Chapter 2 Adventure in AAMWS; Shorty pays debt; The Infanteer; Leave Business...

ADVENTURE IN THE A.A.M.W.S.

JOIN the A.A.M.W.S.! Be a modem Florence Nightingale! Do a real war job!"

It was the usual story and I reacted in the usual way. I joined them.

After various trials and tribulations at barracks, over which it is perhaps best to draw the veil of oblivion, I began my Army career with a Recruit Training School, "somewhere in New South Wales". The school was rather a surprise to me after my visions of sponging the fevered brows of the heroes of Alamein and Tobruk, but I route-marched cheerfully. In three weeks' time--!

Eventually the Recruit Training School came to an end, and I was posted to a military hospital "somewhere near Sydney". How happy I was! Now I could sponge fevered brows, take temperatures and go about with the glorious light of sacrifice shining from my eyes.

Sacrifice was the right name for any light that may have shone from my eyes for some time after this, for THEY told me that "new girls" did not do ward duties-instead, they spent approximately three months serving out meals in the mess. So, I served out meals, and did other things, still with abominable cheerfulness.

True, my cheerfulness abated a little when I was forced to hie myself off to hospital with a vaccination reaction. Those seven days were indeed trying-but I recovered quickly, for the three months of drudgery in the mess would soon be over, and my ambitions about sponging of fevered brows would at last be realized.

The Great Day finally dawned, as Great Days usually do, and I was a nursing-orderly. It has always puzzled me, since, that any member of the A.A.M.W.S. should be called by that name: "nursing-orderly". But I digress. I became nursing-orderly and began sponging -but not fevered brows. It was the ward floor that I sponged, or at least scrubbed-the ward floor and paintwork and hand-basins. Also, I did large quantities of washing-up, said "Yes, sister" approximately one hundred times a day, and was religiously ignored by the medical officer.

After some weeks I decided that my talents, were not being used to their fullest extent in this no-doubt noble work. Perhaps the administrative side of the Army would give me more outlet for my brilliance and efficiency. Yes, I would join the clerical staff, and work myself up to the rank of - well, lieutenant would do for a beginning. So I became a despised office worker, and also, as I turned twenty-one about this time, I became a member of the A.I.F.

It dawned upon me gradually that the Army definitely did not appreciate my administrative powers - as yet, they had not even made me a corporal! Disappointed in still another direction, I soon realized that my place was upon the battlefields of New Guinea. There, I would come into my own, and doubtless be covered with glory and Military Medals.

My applications for transfer were received very kindly by my company-commander, but nothing seemed to happen.

Nothing happened. The months wore on with the usual routine of leave-passes, washing, gas-drill, verses written about the fever tracks of New Guinea, and occasional attacks of ptomaine poisoning. As I said before, nothing happened.

Once day I was sitting in my chair at the office, and bemoaning the fact that I was evidently fated to spend the rest of my life at base. "Books have been written round the heroic deeds of the battlefield," I said bitterly, 'but who has ever written one measly sentence in praise of those who sit and wait at base hospitals?"

The telephone rang. "- are asking for volunteers for Townsville. Will you go?" Would I go!

For the next few days happiness was indeed mine. Excitement! Danger! Crocodiles that crawled up the steps of the local post office! My cup was full.

Then - the draft was cancelled.

Such is life. I now take it as it comes. This day of grace finds me going at the right time to breakfast (well, usually), and being punctual at parades. This day of grace-!

Which reminds me that it is one month since my most recent application for transfer. I must write out another at once. Burma! Perhaps even yet I shall go tiger-shooting on my rest-day-perhaps!

"NFX167416"

SHORTY PAYS A DEBT

HE was lying back in a hospital bed when I first saw him. Pale and weak, he still had a tough, wiry look about him. He couldn't sleep, seemed to have something on his mind, and after a bit it came out.

Shorty and I - it's always been that way. Seems funny here in this hospital bed - oh, I guess I better start at the beginning....

Way back, when this war first started, Shorty and I were two average young Australians, not much interested in wars, but after a while, you know how it is - the chaps around joining up - we joined too, together, as we always have done things.

