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

drawn up on the sandy square he took over without ceremony and stood them easy.
    â€˜Now keep quiet and listen,’ he said.
    They slouched, leaning on their rifles, and tipped their hats forward to shield their eyes from the glare of the sun. Connell walked slowly up and down in front of the slouched jungle green ranks—turning a little from side to side to include them all as he spoke.
    â€˜I want to talk to you, men,’ he said. ‘This is the last time I will talk to you all together before we go into action. It will be the last time I’ll talk to some of you—before we finish this show, a lot of you will be dead.’
    â€˜Cheerful bastard,’ grunted the Laird.
    â€˜There have been a lot of rumours around that the Nip was starving, that he was disorganised, that he had no arms or ammunition.
    â€˜I have instructed my officers to tell you, and I give you my own word now, that such is not the case. Some scattered members of his force may be starving and unarmed; but the great mass of his army is intact, well fed and well armed. They have nowhere to retreat to except the jungle and you will find them a desperate and skilful and completely savage foe.
    â€˜We are going to search out this enemy and destroy him! And, in order to do that, we must be more cunning, more skilful, more enduring and more savage than he is himself.
    â€˜I don’t know what you have been taught in the past, but as far as I am concerned, you can forget what they call the “rules of war”. The little yellow bastard knows no laws of decency, or humanity. We’ll have no time to take prisoners—destroy them where you find them in any way you can.
    â€˜This is going to be no picnic. You are fighting through some of the worst terrain in the world and fighting the most savage foe in the world. A lot of you are going to die, but this battalion, if I have anything to do with it, is going to be the best battalion in the divvy.
    â€˜I think it’s the best battalion in the divvy at the moment—and it’s going to stay that way if I have to kill three-quarters of you to do it.
    â€˜This is a hard game and you’ve got to be bloody hard to play it. I won’t ask any man to go anywhere I won’t go and I expect every man to follow me to the end.
    â€˜Any man who hasn’t the guts to go the full distance can take his pack and go now—I don’t want him with me.
    â€˜The only thing I can promise you is blood and guts—and I want to see more of the Nips’ than your own. I can promise, too, that you will eat more regularly this time than you did in the Owen Stanley campaign—there’ll be no ten men to a tin of bully beef a day this time.
    â€˜That’s all I’ve got to say—except to wish you Good Hunting.’
    Janos’ voice fell clear and casual through the parade: ‘When do we go, sir?’
    Connell looked straight at Janos a moment. ‘I don’t know—but it won’t be long.’
    A challenge had been noted and remembered.
    As we marched back to our tents, Deacon was murmuring with mild inanity: ‘Before our wedding day, which is not long…’
    â€˜What the hell’s that?’ says Fluffy.
    â€˜ Prothalamion. I think.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song…’

3
    Remember, we played poker a lot—hour after hour the greasy broads fluttered over the blanket. You could lose yourself. There was no need to think and the money didn’t matter much, whether you won or lost—this was no time to think about money.
    The brain could not be shaken with vague fears—you could lose yourself in the calculation of two pairs with the chance of filling or the chance of buying a gutzer straight.
    â€˜Never try and buy the middle pin to a straight,’ Dick the Barber used to say. ‘There’s men walking around today with the arse out of their strides