Graham stared up at the cadets in the back of the truck in horror. ‘Oh no! Sprung!’ he thought. To his relief the truck’s headlights were then switched off but the side lights were left on. Doors opened and the army drivers and two Officers of Cadets came around to the backs of the trucks. They undid the tailgates and let them down.
One of the officers pointed and bellowed at the cadets sitting in the back of the nearest truck, “Out you get! Line up over against the bank on the left off the road.”
Cadets began climbing down off the trucks and milling around, ignoring the officer’s calls to move away, while they fumbled with webbing or waited for friends. Graham watched them anxiously, his heart beating rapidly. ‘Any moment now one of them is going to walk over to this side of the road and see us,’ he thought. There were at least thirty cadets he estimated, and they had radios. ‘The mobile reserve deploying,’ he decided.
Then another idea came to him, a flash from something he had read once. ‘Now is our chance,’ he thought. Knowing that the opportunity would be gone within a minute or so he leaned over to Andrews and said, “Get up and cross the road, wait at the fence on the other side. Just walk, don’t try to sneak. Tell Halyday. Go!”
He saw Andrews’ mouth open in surprise and Graham wondered if he would muck it up by being too slow on the uptake to grasp the plan. Without waiting to see, he stood up and waved to the others beside him. “Get up! Follow me!” he called, hoping his voice would be lost in the yelling of the Heatley sergeants and corporals as they tried to sort out their sections. Graham then clambered up the bank to stand near the back of the first truck. His heart was now hammering so fast he seemed to have trouble hearing and his vision was blurred.
Looking back he was relieved to see Carnes and Bragg climbing up to join him. Then others rose and scrambled up the bank too. Graham waited till he was sure they were all up out of the ditch and then turned and walked through between the trucks. By now most of the Heatley cadets had moved to the far side and were forming up at the side of the road. In the darkness there seemed to be cadets everywhere, creating just the confusion he was now depending on.
Graham made his way past a CUO or sergeant who had a night vision device in his hand. The person was ordering a section to get in line. Graham went left around the end of the group and then climbed straight up the grassy bank beyond. At the top he paused and glanced around, noting that Carnes was still close behind him. A line of dark figures came bobbing through the faint light of the truck’s tail light, which was luckily still shielded by the lowered tailgate.
His patrol seemed to be following and that gave Graham hope. He heard an NCO call for 9 Section to follow him and saw a line of figures start moving along the side of the road past the front truck in the direction of the crest. Carnes joined Graham, who now turned and walked into the long grass on top of the cutting. Bragg and Milson scrambled up the bank to join them and he saw others were following. At that moment the tailgate of the front truck was slammed up into position and Graham glimpsed Slim as he hurried past it, right beside a Heatley officer who was helping to do the tailgate clips up.
For a second the Heatley officer glanced at Slim. A puzzled look crossed his face but he said nothing and turned to talk to the driver. Graham led the way the ten paces to the fence. As he stood up after crawling under it he saw a line of cadets climbing up the bank and moving across to the fence ten metres to his right. Not knowing the enemy plan he could only hope they would continue to think his patrol was one of theirs.
One by one his cadets crawled under the fence. Halyday and Andrews appeared at his elbow, both chuckling with excitement. Graham did a quick count and noted they were all still with him. “Get going, that way,” he said, pointing into the overgrown field beyond. This was full of long grass and thorn bushes and seemed to offer good cover. Halyday at once set off.
By then the Heatley section off to their right was also through the fence and seemed to be walking parallel to them. ‘Blast!’ Graham thought. ‘This could get awkward.’ He decided to slowly edge away on a diverging course and pointed further left to guide Halyday. At that moment there was another outburst of yelling up at the crest of the hill. The Heatley cadets broke into an excited babble and their leaders urged them to hurry. They went trampling off into the darkness in that direction.
‘That was the Decoys,’ Graham thought. That made him smile. ‘We’ve done it!’ he told himself. Jubilation welled up and he chuckled. The others were also very excited and began whispering and murmuring so he had to hiss at them to keep quiet.
