Solomon's Song (60 page)

HORNBILL

Hornbill asked me to read his letter after he’d written it, anxious that it be correct. I recall well how he put it at the time.

‘I ain’t had much education, Ben, I left school when I were nine and me father went timber fetching and took me along when me mum died of the TB. Timber and fixin’ things is all I know and I’ve not had much occasion to write to nobody before. Me uncle with the pie cart and me Auntie Maois with the “artyritus” are the only relatives I got and they don’t go in much for letter writing. Still an’ all, if it’s gunna be me only letter, I mean the first and the last one ever they’s gunna get from me, I reckon I ought to get the bugger wrote properly, eh, Sergeant?’

Hornbill died manning the Hotchkiss machine gun during a counterattack by the Turks on the evening of the second day on Lone Pine. The enemy made a concerted effort to put our gun out of action, concentrating all their fire on the machine gun. I guess we must have been doing too good a job with the weapon that had killed Numbers Cooligan and Woggy Mustafa. Hornbill swore he’d take out twenty Turks for each of their lives and I feel sure he succeeded. They threw everything at us, firing and coming in with bayonets. We must have killed thirty men, three getting right up to us, one of them close enough to bayonet Hornbill through the chest before we shot them all. Hornbill, gripping the Turk’s bayonet in both hands, ripped it out of his chest with a roar, and at the same time fell over the machine gun, using his body to protect it. He must have taken twenty Turkish bullets to his head and chest, though I feel sure he was already dead when this happened. He saved the machine gun and we continued to use it to the very end of the battle.

Hornbill, ‘Mr Fixit’, never had a bad bone in his body and he died thinking of his mates. I have put in a report in the hope that he will be decorated posthumously for his bravery, though I can almost hear him saying, ‘Me uncle would wear the flamin’ thing selling pies and tell everyone he won it for puttin’ up with me Auntie Mavis and her “artyritus ” all them years.’

Dear Uncle Mick and Auntie Mavis,

I am writing this to say goodbye because I am dead. They would have told you by now but I wanted to tell you myself. It was nice knowing you both and I hope you can sell your pies for many years to come and make a quid. I have made some good mates here, blokes I’m gunna miss a lot. We give the Turk heaps, but he give us some back too. It weren’t an easy fight. Try to remember me sometimes.

Your nephew,

Private William Horne, 1st Div. A.I.F. Gallipoli.

Please explain to Hornbill’s auntie and uncle that the letter I took from his tunic was torn to shreds and soaked in blood, that is why I have repeated it here.

MUDDY PARTHE

Every platoon has to have a whinger and Muddy Parthe was ours. He could complain better than anybody else about almost anything. Hornbill, listening one morning to Muddy complaining about the sunrise, shook his head, ‘He’s got real class, lissen to the bugger, just lissen to what he’s doing to the bloody sun comin’ up.’

Muddy was squinting into the sun. ‘Bloody sun, shines on them first, don’t it? Warms their ‘ands so the bastards can pull the trigger sooner, shines down into our eyes so we can’t see ‘em. They can see us though, bloody sun’s on their side, I’m tellin ya.’

Bullybeef:

‘We got to eat this shit and that’s why we’ve got the squirts, bloody stuff rots our guts, don’t it? Lookee here what it’s called, Fray Bentos, you think that’s the name o’ the manufacturer, don’t yiz. Well, it ain’t, see, it’s from Argentine where they speak Spanish, don’t they?’

Jesus, Muddy, what you trying to say?’

‘Well you take the word “Fray”, it’s them trying to speak English, they don’t know the word “chewed” so they say the bloody meat is “frayed”.’ He took up a lump of bullybeef and pulled it apart with his fingers, the thin red streaks of meat looking exactly as if they’d been chewed before. ‘See, what’s that look like, it’s been chewed before, ain’t it?’

‘You’re beginning to sound like Cooligan, mate,’ Woggy Mustafa says.

