Читать книгу The Map Of Honour - Max Carmichael - Страница 7

As soon as Green left Law’s office, he began to have second thoughts about the mission, and he realised he had allowed his own vanity to colour his decision. Ruefully, he acknowledged that his association with Monash made him feel important, that he was making a difference. ‘You would think,’ he said angrily to himself, ‘that you would fucking learn, you idiot!’

A senior officer overheard the remark and balked away in alarm. He turned toward Green to reprimand him, but Green had already disappeared around a corner of the corridor. For a moment, the officer thought of pursuing the strange sergeant, but with a shrug he thought better of it. Besides, he was already late for his next meeting.

As Green approached the MP Sergeant’s workstation, he took a deep breath and exhaled with a calming sigh. He realised there was now nothing he could do about the situation he found himself; he would just have to make the best of it. For a brief moment, he wondered what would happen if he went back to Law and told him he had changed his mind, but instantly decided at the very least such a decision would at the very least land him in some military prison. No, it would be better to die in France than be locked up in some bloody hell hole.

The MP Sergeant regarded him unhappily. ‘Next stop France, eh?’ he said as he pushed a bulging envelope across his desk toward Green.

For a moment, Green stiffened in alarm. Was his mission already compromised? But then he remembered his cover story and relaxed. ‘Looks like it, and all of a rush too. Bugger of a job, but someone has to do it.’ He picked up the envelope. ‘What’s in this?’ he asked.

‘Travel warrants, money, and some 3rd Division colour patches. You’re booked in at the local pub for tonight…give the old girl behind the bar a couple of bob and she’ll sew them on for you.’

Green laughed. ‘Bloody colour patches! I’m not sure if the damn things aren’t the General’s prime objective!’

The MP Sergeant smiled. ‘Could be,’ he agreed, ‘but all the same, if I were you, I’d get ‘em stitched on. The same car as brought you here is waiting outside; tell the driver to take you to the pub. You’ll have to make your own arrangements to get to the railway station tomorrow.’

Green pocketed the envelope and gathered up his baggage and weapons. ‘I’d best be off,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help.’ The car and its driver were waiting where Green had left them.

‘You were quick, Sarg,’ the driver commented as he saw Green. ‘They told me to wait for you, but I thought you’d be a while.’

Green threw his gear onto the back seat of the vehicle. ‘I don’t suppose they told you where to take me?’

‘The boss said I was to take you wherever you said.’

It made sense, Green thought. Had he turned Monash down, they would have provided him with a posting order to a battalion and an address to where the driver could take him. As things had turned out, the driver would now take him to the local pub. He wondered briefly who the boss was that the driver referred to and decided it would be either Monash, or Law. Given the sensitivity surrounding this mission, they would not have involved anyone else with any kind of information regarding Green or his choices of employment. He climbed into the front seat. ‘The pub,’ he directed flatly.

‘Sure,’ the Driver responded. He did not ask which pub. Clearly, he knew where to deliver Green and he did so quickly and without further conversation.

Green’s stay at the pub was entirely uneventful. He was shown to a sparsely furnished room and given directions to the bar and the dining room. As soon as he had settled in, he approached the elderly land lady regarding the 3^rd Division colour patches. Grudgingly, she accepted two shillings and took his tunics and his hat puggaree away to sew the new patches in place. Clearly, she thought the task was worth more, and Green agreed, handing over another two shillings when she returned the garments. The extra money was evidently well received, for when Green repaired to the hotel dining room, the old woman served him herself and provided him with beer ‘on the house.’

The next day, Green began his short, yet complicated move to France. The first leg of the journey was to be accomplished by train to Dover, where he would board a ferry for Calais. From Calais his means of travel was less certain, but he had first to reach a place called Albert and from there, Pozieres. He leaned back against a wall of the extremely crowded railway station and contemplated the next few hours with distaste. He disliked train travel. He was of course impressed by the speed and the capability of a train, but after a while, cooped up in a carriage with so many others, he found it boring and stifling in the extreme. The station was crammed full of khaki dressed soldiers bound for the Front, and their families who had come to wave one last farewell. A melodramatic feature was imposed to an already poignant scene when somewhere along the platform, a woman could be heard tying to sing the popular tune “Tipperary” accompanied by an inexpertly played piano accordion. If the lonely vocalist had hoped to have the crowd join her in some kind of patriotic mass choral episode, she was to be disappointed. Men in uniform were slowly pushing their way toward the train. Women and children were either attempting to walk with particular soldiers for one last goodbye, or were standing like tiny islands in a khaki sea staring bewildered and tearful after someone who had already been swallowed up in the crowd.

