Purple's Pup, Mr. Aussie MD, The Last Word

Purple's Pup, Mr. Aussie MD, The Last Word

0RPHO was badly in need of a friend when Purple found him.

Tobruk - still shrouded in its first battle-fog - had been ours for a day and Purple was scavenging in Dead Men's Gully, a nondescript, out-of-the-way wadi which had received a severe bashing from our 25-Pounders. Iti casualties were more than usually heavy in this sector and their dead lay haphazardly among the disorder of rubble and debris flung out of the shell-blasted dugouts scratched into the stony wadi floor. Purple's attention to these was cursory. Tobruk was his first action and he felt a natural repugnance towards searching dead men. The dugouts promised rich enough prizes, though. Perhaps a revolver, unusual badges, a Blackshirt's dagger. But his search, though diligent enough, yielded nothing more interesting than a safety razor, which he shoved into his pocket, with the idea of sending it home as a souvenir of his first battle.

There was one dugout-it was no more than a rough shelter of stones-which looked so unpromising that Purple had left it until last. Unhopefully, he clambered through a crumbling hold in its roof. A brief survey satisfied him that this dugout would be no more fruitful than the others. In disgust, he scattered a jumble of discarded clothing with the toe of his boot. The unexpectedness of what this revealed gave him a momentary shock.

A Bedouin bitch, her woolly hair filmed over with dust and blood smeared from a great gash in her side, lay stretched out stiffly in the litter of the dugout floor. Huddled against the lifeless body was a diminutive fluffy white bundle, which turned frightened eyes on Purple as he stooped to pick it up. The puppy whimpered and struggled in an effort to get back to the one source of comfort he knew, but a caressing hand and soothing voice soon convinced him that he was in no danger, so he relaxed contentedly enough against the broader comfort of Purple's chest.

The warm sunlight was giving way quietly to the insidious chill of an early Libyan night while we drank Iti ersatz coffee around our campfire and watched the intensely interesting antics of Purple's find. Purple -so called because the usual paradoxical "Blue" seemed inadequate to describe the vivid red of his hair- had returned to the gun pit with a sort of shiny look on his face and the dramatic declaration that he had "found an orphan to look after".

The name Orpho just seemed to occur as a matter of course, and he was duly instituted into our assorted company of gunners as a fighting member.

A potion of army biscuits soaked in warm condensed milk and water stirred Orpho into conviviality, and he began to charge around in manifestation of a desire for a game.

We did not disappoint him and by bedtime he was thoroughly tired out from chasing after rope ends and pebbles and empty tins.

The next two months took us as far as Marsa Brega, west of Benghazi. Then we returned to Egypt. A consistent diet of condensed milk left behind by the fleeing Italians and an occasional banquet of pork or chicken obtained from Mussolini's abandoned settlements, had transformed Orpho into a somewhat larger edition of the woolly, white ball souvenired by Purple from Dead Men's Gully. In becoming one of us, Orpho developed a passionate regard for Purple and this feeling was reciprocated. It was a happy combination and Purple's dog became almost as well-known within the regiment as Purple himself.

Then we sailed for Greece.

From the sleet and slush of mountainous Phlorina, on the Yugoslavian border, to the softer and sunnier slopes between Servia and Larissa, we poured all we could into the steel face of the Hun advance. The fighting was hard and rough and we were usually cold and hungry, but Purple never forgot his dog. Orpho was always sure of something to eat and a place beside his master to sleep. As Purple said, Orpho was not much to look at, so far as dogs were concerned, but he was friendly and warm and something to take a man's mind off himself when whole skins were cheap.

One frosty dawn found the regiment stretching in a long line across the patchwork plain below the steep foothills of Thermopylae Pass. We were barely ahead of the Hun at Larissa, and Lamia was to be our next stand.
Daylight brought with it the greatest fear of an army convoy-air attack-and look-outs on every truck were tensely scanning the sky for the first sign of enemy planes.

So when they came, swinging low in the first rays of the sun, we were prepared, and the column opened up like a fan on both sides of the road. Our tractor, with the gun swinging wildly behind, jolted over a hundred yards or so of wheat field, then came to a stop, gunners spilling nut like peas shot from a pod.

Almost on the same instant an ME110, with its multiple Spandaus blazing, came screaming across the top of the wheat.

The tractor rumbled under the impact of a -storm of steel and lead, then with a suddenness too startling to observe, burst into a saffron fury, as an incendiary bullet gouged into the petrol tank. And out of this leapt a blazing torch. It was Orpho. In a terror of pain and fear he stumbled off through the wheat until he collapsed in a smoking heap. Disregarding the planes swarming overhead, Purple raced after him.

