My war won first in the emerging writers section of the Henry Lawson Literary Awards at Gulgong in June 2012

My War

I am warm and comfortable, floating without effort. Sounds are soft and muted. There is an overpowering sense of peace. I can see a blue sky with hazy clouds.

       ‘How are you Mate?’ An unrecognised face appears in my line of view. It is a young face, smeared with mud. The expression is sympathetic and the eyes show a measure of concern.

‘I’m fine.’ I have difficulty making my throat work. A guttural grunt rolls through my head.

The face disappears from my vision. My head is lifted slightly and something soft placed under it. My line of vision now included the branches of a tree somewhere in front of me. They wave in the breeze but they are not clear. They are fuzzy, as if I am looking through a poorly focussed binocular. I blink. The fuzziness remains.

‘Just rest for now!’

 The sun passes slowly above the branches and the light strobes down through the fluttering leaves. The bright, flashing light triggers a memory deep in my subconscious.

            To the right, mortars are firing into the morning sun. The staccato crackle of machine gun fire fills the air. Lines of tracers are visible arcing out into the distance ahead. I am at the front edge of the trench watching the scene across no-man’s-land to the enemy position. The man next to me props his rifle against the earth bank and lights a cigarette. As the smoke rises languidly to the top of the bank, it dissipates in the early morning breeze.

The lieutenant raises his sword. As he brings it down it flashes in the sunlight. He screams ‘Charge!’

There is no time to think. As one, the men of the Company leap over the trench and onto the flat ground. I am running as fast as I can over the muddy, slippery surface.

            My left arm feels numb. It is partly across my body and I can feel the material of my webbing belt around my waist. I move my hand across to the centre where the shiny brass buckle should be. All I can feel is the frayed end of the belt.

‘Don’t move Mate! They’ll be here for you soon.’

With a great effort I turn my head to the left, where the voice had come from. I can vaguely make out his shape, squatting on his heels beside me in the mud. As I move, my body shudders with agony. The excruciating pain is shooting through my right side. My agonised scream comes out as a gurgling screech.

            ‘I’ve got one shot of morphine left. You’d better have it now.’

I feel him gripping my left arm. There is a small sting as the needle enters below my shoulder. The feeling of euphoria sweeps over me again and I feel contented lying in the mud. The pain has gone.

            As the soldier moves back to his squatting position, a flash of sunlight reflects off his belt.

 I keep running, keep firing. Men are falling and screaming all around me. I look left and right. A machine gun off to my right is decimating our troops.

‘C platoon! Form on me!’

 ‘We need to knock out that machine gun!’ the sergeant said as we gather around him in a shell crater.

‘I can traverse across to the right flank and take it out!’ I say with bravado, still on an adrenalin high from the all-out charge across no-man’s-land.

 “How are you feeling, son?’

I recognise the Red Cross symbol on his collar.

‘I feel really good buddy!’ My mind is in much better shape than my voice. A series of grunts and gurgles roll around in my head. Why can’t I speak? I move my right hand up towards my throat. The nerves tell me that my hand is there but I cannot feel anything.

‘Take it easy son!’ I felt my left hand being restrained.

‘We’ll get you onto this stretcher and get you out of here!’

I feel hands around me. I feel a sucking sensation as I am lifted out of the mud. An agonising pain shoots through my right side. I gurgle again as another needle penetrates my left arm.

I reache the right flank of the machine gun post. I watch the team loading new belts of ammunition into the gun. The gunner trains it on our approaching troops. B Company is almost annihilated.

Using the edge of a crater as a rest, I raise my Lee Enfield and with one shot, take out the gunner. There is panic around the gun. I lever another round into the breach and take out a second soldier. I keep loading and firing until there is no more movement in the gun post. I hear an incoming shell, then blackness.

I am lifted onto the stretcher.

I feel the stretcher lurching as I am carried to a waiting helicopter. Through the blur caused by the medication, I can hear voices as I drift in and out of consciousness.

‘Is this one really worth it?’

‘Hey man, every one alive is worth it!’

My right side has been bandaged and strapped. My head is in a brace that keeps it immobile, I am looking straight up.

‘His right side is almost destroyed!’

They are not talking about me are they? There must be others on the helicopter.

‘What about my throat?’ I scream. Nothing comes out. I have no throat. I have no right arm. I have no right leg! Breathing is getting harder.

My mind is still working. Has Sally been told? The baby should be close now. I was home on leave eight months ago. Her first letter gave me the good news. This is my last tour. I’m getting out next year!

            It was a year later that a ceremony was held. Sally and her year old son attended. She was presented with the medal, posthumously awarded to her husband, for meritorious service.

Grandpa’s Bull

The afternoon peace was shattered. The car swung into the driveway like it was coming off the main straight at Bathurst. There was a cheeky toot-toot from the horn. The back doors flew open and my grandchildren came out at a gallop. Six year old Sally was in the lead, legs almost a blur in her haste. ‘Grandpa, Grandpa!’ Her high-pitched voice penetrated the air like a siren and made my ears ring. Not far behind was little Micky. Two years old and feet not yet fully coordinated. He was not helped by the latest fashion in long shorts, elastic waist up under his armpits and legs that terminated just above his ankles. I really love to see them. They’ll be gone in two days, Aaah! The involuntary sigh escaped.