It’s a long, long, way to Tipperary,

But my heart, lies there!

The song concluded. There was no applause.

Green shouldered his kitbag and slung his rifle. It might well be a long way to Tipperary, he mused, but it was a bloody long way to Penola. He figured there was probably treble the small South Australian town’s population right here on the railway station platform.

Hello, hello, who’s your lady fair,

Whose’ the little girlie by your side?

The unseen woman and her accordion accomplice had started another music hall melody and received similar attention to her last effort.

Green worked his way through the crowd toward the train. He had no concerns that the train was the right one for him. The uniformed tide through which he waded was only going to one place—France.

A station attendant using a megaphone was trying to marshal the uniformed passengers into carriages. ‘All aboard for Dover! The train will be leaving in ten minutes! All aboard please!’

Green opened a carriage door and stepped aboard.

A friendly West Midlands accent greeted him. ‘Here you go, Sarg. Give us your rifle and kitbag and I’ll put them up on the rack.’

‘Thanks.’ Green passed over his kitbag, but retained his rifle.

The carriage compartment was crowded with soldiers of the Warwickshire Regiment. Green recognised their distinctive antelope-like hat badge. His kitbag had been thrown into the luggage rack and below it was an empty seat, so he sat down there. His unknown assistant, a very young British Private soldier, offered him a cigarette.

‘No thanks, mate. I don’t smoke.’

‘Coo well this is it eh, the great adventure! For king and country, hurrah!’

The soldier seemed to Green to be hardly old enough to have enlisted, and he found the lad’s enthusiasm annoying. Yet he knew there had been a time when he had been just as keen. He had raced to the nearest recruiting station keen to “do his bit,” only to be turned away on the basis that he was “not substantially of European origin.” He hadn’t let that rejection stop him and he’d walked over sixty miles to the next town and enlisted there, claiming his dark skin was due to his mother being of Spanish extract. He had felt deeply ashamed at that subterfuge, not because he had lied to the army, but because he had been forced to deny his mother’s culture.

His enlistment had infuriated his father. Green senior was not a man to be crossed, and his errant son knew full well that in disobeying his pater, he would be disowned and all family communication with his would be banned. In spite of this, he had received one letter from his mother, giving her blessing and telling him she loved him. After that letter, there were no more. He knew his father would have forbidden her to write and almost certainly would destroy any letter of his that arrived at the homestead. Even so, for a time he had written many letters home, but faced with the total lack of response, slowly and with deep regret, he gave up. He wondered if this Warwickshire youngster would face a similar situation with his family, or if anyone had told the young fellow that it was all a lot of crap, that there was no glory, and so far as Green could tell, the king and his country didn’t care what happened to their soldiers, so long as somebody else did the fighting. With this souring thought, he pulled his slouch hat over his eyes, and pretended to sleep.

The youngster was not to be so easily put off and continued to fire questions at the disinterested Green. ‘You’re an Aussie, aren’t you? I’ve never met an Aussie before; are all of you black? I bet you were you at the Dardanelles? What was it like? Smashing, I’ll bet.’

Finally, an older soldier from the same regiment intervened. ‘Come on, Smitty, leave the man alone. He wants to sleep.’

‘I only wanted to know…’

‘Well, you’ll find out soon enough; now put a sock in it. There’s a good chap.’

‘Young Smitty’s learned a whole lot already, ain’t you, Smitty?’ laughed another soldier in the compartment. ‘Ask him about that little bint he rattled last night, go on!’

‘Shut your mouth, Ormrod!’ cried Smitty angrily. ‘It ain’t none of your business!’

‘Might be her daddy’s thought if he finds you’ve put a bun in her oven!’

There was general hilarity at this exchange, but the older soldier who had first tried to quieten Green’s young admirer was not amused. ‘Jesus Christ, boy! I promised your ma I’d look after you, and you’ve got into strife before we’ve even left Blighty!’

The Guard’s whistle and a tumult of tearful farewells from the platform saved Smitty from any further rebuke. With the exception of Green, the occupants of the compartment crowded to the carriage window to wave goodbye.

As the train gathered speed, most of its passengers sat in contemplative silence. Odds were that not many of them would make the return journey and perhaps with the exception of young Smitty and a few like him, they knew it.

