Chapter 2 A stranger in the hills; Prisoners Prophecy; Ever put up a tent?; Boot...

STRANGER IN THE HILLS

IT had been a long day, this last day of the three-day patrol, and as we came down the track round the spur you could see weariness in the bobbing heads leaning forward from the weight of the packs on the backs. My own legs were stiff behind the knees and my hip had long ago ceased to feel the bumping of my camera against it. Joe was walking behind me and I could hear him softly whistling. a plodding tune to the rhythm of his steps. Down front I could see the line of men sloping gently away beneath me and I could see a red head as Fitzie Russell walked without his hat.

Sometimes when the ceiling of trees broke, the branches parting to frame sky and part of the world that lay beyond this green wall, you could see the blue curtain of rain coming across the valley from the mountain opposite, hanging soft and fine in the air, a mist that ran the sky into the earth and that had no motion but was coming steadily nearer. The sun, an hour before, had gone down behind the hill down which we were trekking and the day was lying on its back, quiet and contemplative, waiting for the night and the rain to blanket it. It was a quiet moment hung between sun and darkness and then it fell, the cord sliced, crashing and splitting apart as the L.M.Gs smashed into the stillness and the men below me.

My mind snapped to a shuddering unbelieving shock and I saw men staggering, tumbling down the path, and smoke hung above some bushes to the left and above us. With no presence of mind, just an automatic action, I jumped to the side of the path and felt the mud slide beneath me and everything was a confused blur of bushes tearing past me, scratching, nipping, and bumping contact with the ground and in my ears the million hammers of the M.Gs.

I lay in the mud at the bottom of the slope, bruised, nerveless with shock, and with my breath stabbing its way through to my lungs. There were short bursts still snapping up above on the track, sharp loud handclaps, louder because of the silence between each burst. I rolled on my side and looked at my camera. Mud smeared it and it was scratched, but miraculously it hadn't been damaged. I took out the adapter, pressed the trigger, and the shutter snapped smoothly. I did it all automatically without thought of going back up to the track to get pictures. Taking photos for military history doesn't mean committing suicide. The dim light, anyway, was an alibi.

Suddenly I heard someone moving to the left of me and I froze in my own sweat. I lay without breathing, with my face an inch above the mud, and I was wondering how a bullet felt when it tore its way through your back, whether you felt any pain or just died right away even before the pain could begin. Then through the grass I saw a slouch hat and my breath came out in such a rush it blew bubbles in the mud. The hat turned and I saw it was Joe.

"G'day mate" I said and my voice vibrated like a tuning fork.

Joe just nodded, not looking at me, kneeling facing up towards the track, and you could see the straining nerves as he listened for movement up there. He knelt like that for perhaps five minutes, a static pose of concentration, and I lay motionless in the mud beside him, twisting my head to stare too at the slope above us disappearing in the rain that was now gently falling with a faint sound on the bushes around us.

Then Joe relaxed, his body taking life again, and he stood up, but crouching, so he was still below the height of the bushes.

"Come on."

I clambered to my feet and followed him, pushing aside the vines, thankful for the rain that was now falling steadily, the weight of it bringing leaves spiralling to the ground, the sound of it a cloak round the noise of our movement through the bushes.

We came upon Fitzie so suddenly that there was no time for anticipatory fear. We came round a clump of undergrowth and he was standing before us, waiting quietly as if this were a pre-arranged rendezvous. It was a moment before we saw Powell sitting at his feet, leaning back against a tree.

"See any of the others"' Fitzie asked.

Joe shook his head. "Not a damn one. I didn't see much after the first burst." He looked down at Powell. "What's the matter, Harry,...Get you?"

Powell nodded and as he raised his head to answer his eyes were hanging deep in the sockets with the pain.

"In the shoulder," he said. "They got me in the first burst."

"Bad?"

"I haven't looked. It feels it."

Joe and Fitzie knelt beside him and Joe ripped the shirt and the shoulder, jagged and bloody, was exposed. It wanted treatment and it wanted it soon.

