The Cadet Corporal (29 page)

“Wait!” Pigsy cried.

Graham paused. “No negotiations,” he called over his shoulder. “You either obey orders or you are in deep legal trouble.”

“Bastard!” Pigsy snarled.

“Abusing me will just make it worse,” Graham said. He turned to the other members of the patrol. “Come on, let's get this over with, then we might be allowed to go on with the exercise.”

As Graham started walking Pigsy gave a strangled cry. For a moment Graham tensed, thinking Pigsy was going to attack him from behind. Instead Pigsy cried out, “Alright! I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.”

Graham turned to face him and said levelly, “I did. So, are you saying you will obey orders?”

“Yes,” Pigsy replied.

Inside Graham heaved a massive mental sigh of relief. With an effort he kept his voice level and his face stern. “Then let's get on with the patrol.”

CHAPTER 29

DECOYS

As Graham walked back to his place in the line he felt that something fundamental had changed. To be sure he was shaking with relief and his heart was hammering but deep inside he felt a new sense of certainty. ‘I can do this,' he thought. It was as though he saw the world through new eyes. ‘Pigsy and his type are just weak bullies,' he realized. ‘Even if it comes to a confrontation it is better to stand up to them than to give in.'

None of the others said anything and Graham did not want further discussion. He nodded to Halyday and Andrews and pointed the way he wanted them to go. They turned and resumed their scouting. A quick glance behind showed that the whole patrol was following. Pigsy and his mates all looked angry but there was something else. At first Graham thought they were subdued, but then he decided they were scared. ‘They know they overstepped the mark and that I have called their bluff,' he told himself.

The tactical problems of avoiding patrols from the ‘enemy' now absorbed Graham's thoughts and he scanned carefully in every direction, hoping to spot any enemy before they saw his people. When he glanced back every few seconds to check that the others were following he was continually surprised at how many people there seemed to be. For much of the time the last few cadets in the patrol were out of sight behind bushes as they snaked across the slope.

It was only then that it really dawned on Graham just how big his patrol was. He had known it intellectually from the moment he had been briefed but now it really struck him emotionally. ‘I've got eleven in my patrol, counting me,' he realized. For a while he mulled over this, then shook his head in puzzled wonder. ‘That is nearly half a platoon in size,' he thought. Most of the platoons only had about 20 in them; a HQ of 2 and three sections of six or seven.

That got him thinking. ‘We are the decoys, but why so many? And why not give the command to a sergeant or the CSM?' There were at least two possible answers. One was profoundly depressing. ‘We are all the rejects so it doesn't matter if we get wiped out. That is why we are the decoys.' The other thought only came later, that maybe Capt Conkey had enough faith in him to trust him to do a good job. After considering this Graham shook his head. ‘No, he wouldn't have broken up my good section in that case. This mob will be no loss to the company.'

The role of decoy made him angry. ‘We are the expendable pawns,' he thought, using a term Capt Conkey had employed during a history lesson. ‘While we draw the flak the good troops get through.' Looking at the route he had been told to take and the ground he was actually crossing seemed to reinforce this. The thorn bushes were becoming more scattered and he was getting long views of several hundred metres through the gaps.

‘Any enemy at the highway will see us,' he decided. That caused him to signal a halt. They had moved about 700 metres across the gentle slope and he knew the highway should be only a short distance ahead. It was twilight by this time but visibility was still quite good. Overhead the sky was darkening and the first stars were twinkling.

‘We had better find a hide till it is fully dark,' Graham thought.

There looked to be a slight dip off down to the left about fifty metres away so he moved them that way. The dip turned out to be a shallow depression that deepened very slowly as it ran off down towards the Anabranches. After following if down for another fifty paces Graham decided it was the best he would get. A small thicket of thorn trees offered some cover from the direction of the highway.

He moved the patrol in and sat them in a circle facing out. When all had arrived he said to them, “We will wait here till we hear some action before we cross the highway. No talking, no lights and no fires. Just rest.”

Even as he said this Halyday hissed and pointed up the slope to the west. Graham looked and in the gloom saw a line of cadets walking northwards across the slope a hundred metres away. Instantly he dropped to a crouch and peeked through a bush. “Down! Enemy patrol,” he whispered.

