In the centre of Nara there is a bloody big cannon. Young kids like to play on it and teenagers have been known to straddle the thing for a humourously suggestive photograph. The well-trimmed grass, blooming flowers, and the gentle shade from a solitary conifer that stands alongside also have made it a popular picnic spot for a family reunion, or a first date, or both. Nestled among this tranquility is a small plaque commemorating the bravery and sacrifice of the greatest bloody generation Nara ever saw.
In 1915, four young Nara men marched off to war and only three marched back. The name of their fallen comrade is now emblazoned across that plaque, and the good people of Nara pause when their gaze falls upon it.
Kenneth M. Alfred
All who read it remember the sacrifice of the Diggers who shipped off to defend Australia against hordes of hungry Austrians. And every April 25, Don Harry, the last surviving Nara digger, recounts the tale of Alfred’s tragic and heroic sacrifice to the somber and grateful crowd.
“Well, we get down to Adelaide to sign up.”
He begins every year.
“They put us all on a bloody big boat bound for WA and off we go. Ken sneaks a couple of bottles of rum on board and we went into it pretty hard as soon as we left the docks. By the time we’re passing the boot, Ken’s three sheets to the wind and he wants to go up on deck so he can point out the sights. So he’s leaning on the railing, pointing out into the Bight.
‘That just reminds me of a yarn,’ he said, before the bastard loses his grip and tips over the edge. Never was one for swimming, that Ken.”
“Lest we forget,” the good people of Nara say back in solemn unison.
Every year Nara remembers. But told far less often, either because of the humility of these brave men, or because the good people of Nara are far too respectful to pry into painful memories, are the stories of the those that were left to grow old.
* * *
Don swayed gently as he stared at the empty spot where Ken had just been standing. By his side were young Bruce McAffrey, barely seventeen, but known around town as a quiet and respectful lad, and George Shankey, a young man, too, but lean and wiry and tanned from long days in the fields.
“Bloody hell,” Don said, scarce able to believe his eyes. “That’s a fucking tragedy.”
“Too right,” said George, gazing at the churning waters below them with a sad look in his eye. “Half a bloody bottle of rum that cunt was holding. War’s not even begun and we’re two soldiers down.”
The sea breeze whistled mournfully passed them.
As they stood in quiet contemplation, two men approached, themselves a little unsteady and one holding an open, almost full, bottle of rum.
“What’s the tragedy, boys?” Asked the taller of the two, peering curiously over the railing.
“Lost a bottle of rum, we did,” replied Bruce, looking longingly at the precious drops that these new arrivals spilled with each roll of the ship, “and a good man, with it.”
“Struth,” said the shorter of the two, “that’s a crying shame.”
After a period of solemn remembrance, he spoke up again. “Pity about your mate, too. Here, have a drink with us, then, and we can talk about the good times.”
So the men passed the bottle from hand to hand and, swaying partly with the waves but mostly to their own internal rhythms, reminisced about the friend they’d lost.
“That was some bloody strong rum.” The waves sloshed against the hull below.
“How about your mate, though?”
“Yeah, right. Ken had been saving that bottle for a date, he had,” began George, well respected as the best story teller among them.
“He was going to take this bird to the dance and warm her up with a belt of this slipped in her punch. Said he was going to show her how to shake a leg.”
“He always could dance, that Ken.”
“That he could. Show her how to shake a leg, he said, then take her out behind the hall and show her how to shake something else.”
“Bloody romantic, was Ken.”
“Too bloody right. Never did get the chance, though. We signed up the morning of the dance and they whisked us off that same day. Ken marched off, bottle in in hand, and left that poor girl waiting on the side of the road, I’d wager. Well he broke it out as soon as we pulled anchor. Barely got halfway through before that clumsy bastard went and dropped it over the edge. Crying bloody shame.”
The two newcomers joined them at the railing, and they passed the bottle in silence as they pondered the vagaries of fate and the tragedy of war. The wind that blew up from the south carried with it the chill of the Antarctic and the smell of the open ocean. It whistled past the mast and cracked the flags like whips.
The sudden report stirred the taller of the two strangers from a thoughtful reverie.
“How hang on,” he began. “Your mate, Ken you said his name was?”
“That’s right,” came the unsteady reply. “Good old bloody Keno.”
“And he was taking this girl to a dance . . . lessee here . . . would’ve been last Friday, right?”
“Right, mate. Friday last. But he never got the bloody chance.”
“He didn’t happen to say her name, now, did he?” Pressed the taller stranger, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Bruce, happily oblivious to the man’s harder tone, gestured emphatically with the now empty bottle as he replied.
“Nah, mate. She was just some Gambo bird. Probably tired of waiting for her cousin to lose interest in the sheep.”
And the three Nara boys joined in a hearty laugh that blinded them from the increasingly hostile glare that the tall stranger cast upon them.
