Chapter 5 Tobacco J.G; ABC News; Troopship; Song of the Jungle; I lie waiting

TOBACCO J. G.

The Q Store at Nantambu, New Britain, was a tottering native sac-sac hut with a precarious floor that groaned under the weight of the stores.

The floor-boards were loose and springy and the morning when the Q.M. bounced into the store the Lamps, electric, No. 1, slithered out of their case and cascaded on to the floor in a jangling heap of broken glass.

"Damn it," the Q.M. roared, "this floor will have to be fixed."

He eyed the Pistols, signal, No. 1, Mk III, Machetes, 15-inch blade, Braces, W.E. pattern '37, left, right, where they swayed in their boxes.

"We're moving out of here though, thank goodness," he said to the sergeant. "Get this list typed out, Mac. It's the stores we'll be taking with us. I'm going ahead in the advance party.

He threw the list on the table and hurled his thirteen-stone through the doorway. The floor-boards jumped and the cases swayed and a pile of Axes, felling, dropped with a clank. The Braces, left, and the Braces, right, slithered with snake-like movements from their box and curled themselves near the Lamps, electric, No. 1.

Mac, the sergeant, threw the list to me to type while he cleaned up the mess the Q.M. had left behind.

I was a comparative newcomer to the Q Store, only having worked in it for twelve months. I'd had some difficulty at first in identifying various stores, but I thought that I had graduated rather well in the finish and knew practically everything we had.

I'd typed half-way down this list this morning when I came to an item that was a new one for me. It was Tobacco J.G. I'd heard of Trousers J.G. and Shirts J.G., but never Tobacco J.G. There was a possibility, I thought, that this is was some new boong twist that the Q.M. hadn't told me about. I said to Mac, "Hey, Mac. What's this Tobacco J.G. on the Q.M.'s list?" Mac didn't have much hair on the top of his head but he had a beautiful cranium. He raised it then and said, "Tobacco J.G.? I'm flopped if I know. It's a newy on me.

When Mac had first been initiated to the Army in 1941 he had started in the Q Store and remained there ever since. I said to him then that if he didn't know what Tobacco J.G. was, how the hell was I to know?

"Ask Massa Wally," he replied. "He might know."

Massa Wally, the storeman, was so black that the boongs had adopted him as a brother. He spoke pidgin English, always asked about their families, gave them his spare pipes and occasionally gave them U.S. Tents, mosquito and sand fly proof (modified) to use as lap laps.

"Hey, Wally," I said, "what the hell's Tobacco J.G.?

Wally flashed his white teeth in a wide grin.

"What name something? Green pella tobac belong bush? Me no savee.

"You mean you've never heard of it"

"Me no savee," he repeated.

He came over to the table and dropping his pidgin English said to me:

"Tobacco J.G.? It might be some new boong tobacco that's been tropic-proofed. Might be done up in that new tropic packing like Dischargers, grenade, rifle, 21-inch, No.1,Mk I."

I shook my head.

Wally went on. "I've heard of Stoves, 12 gall. (Aust.), Baskets, steaming (N.I.V.), and Brushes, scrub, hand, union, but never Tobacco J.G. We've also had Pans, stew, steel, (Aust.), 6 pints, Strainers, gravy, and Implements, butchers, cases, wood, filled."

"But you've had no Tobacco J.G.?"

"That's right," he said, and he walked across the hut laughing, while the floor bounced and the Lamps, electric, No. 1, clattered on to the floor again.

Mac came over again and said, "Was there anything about it in B.R.Os, Brigade R.Os or First Army Orders?"

"Might be worth trying," I said.

We had all the files on the table and we found plenty about tobacco but nothing about Tobacco J.G. The adjutant and the orderly-room sergeant had offered to give us a hand, and Massa Wally had even asked one of the boongs working on the road if he knew what it was.

We were still going through the files when the boards bounced again and we looked up in time to see the Razors, safety, Brushes, hair' and Brushes, shaving, dribbling out of their box on to the floor.

We turned round and saw that the C.O. was the cause of it all. He stood in his characteristic attitude with his legs apart, with the back of both his wrists resting on his hips and his hands hanging loosely down.

"What's the trouble, sergeant?" he said.

