A frenzy of cold water shaving, half shower, shirts, ties and laces, and the lads fled outside into the dark. Scattering blind onto the parade ground, its floodlamps ignited to reveal something loosely resembling a brawl. The sight of this upped the Sergeant’s tirade to fever pitch, yet at least now the fifty could see the painted dots on the asphalt he was howling about, each recruit fixing himself upon one at breathless attention.
Only then did the Sergeant stop screaming. And all was still.
They had survived.
The Sergeant and the Corporals stood like stones before them.
A full minute passed.
Nothing happened.
Until, out of the corner of one eye, Quinn noticed a step light switch on. Something stick-under-arm stepped off it. And menaced towards them. Quinn’s instincts informed him this was something far worse than the Sergeant.
The Drill Sergeant.
*
At Bradfield Park, Aircraftman Class 2 Quinn, D., 254920 found no Tim McCarthy, no one he knew at all, only one bloke he vaguely recognised from uni and he washed out after the first week. ‘Scrubbed’ was the local term.
Quinn knew that, due to his rugby, he was in as good a physical shape as anyone on the course. But even he lost track of the days, so punishing was the physical regime they were subjected to: When they weren’t on obstacle course training, physical calisthetics or distance running, they marched, ‘Square-Bashing’ it was called. Rare ‘breathers’ were spent polishing up for surprise kit and barracks inspections. Any man’s failure, which was daily, spelt a two-mile run for all. The rest of the time they were just screamed at, a newly vacated stretcher and locker every other night.
Quinn gathered from barracks talk that this regime was ideally suited to the current local requirements of the Empire Air Training Scheme: Fail every fifth man. Scrub them at the first post. Initial Training School. One bright spark said the Scheme wasn’t quite ready for its overwhelming flood of applicants. As a result, the Sergeants at Bradfield Park had come into their own. Their mission: Up the attrition rate, make a process of natural selection far tougher than natural. Yes, this living hell was designed to weed out the weak… Only now these career pricks had pitchforks.
Quinn opened the door of his locker one night, cursing as a morass of RAAF-issue pamphlets, exercise and text books fell out of it onto the floor. Picking them up, he cursed again at their titles: Applied Mathematics – he’d always hated Maths. Aeronautical Physics – the only subject he would ever hate more than Maths. Studying Law, for Quinn, hard private study till one in the morning was second nature. Lying back on his stretcher with a copy of Fundaments of Navigation, he winced: At Bradfield Park, the lights went out at ten.
The Wing Commander’s opening address to the assembled course was for Quinn a carbon copy of one delivered by a professor on day one of First Year. Slim, thirty-ish, immaculately tailored RAAF tunic, the officer strode up to the rostrum and, fixing his gaze on the seated recruits, stood perfectly still for long moments before beginning.
‘Gentlemen. I would like you, every one of you, to look sideways. I’m perfectly serious, take a look at the man next to you. First the man on your left. Now the man on your right. Have a good, hard look at him. Alright?
He held their silence a well-practiced number of seconds before continuing.
‘That man… will fail.’
Then came Radio-Telephony. Which seemed an idle pursuit next to the strange and engrossing world of Morse Code Instruction, the more advanced students flouting the silence curfew after Lights Out with extended tapping dialogues on the lockers. The less advanced pretty soon at least mastered the Morse for F-U-C-K (period) O-F-F in the dark. It was accepted you were getting the hang of it by the time dog barks were something you involuntarily decoded into dots and dashes.
If you weren’t already sleeping like the Dead.
*
A fact of service life immediately apparent to Quinn was the lack of privacy, which was absolute. He’d known blokes who claimed to have loved boarding school from start to finish. He imagined they’d be in their element here: Not once in the weeks so far had he been by himself.
Administrative error also becoming a fact of service life, it felt like Christmas to Quinn when he missed out on the initial group class for ‘Point 303 Rifle Instruction’. To make up for it, he found himself one-on-one with an Instructor a week later. The man’s name was Fletcher, a career soldier in his early-fifties. Quinn had caught the word he was a quiet sort of bloke, focused on little except his guns. Indeed, he seemed a different species from most of the other Sergeants: No bawling authority here. Just a man content to impart his expertise, a quiet air of experience about him. He had a British accent, though one new to Quinn, broad and melodic. Quinn enquired as they walked out to the shooting range.