“I’VE NEVER FUCKED A FUCKING SHEEP YOU FUCKING NARA CUNTS!” He yelled, breaking through the mirth, and he stepped forward, uncurling his arm to bring a grapefruit sized fist around,
and around,
and around
and into Bruce’s jaw, lifting him an inch off the deck, floating him softly sideways before he fell, quite fast asleep, in a crumpled heap.
Don and George fell silent. Don squinted as he tried to make sense of this recent development. He looked first at George, eyes closed and mouth open, immobile, and then up at the tall fella. His lips moved silently and he tilted his head as he considered this new turn of events. George, rather quicker on the uptake, let out a roar.
“Fucking Gambos, Don! Get ‘em!”
George leveled the tall fella with a swift quick to his groin and fell upon him, all elbows and knees, while Don tackled the shorter Gambo to the ground. It was grunts, and wheezes, and periodic exclamations of uncouth hatred while this internecine conflict wound its way, kicking and punching, across the deck of the steamer, knocking over crates, loosening teeth, and drawing great attention from the other men aboard. A crowd gathered around them, cheering, and clapping and swiftly drawing the attention of the sergeant at arms. He stepped quickly over to the rolling mass of limbs and fists and swung his club.
Rubbing the back of his head the next morning, George reflected on this betrayal. It was one thing to send young men off to die fighting for a country they’d never seen in another country they’d be hard pressed to find on a map, but it was quite another to ask them to do so next to a bunch of bloody conniving Gambos. He sported a goose-egg on the back of his head, but Don fared much worse. The shorter Gambo with whom Don had been wrestling had gained the upper hand before he was knocked cold by the sergeant’s club. Don seized the opportunity to climb atop the prostrate man and deliver some much needed retribution and was stopped in his righteous act only by a swift kick to the face. Bruce, meanwhile, awoke largely unable to speak but, having been knocked unconscious rather early in the proceedings, without much to say, either.
The bruises faded while the sense of betrayal did not. For the rest of the trip, the Nara boys nursed loose teeth and tender egos. Basic training was marked by tomfoolery and pranksmanship. Those bastards from Gambo would steal shoelaces and the Nara boys would respond in kind by slipping a redback spider into their boots. Those Gambo cunts sneaked in to the showers and made off with three uniforms and towels to match, leaving our boys a rather drafty dash back to the bunks, so they responded in kind by stealing a jerry can, sneaking out during dinner to douse those Gambo cunts’ bunks in petrol and set them alight.
The slow burning coals and quickly burning bedding of their mutual hatred continued to smolder during the long journey from Western Australia to Egypt, where they were banked somewhat by the intriguing proximity of peculiar bazaars, each a warren of dark and inviting stores, or perhaps by the invitations of dusky women draped in brightly coloured silks. Whatever the cause, a de facto cease-fire arose among the men. The cold silence between them continued, no doubt, and was broken only by periodic curses against the illegitimate sons of Nara or of Gambo, or upon discovering biting insects secreted between sheets, missing buttons on shirt-fronts, or vandalised pictures of one’s sweetheart that now included teeth befitting pack mules. But all five men survived these long months in the desert without sustaining a single bruise at each other’s hands and with few nocturnal conflagrations.
What a shame that this fleeting calm poorly presaged the savagery awaiting these brave lads across the Mediterranean.
* * *
It was the day of the landing, a day of death and suffering, that finally brought those five men together. They had crossed the Mediterranean on large ships, but weighed anchor some distance from the shore in the dead of night to load into row boats for the landing. Now they sat in the front of the landing boat as it was rowed ashore under cover of night. The blades made a soft clop-clop as they lifted in and out of the water. The oarlocks creaked. And the men on board bit their lips and clutched their rifles and spoke not at all.
It was not enough. Before they had reached the beach, a shout went up from the cliffs above. Shrill whistles of alarm cut into the peace of the still-dark morning, then shots tore it apart. First one, then more, than too many to count. Splashes in the water ahead of them dared them to come closer. Hot lead thudded into the prow, the gunnels, the benches where they sat. One of the rowers slumped over his oar with a groan and the boat listed, now crippled and moving slowly, an easy target. Quick as you like, George pulled the injured man from his station and moved into his seat. His rangy arms were taught with each stroke and the boat surged forward again. George rowed as if he wished nothing more than to be the first ashore, even as those who landed were cut down on the rocks.
With a sudden crunch, the bow lifted and the boat listed to port. Those men that could were over the sides and making their way up the beach, bullets panging on the rocks around them like hail on a tin roof. George was ahead of them all.
He led the charge up the beach, streaking forward and leaping rocks like a rabbit. While the other men sprang their way from cover to cover, crouching behind boulders or behind the landing boats, George flew over the beach and toward the cliffs, determined to take on Johnny Turk by himself. Bruce and Don rushed forward to a bleached, limbless tree-trunk that provided some cover from the cliffs.
