In a Flanders village square, not far from the hotel that was serving as the headquarters of the AIF’s 13th Brigade, of which the 52nd Battalion was a part, Frankie Pickles and Taz Dutton came to attention in front of a group of Australian officers, and saluted. Both young soldiers were nervous. Out of the blue, they’d been ordered to report to their battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel John Whitlam. They were terrified that the secret they shared had somehow been discovered and that they were about to be sent home.

‘These are the two I was telling you about, Colonel,’ said Lieutenant Blair, the pair’s platoon commander.

‘Don’t look so terrified, lads,’ said the tall colonel, who, although he was only thirty-seven, was already going grey. Smiling, he added, ‘I’m not going to eat you.’

‘No, sir,’ Frankie responded. ‘I mean, yes, sir.’

Whitlam chuckled to himself. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘Just the opposite. I wanted to commend you on the cool-headed way you helped dig out your fellow soldiers the other day. Lieutenant Blair was full of praise for the pair of you.’

Frankie beamed. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said with relief. ‘It was nothing, sir. All in a day’s work, sir.’

‘Very good. Keep up the good work.’ The colonel turned to the lieutenant. ‘I think we’d better give them both a stripe, Blair. We need cool-headed non-coms.’

Lieutenant Blair nodded approvingly. ‘You must have read my mind, sir. I’ll put it through right away.’ Looking at Frankie and Taz, he said, ‘Carry on, Lance-Corporal Pickles and Lance-Corporal Dutton.’

Frankie and Taz looked at each other in amazement, then broke into wide grins.

‘Thank you, sir!’ they said together.

After exchanging salutes with the officers, the pair swung on their heels and marched away.

‘What do you think about that, Tazzie boy?’ said Frankie, once they’d rounded the corner of a church and were out of sight and earshot of the officers. ‘We’re lance-corporals. Non-commissioned officers. We can give privates orders! And we get an increase in pay.’

Taz was shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe it, Frankie. I was sure they were going to kick us out of the battalion.’

They were feeling pretty pleased with themselves when they arrived back at the collection of tents on the village outskirts that made up their company’s latest behind-the-lines quarters. With a stripe on their arm, they would now be the same rank as the obnoxious Rait the Rat. Or so they thought.

When they found Rait waiting for them, Taz noticed that he was sporting a newly sewn second stripe on the arms of his tunic. Now a corporal, he was still superior to Frankie and Taz.

‘What did Jockey Blair and the old man want you for?’ Rait demanded, standing in front of them with his hands on his hips.

‘He said we’re both going to get a medal,’ Frankie lied, ‘for digging you other blokes out the other day.’

Rait frowned. ‘A medal? What sort of a medal? You’ve got to do something brave to get a medal, and there’s nothing brave about slinging sodding dirt.’

‘Frankie’s pulling your leg, Corporal,’ said Taz. ‘We’re both being promoted to lance-corporal.’

Rait’s face clouded over. ‘Colonel Whitlam’s giving you two a stripe? The man must have a screw loose! You two brats? Non-coms?’

‘The colonel can see that we’re full of potential,’ said Frankie, with a wink in Taz’s direction.

‘I can see that you’re full of bulldust, chum!’ Rait retorted. ‘Just don’t act the smart alec with me – either of you – or you’ll come a bleeding cropper!’ With that, he stormed away.

‘Why’d you tell him we weren’t up for medals, Taz?’ Frankie asked, as they watched Rait depart. ‘I had the bugger going there for a while.’

‘Lies don’t get you anywhere, Frankie. I try to stick to the truth.’

‘Well, lies got us both into the AIF, didn’t they?’

Taz looked guilty. ‘Yes, but there was a good reason for that . . .’

‘And there was a good reason for having on Rait the Rat – to take him down a peg or two.’

 

The next day, a quartermaster-sergeant gave Frankie and Taz a cloth stripe each. But they didn’t have time to sew them onto their tunics before they had to join their compatriots for the march back to the front.

The 52nd moved up to occupy reserve trenches not far from where the battalion had been stationed when much of Frankie and Taz’s platoon were buried by a bombardment. There, in the reserve trenches behind the front line, the men of the 52nd would sit and wait for something to happen.

If the Germans attacked here, the men in the reserve trenches would be sent forward to support those in the front line. All the talk behind the lines had been of the German Spring Offensive, which had been launched on the morning of 21 March, in the Somme region of eastern France. They all expected that sooner or later the Germans must also launch a full-out attack here in Flanders. But all Frankie and Taz were destined to see for the next few weeks were trench walls.