Box Office Browning

by Peter Corris

  I hadn't; my eyes had either been closed, full of dust or concentrated on the ground in front of my aching feet.

  I was dimly aware that the torture had been in the company of twenty or so others, but I'd scarcely looked at them. I shook my head and sipped gratefully at the rum-laced tea. I was starting to feel better and I accepted another cigarette from Henderson.

  'They're all little blokes, or medium at best. You 'n me are the two biggest men in the squad and we're much of a muchness.'

  I glanced at him; our shoulders were on a level but he was a little broader and thicker through than me. 'You're right,' I said, 'but what . . .?'

  'It always happens, the two biggest men have to fight it out to see who's top dog. I've been through it a dozen times on the job, on the wallaby, everywhere.'

  'Ah, yes.'

  'Now, seems to me there's no point in our beating each other's brains out for the amusement of the shorties. What d'you reckon.'

  I looked at his hard knuckles and the cords of muscle in his wrists. I nodded.

  'Let's throw in together, divide up what's going.'

  'What will be going?'

  'Lots of things – there'll be two-up and cards to run, there'll be a black market of some sort, various lurks. Are you on?'

  I nodded, vigorously this time. 'You bet, Jack.'

  That was the way things went and it did help to mitigate the misery. Jack had been perfectly correct; others (especially the NCOs who, I suppose, were trying to run a divide and rule policy) did try to force us into conflict but they gave up when they saw we weren't having any. It suited me; I shuddered to think what Jack could have done to me with the pile driver punches those sloping shoulders and tree trunk arms could have delivered.

  'Spit' Thorndike was in command of the section of three twenty-man platoons that lived, worked and sweated side by side. Each platoon had a sergeant and a corporal and the arrangement was that one of the recruits would be promoted to Lance Corporal after three months' training. Jack winked when he conveyed this news, which he'd picked up from Thorndike's orderly, to me.

  'Guess who the lance jack's going to be in this outfit?'

  I sighed. 'You, Jack, who else?'

  'Not me, you.'

  'Christ, why?'

  'You're doing very well in all this training, didn't you know that?'

  In fact I didn't; I was so tired at the end of the day that I fell into my bunk and slept dreamlessly. But I was a naturally good rifle shot and was built big and strong enough to take all the marching. I had good eyes so I could clean webbing and polish boots to everyone's satisfaction and my ears were keen enough to hear the commands that were shouted at me. There didn't seem to be much more to it.

  'You've got it, Bill,' Henderson said, rolling a smoke. 'I don't know what it is, haven't got it myself, but you look like a leader of men.'

  'Me? I can hardly . . .'

  'Look like, I said. That's what counts. 'Course, you've got me to back you up.'

  I rolled a smoke too and he looked at me shrewdly as he lit us up. 'I look and sound like a bloody bushie, which I am,' he said. 'You look and sound like a gentleman.'

  'Which I'm not.'

  We both laughed.

  'Well, I'll go along with it, Jack. I suppose it's in line with what we've been doing up to now.'

  'That's right. Got a few bob out of it, haven't you?'

  Indeed I had. The camp had been virtually empty before we arrived and although more recruits came in the weeks that followed our group had the advantage of seniority, and Henderson had the authority within it. We ran the two-up school and took the house percentage, also the occasional big card game and controlled the trade in cigarettes which a lot of the men (myself included) preferred to the rubbing tobacco which was the only stuff available in the camp canteen. I'd spent a good deal of the proceeds on liquor and lost some on cards (even having the house percentage on your side can't compensate you for being an unlucky gambler), but I had some money saved.

  Henderson and I talked business for a few minutes and then I asked him casually why the promotions were coming through in three months.

  'Because that's when we're going to be sent overseas.'

  My bowels suddenly loosened and I felt a twinge of cramp in my leg. I tried to look unconcerned about anything other than my cigarette ash. 'Sent where, d'you think?'

  Jack shrugged. 'Search me – do you follow the war news?'

  I didn't; the casualty lists depressed me nearly as much as the accounts of the glorious Aussie victories. I shook my head.

