Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  However, what the Middlesex battalion had effectively done was to drive the enemy back hard against the 187th Airborne, who’d already had more than a gutful. Now the Americans found themselves under a renewed and even more frenzied attack. Again they called for help and our time had come, 3RAR was going into battle at last. What’s more, it was our company’s turn to lead the battalion. We advanced mounted on Sherman tanks and trucks. This was the real thing, and my mind tried to take in every detail. The road headed north along a valley floor divided into paddy fields, the usual Asian scene. The harvest had been completed and the fields were now covered with a yellow stubble with rice hay stooks dotted over them, some standing as high as a man. About a mile out of town a rounded spur line came sweeping down from the distant high ground and approached the road. The spur line was covered with apple trees. Funny that, rice paddies are Asian but apple trees are us – you don’t think of apples being something Asians go for. Which is silly, of course, but that’s what I was thinking when suddenly all hell broke loose from the direction of the apple orchard. We’d almost driven past it when they sprang the ambush. Jesus, this is

  it! I thought. We’re under attack! I remember landing with a thump as I jumped from the tank, propelled forwards, almost losing my balance as my haversack jerked up to hit me behind the head. I took cover and started to return their fire. It took only a couple of shots for me to think, This is it, mate! This is what’s taken five, nearly six years to bring about. I was much too excited to be afraid.

  I could hear in the background our company commander yelling to Lieutenant Hamill, our platoon commander. Immediately after he began yelling orders to the section commanders. It seems we’re going to take them on. It’s a company attack with our mob, 7 Platoon, on the left and 8 Platoon on the right, with 9 Platoon pressing on up the road to protect our flank. I find myself thinking, I’m in a platoon of young regulars, will

  they be up to what’s ahead? Which, in retrospect, was pretty arrogant – I should have been asking the same question of myself. We’re in a heap of trouble as we have no supporting artillery or mortar fire because we’re not sure where the 187th Airborne is exactly. Some smart-arse yells out, ‘Why doesn’t someone get on the radio and ask the Yanks their position?’

  Back comes the answer, ‘We bloody have, the buggers don’t know!’

  I’m comfortable enough, well concealed behind a paddy bund with a good sighting of the orchard, the familiar feel of my rifle butt hard into my shoulder giving me confidence. If I see any movement in the orchard he’s mine, sharpshooter McKenzie is in his element at last.

  But then the order comes to line up behind the paddy bund. ‘Shake out, five yards apart!’ our platoon sergeant yells and then unnecessarily, ‘One up the spout!’

  Then the order echoes along the line, ‘Fix bayonets!’

  There’s a series of loud clicks as we comply. I look to the left and right. It’s quite a sight, there’s a line of us about 200 yards long, our long greatcoats flapping as we begin to walk steadily towards the enemy, our rifles held in front of us, bayonets pointing to the sky.

  The nogs aren’t stupid – they see what’s coming and the mortar shells are starting to explode around us. Only a few moments and they’ll adjust onto us and then the shit will really hit the fan. Then we’re off. No matter how much you practise assaulting in line, nothing prepares you for the actual moment when you’re out in the open moving towards the enemy. You’re quite certain that you’ve just grown to the size of a truck, a can’t-miss target for the waiting enemy. Funny, I’m not scared but I can feel my heart pumping overtime. Bullets are buzzing around us, Just like bees in an apple orchard, I think to myself. It’s a feeble private joke. A bullet hits the dirt beside me and sends a splash of mud against my arm. I can see the nogs in the apple orchard jumping out of their weapon pits, which is an absolute no-no when repulsing an attack and can only mean they’re green, inexperienced. They’ve become overexcited and feel trapped just sitting waiting for us. I can’t believe our luck – now they’re no better protected than we are. ‘We’re coming, you bastards!’ I hear myself yelling. They’re firing from the hip and any way they can instead of calmly lining us up and picking us off, one at a time.