Mac looked at him and a slow flush stole over his face.

"No trouble at all, sir," he said brightly.

"Nothing at all? Then what the devil are you doing with all those files?"

"As a matter of fact, sir, we're trying to find some reference to Tobacco J.G."

"Tobacco J.G. What the devil's that?" the C.O. thundered.

"We ... we ... don't know, sir."

"Hmph." He glared at Mac and we put our heads into the files again. "When you do find out what it is let me know," he said and he strode out of the store while the Lamps, electric, No. 1, set up a horrible clanking on the floor where Massa Wally had left them.

We couldn't find anything about this tobacco so we got back to work again and we all felt frustrated and were likely to get into holts with anyone who wanted an issue.

We were like that when Shorty, the Q.M.'s batman, came into the store and started nosing around among the boxes, and every time he moved something, some of the contents finished up on the floor.

Mac got wild with him and said, "What the hell are you doing here, Shorty?"

"By cripes, you blokes are crusty today," he said, but he just went on walking around the store with that curious jerking movement of his head, and his right arm swinging at his side like a steam engine's piston rod.

He finished up near me and said, "Have any of youse blokes seen my box?"

"No, get to hell out of here. We're looking for something too," I said.

"I gave the Q.M. this box and he said he was going to send it with the stores," Shorty continued,

"Well, we haven't seen it," I replied.

Wally came over at that moment and said, "I wonder if A.N.G.A.U. would know what kind of tobacco that was;"

Shorty said, "What tobacco's that?"

"Some tobacco called J.G. that's on the Q.M.'s list and we don't know what it is," I said to him.

Shorty put his hands on his hips and just laughed and we just stared at him.

"Strike me pink," he said, "that's mine. That's the box the Q.M. is taking for me and it's full of tobacco. Instead of putting me full name, Jimmy Gibbons, on the list for you to type, he's just put Tobacco J.G."

"NX143660"

TROOPSHIP

IT is Sunday night and the air vent is blowing above my head. The air smells of smoke from the funnel, but it is cool and makes the sweat on my body feel like tiny droplets of ice water.

I am down in the hold and it is hot. The air that hangs in a laver across the floor is hot and smelly and damp. As it gets higher and passes the bunks, still in layers, it loses the dampness and gathers within itself more heat from the electric-light bulbs.

It is a troopship hold and everywhere there is gear. Packs hang from the roof and rifles hang from the packs and life-jackets hang from the rifles.

And between the hanging gear there are men: men lying in rows, in lines, banked up on the canvas bunks, naked, half-naked, sweating.

It is hot in the hold and I am right under the air vent. I am smoking when I should not be smoking.

Around me, among the gear and the smelly air that changes every fifteen minutes, the men try to rest. They can't sleep. They just lie with their eyes closed against the electric lights. The fights are hot and they are on all night.

Some of the men have their heads shaved. I always think that it only makes it easier for the in mosquitoes. I don't believe in helping mosquitoes.

I am hot and I am right underneath the blower. There is a man underneath me and another underneath him. The bottom man must be hot.

He is lying on his back, naked, one leg hanging over the side resting on the dirty floor.

The engines make the hold throb and the ship rolls gently. It is raining on a calm sea and it is that fine, soft rain that makes little holes where it hits the water.

This is another troopship, a different one from last time, yet somehow it is the same, yet somehow different.

It is Sunday night and we are going to New Britain.

Now and again something seems to creak in the gentle roll; it may be the ironwork of the hold. And up on deck, above the for'ard hatch, some men are singing. The sound of their voices comes down and mixes with the heat and wanders around the hold. They are singing hymns.

Every now and then somebody moves down between the rows of bunks and lying men. Then there is the clicking of steel on steel as they climb the stairs to the deck.

Every now and then somebody comes back.

A man down on the end bunk says, "As if it isn't bad enough being down here without having to listen to that singing going on up top. "

Somebody else says, "Let's start a Jive session in opposition."

Then the singing stops and the man on the end bunk calls out, "More, more. Give us number twenty-five."

The men are stirring, some of them are sitting up.

Over at the back near the steps a man says, "I was just having a dream and I dreamed that the ship was sinking."

The man down on the end bunk has a towel over his head to keep the light from his eyes and from under the towel he is calling, "Number twenty-five."