‘So what about “Bentos’?’ Library Spencer asks. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Simple, mate, it’s them Spanish trying ter speak English again - Bentos, “Bent arse”, they didn’t know how to say “squat” so they say “bent arse”, it’s their word for squatting down to ‘ave a crap. You’ve got ter bend your arse to have a crap, don’t yer? What they’re saying is that what we’re eating is “frayed bent arse”, chewed shit. And don’t you think the army don’t know it, we been eating shit ever since we got here.’

‘For once you may have a point, mate,’ Crow Bigby was heard to remark.

Muddy Parthe died throwing one of their bombs back over the parapet. He’d picked up two Turkish bombs and thrown them back and then one came looping through the air and the fuse must have been cut very short, or a Turk had thrown back a bomb that we’d already thrown back, because as Muddy caught it in mid-air, his hands in front of his face, it exploded. It didn’t kill him instantly though. He was blinded and his face was smashed terribly. There was nothing we could do. Wordy Smith poured some of his opium medicine down his throat, where his mouth once was, and he died half an hour later. I can only hope without any pain.

Muddy Parthe was a brave man, he knew that sooner or later a Turkish bomb must get him, that his luck would run out. But it was his job to watch for the bombs and return them to the Turks and it was the one thing he never once complained about. I shall miss his colourful whingeing. When we were going through a hard time, to hear him complain often made us feel a whole heap better. No platoon should be without a Muddy Parthe.

I am enclosing Muddy’s letter with this one unopened, though London to a brick he’s complaining in it about something.

BROKENOSE BRODIE AND LIBRARY SPENCER

I must write about these two men together for they cannot in my mind be separated. Brokenose loved Library Spencer with all his heart and soul. I mean, of course, in a completely manly way. It is hard for a male to talk about loving another but I cannot avoid the word simply because there is no other appropriate word to take its place. Library made Brokenose Brodie realise that he was more than just a ditch digger, that he was someone who could read and write and hold his own in company. Library told him of people and places and things that would leave him gob-smacked with amazement and the wonder of it all. He discovered that he had a prodigious memory and would take it all in. Brokenose was not stupid, only ignorant, and with Library as his mentor he was like a sponge soaking it all in. He wanted to know everything and as Library Spencer knew everything there were never two mates better suited. Library Spencer, the teacher and reader who loved facts and the truth, and Brokenose Brodie, the pupil who could never get enough of either.

In the tedious hours in the trenches we would often become bored and frustrated, but never those two. They spent hours together with Spencer teaching Brokenose to read and write, Library Spencer using his precious copy of Great Expectations as the big man’s tutor. Library once told me that Charles Dickens was the greatest writer of them all and, if Library said so, who was I to protest that old Wickworth-Spode thought it was Shakespeare. Anyhow, towards the end Brokenose could read from the great man’s book with barely a hesitation.

I suggested on one occasion that he should rewrite his letter home, but he shook his head. ‘It was wrote right for them. If I done it better they’d be ashamed they didn’t do the right thing by us kids.’ Brokenose Brodie, while trying to make up for a life in a dirt-poor family, didn’t want to make them feel bad. ‘Being poor an’ ignorant with too many brats ain’t nobody’s fault, it just happens to some folks,’ he’d once said to me.

Brokenose was the oldest of eight children, who were constantly abused and beaten by a drunken Irish father who worked as a casual labourer at the abattoir. I remember him telling me about his parents. ‘Me old man worked maybe three days a week and so we ate mostly quite good, ’cause he’d bring scrag ends and offal ‘ome. Saterdee and Sundee, though, we didn’t eat nothing we couldn’t steal, because me dad and me mum were dead drunk. Me mum couldn’t take no more with him and us kids and she’d get stuck in the gin bottle.’

Library was brought up by his mother, a quietly respectable piano teacher who always encouraged him to read and to act like a gentleman. He once told me that he had read every book in the St Kilda library and many of them three or four times over. He never spoke of a father and I can only assume he never had one present in the home. Library was the school swot, the scholarship kid who didn’t or couldn’t play sport, the brat who knew everything and was bullied because of his brains. Until he joined the army he had never had a friend, had never been admired by someone his own age. He was the loner, the quiet bloke, until Brokenose Brodie, big, clumsy, eager as a puppy and filled with admiration and love for the man who knew everything, came into his life. There was never a couple more oddly paired or one that worked better in friendship.