The others lay flat and Andrew felt a surge of excitement that left his heart hammering and his throat dry. His mind raced as he worried about what to do if the enemy had seen them. But the way they were walking quickly indicated that the enemy were unaware of their presence.

‘They are walking along the vehicle track heading towards the gate we came through,' Graham decided. That caused him a grim smile. ‘If we had been a few minutes later they would have spotted us moving.'

Waters poked his head up to watch and then croaked, “They are getting behind us. We will be trapped!”

“Rot! We know they are there and we will just detour around them,” Graham replied. “Anyway, we will worry about them on the way back. First we need to get to our objective.”

He waited until the enemy patrol had vanished towards the river then said, “I will do a recce with Cadet Halyday to find the best place to cross.”

The others looked at him in the dusk and no-one argued or disagreed. Graham was careful not to provoke another incident with The Four by not referring to the previous crisis. Once he was sure they understood he left Franks in charge with Bragg as sentry then set off towards the highway.

While moving up the gentle slope from the dip Graham went at a crouch but closer to the crest he went down on all fours. That was a mistake he soon learned. The ground was littered with small, sharp stones and thousands of burrs. Most were the tiny twin pronged ‘bindis', but some were the viciously sharp, three-pronged ‘goat heads'. After suffering several in his hands and one in his knee he gave up crawling and went back to crouching.

Little by little the other side of the slope became visible as he moved cautiously from tree to bush. That he was close to the highway was plain from the frequent passing of motor vehicles. Then he was able to see over the crest and stopped to observe. Halyday ghosted up to settle under cover beside him. The ground sloped away in two directions at such a gentle angle he could not see most of it. Only a few clues to the location of the highway were visible: a fence line and the flicker of passing vehicles, most of which now had their headlights on.

Away in the distance, across a wide, grassy plain was the railway bridge. A massive earth embankment led out of the distant hillside across the plain, ending in the huge concrete abutments which were his objective. From his study of the map Graham knew that from somewhere up to his right a dirt road led down from the highway across the grassy plain to the end of the rail bridge. In the twilight Graham was unable to make out any details and could not see any sign of the defenders.

‘They must be in position by now?' he thought.

Even as he did he tensed. From about a hundred metres in front of him a voice had spoken. Another answered and a third laughed. Yet another voice called angrily, “Keep your voices down. We don't want that Cairns mob to hear us.”

With a shock Graham realised there was an enemy patrol sitting along the fence. ‘If we'd kept going we would have walked right into their arms!' That was a rude shock. He breathed out then wondered where other defenders might be, and how to get across the highway. According to the map he was about 300 metres from the end of the highway bridge. ‘There will be guards there for sure,' he decided. The map also showed that the highway curved south towards the tiny settlement of Bunyip Bend. ‘Might be more at the bend,' he reasoned. That was where the dirt road to the end of the bridge branched off and it seemed a logical place to put a guard post.

Then the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Distinctly on the night air he heard voices muttering- and it was coming from behind him! ‘Bloody idiots!' he thought. An urgent desire to not get caught was mixed with anger at The Four (He was sure it was them!).

“Come on Halyday,” Graham hissed. Keeping the bush between him and the enemy patrol he hurried back across the bare, open ground. It was light enough to see where he was putting his feet, yet not dark enough to hide them from any watcher. But the noise was more of a threat. ‘Bloody fools!' he fumed. ‘Why did I have to be lumbered with them?'

Then the idea came to him. ‘We are the decoys for the company. Why don't I use them as the decoys for the patrol? That way I get rid of them and they perform a useful function at the same time!'

It had such elegant appeal, tied as it was to concepts like ‘poetic justice', that he decided to use it. But first the talking had to be stopped! Moving almost at a trot he hurried back to the dip. As he rounded the bushes Graham saw that The Four were sitting in a group to one side. The other cadets still lay facing out in pairs, as he had positioned them. Standing over them, fists on hips, he glared down at them. In the gloom he could just see their faces.

“There is an enemy patrol just over at the highway,” he said quietly but coldly. “You people should not be talking. It will give the game away.”

“Huh, that's all it is, a stupid bloody game!” Waters replied.

