Solomon's Song (40 page)

‘Sergeant Treloar, sir,’ the sapper with the broken nose and whose name is Brodie replies, being the only one of the three able to speak.

‘Treloar, the boxer?’

‘Yessir.’

The doctor waves a hand, indicating their faces, ‘And you’re sure this didn’t come about in a fight?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I’ll have to hear that from your sergeant.’ The M.O. turns to one of the medics. ‘Send a message to Sergeant Treloar to report to me at once.’ He looks at Brodie. ‘What’s your company?’

‘D Company, sir, Sappers.’ The medic nods and leaves them.

Black Jack Treloar arrives twenty minutes later and confirms that the men are telling the truth and blithely signs the medical report. The M.O. shakes his head, ‘I’m not at all sure I shouldn’t take this up with your CO., Sergeant, damned peculiar fall.’

Treloar looks directly at the doctor. ‘I agree, sir, and would have thought no different, but it happened on the hatchway stairs aft and I just happened to be close, so I seen it meself. Them bulbs, the lights were missin’.’

‘Why weren’t the men brought in right away, there’s always a doctor on duty?’

Treloar chuckles quietly. ‘Well, you know how it is with young lads, sir? They’re in the A.I.F. First Division, they didn’t wanna be seen as milksops, sir.’

‘Sergeant, I’ve a good mind to put you on report, you have a duty to look after your men, these are not minor injuries!’

‘Be obliged if you wouldn’t, sir. The lads begged me. They didn’t wanna be seen as the laughing stock, there’s a lot of pride in the sappers, sir. Fallin’ down stairs, it’d be humiliatin’, sir.’

‘A fair whack of stupidity too, if you ask me!’

‘No, sir, with the greatest respect, pride, sapper pride, not stupidity, sir.’ Treloar would like to put his boot into the M.O.’s groin, silly bastard wouldn’t know what side was up. He’s only a bloody captain, he thinks, straight off civvy street and now he’s playing the fucking warrior doctor.

‘Well, I’ll overlook it this time, Sergeant Treloar, though it’s against my better judgment. Don’t let it happen again or I’ll see your CO. is involved.’

Treloar jumps spontaneously to attention and salutes, ‘Yessir! Thank you, sir!’

‘Dismissed,’ the M.O. says in a weary voice.

The three men are placed in the ship’s hospital for two days, Brodie to have his nose reset and his hands placed in plaster and the two others, Matthews and Jolly, requiring copious stitches to the lips and mouth and the extraction of several broken teeth, which will be done by the ship’s surgeon. There is no dentist on board because in the first A.I.F. intake the standard of recruiting was set so high that a single tooth missing in a recruit’s mouth would disqualify him.

Ben, hearing in the sergeants’ mess that the three men have been hospitalised, goes to see them late on the afternoon of the day following the incident. On arrival he asks a medic if he can see the three men from D Company.

‘You’ll have to see Sister Atkins first, Sergeant,’ the medic replies.

‘How do I do that?’

‘Wait here, I’ll fetch her.’

Ben is made to wait, standing in the ship’s hospital corridor for nearly twenty minutes before he sees Sister Atkins approaching. He has a mind to say something, show her he’s a trifle miffed, but a nursing sister, without apparent rank, is given the status of an officer and so he decides to keep his trap shut. Moreover, as she draws closer, she smiles at him and Ben feels his heart skip a beat. A troopship is an unlikely place to fall in love but Ben knows with certainty, even before she has spoken, that he must make every endeavour to develop a closer acquaintance with Sister Atkins. Please, God, don’t let her have a sweetheart somewhere, he says to himself, knowing full well that anyone as pretty would not go unattended.

‘Yes, Sergeant, I’m told you wish to see the three men who came in this morning?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Are you their sergeant?’ Her voice is light and bright and she smiles again so that the question doesn’t appear to be overly officious.