Opposite me a bunch of men are arguing about politics.

One of them says, "Me, I am definitely a hammer-and-sickle merchant myself. Definitely a red man."

Another, over against the steel side of the ship tells them, "I am a capitalist."

"Garn, you ain't got no money."

"Like hell I ain't," says the capitalist. I got six hundred quid in property."

"Gawd, I got that much in deferred pay. Almost."

"You gotta have brains to be a capitalist."

"Like hell. They say brains is beat by boloney every time. I got more boloney than any two men."

And the ship is hardly rolling and it is hot. Down in the hold it is always night-time, or day-time, you can't tell which. There are always the light-bulbs and the men lying on their bunks huddled, sticky with sweat, uncomfortable.

Up on deck they sing "Count your many blessings, count them one by one."

It is Sunday night.

"NX73132"

SONG OF THE JUNGLE

IT was nearly dusk. The jungle was already hushed by the uncanny, singing silence peculiar to the wild hinterlands of New Guinea; a shadowy, furtive silence which clogs the night with a clinging fear of the unknown. It is the Song of the Jungle, . . . .strange, elusive, gorged with a fullness of life, and the singing of death.

Down the leisurely Sepik River sped two great canoes, followed at a distance by a third. Rippling scarlet flicked their silvery passage, ribbons of gold and red spangling the water astern. As the intensity of the sun was sapped more and more by the purpling mountains in the west, soft warm colours flushed pleasantly on the dense green mat of the jungle, burnishing the bright new growth on the tree-tops, caressing the soft clouds above. Then twilight came and the jungle grew dim.

The third canoe steered close inshore, half concealed from the two in front by overhanging foliage and looping vines. It was manned by a crew of eight fine Sepik River natives, and carried four white men as passengers. The broad, muscled backs of the natives glistened sweatily as they dipped their paddles swiftly, in rhythmic precision, driving the heavy canoe cleanly along the darkening surface with a graceful ease born of Skill and years of practice.

Waria was their leader, bull-necked and strong, as was Brassen, the surly giant who was in charge of the white men. Waria had been a chief man in his village till the Japanese had come. He remembered the slaughter of his people, and gripped his flashing paddle with a fierce joy as the dusk deepened and they drew closer to the two canoes ahead. His muscles rippled and bulged under his smooth skin, as he increased the stroke a little. A shadow crossed his face, as he heard Brassen cursing them again.

Brassen and the three whites were grouped round a Bren gun on a flimsy cane platform between the canoe body and outrigger. His massive jaw was thrust forward truculently as he gazed ahead into the deepening shadows, dark eyes deep-set under shaggy brows. He looked like his three mates-dirty, tired, and an untidy growth of stubble on his chin and neck. Brassen was a man of the tropics, noted for his harsh tongue and tactless manner when dealing with "boongs". The crew had suffered in silence all day under the stinging lash of his scorn.

"Put your backs into it, you damned nigger minstrels! Make 'em go quick-time. Suppose we no look along Japan-man sometime, then kai-kai b'long you 'e no stop!"

The craft strained forward and the two feathers of bow-wave sprayed up whitely against the darkening water.

"Put some meat behind it, you fuzzy-wuzzy angels!" He laughed cynically and the grim lines round Waria's mouth tightened with hate. "Come on, you black, ruddy heroes! Maybe you 'fraid 'long Japan-man, eh? Maybe you no like we fight, eh? You scared? Yah! Faster, you cringin' niggers. Faster! I'll make you sweat blood before I'm through."

His mates said nothing. They knew only too well of Brassen's deep contempt of all people black, and his theory that "black trash" could be handled only one way-by violence and threats.

"Savage heroes?" he would laugh. "Savage nuthin''. They got no guts. They're yeller inside. They ain't even animals."

Now the banks were mysterious and forbidding, with black shadows and whispering quiet. A grey gloom shrouded the river, so that the pursuing canoe had to creep closer and closer.

Curly Mac spoke softly, keen eyes remaining glued to the two faint glinting specks of white foam ahead.

"Reckon they'll camp tonight, Brass?"

"I reckon so. They bin goin' all day, and if they'd seen us followin' they'd have ambushed us before now."