They hit me like rugby tacklers, grabbing me around the legs. I stooped to give them a hug. ‘Come on kids, put grandpa down and get your things from the car!’ My daughter put her arms around me and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘It’s lovely to see you again, dad and great to get out of the city for a while.’ Son-in-law John reached the step, dropped one suitcase and stuck his hand out. ‘G’day old fella. How’re you going?’ I shook his hand and we all went inside to the kitchen where Allison was up to her elbows preparing a gourmet dinner. ‘Mum, you shouldn’t be doing this. We could have picked up a takeaway on the way in!’

John stood back a little self-consciously. ‘Want a beer mate?’ His face lit up as I took two from the fridge and passed one to him. We moved to the lounge and left the women to sort out the food and the kids. ‘Good trip?’ I asked as we settled down into facing armchairs. ‘It was the usual for a long weekend. The traffic was heavy coming out of the city, but it got better when we got into the country!’ I switched on the television to get the late afternoon news. There were shots of all the arterial roads out of the city, with the vehicles almost at a stand-still. I’m really glad we live in the country.

Dinner was the usual circus. Some got eaten, some got left – but nobody starved. ‘Okay kids, it’s time for bed! Karen tried to round up Sally and Micky. Sally was kneeling on a chair at the table. ‘No. No. It’s story time.’ Micky’s echo came from under the table. ‘Storly time!’ Sally took control. ‘Grandpa you tell us a story!’ That little echo came again. ‘Glanpa storly.’

‘Okay, let me tell you about when Ma and I came to Australia.’ ‘Yeah, grandpa, yeah!’ ‘Sit down quietly and we can start.’

‘A long time ago…’ ‘How long ago?’

‘Many years ago in 1968.  We were the last of the ten pound poms.’ ‘What’s a ten pound pom?’ ‘Shush Sally, listen to grandpa!’

‘When we arrived in Australia, we bought an old utility truck and went out to work on a farm about fifteen miles out from here. I was the new chum. It was a totally different world to me. I was so green, I didn’t know wheat from corn, but I learned fast. We were put up in one of the labourer’s houses on the farm. Ma was going through, checking the bedrooms when I heard the loudest scream she’d ever made. I rushed into the room expecting to see her covered in blood, or at least being attacked by something bigger than her. I found her with her back against a wall, pointing at the open wardrobe door. Inside was the biggest spider I’d ever seen. I went to the kitchen and picked up the insect spray. I gave it to Ma and she didn’t just spray it, she drowned that poor old spider.

Because I had been an engineer in the old dart, I was put to work servicing the farm machinery. Tractors, ploughs, scarifiers, harvesters and then around all the bores, pulling up the pumps and fitting new seals and washers. Ma worked around the house, looking after the two kids – your mum and your uncle. We got there in the December and the temperature was up around the 95 degrees farenheit mark. We had just come from less than 40 degrees in the south of England, so it was almost unbearable for us. The only cooking appliance in the house was a solid fuel stove. It also heated the water, so it was lit most of the time. We did a lot of living outside on the veranda, under the shade of an old pepper tree.

We were out there one day when Ma saw one of the cats stalking something across the back yard. She moved in for a closer look and saw that it was a brown snake about four feet long. She was just like a cartoon character. She jumped in the air as she turned and her legs were running before she hit the ground. The snake continued its leisurely way to the wood pile. Ma never went to get wood from that day on. I had to carry the wood for the day up to the house before I went off to work.

When the rain came, all work stopped. As soon as the soil would support the tractor, the work started. This was another new experience for me, driving the Comfort King tractor, towing a 36 tine scarifier. Ricky the young permanent farmhand and I shared the driving. Twelve hour shifts. Ricky liked to go into town in the evenings, so he took the day shift, eight in the morning to eight at night. I did the night shift, eight at night to eight in the morning. Ma would bring out my supper at about eleven and breakfast at six and I’d stop for a few minutes break.

They didn’t have air conditioned tractor cabs in those days. You sweated in the evening and then froze at night. In the morning you got down from the tractor, covered in layers of dust, looking like the bunyip that they told us lived under the bridge across the creek.

It got really boring in the middle of the night going round and round the huge paddocks. I would sing songs to myself and there are limitations to I Spy in the dark! Sometimes I could see the lights of a neighbour ploughing five miles away, but most of the time it was just me and the tractor and the scarifier. Every so often I had to stop, lift the tines and clear the weeds that had accumulated. Then it was back on the tractor, lower the tines and keep going. On one occasion, I forgot to lower the tines and they just scratched the surface until I realised what I had done. I immediately lowered them back to cutting depth and kept going. I could see the scratch marks in the rear working light, no one would know!

I was soon to learn another lesson. Farmer Dave put a mob of sheep into the freshly worked paddock. The next afternoon, I got up to see the sheep huddled together on the firm ground that I had missed last night. I got a cynical look and asked how long I had been asleep on the job.