Screams and shouts broke out down in the river bed a few hundred metres to the left. ‘2 Platoon trying to break through,’ Graham told himself. He heard urgent commands near the trucks and a group of Heatley cadets went trotting off down towards the bridge. Then the trucks started up and went driving off up the hill. Graham kept his patrol moving, ignoring the long grass, uneven ground and small thorn bushes.
Only when he was at least a hundred metres from the highway did he stop for a check. By then he was sure they could not be seen from the road. The headlights of a passing car showed up as no more than a few flickers of light through the thorn bushes.
“Have a drink and get your breath back,” he ordered.
“Boy! That was fun! I was sure we were caught then,” Andrews said loudly.
“Sssh! Shut up! Save the war stories for after the exercise,” Graham cautioned. But he was pleased. So, obviously, were the members of the patrol.
Except Carnes, who pointed and said, “What’s that?” Graham turned to look. It was a whitish wall with dark doorways and windows. “Just the ruins of the old meatworks,” he replied.
“Ruin?”
“Yeah a ruin. Come on, let’s get moving,” Graham replied.
They began to move to the left of the ruin, which turned out to be much bigger than Graham had thought it was. The whole place was overgrown with weeds and thorn bushes. The buildings had no roofs and most of the walls were half-tumbled down. A few still stood, with the windows and doors making spooky looking blocks of shadow. Underfoot the cadets began to encounter blocks of concrete, loose bricks, broken glass and sheets of rusty corrugated iron.
When Halyday walked onto a sheet of iron it sounded very loud and they all froze in fright. Graham had another thought. Until now his greatest fear, snakes, had not crossed his mind, but he knew that they loved to nest under old iron in ruins. “Back off and we will detour further from the ruins,” he said, but he didn’t mention snakes for fear of spooking his cadets.
Andrews achieved that instead. “Do yer reckon this place is haunted?” he asked.
“No,” Graham replied, but he still felt a thrill of fear and his heart rate increased.
“Ghosts you mean?” Carnes gasped. He stared at the shadowy ruins with wide, fear-filled eyes.
“Oh rot! Get moving Halyday,” Graham snapped angrily, but he could not stop the shiver of goose bumps which went over him.
They hurried away through the thorn bushes, banging their shins on more blocks of broken bricks and walking across another sheet of old iron in their haste. Graham found Carnes so close behind him that he kept bumping into him.
More battles in the river bed and beyond slowed them and returned their thoughts to the exercise. Graham stopped the patrol to listen and to check his watch. His radio was turned right down but he could hear snatches of orders and reports. ‘Two Platoon alright,’ he thought, recognizing Stephen’s voice a she reported to CUO Masters that he was past the highway bridge but had enemy chasing him. That made Graham feel bad as his fiend was just down to his left somewhere in the river bed. ‘But my orders aren’t to help in their battle,’ he reasoned. So he kept his patrol moving slowly forward. He didn’t want to reach the rail bridge ahead of time and he knew they had an hour to go one kilometre. From the sound it seemed there were several battles going on across the river.
“That big battle sounds like it is right back near Bare Ridge,” Halyday suggested, as a distant outburst of shouting broke out.
“Yes it does,” Graham agreed. He turned to Carnes. “Are there any reports on the radio?”
Carnes just looked at him. Graham leaned closer. “Cadet Carnes, are there any reports on the radio?”
Carnes shook his head. At first Graham thought he just meant no but then he realised Carnes did not have the radio. “Carnes! Where is the bloody radio?” he cried. Not only was the radio important for safety but Graham knew they cost a lot of money and he didn’t want to get into trouble for losing one.
Carnes suddenly burst into tears. Only after a couple of minutes of sobbing did Carnes calm down enough so that Graham could get the gist of what he was trying to say. “I left it back at the road,” Carnes said.
“Bloody hell!” Graham groaned in vexation. But what to do? Go back and get it, or go on without it? He knew he could call on his hand-held radio but also knew that because it was a ‘CB’ the enemy would almost certainly detect the transmission. After some anguished thinking he decided to go on. “We will get it on the way back,” he said. Carnes kept sobbing and that wore Graham’s patience thin. “Oh shut up for Christ’s sake! We don’t want the enemy to find us because you are making a noise.”