"Maybe there's more in front of these, headin' for the sea?"

"Nope. They're the only ones escaped; just twenty-four out of about a thousand. Good killin' that!"

"Yeah. Good killin' " Curly rubbed his stubble pensively, and for a moment lived again through the bloody slaughter he had shared upriver. He supposed that what bodies the crocs didn't get would float down to the sea, bloated by the sun and water. His eyes followed the two vague blobs ahead as they moved closer inshore.

"They're goin' to camp."

"Yeah. We'll pass 'em on the other side and ambush 'em when they start out in the mornin'."

"You ain't goin' to sneak up on 'em?

"Sneak up on 'em? In this kinda jungle? You wouldn't get a hundred yards in an hour, at night-and you'd be lost lone, before that. No, sit!"

They passed the Japs, unobserved in the dark, and selected a camp-site on the bank, half a mile farther down. Rain set in. They were all soaked before makeshift shelters were erected, tormented by swarms of mosquitoes, and their boots squelching. The broad leaves of some ginger plants were cut and used as a half-hearted covering on the muddy ground. The Bren gun was rubbed with oil and carefully covered with the only groundsheet possessed by the party, but the two rifles and the Owen gun slept beside their owners. The exhausted natives slept in the rain where they lay down, after a scanty meal of plain rice. .

Once during the night Brassen woke up, sodden clothes clinging to him and cold shivers chasing through his body. The moon was up and was diffusing its pale sickly light over the singing emptiness, the pulsing fullness of the heavy dripping jungle growth, the feeble rays serving only to accentuate the gloom. Little eyes of phosphorus gleamed all round as if a few handfuls of pale green stars had been scattered in the choked undergrowth. A thousand unaccountable noises and rustling sounds set his nerves on edge. He could smell the dank rottenness all around him, the fresh rain and musty odour of the natives. Niggers! He cursed them. Black heroes be damned! Knives, clubs, spears-black fools and cowards, afraid of their own jungle.

A stick from high up fell close to him and he jumped nervously. Light rain began to fall 9gain from broken scud, drops drip-dripping from the glossed leaves like impersonal seconds in eternity. Broad wet leaves glistened in the moonlight and long spiky tangles of lawyer-vines hung down in readiness to tear and poison the flesh of the unwary. A great thorn tree near by was silhouetted against the moon-glow on the flying clouds, and Brassen shuddered as he imagined himself trying to force a passage through the scrub at night - a maze of vines, great bloated spiders in sticky webs, pitfalls and treacherous swamp areas, spikes and thorns to tear the eves out, giant nettles and stinging trees. Moccas, mosquitoes, snakes. A nightmare of damp-smelling blackness, clotted with a profusion of clustered trees and thickets and clumped saplings, rotten and poisonous and vile.

He slept. . . .

Before dawn they were all awake, watching the river. Everything was dull and cold; grey waters, grey mists, dark jungle. The men lay concealed on the bank for an hour, and nothing happened. No one came. A few water-birds flew lazily upstream under the rising mists. A crocodile slid lazily into the sluggish water from a mud-bank, and a pair of hogs came to the water's edge to drink, but the peace of the river remained undisturbed.

After one and a half hours a single canoe cruised slowly round the bend. In it was a Jap soldier. He was in the stem of the long canoe, paddling furiously, carving out an erratic, half-controlled course on the river surface. As he approached, the men in hiding could see his ape-like features were contorted with fear. He kept glancing over his shoulder to see if he were being followed, peering ahead or at the grim overhanging banks as if he were in mortal fear of something he could not understand.

The four white men stared stupidly at him and wondered.

"What you say, Brass?" queried grizzled old Mort, puzzledly. "We do 'im over or wait for the rest?"

"Let 'im go; might be a trap. There's twenty-three yet."

"Maybe he's runnin' out on 'em."

They stared curiously at the lone Jap as his course veered crazily and grazed a snag. Waria was squatting easily on his heels, watching, and now he laughed.

"'E no reach soda-water. Short time now plenty rock 'e fight 'em water, push 'em water all about. Canoe 'e die finish!"

Brassen ignored the native, but he also knew that the rapids would smash the clumsily steered craft to splinters. For another hour they waited, watching for any attack by land or water, and evolving a dozen theories. Still nothing happened. They heard nothing but the noises of the jungle, saw no movement except that of river-life. At length Brassen rose, stretching his cramped limbs.

