The Cadet Corporal

by Christopher Cummings

  “So what do we do now?” Waters asked, his voice tinged with rebellion.

  “We wait till it is time to cross the highway, so we co-ordinate our move with everyone else’s,” Graham replied. He then crouched down and took out his pocket torch. Crouching so that the front of the tiny torch was only a centimetre above his map he turned it on. Speaking to Franks he pointed to the map. “See this vehicle track here, the one up to our right that leads down to the gate we came through? When I tell you to move I want you and these three to go up there, then along it to the highway. Cross the highway and follow this other road down to the bridge.”

  “Why us? Are you trying to get rid of us?” Waters asked.

  Graham met his eyes. “No. I am trying to give the patrol a better chance of winning by splitting into two groups. One of us should make it to the railway bridge.”

  “There’s only one bomb,” Waters pointed out.

  “So write your name on the concrete with felt pen,” Graham replied. He knew they had them because they used them to mark people’s faces while they were asleep.

  #x201C;What if we run into the enemy?” Franks asked nervously.

  “You probably will. I reckon there will be a guard post at the road junction. Avoid them and fight any others you bump into,” Graham replied.

  “They might catch us,” Moynihan said accusingly.

  “You are senior cadets aren’t you?” Graham retorted. “So give them a good run for their money and get away.”

  “What do we do after we get to the bridge?” Waters asked.

  On hearing that Graham heaved a mental sigh of relief as he knew it mean they had accepted the plan. “Look for trouble. Stir the defenders up, then withdraw back to the gate at the river and wait till we arrive,” Graham replied. He then gave Franks timings to work to and again told them to spread out and be quiet. To his relief they did so without argument. Silence settled, broken only by passing cars or trucks.

  It was coming up to 1900 by then and the last streaks of red had faded from the western sky. The patrol lay in the darkness in silence. With an hour to wait Graham fretted that someone would give them away but there were only a few quiet murmurs. Then distant shouting reached them on the still night air. Graham raised his head and listened.

  “That’s a long way away,” Halyday whispered.

  “Yes, over on Bare Ridge I think,” Graham replied.

  After a few minutes the faint yelling died away. Next the radio called and Graham asked Carnes what was said. “Four Platoon have just reported being ambushed by a Heatley patrol on Sandy Ridge,” he said.

  “Four Platoon eh? That will hurt their pride,” he said. To himself he thought, ‘Not a good start!’

  Silence again settled and he tried to rest. The sound of a train crossing the bridge carried loudly to them. Graham marvelled at how noisy it was, and how far the sound travelled. After it had gone over the next rise in the direction of Townsville relative silence again settled. This was broken at 1940 by more shouting. It was closer but still a long way away.

  “That is on the other side of the river too I reckon,” Halyday said.

  It was. Carnes passed on a radio report from 1 Platoon saying they had run into enemy on the road to Canning Junction near Black Knoll. That worried Graham and he wondered if Capt Conkey’s decoy plan had failed. ‘They are certainly hitting us a long way out,’ he thought. That got him reconsidering his own plan. After thinking it over he shook his head. It still seemed like a good idea. ‘A smaller group is easier to control and has more chance of success,’ he reasoned.

  At 2000 he called the whole patrol in and went over the plan a second time. They then had a drink and prepared to move. Just as Graham was about to tell Franks to take his party away there was more yelling, closer again, but still a fair way off. The shouting and ‘bang! bang !’ yells went on for a good ten minutes.

  It was 3 Platoon. They had encountered a Heatley patrol at the stop butts to an old rifle range on the flat between Bare Ridge and the river. As that ‘battle’ died down another began, much closer and obviously in the river bed. ‘That must be 2 Platoon,’ Graham thought He was right. A radio report to Coy HQ confirmed they were running into a line of enemy across the sandy river bed two hundred metres upstream from the highway bridge.

  ‘This is not looking good,’ Graham told himself. ‘Every platoon has run into enemy a long way from their objectives, and we have enemy both in front of us and behind us.’ That got him worrying that they would not be able to cross the highway undetected. Suddenly the decoy idea looked even better. “Off you go Lance Corporal Franks,” he said.

