Black Diamonds (22 page)

He edges closer and says: ‘
Du bist ‘n Australier.
'

Picked me in one. Don't need German for that, but it's amazing how quick memory can work in an emergency, or in a place so far from understanding you'll grab at anything. I say: ‘
Und du bist ‘n
Fritz.'

He says, quite seriously: '
Nein. Ich bin Johan. Johan Schultz.
'

I laugh for five minutes, I swear, despite myself. And he just keeps staring, can't blame him, and he's armed all right. Everything I can see plus more no doubt. My rifle is pinned under my back, between my back and my arm. Which is wrong in every way. Pig's fucking arse. I say, for what it's worth: ‘Can you help me?
Gefallen tun …? Hilfe?
' pointing with my left hand at Stratho.

‘Ja.' He gets up and rolls Stratho off me. Unbelievable,
danke.
He says: ‘
Sprechen sie Deutsch?
'

‘No, just a bit,' I say and I let him know about the rest as I sit up.

He says: ‘
Arm gebrochen. Schlimm, ja? Das muss weh tun.
'

Hurts?
Ja.
Very
ja.
To buggery. Oh boyo, don't look at it.

Then he starts saying something else to me, but I can't understand him, apart from
heute, sterben
and
Australier:
today die Australian; which would be alarming if there was any threat in it. He's not threatening; he sounds like he's praying as he says it again; he's shaking, beyond terrified. Can't hear him above the gunning now anyway and I yell at him to write it down; at least I'll have a souvenir of this moment if I ever get out of here. He takes out a little pocket book and pencil, scribbles it down, tears off the page, then leans over and shines his torch on it for me. I read it, but I'm not sure I've got it right. I stick the paper in my top pocket, in with Francine and my compass. He says it a few more times, louder, above the artillery, to the artillery.

‘Shush,' I tell him: ‘Shut up.
Schnautze!
'He'll draw attention to us, and I'm happy here with my mates Stratho and Johan, thank you. He gets the point, and now I think I've worked out what he was saying:
Heute muss ich sterben und ich will von einem Australier umgebracht werden.
He thinks he's going to die today, and he wants to be killed by an Australian. Well, it won't be me who kills him, and not just because I couldn't hold a rifle let alone pull a trigger at the minute even if you asked me nicely.

So we just sit here for ten million years, hour after hour, as the shelling goes on and on and on. Oh Jesus. Jesus. I'm waiting for one to hit us, listening to the whistling as they come close, trying to guess where the next one will land and when this hole will swallow us. And I think I might be praying too. They reckon your life's supposed to flash before your eyes at times like these, but apart from apologising endlessly to Francine, which I've been doing for the last three weeks anyway, all I see in my mind is Pete, my big brother, saying: ‘Don't sook now, save it for Mum — do a good job and you might get the day off school tomorrow.' I was about ten, and I'd scraped half the skin off the palm of my hand, falling back into a dry creek bed, when he saw me, on his way home from work. I think that sort of memory is called wishful thinking. Did my best: but no chance Mum was going to let me off school: ‘
Glückskind — nichts gebrochen.
' Well, Mum, the arm's fairly well
gebrochen
now.

Eventually, we're not dead and the rampage above us settles right down, exhausted, and I say to Johan: ‘You want to come with me?
Kommst mit mir …?
' May as well make a run for it now.

‘Ja.' He gets up. I think he knows what I'm asking him: does he want to stay here and be killed by an Australian or get packed off to prison camp? I hope that doesn't mean the same thing; maybe he doesn't care.

‘Give me —
geben
…' Can't think of the word for rifle, never came up in conversation with Mum, so I point.

‘
Ah — Waff en,
' he says and he hands over the lot, even his frigging knife.

There's hardly anything of him he's so skinny, but he throws Stratho over his shoulder and takes him with us. I'm crawling up the slope of the hole and he says, like the kid he is: ‘
Das muss dir echt weh tun. Echt schlimm, ja?
' and reaches back to pull me to the top. I want to cry; I am hurting. Seriously, for the whole bloody lot. He can't be more than fifteen.