‘No, er, they’re involved with my platoon, I just want to see if they’re all right,’ Ben replies a little sheepishly.

‘Well, they’re not going to die, Sergeant, if that’s what you mean? But they’ve had a nasty fall.’ She puts her head to one side as though she is examining him more closely. ‘We don’t usually allow visitors.’

‘I won’t take long, Sister.’

Sister Atkins laughs. ‘I’ll say you won’t, five minutes is all you’ll get.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’ He is suddenly desperate to think of something to say that will impress her but his mind has turned to mashed potatoes.

‘Right, follow me, Sergeant er…?’

‘Teekleman, Ben Teekleman, Sister.’ Then he adds gratuitously, ‘From Tasmania.’

‘Tasmania? How nice. I have a cousin in Tasmania, though I don’t suppose you’d know her, Lucy Atkins?’

Ben is walking beside her and he receives the slightest whiff of lavender water which is enough to send his head spinning. ‘Don’t suppose I do, but there was a Lucy Atkins in primary school once?’

‘Oh, sure, your sister’s best friend, was she?’

It is obvious that Sister Atkins has not gone unnoticed on the ship and is up to all the tricks men play with a pretty woman in an attempt to prolong a conversation. ‘No really, in New Norfolk, red hair, green eyes, lots of freckles, her mum and dad ran, still do I suppose, the drapery shop.’

Sister Atkins stops, her eyes grown wide. ‘My goodness, Sergeant Ben Teekleman, you do know my cousin Lucy!’

They have reached the ward door and Sister Atkins enters first and steps ahead, Ben following two or three steps behind her. The ward contains some twenty men. There has been an outbreak of flu on board and there have been several cases of pneumonia as a consequence. Ben silently bemoans the fact that they have effectively come to the end of their conversation.

Sister Atkins stops at the last three beds. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she says cheerfully. The three sappers sit up in bed and from their expressions it is fairly apparent to the nursing sister that Ben’s arrival doesn’t exactly thrill them. ‘Hmmph, you don’t seem too happy about it?’ she says, straightening up Brodie’s blanket.

‘Thank you, Sister,’ Brodie says without enthusiasm. The space between his eyes and mouth is swathed in a large bandage, while the damage to the swollen lips of the other two soldiers is uncovered and the ragged criss-cross of stitches can be readily seen.

Sister Atkins turns to Ben, ‘Five minutes. Well, I must be off, there’s no rest for the wicked.’

Ben is suddenly desperate and he takes his courage in both hands, ‘Can I see you, Sister, meet again, talk about Lucy?’

Sister Atkins’ pretty lips form a perfect ‘O’. ‘No, Sergeant, you cannot, you know the rules,’ she replies and, turning on a well-polished heel, she exits the ward watched all the way by Ben.

‘Bad luck, Sergeant,’ Brodie says, happy that Ben has been put in his place. ‘Good sort, though, ain’t she?’

Ben turns back to the men, remembering suddenly why he’s come, ‘Oh, g’day, lads.’ He glances at the doorway, ‘Yes well…’

Brodie nods towards the two beds on his left. ‘Them other two can’t talk, Sergeant, stitches inside their mouth and tongue.’

Ben clears his throat, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard a sergeant apologise, so I won’t. But next time you get an order for a night attack at close quarters, point out to your sergeant that it’s a full moon, will ya.’

Brodie drops his eyes. ‘We was only havin’ us a bit of fun, Sergeant.’

‘What? With pick handles?’

‘Yeah, but we was only gunna hit to the body like, through the blankets, nothing too harmful, plenty o’ bruises but nothin’ broke. Surprise yiz and get out before youse could do anythin’.’

‘That what your sergeant told you, was it?’ Brodie doesn’t reply and Ben continues, ‘In my experience, Private… by the way, what’s your name?’

‘Brodie, Sergeant,’ he indicates the two beds to his left with a nod, ‘Matthews and Jolly.’ The two men nod curtly, unable to speak, though their eyes show them to be less than friendly.