Graham was about to snap angrily back that it wasn't a game, but then he realised that the real issue was that his own future and promotion were bound up in succeeding. Instead he changed tack. “I don't care what you think it is, except that our unit's reputation is involved. We don't want those Heatley people jeering at us for being so useless that they can hear us coming from a kilometre away. So stop talking and don't let your mates down.”

Pigsy gave him a resentful look but said nothing. Franks looked embarrassed and Moynihan just sat in surly silence.

“So what do we do now?” Waters asked, his voice tinged with rebellion.

“We wait till it is time to cross the highway, so we co-ordinate our move with everyone else's,” Graham replied. He then crouched down and took out his pocket torch. Crouching so that the front of the tiny torch was only a centimetre above his map he turned it on. Speaking to Franks he pointed to the map. “See this vehicle track here, the one up to our right that leads down to the gate we came through? When I tell you to move I want you and these three to go up there, then along it to the highway. Cross the highway and follow this other road down to the bridge.”

“Why us? Are you trying to get rid of us?” Waters asked.

Graham met his eyes. “No. I am trying to give the patrol a better chance of winning by splitting into two groups. One of us should make it to the railway bridge.”

“There's only one bomb,” Waters pointed out.

“So write your name on the concrete with felt pen,” Graham replied. He knew they had them because they used them to mark people's faces while they were asleep.

#x201C;What if we run into the enemy?” Franks asked nervously.

“You probably will. I reckon there will be a guard post at the road junction. Avoid them and fight any others you bump into,” Graham replied.

“They might catch us,” Moynihan said accusingly.

“You are senior cadets aren't you?” Graham retorted. “So give them a good run for their money and get away.”

“What do we do after we get to the bridge?” Waters asked.

On hearing that Graham heaved a mental sigh of relief as he knew it mean they had accepted the plan. “Look for trouble. Stir the defenders up, then withdraw back to the gate at the river and wait till we arrive,” Graham replied. He then gave Franks timings to work to and again told them to spread out and be quiet. To his relief they did so without argument. Silence settled, broken only by passing cars or trucks.

It was coming up to 1900 by then and the last streaks of red had faded from the western sky. The patrol lay in the darkness in silence. With an hour to wait Graham fretted that someone would give them away but there were only a few quiet murmurs. Then distant shouting reached them on the still night air. Graham raised his head and listened.

“That's a long way away,” Halyday whispered.

“Yes, over on Bare Ridge I think,” Graham replied.

After a few minutes the faint yelling died away. Next the radio called and Graham asked Carnes what was said. “Four Platoon have just reported being ambushed by a Heatley patrol on Sandy Ridge,” he said.

“Four Platoon eh? That will hurt their pride,” he said. To himself he thought, ‘Not a good start!'

Silence again settled and he tried to rest. The sound of a train crossing the bridge carried loudly to them. Graham marvelled at how noisy it was, and how far the sound travelled. After it had gone over the next rise in the direction of Townsville relative silence again settled. This was broken at 1940 by more shouting. It was closer but still a long way away.

“That is on the other side of the river too I reckon,” Halyday said.

It was. Carnes passed on a radio report from 1 Platoon saying they had run into enemy on the road to Canning Junction near Black Knoll. That worried Graham and he wondered if Capt Conkey's decoy plan had failed. ‘They are certainly hitting us a long way out,' he thought. That got him reconsidering his own plan. After thinking it over he shook his head. It still seemed like a good idea. ‘A smaller group is easier to control and has more chance of success,' he reasoned.

At 2000 he called the whole patrol in and went over the plan a second time. They then had a drink and prepared to move. Just as Graham was about to tell Franks to take his party away there was more yelling, closer again, but still a fair way off. The shouting and ‘bang! bang !' yells went on for a good ten minutes.

It was 3 Platoon. They had encountered a Heatley patrol at the stop butts to an old rifle range on the flat between Bare Ridge and the river. As that ‘battle' died down another began, much closer and obviously in the river bed. ‘That must be 2 Platoon,' Graham thought He was right. A radio report to Coy HQ confirmed they were running into a line of enemy across the sandy river bed two hundred metres upstream from the highway bridge.