The field telephone rang and it was Billy Bugg.
“Rex the Yanks are going to blow up a viaduct lets go have a look!”
“Whereabouts?”
“Up the line a bit, they’re going to wait for a train to come then boom!!!!”
“So behind Jerry’s lines?”
“Yep I have a jeep”
What could possibly go wrong? He picked me up from the ruins of the station and we made our way north.I don’t know how Billy got his hands on jeeps, leave passes, dates with nurses but he had a gift for some things. Bloody Willys Jeep battered but running and “requistioned” from some Yanks, over a card game no doubt.
We headed north in the morning air, following the railway line for about thirty minutes or so. The line started to climb through a gully and we swung up onto a supply road that would eventually lead up the ridge and give us a view of the viaduct and it’s impending doom.
The road and the railway followed the river, the road climbing faster than the railway, soon it was far below us.
We came to a tree dropped across the road, which was by now something of a dirt track. As the tree had completely blocked the road, tanks had gone up the bank to the right and made a new track up and around the tree.
We negotiated the detour the Jeep on a decent lean I had to hold on pretty tight with my right hand, holding myself from falling into Billy’s side. We made the turn and got back on the road again.
“Bloody bees!”
“Jesus they must have made a nest in the tree roots or something”
Bees flew past I was swatting at them, the radiator exploded, steam hissing and escaping out the front….
“Shit that’s no bees Rex! Jerry is shooting at us!!”
We threw ourselves out the jeep, Billy to the left and me to the right. We both lay as low as we could in the road side ditches.
Ahead was a German gun implacement, especially placed so they’d get a good shot at anyone slowing down as they negotiated the fallen tree. We should have known better, why the hell did I get out of bed this morning?
My hand reached for my Mausa a 12 shot pistol with one bullet up the spout. Lot of use that’d be against some Germans with a bunker full of machine guns and grenades.
I had a lot of time to think as I lay there, shitting myself.
I cursed my luck and thought about home and fishing, turning 21 on the troop ship headed for Egypt, a big adventure.
Yeah right, a big adventure indeed, Egypt that’s where it all started.
A line of guns in the desert ten miles long firing for three days straight pummeling Rommel, till we were all deaf.
The noise it’d start in the distance, boom, boom, boom, growing louder all the time until the guns near our position shook the earth and drowned out everything, drowning out thoughts of home, smashing my consciousness to a pulp.
Why the hell did I sign up for this? What was happening to those poor bastards across the river?
Four days later I found out, teams of soldiers and tankers lined up spraying fuel across the river, Gerry was sheltering in the craters left by the shelling. The flame throwers came soon after, I could hear the screams from our position.
Fuck this war, I want to get home….
We hid in that ditch all day, soon it’d be night and we might be able to sneek off back down the hill, down to the river, find the railway line hitch a ride on a train.
But night would mean Jerry might come and find us. Jesus! Billy didn’t even have a gun just a camera…….
“What the hell are you fellas doing?”
A familiar accent, music to my ears, the Maori Battalion! A Maori soldier was standing in the dusty road smoking a roll “We’re hiding from those Germans, they shot up our jeep and we’ve been hiding here all day waiting to sneek off at night” I looked up wondering how he wasn’t cut to ribbons by Jerry’s guns….
I dusted myself off and climbed out of my ditch.
He offered me a smoke and I took it “Boy they gave up the ghost ages ago, you fellas drove right past us, created a diversion I’d say. We went in around the back saw to them, the rest of the boys are mopping them up, skip sent us back to get your jeep, thought you boys had bought it”
Billy appeared looking sheepish, rubbing himself down, smacking the dust off.
“Well bugger me”
“Yeah the funny thing is, your youngest son is going to write about this stuff you know”
“Aye?”
“The young one who always writes a lot of crap. He ends up working on the railways with a guy who’s a real tear away, turns out the guy is his best mate and his dad is the commander of the Maori Battalion, James Henare”
“You what?”
“Oh nothing mate, you like that smoke? Some of the boys found a bunch of it growing everywhere, makes your rations of backy last longer. Gives you a good sleep too, makes you mellow and easier to cart around than booze. Skip doesn’t care if you’re smoking, but you sure as hell can’t drink in the middle of a battle aye?”
“Better see if we can fix your Jeep aye”
I eyed the green contents of his leather pouch and noted the pungent odour, sure enough we’d walked through fields of it in Egypt for days.
It grew like a weed back home, everywhere I emptied the bottom of the budgie cage, the stuff would be sprouting up. Some local old boys once asked me if they could take some of it, saved me chopping it down and burning it.
Once in a while we’d see it growing in Italy too. It never did anythng for me and I told that youngest kid about it all those years later….
Crash writes a river 