From behind the trunk, they looked ahead to see George sprinting toward the cliffs. He had raced ahead of them from the moment they sprang from the boats. He danced now over the rocks, his rifle in arms, surging toward the cliffs as if nothing could touch him. But there, ahead of the rest and far from cover, mid-stride, his head rocked suddenly back, struck by an invisible blow. His momentum carried him forward for a moment but his outstretched leg could not support him as his foot came down. His legs crumpled under him and he tumbled toward the ground, dropped his rifle, and lay motionless.
Bruce and Don leaped up from behind the trunk but were driven back by bullets splashing into the rocks between them. George was only fifty yards away, but it was an eternity. Even now, the men from the boats were being cut down in the surf. On the open stretches of beach to their left and right, men dropped like ripe oranges from overloaded trees. Clusters of men huddled behind rocks. Others carried the landing boats ashore and crowded behind them for shelter. The charge had stalled on the rocky beach. George lay like seaweed pushed ashore on the high tide and left alone as waves of men crashed on the beach below.
Before the men had time to curse their luck, a green blur leapt over them, landed lightly on the rocks ahead and made its way towards their fallen comrade. It was the tall Gambo and he made his way up the beach faster than they’d ever seen a man run. The bullets dared not touch him as he ran, crouched over George and, without the barest effort, flung him over his shoulder. The extra weight did not to slow him as he ran on up the beach, towards the cliffs. The tall man hauled George’s still-limp body into the shadow of a rock that stuck out from the base of the cliff and afforded cover from the men above. He crouched over George as bullets spat sand and shards of rock all around. Pinned down under the barest cover, the tall man could not stand without being exposed to fire from the cliffs above.
From behind the tree, there on the most exposed part of that rocky beach, Don and Bruce could see that this defenceless pair were drawing the fire of the Turks on the cliffs above. With a shout of mad courage, the men vaulted the downed tree and made their own way toward the cliffs. They were joined in the charge by the shorter Gambo, who had been huddled down the beach behind an upturned boat, and all three ran headlong toward the enemy above. By the time they reached the cliff, the taller man was taking full advantage of the confusion to lean from behind the rock and take shots at the cliff-top defenders. A keen eye and a steady hand, he had. First one, then another Turk dropped from his post.
Don, Bruce, and the shorter man rocketed into cover at the same time. Don rushed to George and crouched beside his prostrate, unmoving friend. George’s eyes were closed and blood ran from the side of his head, just above his right ear, but Bruce saw his chest heave slowly with each breath.
Bruce looked up at the taller man who gave a tight smile and a quick nod.
“Reckon it just clipped him on the bonce,” he said.
Bruce nodded back, took a breath of his own, and looked around. Other men had taken shelter behind the bleached trunk back on the beach. Others were wading ashore amid the frequent zip and splash of the Turkish bullets and the floating, clutching, outstretched arms of their fallen comrades. Yet more men were even now rowing their way ashore, as the Turks above held tight to the higher ground. George clearly wasn’t going anywhere fast, and they could hardly spend the morning huddled beneath the over-hanging rock.
“No time for a picnic!” Bruce bellowed. “Let’s get a bloody move on!”
And with nary a backward look, Bruce charged out from behind the rock and away up the cliff, the other men close on his heels. Up they scrambled, rocks shifting under foot, grabbing handfuls of the low, scrubby bushes that dotted the cliffs to hoist themselves higher. Up they climbed, up and up and closer to the defenders atop the cliffs, pausing periodically to shelter behind a copse of scraggly trees or a bare rise in the hard ground and return fire before breaking cover to charge again towards the defending enemy.
Now jumping rocks, now scrambling on hands and knees up loose scree, now throwing themselves down in a shallow hollow to shelter from a barrage of return fire. Their relentless, fearless charge had scattered the Turks ahead. As one man fell, then another, the rest ducked, and hid, and ran from what seemed like half the ANZAC brigade mounting the cliffs. They were a red-hot knife sizzling through butter.
When they had almost breasted the hill, the Turkish captain finally realized the threat was but four mad men and called to his men for courage or, at the very least, its war-time analogue: discipline. The four diggers had sheltered in a shallow depression, they could hear shouts of command not too far distant, and the blast of Turkish rifles lessened, then ceased. Bruce lifted himself cautiously to look ahead and was forced back by a volley of shots that smashed into the hard ground and whistled by his head.
“Struth,” he said, flattening himself back into the dirt. The Turks had gathered their wits sufficient to hold the line in front and were beginning to fan out to the sides of the small hollow.
Before long, a shot rang out from the right of them and whizzed low overhead. Then another from the left thudded into the dirt.