  Franks swallowed and nodded, then signalled to Pigsy and Co to move. Muttering with discontent they stood up and vanished among the thorn trees further up the slope. Graham did not wait. He got his own group up and moving, but angled down to the left, following the dip. After moving fifty paces he stopped then moved along the line to check that everyone who should be with him was. Then he got them moving again.

  As they walked slowly down the slope towards the highway Graham felt his spirits lift. Without the presence of The Four he felt much happier. Then he heard a stumbling sound and a curse from behind him. It came from The Four and it made Graham grin with malicious pleasure. ‘Good!’ he thought. ‘They must be a hundred metres away now and if they are making that much noise they are sure to attract the enemy’s attention.’

  Once Graham’s patrol had gone a hundred and fifty paces down the slope and he was sure they were clear of the waiting enemy patrol he had the scouts angle out of the dip and across towards the highway. They moved one at a time from bush to bush, pausing to listen frequently. Fifty metres from the road they went down into a deep, grassy depression which ran down towards the tangle of dark bushes which marked the end of the Anabranches. Beyond that was a fence and then the highway.

  Graham stopped the patrol and crawled forward to join the scouts at the fence. The fence was a typical three-strand cattle fence and had long grass growing between it and a deep drainage ditch beside the highway. As Graham slithered under the bottom strand he realised he had miscalculated and that they were closer to the bridge than he had wished. He lay in the grass on top of a low cutting and studied the layout. Now he was starting to really enjoy himself and his heart beat faster with excitement.

  Two cars and a semi-trailer roared past. Graham and Halyday lay flat and closed their eyes until they were past. As the last one went past towards the bridge Halyday touched Graham’s arm.

  “There!” he hissed.

  Three strange cadets were lit up by the passing vehicle’s headlights. It was an enemy guard post near the end of the bridge and right where Graham had expected it to be. ‘We will have to back off and go further up the road,’ he decided. That got him anxious as it was almost 2130 and he wanted to try to cross the highway at the same time as the other raiding parties. ‘Do we have time?’ he wondered.

  Halyday touched him again. “One of those guys down there has a night sight,” he whispered.

  Graham looked and noted the faint green glow on the enemy cadet’s right eye. It indicated he was using one of the old-style night vision devices. ‘That settles it,’ Graham thought. ‘We will never get across unseen if he looks this way.’ A look up to his right showed the highway stretching up to a starry backdrop a few hundred metres away. That didn’t help. ‘If we go far enough up the road to get out of sight of the bridge we will run into that first patrol we just missed earlier.’

  What to do? Time was pressing. Graham nudged Halyday and slid back under the fence. As soon as he was in the depression behind he signalled the patrol to follow and set off at a fast walk up the dip, staying parallel to the fence.

  He had only gone fifty paces when a hullabaloo of yelling broke out at the top of the slope ahead of them. ‘The Four have walked into something,’ he thought. Once again he felt a spurt of malicious glee. ‘Good! Now, will the decoy plan work?’

  He moved to the fence a
nd slid under. Up to the right he could hear voices calling out and a person talking on a radio. Then another radio began down near the bridge ‘The decoys have got them going alright,’ he thought. ‘We had better make the most of it.’ He could hear the distant shouting moving away and deduced that The Four must have crossed the highway ‘They are running towards the bridge,’ he told himself.

  ‘Time to go,’ Graham decided. He signalled and slid forward, down into the deep grassy drainage ditch beside the bitumen. Halyday followed, then Andrews. As each reached him Graham whispered, “Line up side by side and we will all cross at the same time.”

  Carnes joined him, his eyes looking very large in the starlight, then Milson, Bragg and Slim. Satisfied that all of his patrol were there Graham looked both ways along the highway to pick the right moment to cross. As he did he saw the headlights of three vehicles pull onto the highway over on the far bank. The vehicles drove onto the bridge towards him.

  “After these vehicles go past,” he hissed. “Then just stand up and walk quickly across.”