‘You’re English, aren’t you, Sarge?’
‘I was, lad.’
‘So you emigrated?’
‘Tha’s right. After the lass war.’
‘You’d been, what, in the Royal Flying Corps over there?’
‘British Army, lad. Leeds Rifles, Prince of Wales’ Own West Yorkshire Regiment.’
‘I see. So why out to Australia?’
‘It were tha’ or back down the pit, lad.’
Quinn had been wondering the whole way so, arriving at the range, asked why they hadn’t brought a ‘303’ out with them.
‘’Cause y’worn’t be needing one, lad. What’s a pilot gonna be needing with a rifle?’
Only then did the man reach into the satchel he’d been carrying.
‘This… is what you’ll need.’
Quinn saw he was being offered a large pistol, and accepted it very carefully indeed.
‘Tha’, lad… Tha’ be your Webley and Scott point 455 Mark 6 Revolver. Don’t be afraid of her. ’Ave a good look at her now…’
Quinn cradled the cold metal in two hands. Grip. Hammer. Spinning chamber cylinder. Its long metal barrel thickened out toward the aiming sight on the muzzle. He touched the trigger, the ring guard around it. On the curve above the ring were some numbers.
‘It says 1918 here,’ Quinn noted with some surprise. ‘This is from the last war…’
The man chuckled slightly. ‘ War don’t change, lad…’
‘And this is what they give you?’
‘Tha’s what they give you, lad. Down the track. Aye. Let’s load ’er up then…’
Quinn passed the weapon back to the man, and watched on closely as he shifted a release catch on its frame. The barrel pivoted downwards ahead of a hinge, the cylinder upwards behind it, its empty chambers now exposed.
‘Just… just seemed like a museum piece,’ trailed Quinn.
‘Aye… I suppose you could call it that…’ Fletcher inserted a brass-shelled bullet into each of the six chambers. ‘…A museum piece that puts out a half inch slug at six-hundred an’ twenty feet a second…’ Locking the pistol shut again, he spun the cylinder, and offered it back to Quinn. ‘Give ’er a try now. Watch it, mind. Kicks like a mule…’
Quinn then did precisely as the man instructed him, drawing the pistol up and out at arm’s length, stance wide, side on to the target, distance 30 yards. As Fletcher surveyed, nodding silent approval, Quinn took aim… and pulled the trigger.
His whole body was jolted by the blast, eardrums battered, then ringing.
‘Missed, lad. Went high,’ followed Fletcher, his voice now adopting a rhythm. ‘Squeeze your whole hand, not your finger, whole hand, not your finger…’
Quinn fired – a thick wooden chunk spinning off one side of the target board.
‘Aye, tha’s better. Now take a breath, half let it out, then squeeze.’
Quinn fired again. His joints were hurting.
‘Not bad, lad, not bad at all. Two on target. Now you try sendin’ off three in a row an’ keep ’em there. As she bucks each time, let her fall off the recoil, when she’s down again on target, squeeze again. Three in a row rap
id fire now…’
Quinn shot. And shot again. With severe difficulty, again. He then lowered the smoking barrel, wincing as he transferred the weapon to his uninjured hand.
‘Kicks , doesn’t it,’ he said, flexing his wrist. ‘Sergeant, I’m afraid it’s got the better of me…’
‘Aye, you’ll get used to it. Now tha’s your six, reload.’
Quinn shifted the release catch and carefully did so.
‘Nothin’ like practice,’ Fletcher continued. ‘An’ you’d better, lad. Or you won’t get your three shots into your man and he’ll shoot back before his internals collapse.’
Quinn looked up to his eyes.
‘Y’have to bring him down, see… An’ one shot won’t always do it right away, not when his adrenalin’s up.’
Quinn swallowed. ‘… Jesus.’
‘Jesus won’t help ya, lad. Put y’man down, tha’s what’ll keep you alive. Kept me alive till ’18, it did.’
‘You were in the Trenches then?’
‘Aye, lad. Tha’ I were. And with your man close up as I am to you now, the old Webley kept me alive… Tha’ an’ me shovel.’
