Brother Fish (29 page)

They still looked unknowingly at me and I repeated the action, saying the word a third time.

One of the soldiers shook his head. ‘Morp,' he said. I took this to mean they had no morphine. I should have worked it out for myself – the Chinese wounded, particularly the bloke with the severed arm, were in obvious pain and plainly hadn't received any morphine. They were not just holding out on me – they had none, even for their own.

My next request, for a smoke, was more successful, and one of them handed me the cigarette he'd just lit for himself. The right side of my jaw was swollen from the hit to my mouth and I tasted blood, but I managed to push the smoke into the left side of my jaw. The cigarette seemed to consist largely of saltpetre, and it flared every few seconds with the smoke drawn hot into my chest as I inhaled.

I decided, while I was still conscious and semi-focused, to try to do something about my broken leg. The ends of the bones were scraping against each other and I concluded that if I could get the chinks to fix some sort of splint to straighten my leg I'd be much better off. I reached for a length of straw among a small heap that had fallen when the roof had partially collapsed. First, pointing to my broken leg, I snapped the straw. They all nodded. Good, at least they knew I had a broken leg. Now for the splint. But all my miming was to no avail, they didn't seem to cotton on to my request. Then, in part due to my befuddled mind, I did something incredibly stupid. My .303 stood against the wall and I reached out and grabbed it, intending to show them that they could use it as a splint. But that's not the message I transmitted. Chinks dived from everywhere, wrenching the rifle from my grasp. I then felt the butt of a Chinese rifle land across my mouth, this time harder than the first, knocking several more teeth out in the process. Another chink butt-stroked me across the back of the head and knocked me out.

When I eventually came to, I was on a stretcher and on the move. The moon was much lower on the horizon and the night darker. The chinks were vacating the village, assuming a larger force would soon be arriving, and as it grew light, they knew a spotter plane would be circling overhead and seeking a target for an air strike.

We followed a very poor mountain track of rocky, uneven ground, and with every jolt the jagged ends of the broken bone in my leg scraped together causing me to cry out. On several occasions the stretcher bearers stumbled, tipping me out, and I screamed out in agony as I landed. I became conscious that my captors might decide my screaming was putting them at risk and simply shoot me and dump me for the pigs and crows to eat. I was also aware that my fellow wounded remained quietly stoic – occasionally a soft moan came from their stretchers, though never a scream. I promised myself, should I be dropped again, somehow I would remain mute. But I was dropped and couldn't keep from crying out. The pain totally possessed me and my screams were entirely involuntary.

We walked steadily, climbing into the hills, and then took cover at dawn in a large cave where I was lifted onto a platform with ten wounded Chinese soldiers. By sheer coincidence the soldier lying beside me was the bloke with his arm severed up near his shoulder and now, surprisingly, he smiled at me. I tried to return the smile but my swollen mouth began to quiver and I could feel hot tears running down my face.
Shit, what a fucking wimp!

Without the constant bumping of the stretcher to distract me, instead of the pain lessening, it now seemed to grow worse. I kept moaning as the spasms of pain hit me, yet I can remember being ashamed of myself. I was surrounded by the uncomplaining Chinese wounded and the particularly poor bastard with the severed arm who'd been steadily losing blood and yet was capable of a sympathetic smile. It was the all-conquering white man who was doing the wailing. I was failing to keep up my end, unable to show the same courage as my enemy.

It isn't true that the Chinese don't feel pain the way we do: they had a discipline born of years of guerilla fighting that allowed them to stay stoic under the most onerous conditions. I once read somewhere that in convict times an inmate might receive a hundred lashes with the cato'-nine-tails, the flesh of his back exposing his rib cage, yet he'd not cry out. The article went on to say that the same treatment today would most likely kill a man. Humans can learn to endure incredible pain but it is something we acquire gradually, our pain threshold built up over long periods of hardship. Twenty years at war and the effects of the Long March had inured these Chinese against hardship where pain was a constant part of their daily lives. If these blokes were representative of their kind, then the enemy opposing us was tough, formidable and dangerous – one who might, in the end, prove too much for the soft Caucasian soldier to handle.

