While the Moon Burns

by Peter Watt

  ‘Preposterous,’ Sarah snorted. ‘Why would I allow my son to be with people I despise?’

  ‘Because the things you hold against your brother and his wife have nothing to do with Michael,’ Charles said, looking at his son on the other side of the table. ‘I think it would be good for him to meet the rest of his family. Besides, your brother is his uncle, and by inviting Michael to stay he might be extending you an olive branch.’

  Sarah picked up a linen napkin and wiped the corner of her mouth. She could not even consider losing to her hated sister-in-law, but what her husband said might have some merit. What was the old saying? Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer. ‘I will consider Donald’s request.’ She said. ‘It might be time Patrick met his cousins.’

  ‘That would be grand, Mother.’ Michael said. ‘Would Nanny be with me?’

  ‘Yes, she will be with you.’ Sarah said. ‘That is what she is employed to do.’

  ‘Where do my cousins live?’ Michael asked eagerly.

  ‘They live up in Queensland on a cattle station,’ Sarah said. ‘It has strong connections to our family.’

  ‘A cattle station,’ Michael said. ‘Would I be allowed to ride horses and shoot guns?’

  ‘I am sure your Uncle Donald could arrange that,’ Sarah replied, reflecting that such things were the substance of adventure for a boy of eight years.

  ‘So, you agree with me?’ Charles said. ‘Michael stays with Donald at Christmas.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Sarah said reluctantly. ‘Christmas is a long way away. We will see where my brother’s invitation leads.’

  ‘It may be possible for you and Jessica to bury the hatchet and even consider a merger. Such a venture would surely put the Duffy and Macintosh enterprises at the top of the financial ladder.’

  Sarah knew her husband was making a good point. But she also knew that while she was alive this would not happen. There was only one seat at the top of the table and that was reserved for her alone. ‘We will see,’ she said, knowing full well that she would continue her campaign to crush her hated sister-in-law and treacherous brother. Her son was merely a pawn in the game, lulling those who occupied Glen View into a sense of security.

  ‘Has it turned cold in here?’ Sarah asked, feeling a sudden chill descend in the room.

  Charles looked at his wife. ‘No, it must be your imagination.’

  But Sarah could feel the chill and cast about, fearing that she would see an apparition. If she did, she suspected it would be of a long dead Aboriginal known as Wallarie.

  THIRTY

  They came in the dark around midnight. Whistles and bugles blowing. Human waves screaming, yelling and cursing in Chinese. Their raw courage was met with Aussie firepower. Grenades exploded, rifle cracked and machine guns stuttered death into the shadowy figures struggling up the slope.

  David worked the bolt of his rifle, sometimes firing blindly, other times picking his target in the flash of an exploding grenade. He did not know if he was feeling fear because he was too busy screaming at the top of his lungs, exhorting his small section to resist. The noise was deafening but occasionally the scream of a man dying could be heard in the constant din of small-arms fire and grenades.

  Beside him the Owen gun in the hands of his lance corporal poured bursts of bullets into the human waves. All David could think about was when would the attacks end. Was it possible that the Chinese would ever run out of troops? He had already learned that they only came on stronger with each wave.

  He and his men cared little that the Chinese had driven off the American tank men, nor that the Chinese soldiers had been able to infiltrate behind them, threatening the battalion HQ. Every platoon of every company of the battalion was under attack, and the enemy numbers seemed to be without count.

  David was suddenly aware of a shadowy figure to his left. It was a Chinese soldier carrying a bucket of Chicom grenades. He swung his rifle but it clicked on an empty chamber. Out of ammunition, he leaped at the slight figure of the soldier, swinging his rifle like a club, bringing him down with a sickening thud. David leaped back into his trench only to feel a bullet tear into his side. His adrenaline was pumping so hard he hardly recognised his wound and quickly charged his rifle with another clip of bullets.