‘For digging?’
‘Fer killin’, lad… Fer killin’.’
Quinn continued blasting away under the watchful eye of his instructor, and though never hitting it, managed closer and closer to the black disk at the target’s centre, until the light was starting to fail, and the master seemed quietly satisfied. They then stowed the weapon and remaining ammunition in the satchel, Quinn thanking the veteran and hitching the satchel over his own shoulder for the walk back.
‘So why’d you join up again, Sarge? …I mean, after the Armistice?’
‘Well, lad… I were qualified for two things. Digging coal. Or shooting bullets.’
‘But why the Air Force? And all the way out here… in Australia.’
‘Simple, lad. The Air Force don’t go down no trenches…’ Fletcher lit the cigarette he’d been rolling. ‘…An’ there ain’t no trenches way out here.’
*
December 1940
Quinn swore it to himself. He was not going to take the Drill Sergeant’s tirades personally.
No, he was not going to get too riled by this man – who clearly had more in common with the Fascists they were being equipped to fight than with his own side. The weeping blisters would heal, this psychotic martinet would fade to a bad memory.
As Quinn marched in precision step with the parade formation all around him, he drilled it into himself that the rabid abuse component was simply part of the process of welding 200 individuals into a single military unit…
‘RIGHT TURN, you re-volting bunch of turd-burglars!’
Quinn was determined not to hate him; that’s what the prick wanted…
Yet Quinn’s resolve wasn’t working: The man was winning. Quinn despised him – So did the whole parade. They had, in fact, become the perfect marching formation just to make him a liar.
‘Looks like the flipping Girls’ Brigade! What is it – THAT TIME OF THE MONTH?!!’
Christmas Eve
Quinn guided the MG through the golden Killara afternoon, and pulled into the familiar avenue. He was going home – three whole days’ Christmas Leave. Still a month to go of the course, he’d been doing well, evidently; the Wing Commander had confirmed it at Quinn’s first Review Board…
Well. We’re not scrubbing you yet, anyway.
Quinn had grinned on his way out of that room. Though only for a moment – He knew the critical decision would be handed down at the very end of the course: ‘Categorisation’. There his Air Crew Selection Board would inform him whether he’d be going on to Elementary Flying Training School, as a Pilot, to Air Observers School, for Navigators, or to Wireless Air Gunners School, which didn’t bear thinking about. They’d all heard the rumours: blokes already with their own civil pilot’s licences being summarily herded off to Air Gunners. And even if they weren’t scrubbed there, they’d only ever have one Wing on their chests.
Quinn wanted two.
Still, despite the uncertainties that hovered, he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he wrenched the handbrake on the old gravel driveway: Not quite the form for a young man in Royal Australian Air Force Number 1 Service Dress. The first time he’d worn it outside inspection parade, ‘Best Blues’ was a dark blue belted gabardine suit, its four black buttons done up at all times over sky blue collared shirt and black tie. Integral to this uniform was a matching ‘forage’ cap – the shape of a large opened wallet and worn at a slight angle, a white strip on its front, called a flash, signified Quinn’s ‘training’ status.
As Quinn gathered the Christmas presents he’d brought from the passenger seat, down the steps from the front door squealed his sisters, Kathleen, twelve, little Angie, five, Matt closely behind them.
Up at the front door, Therese Quinn was looking down at all her children. She would be strong, she said to herself. This was to be a happy day for them. Climbing the steps to hug her was a young man in darkest blue. Such a handsome boy. And so very smart, so manly in uniform. On each of his shoulders it said AUSTRALIA in white lettering, his arms now around her.
She held him tightly, as tightly as when he’d been a little boy. But she knew it.
She had lost her Danny.
CHAPTER THREE
February 1941
Leading Aircraftman Daniel Quinn sweated in flying coveralls, leather boots, gloves and helmet, goggles tight down over his eyes. 28 degrees Celcius at 9am, the sky was clear blue all the way to the horizon, where a distant line of clouds walled in white heat. Sitting motionless in the forward cockpit of the bi-plane, whether he sweated more from the heat or from the sheer excitement of the moment Quinn knew not: He’d never been in an aeroplane before. From the talk at Bradfield Park, no one else had either.