The one-armed soldier, observing my involuntary tears, had somehow managed to roll and light a cigarette and now placed it between my lips. Using the back of my hands I wiped my eyes and smiled my thanks and he returned my smile. Then I watched as, one-handed, he rolled a cigarette for himself and lit it and we smoked silently together. Quite suddenly he gave a soft sigh and his chin dropped and he jerked forward, his mouth open, and with the cigarette still glued to his bottom lip, he died.

I left Korea with some harsh memories that would haunt my sleep for the next fifty years, but this was one of the most poignant. On Anzac Day, and if I happen to be in a RSL Club at sundown and the lights are dimmed and ‘For the Fallen' is read:

At the going down of the sun
And in the morning . . .
We will remember them.

I remember Johnny Gordon, his dark hand lying in a patch of pristine snow. Then I see the little chink smiling and placing a cigarette between my lips and it is to him that I finish with the words, ‘Lest we forget'.

Years later I would tell this story to a physician and question why the Chinese soldier died so suddenly. ‘Trauma and the loss of blood, although fairly slow, say ten hours, would finally shut down his kidneys, in fact shut down everything, and this would cause him to have a massive heart attack,' is how he'd explained the soldier's death. Then he'd added, ‘He must have been extraordinarily tough to have lasted that long.'

I spent the day in and out of consciousness and that night we were on the move again, but this time without my Chinese escorts, who were leaving to go back, I imagined, to their battalion. They handed us over to a squad of North Korean guards. To my surprise I felt real regret at the departure of my Chinese captors. Apart from the chocolate incident, and their response to my rather stupid decision to reach for my rifle, they'd treated me exactly the same as their own wounded and shared their rations equally. It would have been much easier for them to put a bullet through my brain or simply leave me to die, but they'd carried me all night over very hilly and difficult terrain and never once complained. As they were leaving, each of them filed past me and touched me lightly on the shoulder. What else can I say, they were good blokes.

As for the North Korean soldiers they'd left in charge, I was about to learn a lesson in contrasts. Only minutes after the Chinese had left, one of the Koreans approached me and yanked at the boot on my broken leg, twisting it from side to side until it was finally released from my foot. The pain this caused was indescribable but, surprisingly, I didn't pass out. My screaming seemed to amuse them all and the soldier then pulled the boot from my good leg. Then, to the general hilarity of the others, he removed his own and forced them onto my feet. Thank God I was a little bloke and they fitted – without boots I would have had little chance of avoiding frostbite. He then pulled on my boots and commenced to stomp around the cave, swinging his arms in an exaggerated march and laughing at their weight.

A North Korean officer then approached me. ‘Soldier take boots.' He pointed at the soldier's canvas boots now on my feet. ‘You soldier boot.'

I couldn't believe my luck. ‘You speak English?' I asked. He nodded. ‘Please can you find a stick to splint my leg?' I asked very slowly, demonstrating the action of tying a splint to my broken leg.

He grinned, shaking his head. ‘Not allow,' he said. ‘We go now.'

‘Where are we going?' I asked.

‘To be educated . . . to learn truth.' He turned and walked away and said something to one of the soldiers, who immediately came over and removed the canvas boots and, at the same time, my socks. I knew I was history – without my boots my chances of survival were zilch.

As the Koreans mustered to depart I realised that this large cave was a collection point and that we'd been joined by other prisoners, mostly South Koreans but among them Dave McCombe. Dave was also K Force, and while not in my company we'd heard of his capture several days ago. I'd also met him once in the pub at Puckapunyal.

He walked up to me. ‘G'day! Jacko, isn't it? Jacko McKenzie?'

I was surprised that he remembered me – we couldn't have shared more than a couple of beers together and that was more than a year ago. ‘Jesus, Dave, it's good to see you,' I answered. Later he'd tell me he'd been equally surprised that I'd remembered his name.