  ‘Charge!’ The order comes. Now there’s a screaming chorus of ‘charge!’ and a heap of other choice epithets as well and we’re all running, not thinking. My .303 rifle feels about ten feet long with its bloody great steel bayonet catching the light. I see a nog jump out of a trench not far in front of me and I drop to the ground not even feeling the impact. I don’t know if he’s coming for me or is about to bolt. All the hours on the range are about to pay off. I line him up, the foresight drops neatly into the ‘U’ of the backsight, and I squeeze the trigger. The nog drops like a bunny rabbit. I’m up, feeling weightless, excited, yet in control. It’s a combination I’ve never before experienced – frenzy and calm, a contradiction in terms that somehow works in this situation.

  I leap to my feet. Everything seems effortless, almost as though I’m being carried along. A bunker appears immediately ahead and Johnny starts pouring Owen fire down it. Rrrit-rrrit-rrrit-rrrit! I pull the pin out of a grenade and lob it in and we go to ground. Boom! I hardly hear either sound as we jump to our feet and run on. My section leader is yelling, ‘Give covering fire! Give covering fire!’ I see him firing alone at two nogs in a trench who are firing back, bullets kicking up soil around him. We drop down and take the two North Koreans on and, with us coming at them from a different direction, the two nogs duck for cover just long enough for Jason Matthews and John Lazarou to charge in and take them out with their bayonets and move on sticking another three with the big blade.

  The fire is becoming heavier now, coming from the enemy further up the hill. Bullets are smacking around us like a hailstorm and we’re having trouble moving forward. Over to our right I see gunner Angus McGregor, who doesn’t appear to give a stuff about the machine-gun fire. He’s firing from the hip and charging into a pit where he digs out a couple of nogs on the point of his bayonet. As I watch, not yet game to follow, he heads for an apple-picker’s hut and bursts through the door firing like you see in the movies, only this is for real. Angus is out there in front of us taking the enemy on by himself. His foolhardy courage is just what we need, and we’re up and into them again. We fight on, pit by pit. The front lot of nogs may have been green, but further in they’re seasoned fighters and we’re facing strong resistance. Then suddenly, as sometimes happens in battle, there’s enemy running everywhere. They’ve had enough, and it’s every man for himself – the bayonets have panicked them big time.

  We continue to fight our way to the top of the spur line against token resistance and just as we think the nogs are done for, the skipper hails into view shouting for us to regroup. On the road 9 Platoon is copping it from nogs concealed in the dry paddy fields below. The section commanders are calling us into line and we head down the hill. We hit the paddy fields and straighten our line. I recall I stepped into a still-muddy patch in the dry paddy and slipped, landing on my arse. I got up and lined up with the rest and thought no more about it. The enemy hidden behind the stooks must have seen our bayonets flashing in the sun and as we prepare to charge they panic, blow their cover and begin to run. We pick them off with rifle fire and soon they’ve got their hands up by the score and we begin to round them up.

  Or more precisely, some of the other blokes do the rounding-up. I’ve suddenly gone flat, like someone has punched me hard in the gut, taken the wind out of me. I can’t see too clearly and then I just sort of collapse, sink to my knees and throw up. Johnny comes over. ‘You done good, Jacko,’ he says, squatting down and placing his hand on my shoulder. ‘Never mind about shittin’ your pants, mate, it happens to all of us.’ He’s mistaken the wet patch where I’d slipped in the rice paddy for you know what. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘welcome to the club.’

  Then the skipper comes up, grinning. ‘Well done, Jacko,’ he says.
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  ‘It’s not shit, skipper, it’s mud . . . I slipped in the paddy field,’ I protest gratuitously.

  Now they’re all laughing. ‘That’s what they all say,’ John Lazarou says to further laughter. Needless to say I wasn’t allowed to live it down, and henceforth the platoon’s term for a visit to the latrines became ‘Goin’ for a slip in the paddy’.

  Later we hear that Charlie Green had deployed three other companies as well as us and effectively blocked the North Korean retreat. One hundred and fifty of the enemy are dead and 239 captured. In turn, we’ve got seven men wounded, no dead and so, you can imagine, we feel pretty damned pleased with ourselves.

