When we returned to the hospital a communique had been posted giving the number of men taken prisoner of war. ‘23 258 Australian troops in Japanese hands and 12 819 missing, of whom no news has been received at all.’ We were still taking in patients and patching them up so they could be sent back up north to fight again. The obscenity of war is never more evident than in an army hospital. It was not acceptable for a young man to cry ‘Enough, I’ve had enough!’ and yet, never silent in his psyche and his trembling heart is the whispered ‘must I go again?’ This is not a thing that is spoken about: the way boys/men have been brought up makes it almost impossible for them to cry ‘enough!’ But they could say, ‘Nurse, you get on well with my doctor – I see you laughing with him, joking. How about trying … you know … tell him I’m not cold-footed … but I’m not sure I can do it again.’ And you would tell the doctor, in a jokey way, of course, and he would tell you firmly you must never, not ever listen to or speak of such a thing. But though the young doctor does spend time talking to the boy in the bed, one day when you come on duty the boy has gone and a new patient is in his place. Boys just disappeared with their patched-up bodies and you knew they had gone north again.
Ginger disappeared in this way. One day he was telling me about how his father had pioneered a soldier settler block after he got back to Australia from the first big war, and Ginger and his brothers had lived in a lean-to beside the small house until they left to go to this new war – and then he was gone and a note was brought to me saying ‘See you soon’. But no mail came from New Guinea to me. Everyone I knew was asking ‘Got word from Ginger yet?’ The older nursing sisters always told us ‘They forget a pretty face when the rifles are cracking.’ But Ginger! I would have thought Ginger would have remembered me.
I never saw him again. There seemed to be an awful lot of people you never saw again. One day you’re as thick as thieves and declaring love eternal and the next day it’s ‘See you soon.’
Ginger, who had been a friend, mate, a simple young country boy with whom I had got along fine, had just gone. Everyone in the hospital knew that he and I were a partnership. However, there was a saying in those days when things were difficult to explain: ‘It’s the war’. Yes, it was the war and we had made no spoken arrangement. Indeed, when he was sent off he had gone before I got word that his battalion had left on a ship ‘going north’. And I received no word from him, not one letter. I pretended I didn’t care, but I was heartbroken.
Fifty years and two months later, I was speaking with one of the men who had been with Ginger in New Guinea. This man was one of the few remnants of the battalion and didn’t know that Ginger and I had had this almost childlike friendship and innocent love. He began to tell me about things that had happened after the men in our hospital had recovered from New Britain and, once patched up, had gone on to New Guinea. He said, ‘We had a bad thing happen there. Did you ever know Ginger?’ I said, yes, I knew him well. He continued, ‘One night we were sent out on patrol up in the Wewak area – the colonel was all for night patrols, which was a bit of a joke as moving around in the dark in the jungle you made a noise like a bull elephant. He was burning up his troops with night patrols and all sorts of tricks. This night he sent Ginger, a corporal, out with his section, and it was Ginger’s understanding that we were the only patrol out. But this night was a real bit of a mix-up. You don’t send a patrol out unless you know what other patrols are about and exactly where they are. But our patrol was sent out. So Ginger and his patrol were out there in the black jungle and in the course of the operation Ginger thought he spotted a figure silhouetted in the dark.
‘We had a whispered conference, some of the patrol said it must be one of our blokes: you knew the configuration of men and the clothing they wore, some said it was just the shape of bushes, and the rest of the patrol said it had to be a Jap, there’s no other patrols out but us. Ginger, through long experience in jungle warfare, both in his escape across New Britain from Rabaul and his time in the hinterland of New Guinea, knew that there was a split second between sighting and shooting. He said, well, if he doesn’t have a go, I will. So Ginger lined up the figure and fired. Of course, he didn’t miss, he had been in this game for too long to miss.’
And his bullet hit Jimmy, his mate who had been in the boat with me and Ginger that sunlit day on Lake Wendouree, and who had cared for me when I was sick during the ensuing days.
I learnt from the ex-soldier – who had no idea that I had known these men so well – that Jimmy had been out on patrol in the opposite direction and when he reported back to base and was told that Ginger had been sent out into a particular area, he asked could he take his patrol out again immediately because he was aware that there was a Japanese patrol headed in that direct line. Jimmy’s men later reported that, in the thick jungle, he was unsure whether the patrol he had come on was Ginger or a Japanese patrol and he couldn’t take the risk. He raised his rifle, but Ginger was faster than him.
Hearing this story fifty years later was a most terrible thing for me. When I returned home I just sat there with tears raddling my cheeks. I couldn’t stop crying – I don’t know where all the water came from. And I couldn’t help but remember that Ginger was noted for his great care in planning everything he did. In particular, his jungle patrols had to be ‘spot on’, as he had once told me.
The ex-soldier who told me this story had no idea of the effect the telling had on me and he said, ‘Ginger had been becoming more daring and pushing his luck at that time. He was still respected as being a leader who cared and protected his men, but he would now take chances – always when only he himself would be involved. It could have happened to anyone in that area. Most of the men on patrol could see nothing at all, hear nothing, but Ginger had had years now in jungles and he had sensed through the bush the shape of a man, that was all. It was just his own acute sense of danger, and when one of the men said it might be one of ours, he had said “And it might not be.” And fired.’
