The good die young
I forgot to mention earlier about our drinking water. It was never fresh as you know it. It was (brackish) half salt and half fresh, you would bloody near ‘spew’ when you drank it. But of course you had no choice. Also we had to go sometimes a week or more without a wash or even taking off your boots to change your socks. If you took them off they were that covered in mud you would have had trouble putting them back on again. There were no little streams or brooks up in the ridges, there was only drizzly rain, mozzies, sweat, mud, fear, prickly heat, discomfort and Japs.
If there was something we all feared the most it was Jap’s 4.2 mortars. The first warning you had was a little ‘putt’ in your close proximity and then this terrifying rushing of air just prior to the shell exploding with a deafening roar. Even when you were lying down you weren’t safe. We used to call them Daisy Cutters. The bloody thing killed many and wounded more. There was something else probably on a par with the mortar and that of course was the machine gun, especially when it was set up at the end of a long track. They would not shoot the first man to appear, they would wait for the whole Platoon to be lined up behind each other then they would open up on you (enfiladed fire). Nobody but nobody liked long tracks.
Another thing we soon learned to fear was the ‘booby-trap’, usually a cunningly concealed wire about ankle high, strung out across the track hidden by a fern or something so you would not see it attached to the pin of a hand grenade with a four second fuse. We all took turns at doing ‘point’. If any of those nasties didn’t put your lights out they would certainly make you suffer.
After spending some weeks up in the ridges our company was relieved and we returned once again down to the coastal area of Tol Plantation, the scene of a very infamous massacre of Australian soldiers. I will elaborate in much more detail about that later.
During the time we had spent away from the Henry-Reid River the engineers had built a bridge across it. The Red Cross was there with a hot meal for us (you beaut). The first hot meal we had had for about three months, but I’m afraid to say my joy was soon cut short. One of my best friends, Stewart, was sent across the bridge to bring back a hot meal for us in two big Dixies (pans). We all heard this Jap ‘zero’ coming over our heads. Next minute we all heard this huge threatening rushing of air. Stewart would have heard it too. We all hit the ground except ‘Stewy’, being more exposed than the rest of us. He decided to run. The Jap of course was after the bridge. I have only heard one big bomb like this one and I don’t want to hear another. The explosion was enough to split your ear-drums and it could have well contributed to my deafness. The Jap missed the bridge but he got Stewart. They covered up his mangled body with a ground sheet. When I saw what was left of him I cried like a baby.
Before I go any further I would like to say something about Stewart. A brief biography, if you will. Stewart was as some people might say ‘a very good Catholic boy’. He had this fiancée in Australia, when they communicated they called each other husband and wife, they were so much in love. He had everything to live for. Every Sunday the Padre would try to hold some sort of service in the jungle when safety allowed. Stewart was only one of two or three of us that bothered to attend and yet he was the only one to be killed by the bomb. It just goes to show how the good die young.
Getting back to the hot meal again, as I was saying the only other food we used to eat was a very small tin of Bully Beef and two or three ‘dog’ biscuits. A lot of the men couldn’t stomach the Bully Beef, it had pieces of hair attached to it, the sight of which was enough to turn your stomach but it did not worry me, I loved it. If you had false teeth there is no way in the world you could have chewed those biscuits, it was like chewing rocks. But they had plenty of vitamins and minerals to sustain you and that’s all the army cared about.
The next morning when I woke up, my feet were covered in tinea and my genitals were smothered in weeping dermatitis. It was so bad they put me on a barge and ferried me back to the hospital in Jacquinot Bay where I spent the next six weeks being treated for it. I was not the only one in the ward with it, it was commonplace. Very soon after that we were all sent back on leave to Australia (sick again).