  The only down side is that now our platoon will have to hear the never-ending saga of John Lazarou’s successful bayonet charge ‘Jab! Jab! Left then right! You should’ve heard them noggy bastards squealin’!’ He’s working up to the full Audie Murphy scenario where, after the first day’s retelling he’s already forgotten that Jason Matthews was at his side taking out three nogs to the two he managed to kill. Lazy didn’t shut up about his warrior status till weeks later when it was announced that Private ‘Gunner’ Angus McGregor had been awarded the Military Medal. I obtained a copy of the citation which I read out to Lazy to the joy of the rest of the platoon who’d gathered around to watch him squirm.

  Yongu, 22 October 1950

  Private McGregor was under heavy fire for two hours and displayed utter disregard for his personal safety. During the assault by his platoon he moved forward bayoneting and shooting a number of the enemy. Throughout the engagement his courage and determination were an inspiration to the younger, inexperienced men in his platoon.

  By the way, we finally made contact with the lost 187th Airborne Regiment who, while not far away, had played no part in the battle we’d just won in the bid to rescue them. Which was probably a good thing – they’d had a torrid time and compared to us seemed like sixteen-year-old kids, though I imagine they’d done a fair bit of growing up over the past forty-eight hours and deserved to sit this one out. When it came to growing up, I guess I’d done a bit myself in the final three hours of the six years it had taken me to finally fire my rifle at a bona fide enemy and so earn my membership of the club.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The First Winter

  The day following the Battle of the Apple Orchard the skipper told us – that is, the four deserters – that we were going back to D Company. ‘They’ve copped a fair whack from the flu and are short of men, with no reinforcements coming through,’ he explained. ‘I’ll miss you – you were good for the young blokes, a steadying element.’

  When we arrived back at our old company our reception this time was different. It seemed they’d heard about our deeds at Apple Orchard, which in translation had become somewhat exaggerated, Angus McGregor’s glory having rubbed off on us as well. Unfortunately, so had the story of me shitting in my pants and blaming it on a slip in the rice paddy. It was hopeless trying to deny it, as the expression ‘Going for a slip in the paddy’ had already been adopted, and I copped a fair bit of teasing. Still, with it came a new respect – the four of us had been in a big stoush and we’d covered ourselves in glory. Not quite mentioned in dispatches, but nevertheless pretty good and getting better with each telling.

  I’m told that an adrenaline high settles down pretty quickly and your metabolism goes back to normal as soon as the stimulus is exhausted. All I can say is, it took two days for me to truly come down from the Battle of the Apple Orchard. One of the abnormal indications was that I was ravenous all the time, whereas, being a little bloke, my appetite has never been large. As a kid, Gloria would often comment that I ate like a bird. Unfortunately this craving for food coincided with a tucker crisis brought about, or so the skipper said, by our rapid advance towards the North Korea/China border where poor roads meant the supply system couldn’t cope. This meant we were stuck with American B rations – tins of food designed to be cooked centrally and served hot to the troops. Which would have been okay if we’d been in one place long enough for the cooks to set up field kitchens. As it was, we had to eat our rations on the move.

  Each of the oversized tins contained a single item: braised steak in one, carrots in another, potatoes in a third, peas in yet another so that, in the hands of an army cook, they could be turned into a meat, potatoes and two-veg dinner. But that’s not what happened. The tins arrived at company headquarters, and each contained maybe five servings of something or other, but for some unknown reason they’d all lost their labels. At company headquarters they’d divide these anonymous tins into platoon lots, where they were again divided into section lots and then split and distributed, two tins to each weapon pit. So every two blokes would end up with ten servings in combination of something contained in two unlabelled cans. ‘You’ll just have to share what you get amongst the other blokes in your platoon,’ our sergeant declared unhelpfully.