  The lance corporal was tugging at David’s arm. ‘Almost out of ammo,’ he shouted, and David nodded. There was nothing he could do, except slip the bayonet on his rifle. He, too, was low on ammunition, and he feared that his section would have to go down fighting with nothing but bayonets and the sound of defeat ringing in their ears. For just an instant David wanted to lie down and pretend that he was not on the side of this hill in a place he knew hardly anyone in Australia cared about. For David and his section the area they covered with their firepower was the most important piece of ground on the earth, and for the moment there was a slight lull in the enemy assaults.

  The pain in his side came in waves. It was too dark to examine his injury and he knew he did not have time to do that when the welfare of his section came first. He did reach down to feel the wetness of his own blood in the chill of the Korean night.

  ‘Get your section back to our other positions,’ the platoon sergeant yelled at David, who ignored his wound to pass the order along his front. When he was near the young soldier’s gun pit he saw that he lay with his face against the earth, groaning. The Bren gunner beside him looked up at David. ‘He’s been gut shot,’ he said.

  ‘Sling your Bren and drag him back,’ David commanded. ‘I’ll get Bluey to give you a hand.’

  Satisfied that he could account for all of his section, David and his men fell back to a new, tighter position and he set about placing his men for what they all knew was coming. So far only he and the young soldier had been wounded, and the Bren gunner watched over the young soldier until it was safe to get medical help.

  David and his section were weary as the adrenaline washed away, but before dawn they were given the order to assault their old position now occupied by the enemy. They were to drive the enemy out and reoccupy their position themselves. Time seemed to have lost meaning. Only hours earlier they had been fighting a desperate battle to stay alive and hold a line. Now it was time to move forward and sweep away the enemy with bayonets and bullets.

  David led his section as part of the platoon and company attack and was relieved to see that the Chinese had vacated the trenches they had originally occupied. The young soldier had been moved to the rear, joining the other wounded. The platoon sergeant told David that they had incurred fifty casualties in the last few hours. The battle for Kapyong had only just begun and the Australians knew that there would be no rescue for them. A mere handful of Yanks, Kiwis, Aussies and Canadians stood between the Chinese army and the city of Seoul.

  *

  This time Jessica gave birth to a baby daughter in a Brisbane hospital. She had done so on the advice of her doctor, and the insistence of Donald, who now held his princess in his arms.

  ‘She will be called Shannon,’ Jessica said weakly from her hospital bed. ‘That is the place where my Irish ancestors came from – the banks of the Shannon River.’

  Donald did not care what his daughter’s name was because she was the most beautiful creature he had ever beheld, even with all her wrinkly skin. Her eyes were closed against the glare of the hospital ward lights as he rocked her in his arms. Jessica could see that her daughter had her biggest admirer in her father.

  The nurse standing nearby took the baby from Donald and placed her in Jessica’s arms.

  ‘I have to leave tomorrow for Sydney,’ Donald said. ‘Sean contacted me to say that things are hotting up with our enterprises. He said it’s getting beyond him to handle alone.’

  ‘I suspected that it would come to this,’ Jessica said, nursing her baby in her arms. ‘We need to establish offices in Sydney to manage the expansion of the companies. It’
s not fair to leave it all to Sean.’

  ‘Does that mean one of us will have to live in Sydney?’ Donald asked.

  Jessica frowned. Her dream of living a simple life on Glen View with Donald and her now-growing family was being threatened by her financial success. ‘I hate to say this but it might mean we all move to Sydney,’ she said. ‘It would at least mean that we don’t have to send the boys away to boarding school, and Mitch can take over the management of the property in our absence.’

  Donald sighed. He loved working in the open air with the ringers mustering cattle, but he also appreciated his wife’s ambition to destroy Sarah. She was also right about the boys’ education.

  ‘I’ll look around for a place for us to live,’ he said.

  ‘We have the house at Strathfield,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s not a mansion but it’s a good place to raise children. I know how much you are giving up by us moving back to Sydney. It shows me how much you really love me.’