In time I got two stripes, but Shorty, well he never did seem to worry about promotions or things like that. For four years now we have been together, through Greece, Crete and the Middle East, then up to New Guinea....

Two weeks ago with seven other chaps we were out on patrol when we ran into a Jap patrol coming our way. We slipped into the jungle on either side of the trail and blazed away at them with everything we had for a while, then they stopped firing back, and we thought maybe we had got them all, so we scouted ahead.

We counted six bodies, and it seemed as though the rest of them had moved out; back to base or somewhere. Anyhow, it was about the limit of our patrol so we turned back, Shorty being drag-man.
I was a bit worried about those missing Japs; just as well, too, because I looked back in time to see one taking a bead on Shorty, who hadn't seen him.

I gave that Nip a quick long burst with my Owen just as his finger tightened on the trigger, so Shorty only got a grazed shoulder instead of a hole in the head.

Shorty didn't say much except "Thanks, that's one I owe you."

A week later I got mine as the Japs tried a counter-attack, a bad leg wound it was, so bad I became pretty weak and couldn't even crawl back to the boys.

So I just lay there by the side of the trail, hidden by the jungle from the Japs up front -not far in front, either. I could hear them talking as they set up a machine gun not twenty yards away.

My leg was throbbing pretty badly, and I'd lost a lot of blood, which was slowly seeping through the field-dressing. I guess I must have faded out for a while, because when I awoke it was just getting dark, and raining like it does in New Guinea.

Shorty was due as soon as it got thoroughly dark-I knew that, because never vet has Shorty forgotten a debt-not that he wouldn't have come without that.

Half an hour later I heard someone moving along the trail from our line. When he got level with me I whispered, "That you, Shorty? " There was a grunt and a hand groped in towards me.

"Can you move?" he whispered back. When I told him no, he says, "Oh, well, I'll have to carry you, I suppose."

After a bit of a struggle he got me out on the trail. I don't know why the Japs didn't hear us, I guess it was the rain on the leaves; anyway they didn't.

Shorty lifts me up and starts back. The track was muddy and slippery, and he had a lot of trouble keeping on his feet, but he managed all right till about half-way back when he must have trodden on a root or something, because he went crashing into a growth of bamboo.

Maybe you don't know how much noise bamboo can make, but I can tell you it makes a noise that can be heard through the heaviest rain.

Anyway, the Nips must have heard it, because after a second or two they started to spray that track with quite a bit of lead. We waited till they'd finished, then Shorty lifts me again and starts to stagger back.

We got another ten yards when suddenly the Nips decide to shoot again. Shorty gives a lurch and almost drops me. I know he's been hit, so I tell him to leave me and go back by himself, but he says he's O.K. only there's something warm and sticky dropping down on me that gives the he to what he says.

But he keeps on till a couple of chaps step out and take me from him.

Then he sort of folds up and as he goes down he says, That s quits, Jimmy. . . ."

That's the last I remember for a long time, but when I wake up I'm in this bed and they tell me Shorty is gone.

"Quits," he said, but lying here, I wonder.

"NX125132"

THIS LEAVE BUSINESS

JOE is a peculiar fellow. He never seems to understand things. Take, for instance, when we reached Australia coming back from New Guinea the last time. I don't suppose the censor will mind if I say that we arrived at Brisbane.

Well, anyhow, we got to Brisbane and raced through pretty smartly after collecting our day leave passes. It was Saturday. We didn't know anyone in the place, but a bloke in a pub told us there were some races on at the Creek that afternoon. It was the only thing we got out of that pub. They were five deep around the bar; and you'd have needed a Bangalore to get through.

We landed at the races. It was a dusty little course about the size of a decent saucer. The horses ran the wrong way round, but still managed to remain out of sight for about go per cent of the time. We didn't know anything about form, and neither did the horses; but we snooped along to the bookies and tried our luck. It wasn't.

I told Joe of some races I read about in Mexico, or some place over that way. They put all the jockeys on other fellows' mounts, and the winning horse is the one that comes in last. They reckon the game keeps cleaner that way.