"Where's your dressing-"

Powell fumbled with his other hand and produced the small package from his haversack. Fitzie tore it with his teeth and then ripped a length off. He wet it, pouring water from his bottle on to it, and sponged the wound. Powell lay with his eyes closed and I noticed again the lean strength in his face, almost a beautiful face but for the sullen lines beside the mouth and the lips that didn't know how to smile. He was an unpopular man, a negatively unpopular one. He was a silent sour fellow and kept very much to himself. I had only been with the battalion five weeks, but I knew as much, or as little, about him as anyone else in the outfit. He lay now while Joe and Fitzie bound the shoulder and when they had finished and there was no word of thanks it was no surprise.

"O.K.," Joe said. "Let's get out of here. We're still too close."

We helped Powell to his feet and Fitzie took his Owen from him and Joe and I split up his gear. After about five minutes' walking we came upon a faint foot-pad and we followed this, bearing cast, which had been our original direction. It was now quite dark and the rain was still falling so that in the darkness and the mud we often stumbled and had to clutch blindly for a vine to regain our balance. Once Powell fell and I heard the moan burst from his lips. I felt for him in the gloom and helped him to his feet.

"All right-" I asked.

I sensed rather than saw his nod.

We went on. Joe was leading the way and I could hear him curse as he tripped or blundered into something. Joe was a small dark man and you thought he was ugly till you had a good look at him and then you saw it was just years of struggle and knowing the bitter things of life that had come out from a heart that knew no defeat and you knew you could trust him as you can trust few people.

Suddenly I bumped into Powell. He had stopped and was leaning against a tree, breathing heavily.

"I'm done," he panted. "I'll have to stop."

I called Joe back. "What do you say we stop, Joe. Harry is done and we'll be damned unlucky if the Nips come this far after us."

"O.K. I think it would be better. Tell you the truth, I'm a bit fogged as to where we are. We may be walking round in a circle for all I know."

"Let's wait till daylight. Then we can have a look around."

We found a small clearing in some bushes off the track and we bedded down there. Fitzie and I set up Powell's net for him and tried to make him comfortable. That was the one time he expressed any gratitude.

"Thanks," he said, and it seemed to be an effort for him to say it.

We had decided to take a risk since we had moved off the track and the clearing was so small and we weren't, going to post a sentry. We were all too tired to want to sit up in 2 hour stretches so we lay down and trusted to the darkness of the night and the falling rain to protect us. Fitzie was sleep beside me and he was soon snoring. It wasn't an annoying snore: it was a faint murmuring sound as if he had been humming a tune when he dropped off to sleep and had stayed on the one note.

The Fitzie stood for Fitzroy. I had got his story one night on a previous patrol. He was a tall quiet lad with a sleek head of deep-red hair and freckles that lay along his cheek bones and nowhere else on his face as though his face had been washed clean of all but these brown specks below his eyes. He came from the country and he had never known his mother. He had travelled round with his father, odd-jobbing here and there, and then in mid-1940 they had joined up together. His father had been killed in Syria, but he had got over the grief and loss of that and now he was engaged to a girl back Sydney and was waiting patiently for the end of the war. The girl back in Sydney was going to get a good husband.

I woke to find the stranger standing over me. Before I was quite awake I knew there was someone there and something told me I didn't know him. I could see the shape of him through the net and I felt quickly for my rifle.

"You don't need that." His voice was so soft that for a moment I wasn't sure he had spoken but the words were there in my mind. "I'm not armed."

I crawled out from beneath my net and stood up and got my first look at him.

He had no rifle or equipment of any sort and his clothes were faded from the green to a greyness and they were worn. His face was bearded and the hair was soft as if he had had a beard for a long time.

The beard hid the outline of his face and so I looked to his eyes. They were deep without being mysterious and they were very tired-looking.

He was about my height, maybe five feet ten, and he didn't look strong physically he looked as if he had something within him that would keep him going.

"You were lucky I wasn't wide awake then or you'd have copped something." He smiled, and that was slow and soft like his voice and you knew it was registering more in your mind than any of your senses. "Luck usually stays with me."