Because of my peripatetic life in the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service, my mail was scattered all over the place, and some I didn’t get until months later. One bundle didn’t arrive until I was on my way down south to be married. As the train was about to depart, the kind and thoughtful WO II, Mac McKellar, came running down the platform waving a bundle of mail tied with string. ‘All the same handwriting!’ he called as he thrust the letters through the open window. ‘Looks like New Guinea to me!’ And it was. ‘Stored away on HOLD,’ Mac called. And the train rolled on as I opened one letter and I didn’t open any of the others. Not ever.
The letter on the top of the pile was numbered ‘6’ (the letters beneath were 5, 4, 3, 2, 1). ‘Dear Lik Lik VAD’ it began. ‘What has happened? Today I was playing football and my opponent said, ‘I hear your girl is getting married to a 9th Divi bloke.’ This can’t be true Pat. We were the happiest little couple in the whole Aussie Army.’ I folded the letter back with the others, unread, as for four days the train jolted south, and I only remember confusion and bewilderment and a sadness I’d never known. I told no one. I have never mentioned it until today as I write. And a huge and horrible wave of confused emotion floods over me.
The wedding had been arranged by long distance and the guests invited and the witnesses had applied and got leave to attend and – I never could see any of it clearly. And I still can’t.
In 1993 I saw a photograph of him in a journal, announcing his death. And I wished … I wished we had stayed in the one bedroom that night, a half century ago. And I still wish it.
My Mate
EACH OF US HAD A mate, you can’t survive in the army without a mate. ‘You need a mate to guard your back’ they said. I don’t know whether the same applies in other services but this has always been true of the army. Phyllis O’Brien was my mate. Before we met, each of us had had a casual mate or belonged to a small floating group unconsciously waiting for a mate to turn up. But once we set off together we were a twosome and were re
cognised as such, and the connection survives to this day. All around Australia there are hundreds of pairs of women who, fifty years later, still see themselves as army mates.
The first time we met Phyllis was leaning, slumped against a barracks wall near Matron’s office, a strange pose for a rather timid, ‘well brought-up young lady’ as she obviously was. I had seen her around for some months but had scarcely noticed her. She was quiet and I was rowdy. I passed by, then doubled back. ‘You all right?’ She replied ‘I don’t know which one.’ She wasn’t weeping, distraught, distressed. She was in some other state that my own youthfulness had not encountered. ‘Have you been called in to Matron?’ That, of course, was always our worst fear. ‘Yes.’ ‘What have you done?’ Her hat was skewed across her forehead where she had slumped. ‘Matron called me up, she told me my brother had been shot down, dead, over Britain. But she didn’t say which one.’ Phyl had three brothers and all were pilots.
Matron, for all that she terrified us, would have been kind, loving and caring, as at all times when she must tell one of her girls such news. But she hadn’t known Phyl had other brothers in the airforce. ‘I don’t know which one’ Phyl repeated. Together we went back to Matron’s office and, after phoning the ADC room for details, this woman who habitually terrified us now put out her arms and cuddled us both into her ample bosom. She told me to take Phyl away ‘and care for her’. We lay on my palliasse, our arms around each other, both weeping, not saying a word, and that night I moved into her tent, dragging my straw-filled palliasse down the lines, with a couple of orderlies coming along behind, carrying my cyclone-wire stretcher and kit bag. And we have been mates ever since. She is aunt to my children, I am aunt to hers.
My cousin Margaret Buick (left) and I could never have guessed in 1933 that in a few years we would dress up in a different rig – she as an aircraftswoman, me as an army nursing aide.
Kathleen had two brothers who were not mine – then neither was she my sister. But it was a story too long to tell.
Mum, a keen Box Brownie photographer, took this in 1938 with light from the kerosene lamp – Kathleen, Dad and friend Rene. (My music certificates hang on the wall, along with Dad’s naval discharge, dated 1918.)
A visiting warship was a curio; the young newly-weds saw no omen in it. Dad, Kathleen and Bob, 1938.
After this family holiday at Black Rock, Victoria, in 1939, my cousin Margaret (top left) and I (top right) did not see one another until war’s end.
Dad and six of the laughing cousins (me centre, Bob to my left) in 1939. When war came, six of us from this snapshot became mixed up in the three services.
The threat of war seemed to cause an outbreak of marriage. Kathleen and Bob were swept along – to disaster.
Bob, Kathleen and children the day before our last Christmas.
Grandmother Isabella Adam-Smith, wearing her naval service brooch issued in the First World War to mothers with sons at sea, and Aunt Bella from ‘Ahava’.
Mum and Dad taking a rest from ‘laying the foundation stone for Parliament House, at Rhyll’, Phillip Island. The farm was bought while I was away in the army.
In my VAD uniform, 1941.
The war swept us all away. The life we had known was gone forever.