As I said before, Joe is a peculiar fellow. My story impressed him pretty much, so nothing would keep him quiet until I promised to go up to the stewards with him and put forward a similar proposition. I was glad we couldn't get beer at that pub. God only knows what would have happened. As it was we got thrown out.

"Nice welcome to give the troops," said Joe.

"Best we go back to town," I said. "Let's go to a picture show or something."

"Suits me," said Joe. "I'm getting pretty tired of all this business. Let's go back to New Guinea where a man can keep healthy."

We grabbed a taxi outside the course.

The driver was a very decent sort.

"Want to take a look at the city?" he asked as he flipped over the meter. "You look as though you're new to the place."

Well, you've always got plenty of money when you've been away in the islands for any length of time. We went for a good ride around the city. Must have taken half an hour or so.

"That'll be six quid," the taxi bloke said. "You can't take any notice of the meter. We're working on a different rate these days, and can't get new meters. There's a war on you know."

Joe started to buck a bit, but I said: "Maleesh, what does it matter. We've only got about three weeks to spend it, and then we can start saving again on some island or other."

So we paid up and walked into a cafe'.

As we sat waiting for a waitress to finish talking to a couple of her boy friends, we got to chatting about our first day in an Australian city.

Of course going to the races was a mistake. Neither of us had ever liked racing much. According to the newspaper cartoonists that must make us anything but typical Diggers. But I suppose that doesn't matter. We've both been in it for more than four and a half years now. Joe managed to get himself a Military Medal in that time, but he still can't seem to say "bonzer". He'll never make the comic strips.

Joe was still a bit sore about the taxi fare. He might have been right, but what did it matter? As one of the chaps in our platoon used to say: "There's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another." He used to say that about every five minutes. He said it just before he died in the mud outside a Jap pillbox at Buna. "There's always something". It turned into a sort of epitaph.

The waitress wasn't one of those golden Australian girls we'd been thinking about off and on.

Perhaps there's no such animal.

She was a bit on the blousy side. A nondescript blonde; sort of off-white.

"Wadya want?" she asked, and leaned on the table like a bag of chaff trying to look graceful. She'd obviously studied the movies.

"U can 'ave eggs and ham, or 'amburgers. Take yur pick."

We chose ham and eggs. As Joe said: "It's the evening meal but why worry; we might be able to get turkey for breakfast."

The plate I got was still smeared with a generous part of the last meal it had held. But the blonde was back talking to her friends at the far end. I called her over and asked for a clean plate, or at least a cleaner one.

"Clean plate?" she almost screamed. "You guys want to get up into New Guinea or somewhere. You're too damn particular. Haven't you heard about the manpower shortage?

I managed to stop Joe from saying something rude. As I said before, Joe never seems to understand things. Of course there is a manpower shortage.

After the meal we looked about for a theatre. It was too late for the afternoon session and too early for the evening. We bought a couple of tickets, and walked about the streets looking at closed shops until time to go in.

It wasn't much of a show. We came out before it ended, and went back to the camp at the Exhibition. After a few tries we managed to find ourselves a tent, and bedded down for the night. It was our first day in an Australian city.

Next morning we woke up with a mild fit of the blues. Sunday morning in a strange city is always depressing, they say. The sun came out just after breakfast - and a good breakfast too. It shone brighter still when we got on the administration parade, and found that we were heading for Melbourne that afternoon. They handle you pretty well in these camps nowadays. Of course they should after about four and a half years' practice. The food was good and there was plenty of it. It made you feel glad to be back in Australia again.

The miles flew along pretty well for a troop train. It wasn't like the old days when they had octagonal wheels. They've shifted them to the far northern lines now. We reached Melbourne in two days. It was a typical Melbourne day. The sun was shining and all the roof tops "were clean and smiling". Actually it was raining, but it didn't seem dull to us. It was good to be home.

There could be no doubt of that. The tram conductress said so; and so did the man next door. In fact, everyone said so. They also asked me how long I would be home. I said: "Three weeks"; and they all said: "That's not long is it?"