I heard the others stirring and in a moment Fitzie and Joe were standing beside me. It suddenly struck me that the man hadn't said who he was. I looked at him and he must have guessed what I was going to ask.

"I was in Rabaul," he said. "I've been here in the hills for the last three years."

"Why didn't you try to get out? You could've made it down to Gasmata. The Yanks have been there for the last year or more."

"I had something to do here. I know this country."

I had an idea. "You're not from the A.I.B.?"

"No." He shook his head. "I'm not from the A.I.B. I'm on my own."

Powell rolled over and moaned. Fitzie dropped on one knee and flung back the net.

"How is it, Harry?"

Powell opened his eyes and you could see the pain through the sleep in them. He shook his head and tried to sit up. Fitzie gently pushed him back.

"Stay there. Here, have a drink." He put his bottle to Powell's lips and Powell's throat quivered as he swallowed.

"What is wrong?" asked the stranger.

"The Nips jumped us last night. There were eighteen of us. I don't know what happened to the others. Harry got it in the shoulder."

"I saw the others back on the track." He made the statement calmly and without emotion as if he had seen so many dead men another fourteen didn't matter. "They were all dead."

Joe said two hard short words and his voice was flat with hate. The stranger looked hard at Joe and I suddenly had the feeling he would rather have not heard Joe utter the words. But he didn't say anything and knelt down beside Powell. He started to undo the bandage.

"I know a little about surgery," he said. "Perhaps I can do something."

The wound looked worse this morning and when Powell twisted his head to look at it you could see the sudden fear and sickness in his eyes and he quickly turned his head the other way.

"That bullet needs to come out," the stranger said. "Has anyone got a good sharp knife? "

Joe undid his from his belt and handed it down. "It's as sharp as I could get it."

The stranger snapped it open and the blade was shining silver in the early morning light. He ran his thumb along the edge.

"It'll do," he said. "We'll need some hot water."

"That means a fire," Joe said. "We don't want them to get on to the smoke."

"They won't see it." He didn't look up as he said it, just went on gently tearing Powell's shirt away from the shoulder, but his voice was a confident statement of an unquestionable fact. We lit the fire and the water was soon boiling in my mess-tin.

"It's ready," I said.

He put the knife in the boiling water and turned back to Powell.

"This is going to hurt, Harry," he said. "Have you got someone at home to think of while I'm doing this? Someone to take your mind off the pain?"

Powell shook his head. "I got no one. Just go ahead. I'll stick it."

The stranger took the knife and Powell shut his mouth tight to stop the scream that rose in his throat as the knife bit. I slid the sheath of my camera and focused it. The two of them were there in my view-finder, framed in the oblong of wire, alone in their own drama, the wounded man and the stranger who was helping him. It had an obvious title, only the priest and the Levite hadn't passed this way.

The stranger was talking, in a voice that was soft and detached and yet personal, as if he were talking in some corner of a mighty hall and the walls had amplified it so that the words were for everyone and yet just for this man immediately before him, the man lying white and strained as the hot knife turned in his flesh.

"It would have been easier, Harry, if you had had someone to think of. He's a lonely man who has only himself in his mind. It makes things so much harder. You can't make a long journey without stopping somewhere to lean on a post. Life's a pretty long journey, Harry, and that's what people are for-to lean on."

The sun was coming over the trees and the clearing was coming into sunlight. A parrot made a red-and-blue streak of harsh sound across the strip of sky and a giant leaf was a slow-falling brown-gold arrow. Water still dripped somewhere and there were rustlings and this was morning in the jungle and we were insignificant.

"People aren't so bad, Harry, that you have to wipe them from your life. For every one who does you a wrong there's a dozen or more who'll do you a right. I heard an American say it once: A feller needs a friend. He had it right, Harry. No man is big enough to fill his own life."

He turned and Fitzie held the tin forward as he dipped the knife in the water.

"Get a friend, Harry, get someone to think of."

The knife went in again, twisted and was out, and the stranger leaned back and wiped his brow.