  'Nor do I,' Jack said. 'I reckon most of what they print in the papers'd be lies. Egypt or France, I suppose.'

  Sand and mud, I thought. Wogs and Frogs, what a choice.

  'That'd probably mean London first,' I said. 'That'd be worth seeing.'

  'Wouldn't it though. They say those London sheilahs are beauties.'

  'You're a married man, Jack.'

  'Not in London I wouldn't be.'

  The weather got hotter and the training got more and more monotonous. Parade ground drill is the most boring thing I know, apart from burping babies. We marched, dug trenches, fought mock battles and marched some more. Ever since the Casula riot there'd been pretty strict controls on liquor in the camp and rigid military discipline generally. We got leave passes to go into Liverpool and Sydney but these visits lacked spice. Somehow the lectures we'd been given about VD in Europe and the Middle East took hold and made me cautious about sex. I stayed away from the street girls and didn't even visit Kate Leigh's. What I needed was a nice co-operative wife – someone else's – and army life made that hard to come by. I even missed Katie Ryan.

  'Wag' Andersen provided a few laughs, such as when he glued together the pages of the minister's Bible and hymnal, and got a circus elephant to spend a night on the parade ground with the inevitable results. I enjoyed the shooting competitions because I excelled at it and got more 'possibles' than any other man in camp. Night sentry duty, latrine duty, and aquatic training were a misery which I only got through with the help of cigarettes and the booze Henderson brought in from the town.

  The worst thing about it was the feeling of being fattened for the slaughter. Here we were, the prime of young Australian manhood, good eyes, good teeth, sound in wind and limb, being prepared to be turned into hamburger. I'd look along the ranks sometimes, or glance around the tent at night and I'd be reminded of that line of Shakespeare's from Macbeth about chaps getting into their graves like beds.10 I'd shiver and take a tot of brandy. I suffered a little too when the others spoke of their families and sweethearts. I felt like an orphan and often took a drink on that account too.

  I had a scare one day near the end of the training period. Among a new intake of recruits was a face I recognised. He was a big man, pock-marked and shaggy. After the camp barber had got to him with the clippers I knew who he was. With his hair cut much the way they cut it in Long Bay I recognised him as Lewis, a prisoner from the same cell block as my own. There weren't more than a few hundred men in the camp and it was impossible for me to go sneaking around to avoid him. He saw me at close quarters a few times and I saw a look pass across his brutalised face that indicated that his memory was trying to place me. I took Henderson aside one day and outlined the problem to him. Of course I lied about the details, claiming that I'd run foul of Lewis on the racetrack – that he was a bookie's enforcer whom I'd outsmarted.

  Henderson eyed Lewis from a distance. The ex-convict was stacking empty petrol drums, picking them up and carrying them around like milk bottles.

  'I see your point, Bill. Wouldn't fancy a go in with him myself.'

  'What should I do?'

  'Simple enough, mate. Show 'im how good you can shoot.'

  The promotions came through within a few days and I had the opportunity to put Jack's plan into operation. I had a word to the Corporal in Lewis' squad and planted the idea that his green as grass recruits should see some real army shooting.

  Beho
ld Browning on the rifle range, belly down, rifle up and the target at four hundred yards. Lewis was lined up with his comrades, a particularly unsavoury lot I thought them. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel by then.

  'Lance Corporal Hughes will now demonstrate the accuracy of the Lee Enfield .303 rifle for us against a moving target.'

  The target was a man-sized figure suspended from a line run between two trees at a height of about twenty feet. The figure was pulled for fifty yards along the line, bobbing and bouncing as it went. I hit it eight times.

  'Lance Corporal Hughes will now shoot at a target at nine hundred yards distance.'

  I scored a possible.

  I don't know whether or not Lewis ever twigged to my identity but I certainly had no trouble from him and, like many of the others, he was dead before long anyway.

  I would almost have enjoyed my period as a Lance Corporal in the camp had it not been for the looming departure overseas. Strutting about with a stripe on my sleeve, ordering others around and slacking myself was soup and nuts to me. I had Jack's authority to back me up too and, being basically an easy-going type, I didn't give offence to anyone really – no-one who mattered, anyway.