Well, there's no really polite answer to that one; and I found out long ago that you can't explain these things. But that aside, everyone was very decent to us. One dear old lady in a tram even went so far as to apologize when she hit me in the eye with her case.

Joe said: "So she should," but Joe doesn't realize just how difficult life can be in Australia during war-time. Why, the ordinary luxuries of life are practically unobtainable unless you've some sort of lurk on. And even then you have to pay about twice as much. I know. A fellow in a big Buick told me. He was a very nice fellow. Stopped and picked us up when we were waiting for a tram.

Joe was going to ask him some silly questions, but I stopped him. Joe is always trying to pick people
to pieces. Why should people ride on crowded trains and trams when they can get hold of petrol? Joe is a nice chap. We've been together ever since we joined up; but sometimes he annoys me the way he keeps querying things.

My aunt came round to see me the first Sunday afternoon: I was glad Joe wasn't there. He was going through a bit of relation-torture at his own place. My uncle came too; but I didn't get much of a chance to talk to him. He kept pretty well in the background. He went to the last war, and had a pretty good record.

I don't think Auntie could have been in the last stoush. She kept on asking me questions. You know the sort of questions they ask. What is it like being under fire? Weren't you afraid? What do you think of the Japanese? And when you start floundering to give some sort of an answer they look at you in wonderment and say: "But in a book I was reading the other day, it said . . ." And you tail off weakly and say: "Perhaps he was right. He might have been in a different place."

Uncle just sat there trying to help me out now and then. He didn't say much, except to ask me if I'd been out to the tennis club on Saturday afternoon. I hadn't been there. Last time home on leave I went out. All my friends had left. There were a few people I had known, but they all seemed to talk about different things. They were all a lot younger too. I felt out of place.

The next week I met Joe in the city each afternoon, and we had a few drinks with others of the boys down on leave. Wonderful how much there is to talk about once you get together. And when you're home and meeting your relations, you can't seem to say anything. Which doesn't matter much. They generally say it all for you.

There isn't much of my leave left now. Before long we'll all be in camp again, training, training, training. . . . There's a lot of war ahead of us yet, and I suppose we'll just have to keep going and finish what we started out to do.

The first day back in camp everyone will be swapping yarns about their leaves.

"What sort of leave did you have, Charlie?" they'll be asking.

And the Charlies will all say: "Oh, pretty good. Quiet you know, but all right." Joe will start to ask questions. He never seems to understand, old Joe.

A lot of the pep seems to be going out of leave. It's only a short interlude, and by the time you get used to it there's nothing left.

And then you start training again. There's always something.

"SX2663"

XMAS NIGHT-NEW GUINEA

NATIVE drums are beating. It is Christmas night. Masculine voices rise and fall, singing a strange song. Firelight glints on the sac-sac huts. The serried rows of carefully placed sago-palm leaves look like the russet coloured scales of some night monster. A pungent smell of burnt feathers is on the air.

Near the huts the gaudily dressed dancers sway and whirl, barefoot in the dust. There are tribesmen from many native villages, some from as far away as enemy-held territory. Dances in which natives swayed and pirouetted in jungle villages long before the first white man landed on this wild island are now used to celebrate the white man's Christmas. The drums which throbbed in a cannibal Village, the fantastic headgear which swayed and nodded in the fire-glow of a primitive ritual are here tonight.

The drums are hollowed pieces of softwood, shaped like an elongated hourglass. They are ,about three feet long, eight inches in diameter, waisted in the centre to about three inches. A piece of snake-skin is stretched tightly over one end. On this are blobs of a sticky substance. When the drummer strikes it flat handed and draws his hand away it causes two notes, "Boom Doo", "Boom Doo", "Thrum Bob", "Thrumb Bob". It is a slow persistent rhythm which seems to impress itself on the hearer's subconscious mind. The drummers carry their drums and dance to the rhythm they beat.

The costumes are gaudy. Bright-coloured trade-cloths, vivid grass-skirts, worn as a skirt and also about the shoulders like a cape. Headdresses, elaborate and varied, carefully built on a thin bark and cane frame, which is skilfully hidden beneath plumes and feathers. White feathers from the sulphur-crested cockatoo, fine flame-coloured plumes from the bird of paradise.

