Brother Fish (30 page)

Then the process would begin all over again. ‘What your unit?' ‘Why your patrol go to village?' ‘Where else you go patrol?' ‘Where you go holiday?' ‘Where you live before come to Korea?' ‘What your mother maidens name?' ‘How old you are?' ‘Where you go school?' ‘Your wife name before marry?'

‘I can only give you my number, rank and name,' I'd insist. They'd finally leave, only to return the following day to repeat the procedure. We'd nicknamed them Bib and Bub because they had the habit of each asking the same questions but taking it in turns to be first. ‘Where you go school?' Bib would ask, whereupon in a much more strident tone Bub would say, ‘WHERE YOU GO SCHOOL?' Then they'd reverse the order and the tonal roles for the next question.

Each morning a small bucket of rice swill, not sufficient to give any of us even half a decent feed, was placed in the cage. The ragged South Koreans, yabbering like monkeys, would grab at the bucket, the three of them too much for even Dave to handle. He'd struggle to shoulder them out of the way in order to get just a handful of rice for himself and then another to feed me.

‘Open yer mouth wide, Jacko,' he'd shout above the yabbering. Then he'd lunge at the nogs, knocking one out of the way sufficiently to get his hand into the dish and scoop up a handful of rice swill, swing it up and slap it directly into my open mouth, holding his hand across my mouth so that I got as much as possible. Then he'd do the same for himself. I can't remember the contents of the dish ever lasting long enough for a second go.

Soon enough interrogation by the North Koreans was directed at Dave as well as me, and the nogs found another way to get to me: sleep deprivation. I was in a fair bit of pain, not only from my leg but also because of my mouth, where my broken teeth were giving me hell, but sheer exhaustion would finally take over and put me to sleep. The bastards soon observed this and a guard would shout out as soon as he noticed me nodding off and Bib and Bub would come running, pad and pen in hand, and prod me through the bars with a length of bamboo, whereupon they'd commence questioning me again.

‘You answer question we give morphine.' This was the carrot always dangled in front of me, pronounced ‘morfin'.

In desperation I decided to answer all their questions with lies. Unbeknownst to me this too was pretty routine and meant I'd reached the second stage of interrogation. They appeared quite elated at my lies and when they came forward with a little morphine I was convinced I'd tricked them and felt pretty pleased with myself. As their captive I had won very few rounds, and Dave's quiet congratulation, ‘Giddonya, Jacko', when the first syringe of morphine arrived, boosted my ego no end.

Of course, several days later they'd ask the same questions and check them against the meticulous notes they'd made of my previous answers. When they didn't match they were infuriated, even though they were probably expecting this to occur. They'd jump up and down with their dark eyes bulging and in duplicate yell, ‘No medicine! No morfin! You lie me!'

But after two weeks, one morning I'd had enough. I was in the kind of pain where I didn't much care if I died, just so I didn't have to put up with this shit any longer. I turned to Dave. ‘Mate, I've had enough, I ain't gunna answer any more Bib and Bub questions.'

Dave nodded his head, ‘Suits me, Jacko. Righto then, let's give the bastards a serve. We might as well go out telling the buggers what we think of them, their wives, their kin, their ancestors and their fuckin' noggie nation.'

This we commenced to do, calling them every combination of name and adjective we could think of, including several deeply offensive though imaginative monologues involving their offspring, wives, mothers and their poxy nation.

At first this infuriated them. But then they grew accustomed to our outbursts and seemed to be genuinely perplexed at our behaviour. They must have finally decided we'd gone round the twist, because one morning they came to fetch me and placed me in a nearby cave, disastrously separating me from Dave McCombe, whom I was never to see again. I recall his last words, called out to me as they carried me away, ‘Jacko, don't die, don't let the fuckers win!'

The cave was in permanent twilight – at its entrance they'd built a crude wooden stockade that blocked most of the light – and towards the back it was almost totally dark. Even by the standards of the previous caves and the cage we'd been in for two weeks, the stink of rotting gangrenous flesh and human faeces was overwhelming. At night rats brazenly attacked the open wounds of the cave's twenty or so prisoners. Thank God it was so cold that our nostrils were all but anaesthetised, making the fetid air slightly more bearable. All about me men lay moaning, lying in their own excrement. Stink and shit notwithstanding, the only way we could prevent freezing to death was by lying huddled against each other. A few rice sacks had been thrown into the cave and those wounded men strong enough to fight quarrelled like mongrel dogs over them, pulling hair, biting, kicking and punching to secure one. I saw one prisoner with his hands around another's throat throttling him until he released his grip on a sack.