When we hop down into the trench, who should be there but Tommy Major Nobody. Good: let the Brits have Fritz Johan; they won't kill him — they might even give him a cup of tea if he calls them sir. I see clearly now that Tommy major's younger than me too; looks as though he's only just started shaving, but then a lot of Brits look like that, don't they. I say, dumping the weaponry at his feet: ‘Fritz is yours, but you can give James Strathlyn to the Ambulance.' And you'd better fucking organise it, you safe-and-sound fucking major fucking major piece of shit, or I'm going to come back and kill you myself. With something blunt in my left hand. Not sure if I actually said that last bit or not.

Tommy wants to ask me questions; I definitely tell him to fuck right off, tell him to speak to Duncan if he has a problem with anything. Johan's dropped to his knees now, with relief, I think, and I say; ‘
Auf Wiedersehen
.' I've had enough of this, I realise, finally. It's all over for me. I'm taking my dishonourable discharge and going home, when they let me out of prison. They won't shoot me for refusal; no one in the AIF has been shot for being a goose or a coward; in fact, never heard of anyone having been shot by AIF court martial ever. They'll just lock me up with all the others that are having problems with their behaviour. I've heard there are quite a few; more Australians than any other type of ally in military prison: we do everything in a big way.

It's just after 0300 hours, my favourite time of day, and I haven't done anything I was supposed to be doing tonight, so I start wandering off through the trenches back to the road, back to the camp. I'm so out of my mind that I don't think to hand myself in to the Ambulance and get my arm seen to, have a nice rest in dock for a few weeks or several, care of my own stupidity. It looks like it's been put on backwards, but there's no blood, not a scratch on me, and it's not hurting any more, so I don't care. Duncan was right: I don't panic for anything on the job, don't miss a fucking duckboard, I know so clearly where I'm going, but I am definitely insane.
Saublöd.
It's not shellshock; I'm not shaking, not now; it's just me. Broken in half, mission complete. I couldn't hold one full thought in my head right now if my life depended on it. It occurs to me that my life probably does depend on it, and I have a laugh at myself as I hit the road.

It's just on dawn when Duncan catches up to me, as I'm nearing Albert. I can hear him yelling, ‘Ackerman! Ackerman!' as in stop this minute you idiot, fifty or sixty yards behind me. But he can talk to me when I sit down again, when I get to the huts in camp. Got to get my kit, my letters from France are in there, and I'm cold, I need her jumper, so I'm ready for when they take me to the lockup. I'm not stopping here. Besides, you never know who's lurking around Albert; it's not a good place to stop. So I'm not stopping. Not for anything.

But I am apparently.

I can hear it coming under the buzz of the aeroplanes. The whistle sails through the air. I stop, but I am that confused I don't take cover. I just stand there as it hits the ground in front of me. Not exactly, but near enough is good enough to do the job.

 

 

FOUR

AUGUST 1916–DECEMBER 1917

 

DANIEL

‘Just keep quiet and be still, will you,' Duncan is saying. He's pulled me into the ditch and is trying to stop the bleeding with the towel from his pack. I'm not mad any more but I'm not cooperating either. I can hear France screaming inside my head, like she did that night her father died, and I am matching her for breath and volume. I started up as soon as I saw the size of the hole in me and kept going as Duncan started pulling out the khaki and pouring iodine in it, pushing the inside of me back down. Even though we've all seen something like this before, it's a bit different when you're looking at your own; there are some things about the way you're made that you really don't want to know. I wish I didn't know, too, that a hole like this means you bleed to death fairly quickly or die of shock before anyone can do anything for you. I'm not keen on either of these, but I shut up now; try to: Dunc looks like he knows what he's doing, and he's just doing it anyway.

He's already sent off for me to be collected, and now he's shoving a piece of wood between my legs, looks like a bit of window frame, and he's tying them together with a length of rope. Always hated carrying rope in my pack: it's heavy and never long enough to be useful for anything. Dunc's found a use for it, though: an extremely painful one. Then he picks up my arm, says ‘For God's sake, Ackerman,' strapping it to my side with my belt and I don't know what pain is any more. It's a whole new world in itself. Special one, just for me.