Carnes lapsed into shuddering, wracking sniffles. Graham noted the looks of astonished disgust and contempt on the faces of the cadets near him as they stared at Carnes. He felt that way himself but tried to hide it. He gestured to Halyday to keep moving.
Then Graham realised he had miscalculated again. ‘We are right on top of the river bank,’ he noted. He had meant to keep a hundred metres or so from it but now found they were following a fence only ten paces from the edge of the steep bank. Worse still, the ground on the right opened out to a bare, grassy field. The best option seemed to be to move among the thorn bushes on top of the bank.
To that end he had the patrol roll under the fence then begin moving slowly from bush to bush. The whole area seemed to be devoid of undergrowth and the grass had been cropped to stubble. For 200 metres they crept slowly along.
Then Graham heard what he had been dreading: movement coming the other way. He gestured them to get down but Halyday and Andrews had already done so, crawling in under thorn bushes. Graham slithered in under another thorn bush, although it seemed to be pitiful cover; too high and with bare ground under it. And goat dung! Then Carnes huddled in against him.
Ignoring Carnes Graham began to consider the options: over the bank into the thick growth of vines and thorn bushes, out into the open field, or lie still and hope. Then he realised it was too late and he was committed to the ‘lie still and hope’ option. Into view about thirty metres away had come two cadets. They were walking along beside the fence. Three more appeared behind them. They were moving slowly and obviously searching. ‘They will see us for sure,’ Graham thought despairingly. He tensed ready to ‘open fire’.
Suddenly a small battle erupted a few hundred metres to the right, on the other side of the open paddock. ‘Either the decoys or the Hutchie Men,’ Graham thought. The enemy patrol, now almost beside Halyday, went into a crouch and stared towards the sounds. Then their commander said, “Let’s
get them!”To Graham’s relief the enemy patrol stood up and ran off across the open field. Only then did Graham realise they had been on the other side of the fence. He crawled out and gestured to Halyday. “Move!” he hissed.‘There won’t be another patrol in this area for a while,’ he thought. Halyday and Anderson got up and began moving at a quick walk.
After checking the remainder of the patrol were following Graham hurried after the scouts. By then the ‘battle’ to the right had died down but there were still people yelling, apparently co-ordinating a pursuit.
Out in the darkness one of the enemy yelled, “We’ve caught one!”
‘Drat!’ Graham thought. ‘I hope whoever it is doesn’t blab his big mouth off and let the enemy know we are here somewhere.’ He tried to visualise Pigsy or Waters standing up to questioning. ‘No, it will be Franks who is the weak link,’ he decided. Not knowing who had been captured did not help. Nor did the knowledge that he had lost one of his patrol to the enemy. That hurt his pride.
Another much larger battle erupted on the other bank of the river, almost directly opposite them. Graham stopped to study the situation. He could see torches flashing and a powerful spotlight came on and swept the river bank and then the trees and sand in its bed. ‘That is the enemy HQ,’ he deduced when a vehicle’s headlights were added to the illumination. He saw tiny figures running and heard them yelling but could not tell which side they belonged to.
‘If they are ours they are in trouble,’ he considered. Then he looked around and breathed out with satisfaction. There was the rail bridge! He could see the massive concrete pylons in the sandy bed of the river and the criss-cross steel girders against the stars. ‘Not far now,’ he thought. Perhaps 300 metres he decided.
He checked his watch and saw that it was 2110. ‘Only twenty minutes to H Hour. We had better get a wriggle on,’ he thought.
He got the patrol moving, walking at a steady pace along the top of the steep bank. Down behind to his left fierce skirmishing broke out in the river bed. ‘That must be our platoon,’ he thought. It did not sound good. There was a lot of yelling and arguments and he glimpsed torches from time to time. ‘It sounds like our people aren’t even getting close to the rail bridge,’ he thought.
More running battles across the river and along the top of the opposite bank confirmed this. The most hopeful thing was there did not seem to be any more patrols in front of him. His patrol moved steadily closer to the bridge. Graham kept counting down the distance: 250 metres, 200 metres, 150 metres.