"There. The bullet's out. How's the other tin of water,"

Fitzie handed it to him and he dipped a piece of the bandage in it and bathed the wound. The hot water was stinging the open flesh, but Powell lay with his mouth tightly shut and there was no sound from him. His eyes were closed and I wondered if he had been listening to the stranger. He opened them as the stranger finished rebinding the shoulder. He lay for a moment, looking hard at the bearded face above him,

"Thanks," he said, quietly.

The stranger gazed at him for a moment, then stood up. "Any time," he said.

We had breakfast then, I sharing my packet with the stranger, though I noticed he ate very sparingly.

"Go on," I said. "Don't hang back.';

He smiled again and I knew the smile was beginning to stick in my mind and I would always remember it. "I'm all right. You need it more than I do. I need to eat very little."

Joe spoke. "We don't want to go through this food too quickly. We don't know how long we're going to take to get out of here. Does anyone know where the hell we are?"

"I think we're still on New Britain," Fitzie grinned.

"You ought to be on the pictures, you comic," Joe said. "I mean it; I don't know where we are. I lost my sense of direction last night in the dark."

I looked up above the trees. "Well, there's east. If we cut back up over this hill behind us we should strike the coast."

"I spent four days cutting back over hills in the Finisterres," Joe said. "When they finally came across us we found we'd cut* back over the same hill three times."

"I can get you out of here." The statement was quiet and confident as all his other statements had been. We turned to look at him.

"Have you been down to the coast?" I asked.

I've been all over the island," he said. "In three years you go a long way. If we leave soon as you have had your breakfast we'll reach the coast before dark."

We started twenty minutes later, Joe and Fitzie walking on either side of Powell. He seemed to have gained some strength since the bullet had been taken out and if we didn't hurry him he looked as if he could last the journey.

I was walking beside and just a little to the rear of the stranger. I had remarked to myself earlier that he hadn't told us his name, but I couldn't bring myself to ask him. He just seemed one of those people whom you feel you would insult if you asked them anything about themselves.

He spoke over his shoulder. "Is it difficult getting good war pictures?"

"It's not difficult. It's just luck. Sometimes you get a shot that has everything and then you might go for months just taking stuff that is as dead as a backyard snap. I got a good shot this morning." I looked steadily at him as I said it. "It had everything."

"Yes," he said. "It had everything. But most of the people won't see it."

His voice sounded sad and for the first time rather weary and he walked along in silence, deep in thought that I could see took him a long way from this jungle track.

Walking close to him now I had time to study him. I could see the thick brown hair, soft like a woman's, curling out from beneath his hat and the beard had the same silky look about it and when the sun caught it it shone like metal. And then for the first time I noticed it. He wasn't brown or yellow-skinned like the rest of us. His arms below his rolled up sleeves and his neck above his shirt were white and clear as if he had spent all his life in a winter's clime. Except for the muscles moving in his forearm his arms were white and smooth as a woman's. But for the beard and the tattered clothes and his evident knowledge of the country he could have been someone who hid just come up from a southern winter. It puzzled me, but I still couldn't ask him about it. Only now do I wish that I had asked him a lot of things.

He stopped and turned back to speak to the others.

"How are you going?"

Powell smiled weakly. "I'll be all right. Joe and Fitzie are giving me a hand."

For the first time I was seeing emotion other than sullenness in Powell's face. I was seeing gratitude and I knew clear as a bell note in the silent night that the stranger had taken more than a bullet out of Powell.

"All right," the stranger said. ,Let's keep going."

We set off again. We were traversing a narrow foot-pad that twisted like a snake in the close-growing bushes on either side and every turn was a perfect set-up for another ambush. But somehow I knew we wouldn't walk into any more trouble. I was confident of this man in a way I can't explain even now when I have had so long to think about It.

"How much farther?" I asked.

"Not much." He pointed. "From the top of that hill you can look down on the sea. Probably another two hours."

"I'll be glad to see it. Last night I doubted if we'd ever get away. When that first burst went off I thought I was a goner."

"How did you feel?"

"How do you mean?"

