The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  But, of course, this is not the kind of thing that causes you to rush into the colonel’s office yelling ‘From the land of the silent language, Eureka!’ So I would add it as a paragraph, an addendum at the end of a report. Naturally, at first nobody took any notice of what must have seemed to be pure speculation on my part. Even I was somewhat hesitant when writing such information, a little negative voice in me would be saying, What if this is all bullshit? But when, more often than not, we, the deadly combination of Corporal Belgiovani and over-promoted Duncan, began to be proved right, they started to take the extra paragraphs very seriously and these addenda became known as ‘Nick’s Knacks’, often becoming the subject of some rather serious meetings between Intelligence and the top brass.

  Even after the excitement of the first week of establishment, I began to think about some way to get into the field. I literally longed for the jungle, to be alone or with a small tightly knit group of natives whom I trusted, and operating behind enemy lines.

  I was surrounded by several thousand marines, some of whom were beginning to carry battle scars, unshaven faces and a certain look I hadn’t seen in the faces of young blokes before now. More often, they wore the plum-bruised and hollow-eyed look of malaria recovery, or exhibited the sniff and over-bright eyes that warned malaria or dengue fever was about to strike them down. I wanted some of their action — not as a sitting duck in a dugout, but on my own terms in the jungle.

  But secretly I wondered — that is, when I had the chance to question myself, lying on a stretcher at night in my tent — whether being a coastwatcher was really what I wanted. The reports over the radio coming in from behind enemy lines clearly showed that these were mature men, steady, enduring and diligent, who knew who they were, and while observing the enemy’s movements, would go to extraordinary lengths not to confront him. It was not the excited chase of a boy after a butterfly, but a nerve-racking vigil by patient men, spent in a wet jungle that you could watch rotting while you boiled a billy. They worked in an environment where everything happens slowly, methodically; great sentinel trees are slowly strangled by vines restricting their supply of rising sap, finally choking them to death. Jungles are much more about slow death than urgent life. It takes patience and extreme caution to reach the canopy.

  When Commander Eric Feldt set up the coastwatchers network he adopted the cartoon of Ferdinand the Bull, the mild-mannered young bull who hated violence and would sit under a tree while all the other bulls fought each other for, well, you know what bulls fight for. Then when they’d battled themselves to a standstill and collapsed in a heap, Ferdinand would get up, stretch, yawn and saunter over to Daisy, the object of every bull’s desire, accepting the prize with a sense of dignity and entitlement, brains triumphing over brawn. What this patently meant was that coastwatchers don’t get involved at the sharp end. They had inverted the traditional soldiers’ motto to read ‘Ours is not to do or die, but to reason why’. I didn’t want to be like Clemens and Kennedy (the coastwatcher on New Georgia) and the others, valiant and praiseworthy as they undoubtedly were. In my mind the jungle was the ideal place to fight the enemy — I didn’t see it as simply somewhere to hide, as did these older, wiser coastwatchers.

  While I would never have spoken or, God forbid, bragged about my capabilities, nevertheless I would review them in my mind while lying in bed under a mosquito net. Although I appeared to be sufficiently competent at the radio task I’d been given, and my knowledge of Japanese was a bonus, I would tell myself this was only one small part of what I’d learned to do in life and merely a component of the training I’d received. I’d tick off my supposedly wasted credentials in my head. I could sail just about anything that carried canvas, from a beautiful ketch like Madam Butterfly to the clumsy, wallowing and totally uncooperative mission boat. I knew how to work and survive in the jungle. I spoke pidgin and several of the coastal native languages. I had practically gained the status of a sniper with a rifle. I could use an Owen submachine-gun better than anyone in the course. I had a sound knowledge of martial arts and unarmed combat that allowed me to defend myself more than adequately. I knew how to use a knife at close quarters. My reactions had been tested and shown to be well above average. I was big and strong and not too clumsy.

  All these things I knew about myself with the exception of one: my courage had never been tested in combat. During the months since the slaughter of the sailors from HMAS Perth on the beach in Java, I’d brooded on the fact that I had never buried them properly, that I’d been terrified that the natives who had murdered them would return and find me. I had lacked the courage to do the right thing. In my mind’s eye I could see the crows and the gulls pecking, lifting out entrails with their sharp black and pink beaks, and the crabs crawling up the beach at night to feast on rotting flesh. I even tried to invent a king tide that rose high enough up the beach to wash them out to sea again so that they received a belated and honourable sailor’s grave.