  ‘That goes without saying, my dearest Jessie,’ Donald said, taking hold of her hand. ‘After all, we can take holiday breaks on Glen View so that the boys are reminded of where they come from. I know they would like that.’

  ‘Have you had any news from David?’ Jessica asked. ‘I know you two are close, and maybe David might consider joining our companies when he returns from Korea.’

  ‘I haven’t had any letters lately, but knowing David, he will get through the war. He has to be the toughest man alive. But it might be hard to extract him from his place on the beach, and his macadamia nuts, when he does come home. He has a little bit of paradise up there on the north coast.’

  ‘David deserves the love of a good woman and a peaceful life,’ Jessica said. ‘He’s a lost soul.’

  Lost soul . . . Donald knew what his wife meant. But at least David was a seasoned soldier and surely this little war to the north of Australia could not kill him – or so Donald prayed.

  *

  ‘Battalion HQ has finally made contact with us,’ the platoon commander told his NCOs at an early morning briefing. ‘It seems that the Chinese have cut HQ off and occupy high ground to our rear. We are too exposed here so there will be a bit of moving around to set up better defensive positions. I have heard some of the Chinese are surrendering which is a good sign that they are as sick of this as we are. We have been tasked with clearing a knoll occupied by a well dug in Chinese force. The only option for us is a frontal assault to clear them off.’

  The young officer glanced at his exhausted NCOs and knew he was asking a lot. But they were soldiers and this was their craft – killing or capturing the enemy.

  The platoon moved out and waited for their brother platoon to launch the first attack on the knoll. It ran into heavy machine-gun and rifle fire and grenades, forcing them to withdraw after suffering many casualties.

  ‘Our turn,’ David’s platoon commander said, and the word to fix bayonets was given to the men crouching in the daylight.

  David looked to his section and wondered who else would join the young soldier still awaiting evacuation behind them. He could see that they would have to cross open ground and knew that the enemy machine guns would sweep the ground like a giant scythe in a harvest of death.

  David remembered running, bullets smacking into the earth around him. He did not consider running away but experienced the terrible fear of being killed. He had been able to hide his wound, packing the injury with a battle bandage that eventually stopped the bleeding. When he had been able to examine his wound he had seen that the Chicom bullet had entered and exited his left side without too much damage. So long as his open wound did not get infected he felt that he would survive.

  Then he was on the slopes with his section and, with grenades, bullets and bayonets, engaged the enemy bunkers.

  David could see the faces of two enemy soldiers framed by the slit of a gunport. He was on top of them before they realised the threat to them. He stabbed through the slit with his bayonet, forcing the enemy machine gunners away from the weapon they manned. Then he jumped on top of the bunker and tossed a grenade through the slit. He quickly leaped aside to avoid the explosion, and was pleased to see it rip away the timber. Blood splashed his face from one of the men shredded by the shrapnel of the exploding bomb.

  From the corner of his eye David could see fleeing Chinese soldiers. Had they taken the hill?

  Heavy gunfire erupted from higher ground. Without hesitating, David screamed to his section to follow him in a wild charge against the trenches higher up on the hill. He hardly remembered the killing, as he and his section took one trench after another. Stabbing, yelling, and exploding grenades were flashes in his memory. The constant crash of small-arms fire and the sounds of men dying, calling for their mothers in a language David did not understand. It seemed to go on forever, but eventually the firing died away and after midday the knolls were in Aussie hands. David glanced around. A quick count showed over eighty enemy lay dead on the sides of the scrubby hill.

  Even as David and his platoon fought the vicious battle, the Chinese were continuing to attack the other companies. But this time the Kiwi gunners were able to bring their 25-pounder guns into action and pour extremely accurate exploding death down on the massive waves of attacking enemy troops.

  All across the Kapyong battlefield that day the Australian infantry held their positions in an heroic defiance of the overwhelming odds against them.

  Early in the afternoon David’s section was pulled back to the centre of the company’s position to form a tight defensive perimeter on the knolls they had captured.