"Load up. We got to go up and see what goes on."

"Might be an ambush for us," suggested Curly Mac.

"Might be, but I don't reckon so." He gazed upriver thoughtfully.

"Gotta be careful," he added, and turned to the waiting natives, glowering.

"You kanaka get along canoe. We go look along Japan-man." He squinted at Waria, but the black steadily returned his penetrating stare, a faint smile on his savage face. Brassen grinned cruelly, and there was a wealth of contempt in his voice.

"You no like, eh? You scared too much? You stop along damn canoe, see- Paddle 'im quick-time! "

He glared resentfully at them as they passively boarded the canoe and settled themselves comfortably, nursing the paddles. Quietly the big craft glided out from the bank and kept close to the shore as they worked their way upriver. The Jap camp was round the bend. The Bren was set up on the platform and Mort lay in readiness behind it, Curly Mac beside him with spare magazines. Broder and Brassen each had a riffle.

Brassen crouched in the bows of the canoe, hunched forward over his gun, with his fierce black eyes intently searching the shore. As he rounded the bend he motioned the natives to go slowly, but instead they increased speed till the paddles were flashing with amazing swiftness and the canoe was racing towards the camp at full speed. No shots came. There was no sign of life. Six small tents stood in a of a clearing; the second canoe floated at the water's edge, facing upstream and gently bumping against the bank.

A cut rope dangled from a tree-trunk where the other canoe had been tethered. Brassen sprang ashore as the canoe grounded, and fell flat on his stomach behind the first available cover. His mates followed suit and waited for the hall of hot lead to come whizzing round their ears. The scrub was thick. There were many places where the lurking Japs could be.

The eight natives just sat in their canoe, in the open, watching the antics of the white men. Apparently they were oblivious of the danger. They made no effort to hide.

For long seconds Brassen lay there, and then began to notice things. Over to the left a head grinned fixedly at him. just a head, sitting by itself on the ground. It looked absurd. Behind it someone was lying face down in the grass, not breathing and almost hidden. Two feet protruded from the end of one of the small tents-two feet which remained quite still as he studied them. There was blood on the grass and a lot of it on the trampled earth. Something had happened.

Curly Mac hissed to attract his attention, and pointed up into a tree. There was someone there, too, very still, hung by the neck from a long kunda vine, the face blue and the tongue protruding.

Brassen rose slowly to his feet and the others rose, too. They walked forward into the clearing and found death on every side. Twenty-three. They must have died while they slept, for there was no sign of a struggle.

Someone had come, silently killed, and gone away. Someone who had used knives, clubs, garroted with strong, thin vines.

Brassen saw all this as he stared about him

he cursed. For a full minute he stood in that small clearing and cursed with fearful fluency, swearing long and luridly as only Brassen could-Brassen the brute, Brassen the boong-basher.... Then he swung round and strode down to the canoe and the smiling natives.

"Waria!" his voice rasped huskily. The black chief stepped lightly from the canoe and stood before him; loyal, magnificent, savage. In the white man's eyes there was something more than admiration. A moment they stood there, each looking deep into the mind of the other, pleased with what they saw.

No word was said, but the silence was eloquent, pregnant with realization.

Deliberately Brassen took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Waria, who smiled and accepted it. The others looked on, understanding.

Soon the canoe drew away from the bank once more and turned upstream, broad backs moving in rhythm and paddles dipping, and the natives singing their lusty full-throated song, filling the jungle wilderness with vibrant volume, throbbing up from the river, above the jungle and into the clouds.

"NX38335"

I LIE WAITING

THIS sitting is becoming a habit with me; more and more I see myself commencing to founder. You feel such a fool, waiting here, waiting and sitting. Nothing degrades a man more than the incapacity of the mind to control the body. This is the third fall in a month. We won't speak about the first. If it goes on much longer I shall have to cut down on things, with all that implies towards the cramping of the mind.

Last week it was fishing. Wednesday, such a lovely day. After breakfast Martha said, "If you feel up to it you can go out in the dinghy today."

"Fishing?" I queried, and observed how her eyes set.