This Melbourne Herald cartoon was not too exaggerated in its depiction of the earliest enlisted women returning home on leave for the first time in uniform.
I loved life in an army hospital – the drama, tragedy, fun and friendships.
Phyllis O’Brien. ‘My mate’ – still is.
Our sergeant, Margaret (‘Mac’) McLeod, was one of the greatest women in our service.
Our tent lines.
We three topped the Warrant Officers’ school in Sydney.
‘… in love with every boy I met and they with me.’
‘Ginger and I had “gone” with one another for two months while we were in Ballarat.’
In 1988 a gentleman handed me this photograph of my attempt to get the boat ashore on Lake Wendouree, Ballarat, after the rum episode with Ginger in 1942.
Mum wrote on the back of this card, ‘Until my girl comes home’. She had never worn trousers and it surprised me to learn many civilian women had to work so hard.
When Grandmother Adams died it seemed unreal to me – our army life seemed the only real thing we now knew.
This snapshot and the one below at left have always been a joke to young relatives – and were a source of dismay for my parents. After posing for this photograph on the day I was to be married, my parents made their way to the church, wondering if I was going to turn up. May 1944.
A neighbour came by with her camera and saw me still standing at the gate and coaxed me into the ‘bridal’ outfit.
May 1944.
Having kids when you are very young is great fun – here Michael, born in 1945, is aged one. After the short cuts of the army, I let my hair grow long and wild.
One is fun, two is double fun – Cathy Danae was born in 1948.
Returning to Tasmania one more time. My parents tried to save my marriage and often encouraged me to go back to Tasmania.
I made all the children’s clothes as well as my own. This dress I made from old curtains Mum gave me. Money was scarce but by now (1950) more and more of my writing was being accepted.
In the late 1940s I began travelling Tasmania gathering research for my writing. My Dutch friend Hans Maree became a wonderful travelling companion. Here Hans (centre) and I pose with one of our piner friends, Frank White, in Strahan, 1952.
The Abel brothers in the dense forest with which the south-west Tasmanian piners had to contend. The Splits, Gordon River.
I went below with the miners in the last of the original mines in The Silver City’, Zeehan, Tasmania.
The cook threw this fly net over me in this south-west Tasmanian miners’ camp. The flies were worse than I’d seen anywhere in a lifetime in the bush.
Gordon Abel and I relax after a strenuous trip up the Gordon River with piners in 1953.
After buying my Linhof Technica from the chemist in Devonport I was able to supply photographs to illustrate my stories. I practised on my children, who graciously (mostly) posed for me. Cathy was my favourite model – still is.
I played with the Linhof as if it were the most gorgeous toy and a great challenge. Mostly I had to photograph ‘on the run’ but sometimes pulled in a photograph I was proud of, such as this one on Bruny Island, Tasmania.
My life changed forever when I accepted an assignment to write about a cruise on the Naracoopa. I couldn’t have predicted then that this small wooden ship would become my home for almost six years.
It was not just that sad, sorry episode that bound us. Mateship, like love, is an amalgam of coordinates. We were both too young to be away from our homes and suddenly exposed to horror in that still-sheltered age. We needed one another, we fitted. To the camp and the hospital, we were just Pat and Phyl. A third girl was put in our tent once and we did our best about it, but without mentioning it to one another we knew she didn’t fit with us. We two went everywhere together. If one was off duty she waited for the other before leaving camp. When off-duty leave was permitted we would gallop up the hill to get back to camp in time, rush from pubs that we should never have been near (most pubs were out of bounds to young nursing aides).
One day we came off duty at 2 pm from a 6 am shift and found Robin lying on her bunk reading – naked except for her army bloomers. Gee whiz! Phyl had the courage to photograph her but when the time came, none of us girls had the courage to collect the print. Weeks went by before Phyl, the quietest of all, plucked up the nerve to go and get it. Speaking with Phyllis fifty years later, I learned that until then she, too, had never seen another woman’s breasts.
During my time in the army I didn’t think much about religion, except for the time when Phyllis and I decided we would ‘do something’ for Lent. What this would be was hard to decide because Matron told us we were not to go off food –
she wanted the most out of our labour. Eventually we two girls decided we would say the rosary each night, kneeling on the floor of the wooden hut we were billeted in temporarily, along with twenty other aides. The nights were bitterly cold in this camp, wind whistled through the gaps in the walls, floorboards had been laid down directly on the grass and were wet. The first night was hard, the second worse.
At first the other girls thought we were play-acting and they partly went along with our Hail Marys and Our Fathers, and chiacked us no end. The second night the ‘joke’ had worn thin: everyone wanted us to shut up and get into bed. So we prayed quietly, quickly, mumbling away ‘Blessed Mary ever a Virgin’ (so were we, for that matter) and ‘at the hour of our death’ and ‘pray for us sinners’. It became a little embarrassing, we could see the girls’ view but our view was equally urgent – we would have given it up willingly but we had made a vow to say this rosary each night during Lent for ‘the missing, and the boys we’ve nursed who have gone back to the war’. We couldn’t back out now.
Goodbye Girlie Page 7
