Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  When Charlie Green finally spoke he didn’t raise his voice but looked directly at us, his tone of voice clearly registering disappointment. ‘Well, you’ve made a right mess of things, haven’t you?’ he began.

  Apart from looking up briefly when I heard his voice I was standing rigidly to attention with my eyes crossed looking straight down the ridge of my nose so that my boots were out of focus. I guess the others must have been doing the same because now he said, ‘You’ll oblige me by looking at me, please.’ I brought my eyes up slowly and was shocked to see he was looking directly at me. ‘Private McKenzie, you were in New Guinea weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you’ve been in action?’

  ‘No, sir. I arrived too late, sir.’

  ‘And by absconding to the front you were making up for lost opportunities?’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . er, no sir.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I want a soldier like you in my battalion, Private McKenzie.’

  He turned to Johnny Gordon. ‘Private Gordon, your grandfather had a distinguished career in the Light Horse and was mentioned in dispatches in France. Do you think he’d be proud of you right now?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And your grandmother, how would she feel?’

  ‘She’d be real cranky, sir.’

  ‘Cranky?’

  ‘Ashamed, sir.’

  ‘We’re all ashamed, private, you’ve brought my battalion into disrepute and that makes me very ashamed.’ How the hell did the commanding officer know about Johnny Gordon’s grandma?

  He then did the same to every one of us, systematically reducing us all to a state of shocked contrition.

  At this point a soldier entered and presented an envelope to the old man by placing it silently on the desk in front of him and then saluting as he left. I could read it upside down and printed in large letters on the outside it read ‘URGENT MESSAGE’, which is why I suppose the soldier interrupted the orderly room to deliver it.

  Charlie Green reached down, picked up the envelope and opened it carefully. You could have heard a pin drop. I don’t suppose it took too long to read but to me it seemed to be an eternity, even though I had no idea whether the message it contained had anything to do with us. But when he finally looked up I was left in no doubt.

  ‘Headquarters in Japan have informed me that they are sending over a detachment of military police to escort you back to Hiroshima.’ He paused and seemed to look at each of us in turn. ‘I don’t have to tell you what that means, do I?’

  I thought I was going to piss my pants. Apart from being scared, I’d really fucked up this time. All my efforts to fight in a war were suddenly blown to smithereens and I could now expect a court martial and dishonourable discharge to boot. This time I couldn’t blame the unfortunate circumstances of my life on Alf dying prematurely or Gloria convincing us we were the proverbial or even Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan exerting her imperious influence over me. I’d managed to be piss-weak and inadequate all on my own.

  I barely heard the commanding officer say, ‘I shall adjourn this hearing until the military police arrive. March out, regimental sergeant major.’

  The regimental sergeant major then ordered us to left turn and quick march and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more ashamed of myself. But, I knew, in the unlikely event that we got a reprieve, that I’d never let Charlie Green down again.

  That night and the following day we truly shat ourselves. With the provosts arriving from Japan there could be only one outcome – we were going to face a court martial. We tried to comfort ourselves with the notion that Charlie Green would not have given us the big talking-to if he was simply going to send us off for court martial. But then someone said, ‘The brass in Japan wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about that – they obviously want to make an example of you lot. No commanding officer’s gunna go against them.’

  I doubt if I slept a wink that night, and I was that nervous the next day that I threw up twice. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that Gloria would add this to Alf’s big disgrace – in fact, this would supersede the great harmonica judge incident and I’d be the next generation of McKenzie to prove that we were not worth a pinch of the proverbial.

  The following boxed insert in a column about the ongoing war appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, and tells the rest of the story.

  Fight to the death

  The North Korean Premier, Kim Il-sung, called on the North Koreans today to fight to the death. Kim, who made no mention of the UN surrender demand, said on the Pyongyang radio that the country was facing a grave crisis. He said: ‘We must learn from the beautiful example of the Soviet Union, which, after the October revolution, won its victory after a bitter struggle.’

