Read Online The Easy Day Was Yesterday by Paul Jordan - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul Jordan
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worst, only lose his bedding, while everything else was still packed away. Some 20 minutes after dark we bedded down for the night.
At 5.15 am the next morning I woke and sat up. The sun would not be up for another 45 minutes, but I always seemed to wake early in the bush. It’s a good opportunity to have a bit of a listen and to adjust my eyes once again to the darkness. I’d done the same thing three times during the night and so had the other guys at different times. Slowly the remainder of the patrol began to stir and I could see them sitting up and slipping on their webbing. After a few minutes of sitting and listening, they slowly and methodically packed their bedding into their packs. Thirty minutes after first light I called the patrol closer in and said, ‘We’re never going to make it at this pace. So from here we step it out and move as quickly as we can to the ambush site.’
After breakfast we bolted for the ambush position. John set a blistering pace — well, as fast as you can go in secondary jungle — and, at the end of that that day, I was well and truly rooted. At the end of the next day both Tony and I had a bitching case of crutch rash. Having trousers that were continually wet meant some severe rubbing on the inner thighs until the skin was gone. It felt as though someone was running a blowtorch across my thighs. The worst was the local guy. He had his head down all day and just seemed content to follow and do nothing more. I had to stop the patrol more often for the local guy because I didn’t want to lose him nor did I want to embarrass him should he go down with heat exhaustion.
At the end of the fourth day we were still 4000 metres from the ambush site. We found a secure spot inside some thick undergrowth to conduct our nightly routine and sleep. After a tactical breakfast in the morning we moved off on a general bearing of 5900 mils. This would take us pretty much to a position some 200 metres to the rear of the ambush position.
Patrolling in the jungle is very slow, and covering 4000 metres in one day is unheard of, but we had to cover this, so we patrolled at a speed that was faster than I would usually be comfortable with. We’d patrolled for about an hour and just got smashed by some bloody thick jungle that was almost impenetrable. We were making too much noise trying to find a way through this wall of foliage so I stopped the patrol and told John to push forward to see whether the jungle opened up. Moments later, I’d lost sight of John, but heard him swearing and cursing. I wanted to tell him to shut up, and I moved forward, taking the patrol with me, to see what was going on. John’s cursing grew louder as I got closer to him but I still couldn’t see him, so I called to him. He replied but, to our surprise, so did someone else. We froze, wondering who the hell it was. Slowly we moved forward and the jungle opened to reveal a small cleared area where I saw John. He had dropped his pack and webbing, his weapon was on the ground, his shirt was off and his trousers were around his ankles. At the same time another Asian patrol broke through on the other side of the clearing. We all looked at one another, then the semi-naked John and then back to one another. Their once narrow eyes were now as round as dinner plates as they tried to process the sight of this naked, cursing white man in the middle of nowhere. This was beyond confusing. What the fuck was John doing and who the hell were these guys?
I heard the guys behind me laughing. I looked closer at John and realized he was pulling green ants from his hair, chest and pubic hair. In fact he had ants all over him. Obviously he’d walked under the nest in a tree and it had collapsed on him. This other patrol saw we were laughing and did the same. John eventually got all the ants off himself and we sat and had a chat with these other guys. It turned out they were a patrol from Singapore doing their officer training and had been in
At 5.15 am the next morning I woke and sat up. The sun would not be up for another 45 minutes, but I always seemed to wake early in the bush. It’s a good opportunity to have a bit of a listen and to adjust my eyes once again to the darkness. I’d done the same thing three times during the night and so had the other guys at different times. Slowly the remainder of the patrol began to stir and I could see them sitting up and slipping on their webbing. After a few minutes of sitting and listening, they slowly and methodically packed their bedding into their packs. Thirty minutes after first light I called the patrol closer in and said, ‘We’re never going to make it at this pace. So from here we step it out and move as quickly as we can to the ambush site.’
After breakfast we bolted for the ambush position. John set a blistering pace — well, as fast as you can go in secondary jungle — and, at the end of that that day, I was well and truly rooted. At the end of the next day both Tony and I had a bitching case of crutch rash. Having trousers that were continually wet meant some severe rubbing on the inner thighs until the skin was gone. It felt as though someone was running a blowtorch across my thighs. The worst was the local guy. He had his head down all day and just seemed content to follow and do nothing more. I had to stop the patrol more often for the local guy because I didn’t want to lose him nor did I want to embarrass him should he go down with heat exhaustion.
At the end of the fourth day we were still 4000 metres from the ambush site. We found a secure spot inside some thick undergrowth to conduct our nightly routine and sleep. After a tactical breakfast in the morning we moved off on a general bearing of 5900 mils. This would take us pretty much to a position some 200 metres to the rear of the ambush position.
Patrolling in the jungle is very slow, and covering 4000 metres in one day is unheard of, but we had to cover this, so we patrolled at a speed that was faster than I would usually be comfortable with. We’d patrolled for about an hour and just got smashed by some bloody thick jungle that was almost impenetrable. We were making too much noise trying to find a way through this wall of foliage so I stopped the patrol and told John to push forward to see whether the jungle opened up. Moments later, I’d lost sight of John, but heard him swearing and cursing. I wanted to tell him to shut up, and I moved forward, taking the patrol with me, to see what was going on. John’s cursing grew louder as I got closer to him but I still couldn’t see him, so I called to him. He replied but, to our surprise, so did someone else. We froze, wondering who the hell it was. Slowly we moved forward and the jungle opened to reveal a small cleared area where I saw John. He had dropped his pack and webbing, his weapon was on the ground, his shirt was off and his trousers were around his ankles. At the same time another Asian patrol broke through on the other side of the clearing. We all looked at one another, then the semi-naked John and then back to one another. Their once narrow eyes were now as round as dinner plates as they tried to process the sight of this naked, cursing white man in the middle of nowhere. This was beyond confusing. What the fuck was John doing and who the hell were these guys?
I heard the guys behind me laughing. I looked closer at John and realized he was pulling green ants from his hair, chest and pubic hair. In fact he had ants all over him. Obviously he’d walked under the nest in a tree and it had collapsed on him. This other patrol saw we were laughing and did the same. John eventually got all the ants off himself and we sat and had a chat with these other guys. It turned out they were a patrol from Singapore doing their officer training and had been in
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