Читать книгу Shoot to Kill - Ion Idriess - Страница 5

CHAPTER I

We Must Fight for Life

IF parachute troops drop on your suburb tonight what can you do? Nothing. The lives of your wife and children and your own life, are worth—nothing.

Should enemy troops land in your paddock you can take to the hills. But your farm will go up in smoke while you and your wife and kids will be hunted like rabbits. For you have nothing to fight with.

If an enemy bayoneted your wife you could neither save nor avenge her. At this moment of writing we are defenceless against this phase of modern “all in” war.

Yet strangely enough, we could be the saviours of our nation—if only we were organized and armed. Australia is unconquerable provided every man is armed and ready to drop his work tools in sudden emergency to fight and thus take portion of the load off our regular army.

That army may be hard pressed at any time. Should the enemy break through Irregulars must be prepared to fill the gap. Should the enemy still push on, every man in that devastated area will want to down tools and fight. He must—to survive.

I believe the time is fast coming when all will be armed. It should have been done long ago. We will become part of the army, one great army to defend and hold Australia. The V.D.C. will be greatly expanded; mounted guerrillas will be formed throughout the country; dynamite squads throughout every mining district; factory fighters in every factory and in large business and government enterprises. Every suburb, every town and district will have its armed quota.

Hence this little book and the others quickly to follow to teach you the practical use of your weapons in the shortest possible time. And that goes for the regular forces too, for there are many hints in it that they never will find in textbook or on the parade ground.

Australia has been manufacturing rifles and machine guns since the last war. There should be sufficient in the land to arm every man and woman.

The weapons of the civilian fighter are the rifle, the bomb, and the machine gun. In the hands of trained men these simple weapons are still the deadliest in war. We can become trained within a very few weeks. Cut out three-quarters of the drill book routine, and parade ground waste of time. Concentrate on the things that matter, on how to shoot straight, on how to use a machine gun, on how to throw a bomb.

British-Imperial armies in the last and this war have spent months on the drill ground to a few spare half hours on the rifle range. We want none of that; we need our rifles for the most efficient use when the time comes. Six hours of rifle shooting is worth to guerrillas more than six weeks of parade ground soldiering.

With a very few weeks of practice we could handle suitable weapons with deadly effect.

Every male citizen, from the boy of fourteen to the greybeard of ninety, should have his rifle and bandolier constantly beside him. Take it to work in office or factory, out to the paddock or orchard, to the wharves or mine—to wherever he may be. And the wife at home should have a rifle too; she will use it should the time come.

For this is a war where death may threaten on the instant, night or day. It may drop from the peaceful skies, come roaring up the road at sixty miles an hour, come creeping in from a misty sea or dash inland up a river before the dawn.

Regular troops may be distant or stationed in fixed positions, or engaged so heavily fighting for their lives, that they could not help us. In numerous ways in this most unpredictable of wars threatening death may pour in upon us from anywhere at any moment.

If armed, we can instantly give as good as we receive—and better, for we will be fighting on our own ground for our families as well as for our country. If unarmed, we are but lambs for the slaughter and the enemy will pierce in behind our regular troops.

Every man of us will willingly give two hours at least after work each day for training in the handling of the weapon allotted him. And the instructors are already amongst us. Any number of returned men, of old rifle-club men, of experienced sportsmen used to the handling of firearms, of old soldiers who have fought in little-known wars—and, strange though it may seem, civilians who have not fought in any wars, nor been used to the handling of deadly weapons. Large numbers of us in city and town can already more or less handle gun or rifle and very speedily would become efficient shots. There are 50,000 rifle-club members and ex- members in Australia, an army of already experienced shots. Among these men, and among the rest of us, are men fully capable of being instructors to teach the unfortunately large number not used to guns. Doubly quickly these would learn, for we all know how urgent this matter is.

As to the country and bush folk they are already familiar with firearms. The best guerrilla bands in the world would spring up like magic amongst the bushmen.

Give us arms!

We cannot all join the military forces, nor can we all join the V.D.C. But we can form auxiliaries. Form your sections, companies, regiments, from the suburbs, streets, towns, districts in which you live. From the factories, wharves, mines, warehouses, whichever group method is most convenient. The bushmen will form their own squadrons more simply and easily. City men may find Suburban Groups the easier, or companies formed on the block system. If it came to street fighting whole streets would fight. In suburban fighting, whole suburbs would fight more efficiently if in groups or companies who knew one another and their suburbs. Knowledge “of the ground” is a tremendous factor in modern war whether in city or on mountain, in township or open bush, in desert or on winding river. The men who know their city streets and the men who know their country have a very great advantage over the stranger invader.