  This near-idyll came to an end when Thorndike called a meeting of the NCOs. We assembled in a room next to the officers' mess; I could see white linen tablecloths and the light glinting on polished silver cutlery. The sight revived my former idea of winning a commission and getting an administrative job in some spot where the only lead was in the pencils. I resolved to pay close attention to Thorndike.

  He was starched and polished like a shop dummy and held himself about as stiff. 'Men,' he said, 'we are to have the singular honour of joining the Third Division to fight the enemy in France.'

  Believe it or not, the idiots sent up a rousing cheer which I hastened to join, hoping that my surprise hadn't been noticed.

  'Embarkation is set for the 10th of the month, that is five days hence. You will be responsible for conveying this news to the men and organising an orderly departure from the camp. Further instructions will be issued between now and the 10th. Dismiss!'

  They cheered again and off we trotted. I announced the tidings to the men in my unit after the afternoon parade and there was more cheering. Henderson was happy at the prospect of London and, I suspect, of shooting at his fellow man. One of the men had a camera and nothing would do but that we should line up outside the tents, fold our arms, look like heroes and be photographed.

  'I want crossed rifles in the front row,' the photographer said. 'You blokes squat down and hold 'em. That's right. Pull yer sleeve around, Bill. I wanna see the stripe.'

  We obliged him.

  That night I noticed 'Wag' Andersen poring over a bundle of newspapers with a sheet of paper before him and a pencil travelling between the paper and his mouth. I asked him what he was doing.

  'Do you know what job I did as a civilian, Bill?'

  'No.'

  'I was an accountant. Mad for figures, I am.' He rustled the newspapers. 'I've been doing a bit of work on these casualty lists they publish. Terrible aren't they?'

  I gulped. 'Yes.'

  'Found something interesting; breaking them down, y'see. Do you know what rank has the highest casualties?'

  I shook my head.

  'Lieutenant.'

  'Ah.'

  'Closely followed by Lance Corporal.'

  10

  Perhaps the meaning of the casualty lists had finally got through to people, perhaps it was the failure of the conscription referendum or maybe they were just sick of the war, but our send-off from the Woolloomooloo docks was less than tumultuous. There was no band that I recall and, although there were wives and sweethearts dealing out the tearful embraces, there was by no means enough of them to go around. When the ship pulled out a hell of a lot of chaps like me stood at the rail without any face to wave to, let alone a pretty one.

  The troopship Wisden was a well enough founded vessel and the voyage wasn't too onerous, not comfortable mind you, there is no comfort in the army. We had been issued with the remainder of the gear for serving soldiers – greatcoats, tin hats, medicines and the like, and the stowing and packing and arranging of all this stuff so that it could be carried was an art to master. As well, I recall falling out of hammocks, parade and drill in small batches on the cramped deck and sea-sickness. I was spared this mercifully, but some of the men suffered terribly from it and one even died. He was buried at sea off the southern tip of Madagascar – the first of our number to die heroically for his country. As the canvas wrapped body slid into the water I made a solemn vow that I would survive this madness at any cost.

  The ship put in at Cape Town but we were allowed only brief shore leave and then in small, tightly controlled parties. It was my first landfall outside Australia and it was exotic enough, with blacks and Indians clustering about offering to sell things, including their sisters, and carry things, including ourselves. It was a noisy place but not cheerful; perhaps the pink-cheeked policemen strolling about with batons and pistols on their hips had something to do with that.

  Back on board for the run to London, gambling fever took hold of the ship. I hardly saw Jack Henderson; he was too busy running two up and card games. I covered for his absence on parades, let him skip duties to catch up on sleep and generally earned my 25 per cent cut of his winnings. The men would bet on anything – when it would rain, how fast the ship was travelling, how many times round the deck made a mile. Jack backed me heavily in a shooting contest we held somewhere off the west coast of Africa. We shot at bottles bubbling along in the wake; I was in top form and Jack cleaned up. When we docked at Southhampton I had over five hundred pounds in my possession. God knows how much Jack had.