  He saw nods and eyes flicking nervously in the rapidly increasing light from the approaching vehicles. So as not to be seen they all pressed themselves flat in the bottom of the ditch. The first vehicle raced past, its headlights illuminating several cadets standing beside the road a hundred metres up the slope. ‘The guard post we dodged,’ Graham noted.

  Then he looked up in alarm. The next two vehicles were slowing down. To Graham’s annoyance they braked to a halt directly opposite where the patrol lay. The nearest was only five metres away. Then his annoyance turned to dismay. They were army trucks and he saw that the back of the one he could see into was crammed with cadets. In the truck headlights he could see yellow epaulets. ‘Heatley! The enemy!’ he thought. Worse still, it was obvious they were about to debus!

  CHAPTER 30

  UNRAVELLED

  Graham stared up at the cadets in the back of the truck in horror. ‘Oh no! Sprung!’ he thought. To his relief the truck’s headlights were then switched off but the side lights were left on. Doors opened and the army drivers and two Officers of Cadets came around to the backs of the trucks. They undid the tailgates and let them down.

  One of the officers pointed and bellowed at the cadets sitting in the back of the nearest truck, “Out you get! Line up over against the bank on the left off the road.”

  Cadets began climbing down off the trucks and milling around, ignoring the officer’s calls to move away, while they fumbled with webbing or waited for friends. Graham watched them anxiously, his heart beating rapidly. ‘Any moment now one of them is going to walk over to this side of the road and see us,’ he thought. There were at least thirty cadets he estimated, and they had radios. ‘The mobile reserve deploying,’ he decided.

  Then another idea came to him, a flash from something he had read once. ‘Now is our chance,’ he thought. Knowing that the opportunity would be gone within a minute or so he leaned over to Andrews and said, “Get up and cross the road, wait at the fence on the other side. Just walk, don’t try to sneak. Tell Halyday. Go!”

  He saw Andrews’ mouth open in surprise and Graham wondered if he would muck it up by being too slow on the uptake to grasp the plan. Without waiting to see, he stood up and waved to the others beside him. “Get up! Follow me!” he called, hoping his voice would be lost in the yelling of the Heatley sergeants and corporals as they tried to sort out their sections. Graham then clambered up the bank to stand near the back of the first truck. His heart was now hammering so fast he seemed to have trouble hearing and his vision was blurred.

  Looking back he was relieved to see Carnes and Bragg climbing up to join him. Then others rose and scrambled up the bank too. Graham waited till he was sure they were all up out of the ditch and then turned and walked through between the trucks. By now most of the Heatley cadets had moved to the far side and were forming up at the side of the road. In the darkness there seemed to be cadets everywhere, creating just the confusion he was now depending on.

  Graham made his way past a CUO or sergeant who had a night vision device in his hand. The person was ordering a section to get in line. Graham went left around the end of the group and then climbed straight up the grassy bank beyond. At the top he paused and glanced around, noting that Carnes was still close behind him. A line of dark figures came bobbing through the faint light of the truck’s tail light, which was luckily still shielded by the lowered tailgate.

  His patrol seemed to be following and that gave Graham hope. He heard an NCO call for 9 Section to follow him and saw a line of figures start moving along the side of the road past the front truck in the direction of the crest. Carnes joined Graham, who now turned and walked into the long grass on top of the cutting. Bragg and Milson scrambled up the bank to join them and he saw others were following. At that moment the tailgate of the front truck was slammed up into position and Graham glimpsed Slim as he hurried past it, right beside a Heatley officer who was helping to do the tailgate clips up.

  For a second the Heatley officer glanced at Slim. A puzzled look crossed his face but he said nothing and turned to talk to the driver. Graham led the way the ten paces to the fence. As he stood up after crawling under it he saw a line of cadets climbing up the bank and moving across to the fence ten metres to his right. Not knowing the enemy plan he could only hope they would continue to think his patrol was one of theirs.