Form your local battalion into sections, platoons, companies. A section approximately numbers 100 men, under a section leader. A platoon numbers 35, under a lieutenant. A company numbers 200 under a major or captain. Four companies go to a battalion which probably numbers 800 men—or thereabouts.

For convenience and efficiency’s sake you may choose that each section of your battalion consists of men living near one another. Thus at a sudden alarm a whole street may turn out and the complete battalion be formed as the men step from their doors. And news, advice, or orders could be passed to the complete battalion without a moment’s loss of time.

Make no mistake, an organized people could turn-to almost with the quickness of regular soldiers. And such a support to a hard pressed army would be beyond compute.

If an alarm came during work hours, the case would be different but very similar. Each man would be a fighter even though away from his suburban mates. He would fight in a Factory Battalion, or Wharf Battalion, or Street Battalion, or out in the farmlands or bush squad—just where he happened to be if fighting suddenly broke out around him. If no actual fighting was taking place there, but was threatening his suburb or township, farm or district, he would make all haste back to his Guerrilla Band or Suburban Battalion, as the case might be.

Nothing can be surely foreseen in warfare, particularly in this present warfare. All that we can do is to carry on with our work all over the continent, and be prepared to act and to fight immediately danger threatens.

There is only one proved certainty in this war and that is: given weapons a people can fight and fight exceedingly well. Those weapons will make all the difference in the world to us, our families, and our country.

Elect your own leaders and sub-leaders. It is not necessary that all leaders of a complete battalion should be men with previous war experience. The majority ought to be. The others should be level-headed men who can listen to a proposed line of action, think for and against, then probably suggest an improvement, or a better move still: men who can reason and plan, then act.

Such men in the councils of a battalion could make it very strong. Your battalion may elect a “fire-eater” as colonel, a good soldier who in a short time could train you to put up a jolly good show against a strong enemy. When that enemy came along the fire-eater would be eager to “try you out” which of course would be his job and you’d have to follow him. Well, the job of the “thinkers” among your leaders would be to follow the colonel too, but also to point out to him ways of bettering his plan. The result would be that the battalion would be a better job and suffer fewer casualties.

Remember if war bursts upon your city, your town, your farm, there are going to be casualties. You want as many as possible of them to be on the enemy’s side.

I have seen quite a lot of war, practically four years in the front line. And every time it was the level-headed colonel, or the colonel with cool, thoughtful advisers who gave the enemy the hardest knocks while suffering the fewest casualties. So choose your leaders well. We may and will have to fight as scattered individuals, as scattered sections, or platoons, or companies, or battalions, or Guerrilla Bands. Your success and your life depend upon how your leaders have trained you, no matter whether you find yourself fighting alone or with the tiny section, or the entire battalion—perhaps in company with a far flung line of battalions.

Hence, choose your leaders carefully. Avoid the old-time sarg-major stuff, that belongs to the parade ground of old-time soldiering. No matter whether you are one of the Auxiliaries, or a “trammy”, or the manager of a great business, you are a worker whose precious spare hours are being given to training to fight for your home and country. And every minute of that precious time must be devoted to the things that really count: to the better handling of a weapon, to the learning of fighting craft that will make you and your section and platoon and company and battalion a better fighting unit in team work.

As you train into a dangerous fighter so your section will grow into a dangerous fighting section. So with the platoons and companies, until your whole battalion becomes a fighting unit to be reckoned with.

If populated Australia becomes thick with such battalions and the bush with mounted regiments then we need not fear. Should the enemy infiltrate, as of course he will, then let him do so if we are not there to stop him—there is plenty of country. But we will infiltrate behind him. Our great continent is so built that two can play at the same game. Should an enemy break through the regular army he would find us everywhere; he could never take us, never beat us.

If the leaders of your battalion are the right men, there should be no waste time. Every moment, step by step, should be devoted to the things that count. During the day the leaders will plan out the programme for the evening, the teaching for every platoon, for every man. It will mean a lot of extra work for those leaders, but then their hearts, like yours, will be in the job.