leeches. So far, while neither soldier had been bitten by a venomous sea-snake or spider, both had lost a lot of blood to the many leeches that attached themselves to their skin under the water or after falling from the branches or palm leaves above them.
‘My eyes are all swollen,’ Red complained. ‘I can hardly see a thing.’
‘Your lips are all swollen as well,’ Shagger replied, ‘but you still manage to talk.’
‘I’m just trying to keep your pecker up, Sarge.’
‘With whinges and moans? Just belt up and keep wading. We’ll get there any moment now and then you can do a bit of spine bashing’ – he meant have a rest – ‘and tend to your eyes and other swollen parts, including your balls – if you’ve got any, that is.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Red said with feeling. ‘My memory doesn’t stretch back that far.’ He had served with Shagger in Borneo, and formed a solid friendship that included a lot of banter. He felt easy with the man. But then, having a philosophical disposition, he rubbed along with most people. ‘Actually,’ he said, noticing with gratitude that the water was now below his waist, which meant they were moving up on to higher ground, ‘I prefer this to Borneo, Sarge. I couldn’t stand the bridges in that country. No head for heights, me.’
‘You did all right,’ Shagger said.
In fact, Red had been terrific. Of all the many terrifying aspects of the campaign in Borneo, the worst was crossing the swaying walkways that spanned the wide and deep gorges with rapids boiling through bottlenecks formed by rock outcroppings hundreds of feet below. Just as in New Guinea, the jungles of Borneo had been infested with snakes, lizards, leeches, wild pigs, all kinds of poisonous insects, and even head-hunters, making it a particularly nightmarish place to fight a war. And yet neither snakes nor head-hunters were a match for the dizzying aerial walkways when it came to striking terror into even the most courageous men.
The walkways were crude bridges consisting of three lengths of thick bamboo laid side by side and strapped together with rattan – hardly much wider than two human feet placed close together. The uprights angled out and in again overhead, and were strapped with rattan to the horizontal holds. You could slide your hands along the holds only as far as the next upright. Once there, you had to remove your hand for a moment and lift it over the upright before grabbing the horizontal hold. All the time you were doing this, inching forward perhaps 150 feet above a roaring torrent, the narrow walkway was creaking and swinging dangerously in the wind that swept along the gorge. It was like walking in thin air.
Even worse, the Australians often had to use the walkways when they were making their way back from a jungle patrol and being pursued by Indonesian troops. At such times the enemy could use the walkways as shooting galleries in which the Aussies made highly visible targets as they inched their way across.
This had been the experience of Shagger and Red during their last patrol before returning to Perth. Their patrol had been caught in the middle of an unusually high walkway, swaying over rapids 160 feet below, while the Indonesians unleashed small-arms fire on them, killing and wounding many men, until eventually they shot the rattan binding to pieces, making the walkway, with some unfortunates still on it, tear away from its moorings, sending the men still clinging to it screaming to their doom.
Shagger, though more experienced than Red, had suffered nightmares about that incident for weeks after the event, but Red, with his characteristic detachment, had only once expressed regret at the loss of his mates and then put the awful business behind him. And though, as he claimed, he had no head for heights, he had been very courageous on the walkways, often turning back to help more frightened men across, even in the face of enemy fire. He was a good man to have around.
‘The ground’s getting higher,’ Shagger said, having noticed that the scummy water was now only as high as his knees. ‘That means we’re heading towards the islet marked on the map. That’s our ambush position.’
‘You think we’ll get there before they do?’ Red asked.
‘Let us pray,’ Shagger replied.
As he waded the last few hundred yards to the islet, now visible as a mound of firm ground covered with seedlings and brown leaves, with a couple of palm trees in the middle, Shagger felt the exhaustion of the past five days falling upon him. Three Squadron SAS had been sent to New Guinea to deploy patrols through forward airfields by helicopter and light aircraft; to patrol and navigate through tropical jungle and mountain terrain; to practise communications and resupply; and to liaise with the indigenous people.
For the past five days, therefore, the SAS men had sweated in the tropical heat; hacked their way through seemingly impassable secondary jungle with machetes; climbed incredibly steep, tree-covered hills; waded across rivers flowing at torrential speeds; oared themselves along slower rivers on ‘gripper bar’ rafts made from logs and four stakes; slept in shallow, water-filled scrapes under inadequate ponchos in fiercely driving, tropical rainstorms; suffered the constant buzzing, whining and biting of mosquitoes and hornets; frozen as poisonous snakes slithered across their booted feet; lost enormous amounts of blood to leeches; had some hair-raising confrontations with head-hunting natives – and all while reconnoitring the land, noting points of strategic value, and either pursuing, or being pursued by, the enemy.
Now, on the last day, Shagger and Red, having been separated accidentally from the rest of their troop during a shoot-out with an enemy column, were making their way to the location originally chosen for their own troop as an ambush position, where they hoped to have a final victory and then get back to base and ultimately Australia. After their long, arduous hike through the swamp they were both exhausted.
‘I’m absolutely bloody shagged,’ Red said, gasping. ‘I can hardly move a muscle.’
‘We can take a rest in a minute,’ Shagger told him. ‘Here’s our home from home, mate. The ambush position.’
The islet was about fifty yards from the far edge of the swamp they had just crossed, almost directly facing a narrow track that snaked into the jungle, curving away out of sight. It was along that barely distinguishable track that the enemy would approach on their route across the swamp, but in the opposite direction as they searched for Shagger’s divided patrol, which had undoubtedly been sighted by one of their many reconnaissance helicopters.
Wading up to the islet, pushing aside the gigantic, bright-green palm leaves that floated on its miasmal surface, Shagger and Red finally found firm ground beneath them and were able to lay down their SLRs and shrug off their heavy bergens. Relieved of that weight, they clambered up on to the islet’s bed of brown leaves and seedlings, rolled on to their backs and gulped in lungfuls of air. Both men did a lot of deep breathing before talking again.
‘Either I’m gonna flake out,’ Red finally gasped, ‘or I’m gonna have a good chunder. I feel sick with exhaustion.’
‘You can’t sleep and you can’t chuck up,’ Shagger told him. ‘You can chunder when you get back to base and have a skinful of beer. You can sleep there as well. Right now, though, we have to dig in and set up, then spring our little surprise. Those dills, if they get here at all, will be here before last light, so we have to be ready.’
‘Just let me have some water’, Red replied, ‘and I’ll be back on the ball.’
‘Go on, mate. Then let’s get rid of these bloody leeches and prepare the ambush. We’ll win this one, Red.’
When they had quenched their thirst, surprising themselves by doing so without vomiting, they lit cigarettes, inhaled
