Read Online The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth - Free Book Online

you want for it?’ asked Pez.
    â€˜One and six,’ said the native carefully. He pronounced it one and sick’ss.
    Pez dug into his pocket, pulled out some coins, and offered him a shilling, a threepence and three pennies. The native shook his head: ‘One and sick’ss.’
    â€˜He wants the right coin, I suppose,’ said Janos. He pulled out a zac and tossed it to Pez.
    Pez showed the man the coins—the shilling and sixpence. He nodded and proffered the bird.
    â€˜Wait a bit,’ said Pez. He went and plucked a large green leaf and took the bird on it. The native picked up his bamboo and set off after the others with long, stubbornly strong strides. He clutched the coins tightly in one hand.
    Janos cursed and abandoned his attempt to knock a green coconut from the palm by hurling stones at it.
    â€˜Hey!’ he said to the big bronzed native boy who had watched his efforts for some time with a quizzically philosophical look. ‘Hey, what about shooting up the tree and getting a coconut for me, mate?’
    The boy looked at him and grinned without answering. He was a big fellow with a graceful, proud body, a spotless scarlet lap-lap twisted around his waist and a scarlet hibiscus tucked in his crinkly black hair.
    â€˜Hmm,’ thought Janos. ‘Doesn’t speak English, eh.’ He tried to recall what little pidgin he’d picked up from conversations.
    â€˜You fellow,’ he began, uncertainly but beguilingly. ‘Catchem coconut belongem me.’
    He paused expectantly. But the boy just grinned at him.
    Janos gestured dramatically to the boy, the tree and himself and tried again: ‘You fellow catchem coconut belongem me—me fellow givem cigarette. One cigarette—two cigarette—three cigarette,’ he coaxed, carefully raising three fingers in turn. ‘Go up along tree, catchem coconut bringem me.’
    But the boy just grinned.
    Then, just as Janos, desperately, was about to try again, the boy spoke. Perfect colloquial English, with a slight American accent: ‘I really wouldn’t eat them yet—they’re too goddam green,’ he said. And walked away.
    â€˜Christ,’ said Janos, retailing the story with great delight. ‘I could have belted him in the teeth! There’s me battling with the pidgin—trying to get him up the tree after the coconuts and after all that, he turns to me and says, “I really wouldn’t eat them yet—they’re too goddam green.” ’
    Nearly six weeks we had been here now…six weeks of nerve-tightening expectancy and subtle shaping of the mind for battle and hardening of the body for the track.
    We crowded round the sand table with the country sculpted out in miniature and the ‘I’ Officer gave us the disposition of our own and the enemy forces—reports brought in by native patrols from deep in Nip territory. There were patches of prophetic red on some of the features along the toy shore. We were to know them in time—Bayonet Ridge and that dark gulch where Slapsy Paint would lie dying in front of us through the long agony of a dying day.
    We attended lectures on malaria control, hygiene in the jungle, scrub typhus.
    Over the road, ‘A’ Company showed they had learned their lessons well and were prepared.
    They had a new sergeant major—a pukka, spit-and-polish type—who had decided to come and get himself a bit of combat glory before the war ended after spending the first four years of it at Duntroon frightening would-be officers.
    He tried to pull his Duntroon stuff on ‘A’ Company. They warned him several times, but he took no notice. Then one night they caught him in the dark and beat him up. They knocked him down and then kicked him about a bit.
    Not very pretty—but it showed that the boys were ready for the trail. This wasn’t a pretty business.
    Connell called a battalion parade.
    When all the companies were