  One by one his cadets crawled under the fence. Halyday and Andrews appeared at his elbow, both chuckling with excitement. Graham did a quick count and noted they were all still with him. “Get going, that way,” he said, pointing into the overgrown field beyond. This was full of long grass and thorn bushes and seemed to offer good cover. Halyday at once set off.

  By then the Heatley section off to their right was also through the fence and seemed to be walking parallel to them. ‘Blast!’ Graham thought. ‘This could get awkward.’ He decided to slowly edge away on a diverging course and pointed further left to guide Halyday. At that moment there was another outburst of yelling up at the crest of the hill. The Heatley cadets broke into an excited babble and their leaders urged them to hurry. They went trampling off into the darkness in that direction.

  ‘That was the Decoys,’ Graham thought. That made him smile. ‘We’ve done it!’ he told himself. Jubilation welled up and he chuckled. The others were also very excited and began whispering and murmuring so he had to hiss at them to keep quiet.

  Screams and shouts broke out down in the river bed a few hundred metres to the left. ‘2 Platoon trying to break through,’ Graham told himself. He heard urgent commands near the trucks and a group of Heatley cadets went trotting off down towards the bridge. Then the trucks started up and went driving off up the hill. Graham kept his patrol moving, ignoring the long grass, uneven ground and small thorn bushes.

  Only when he was at least a hundred metres from the highway did he stop for a check. By then he was sure they could not be seen from the road. The headlights of a passing car showed up as no more than a few flickers of light through the thorn bushes.

  “Have a drink and get your breath back,” he ordered.

  “Boy! That was fun! I was sure we were caught then,” Andrews said loudly.

  “Sssh! Shut up! Save the war stories for after the exercise,” Graham cautioned. But he was pleased. So, obviously, were the members of the patrol.

  Except Carnes, who pointed and said, “What’s that?” Graham turned to look. It was a whitish wall with dark doorways and windows. “Just the ruins of the old meatworks,” he replied.

  “Ruin?”

  “Yeah a ruin. Come on, let’s get moving,” Graham replied.

  They began to move to the left of the ruin, which turned out to be much bigger than Graham had thought it was. The whole place was overgrown with weeds and thorn bushes. The buildings had no roofs and most of the walls were half-tumbled down. A few still stood, with the windows and doors making spooky looking blocks of shadow. Underfoot the cadets began
to encounter blocks of concrete, loose bricks, broken glass and sheets of rusty corrugated iron.

  When Halyday walked onto a sheet of iron it sounded very loud and they all froze in fright. Graham had another thought. Until now his greatest fear, snakes, had not crossed his mind, but he knew that they loved to nest under old iron in ruins. “Back off and we will detour further from the ruins,” he said, but he didn’t mention snakes for fear of spooking his cadets.

  Andrews achieved that instead. “Do yer reckon this place is haunted?” he asked.

  “No,” Graham replied, but he still felt a thrill of fear and his heart rate increased.

  “Ghosts you mean?” Carnes gasped. He stared at the shadowy ruins with wide, fear-filled eyes.

  “Oh rot! Get moving Halyday,” Graham snapped angrily, but he could not stop the shiver of goose bumps which went over him.

  They hurried away through the thorn bushes, banging their shins on more blocks of broken bricks and walking across another sheet of old iron in their haste. Graham found Carnes so close behind him that he kept bumping into him.

  More battles in the river bed and beyond slowed them and returned their thoughts to the exercise. Graham stopped the patrol to listen and to check his watch. His radio was turned right down but he could hear snatches of orders and reports. ‘Two Platoon alright,’ he thought, recognizing Stephen’s voice a she reported to CUO Masters that he was past the highway bridge but had enemy chasing him. That made Graham feel bad as his fiend was just down to his left somewhere in the river bed. ‘But my orders aren’t to help in their battle,’ he reasoned. So he kept his patrol moving slowly forward. He didn’t want to reach the rail bridge ahead of time and he knew they had an hour to go one kilometre. From the sound it seemed there were several battles going on across the river.

  “That big battle sounds like it is right back near Bare Ridge,” Halyday suggested, as a distant outburst of shouting broke out.