"What did you think? Were you afraid or did you have regrets or, possibly, were you glad? "

"Well, I certainly wasn't glad! Who wants to die? But I didn't think about the rest of it. I was just sort of stunned, just as if someone had clipped me while I had my back turned. I guess I was scared, but I didn't have time for regrets."

"There was an old maid's tale that in the moment before you died your whole life ran before your eyes."

"It didn't run before mine. I guess someone must have known I wasn't going to pass out that time and deferred the screening."

"You believe in destiny ?"

I believe in nothing but the present and the past and sometimes then I wonder if I'm not a fool."

"Maybe you are." He smiled. "Forgive me. I shouldn't have said that."

"That's all right," I grinned. "My wife agrees with you."

He didn't answer and we walked in silence for the next hour and then we topped the rise of the hill and the sea lay before us, stretching out in the deepening day to the dark outline of New Ireland.

We stood in a bunch on the hill, getting our breath, and as we stood, down to the south-west I saw smoke curling up from the shore. I recognized. landmarks now and I knew the smoke came from the company's headquarters.

"There's home," I said.

"And this is where we say good-bye." The stranger held out his hand to me. I looked at him in surprise and the others had turned sharply to look at him. "I mean it. I am leaving you here."

"But, God, man, why must you go back into those hills? Haven't you had enough? Three years? "

"It's not a matter of time." He was talking beyond us again, I sensed that, talking as he had to Powell. "It's just that I have something to do. And it's not finished yet."

I knew it was no use arguing. "All right. It's your life." I put out my hand and I tried to tell him what I felt in my handshake. "I won't go into pretty speeches. Thanks."

Fitzie and Joe shook him by the hand and they were quiet too. There was no emotion about the scene, but I know I'll never see another one to equal it.

Powell leant on Joe as he took the stranger's hand.

"Thanks, friend," he said.

The stranger smiled round all of us and suddenly it didn't matter that we didn't know his name or where he came from or where he was going: he was a stranger no longer.

"Good-bye. God be with you."

He turned on his heel and went back down the track we had climbed and went round a bend and he was gone.

We got to our camp an hour later, men back from the dead, as they had posted us missing, and the next day I caught a barge back to Jacquinot.

That night I went over to the airstrip and asked the Tac R people could I use their darkroom. I worked there in the dark, everything dim and unreal in the red glow from the safety light. I ran the pack through the developer and all of the negs looked clear and sharp. I didn't look too closely at them as I was in a hurry to print them.

I fitted the first neg in the frame and flicked on the light. I did that with all of them and then I dropped them into the bath. I stood watching the grey smudges take shape on the white paper.

They floated in the solution, but I held one with my finger against the side of the bath. I saw the background coming up darkly and then a lightening in the mass of it.

I leaned closer and slowly it came clearer and I could feel sweat in my palms and then Powell was lying in the grass with the bushes behind him and the wound in the shoulder showing and - he was alone!

I clicked out the light and sat in the darkness and for the first time in my life I really began to wonder.

"NX5943"

EVER PUT UP A TENT ?

I WENT Up to Lofty, the camp comedian, stood on a box so he could hear me, and said, A want to put up a tent."

"Eh?"

There must have been a storm raging up where his head was.

"I said, I want to put up a tent."

"Why? "

I wish he hadn't asked that. I hadn't thought about it. Come to think of it, why put up a tent? Why not put up a good reason for a discharge or a proposition to the blonde you met on your last leave (back in 1942, or was it 1941)? ... A clucking sound with the mouth: tch t'ch, how men dream. Well, back to business.

"I want a roof over my head."

"Why?" He never wastes a word. He can't afford to. So far he seems to have only the one.

"I'm afraid of the birds."

"Get a tent at the Q. Get you a coupla blokes to help you. Got a jeep?"

I nodded. Mulligan, the taciturn.

