontinental two years back, didn’t they? There’s bugger-all work for a bloke there.’
Pete Grainger decided that the man was mad. ‘But you’ve had no experience,’ he argued lamely.
‘What experience does a miner need?’ Tom’s tone was getting belligerent.
Two arms for a start, Pete thought and decided to bite the bullet. ‘Mate,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve only got one arm.’
‘So what? I can swing a pick and pull a cart. I’m just not too good with a shovel, that’s all.’
‘Sorry,’ Pete said in the end, ‘there are no jobs left.’
‘’Course not, the bloody Italians have got them, that’s why. It’s a bloody disgrace!’
As Tom walked off muttering, Pete wondered what his reaction would have been had he been confronted with the previous underground boss. A bloke with a name like Giovanni Gianni would not have gone down too well with Tom Brereton.
Dissatisfaction and ill-will grew as more Aussie troops returned home to no work, and their anger focused upon the Italians, who seemed to hold most of the jobs. Italians were hard working, everyone knew that, but it wasn’t natural for a man to work harder than he needed to. It was even rumoured that the Italians paid the underground bosses for extra shifts, and that was downright robbery. Those shifts could have gone to a digger!
There were brawls in pubs and, in the street, Aussies now openly hurled abuse at Italians. The old antipathy was fed with fresh fuel and the wounds reopened. Kalgoorlie was seething.
One evening, after downing a few beers at Maudie’s pub, Snowy and Mad Tom were heading home to their boarding house and, as they passed the Sheaf Hotel, Tom insisted on one last drink before it closed.
Snowy shook his head. ‘You don’t know Kal, mate, that’s a dago pub.’
‘Good,’ there was a glint in Mad Tom’s eyes, ‘let’s stir ‘em up.’
Before Snowy could stop him, Tom was through the doors and Snowy felt obliged to follow. The place was crowded with men, mostly Italians, scrambling for last drinks before the pub closed. Tom ordered a beer at the bar, then demanded loudly, of no one in particular, ‘Which one of you blokes won a medal in the war?’
Gradually the hubbub died down.
‘Shut up, mate,’ Snowy muttered, ‘there’s too many of them.’ Snowy didn’t mind a good pub brawl but, here tonight, they were vastly outnumbered and the dagos looked like a surly bunch.
It was true. The Italians, fed up with abuse, were ready to retaliate.
‘Well, I won a medal,’ Tom said, ‘and so did he.’ He waved his beer in Snowy’s direction. ‘We fought for this bloody country and you blokes have stolen our jobs.’
‘My son, he fought for this country.’ The voice came from a seat in the corner. A big burly man, black hair flecked with grey. ‘My son, he died for this “bloody” country, and he won a medal too.’
Tom was momentarily halted, but the burly Italian wasn’t. He rose, his black eyes burning with anger. ‘You two want to fight about that?’
The Italian was a good six inches shorter than he appeared when seated and Tom realised, with surprise, that the bloke was a cripple.
‘Jesus, it’s Rico Gianni,’ Snowy muttered to Tom. Every local for miles knew the madman Gianni.
‘Gianni? Rick’s dad?’ Tom grinned, his anger gone in an instant. ‘I fought with your son, Mr Gianni. He was a good bloke, Rick.’
‘Rick!’ The Italian spat out the name as if it was poison. ‘Rick! His name was Enrico!’ He started pushing through the men who stepped aside to make way for his lumbering gait.
‘I work in the mines,’ he said when he stood before Snowy and Tom. ‘You want to fight me for that?’ Tom was taken aback. Fight him? The man was a cripple, and he had to be fifty. ‘Come on and fight,’ Rico goaded. ‘You have only one arm so I take you both on.’
‘Let’s go, Tom,’ Snowy said, starting for the door.
‘But I haven’t finished my beer.’
‘I said, let’s go.’ Snowy grabbed his arm and marched purposefully out of the pub.
�
�Why did we leave?’ Tom asked out in the street.
‘I didn’t want a fight, that’s why.’
‘But I wouldn’t have hit him, he’s a loony cripple.’
‘He’s a cripple, yeah, and he’s a loony, all right, and they say he can break a man’s neck with his bare hands.’ Tom Brereton might be mad, Snowy thought, but Rico Gianni was insane, and there was a difference. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said.
THESE DAYS RICO spent every night drinking at the Sheaf.
Teresa had stopped nagging him; she didn’t seem to care what he did any more. But then Teresa didn’t seem to care about anything any more. Except the church. She was always at that damn church—either there or at Giovanni’s. She’d talk to Giovanni and Caterina but not to her own husband! Of course, Giovanni was dying, so that could explain why—she was probably preparing his soul for the hereafter. She had become obsessed with religion since the death of her son.
Everything had gone wrong in Rico’s world. It had started with the news of Enrico’s death. He’d accepted that—he’d more or less expected it—but when the citation had arrived announcing the awarding of the Distinguished Conduct Medal to one ‘Rick’ Gianni, it had been the final insult.
‘The fool of a boy doesn’t even die with his own name!’ he’d roared. Teresa had simply stared at him, the grief in her eyes turning to hate. ‘It is not enough that he dies for a country not his own, he dies bearing a name not his own!’
Teresa had barely spoken to him since. Rico had even tried to apologise. It had been his grief speaking, he’d told her, the grief they should be sharing over the death of their son. But she wouldn’t listen. She went to church instead. And, once again, Rico blamed his son. If the fool of a boy hadn’t joined the Australian army, if he hadn’t gone to war …
Everything was wrong. His wife didn’t speak to him. His daughter, his precious Carmelina, didn’t speak to either of them. And now his brother was dying. No wonder Rico spent his nights at the pub.