They had run courageously towards the enemy, but they also had run away from their brothers on the beach below them. Alone, now, on the top of the cliffs, the men huddled in the most meagre of foxholes as the Turkish defenders had regained their composure and began to flank them.
“Well, boys,” said Bruce, with his usual perspicacity, “We’re rooted.”
Pinned down, cut off from the men on the beach, unable to so much as raise their heads without inviting a swift and deadly reply, Bruce had made a particularly salient point. It was only a matter of time before the Turks were able to pick them off with well-aimed shots.
But as the cliff-top defenders had fallen, then retreated, and now concentrated their fire on these four men who had rushed heedlessly into danger, those below had crossed the beach in greater safety and in greater numbers. Hundreds of men had made their way first to the bottom of the cliffs and, looking at the mad scramble on the cliffs above, they too charged up. Up and up over the loose scree and the protruding rocks, leaping downed trees and scrambling up the steep hills, finally now to a stretch of exposed ground, lined on three sides by Turkish defenders who were utterly unprepared to meet them.
From where they lay in the hollow, the four lads heard only a sudden and intense burst of fire. Shots rang out from behind them, shouts and screams from ahead and before long a wave of diggers rushed from behind and hoisted them to their feet. Twelve or fifteen men lay dead not twenty yards away on three sides of them, twenty or thirty diggers now held the top of the hill, and hundreds more were streaming unimpeded up this stretch of cliffs.
The diggers fought on, pressing to the next rocky rise, encountering resistance at the top of every hill. It took all morning and the better part of the afternoon, moving forward now at a charge, now at a crawl, now being beaten back under fire, and now pressing forward with bayonets at the ready, before the diggers had breached the front line of the Turkish trenches. There they fought, hand to hand, clearing the Turks from the trench, pushing them back to their secondary lines. The Turks were digging in deeper even as they spoke. There’d be more fighting in the morning, no doubt, and up and down the line they could hear shouts and periodic firing as the Diggers encountered pockets of resistance or strayed too close to the Turkish reserve trenches to which the front line had retreated. But a more pressing task on the beach awaited the four men who’d started the charge.
As soon as they’d secured the trench, Don, Bruce, and the two Gambos had hurried down to the beach and found George still prostrate under the rock. They’d knicked a donkey off some bloke on the beach and used it to carry George back up the trench, where they’d found a quiet dugout and a stretcher to lay him down.
* * *
Bruce shook his head and other men looked at him.
“Bloody hell,” he finally said. “Bloody hell that had to be the finest piece of running I’ve seen. Legs like bloody steel springs, you have.”
They’d been sitting there in silence for the past hour until Bruce’s unexpected interjection.
“Weren’t nothing,” said the taller man. “Thought I heard one of you lot behind me and I reckoned I’d better run just as fast as I could.”
Don and Bruce shot him a hard and sceptical look but bit their tongues when they noticed his sly grin. Don started to chortle, then Bruce gave a smile and joined in, too. Before long, all four men who had cheated death and brought their vegeance to the Turks, had their arms around each other and were heaving great peals of laughter to shake the dirt walls. This was the scene to which George awoke, stirred not by enemy gunfire by the sound of joyous brotherhood.
A think white bandage wrapped George’s head and covered his right ear. Blood stained the side of his uniform, which was streaked with dirt, and his hat, which they’d left sitting on his chest, had a neat hole right where the crown met the brim. He raised his head and looked confusedly at the sight of these four sworn foes—two from Nara and two from that rancid Gambo backwater—clutching each other in mirth and camaraderie. The men fell silent when they noticed him moving, but his puzzled face was enough to bring them to renewed laughter and they collapsed once more under the weight of their joy.
“Here,” said George. “What’s all this then?”
George’s sceptical squint gave way to a confused and distant look as Bruce and Don recounted the tale of his injury and subsequent rescue at the hands of the tall man. All the while, the Gambos stood silently. George sat on the edge of the bunk, hunched over with his eyes closed as he processed this new information.
He looked up at the tall Gambo for interminable seconds before pushing himself up from the stretcher with a grunt. The two men stood face to face, silently, before George stuck out his calloused hand.
“Can’t bloody well thank a man without knowing his name, can I?” He said.
And the tall man took his hand.
“John Greenly.”
“George Shankey,” George replied. “And from the way these boys tell it, it was quite a bit of work you did back on that beach. I reckon I’m in your debt.”
“No worries, mate,” said John. “Just promise you won’t crack me one like you did on that ship!” And he rubbed his jaw as the men fell to laughing once more.
Don retrieved from his kit a bottle he’d kept over from Cairo and they passed it slowly between them as they reflected on the foolishness of war. It seemed so senseless to troop off to fight other young men far from their families for a cause they barely understood. Surely it was more foolish for these young lads from south-eastern South Australia to do so while locked in a struggle among themselves!