I went across to get my jeep. Since I had parked her last night two coconut palms had grown on either side. She was wedged like the middle man in a beer queue. She was on a slight rise so I decided to let her run backwards down the slope then turn her into the road. I let in the gear, put my foot easily on the brake, and away we went. I pumped the brake and I might just as well have been pedaling the organ at St Mary's; I pulled the handbrake like a man throwing the switch with the Melbourne Express and the Midnight Horror to Camden on the one line but my hair was still being blown from the back; I threw in the clutch and it became part of the floorboard. I gave the game away, sat up, let her go, yelled "Fore!" and waited for the end of the section.

I went right through one tent without touching the poles, driving no hands, returning a salute midway between the second and third bed to the corporal who leapt to attention, collecting a pair of size-44 underpants round my neck, and finished up in the next tent, still not dislodging the poles. 'There was 1 man cleaning his teeth in the tent when I suddenly arrived in front of him and he had brushed my molars twice before he found he was polishing the wrong cove. I liked his toothpaste, sort of rum flavour.

I climbed out and surveyed the damage. I had flattened two beds, made a tyre mark right across a cake, wiping out the middle seven letters of Merry Xmas to Alfie, upset a bottle of hair-oil over a blanket, mangled a hurricane lamp, and there were two shirts, a towel, a pair of socks with a hole in one of them, and a singlet hanging on the windscreen.

"Sorry," I said.

The cove saluted. "Not at all, sir." I saw his lips begin to move as I turned round but I couldn't be sure about it. He may have had a bit of meat in his teeth.

I drove the jeep out of the tent with the clothes clinging to it, looking like the Laundry Trades float in the Six-Hour Day procession. I disrobed her and went up to collect the two men who were to help me with the tent. They were Oddshot and the Kid. Oddshot, with his teeth in, his boots on, and carrying a kitbag going home on leave, weighs ten stone four. He looks as if he has suffered from being patted on the head too much when young. The Kid is long and thin, so thin he has to wear braces on his underpants, and he stutters so that if he bids you good morning it is midday before you catch on.

"We're going to put up a tent," I said.

Oddshot and the Kid just looked at one another. It's wonderful what people can say with a silence.

We went to the Q Store, drew a tent, an axe, two shovels, and a pick. I drove up along the road and turned in at the chosen site.

"This is it," I said.

It dropped four feet towards the back, and if it snowed in New Guinea would have made a good ski-run. Oddshot and the Kid looked at one another, shook their heads, and I was a race apart.

"We'll need some gravel to level her off."

The Kid went back to get a trailer and Oddshot sat under a tree and rolled a smoke. He didn't say anything, just sat there smoking. I bounced a pebble in my hand. A bird whistled in the tree above. A bulldozer clattered past. Over the road someone told someone else what to do with something. Oddshot sat smoking. I bounced a pebble in my hand. The Kid came back with the Jeep.

We went down to the gravel pit, took off our shirts, and dug in. I mean, I put the end of the shovel, the sharp end where the dirt goes, on the surface of the earth, put my foot on the neck of it, and pushed. Nothing happened. The shovel was still on the surface of the earth. I hadn't even wrinkled it.

"It's hard," I said.

Oddshot just looked at the Kid.

I picked up the pick-that phrase intrigues me: sounds like a novelty song-swung it, and Oddshot ducked as the head bounced from the ground and flew past his ear. He didn't say anything, just looked at the Kid, stubbed out his cigarette, picked up the other shovel, walked about two yards west of me and proceeded to dig out gravel like a dog scratching for a bone in the bottom garden.

The trailer was filled and we threw the tools on and drove back. I had an inspiration.

"Let's tip the trailer. It'll save shovelling it out."

We undid the connection, heaved, and the gravel came sliding out. For the moment the sound reminded me of an aunt who used to come to our place Sunday nights and sing "The Holy City". She married a butcher and cut off two fingers helping in the shop one busy Saturday morning

"Right. Now we'll spread it. Where's the shovels? "

Oddshot looked at the Kid, then at the pile of gravel. It took us twenty minutes, digging with three pairs of hands, to ungravel the tools. It took us another hour and a quarter to level it.

"There," I said. "Now we can put the tent up.

We spread out the tent. While we had been gravelling, clouds had come up and now great fat drops of rain were beginning to fall.

"Looks like we'll get wet."