Library Spencer, like Hornbill, died when three Turks managed to get over the parapet into our trench, one of them stabbing him through his back and heart, the bayonet’s point coming out of the front of his chest. Brokenose turned around to see if his mate was all right just as it happened. His roar, or perhaps in the confusion and noise I imagined it, seemed to rise above the rifle and machine-gun fire. He dropped his rifle and lunged at the Turk who had his foot planted in the small of Library’s back and was trying to pull his bayonet out. The huge man grabbed the hapless Turk by the throat and lifted him clean off the ground, snapping his neck like a chicken. I saw one of the other Turks coming for him and hurled my fighting axe, the blade cleaving the man’s skull. Brokenose bent over the fallen Turk and grabbing my axe by the handle he pulled it out of the dead man’s head. Screaming, he jumped onto the firing platform and vaulted over the lip of the trench, charging down the embankment straight into the attacking Turks. He killed six of them before they chopped him to pieces with bullets and bayonets.

I don’t think Brokenose would have wanted to live without Library Spencer in his life. Both men died having known that they had a pride and a purpose, the one no longer a loner, the other no longer thinking himself useless. The teacher who knew everything and the pupil who wanted to learn everything there was to know together forever. We buried them next to each other, Mr Dickens’ book in Library Spencer’s hands and Brokenose hugging his slate and stylus. It was a partnership made in heaven where both men are now looking down at me as I write this.

How very much I shall miss them all.

Your loving grandson and brother, Ben.

P.S. I have written all the names and addresses on a separate page.

B.

R.I.P.

Second Lieutenant Peregrine Ormington-Smith

General William & Mrs Lucinda Ormington-Smith

Holyoak Farm

Warrnambool, Victoria

Private William Thomas Horne

Mr Mick & Mrs Mavis Horne

14 Lambeth Place

St Kilda, Victoria

Private Wayne Cooligan

(Notify only) The Superintendent

Melbourne Orphan Asylum

Dendy Street

Brighton, Victoria

Private Joseph Mustafa

Mr Joe & Mrs Sarah Mustafa

9A Arthur Street

Coburg, Victoria

Private John Heywood Parthe

Mr John & Mrs Shirley Parthe

15 Vere Street

Collingwood, Victoria

Private Colin John Spencer

Mrs Gladys Spencer

51 Alma Road St Kilda, Victoria

Private Kevin Sean Brodie

Mr Seamus & Mrs Maude Brodie

14A Wight Street

Kensington, Victoria

Corporal Peter John Rigby

Mr Roger & Mrs Sandra Rigby

‘Lyndale’

Roadside delivery

Wooragee, N. E. Victoria

GALLIPOLI

The days will come when men will stand upon the shores,

Of Suvla Bay and Anzac where the fierce sea roars,

Amazed that mortals under such tremendous fire,

Landed at all, and, having landed, could retire.

Men will embark at Anafarta’s sandy bay,

Under the peaceful skies of some soft summer day,

And picture to themselves that time, not long ago,

When all the hills were guns, and every rock a foe.

Bits of barbed wire will peep at them from out the grass

And waken up their slumbering memories as they pass,

Old speechless cannon look them in the face,

And ask them are they fit to stand in such a place?

Yes, other men will gaze upon the silent beach,

And thoughts will crowd about the hills too deep for speech;

Sorrow and pride will come and take them by the hand,

To those heroic graves in that forbidding land.

No need for polished marble there, nor sculptor’s art,

To tell the world of Australasia’s glorious part;

In quiet village church and in cathedral old,

Let the immortal deeds in glass and stone be told.

But at Gallipoli the place will tell the tale,

The yellow sands, the rocks, the beetling cliffs, the gale;

Why carve New Zealand’s name on lonely Sari-Bair,

Or tell old frowning Krithia who lie buried there?

Nations may pass away and other nations come,

But time’s destructive hand will never mar their tomb;

Those mighty monuments for ever will remain,

The everlasting witness of a deathless fame.