  The Communist Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that China ‘could not sit idly by with regard to the serious situation created by the UN advance into North Korea.’

  SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 12 October 1950

  ‘Wanderers’ forgiven

  Tokyo, Oct. 11.

  Several military policemen went from Tokyo to Korea to arrest ten Australians who had joined Americans to be the first over the 38th parallel. The commanding officer of the Australian troops, Lieut. Colonel C.H. Green, decided there would be no arrests. The police returned without their men.

  SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 12 October 1950

  I guess, in the end, we got off pretty lightly, thanks to a bloody decent commanding officer who gave us a severe reprimand and docked us two months’ pay. Later a rumour spread that the old man had known about the arrival of the provosts from Japan all along. That the entry of the orderly with the message had been staged just so we’d really shit ourselves. If this was true, then the success of the ploy exceeded all expectations.

  We’d escaped court martial but we were by no means forgiven. Besides the formal punishment we received it was decided that leaving the ten of us in the same platoon was only asking for more trouble. Johnny Gordon, Jason Matthews, John ‘Lazy’ Lazarou and myself ended up in 7 Platoon, C Company. This was probably the worst punishment of all, as most of the blokes with us were young regulars. Charlie Green had a way of doing things that were unexpected and this was perhaps only a small example, but he knew that bonding with your mates is part and parcel of the army experience; taking them away from you is a very severe punishment.

  I’d heard a bit about Charlie Green from the Western Australian K Force blokes who’d served with him in New Guinea. Later I would read up on him. He’d joined the 2nd/2nd AIF at the beginning of World War II and went with them to Egypt where he fought at Bardia and Tobruk. His next theatre was Greece where he was part of the ill-fated expeditionary force, his brigade given the task of delaying the rapidly advancing Germans. He made his escape into the surrounding hills together with the survivors in his company. It was tough going and they were often without food and water as they escaped over the mountains and through insect-infested swamps. With the help of Greek villagers, they finally reached the coast where they managed to get hold of a boat. In a state of total exhaustion and near starvation, sailing by night and hiding in island tributaries by day, they eventually landed on the coast of neutral Turkey.

  They had come ashore near a Turkish garrison and were taken into custody where they met the colonel in command. As it turned out, he had fought the Anzacs at Gallipoli where he had learned to greatly admire the bravery of the Australian diggers. Abandoning any pretence of neutrality, the garrison commander fed and cared for them until they’d recovered sufficiently, then issued them with clothes, rations, train tickets and boat passage back to Palestine to join what remained of their unit.

  In 1945 Charlie Green was awarded the Distinguished Service Order while commanding a battalion in New Guinea. At twenty-five he was the youngest battalion commander in the 2nd AIF and he’d already been awarded a DSO whereas I, at twenty-four, had escaped being court-martialled by the skin of my teeth and definitely wasn’t medal material. Wha
t a pathetic comparison.

  We arrived in Kaesong where we were told that the UN had given the go-ahead for the Allies to cross the 38th parallel and to attack North Korea. The briefing that preceded the crossing was much too involved for the ‘baggy arses’, the ordinary soldiers, like me. Charlie Green was a leader who believed his men had a right to know what they were getting into, and I guess he overestimated our intelligence – as our sergeant major frequently pointed out, not a difficult thing to do. Anyway, what it essentially boiled down to was that we were under the ultimate command of the 1st Cavalry Division, a mob of about 16 000 troops. Along with two other divisions of similar strength we would be moving up the main routes leading directly to the North Korean capital Pyongyang some ninety miles north, then a further 120 miles to the Yalu River, North Korea’s northern border. We’d either destroy the North Korean army on the way or force them to retreat into China.

  We would be advancing up one side of the Korean peninsula, while a similar force moved up the other side. I was too ignorant to ask myself who would be advancing up the centre. As it turned out, this would have been a fair enough question. What the briefing failed to tell us was that a whacking great eighty-mile-wide mountain range ran up the middle of the peninsula like the knobs on a crocodile’s back. If the invasion planners regarded the mountains as irrelevant to the combined advance they were about to be proved tragically mistaken.