‘Yes well, as I was saying, the essence of surprise is concealment, the enemy has twenty-twenty vision the same as you, Private Brodie, you could’ve read a newspaper on deck last night.’

Brodie glances down at his lap. ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he says in a small voice. Then to Ben’s surprise he looks up, ‘It were wrong, what we done. Your mob didn’t do nothin’ to us and we didn’t find that place to kip down before you done, neither.’

Ben smiles. ‘Well, one apology deserves another.’ He looks at all three men in turn, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you, lads, surprise attacks generally cause an overreaction.’

Brodie looks up at him. ‘Not to worry, Sergeant, me nose’s been broke twice before by me old man and he didn’t never say sorry neither.’

‘Yeah, well, what say you, lads? Best to keep our mutual aggression for the Hun.’

‘Jesus, Sergeant, when I saw that there axe o’ yours, I damn near shit me trousers.’ He pulls his hands from under the blankets and Ben sees that they are both in plaster. ‘Four broken fingers and me nose ain’t too bad, I thought me time was up for bloody certain.’

Ben laughs softly then suddenly grows serious. ‘We’re all in this war together, lads, if I can help you at any time, I hope you’ll come to me.’ Conscious that he may have embarrassed Brodie he looks down at the sapper’s plaster-of-Paris mittens. ‘Don’t suppose you’d care to shake hands on that, Private Brodie,’ he teases. Ben is suddenly aware of a tug to the back of his tunic and he looks round to see both Matthews and Jolly have’ their hands extended. ‘No hard feelings?’ he asks. They both shake their heads and, in turn, clasp his hand in a firm handshake. Then he shakes Brodie’s plaster cast ceremoniously, both of them laughing. ‘Well, I guess my five minutes is up, lads, better be kicking the dust then, eh? Cheer’o, nice to meet you again under friendlier circumstances.’ Ben walks away down the centre aisle of the ward.

‘Good luck with the sheila, Sergeant,’ Brodie calls after him. ‘I reckon you ain’t got a snowball’s ‘ope in hell.’

‘You’ll keep, Private Brodie,’ Ben calls back and there is general laughter in the ward.

The five-day voyage to Albany is without further mishap. In the parlance of the sea, it has been plain sailing. In the way of the army the days become routine, even somewhat boring, so that by the time the ship reaches the tiny whaling port the troops feel as though they’ve been at sea for several weeks.

What a sight the fleet presents as it lies anchored in the tranquil waters of King George Sound, set against a smudge of distant island hills. Twenty-eight ships carrying twenty thousand young men, Australia’s young blood, hand-picked like some exotic fruit to be as perfect as can be, the tallest, straightest, strongest we have to give. They are not to know that they leave as surrogate sons tied to the apron strings of Mother England, but will return as Australians, sons of a nation confident and individual, having completed its final rites of passage.

PEREGRINE ORMINGTON-SMITH

Leaving Home 1914

If Peregrine Ormington-Smith had enlisted as a raw recruit, he would have been culled from the queue outside the recruitment depot. If by some mischance he’d made it inside, he would have stumbled at the very first hurdle, the all-important eye-test. Ormington-Smith wears spectacles, the lenses of which closely resemble the bottom of a ginger-beer bottle.

In military terms Second Lieutenant Ormington-Smith is a dud, plain and simple. Peter Pan would have been a more effective platoon leader. There is simply nothing about him that inspires confidence. He is so hopeless there is a fair bit of speculation that he is the reason Ben’s CO. contrived to keep Ben in the Victorian outfit.