The Kid looked at Oddshot, looked up at the sky, then bent and picked up a comer of the tent. Everything was set to put the poles in. We slid the ridge-pole through. then Oddshot held one end while I put the upright in.

I got the end of it through the hole in the canvas and was searching for the hole in the end of the pole. I found it and pushed. Oddshot gave a howl like a lioness with labour pains and seemed somehow permanently attached to the ridge-pole. It took us ten minutes to extricate him without breaking the finger or paring a bit off the end of the upright.

The G.111 (Air) went past.

"Putting up a tent, eh?"

To some people, things are never obvious. They doubt everything. Show them a picture of the Harbour Bridge and they say, "Oh, the Bridge, eh?" A myopic Zulu wearing sunglasses might have thought it was a fire-grate but then you could have forgiven him.

Now it was raining like where little girls go who listen to commercial travellers. I hadn't had a haircut for eleven weeks and my hair was hanging down in a wet mat in front of my face. It was like looking at the world through a horse's tail. My pants were carrying water inside them above the line of my gaiters and every time I moved I sounded like a water-bag in the breeze.

Then she was ready to go up.

"Ready? One, two--"

I lifted my pole, tottered like a caber-tosser at the Highland brewers' picnic, and went straight through into the middle of the tent. It collapsed and I was lost to the world, alone in the darkness and the mud like a coal-miner who went to work on the wrong day.

When I struggled out, eight minutes later, Oddshot and the Kid were sitting under a tree smoking and not saying anything. When I made my reappearance, born to the world of light and no leave, they flicked away their cigarettes and stood up.

It took us another fifty-three minutes finally to get her up. We stood back and admired it. It was the Taj Mahal, it was the Empire State, it was the fruit of our endeavour, it was a flaming lot of trouble.

Oddshot and the Kid looked at one another and didn't say anything. They got into the jeep and drove off. The sun was shining now, not a cloud in the sky.

Next day we moved up to our forward positions.

"NX15943"

BOOT TOES THE LINE

THE reason I am up in this new area of the fightin' zone is that I have had a conversation with my artillery C.O. I have what they call "fronted him".

I pass on to my C.O. what I have already hinted to my sergeant and troop officer-that this red-tape business of atebrin parades, folding blankets, and mosquito nets down at dusk is all very tiresome, and I wish to have none of it. Furthermore. I think arty work stinks.

However, I say to the infantry officer: "I have been sent up here because I prefer the active life. It's the soldier in me. And because I'm not happy about all the parades and things they have in some units.

The officer is running his finger along the edge of a very vicious-looking knife. "Can you use a rifle ?" he asks in an absent sort of way.

I muster an injured look.

"Very well," he says, "we'll post you to a rifle company, 13 Platoon, C Coy." And off I trudge.

Next morning a sergeant, with a set of handlebar moustaches, pokes me in the ribs before I've seriously got down to last night's sleep. "Get up, mate," he whispers. "You're on the first patrol."

"The first what?" I stammer, and not because I'm half asleep, either.

"Report to Lance-Corporal Edmonds, 8 Section. You take 'Darky' Lake's place as Owen-gunner."

"Where is this Lake bird?" I want to know.

"They got him on the last patrol," he says very quietly; and then he merges into the halfhearted darkness.

This Edmonds is a tall, dark bloke, and I like the look of him. "My name's Mick," he says. "Make sure you have enough ammo, and I'd take off that puggaree if I were you. Sticks out a mile."

We slouch off into the pallid dawn. I'm a bit surprised how calm and stoic I am about all this patrol business. I'm thinking, too, of those arty blokes back in the troop, who are just getting out of bed. And then I think of the parade they'll be on shortly, and this makes me feel a little better.

Mick Edmonds is gesticulating to us, and we stealthily gather round. We are just below the crest of a kimai hill. Way down on our right there is a mountain stream boring its way into the mist-screened jungle, and lapping their feet in the stream is a tenement of towering peaks, clothed in immaculate green.

The morning sun is shunting little carriages of wispy cloud up from their camping grounds in the gorges, and all around there is a cathedral quiet and expectant hush, like in a theatre just before the soprano sings.