-W. S. Pakenham-Walsh, 1916

JOSHUA, BEN AND SISTER ATKINS

London and the Western Front 1916-1918

Thus far Major Joshua Solomon has had what every concerned parent would describe as a ‘good war’ in as much as he has spent it well behind the front line, first in Mena and then in France. Anybody who spends a war ordering boots and bullybeef won’t die a violent death, which is a comforting thought to Sir Abraham but one which rankles constantly with his son, the heir to the chairmanship of the giant Solomon & Teekleman conglomerate.

Being the officer commanding an army ordnance company, the chief margarine merchant as the front-line troops call his kind, does not fit in with how Joshua sees himself. From the moment he was plucked unceremoniously out of his Light Horse regiment in Egypt he has done everything he can to be transferred to a fighting battalion.

Joshua is no fool and, while he has been unable to prove that it wasn’t sheer bad luck that found him placed in the army ordnance corps, he has a pretty good idea that his grandfather, the deceased David Solomon, may have had something to do with his posting to a safe haven.

His applications to be transferred to a front-line battalion are sent in monthly and are just as routinely refused. In truth, he is damned good at his job and may be said to have contributed significantly to the efficiency of war supplies reaching the front both at Gallipoli and later in France. So much so that he has been promoted to the rank of major, a rare occurrence in an ordnance outfit where promotion is almost unheard of and where officers tend to die in their beds.

Joshua’s life in a British ordnance battalion has become as predictable as if he were working eight to five in the city and catching the five-thirty train to Tunbridge Wells each night.

Having bathed and changed into his mess kit, six-thirty every evening finds Joshua in the officers’ mess with a gin and tonic in his hand. The pre-dinner small talk among the battalion officers is occasionally interrupted by the crump-crump of distant artillery and at seven o’clock, feeling slightly tipsy but with the sharp edges of the day somewhat smoothed over, Joshua will gulp down the last of four G & T’s before going in to dinner.

Dinner, served by a dour, white-coated corporal, a Welshman whose surname, predictably enough, is Thomas, invariably consists of a pot roast rather too well done for Joshua’s liking or an occasional leg of pork bartered or purchased from a local farmer. The inevitable mediocrity of the evening meal is somewhat compensated for by an excellent bottle of French red debited to Joshua’s mess account. Finally, dessert and coffee are served while the port is passed around. Though there is a war raging just five miles to the north, with the dead too numerous to count, life in the officers’ mess of an ordnance battalion in the rear echelon is very little different from the mess routine of peacetime in the barracks at Aldershot.

Colonel ‘Tubs’ Henderson, Joshua’s battalion commander, referred to by his officers as ‘the old man’, is a regular-army officer and veteran of the previous war who enjoys all the characteristics of a Boer War officer, including a sanguine complexion and enlarged proboscis brought about by his fondness for the bottle. However, he never drinks alone and is fond of saying, ‘A chap who drinks alone is a pisspot. Bad habit. Bad habit. Solitary, not up to scratch what?’

No matter how ordinary the food, Colonel Henderson has never been known to complain about it. In fact, he completely ignores Corporal Thomas until after he has served coffee and whatever passes for dessert, always something out of a tin from one of the colonies. Thomas’ choice of tinned fruit then prompts the same question from the old man every night. ‘The fruit, Thomas? Which of our allies do we have to thank for this munificence?’

‘The Union of South Africa, sir,’ Thomas will reply mournfully. ‘Will you take tinned cream with your peaches, sir?’

‘Jolly good show, yes, yes, just a drop, ha ha, don’t want to drown the African sunshine in the fruit, do we?’

Joshua has come to dread those nights when tinned pears are served. These invariably come from Australia and while the colonel’s reply to Thomas always remains the same, with the only change being that Australian sunshine replaces the African, it means that Joshua will almost inevitably be selected to remain behind to share the colonel’s after-dinner carafe of port.

Corporal Thomas, also regular army, waits until the port is passed around and the toast to the King is pronounced, then he retrieves the carafe (always from the left) and refills it to the brim.