Most of the dancers wear a colourful half-bustle. It protrudes behind them like a cock's tail; this combined with the curious bent legged motion of a dance, makes the dancers very birdlike. The company forms in lines for some of the dances. The drums throb. The voices rise and fall, and the lines of dancers advance and recede like the waves on a beach.

The men's voices attain a deep virile roll, intensely masculine. The "Marys' " softer voices answer, eternally feminine. The dance usually ends with a concerted "H-a-a-a-a-a" , "0-o-o-o", or "H-e-e-e-e", or other vowel sounds. A pause, then the next dance begins.

The drums beat the tempo. Voices keep perfect time, and the dust rises from the ground as the dancers gyrate. There are different forms of dances. Some are performed round a war drum placed in the centre of the dancing circle.

Away from the dance there is a sound of plaintive piping. The savagely painted native pipers stand in the fire-lit night, blowing steadily into their huge pipes. The pipes are bamboo, about eight feet long. One end rests on the ground; the piper stands erect and blows into the other. Pipes of different diameter give different keys. The greater the diameter of the pipe, the lower the key. The pipers harmonize, and the effect is a rather sweet music which rises and falls, carrying an wider tone of primitive loneliness.

Behind the huts, at the foot of a tree-lined bank of the Markham River, important things are being done. A tall, elderly native is holding a small hurricane lantern over a gory mess on a none-too-clean sheet of bark. The pig has been crudely butchered. It is hacked in pieces. Carefully he shares it out, battered head, legs, liver-everything. Their people always share. Even a sheet of newspaper for rolling cigarettes. Pork is "Number One Ki-Ki", and it is shared with scrupulous fairness.

Christmas night such as we may never see again. Still our thoughts are with the folks back home.

"Q46617"

DUCK'S TALE

FLANNEL, at one week, was a charming young thing with a prominent beak, a scrawny neck, and, like many young things, feet that conveniently anticipated her future size.

She had been abducted in broad daylight from the local poultry farm. Nothing was known of her mother's emotions on discovering that one of her brood was gone but Flannel seemed to leave the parental roof with few regrets. She was soon to achieve local fame for a trick which, to her, seemed an ordinary attainment.

Her early days were spent in the Sigs office under the maternal care of Corporal M., who, in between spells of signalling, taught Flannel to come to his call or to the sound of his finger finger tapping on the floor. These things, she soon learned, meant dead flies to scoff. She could hear this finger tapping twenty feet away, and, with growing strength and appetite, soon developed astonishing speed. As she ran, her "parson's nose" waggled from side to side in order, it seemed, to balance the huge feet.

It soon became the accepted thing for passers-by to stop at the Sigs office, swat a few flies, and feed Flannel. No instance of her being off her tucker was ever recorded, and a swatting sound brought her just as quickly as a finger tap. She did sulk once as a result of tapping that produced no flies, but the smart guy who did it was asked not to call again. The drum* regarding her health and latest performances was regularly sought, even by people who cared not two hoots for easy Q.M.s or accommodating cooks. Even officers were known to drop in, when they could be sure there was no one but the corporal and Flannel present.

One day a large part of the unit enjoyed the spectacle of nine N.C.Os gathered in a circle industriously swatting and tapping whilst the duck fed. And could she feed! At this "siting" she was credited with one hundred and fifteen flies, and still prepared to continue. It was later agreed that, having regard

to the pay of the nine N.C.Os, Flannel could have been fed cheaper at the swankiest pub. She survived many lone waddles to the kitchens, across a road much used by M.T. On these occasions Corporal M could be seen, tendering watching his protégée, her tail sometimes almost grazed by death in three-ton lots.

Now growing into a big girl, she survived a move into another camp, but here fortune must have been tempted overmuch. The Perfect Crime was committed. No one saw any murder, no one found any body, and, so, skilfully were questions parried, no one could prove anyone was missing!

*Drum lowdown, dinkum oil, pukka gen, swell info. "NX126751"