His Air Crew Selection Board had delivered its verdict.
‘Pilot.’
Thus ‘Categorised’, he had been promoted, and posted: ‘Report Number 4 Elementary Flying Training School, Mascot.’
Thank God for the Instructor, he vowed: ‘ Throttle set.’
For the Ground Crew: ‘ Contact.’
And for the parachute on which he sat.
A man called the ‘fitter’ swung down on the propeller in front and the De Havilland Tiger Moth came alive. It was mustard yellow – ‘training’ colour scheme – built of spruce and ply wood, tight-doped fabric and leather. Struts and wires connecting the upper wing to lower wing, the Moth’s 130 horse-power Gypsy Major engine now chugged out all other sound, and it was only idling.
‘Ready, son?’ came a voice in the ear-cups of Quinn’s leather helmet.
Though he knew the instructor was there behind him in the rear cockpit, connected via the rubber speaking tube, Quinn felt eerily alone. ‘Ready, sir,’ he yelled into the tube as a young airman of the ground crew pulled the wheel-chocks away.
‘Alrighty then,’ returned the voice.
The instructor gunned the little engine, a blast of oil fumes and hot grass filling the open cockpit as Quinn felt the aircraft all around him for the oddest moment seeming to guide itself: By his left hand a ghostly throttle pressed forward, as did the aircraft, the rudder foot pedals hard to the right as the ‘dual’ controls before him mirrored the instructor’s every touch. He saw they were turning to the right, and perched his head over the rim of the cockpit, the sole means of seeing ahead as the nose-high Tiger Moth taxied. After a few seconds the throttle came back again, rudder pedals now centred as they rolled to a stop. The engine settling, the voice barked once again in Quinn’s ear-cups.
‘Now. Watch the gauges, watch the controls, and watch the ground around you.’
‘Anything in particular, sir?’
‘Everything at once.’
‘Sir.’
Quinn’s seat pressed into him as the throttle drove fully forward, engine even louder now, the rev-counter needle sweeping round its dial. The grass of the airfie
ld already speeding past, the wooden joystick between Quinn’s legs edged forward, tail lifting behind him, the far end of the field now visible ahead. The Moth swung gently left due to the ‘torque’ of its right-spinning engine, a touch of right rudder pedal correcting this, and the ground fell away.
He was flying. And steadily climbing as the airfield perimeter trees passed below. Quinn saw the sun’s reflection off a canal, a plume of steam, there a train, red-tiled roofs, a green oval. He registered the compass at North, there was no speedometer, on the altimeter though, height already 800 feet. The stick edged slightly forward, centred, and they levelled out. Sydney sprawled below, way ahead right, the Bridge, the Harbour, the ocean far right out to the east. The voice came again through the tube.
‘Alrighty. We circuit the airfield anti-clockwise in 90 degree left turns. One complete circuit back to where we currently are. With me?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Quinn was not.
‘Make sure you keep your bearings in relation to the airfield. There are other aircraft in the circuit. Watch out for them and stay alive. Alrighty.’
Quinn’s whole world tilted as the plane flew into the left-banking curve. Over the left rim of the cockpit his sideways view peered almost straight down, the rollercoaster pressure on his chest switching to a stab of fear as, for the first time in the flight, the thousand feet of nothing below him became real. He focused hard attention back on the aircraft, back on the controls, and on the horizon ahead as they flattened out. Visibility unlimited, all the way to the Blue Mountains.
Then came the up-thrust, Quinn’s stomach left behind as the Moth went up like up lift: a ‘thermal’ – he’d been warned about them – invisible columns of hot air in the sky. As the aircraft dropped down again he lost his stomach again, only this time upwards. Though Quinn knew the leather shoulder and waist straps anchored his body to the seat of the aircraft, he realised he’d braced his gloved fingers under the lip of the cockpit, as if to stop himself being flung up into thin air next time.
His hands were soaking inside the gloves. He peeled them off, finding the air strangely still inside the open cockpit. Extending a tentative palm just over its rim, he flinched back from the shock of fast rushing air, an onslaught clearly deflected by the cockpit’s small perspex windshield. The compass below it now indicated West.
Nor the Years Condemn Page 3