It is difficult to see how Ormington-Smith could possibly have passed muster when the battalion commander was selecting his junior officers, unless nepotism or some other major influence had been brought to bear. Like most sergeants, Ben has grown accustomed to the often mystifying decisions of senior officers, nevertheless he finds it impossible not to believe that any experienced senior officer even wearing a blindfold would instantly conclude that Peregrine Ormington-Smith has a very precarious hold on the practical skills required to navigate his way through life. The battalion commander, Colonel Wanliss, has obviously passed the buck to his C.O. in C Company, Major Sayers, an Englishman from Liverpool, who, in turn, has duck-shuffled it on to his most competent sergeant. Ben Teekleman is to be Ormington-Smith’s surrogate nursemaid.

Sayers has on one occasion come close to admitting as much, hinting it was the fault of his battalion commander. ‘It’s got naught to do with you, Sergeant Teekleman, it’s… well, it’s just the way things sometimes are in the army.’

‘With respect, sir, the excuse that there are too many sergeants in the 12th Battalion is bulldust. We have five more platoon sergeants than we need in this battalion.’

‘Oh aye,’ his C.O. admitted, ‘more a question of personnel, officer personnel.’ He looked meaningfully at Ben. ‘Influence higher up, if you get my drift.’ He left it hanging in the air like that, making Ben cope with the hapless junior officer, knowing that the stumble-bum was the reason why he couldn’t join his mates in Tasmania.

One of life’s paradoxes is that people who are temperamentally ill-suited to a particular vocation actively seek it out. It is as if they want to prove to themselves that they are not who they seem to be. For instance, an irascible and short-tempered person becomes a shop assistant, a tram conductor, a teacher, a football referee or a museum guide and in the process makes a terrible hash of things. Conversely, a timid or congenitally shy person elects to be a policeman, a clergyman, an auctioneer or a choirmaster, with the same disastrous results. These perverse decisions to practise what one is patently ill-suited to preach seems to have no rational explanation and simply emphasises that our perception of ourselves is seldom, if ever, to be trusted.

In an effort to understand where Peregrine Ormington-Smith was coming from, Ben asked Victoria to dig into the second lieutenant’s background. She came back with the information that his father had been a colonel on the headquarters staff of General Roberts in the Boer War and was one of the heroes of Mafeking.

The family settled in Australia in 1901 because Peregrine, an only son, suffered from a bronchial complaint and, on the advice of a Harley Street specialist, they moved to a warmer climate. He was just fourteen when they arrived and, shortly afterwards, the colonel purchased a sheep property near Warrnambool in the Western District of Victoria. In Victoria’s words the family is ‘quite uppity’, with Lucinda Ormington-Smith, ‘quite a gel’, quickly making her mark on the Melbourne Ladies’ Benevolent Society and the Red Cross committee.

Young Peregrine somehow stumbled and mumbled his way through Geelong Grammar, where he was the subject of routine persecution because of his impossible Christian and family names, his toffee-nosed English accent and his inability to master even the fundamentals of cricket or football. His chest cleared up and he matriculated, but without distinction. Soon after, much to his father’s dismay, he elected to study art at the National Gallery School. After this, little is known of his whereabouts except that he was thought to have become ’some sort of a bohemian’. Quite simply, Peregrine Ormington-Smith began life as a failure and seems to be continuing on in the same vein.

Ben’s very first task was to try to persuade his lieutenant to keep in step, for on occasions Ormington-Smith confuses his left with his right. Even when he does march in time, he seems to develop an awkward sort of wobble, his head jerking forward, followed by his shoulders, then his hips and finally his long Ichabod Crane legs. All in all, his body gives the appearance of being jointed in a manner quite different to that of most homo sapiens.

Ormington-Smith stands a reedy six feet and one inch in his stockinged feet but, unlike the angular Crow Rigby who is all horn and hide, he is built on a skeletal frame so rickety in structure and sparse of muscle and meat that a sou’wester blowing with only the slightest malice would knock him on his arse. At the one extremity he has two left feet, both of them size thirteen, while at the other he is almost completely bald. People seeing him in full uniform shake their heads in disbelief and grow fearful for the defence of the country. It is also apparent that the tailor who fashioned his uniform admitted defeat early on in the cutting and stitching process, for his tunic, despite the efforts of his Sam Browne belt to hold it down, hangs from his body like sacking on a scarecrow and his trousers end two inches above the top of his boots.