  Within ten days he was broke. We were quartered in 'A' camp on the Salisbury Plain and leave passes to London were readily handed out while the authorities decided what to do with us. (The war was going badly; it was near the end of a bad winter in France with everything at a stalemate. 'Wag', who read all the papers and took what he called 'an intelligent interest in how and when I'm going to get my brains blown out', claimed that the top brass didn't know how to use the fresh troops.) Jack went to London and found his 'beauty' all right: she was a Cockney named Rose, a little slip of a thing in clown makeup and a hobble skirt and she took him for every penny.

  As for myself, I was still cautious about the pox and decided to wait and work on my plan to become an officer. Officers, I felt sure, would have access to clean women. I went into London and drank with Jack and ate in the posh hotels (paying the bills myself once his money had run out) and gawking at the sights – the Tower, St Paul's, etc. It impressed me mightily but all places are the same when you're among the lower ranks and on foot. The only way to see a town is from an automobile with a chauffeur and while wearing tailored clothes.

  At the camp they decided that we were inadequately trained by which they meant that we weren't trained in the English style. English officers were set over us to whip us into proper shape to be blown apart, but they didn't have much luck. I toadied to Captain Ambrose this and Major Algernon that in the hope of getting a leg up but when I saw how complete their contempt for colonials was, I lapsed into the slack, insubordinate ways of all the others.

  Thorndike and the other Australian officers suffered similar slights so, all in all, we were a pretty discontented bunch when we got our orders to depart for France.

  'At least the winter's over,' I said to Jack.

  'Means a thaw,' he grunted. 'More mud.'

  I was still trying to be cheerful. 'Wonderful wine over there.'

  Jack spat. 'Wine! Haven't had a decent beer since leaving Australia.' Jack was never the same after his encounter with Rose.

  Across the channel we went, more trains and marches until we joined up with the Third Division in the Somme Valley.

  So much has been written about the war in France and I don't want to add to it. I was there for a year, excluding per
iods of leave: since then, at whatever I've done – mostly drinking, gambling, being bored to tears on film sets – memories of that year have only been just below the surface. Imagine being terrified for months, not smiling for weeks and not sleeping for days at a time and you'll have some idea of what it was like.

  And I was a sniper naturally, so I didn't have the worst of it. You can be sure that I didn't see more than a few Germans in the whole time. The sniping post was sandbagged and covered over; we shot using periscopes which we raised to see if there was any activity in the opposing trenches. Mostly I shot at German loopholes; it resembled clay pigeon shooting in that it was silly and loopholes weren't Germans as clay discs aren't pigeons.

  'Going over the top' was out of vogue by this time but there were still raiding parties being sent out and men idiotic enough to volunteer for them. Jack Henderson went on many raids, not for the honour and glory but for the booty. Back he came, covered in blood but without a scratch on him, with his pockets filled with watches and rings, German money and other knick-knacks. He did a lucrative trade in Fritz rifles, bayonets and hats. Occasionally I gave Jack covering fire when he made a daytime sortie into no-man's land for a prize, and I was rewarded with tradeable Hun items. Still cautious on my London leaves, I spent little of the money I collected in France and carried a fair sum around with me in a money belt.

  Our numbers were whittled down fast; by the end of 1917 only Henderson, myself and half a dozen others remained of our original intake. 'Wag' Andersen died of wounds he received while trying to pull a comrade off the wire; Thorndike was wounded and repatriated. Some men transferred to other units; I tried desperately to find a safer billet; I considered the signals, even the ambulance corps, but there were no safe spots. The sniping hole was as good as any although I suffered mightily from the cold in the winter of '17-'18.

  By then few of us thought that the war would ever end; it seemed likely that the Germans would gain and lose inches of ground as we would and the game would go on for all eternity. Men lost their reason when the air around us was filled with whistling death and the ground beneath our feet shook. I wonder I retained mine. By far the craziest were the glory seekers who charged machine gun nests, next maddest were the patriots and after them the Christians. I saw a young Tasmanian infantryman pray to God to protect him only to have the prayer interrupted by a bullet through his throat. His mate, from the same town and church, took up the prayer.