As Purple stooped and took the blackened head in his hands, Orpho's glazing eyes lightened and his little red tongue feebly licked the fingers which had caressed him so often. Then, in his last spasm of agony, Orpho shuddered briefly and relaxed into perfect stillness.

As swiftly as they had arrived the planes left us, with our smoking tractor the only harvest of their attack. In the quiet that followed Purple scooped out a shallow grave among the wheat showing yellowy-green under the early morning sunlight. The cross which he fashioned from a discarded petrol can and planted firmly at Orpho's head bore a brief inscription scratched into the wood with a jack-knife: "Orpho, born Tobruk, January 1941. Died here, April 1941-"

Meanwhile we had hooked our scorched gun to another tractor and the convoy moved back to the road to continue the journey southwards.

It was plainly evident from his silence, as he rode beside us, that Purple felt deeply the loss of his dog in a way that only a man who has loved a dog would understand.

Perhaps, when the hot breath of war has passed from their lovely country and the creamy-complexioned peasant women of Greece go out in peace to sow and reap their fields again, they will not disturb the little patch of ground marked by the emblem they revere above all other things. They will do more than consecrate the burial place of a dog, because that rough cross is Purple's memorial, too.

He was killed near Canea, in Crete. With his hand still tightly clenched on the butt of the Bren gun he had used so effectively, he lay where he fell while the Germans swept over our gun position.

0BVIOUSLY he had never been a boy scout. He did not know the difference between in-growing toenails and lumbago-and therefore was the obvious choice for the job of doctor's orderly in the regimental aid post. But in spite of his lack of knowledge, "Doc", as the boys christened him, gave all callers some sort of treatment for something.

It all started when Doc managed to rejoin his unit in Palestine after a nightmare escape from Crete. Doc was feeling the strain of war, and eight days adrift in the Mediterranean on a clumsy, flat-bottomed barge, with scarcely any food and water, had done anything but improve his health. It was thus decided that he deserved a rest, and consequently he was placed in charge of the unit regimental aid post with the attendant rank of corporal.

Doc was taken in hand by the medical officer in charge of the local camp hospital, and for some weeks he gloried in treating cuts, bruises and "wog sores". He learnt how to bandage an injury without making the patient resemble an Egyptian mummy and, after much arduous practice, was pronounced proficient in the art of applying iodine.

He set up his "practice" in a tent on the fringe of the camp area, and patiently waited for his first customer. Even his bosom pals were reluctant to turn guinea pig in order that he might get much-needed practice. For weeks Doc's charnel house was empty-save for Doc himself, who sat brooding on the sudden unusual healthiness of the unit.

This period of slackness, however, gave Doc an opportunity to improve his knowledge, and after he had waded through divers textbooks provided by the M.O., he confessed to his closer pals that not even the most delicate brain operation would hold any terrors for him.

Even the limited amount available was denied these poverty-stricken Arabs. Doc had scarcely finished unpacking his medical gear before the word had spread through the village that a great Australian doctor had arrived. Soon there were Arab patients in his court-yard.

They had complaints ranging from sore toes to acute appendicitis. A man of less grit might quite easily have become awestricken, but not Doc, who calmly and methodically set about treating all and sundry. So vast did Doc's practice become that sticking plaster and iodine soon became part of the village national dress.

Language difficulties presented many problems to Doc, but he usually managed to obtain at least a rough idea of his patient's complaint-rough enough for his intended treatment at any rate-by
their various gesticulations, although an interpreter had to be called upon if the going became too tough.

To the children of the village Doc was a champion, and was always kept busy patching them up after their inevitable street brawls. Grinning youngsters would stampede through Doc's rooms and proudly emerge displaying a bandage or a piece of sticking plaster. It was generally agreed that the youngsters only called upon Doc to be able to say that the great white doctor had treated them.

Q- was not without its glorious specimens of the fairer sex, and Doc soon became the envy of the entire unit. Hardly a day passed that he was not called upon to administer first aid to some desirable miss. Although naturally shy in the presence of the Australian strangers, the lasses placed complete faith in Doc, and even veiled Moslem women sought treatment from him.

It was universally agreed that whatever would cause Doc to blush would for a certainty make an honest man leave the country, but even he found himself in embarrassing situations, especially when expectant mothers sought his advice. Doc, however, was equal to the situation, and more often than not the women quitted his rooms satisfied that the doctor's beaming smile at least would help them.

Then there was the celebrated case of Father G-, Greek Orthodox priest and head man of the village, who complained to Doc that he was among other things, irritable, nervy, rheumatic and generally not feeling his bright self. Such a broad statement of the Father's complaints did not deter Doc in the least. He gave him liberal doses of Epsom salt.