“Look at us now,” said Harold, for that was the shorter man’s name. “After all that fighting and anger, we’re sharing a drink as mates.”
“Too bloody right,” agreed George. “Look around. Just yesterday Johnny Turk and his mates were sitting in these same trenches and talking about their girls back home. I’d wager right now there’s a few of ‘em in one of those trenches,” and he gestured out the low door and over the top of the trench, across no-man’s land to the Turkish trenches beyond, “there’s a few of ‘em in those trenches nursing a wound and a bottle of something strong. Wouldn’t be such a bad thing to share a drink with them.”
“I reckon you’re right, George,” said John, thoughtfully. “I don’t reckon we’re so different from those boys, yet here we are, fighting against them. It’s a crying bloody shame.”
Muffled, not-too-distant gunfire filtered was the backdrop to their silence. Far from home for no obvious reason, scraped, scuffed, shot, and filthy, the men had no rebuttal to the sounds of war. Then Harold began to whistle.
The high, hollow notes seemed to shiver in the dark before Don recognised the tune and joined in. Before long, the other men added their voices and together, they filled that little bunker, tucked away in a trench on a lonely beach in a strange land, with the familiar strains of the songs of their homeland.
Let me the sing you song of times long passed, Of golden fields and summer rains. Let me sing you the song of the rolling hills, And blue skies shining down on. In the town where I was born, The folk were always friendly. Until one sunny summer morn’ We got word of five bingoolies. Round up the boys and head for the hills, Head for the hills! Up for the hills! Round up the lads and head for the hills! There’s word of five bingoolies! Bingoolies came from o’er the waves O’er they came, now here they come. Bingoolies come to take our land, But blowed if we’ll all let ‘em. Round up the boys and head for the hills, Head for the hills! Up for the hills! Round up the lads and head for the hills! We caught sight of five bingoolies! Drove ‘em out across the plains, Across the rocks, across the sand. Drove ‘em up far from the town, And chased their trail ‘til it ended. Round up the boys and head for the hills, Head for the hills! Up for the hills! Round up the lads and head for the hills! We caught our five bingoolies!They were brothers now, kindred with all mankind, the tune of their common history ringing in their ears, the men the men leaned against the walls and each other and fell softly asleep.
* * *
George was sitting on a rock, his back against a stack of crates and a sheet of paper stretched before him. They’d spent a week in the trenches and were well dug in. A preliminary charge against the Turkish lines had proved deadly and unsuccessful, but they’d been blessed now with a period of relative inactivity, during which all five men had rotated to the rear lines to assist with the installation of artillery pieces. George reached into his pocket and withdrew a fine fountain pen. The cap was enamelled in a deep blue, and the pocket clip glinted in the sun. The barrel was the same deep blue and pin-striped with shining silver. He’d purchased it in Adelaide the day of his departure to fulfil his promise to his sweetheart to write her often. It was a fancier thing than he could truly afford, to be honest, but he had forgotten to pack a pen and had not discovered the oversight until the day they were shipping off to Western Australia. Not trusting foreign stores to carry such an exotic item, he sneaked away for long enough to find a local merchant with a soft-spot for the brave lad writing home who let him have the pen for far less than it was worth.
He admired the fine instrument now, then licked the nib and endeavoured to write home to his sweetheart.
“Here, George, what are you about?” Asked John, he was standing a short distance away.
“Me, mate?” Replied George, looking up from the page. “I’m endeavouring to write home to my sweetheart.”
“A bloody letter, mate.” Said John incredulously. “Have a go at that. I didn’t fancy you for a reading man.”
But George was, indeed, a reading man. The people of Nara have always been an educated bunch, to be sure. They were well-versed in the currents of the river and caprices of the seasons but, at least in 1915, they had little need for the written word. George, however, came from a proud and learned family. His mother had not let him out to feed the chooks until he could spell “chicken,” nor out to milk the cow until he could count her teats. It paid off, now, as he wrote his first letter home to his sweetheart, informing her of the progress of the war.
Dear Catherine,
George had written.
The bloody war continues, and I bloody well continue with it. We have spent the last week in a trench, which is just a fancy term meaning “big war hole.” Our days are relatively boring, punctuated by brief but terrifying periods of excitement and death. Johnny Turk is not known for his hospitality and fancies himself a prankster, shooting at us whenever we dare show our heads. We have taken to shooting back.
Some of the poms came across young McAffrey pissing on his feet the other day. “Ahhh,” they said knowingly, “we have heard you bloody Aussies do that to prevent the trench foot. A jolly good idea it is.” A good chortle we had, my dear, as we explained to them that he just shoots crookeder than a bingaloo banker!
As you can see, war is not such a bad time, other than the constant threat of death, injury, and illness.