  When I recalled the scene I could now clearly see them as skeletons – white bones on yellow sand, rib cages with the sharp ends buried in the sand, grinning skulls, scalloped hip bones, spines like empty cotton reels strung together — intact skeletons neatly laid out side by side, with the skull of the headless sailor still separated by several inches from his neck and shoulderblades. All because I had been consumed by fear and had lacked the courage to give them a decent burial.

  We fight dragons in our imaginations and win, always win. But now I longed, yearned, my subconscious screamed out to me, that I must be tested, that I must resolve whether I had courage or remained the coward who had snivelled on the beach. I needed to find out whether I had the balls, the raw guts it takes a thinking man to go into combat.

  Marg Hamilton had been correct. Coastwatching was an old man’s game. The Japs had Anna. God knows what they’d do with her. She was much too pretty to remain safe and undefiled. I can’t tell you what I imagined was happening to her: horrible, terrible stuff. I was angry and I wanted to have a crack at the slant-eyed yellow bastards, to test my courage against theirs, to avenge whatever Anna was enduring.

  What I didn’t want to do was to sit out the remainder of the war with a pair of earphones clamped to my head, listening to bucktoothed Jap radio operators jabbering at each other, and attempting to read their supposedly inscrutable minds. Or, for that matter, to find myself sitting on a rock with a pair of binoculars spotting enemy planes and doing a Ferdinand the Bull — avoiding contact with the enemy at any cost.

  But all this was pie in the sky, lying on my camp stretcher staring at the dark canopy of coconut palms from the open tent flaps, the Owen machine-gun, oiled and clean, lying uselessly at my side. It was fairly clear that Colonel Greg Woon thought I was the ant’s pants, the cat’s pyjamas. I was stuck for the duration, seconded to the American Army Air Force Intelligence, and they had no plans to turn me into either a hero or a body bag. I was to remain Nick Duncan, writer of addenda, Nick’s Knacks, clever young sod with fat little Corporal Belgiovani at my side chewing gum and ‘dis-and-datting’ in Brooklynese.

  And then, completely out of the blue, an opportunity arrived. We’d received reports that the Japanese were planning an assault on Henderson Field. I’d first picked up something on their field network and though it was in code I’d Nick Knacked it, and then Martin Clemens had confirmed it, warning us of a major attack coming somewhere around the second week in September. Colonel Woon had called me in. ‘Nick, we’re pretty certain the Japs are going to be coming at us in a few days and our headquarters in Luganville have been pestering me for a battle piece intended for American radio, something that brings home the fighting on a Pacific island. Do you think you could do a running commentary on the assault? Stay away from the fighting but be close enough to see the action? You’ll have to do both, listen in to the Japanese field radio and report what you hear, as well as attempt in the quieter moments of battle to mount a commentary. Listening in and repo
rting on their field radio is obviously the more important.’

  The warmth of my smile would have raised the temperature in the hut he used as his office. ‘Yes, sir!’ I said, my voice making no attempt to conceal my excitement.

  ‘Lieutenant, I said observe. You’re not to get involved other than in the commentary and listening in to the Japs. Do not use that popgun you brought with you! Those are my specific instructions. Observe, comment, listen to the enemy field radio and stay out of the fight! Colonel Edson will be in charge of the defence and you’ll accompany me on a briefing with Major General Vandegrift tomorrow at 1500 hours at HQ. Be here just before then and we’ll go together.’ He leaned back — Woon was a great one for leaning back. ‘If Colonel Edson or the general ask you a question, answer it specifically, then throw it back to me as soon as possible. The general doesn’t much care for the press. He doesn’t want some would-be Ed Murrow with an elevated rank in the Army Entertainment Unit flying in from the States in a tailor-made set of fatigues, with a Cuban cigar jammed into the corner of his mouth. Do you think you can do both tasks?’

  I wasn’t going to miss out on such a great opportunity, even if I mucked it up and they sent me back to Australia in disgrace. At least I’d have been in a fair dinkum stoush. ‘Yes, sir. Shall I do it in an American accent or my own Australian?’ I volunteered. Smart-arse!