  Not far away one of the battalion’s companies was fighting its own desperate engagement. An airstrike was called in from a wing of American Corsair fighter bombers hovering nearby. Two peeled off and released their canisters of napalm on the hill, to the horror of the Australian defenders. It was their hill and the result was that the burning mass of petroleum jelly killed two diggers and wounded three more, and the fires it started in the scrub destroyed valuable ammunition and supplies.

  Seeing the terrible mistake, the Chinese launched an even more determined attack on the burning scrub concealing the Australian defenders. They came at a run but the Australians fought back with everything they had in their hands and in their hearts, and the Chinese failed to sweep them off the hill.

  From his vantage point on a knoll David could see that their previous positions had been once again occupied by the enemy. Already their company commander was planning an assault to clear the occupying Chinese away once more. It would mean another bayonet charge against an entrenched enemy, and David knew it would almost certainly be the death of his weary soldiers. He crouched in his hastily constructed shell scrape, checking the little ammunition he had left. His bayonet was still fixed to his rifle, and David could see that it was covered in blood. He leaned forward against the piled-earth lip and stared across the battlefield. It was a scene of carnage and he wondered if what he saw would be amongst the last memories he had before he, too, joined the ranks of the dead.

  ‘No more,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve had enough.’ Then David tried to muster the faces of the women he had loved and lost. They became a blur in his thoughts and made David want to cry. His face was smeared with blood, dirt and burnt cordite, and his battered slouch hat torn by shrapnel. Deep in his heart David knew his time had come in the craggy hills of Korea. The next order to attack would be the last in his life.

  But they were saved when the order came down from BHQ to withdraw. The CO could see how thinly stretched his infantry companies were, caught between the road and the Kapyong River. They were to fall back to the British Middlesex battalion’s area established behind them.

  Around mid-afternoon the signal came that they would have to make a fighting withdrawal, and it was not known if the Chinese had positioned a force to cut them off in their retreat.

  David and his company bega
n to withdraw under fire. Each company retreated in leapfrog fashion and provided as much mutual covering fire as they could. The Chinese army, supported by their heavy machine guns and mortars, kept coming and they fell back in a running firefight. David experienced intense exhaustion after hours of firing, reloading and screaming directions to his section as the human waves fell on them, only to be repelled at close range.

  Suddenly an exploding mortar bomb knocked David off his feet, causing a searing pain in his knee. He lay stunned as a young Chinese soldier ran up to him with a bayonet-tipped rifle. David was powerless to protect himself as his rifle had been smashed by the explosion. The young enemy soldier was only a rifle thrust away. Both men’s eyes locked. David had little time to think about dying as the young soldier looked at him with almost pity in his expression. David waited to be killed. But the soldier simply moved on with the rest of his section.

  For a moment David could not believe he was still alive. He could see his Bren gunner firing at the young Chinese soldier’s section with devastating effect. He watched as the man who had spared his life was cut down by the Bren.

  The Bren gunner saw David on the ground and rushed to him. ‘Hey, corp, you okay?’

  ‘Caught some shrap in my knee and it hurts like buggery,’ David groaned, attempting to stand up, only to fall when his knee gave way.

  The Bren gunner gripped David under the armpit and hauled him to his feet. He was positioned to take the pressure off David’s shattered knee and he half-walked David rearwards. All the time David tried to shake the image of the young Chinese soldier granting him mercy, only to be killed himself. The face of the Chinese soldier, whom David guessed to be barely out of his teens, would haunt him forever. In such a savage conflict, that an enemy would take pity on another human being did not make sense.

  When they were able to disengage sufficiently from the close, bloody fighting, the New Zealanders brought in artillery to drop rounds very close behind the retreating Australians, chewing up the pursuing enemy with red-hot shrapnel. David’s section withdrew down towards a ford in the Kapyong River. Then all the survivors of the badly mauled Australian companies were able to pull back into newly established defensive lines.