Yours,
George
John was more than a little impressed with the fine scratching that George had made across the page. He started to think of his own lass back home and how she must be missing him. She was a wee and winsome thing, she was, and she had promised that she would long for him and faithfully await his return. Just now, John hoped, she was sitting in her parents’ house, working on her cross-stich and pining away for him.
The five men had grown closer, of course, since John had save George’s life. Nonetheless, it was with no small trepidation that John made his confession.
“George. There’s this lass back home, you see.”
“Ah yes,” said George, with a knowing look.
“There’s this lass back home that I’ve been seeing for some time now. Sheila’s her name. She’s quite lovely, you see, and when I get back home we’re to be married.”
George nodded.
“The problem is, you see, I can’t . . . Well, I can’t exactly read or write, mate.”
George hardly looked up from the page, and he gave an answer before John had the chance to ask the question.
“Of course, mate. I’ve been writing letters home for those two bastards since the day we pulled out of Adelaide,” as he gestured towards Don and Bruce, shirtless in the sun, bent over an artillery piece not too far away.
John was beside himself.
“I wouldn’t ask you to write much, mate.” He said. “Just maybe a letter now and then letting her know that I’m alive and thinking of her to keep her heart warm while I’m away.”
So George became the official scribe of the group. Harold was equally enamoured of a girl back home—Sheila—who he had met mere months ago. When Harold’s impending departure threatened their young love, they married only a day before he shipped off to Turkey. The two Gambos were not short on feelings, though they lacked the requisite verbiage to express the depth of their love. So George, the only one among them who’d had been educated in the gentle arts of both writing and romantic composition, had swiftly assumed the burden of writing letters home.
George spent long hours holding that beautiful pen, hunched over a single sheet of paper, writing carefully by candlelight, pausing to brush away dust that fell as artillery shells shook the trench walls, studiously avoiding dripping sweat onto it as the men crouched in the sun next to the artillery pieces on the treeless expanse behind the front lines and, on one memorable occasion, he scratching out what John was sure were his last desperate expressions of love as the two men crouched under an oilskin cape and shared a cigarette in a muddy crater in no-man’s-land while bullets whizzed over them.
George’s letters home were a life-vest in rough seas and, despite the absence of a single letter in return, not a one of them failed to write as often as he could. After six months in Gallipoli, the men transferred to the Western Front and the letters continued. They fought side by side in the blasted French countryside and shivered together in snow covered trenches that were little more than furrows in a great muddy plain. When their unit rotated back to Paris for a month of rest, George carefully recorded the breathless excitement of the men upon seeing the broad streets and strange sights of this cosmopolitan metropolis.
When, finally, the Kaiser was broken and Germany brought to heel in a train car in the country-side, George put his own pen to paper once more to tell those waiting anxiously at home of the men’s imminent return.
* * *
The men stood silently, their hands gripping the railing, as the ship approached the docks. None carried more than a rucksack and the freshly washed uniform he had on, but they passed a bottle between them. As the sailors on one side busied themselves with coiled ropes and readied gangplanks, the five brothers in arms stood across the deck, looking back to sea.
Not a word had passed their lips in the past hour. Words had been replaced by a steady supply of rum and memories of the countless days that had gone before. The ship bumped up against the docks and shook the men from their quiet contemplation. Strains of music drifted over the railings and mixed with shouts from the crowds below. John looked down at the empty bottle in his hand and back at the men around him at the rail. He held the bottle over the railing and he cracked a smile as he dropped the bottle into the gentle waves below.
At the bottom of the gangplank, flashbulbs popped and flags snapped in the stiff breeze. It seemed like half of Adelaide had arrived to welcome the returning Diggers. It was clear from their faces that a good many had come to welcome home the memory of men they’d never see again. Trains were waiting to carry men back to their homes in Victor, or Pt. Augusta, or all the way north to Copley. George, Bruce, Harold, Don, and John made for the one that would carry them past Adelaide, up through the hills past Mt. Barker and Murray Bridge and out into the rolling hills that would take them home.
The men stared silently out the windows as houses flashed by and crowds of people waved and cheered at every crossing. The houses thinned, and the people with them, and they were replaced by the land that had missed them, too. Fields that cried out for attention these years past and lay ready now to be ploughed, and planted, and tended. Barn roofs needed repair and water tanks dripped and needed patching. There were sheep to be shorn and there was hay to rake, and the country welcomed them back with a warm smile and a list of chores that let them know they were home and that their home had missed them.
The train clacked and hissed and squealed to a halt at a lonely stretch of road, almost exactly halfway between Nara and Gambo. No bunting greeted them this time, but the tall grass waved to them and gallahs shouted raucous hurrahs from the nearby trees. The warm sun and the smell of the earth let them know they were home. They stood and waited as the train clacked and hissed and chuffed its way into the distance and then waited a few minutes more.
Bruce finally broke the silence. He squinted up the road to Nara and said,
“Reckon we should be getting home, boys.”