  ‘You can do an American accent, Nick?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘Only Chicago, New York or your own, Boston,’ I replied.

  Listening and mimicking is a talent most loners perfect from childhood. You do a lot of standing aside and listening, and tonality can often define a person. In principle, it’s not very different from listening to the silent language of the Japanese. How people colour their words to express meaning is our equivalent in English. I was fairly sure I could capture the American accent, even if I missed out on one or two of the more subtle nuances.

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, then, smiling, said, ‘Do the Lord’s Prayer in all three accents.’

  I grinned. ‘You’ve lucked in, sir. Being the son of a clergyman, I may just be one of the very few Australians who know all the words.’ I proceeded to do the little bloke’s Chicago accent. Then Gus Belgiovani, in Brooklynese, followed by the colonel himself in Boston English.

  Halfway through my mimic of his own accent, the colonel chuckled and put up his hand, indicating I should stop. ‘Goddamn! You could have fooled me, Nick. You may do the commentary in my accent. That will make it easier for me to overlay your field commentary with a lead-in and conclusion.’ He continued, ‘Don’t worry, if it all works out you’ll have a credit at the beginning and end. ’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, sir. I only hope I can pull it off.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough; the general will have to give the final approval,’ he said, adding, ‘You’re still young, Nick, so don’t get too worried if we don’t get it right first time; it’s essentially an experiment in recording events on the battlefield, then broadcasting that to people in their lounge rooms in America. We’re not even certain yet if it’s a very good idea and it’s going to need the ultimate approval by some asshole colonel in the Pentagon.’

  Colonel Edson chose the highest ridge, directly overlooking Henderson Field on its far side, to dig in using his own Marine Raider Battalion supported by elements of the Marine Parachute Battalion, all of them élite soldiers. The corporal and I found a place where we could see the battlefield but be more or less out of the way, and we too dug in.

  Gus Belgiovani was not a marine and had joined Army Air Force Intelligence with much the same attitude as the little bloke had; that is, to avoid confronting the enemy at any cost. We’d climbed into our dugout on the late afternoon of the 12th of September knowing the Japanese attack could come at any time, that night or the following one. He’d arrived with our radio equipment, his ample waist circled with hand grenades and extra ammunition for his Springfield rifle. Apart from boot camp he hadn’t used either since leaving the States and I reckoned I was probably in more danger of getting killed by him than by the enemy.

  ‘Beljo, mate, we’re here as observers!’ I protested. ‘The colonel will have our guts for garters if he hears you’ve lobbed one of those, or fired a shot in anger. We’re commentary, not combat.’ That’s not to say that I hadn’t done a little daydreaming of my own. ‘Take that grenade belt off, Corporal Belgiovani,’ I said. ‘I’m confiscating it in the name of my personal safety.’

  He pointed accusingly to my Owen. ‘Say, buddy, who own dat cockamamie popgun?’

  ‘It’s only here for the outing,’ I said. ‘I want it to become familiar with the sounds of a battle.’

  ‘Dat de same for dat dere ammo?’ he asked, pointing to the three hundred nine-millimetre rounds and the half-dozen loaded magazines I’d lugged laboriously into our dugout.

  ‘Yup, they only fly true when they’ve been in a blue,’ I quipped, to a look of incomprehension. In idle moments we’d swap slang, Australian for Brooklynese, but I’d obviously not yet translated the meaning of ‘a blue’ for him.

  In retrospect, perhaps I’d acted like a bit of a mug lair in the uniform department. I was wearing my Australian jungle greens that had come about in a peculiar way. I’d written to Sergeant Major Wainwright on Fraser Island soon after I’d arrived, just to let him know how things were going with the Yanks. I’d told him the story of my lamentable navy uniform and how grateful I’d been to get issued with two sets of US Marine fatigues, boots, etc. A few days later a huge parcel had arrived with a stamp that read ‘Australian Army HQ Brisbane — Confidential’ to lend it an air of importance. This was something only Wainwright and the Allied Intelligence Bureau could have brought about. The parcel (it looked more like a small bale) had contained three complete sets of Australian jungle greens — three long-sleeved shirts and trousers in the new, deep shadow green, the webbing and gaiters in a slightly lighter green. There were half a dozen pairs of socks and two pairs of high-topped rubber-soled boots with canvas tops that made them light and comfortable to wear. Tucked in the pocket of one of the shirts was a hastily scribbled note: ‘Time you wore the correct bloody uniform, boyo.’ It was signed simply ‘Wainwright’. Then came a postscript that was longer than the note: ‘Remember, if you are moving in the jungle then you are vulnerable. The soldier who stays still gets the kill. W’