  3RAR set off in a convoy of trucks, our ultimate destination the capital of North Korea with, hopefully, a bit of real action on the way. On our previous journey to the Americans we’d been confounded by the dust, but now the late-autumn rains had turned it into deep mud. Our truck tyres often lost traction or sank into a quagmire, which meant we had to constantly dismount and push. Our boots stuck in the muck that often reached to our knees, whereas the remainder of our bodies became splattered with wheel spin, so by day’s end we more closely resembled the mud men I’d encountered in New Guinea than soldiers.

  We’d reached about halfway to the capital, Pyongyang, and were about four miles from the town of Sariwon when we heard firing, and soon afterwards learned that the Argylls, one of the British battalions, had engaged the North Koreans. Fierce fighting had broken out and we could hear the machine guns rattling away, then the louder crack of the nine-pounders from their Sherman tanks. The North Koreans appeared to be giving as much as they got, and their firepower seemed as competent and determined as our own. It certainly didn’t sound as if the enemy was running away for dear life with its tail tucked between its legs. My earnest hope was that the Brits would call us in to help, but after quite a stoush the Argylls finally broke through the enemy lines and set up in the town. We moved through their position and in the late afternoon dug in five miles north of the town leaving our rear echelon in Sariwon to organise rations.

  We were pretty exhausted, having seemingly pushed half the way to our destination, but we’d discovered that an additional punishment for desertion was to be given all the shit jobs around the place. Along with a couple of other miscreants I was sent some distance behind the battalion night defensive position to meet up with the battalion second-in-command. With soldiers from other companies, probably also being punished, we were to meet the resupply trucks coming in from Sariwon. Our job was to unload them and get our rations and ammunition by jeep, if we were lucky, but as it turned out mostly on foot, back to our company position.

  It was already dark when we reached the place where we were to meet and Major Nicholson gathered us around for a bit of a briefing. Then, instead of the sound of the grub vehicles, we heard the unmistakable sound of a great many marching feet.

  ‘Hang on, what’s this?’ the major said, clearly as surprised as we were.

  ‘Don’t march like us or the Americans,’ Johnny said. I suppose it was an Aboriginal thing because I couldn’t tell if the marching was any different. ‘Small men,’ Johnny added, ‘they’s buggered, very tired, hardly lift their feet.’

  The major turned on his jeep lights to reveal a battalion, probably more, of North Koreans marching towards us.

  ‘Shit, what now?’ I heard John Lazarou say beside me.

  It’s amazing how the mind focuses at a time such as this. I can clearly recall the surprised face of the North Korean officer as the lights hit him and when moments later he broke into an enormous smile. ‘Russki! Russki!’ he yelled, thinking we must be the Russians who’d come to their rescue. Bizarre as this incident may sound, it had been the Russians who had trained the North Korean army and who had encouraged them to invade the South. Now this poor, exhausted officer thought they’d put their money where their encouragement had previously been and had come galloping to their rescue.

  Freddy Grimmond, another company guide, opened up with his Owen gun, which soon wiped the smile off the noggy officer’s face. There was wild panic as the enemy broke ranks and scattered every which way.

  Though surprise was on our side we were far from being in the clear. There were only a handful of us and several hundred North Koreans. The major was onto the radio frantically calling for help and was clearly becoming more and more agitated. ‘Yes, North Koreans, at least a company!’ he kept repeating.

  Whoever was on the other end must not have believed him, which was reasonable. Technically speaking the enemy simply couldn’t be where we were unless they’d found a way to become invisible when first the Argylls and then 3RAR had come through Sariwon earlier.

  While all this was going on the North Koreans seemed as confused as we were and held their fire. The major’s call for reinforcements must have finally sunk in because in a short while we could hear the comforting rumble of a tank.