The men nodded. Bruce and Don hoisted their rucksacks and turned north. John and Harold did the same, but as they turned south toward Gambo, George spoke out.
“Here,” he said, as reached deep into his pocket and withdrew a battered fountain pen. The barrel was scratched and the enamel on the cap was all but chipped off. The pocket clip was bent and loose.
He held it out to John.
“This pen said everything I ever wanted to, mate.”
John said nothing as he took the pen, but he let out a deep and shaky breath as he looked down at it and then back up at George. Without a word he slipped it in his own pocket, threw his rucksack over his shoulder, and turned down the road to Gambo.
* * *
It was quite a hike up the road to Nara, but it was worth every step. George, Don, and Bruce were greeted like heroes. A shout went up as they walked into town and folk stepped from shopfronts and homes as they walked by to cheer their return. They soon forgot the blisters on their feet and the ache in their backs as they were swept in to the pub, pushed into the best seats at the bar and feted with beers and calls for retellings of their heroic endeavours.
Down the road, after their own long walk, the Gambos met no cheering crowds. No one stepped out from a shopfront to shout in glee at this joyous sight. No one rushed them into the Gambo pub to slake their thirst for local ale. They walked first up the main street to where Harold’s wife still lived with her parents. What with the rush of the marriage, Harold explained, they’d not found a place to move to before he left.
“Reckon we’re going to find a nice bit of land to build a place on, mate.” He said to John.
“In all those letters, I told Sheila about a place just up and out of town that I’ve had my eye on. Nice bit of flat land with good soil. Was always a bit dear for just me, but I reckon her parents are willing to help us get on our feet.”
John smiled at his friend.
“I know what you mean, mate. My own Sheila’s a lovely bird. I’ve been writing home to tell her of my love and devotion. Soon as I see her, I plan on giving her this.”
And he procured from his pocket a gold ring that shined in the bright sun.
“Picked it up in France. It’s not much, but I reckon it’ll be enough.”
Harold smiled at his friend and they walked on, quicker now they had a happy purpose driving them forward.
The town remained curiously quiet. It was not until they turned off the main road and onto the street on which Sheila still lived with her parents that they heard a sound. Across the street, a door swung open and a young lady stepped through it holding an empty milk bottle. She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of them and let out a small gasp. The milk bottle shattered on her doorstep as she fled back inside.
“That was bloody odd,” said Harold.
“Too bloody right, mate,” replied John. “She turned white as a lamb.”
Struck now with curiosity and no small amount of trepidation, the two men continued down the road. They stopped in front of the largest house on the street. It was built of cut local stone and trimmed in red brick. A large verandah shaded the front, and roses bloomed in abundance on the hedge that lined the road. John shook Harold’s hand.
“Looks like you’ve done well, mate. I’ll be seeing you” And with that he turned back up the road with a smile on his face, headed to see his own Sheila. He had barely walked fifty yard when a shriek called him back to the large house. Harold stood at the door, looking shaken. A man in the doorway held a letter in his hand and a woman, presumably the source of the shriek, stood behind him, leaning one hand on the wall for balance and fanning herself with the other.
John hurried up in time to hear Harold say indignantly,
“I’m bloody well standing here and telling you I’m not dead is how you’d know.”
“That’s not what it said in this bloody letter,” said the man in the doorway, and he held up a battered sheet of paper began to read.
Dear Sheila,
“The letter begins,” he said pointedly to Harold.
I regret to inform you that your bloody Gambo husband has been killed in the war. Please do your best to maintain your morale. For the sake of King and country, you would do well to find a good young lad to marry. I have heard that there are some strapping fellows up the road in Nara.
Best,
And he looked up at Harold with a disapproving stare as he finished the letter:
Your bloody Prime Minister.
“What do you say to this then?” he asked as he handed the letter to Harold. “A letter from the bloody Prime Minister!”
By this point, John was standing at Harold’s shoulder and the two men looked down at the offending document. They could no more read the letter than they could write one, but the handwriting looked awfully familiar.
“That bloody bastard,” he growled.
He turned to look at John to seek confirmation, but John was already skidding around the roses at the end of the path, his boots kicking up dust as he ran back towards town. Back, he ran, past the shattered glass, onto the main road and towards the edge of town where Sheila waited for him. His lungs burned and his legs screamed, but he could not slow down. He remembered running like this only once, on a rocky beach in a foreign land a life-time ago. He turned on to the dirt road that led to Sheila’s house, on, on, on in the hot sun until at least he reached her door. Without pausing to catch his breath, he banged out a tattoo of impatience and desperation on the front door and stood panting in anticipation. When at last the door was opened, he was greeted not by the tender arms of the young woman he’d left, but the wrathful stare of her mother.
“Some bloody nerve you have showing up here!” She screeched, as the door banged open. “I woulda’ thought you be bloody ashamed of yourself you would!”