  But hungry soldiers are selfish buggers and the tucker lucky dip didn’t work quite like that. If you copped a tin of braised steak and another of potatoes you’d won the lottery and ate like a veritable prince, with blokes lining up to swap generous portions of whatever they had in return for a tiny serve of meat and spuds from your five-star weapon-pit restaurant. But should you end up with five servings of boiled carrots and five of pickled cucumber you faced potential starvation. Which is what happened to me. In my ravenous after-battle state when I could have eaten a horse, our weapon pit, John ‘Lazy’ Lazarou and myself, received a tin of beetroot and one of stewed tomatoes, both guaranteed to be non-negotiable items at any swap meet.

  There never was a truer saying than ‘An army marches on its stomach’. The two days after the battle were less than memorable and I became thoroughly miserable. Beetroot and stewed tomato is one of the less gratifying combinations in the lexicon of edible food. It was a good thing I’d drawn Lazy as my partner in the pit, as sensitivity wasn’t one of his more noticeable characteristics – he didn’t seem to notice my bad humour. Moreover, he relished the beetroot and tomato combination, piling his tin plate high and to the edges and often having a second helping. ‘Makes you piss pink and shit red,’ was his only comment.

  However, on the third day on our way north the rations caught up with us and we were issued twenty-four-hour ration packs – one man’s rations for a day and a vast improvement, I can tell you. But if the food improved, so did the enemy. The deeper we pushed into North Korea the better prepared they were. At Apple Orchard the enemy had been on the run, hungry, demoralised and lacking the determination needed for a sustained resistance. But now we met an entirely different opposition. These enemy nogs were well prepared for us. They’d marshalled more tanks and artillery and, more importantly, were determined to hold their ground. A man protecting his home and hearth is a far more determined foe than one fighting over neutral or impersonal territory. We, that is the Commonwealth Brigade, were leading the Allied army to the north with 3RAR in the very front and so could expect to take the full brunt of the enemy forces.

  This proved to be the situation with our next encounter at the Battle of the Broken Bridge, my first experience of night fighting. This battle was for the high ground overlooking a vital crossing point on the Taeryong River. My platoon’s part in the battle was to protect American engineers building a ford not far upstream from the crossing. I was at battalion headquarters waiting to guide signallers laying telephone cable to D Company headquarters. Across the river the battle was raging and they needed reinforcements. A group of us were hastily bundled in with a reserve platoon and sent across the river.

  Fighting in the dark is an entirely different experience. Apart from the celestial pyrotechnics, their artillery and ours competing against a blistered night sky, I seemed to be firing at nothing substantial, at muzzle flashes, noises made by movement, the estimated source of the lines of a tracer bullet and shadowy figures that I half-suspected were imagined. But I need not have been concerned – by morning’s light, when t
heir attack was spent, around one hundred enemy dead lay outside our perimeter, though how many had been killed by small arms and how many by mortars and artillery was anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, the North Koreans proved comprehensively that they were no pushover and we began to realise that MacArthur’s easy path to victory was not to be taken for granted. These soldiers were not afraid to fight.

  Broken Bridge was followed three days later by a battle at Chongju, a town some sixty miles from the Chinese border. The North Koreans were desperate to stop us and they’d dug their trenches deep with overhead cover. They’d also dug their tanks into the side of the hill, a good indication that they didn’t intend to retreat any further and experience the humiliation of being forced to flee into China.

  Charlie Green was proving to be a very effective battalion commander. There were several blokes in the company who’d fought in battles under diverse commanders, some going all the way back to the early part of the siege of Tobruk and the battle of El Alamein in World War II. They’d seen most of the leadership the army throws up and reckoned Charlie Green had ‘the touch’. The general consensus was that Green was a rare bird indeed, a leader who thought his way through a battle, adapting to the conditions and unafraid to improvise. At Apple Orchard he’d quickly realised that speed was the way to win – quick, decisive action with bayonets to overwhelm an already demoralised enemy. At the Battle of the Broken Bridge he’d taken the initiative and risked sending two companies across the river during the night to grab the high ground overlooking the crossing, knowing that if the enemy got there first it would be twice the fight to get them down off the top. Now, at Chongju, Charlie Green realised that the nogs were going to make a stand and so he put in four hours of air strikes and a heavy barrage of artillery fire before sending us in with platoons of American tanks.