  ‘Wait on,’ Major Nicholson said, ‘I’m going to meet that tank.’ He jumped from the jeep leaving the radio operator behind and telling one of our Korean interpreters to follow him. We watched as he disappeared into the night.

  ‘Good one! What now? What happens if the noggies come for us?’ John Lazarou said, his voice just a tad panicky.

  ‘You’re in control, Lazy,’ Johnny said, smiling. ‘You the lance corporal, mate.’

  ‘No I fuckin’ ain’t!’ Lazy protested, ‘I lost me stripe when we deserted to the Yanks!’

  ‘If they come at us now we can say our prayers – must be a thousand nogs,’ I exaggerated, ‘and only a handful of us blokes.’ I knew it wouldn’t be too long before the nogs caught on that there were very few of us. I wondered how many I might be able to take out with my rifle before I died, as I most certainly would. This wasn’t in the script I’d written for my second army career. Even with the extra men the tank might bring, the situation would remain pretty hairy. The North Koreans couldn’t retreat and were hell bent on joining up with their comrades – their only chance was to go straight through us and to keep moving north. They were desperate, and we’d been caught with our pants down. I was about to face my maker.

  We waited a further five minutes and still the North Koreans hadn’t come back at us, and then I witnessed one of the strangest incidents I was to experience in the war. The tank appeared rumbling out of the darkness, moving right past us towards the enemy, its nine-pounder cannon completely silent. On its turret stood Major Nicholson and the Korean interpreter who was yelling out in the local lingo using a loudhailer.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked the radio operator, pointing to our second interpreter beside him.

  ‘He says, the major’s telling the nogs they’re surrounded and is giving them two minutes to surrender.’

  Johnny Gordon was standing listening beside me. I guess there wasn’t too much that surprised him, but now he stood open-mouthed watching. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ he said slowly, which were my sentiments exactly.

  Inside the required two minutes the North Koreans had surrendered. I’d underexaggerated the enemy force at 1000 men – there were in fact 2000! They turned out to be exhausted, short of food and ammunition and weary of being chased by swooping fighter jets. They’d becom
e accustomed to being the aggressor and winning easy battles against their southern brothers and when they’d come against the initial contingent of Americans and had sent them packing, their egos had become inflated and they’d thought themselves invincible. Now they were taking a hiding and they weren’t psychologically prepared for this reversal of fortune.

  Major Nicholson received no award for this action, which was bloody pathetic. He should’ve got at least the Military Cross. Immediately after the surrender, he came over to Johnny Gordon and thanked him.

  ‘Whaffor, boss?’ Johnny asked, clearly surprised at being singled out.

  ‘When you made the comment about their marching, saying they were dog-tired, when they revealed themselves as the enemy, that was when I got the idea they might be ready to throw in the towel.’ Nicholson gave a short laugh and added, ‘Mind you, if I’d known there were 2000 of the buggers I might have had second thoughts.’

  It was all very dramatic and we got heaps of kudos for being there, but the fact remained that I hadn’t yet fired a shot at the enemy. I was still the virgin soldier and it would be several days before I would finally lose my virginity.

  It happened like this. We’d moved all the way to Pyongyang, which had been secured, and were due for rest, which wasn’t to be. We were sent off to rescue the 187th Airborne Regiment who had landed twenty-five miles to our north, the idea being to cut off the North Koreans fleeing from Pyongyang. This regiment had been unsuccessful, the enemy having slipped through the net, and so they’d headed south to return to Pyongyang when one of their battalions hit the enemy at the town of Yongju. The fighting was fierce, and the Americans were taking a beating and called for help. The help was us, with the Middlesex battalion leading off the brigade advance. By late afternoon we’d reached Yongju and the Middlesex went into battle, and by the following morning they’d driven the enemy out of the town. As far as I was concerned it was another futile exercise with us sitting on our hands at the rear waiting for a chance to enter the battle. It looked as though the Poms were going to get all the glory.