He grinned down at me. ‘Mate, we'll be seeing a fair bit of each other – I'm on one end of your stretcher.'

We travelled for hours that night, all of it over mountain tracks, with Dave at the top end of my stretcher and two nogs at the other. While the two guards at my feet were changed on a regular basis, Dave was made to remain on the other end. He was a big raw-boned man not unlike Rick Stackman, maybe six foot and then a bit, but the task must have taxed him mightily, though he didn't falter, even once. ‘Dave, I'm sorry,' I said on several occasions during the night.

‘No worries, mate,' he'd always reply, though the first time he added with a bit of a laugh, ‘Yiz only a little bloke, thank gawd.'

Then an hour or so before dawn, with my bare feet exposed to below-zero night air, we stopped to rest. For the past couple of hours I'd felt the familiar signs of impending frostbite. Dave was leaning over me. ‘How ya goin', Jacko?' he asked as he did every rest.

‘Mate, it's me feet. They're stinging and aching a bit.'

I didn't have to say any more, Dave knew what I was saying and he knelt down beside me and unbuttoned his battledress jacket. Then, ever so gently, he lifted my broken leg and, along with the good one, tucked them under his armpits, pulling the jacket around them for additional warmth. After ten minutes or so the guards approached, indicating that it was time to move on.

‘How they feeling?' Dave asked me. I hesitated. ‘Not good, eh?' he suggested. I nodded. ‘Then we stay put,' he said firmly.

‘Better get going,' I said. ‘The bastards are likely to get cranky.'

Dave laughed. ‘Fuck 'em, Jacko, they won't harm me – it would mean two o' them would have to take my end.'

The guards continued shouting, becoming very agitated, but they never laid a finger on him. Finally the circulation returned to my feet and we set off again. Without Dave McCombe I could have lost both my feet to frostbite.

After another difficult night made bearable for me by Dave's quiet and reassuring voice, we arrived at a transit camp of several well-constructed huts. Here I was carried into a room and put into a cage roughly ten feet square, its roof no more than three feet above the ground. Dave was pushed in after me. ‘Bit snug, eh?' was all he said, sitting with his knees up near his chin.

The cage had been designed so that its occupants would be unable to stand or walk around, which didn't concern me, as I could do neither. Three South Korean prisoners already occupied the premises and they didn't look too pleased to see us. The remnants of their uniforms hung in tatters from their emaciated bodies and it appeared they'd been there for some time. Now, with five people occupying the cage, Dave taking up almost the space required for two, and with me forced to lie down, movement of any kind was restricted. The nog next to me would scratch frantically at his hair and a shower of lice would fall onto my body so that I was soon to share his condition and learn to live with lice as with everything else. Curiously, while the louse-ridden nog had bitten most of his nails to the quick, he had allowed the nails on the two longest fingers of his right hand to grow to at least an inch and a half, each curved into a bow shape, and in the process creating the perfect vermin-scratching instrument.

Pretty soon we were approached by two English-speaking North Koreans who began asking me questions, ignoring Dave, perhaps thinking that in my wounded state I'd offer less resistance.

‘My leg is broken. Please, I need a splint,' I pleaded.

‘First you answer question, then we fix,' came the reply.

In the fifteen minutes or so that followed came a barrage of questions, some relevant, some not. For instance they wanted information about our patrol objective, its strength and duration, while other questions appeared to be totally pointless. While I didn't know it at the time, it was the silly questions that mattered to them. They would return later and repeat these irrelevant questions and if they found inconsistencies they'd know my answers to the relevant ones were not to be trusted. It was a curious way of going about an interrogation – rather than first seeking to establish the truth they began by probing for lies.

But this was early times and in answer to each question I would simply repeat the prisoner's mantra: my number, rank and name. This displeased them mightily. ‘No medical treatments!' they'd shout. ‘You answer questions, you have!'