But it is the lieutenant’s voice that marks him for genuine disaster. As high-pitched as a girl’s, words issue from his mouth with machine-gun rapidity, so that they bump into each other, some of them breaking in half and joining together as they collide, with the result that Ormington-Smith seems to speak a language which resembles English in tone but makes almost no sense. No doubt this manner of speech has developed as a consequence of the chiacking he received at boarding school for his plummy British accent.

The platoon is forced to master this new language which Library called ‘Truncation’. They have learned to respond to sounds rather than meaning. As an example, the word platoon comes out as ‘oon’, attention as ’shin’, eyes right, for some reason, always comes out as ’shite’, forward march as ‘farsh’, and dismissed as ‘mist’ to name but a few. Library Spencer seems to be the only one in the platoon to understand him without too much difficulty.

‘How come you understand him?’ Muddy Parthe once asked him.

Library shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I just can.’

‘It’s got to do with him reading all them books,’ Numbers Cooligan explained. ‘Library’s that fast when he’s readin’ that the words come into his mind all blurred, bumping and squashing together, same as the lieutenant speaks.’

Eventually Library Spencer produces a dictionary of the Truncation language which even Ben is forced to swot up.

However, Second Lieutenant Peregrine Ormington-Smith, christened ‘Wordsmith’ by Library but soon enough adapted to ‘Wordy Smith’ by the platoon, does not have a malicious bone in his body. And on those not infrequent occasions when the platoon responds incorrectly to one of Wordy Smith’s mysterious commands, he doesn’t seem to mind too much. At first their apparent ineptitude brought down the wrath of the company sergeant-major and Ben was obliged to cop a fair bit of aggro until the cause of the confusion was corrected by learning Truncation.

Whenever Ben places a member of the platoon on a charge for some army misdemeanour it becomes fairly pointless parading him in front of Wordy Smith for sentence. The lieutenant simply appears anguished and, often biting his nails, he looks appealingly at Ben, sighs and says ‘Kitchooty’. This means the offender is to do a day’s kitchen duty peeling potatoes or at the handle end of a broom. Kitchooty eventually comes to mean whatever Ben considers to be an appropriate punishment.

The platoon regards Lieutenant Wordy Smith as a kind of invisible presence who depends entirely on Ben to guide their destiny and get them all, including himself, safely through the war. They don’t, as might be expected with soldiers who are not much older than schoolboys, take the piss out of him. They accept that they have a sergeant whom they trust and an officer who, while being totally inadequate, doesn’t interfere, which makes for a reasonably uncomplicated army life.

In the sergeants’ mess Wordy Smith’s disinclination to be involved in the daily affairs of the army is considered an ideal situation and Ben is thought to be a lucky bastard. Since the time of the ancient Romans, sergeants have come to the conclusion that the art of war cannot afford the luxury of an officer class and the A.I.F. is no different, regarding the rank of second lieutenant as the lowest possible form of life.

Lieutenant Wordy Smith’s reluctance to issue orders and to restrict himself only to those parade-ground commands which are mandatory for a one-pip lieutenant makes running the platoon comparatively easy for his sergeant. As a consequence, Ben must do most of the administration work normally the duty of his platoon commander. Sheer incompetence, and the fact that it is easier to perform around him than to include him, has given Lieutenant Ormington-Smith a soft ride in the army.