Doc soon became recognized as a village patriarch, and the Red Cross arm band he wore readily gave him open sesame to places denied the average soldier. He was invited to births, weddings and funerals-not always in his "official" capacity and was generally welcomed with open arms.

THE boys were used to the peculiarities of big George and Slim.

Not unnaturally, a stranger would have been puzzled at their total lack of interest in the verbal battle of great heat that was raging inside the mud-bespattered tent.

Condemnation, threats, and a lurid if imaginative knowledge of each other's family tree and parentage, were among the assortment of virulent utterances spewed forth to the desert breeze. By not so much as a word did the balance of the subsection, squatting outside the tent, show any interest in what was going on inside, until big George appeared, palliasse under one arm, belongings under the other, and casting a final, "That'll do me," over his shoulder as he stalked away.

Red expressed the feelings of us all when he sighed, "It's on again, boys."

You see, George and Slim were real cobbers. Either would have cut down the man who dared say anything derogatory of the other, and for nine-tenths of the time they were inseparable. Every now and then, however, it appeared that they just had to let off steam for a few days, and these days were spent either ignoring or hurling abuse at one another. It meant nothing, and raised no interest in the remainder of us. Long ago we had discovered that neither George nor Slim had any intention of carrying out any one of the thousand and one blood-curdling punishments each threatened the other with.

It happened in the early days of their training when they were very, very rough rookies. In the days of "Ingleburn throats" and week-end leave. It had happened at Cowra ' Darwin, Alice Springs, and even at Terowie, where all men should be brothers.

It had happened on that floating palace that had been used to transport them from Australia to the dangers of Syria, Tobruk, Arak and Alicante, and in Gaza, Cairo, Tel Aviv and many a dusty, dirty, sandy, windswept staging camp from Palestine to all points west and east.

No. The boys were decidedly not interested in this inevitable and temporary rift in the lute, as they well knew that a few hours, or at the worst, days, would see things back to normal.

However, there would be a passing interest during the period of discord. Firstly, in judging the victor in the exchange of insults that was certain, and secondly, in observing the manner in which the reconciliation would occur.

When the estrangement was over it was their custom at odd times to recall some of the more potent of the insults passed at one another, and in a friendly way to boast of their powers of repartee.

Neither was above recounting at his own expense, and chuckling over with the victor, some extra crushing remark to which he had been unable at the time to find a suitable reply.

Remember the one about "No razah !" Well here there is "No watah, eithar !"

This bout of being at outs should have lasted only two days. It would have . . . only Slim wouldn't play. If he had, this story would never have been written.

The staging camp of the moment had boasted a tumble-down shack of a canteen which on the day became to us as imposing as Australia's best hotel. That day came about once a week, when beer found a resting-place there for a short time, a very short time.

One of these occasions was two days after the latest parting of the ways between George and Slim began, and the opportunity for a reconciliation was provided by George himself. He had stood ruminating, and then, a slow grin softening the hard lines around his mouth, he turned in the direction of Slim's tent, and yelled, "Hey, Slim! . . . It's Aussie beer an' I've snatched a bottle for you."

Back came the reply, "I'd sooner drink with a snake!"

Next day, George, who was one of our most reliable Sigs, was seconded for duty to battalion headquarters; within a few hours we moved up to the desert, and in the next three weeks George and Slim never once came face to face.

We were in a quiet sector, just a part of the line of which the communiqué's say,, "There was spasmodic shelling by both sides." Those laconic messages hide the fact that somewhere somebody is receiving a telegram that means their whole world in collapse; that some child has lost a father; some men lost a pal.

That's how it happened that morning they told Slim-"Poor George out mending a break in the line.... Got the job done, though. Good man, George . . . likeable cuss too." Nobody was meeting Slim's eyes. He never spoke a word, just stared blankly at them awhile, then walked away and sat down well away from the crowd.

At sunset a few days later I'm driving- a truck back from headquarters. It's a picture postcard sort of sky, with such a vivid variegation of colour that it had to be seen to be believed. While I'm admiring this I become conscious that there is something puzzling me, and realize suddenly that it's the unusual quietness. No distant rumble of guns, not a plane in 'the sky or another truck in sight on the road. It gives me a feeling that for a few moments the world has returned to sanity and peace.

just then I sight Slim not so very far up the road. He's just dropping out of sight where the track takes a sharp dip, and when I breast the rise he's off the track about thirty yards and there's a mound of earth just there that's marked by a rough wooden cross.

Then I understand. . . . It's big George's grave.

Without thinking I pull the truck in and walk over (my feet make no sound in that sandy loam) and suddenly, I'm sorry that I came.

He's talking there, and not looking at the grave . . . just gazing ahead as though another person were standing there listening to him.