At that he stopped the scouts and went forward to them. “There are sure to be guards at the bridge so start creeping really carefully,” he whispered.
They nodded and went down into a monkey run. Graham copied them, relieved to find there did not seem to be many burrs. The other cadets followed. The scouts moved one at a time, crawling from bush to bush and Graham was very pleased with how well they did it. ‘Halyday has turned into a really good scout,’ he told himself.
They came to an area where the thorn bushes thinned out. A few cattle pads went down through the thicket towards the river bed. For a moment he considered going down one, in the hope that the cover might be better. He decided not to. ‘We might clash with our own platoon,’ he thought. He hurried the patrol across the open areas. After that the thorn bushes grew in a real thicket and were hard to get around or even under.
The most annoying thing was that Carnes kept glued to him like a shadow, bumping him frequently. Graham hissed at him to spread out several times but Carnes ignored him. Then Graham paused to listen. Above the yelling and banging in the river bed sounded a vibrating, rumbling noise. It took Graham a minute to realise what it was: the sound of a train. It was a big freight train, coming from the direction of Charters Towers. He saw the locomotive’s headlight come onto the long embankment out to his right. That sent them all to cover as it bathed the whole area in light.
As the engine went onto the actual bridge the noises were all magnified enormously, the throbbing roar of the huge diesels and the rattling, shrieking, clanging thunder of hundreds of steel wheels and couplings. The train’s headlight flickered impressively among the steel girders and threw weird moving shadows into the sand of the river bed. ‘Just what we need to cover our movement,’ Graham thought. He gestured to Halyday and Andrews to move, then quickly rose and hurried across to the next bush himself.
Confident that the terrific roar of the kilometre long train crossing the kilometre long steel bridge would cover any noises they made he urged the scouts to hurry. They quickly scuttled to the next couple of bushes. Graham hurried on to join them, then glanced back to check the others were following.
But there was no-one behind him!
‘Where the hell is Carnes?’ Graham wondered. He paused and kept looking back in hope. After a minute no-one had appeared and the scouts were now nearly out of sight. They would have been except for Halyday looking back and stopping Andrews. Graham hurried forward to them. He was anxious now because the H Hour, the time set for all the raiding parties to attack at once, was now only about ten minutes away.
“The patrol has broken in half,” he whispered. “Wait here while I go back and find out what has gone wrong.”
Halyday nodded. Graham turned and walked quickly back the way he had come. Thirty metres back he found the problem: Carnes had not moved when he did and all the cadets behind were waiting for him to go. Anger boiled in Graham and he crouched next to Carnes. “Come on Cadet Carnes, get moving,” he hissed.
Carnes made no move, remaining crouched on all fours, his head up and eyes staring. Being disobeyed set Graham’s temper flaring. “Carnes! I said get moving!” he hissed.
Carnes made no move of any sort, did not even turn his eyes, never mind his head. A peculiar sensation, a mixture of fear and astonishment swept over Graham. “Did you hear me?” he asked.
No response. Graham bent and looked closer. Carnes had his eyes open and seeing them scared Graham. In the light of the spotlight across the river he noted that they were wide and not moving. Carnes seemed to be staring at the rail bridge, which was now close enough to tower over them. Anger gave way to anxiety.
“Carnes, are you alright?” Graham asked.
No answer. Not even a flicker. Graham reached under the thorn bush and touched him. Carnes did not react. Graham shook the boy’s shoulder and again asked if he was alright. To his surprise Carnes’ muscles were all tense. The boy was rigid. Graham felt another prickle of anxiety. ‘Is he having some sort of a fit?’ he wondered, remembering Peter’s story about the bridge. To test this idea Graham moved his hand close to Carnes’ eyes.
Not a blink. Graham was both astonished and afraid. ‘I wonder if I should get him medical aid,’ he thought. That at least started him moving. He signalled to Cadet Milson who scurried over. “Get the medic,” Graham instructed. Milson nodded and went back to call up Slim. While he waited fro him Graham fretted about the lost time and about what to do. He tried to remember what he had been taught on his First Aid course about epileptic fits. To be sure he checked that Carnes was breathing normally and put his fingers on his throat to check his pulse. Even at that Carnes made no move. The pulse was rapid but strong.