Together with two fresh glasses and a small silver bell he places the newly filled carafe in front of the old man and then, taking one step back from the table so that he stands behind the colonel’s right shoulder, he stamps his right boot to rigid attention. ‘If that will be all, sah!’ he announces at the top of his voice, bringing his hand up in a smart salute.

‘Yes, yes, Thomas, don’t fuss,’ comes the invariable reply. With Thomas departed, Colonel Henderson looks around the table and fixes a bloodshot eye on one of his company commanders. ‘Captain Carruthers, a word in your shell-pink,’ he’ll say, whereupon the remaining officers, barely able to contain their relief, will hastily scrape their chairs backwards and retire from the table, leaving the old man and the hapless officer of his choice to drink out the brimming carafe.

On a bitterly cold night in mid-January 1916 pears are served for dessert and Joshua finds himself selected for the after-dinner port run. He sighs inwardly. No officer has ever escaped before the carafe was empty. If he’s lucky it may take an hour, but if the colonel is in a melancholic mood with the conversation punctuated by long silences it could take as long as two. By the time the last glass is swallowed the old man’s conversation will have deteriorated to an almost incomprehensible mumble, always involving the Siege of Mafeking, where it seems Henderson was appointed the senior quartermaster.

However, the mention of Mafeking is always the signal that the evening is coming to an end and the little silver bell may be rung with impunity to summon Gunner Morton, the colonel’s batman. Gunner Morton will enter, come to a smart halt, salute and say, ‘Permission to transport you to your billet, sah!’

Tubs Henderson, slumped in his chair, will give the soldier a desultory salute and offer the same arm to Gunner Morton to raise him from his chair, whereupon Morton will lead the colonel quietly off to his billet, a cottage on the outskirts of the small French village of Albert, some two hundred yards from the front gates of the ordnance depot. Many a young officer summoned to the port run of an evening, unable to rise after the colonel has made his departure, has been discovered asleep under the mess table by Corporal Thomas the following morning.

With the weather outside bitter, Joshua had hoped to retire to bed early with a book and a bottle of Scotch. He makes a mental note to renew the pound note he’d slipped Corporal Thomas some weeks earlier, together with the suggestion that he go easy on serving Australian pears for dessert. With a second toast to His Majesty and the royal family and an additional one to the speedy defeat of the Hun, he waits, ruby glass in hand, for the colonel to open the after-dinner conversation.

‘I say, young Solomon, you’re a damned curious case what?’ Henderson begins.

‘Case? Curious? How, sir?’

‘Well, you’re a strapping lad, damned fine specimen, all the right qualifications, Oxford, rugby and cricket blue, not at all the type to be found in an ordnance outfit.’

Joshua, realising that, like himself, the old man is a little worse for wear, replies carefully, ‘Are you not happy with my work, sir?’

‘Good God, lad, not at all! Quite the opposite. Good heavens! You’ve done a splendid job. Splendid. Promoted to major, almost unheard of what.’

‘What is it then, sir?’

‘Young, fit officers like you don’t usually end up in an ordnance battalion. We’re a bunch of old crocks here, jumped-up senior clerks and depot men in uniform.’

Joshua smiles, unable to disagree with this assessment of the officers in the battalion. ‘Well, sir, I really can’t say. As you know, I’ve put in for a transfer to a fighting battalion every month I’ve been here.’

‘Quite right too! You deserve your chance to have a shot at the Hun. At your age I’d feel the same way, old boy.’ The colonel takes another sip from his port glass and looks up at Joshua. ‘I’ve put through your request for a transfer every time you’ve made one and, well, it’s tantamount to bumping my head against a brick wall. Damned curious what?’ He holds up his port glass and sniffs, then squints over its rim at Joshua. ‘Tell me, Major Solomon, are you being saved for something?’

‘Saved, sir? Whatever can you mean?’

‘Politics? Only son? Heir to the throne? That sort of malarky? Never come across anything like it in my life. Not British, you know. Sort of thing they do to a maharaja’s son in the Indian army. Not the done thing here.’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean, sir?’ Joshua says again, knowing himself to be tipsy and so trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Of what?’ Joshua asks, now consciously restraining his temper.