"Yes, why not? You'll have to learn some time. Other people have their troubles too, remember."

I couldn't say anything to that so I bent down quickly and laced my boot.

It was a little awkward at first. The boat kept working round to starboard so that I slewed around like a toy train on a circular track. Finally I managed to work a crutch under a br2cket near the stern, and then things weren't so bad. The dinghy didn't exactly skim, but she made the same sort of progress as a teenaged boy pushing to town on his brother's tricycle.

It must have been about three when I pulled in the anchor. There were a dozen-odd flathead on the floor, and a whiting. I didn't like the look of the sky. A sharp wind had sprung up across the peninsula and I was a long way offshore. Everything would have been all right if I hadn't had to strain with the anchor. Anyone could see what would happen, but, as Martha said, you have to learn some time. I tried to do it from the seat and when the boat rocked, back I went.

This is what normal people find hard to grasp; I knew it was happening but there wasn't anything I could do about it. All I had to do was swing up on my hips; it's surprising the power people have in their hips. Of course it should have been easy, but then there's a part of my hip-bone I just haven't got, and as my leg came up I glimpsed the crutches disappearing overboard with a clatter.

I know what you're going to suggest. I tried that. But somehow I couldn't get enough leverage to scull the oar across the stern. There wasn't anything to do but sit there and wait. Wait-there's the catch. Wait, and drift, and wait, till the wind geared up and the waves commenced to lash the boat. I began to wish I'd never heard of Sattelberg. I'd never thought about it that way before. Now I wished I'd never seen the Islands; never touched a driving wheel; never heard a bugle blown. I got round to thinking how it happened, and now and then the spray flung up and I'd taste the salt, like I did before, the night it happened, only different somehow.

We were waiting at Sattelberg for the mud to dry. We'd been there a week-all dressed up and nowhere to go like a wine-bibber in a dry area. About ten the Don R turns up and says the roads are jeepable as far as Palanko. He looked pretty tuckered, I thought, from holding the bike on the roads and there was so much mud about his feet that you couldn't rightly say where his boot left off and his leg began.

As it turned out the roads weren't too bad. At midnight I took over from Bill. We'd done a dozen-odd miles and Bill said, "We ought to make it by dawn if the moon comes out."

"Maybe, Bill," I said, and swung aside to let an ambulance have the track. God knows why it had to be an ambulance. The jeep stuttered a bit and I slammed down my leg on the clutch. Everything was vivid, white and hot, and the way the gears grated I knew I'd missed the pedal.

After that things went pretty black. We must have struck a mine, or something, for when I came round there wasn't too much of the jeep left intact. I felt sick and sore, pinched and pulled about the skin, like a jelly-fish a mob of kids have prodded. By and by the moon came up and singled out the trees. I sat up and tried to take a peep around. Only then I knew why I hadn't hit the clutch.

The wind was racing now. The sky had darkened over like an ebony bowl. Every now and then a wave hit the boat and together we'd give a shudder. She was drifting in closer ashore, heading towards the cape. Near the estuary the red roof of the house came into view and I thought about Martha and the kids, and I thought this morning was a pretty poor way to say good-bye to one's wife. When I caught up with that one I was scared, no mistaking. After the Islands I'd been counting on a long spell at home and the way things looked on the bay it seemed I might be off for a long spell somewhere else. If I'd been able to move around, maybe things would have felt better; but there I was, stuck without a leg, and that was all there was about it.

And then the crester came. I picked it up a couple of minutes from the boat. When it struck it seemed as though I'd come face to face with something. I wasn't frightened any longer. I'd suddenly seen the storm in just the same way as it saw me.

It's funny when you first come out on crutches, out of hospital I mean. You're in blue; you're pasty about the face; it's pretty obvious to most people where you've been. They glance where the leg isn't and follow the up-turned trouser-leg to where it disappears beneath your jacket. They look you in the eye, and smile, and you feel pretty good and hero-like. But after a while they forget.

I don't know whether it's pity, or whether they're 'just not game to face the facts. In trams and trains you catch them at it - they take one decco where the stump should be and drop their glance like a red-hot penny. Every-day becomes a fight not to feel you , re some new sort of pariah, some unfortunate maladjustment. But when the wave hit that boat I knew the storm felt neither love, nor pity, nor hate; it had me right in a flash, saw me at face value-another sphere of motion fulfilling its mission at the appointed time. The boat was coming in towards the pier; all I had to do was wait.