Green surprised himself, for in spite of young Smitty’s chatter and the uncomfortable conditions, he actually slept, waking only when the train began to slow at the end of the journey. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The carriage was a hive of activity with the Warwicks hastily retrieving their gear and adjusting their uniforms.

‘Nearly there, Sergeant,’ said Smitty’s older keeper. Smitty was leaning out of the carriage window and cheering at people they passed.

‘How old is the lad?’ asked Green, nodding toward the enthusiastic Smitty.

‘Ah now, Sergeant,’ replied the older man, ‘that would be telling.’

‘Hmm, don’t you think he’d be better off out of it?’

‘Course I do! Listen mate, I’ve been doing this shit since 1914. His dad was my mucker; he got it at Mons, and I’ve been dodging bullets and whizbangs ever since. Course I’ve tried to talk him out of it, but it’s no go. He’s tried to join up three times before and each time we found him and brought him back to his ma. This time…well, let’s just say his ma gave up. So now he’s here.’

Green shrugged. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘I hope you both make it.’

The train slowed to a halt.

‘Warwick Shire Regiment, fall in at the engine end of the platform!’ An unseen voice of authority called Green’s travelling companions away.

‘Good luck, Sarg,’ said young Smitty. ‘Might see you over there, eh?’

‘You never know,’ replied Green. He shook the lad’s hand and nodded to his minder. ‘Keep your heads down.’

Then they were gone. Green picked up his equipment, slung his rifle, and stepped down from the train; the next part of his journey to the Somme would be by sea. He showed his movement order to a much harried Transport Officer and was pointed toward an already crowded ferry. Several hours later having endured a relatively smooth crossing of the Channel, the ferry berthed at the Calais dock.

Green waited on the crowded boat deck while the crew positioned the gang plank.

‘Going all the way, Sergeant?’ a voice at his side asked.

Green turned to find a British lieutenant standing beside him. ‘Just about,’ Green replied. ‘Where’s the train start from?’

‘Good Lord, you want to avoid that if you can,’ the lieutenant retorted. ‘If the bloody thing went any slower, it would go backwards! Besides, it damnably uncomfortable, cattle trucks don’t you know. My advice is to find a nice comfy supply column and hitch a ride. Only don’t get caught; they tend to take a dim view of people striking out on their own. Do your orders mention the train?’

Green shook his head. ‘No, I just have to get to a place somewhere near Albert.’

‘There you are then; you’ve every right to look elsewhere for a mode of transport!’

The gang plank was secured into position and soldiers began to file down on to the dock below. The lieutenant shouldered his pack. ‘Well, must away, don’t forget now, find a nice supply column, and avoid that bloody train!’

Green looked down from the boat deck at the turmoil of the dock and despaired of finding the train let alone a supply wagon. But the lieutenant’s advice appealed to his ‘old soldier’ instinct to see to his personal comfort whenever possible, and he determined to at least attempt to follow it. He shouldered his pack and weapon, pushed his way into the disembarking troops, and began to make his way down the steeply inclined gang plank. Then just as he reached the dock, a rather insignificant sign on the façade of a long building situated on the far side of the dock caught his attention. The sign read simply: ‘AAOC.’

‘Blanket counters!’ he mused using the somewhat derogatory term combat troops sometimes unfairly used to refer to the Australian Army Ordnance Corps. He felt certain if there was any chance at all of avoiding the train journey to the Front, the men who worked beneath that sign represented his best hope. He began to make his way toward the sign, through a throng of uniformed humanity. The trick, he knew, would be to avoid officious pommy bastards, particularly young officers thrusting for promotion. Either of those personalities would see him promptly directed back to the train.

It took some minutes to elbow and push his way through the crowd to the building that bore the AAOC sign. He peered in through a wide doorway. A mountain of stores laid out across the floor confirmed that he had arrived at a major warehouse. A number of soldiers in their shirt sleeves were working loading stores on to wagons and a corporal armed with a notebook appeared to be recording the product of their labour.

‘No joy with that lot,’ muttered Green. He needed someone with slightly more authority.

An office in the corner of the building caught his attention and he walked boldly toward it, but before he reached this destination, the office door opened, and an older man stepped out. The man wore a medal bar on his left breast indicating that he had seen service in the Boer War, and for a moment, Green and the man regarded each other in silence. Then the man grinned and extended a hand: ‘Bloody hell, it’s young Green!’ he said.