‘Well, I finally grew curious myself. Not usual to have a request refused when it’s signed by the battalion commander. Bit of an insult, actually. Slap in the face. Know a chappie in the War Office. We clerks, you know, stick together. Asked him to dig around. Came back to me all hush-hush. You’re not to be moved. Stay where you are for the duration. Nothing I can do about it, old chap. Orstralian Government. Official request to the W.O.’

This is all the confirmation Joshua needs to act and he immediately writes off to his father. In his letter he threatens Abraham, telling him that if he doesn’t have the order rescinded he’ll not return to Australia after the war, stating that he’d be ashamed to do so. He points out that his grandfather has left him sufficient funds to live comfortably in England for the remainder of his life, a prospect that would not make him unhappy. In addition he adds:

Father, please understand, this is no idle threat. While I respect you greatly, I deserve the same chance to serve my country as any private soldier and that means carrying a weapon into battle against the enemy.

If you do not see to it that my grandfather’s interference is removed I shall write to the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Bulletin. If you think you can buy their silence then I will write to the Truth, who has long waged war against our family and would relish the opportunity to run a piece as follows.

I shall tell them that while others lay down their lives for their country the rich and privileged such as me issue bootlaces and count cans of bullybeef in perfect safety five miles behind the front line.

I will not hesitate to add that I have weekend leave to Paris and a private automobile to get me there, where I have occasion to enjoy champagne suppers with beautiful young mademoiselles while my countrymen die in the mud and stench of the trenches.

Furthermore, I shall not be above using the anti-Semitic angle to all of this. ‘Rich Melbourne Jew’s son… etc’ You know how much the Truth hates Jews and niggers.

Please, Father, take me seriously in this. I have been trained by my grandfather and I will fight you the way he would have done and you may be sure I shall win.

I wish also to be transferred to the 5th Battalion A.I.F. and not the Light Horse as previously. There are sound reasons for this, the 5th contains the public school company which includes many of my friends.

Although, with the rank of major, I am more likely to command another company in the 5th, it will still be within the same battalion. When, after the war, we all return to Melbourne, it will be most useful for business purposes as all the top families are represented.

Please, I beg you, do not let me down in this endeavour, Father.

Yours respectfully,

Joshua.

Though mortified by the general tone of Joshua’s letter to him, Abraham Solomon takes his son’s threat seriously and realises at the same time that Joshua’s ruthless attitude towards him will make him an ideal opponent for Victoria when he returns to civilian life. Moreover, his transfer to the 5th Battalion, if it can be arranged, will not be an altogether bad thing. If he should return as the conquering hero with the rank of major, having faced the Boche in the trenches, it will do him not the slightest harm in the Melbourne business community. The newspapers claim that the worst of the fighting is over in France and that things are relatively quiet on the Western Front. Some sort of medal will sit nicely on his son’s chest.

Abraham is beginning to realise that Joshua will not have it all his own way when he returns to Australia. Victoria Teekleman is showing a natural aptitude for business. Increasingly she is being allowed by Hawk to do things her way and the results are impressive. The Potato Factory is growing at better than a ten per cent rate per annum so that the Tasmanian-based company will soon be more profitable than its Victorian counterpart under the Solomon & Teekleman banner.

Hawk’s granddaughter is proving to be bold but not foolish in her business ventures and Abraham is forced to admire her intelligence and application. Starting with a small woollen mill in Launceston, which Hawk had given her on her own in the first months she’d been placed under his direction, she has, in just under eighteen months, built it to a size where it is now a major supplier of blankets to the Australian army. In addition she has recently lobbied for and submitted, without any help from Hawk or himself, a government tender for the supply of army greatcoats for the troops fighting in France.

John Parkin, the permanent head of the Department of Trade and Customs, who sat in on the conference when Hawk and Victoria first confronted Abraham with Hinetitama’s shares, dropped Abraham a note after the successful contract.

Parliament House

Canberra

15th January 1916

Dear Sir Abraham,

This morning I was able to write to Miss Teekleman in Hobart to inform her that her tender for the manufacture of greatcoats for our forces abroad has been accepted by my department. While doing so I was reminded of the meeting in your office in Melbourne.