Slim arrived and Graham explained the problem. Slim looked very worried and said, “I think we should just leave him to come out of it naturally Kirky, then get the officers.”
Graham bit his lip in indecision. He wanted to get on with the exercise. At the same time he was feeling really stressed in case something serious was wrong. ‘Why me?’ he thought, then shook his head, ‘This is what would happen in a real battle, unexpected casualties. But what should I do?’ For a moment he fingered his hand held radio, thinking to call CUO Masters. ‘He should be just down in the river bed a few hundred metres away,’ he reasoned. But he did not want to call if it was not serious so he hooked the radio back on to his shirt. His frustration moved him to act. He shook Carnes firmly by the shoulder. “Carnes! Snap out of it!”
To his enormous relief Carnes gasped, blinked and turned his wildly staring eyes on Graham who thought, ‘Bloody hell! He’s gone bonkers!’
“Wh...what....what?” Carnes gasped. He broke into a bout of shivering and Graham saw sweat beading his face. “Are you alright?” he asked.
Carnes nodded, then sobbed. “Ye..ye.. yes. I’m j..ju...ju...just sc..sc.scared.”
Carnes had great difficulty speaking because his teeth were clacking and chattering together as he shivered. Graham had heard about people’s teeth chattering when they were frightened but actually seeing it made him come out on goose bumps. “What are you scared of?” he asked in astonishment.
“G..g...gh...ghosts, and d..d....d...death!” Carnes croaked. Graham was astonished, and annoyed. “Bloody hell! It’s only a cadet exercise. It’s not as though anyone is shooting at us!” “And the b..br..bridge,” Carnes added.
Graham had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes the bridge,” he agreed. “That is our objective. So, if you are alright we will get moving.”
He made to go but Carnes shook his head and stared at the bridge. Graham was really agitated now. He bent down and hissed, “I said, let’s go.”
“No,” Carnes replied.
‘He is scared stiff!’ Graham observed. He found it hard to believe. He was also aware that the minutes were ticking by. “Listen Cadet Carnes, I gave you an order. Get moving.”
Carnes shook his head. “No! I won’t go.”
‘Oh no!’ Graham thought. ‘Not another disciplinary battle of wills!’ He bent close and pointed to his sleeve. “See these stripes? They say I can give you orders. Now get up and move!”
Carnes refused. Being defied really sparked Graham’s anger. He shook his fist in Carnes’ face. “Oh, get bloody moving before I thump you!” he cried. Even as he said it he knew he was in the wrong. In desperation he groped in his mind for a strategy to deal with the situation. Carnes now crouched in a shivering ball and burst into tears.
Then a great outburst of shouting in the middle of the river bed, but downstream of the bridge, indicated 4 Platoon must be attacking. At once the other platoons began their attacks, although most seemed to be still a long way from the bridge. ‘Oh bugger!’ Graham thought. ‘We are late.’ That decided him.
“Ok Slim, you stay here with him while we raid the bridge,” he said. Slim looked distinctly nervous and licked his lips. Graham pointed to the embankment, now only about a hundred metres away. “We will be just there. There is a safety vehicle there too. If there is a problem you can just yell out and we will bring help.”
Slim nodded at that and agreed. Graham took another good look at Carnes, saw that he was still crying and shivering, then waved the others to follow him. He didn’t feel good about it but reasoned he could tell the St Michael’s officers as soon as they reached the bridge. Hurrying to make up for lost time he led the tail end of the patrol forward to where Halyday and Andrews waited.
By then the battles all seemed to have fizzled out. “Sounds like our people have been driven back,” Halyday suggested.
It sounded that way to Graham too and fuelled his desire to succeed. “Keep going, but be careful,” he instructed.
It was only then that Milson touched his sleeve. “I don’t know where Braggy is,” he said.
Graham looked around and did a quick count. Halyday and Andrews, Milson and then Slim with Carnes, plus The Four. ‘Count yourself,’ he reminded himself. Then he swore quietly but vehemently. One missing: Bragg. ‘Oh bugger it!’ he thought. ‘My patrol has unravelled on me at the crucial moment!’