John, who had not yet caught his breath, could only gasp in confusion.
“I . . “ he tried, “. . . letters,” was all he managed.
“Too bloody right, letters!” She shrieked back. “Bloody letters! He says,” she yelled over her shoulder, as her husband appeared behind her.
“Alright, Sheila,” the man grumbled. “Give the lad a rest. I’d say he’s had a hard enough time as it is.”
“Listen, mate,” he said as he gently maneuvered his wife back inside the house and stepped onto the porch to talk to John. “You’ve got a bloody nerve showing up here after what you done to our Sheila. If you weren’t a bloody cripple you can believe we’d be having a much shorter conversation.” And he shook his fist to emphasise his point.
“A cripple?” Asked John, incredulously. “Take a look at me! I’ve got all my arms and legs, don’t I? What are you about?”
“Well it’s all here in these bloody letters, isn’t it?” Said the man, holding out a bundle of papers covered in familiar handwriting.
“Now you take these and get off our porch before the missus makes me rethink my generosity.”
He threw the bundle at John and slammed the door, leaving him standing clutching a bundle of papers, gasping for air and grasping for answers. There was nothing for him to do but walk to town and find a learned man to decipher this mystery for him. By the time he made it back to town, the sun was setting. He trudged slowly into the pub, where he found Harold seated at the bar, an empty schooner in his hand and an unsteadiness about him that suggested it wasn’t his first. Men were sitting at the bar, others at the tables, and some stood in the darkened corners, but all were staring at John. He took the empty seat beside Harold and ordered a beer of his own.
“Strange thing, you boys being here,” said the publican as he set down John’s beer.
“So it bloody seems,” John replied. “You couldn’t read these letters for us, could you mate?”
The publican dried his hands on a tea towel and took the bundled letters from John.
“These say they’re from you, mate.” Said the publican, with some confusion.
“Letters I wrote home from the war.” Said John defiantly. “I would like to know what I wrote.”
The publican seemed to accept this explanation and he unfolded the first letter. His lips moved as he ran his eyes across the page.
“You want me to read this out loud?” He asked, and looked around the pub.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Your funeral, mate,” said the publican. Harold gave a hollow chuckle at this, but it came out sounding something closer to a sob and he quickly fell silent. John nodded at the publican to start.
Dear Sheila,
I have not fared well in this bloody war, having caught the clap from a bint in Cairo. You should have expected nothing more from a bloody Gambo.
Your philandering Gambo bastard,
John
Snickers rose from further down the bar.
The publican placed the letter on the bar and opened the next.
Dear Sheila,
As you may have heard, the bloody war has not yet ended. Nor has the inexorable spread of this bloody VD. At the most recent short arm inspection, the doctor told me that it does not look good.
Yours completely, for now,
John
“That bloody Nara cunt,” gasped John, as the laughs spread around the room. But the publican already was unfolding the third and final letter.
Dear Sheila,
We have arrived safely in France and thus I am writing you now a ‘French letter.’ I am told that the term means something different to the poms with whom we are now stationed. I only wish they had explained the meaning of the term and the utility of its reference before I had caught the clap from that bloody bint in Cairo.
The infection having spread too rapidly for modern medicine to control, the doctor was forced to take drastic action with the knife. I am afraid this will be quite a hindrance to our plans to marry and have dirty little Gambo children upon my return. Without children, you will be a failure as a woman. It seems the only hope for your happiness will be to find a suitable husband.
When I return, it will be as a broken and imperfect man. Surely I will not be able to endure the sight of you gallivanting about town with your new beaux. Please, therefore, select a husband from a town of sufficient distance that I will never be forced to witness your life of idyllic domestic servitude, yet close enough that you will be able to visit your parents frequently. One of approximately 40 to 45 miles distance would suffice, preferably located on a river for convenience and idyllic beauty. When I sat to ponder what towns fit this description, I could think of only one: Nara. I am sure you will find there a suitable, and whole, man.
Yours,
John
Harold’s head fell with a thump onto the bar, his beers having finally had their desired effect. John stared into his empty schooner and waved silently for another.
* * *
Up the road in Nara, the celebrations lasted for a week. George and Bruce were pleased to learn that they had become uncles in their absence, their younger brothers having found wives from out of town and moved swiftly, as the men of Nara are wont to do. But as much rejoicing as there was, there was sadness too for their fallen comrade. On the day of the last celebrations, the three men gathered in the center of town. The local blacksmith had stamped a plaque with Ken’s name and the people of Nara had gathered to see it dedicated to his memory. Standing on a quiet patch of grass, shaded by a solitary conifer, Don told the story of Ken’s heroic and tragic sacrifice. The good people of Nara, looking back at the three brave Nara lads who stood before them, thinking of the one who never returned, chanted back to him:
“Lest we forget.”
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