All Wordy Smith ever desires is time to write or paint in watercolours. But even in this he is peculiar and contradictory. Without his spectacularly thick spectacles he is certifiably blind, yet his art concentrates exclusively on wildflowers, but only those too small to be noticed in the normal course of observing nature. Using a sable brush which contains only three or four hairs, he will paint no flower in nature that is larger than a tunic button, specialising in those to be found in decreasing sizes down to exquisitely beautiful specimens no bigger than the circumference of a single, minutely small blossom from the pale blue pin-cushion plant. His paintings of tiny green hood, spider and pink cockatoo orchids found on a route-march location show him not only to be a very fine watercolourist but also a very competent botanist. It is as though Lieutenant Wordy Smith is doing some sort of penance for a previous life, one which requires him to find the most difficult way possible to accomplish everything he attempts.

Together with his paintbox and diary, which doubles as his sketchbook, he carries a very large magnifying glass and a small laboratory microscope, the first to locate and the second to unlock the secret details of a myriad of dwarf flora. Wordy Smith paints, identifies, catalogues and writes about floral specimens which one might spend a lifetime crushing underfoot without ever being aware they existed. His field excursions are spent almost entirely on his knees within a radius of ten feet of a plant, crawling through rock and scrub with his nose and magnifying glass inches from the ground and his scrawny bum sticking up in the air. His trousers, despite any amount of washing, always show brown stains at the knees. In an attempt to get him onto the parade ground looking half decent, Ben asked Martha Billings to make him a set of padded leather kneepads to wear on his rambles. When Ben presented these to him, he blushed to a new hue of scarlet, his mouth working to find the words to say thank you, but only managing an assortment of small explosive sounds involving spittle. Finally he gave up and simply reached out and touched Ben’s shoulder. He now carries the kneepads in the side pockets of his military tunic, which makes him look as though he is perpetually poised to take off and fly.

*

The Orvieto slipped into its West Australian anchorage on King George Sound late in the morning of the fifth day out from Port Melbourne. There were now twenty thousand men and seven thousand, eight hundred and thirty-four horses on board thirty-six ships, who consider themselves fully equipped, trained and ready to go into action.

However, yet another delay caused them to remain at anchor. A rebellion by conscripted Boer forces in the Cape Colony had raised the possibility of Australians being used for garrison troops in South Africa. It seemed the Afrikaners among the South African recruits, many of them still harbouring bitter memories of their defeat by the British in the Boer War, saw no reason to fight for Mother England. Germany had been one of the very few friendly nations to the Boer Republic during the bitter conflict, supplying them with arms and much-needed medical aid and, if they were going to fight at all, the rebellious men would have preferred to do so for the enemy side.

General Botha, who had himself fought on the Boer side against Britain but now commanded the South African forces, managed to suppress the uprising. The convoy of Australian and New Zealand troops was free at last to sail, bound for the Western Front to play their part in a war that was going increasingly wrong for Britain and her allies.

The giant convoy leaves on the first of November and this time it is an almost silent departure, with the townsfolk from Albany lined up on a mountain ridge almost too distant to be seen. Once clear of the Sound, the Australian ships travel in three long lines, about a mile apart, with a gap of approximately eight hundred yards between the vessels in each line, while the New Zealand ships follow in a double line observing the same ratios. The convoy is escorted by the three Allied cruisers, HMAS Melbourne, HMAS Sydney, Ibuki, and with a fourth, the HMS Minotaur, leading the convoy.

The New Zealand troopships had been painted light grey with a small number inside a star at the bow and stern, but the Australians had been less conscientious, leaving their vessels in their original colours, potential sitting ducks in daylight, even obliging the enemy with a large square painted on the bow with which to identify each vessel and supply a perfect target at which to aim. They are almost a week out to sea before someone in the fleet realises that the larger passenger liners and, in particular, the Orvieto with the general and staff on board, are conveniently lit up like a Christmas tree for any German cruisers hunting at night. From this point on, the strictest blackout conditions are observed. In an example of Navy overkill which goes from the sublime to the ridiculous, the troops are even forbidden to smoke on deck on the premise that a match struck on a dark night can be observed by a strong pair of field glasses at a distance of four miles.