in the senior NCO’s mess drinking booze somehow made the time drag badly; he felt like a seasoned and prepared football player watching the game from the sidelines. And then there was his real reason for coming back, the secret motive he held for choosing to return to this place, the one that could never be satisfied by a base camp role.
His father had died during his first tour, leaving a huge gap in his life; the family unit he had loved so much, and depended upon so completely, was suddenly not the same any more. While his mother still maintained a home with his younger siblings, it was not the warm family base he had known, and Bishop felt his world had somehow changed forever. The fond memories of his simple and unfettered childhood had gone, driven from his heart and mind by the trials of this other life, created in and by war.
Cold recollections now invaded his sleep, stark images of his father’s withered body, his eyes wide in his cancer-shrunken face. Anger, confusion and bitter shock blended with the fear and clouded those eyes, until they looked like the eyes of a frightened child. His father had been a dreamer, oblivious to reality at times, but always focused on the better days that he alone saw in the future. Then suddenly, inexplicably the future was gone and the present loomed with hopeless finality.
The long sleepless nights he had spent listening to his father’s hacking cough as the cancer ate its way through his body now returned to Bishop in his dreams. He remembered those final days before beginning the last tour, how he would leave his bed to go and peer into his parents’ room in the old house. Memories of the vague forms in the bed came back to clutch his heart, ghostly shadows in the soft light of the street lamp that filtered through the window. His father would be semi-conscious, the wasted body convulsed with the deep coughs that rose up through him and burst from his mouth accompanied by phlegm and blood. Scarcely audible moans of pain escaped his dry, cracked lips between the coughs.
His mother’s body would be curled in a dark question mark of love and comfort against her husband’s side as she stroked his face. Her eyes were wide and unblinking in the darkness, two bright, glassy orbs that glistened in the gloom, her head pressed deeply into her tear-soaked pillow. The family watched painfully as the once strong and proud man succumbed to the disease that chewed away at his tissue, poisoned his blood and sapped his strength, leading him down a dark spiral of misery to certain death.
Bishop remembered his mother in the early days on the little farm where he had grown up, and the image was a far cry from the more recent one that loomed in his mind. She had loved the simple, uncomplicated bush life, and her husband and children were the centre of her world. They had been dirt poor, but having no basis for comparison, blissfully happy. His mother was always full of life — an impish smile about her mouth and amusement in her eyes — these were the images he had of her. Somehow she managed to make her husband and her nine children feel as if each of them was the only one in her care at times, and they all had a special bond of love with her.
Then the cancer came to visit the household, infecting her husband but affecting them all at the same time. Slowly the spring ebbed from her step, the light drained from her eyes and the colour was bleached from her hair. Her face became haggard, her eyes dull and flat within the lines of grief and care that appeared, almost over night, on her face. Bishop knew that every single day his father managed to add to his own life; somehow struck several days off the end of hers. But she never complained, withdrawing into herself to suffer, emerging bravely when she was needed to nurture and support her brood, steeling her heart and mind to a future she feared, but could not change.
Bishop felt hot tears well up in his eyes as he remembered those final days, how he was relieved to go off to war rather than face the hopelessness he saw in his father’s face every day. The guilt of his cowardice was hidden from others who admired his apparent courage in going off to war at such a time, but he knew the truth.
Then there was the first tour of duty and the experiences that spawned new nightmares, vivid and terrifying experiences that somehow joined with his personal pain to romp over him, to tease and taunt him as he fought for sleep each night. The Australians had what appeared to be a small role to play in the war, at least compared to the heavy fighting faced by their American allies to the north. But Bishop’s unit had been involved in a number of major actions and had suffered heavy casualties during the tour. Those bloody actions were seared into his mind, feeding a monotonous cavalcade of disturbing dreams that invaded his sleep and plagued his waking mind.
The nightmares followed a regular pattern, one that rolled through his head with a certainty that eventually made bed a place to fear. As the scenes of his dying father faded from his subconscious memories, they were replaced with a new image, that of a routine creek crossing during a monsoonal downpour in the dark brooding jungle. Bishop had argued with the officer about the folly of wading across a swollen stream without first securing the far bank, but he had been warned about his insubordination and then ordered to take his squad across first.
They were halfway across the creek when the Vietcong sprung the ambush. Secure in their bunkers along the far bank of the stream they poured fire down on the Australians, picking them off as easily as shooting fish in a barrel. Bishop took no smug comfort in the fact that he had been right about the need to secure the crossing, but he wished the officer had shared the stream with them to take a just punishment for his folly. The sudden violence of the attack had wiped out half of his squad in just a few seconds; they crumpled like ragdolls as the Vietcong bullets met them in the middle of the swirling waters.
He watched in helpless frustration as hungry bullets raised little waterspouts across the surface of the stream, dancing after his troops until they found their target; thudding into flesh and bone with a sickening sound, like a butcher chopping up a side of beef. It was an image that was seared into his soul, one that would follow him to his grave.
Somehow he had found his way under the barrage that cracked over his head, until he made it to the shelter of an overhang on the far bank. He wallowed in the water that swirled under the overhang, clinging to the root of a tree; his breath coming in great sobbing gulps which burned his lungs. But at least the overhang was hidden from the Vietcong and sheltered from the gunfire. He heard again the screams and shouts of frightened men and the deafening rattle of weapons, saw the churning waters foam pink with blood as the dead and wounded were carried downstream by the current.
One of his men had struggled towards him through the carnage, his eyes wide with fear, his mouth working silently behind the noise of battle. The man reached out his hand for support, Bishop felt the touch of clammy skin, and then hot rounds from an AK47 began hammering into the man’s body. Surprise and confusion suddenly mixed with the fear until the death mask slid across his features. Blood welled from his mouth, eyes and ears; then he slipped under the water and was gone.
Then the nightmares would shift to a new scene, the bad dreams moving from plot to plot, like the trailers of a movie. Bishop was in an American helicopter, sharing the dawn sky with a dozen other craft as they skimmed across the humid landscape at the level of the treetops. His chopper suddenly swooped on a wide clearing, a disused paddy field somewhere deep in the featureless jungle. The side gunners opened up as the choppers slid below the tree line, saturating the jungle fringe with bullets to ward off any lurking Vietcong. The practice was designed to give some comfort and protection to the infantry soldiers who would soon disgorge from the aircraft and melt into the undergrowth to begin another patrol.
The chopper was still a foot from the ground when Bishop saw the crewman mouthing the order for them to get out. He signalled to his men and rolled from the hovering craft as the gunfire started up from the tree line. The side gunner was torn apart from the first burst and Bishop saw several of his men get hit and sprawl in the long grass of the paddy field. The stricken chopper somehow struggled form the field like a wounded pelican, with the dead gunner hanging limply from his harness.
Bishop