Mick Edmonds breaks the silence. "There's a Jap pocket between here and where that stream makes an S-bend," he says. "If we go straight down we arc under observation all the way. So we'll cross the river, well up, and then move down the other bank and recross it somewhere near the S-bend. Then we'll have a look-see at what those Japs are doing."

Well, I say to myself, this is all very nice. Two swims before breakfast and maybe a fight. Now, if I was back in the arty troop ... But I dismiss that. I feel somehow I like to help this Edmonds bloke do the job on hand. It's the soldier in me, no doubt. Anyway the Japs might have gone by the time we get there; and with this comforting thought, I patrol on.

We cross the stream, twice, without any trouble-although the way these infantry blokes make use of cover pops my eves out so far I have to take a step forward every now and again, to catch up with them. Mick is continually telling me to keep my head out of sight. Once he says, "Keep down, mate. Keep down. We haven't got time to bury you here."

I'm thinking this is not a very judicious remark to make to a soldier doing his first infantry patrol, when some fool lets off a shot. And this slug buries its nose very noisily into a tree right beside me. Well, the infantry blokes hit mother earth so neatly I fancy I'm all alone. But Mick peers through a fern cluster at me, and motions me under cover. "Japs," he says, like he has seen cockroaches in the kitchen, "right out in front."

I do not ack his message. I am not used to this sort of conversation.

Every man seems to be acting instinctively, although I can see Mick making a few signs to them. I see the Bren-gunner disappear behind a spur to the right. The Jap is only firing spasmodically as though he'd carried his ammo a long way. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. A grenade bursts too close to be called an accident, and there are several Japs firing at me with evil intent. Over to the right the Bren gunner is in action and beating out a beautiful conga tempo, and I seem to remember this usually heralds an attack. I hope I have been misinformed.

The rest of us are not firing much ammo. I move over to whispering distance of Mick and ask him what's-to-do. He says, "Box formation." Which is a damn silly answer whatever way you look at it.

The Jap fire abates a little and this is the cue for five stout warriors, and ex-Gunner Boot, to rise and move forward.

We have gone about ten yards when - say a prayer for the boys over there - six Japs burst out from the fringe of jungle directly in front, and charge straight at us. There is frenzied shouting of "Banzai!" and one bloke, who is obviously a foreigner, screams something nasty and brandishes one of those swords we sell to the Yanks.

I hear a little fair fellow on my left cry out in pain, but he stays on his feet, and is there with us firing point-blank at the King's enemy. I juggle my heart back into its normal position and get the Owen into action. But by the time I'm steady enough to pick out a target these infantry blokes have buttered the jungle with the six Nips, and are arguing over the sword.

But it's old Boot who is ready for the pigmy-sized Nip who has sneaked up behind us, and is poised ready to throw a grenade. I throw the butt to the shoulder and have Just drawn a bead on the yellow of his eyes when I cop a blast in the ear, and the Jap does a French adagio act and topples over, as dead as a skewered frog.

I look round and see Mick shuffling his rifle bolt. He grins and winks at me; but I am in no mood for such frivolities.

This is the life, I think to myself, later, when we are back with the platoon. You just go out and fight, and then sit about for the next stoush. Mightn't be a great future in it, but there is certainly no red tape.

Then at one fifteen a whistle blows, and this same sleep-walking sergeant bellows out: "All out in ten minutes. Full webbing, gaiters and firearms. C.O.'s inspection."

Well, I mean to say!

"I have been sent back here," I say to the officer at Base Ordnance, "because I do not like all this parade business and red tape that goes on in the forward units . . ."

The officer is running his finger over a very innocuous leaf from a jeep spring. "You know anything about the army weapons ?', he asks in an absent sort of way.

I muster an injured look.

"Very well," he says, "you can bed down in the last tent in the row. Mess parade at 1800 hours. Gaiters, long sleeves. Next parade at 0645 hours tomorrow, tent inspection 0745--"

But I have heard enough.

I am back with the arty troop now.

"NX98926"