Dunc says, ‘I'll speak to you later,' and the last thing I see as I'm carried off is Madonna and her baby, still hanging on over the road. I want to know if I have a son or a daughter. I'm not going to die. Not like this. France is just blinking at me now, and I'd very much like to pass out.

The last thing I hear is Dunc yelling out: ‘Stop.' A motor turning over. An argument. And I'm on the back of a lorry. An empty ammo truck, I think. At the first jolt I would start screaming again if I could understand anything.

 

FRANCINE

Postman comes. My old friend Mr Symes delivers it personally. At first I think they've made a mistake because it says
Sgt D Ackerman.
Sgt is a sergeant. They've got the wrong man. But they don't, I know. And even though I know, it still takes a small eternity to believe it.

It says
gravely injured.
What does that mean? What does
shrapnel wounds right leg/hip, fractures femur & pelvis
mean?
Dear Madam:
it's a warning. But I'm oddly thrilled. He's alive. Because this is not a pink death telegram delivered via parish priest; this is a white letter, a slow white letter from Victoria Barracks. Which might mean he's toughed out
gravely
for weeks already. No pink telegram to tell me otherwise. Gravity rushes through me with every breath, but I can't help trembling with relief. Little Daniel smiles in his basket as I peer in at him: ‘Dad's all right.' Of course he is.

Louise is in town shopping and Sarah is at her house now; I'll keep this to myself till I know for sure.

Lots of apples still left to bag and with every one I take out of the tubs in the shed I make a wish. Pretend that my thoughts can reach him, have reached him, will make him well. Not too well, though. I want him to come home. Unfit for service. Now. Grave battle wounds mean amputations, though, don't they? I'm not silly, and I haven't failed to notice the increase in advertisements for prosthetic limbs over the past year. I don't want them to have cut his leg off, but if they have, they have, and it means he can come home. How do you amputate a hip, though? Oh God. I wonder how many women are praying that their husbands and sons are merely crippled today — not too badly, but just enough. Thousands probably. This war is warping the fabric of everything.

The letter also said in handwritten scribble beneath typed warning that he'd been recommended for some award, for doing something or other with a gun
under bombardment.
I don't doubt Daniel's bravery, but that doesn't sound right: he was supposed to be digging holes, and he has an aversion to firearms. But what would I know? Then again, maybe they say things in these slow white letters and pink telegrams to make you think your dearest was a hero, to soften the blow. Maybe more so now than ever: I think the whole country is in shock at the numbers lost in France, but Billy Hughes is going to hold a referendum on conscription, to change the constitution to force All Our Boys to serve overseas. After all, at the bottom of the letter, in big bold type are the words:
IT BEING CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD THAT IF NO FURTHER ADVICE IS FORWARDED THIS DEPARTMENT HAS NO MORE INFORMATION TO SUPPLY.
Perhaps that can be interpreted as: DON'T DARE ATTEMPT TO SEEK THE TRUTH. Maybe no one's getting pink telegrams now, maybe Daniel's not even … Maybe, Francy, this war is warping your brain. Billy Hughes might be the prime minister, and he might look like a troll and act like a troll, but he couldn't make the army lie, could he. And half the Labor Party is against him and conscription. Bishop Mannix has promised thunderbolts if the referendum goes ahead.

Daniel also has
fractures right arm
, and the address given for the hospital in France was quite plain. Get back to counting apple wishes against miserable facts.

Please God, if you let Daniel survive, I will eat dirt for the rest of my life. I will sell my half of the Wattle smack on the third of May next year, my birthday, and I will give the money to the miners, pay off our greedy capitalist debts in capfuls of cash. My Daniels can live on apples and potatoes and my love. Please. But why would God listen to me and my impossible promises? I haven't kept my last one: Little Daniel will not be raised a Catholic: Big Daniel will have been through enough without coming home to discover his son is a Certified Mick.

No. Sensible, higher thought: if he survives, I know I'm not going to get the very same Daniel back, but the wish I make the most is that there is just enough. That'll do. That's reality. But as much as I can, I'll try to keep that to myself too: keep believing that my wishes make a difference.