Ma learnt to drive out there on the farm. We had a second hand Holden FB ute. It had a manual gear box, with the shift up on the steering column and a dip switch for the headlights down on the floor beside the clutch pedal. The gear box took a bit of a hammering as she ground up and down the farm tracks, but she gradually improved.

She had a few interesting experiences. One morning my breakfast was half an hour late because she got bailed up by a big goanna in the middle of the track. It just stood there staring at her.  There were trees on either side so she couldn’t drive around it and she would have needed four wheel drive to go over it. She stopped well back from it and tried using the horn to frighten it into shifting. It just stood there staring at her. Then she bravely got out of the ute, picked up a big stick and beat the ground. It just stood there staring at her. In disgust and frustration, she threw the stick at it and got back into the ute. After many more minutes, it haughtily lifted its head and slowly ambled towards the trees at the side of the track.

Another time she was driving on the farm with the two kids when a huge huntsman spider came out from under the dash board. Little Karen screamed and climbed up onto Ma and hung around her neck, effectively preventing her from driving. Kevin jumped onto the back of the seat, pressing himself against the rear window. Ma stalled the ute, opened the door and bailed out with Karen still attached to her neck. She doesn’t know how, but when she turned around, Kevin was already outside standing behind her. That day, she abandoned the ute and walked back to the house. I had to go and pick it up later.

My farm transport was a Ferguson 35 tractor. It was very basic with a small rack on the back that could be raised and lowered with hydraulics. This was normally in the raised position when travelling. This is very important because one day, it saved me from certain injury.

We got our job list from Dave each morning and this day, among the tasks was moving the bull from the home paddock to a stubble patch on the other side of the farm. Ricky had been on the town the night before, so he took one of the jobs in the shed out of the sun. He told me that moving the bull was easy. Open the gate, get on the tractor, follow the bull through the gate and shut it after he had gone through. Get ahead of the bull to the next gate and open it. Follow this procedure across the farm to the final paddock and shut the gate behind the bull. That sounded really simple.

I didn’t know anything about bulls, except that this one appeared to hate me! Every time that I got close to him, always with a fence between us, he gave me a malevolent stare, tossed his head and snorted loudly. Well, I thought the look was malevolent. In my naïvety; he may have been trying to make friends.

The first gate was easy. The bull was at the other end of the paddock; I opened the gate, got on the tractor and moved around the fence line to take up position behind the animal. He gave me that well known look over his shoulder and shambled off towards the open gate. Once through, I let him get well ahead before I dismounted and shut the gate. I then had to drive quite quickly (for a Fergy) to get to the next gate before he did. I made it with a few seconds to spare. I opened the gate, got back on the tractor and drove away from the gate to allow him to go through.

He kept moving lethargically while I circled around and shut the gate behind him. When I tried to get to the next gate, it was obvious that the bull had worked out the routine. I increased speed to go around him but he worked up to a trot and then broke into a canter, keeping one red-rimmed eye on me, as he stayed parallel to the tractor. I slowed the tractor, hoping to change the pattern, but the bull only slowed to a jog. He reached the gate first and turned, just like a beast at bay. He lowered his head and made a menacing move towards me, pawing the ground threateningly.

I stopped the tractor. What am I going to do? I could drive along the fence line, jump off the tractor, over the fence and open the gate from the other side, but then, when the bull went through, we would both be on the same side of the fence and me with no tractor! Before I could decide, the bull charged. He rammed the hard part of his head, between his horns, into the front of the Fergy. The little tractor was pushed back several feet. I saw the bull lining up for a second run. I threw the lever into reverse and accelerated backwards. Due to the movement, the second charge had a lighter impact. I felt like one of those cowardly warriors who were reputed to have tanks with one forward and six reverse gears.

I came to a stop half way back towards the gate that we had come through. The bull circled around as if lining up for a charge at the side of the tractor. He had my measure; I could not reach either gate. There was a solitary tree in the centre of the paddock. The lower foliage had been stripped by generations of cattle grazing here. I slammed the tractor into gear and headed for the tree. The bull charged in from the side. I reached the tree, jumped off the seat onto the raised platform behind me and leaped for the lowest branch. I got my right arm over it as the bull hit the side of the tractor and pushed it into the trunk of the tree. The whole thing shook and I almost lost my grip.

Scrabbling with my feet on the trunk, I hauled myself up onto the branch and sat there quivering as the bull paraded below me, tossing his head and kicking up dust with his front hooves.

So that’s how grandpa got treed by a bull!

I sat there for over an hour before Dave and Ricky came to rescue me. I thought that I would be roasted by Dave, but it was Ricky who got told off.’

“You know he’s greener than a well-watered Lucerne patch. Why did you let him do it? You know better. Get a couple of cows and the bull will walk along quietly with them. You could have got him killed – or more importantly, the bull could have been injured!”

Little Micky was sound asleep in his dad’s arms and Sally was fighting to keep her eyes open.

Karen looked across at me. ‘I’ve never heard you tell that one before, dad!’

‘No luv, I keep the best ones for special occasions. Want a beer John?’