When the crash came, the boat tipped, and I ended up like so much seaweed wrapped round a pillar and beam. I was safe. Someone would find me eventually, children perhaps. I would cling, I thought, and wait. Another simple exercise in the philosophy of resignation. On the woodwork the sea-mussels were rough and sharp, and I bled a little, so that after a while I got round to thinking how the bomb had blown me from the jeep.

About two they picked us up. Bill was dead. Killed outright; and one of the jokers from the ambulance. The natives brought us down on stretchers. They covered Bill with a blanket and took him ahead of me. All the wav down I could make out his shape under the blanket, heavy and dead, rising and falling with the onward progression of the stretcher, and then I'd see the sweat gleaming on the backs of the carriers, lithe and supple. That didn't make me feel so good, so that after a while I had another black-out and when I came round I was in the hospital, and I didn't have any leg at all. They took it pretty close to the groin.

For a week or two things were fine; I didn't worry overmuch. They were a decent bunch at the hospital and kept you talking pretty nearly all day. I didn't know it at the time but that was the right thing, gave the mind a holiday. But as the weeks went by things didn't seem so good. The waiting began. It wasn't till later I knew what that meant, but it was on all right. People got sick of talking, and after a while they began to drift out, one or two a week, and new ones came in, so that I came to feel like a piece of the furniture. And the sisters, who seemed at first so bright and cheerful, closed down. I suppose for them I became part of a routine. Once or twice, while they bathed me, one or two of them went wet about the eyes and hurried to finish the dressing. That, I thought, was a pretty big concession for a nurse, seeing the things they see.

The weeks dragged on into months and I felt myself becoming really irritable. Once, lying half awake, I felt an itch about the knee and, dopey-like, I tried to reach down and scratch. Of course there wasn't any itch because there wasn't any knee and I damn nearly ended up on the floor. Sister Manning caught me, and as she hauled me up she snapped something sharp and nasty about getting hold of myself. I'll be in this, I thought, and came in with all I had, which, God knows, was a fool thing to do, because up she hopped and rushed out of the ward, with everybody sitting up in their beds as though I'd committed some sort of heinous crime.

She was back in a moment with Captain Rogerson. Doc Rogerson wasn't a bad bloke, but on this occasion he went off the handle a treat, with Sister standing there looking silly about the gills, wishing she hadn't been so hasty, and me lying motionless knowing neither of us had meant what we'd said.

It's now nearly three months since I came out, and it shows how the Army gets a bloke. I woke this morning and heard a Vickers mocking up the valley. My skin began to tingle and a big smile crossed my face. "Cadets," I said, "training on the range," and then I shut up because I didn't want Martha to know. After breakfast I took the bike, and a crutch, one of the new ones Martha had bought in town, and set off on my pat. I aimed to see that gun. It's not so bad on a bike as long as you have a crutch at the kick-off. When you get going you can balance it along the handlebars and drop it down again when you want to ease up. I didn't tell Martha, I meant to surprise her when I came back. I wanted to see her face when I said, "I've ridden four miles today, dear." After the boat affair I should have been a wake-up. Now I'm lying here, off the highway, waving a broken crutch every time a truck roars by, but so far they haven't seen me.

I'd been thinking what they said when I left the hospital. Two of the doctors came out, and one of them, a lean wiry-looking joker, helped me into the taxi: "We could fix you up with a temporary limb," he said; "but it wouldn't be much good. A couple of years after the war they'll be turning out plastic limbs, good ones, then you'll have a leg the children can see through." I'd just got up to. the point where that raised a good laugh with Martha and the taxi bloke, when the crutch twanged in the spokes. Down I went, Peter over Paul. It didn't hurt much, me or the bike, and together we slid down the embankment. The crutch splintered in the fork. Now I'm lying here and the trucks are roaring overhead. The old fight is on, body against mind. This time I think I'll get the better of it; though one day, I know, I'll burst. I know what you're going to say-why don't I drag myself up the embankment? Yes, of course, but then you have two legs, haven't you?

"VX105554"