  Apart from his immediate generosity, I was aware that I owed the wiry little Englishman a great deal. He spoke with a soft Somerset burr, and he referred to it as ‘Zoommerzet’. I’d never once heard him raise his voice. Although I quietly fancied myself in the jungle, he had raised my skills to yet another level. When I’d won our group’s shooting competition and the CO had presented me with the Owen submachine-gun with the brass plate bearing my name, he’d called me to the sergeants’ mess that evening, bought me a beer and drawn me aside. ‘Guns, laddie, to be sure we need them, but what we need most as a jungle fighter is the right personal equipment.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, Sergeant Major,’ I’d replied to what seemed like an obvious piece of commonsense, though I knew better than to think that was all it was.

  ‘Nay, boyo, you’ve not got my meaning, the right extra, your own personal addition.’ He’d paused, then said, ‘I’ve trained you how to use a knife and even if I am forced reluctantly to say so, you’re not too bad.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant Major,’ I’d replied, somewhat surprised, since ‘not too bad’ was the ultimate praise, about as good as it ever got. He had spent weeks instructing us in silent killing, training us in the first rule of using a knife in order to kill — if you stab you’re as good as dead; knife fighting is all about slashing. He’d taught us that when armed with a sharp knife anyone coming at you with a bayonet was, to put it into his own words, ‘fookin’ dead’. If the hapless, bayonet-carrying rifleman is facing a well-trained, knife-wielding oppon
ent, he’s going to be dead before the bayonet blade comes within six inches of the intended gut.

  Then he’d handed me an object wrapped in a chamois. ‘Open it,’ he’d urged.

  I’d unfolded the chamois to see it was a commando dagger, a plain, rather narrow knife with a tapered double-sided blade about nine inches long. He’d handed me the canvas sheath separately. Such a dagger was originally intended to go on your belt, but he’d trained us differently and we all knew it rested inside the left or right gaiter, depending on your knife hand.

  I confess, I was overcome. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Major,’ I’d stammered.

  ‘You’ll use it every morning to shave. If you have a bad shave then it’s not sharp enough, boyo,’ he’d said gruffly. ‘Stay sharp in everything: fitness, attitude, awareness, caution, circumspection, respect, brains, but above all these, keep your blade sharp and ever at the ready. Half of one second of carelessness may be the difference between dying and staying alive. The whetstone is your dagger’s best friend.’ He’d reached over and patted me on the shoulder, smiling. I’d never seen him smile. ‘The knife is yours for the duration of the war. Then I want it back. I want you to personally hand it back to me. Righto, Duncan, it’s your shout, boyo.’

  And so I found myself in the radio dugout with my Owen submachine-gun and wearing my Australian jungle greens, with the little brass plate resting in the pocket above my heart. I can’t say the fatigues hadn’t attracted attention in the week I’d been wearing them since Wainwright’s parcel arrived. ‘Thou shalt be fit, fitter than anyone else in the army, navy or air force’ was the first mantra of our training on Fraser Island. I had promised my instructors that I’d keep up what we’d come to know as the ‘morning death bash’; that is, running five miles in army marching gear carrying an Owen with a light pack containing two hundred rounds of ammunition and four thirty-three-round magazines. I’d do this in the cool of every morning, resting on Sundays. At first there were a good few wolf whistles and chiacking from the marines, but eventually they got accustomed to seeing me jogging through the plantation, around the airfield and back along the beach from Lungga Point. Young blokes like me react to the standards set by men they respect, blokes who are better than them in every department. I felt, despite the sedentary radio job I’d been given, that I wanted to stay combat fit and razor sharp, the way we’d been conditioned on Fraser. One or two marines had come along with me a couple of times and I guess I’d earned their respect. They stopped calling out ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Joe Palooka’, ‘Charles Atlas’ or even once ‘Hey, Tarzan, where’s Jane? I needa get laid bad, buddy!’