On my first morning one of the inmates crawled towards me, a bearded American with a dirty bandage around his forehead from which a crop of dark matted hair protruded straight up to a height of about twelve inches. What remained of his uniform was crusted with filth and one of his eyes was closed or missing – pus oozed from the corner suppurating wetly down his jowl and into his beard. He crawled past me to the prisoner who lay beside me asleep and stole his portion of rice swill. I looked at him and he returned the look. ‘He's dead meat, buddy,' he said with a slight shrug.

I was too spent to react, to feel indignation, in fact to feel anything, anger or pity. Constant pain and hunger and the separation from my mate Dave McCombe had turned me inwards, all my energy absorbed in my own self-pity. The shock of losing Dave had been enormous and I realised that he had been the real factor in keeping me alive. Now I was alone in this living hell. I was among wild animals and knew I wasn't up to the task required to survive.

The bearded Yank sat on his haunches, about to eat the swill he'd stolen, when suddenly a dark hand reached over the sleeping soldier beside me and grabbed his wrist. The American gave a cry of anguish as the grip tightened. ‘Put it back, soldier!' a deep voice demanded. I followed the arm and saw it was attached to a very large man lying one body over and parallel to me. Whimpering in fright, the bearded American put the sleeping man's portion back and the large hand released its grip, allowing him to slink away into the darker interior of the cave.

‘Giddonya, mate,' I managed to say. Was it possible there was someone here who wasn't reduced to an animal state? I was astonished at the effect this had on me.

I heard a grunt of acknowledgement and then the single word, ‘Sonofabitch!'

I lay quiet for a while then asked, ‘What's your name, mate?'

‘Jimmy . . . Jimmy Oldcorn.' He said the name slowly and it came out like organ music, real deep.

‘G'day, Jimmy. Jacko McKenzie. 'Ow ya goin'?'

A fair silence followed, then, ‘Where yoh from, man, yoh talk funny.'

‘Australia.'

‘Aus-tray-lee-ah.' He pronounced each syllable. ‘Man, dat da other side da fuckin' world!'

‘Yeah, you're not wrong,' I replied. ‘They don't call it Down-under for nothing.'

‘What yoh got, Jacko?'

I wasn't sure what he meant by this question. ‘What do you mean, Jimmy?'

‘Yoh sick? Wounded? Able-bodied?'

‘Broken leg, bullet, bone shattered.'

‘Me also – I got me a broken leg.' He said it with a chuckle, as if it was an amazing coincidence. ‘Dis nigger ain't gonna do no 'scapin', dat for sure.'

I was growing increasingly weary, the conversation taxing the little strength remaining in me, but I wanted him to continue if only for the comfort of his voice. ‘You did good stopping that bloke,' I said.

‘Goddamn muth'fucker!' he replied. ‘No-good sonofabitch!'

Despite my need for him to continue I could no longer concentrate, and dropped into an exhausted sleep. When I woke, the bloke next to me whose food had been stolen then salvaged was no longer there. Now Jimmy Oldcorn lay next to me, the biggest goddamn black man I had ever seen in my life.

‘How yoh doing?' he asked.

‘Could be better,' I replied.

‘Or worse.' He indicated the spot where he now lay. ‘Dis poor guy, he gone died on us, man.' He seemed to be suggesting that I ought to feel fortunate to be alive.

I felt slightly ashamed. ‘I just need a bit of a stick to make a splint,' I said, trying to explain. ‘That'd help a fair bit to stop the pain.'

‘Yeah, I can see dat,' he said sympathetically, and just the tone of his voice was remarkable. In this hellhole there was no room for sympathy, each of us totally preoccupied with our own misery, so the big black bloke's apparent concern came as a surprise.

I recalled a rather ponderous saying Gloria had when someone showed a callous disregard for the misfortune of another: ‘Sympathy was a stranger knocking on a firmly bolted door'. Jimmy had a crude splint down the lower part of his left leg and would have been in much the same sort of pain as me, yet he still found the strength to be concerned about someone else.

Nevertheless, in a voice filled with sickening self-pity, I found myself saying, ‘You wouldn't think it would be that bloody hard for the bastards to find a bit of wood.'

‘Dat a natural part of being da enemy – dey ain't suppose to show no concern, man.'

We talked for a while and it was obvious he'd been through much the same experience I'd endured, the only difference being his spirit remained dominant and unbroken while mine was just about spent. But all the time I was too preoccupied and sorry for myself, convinced that I was about to die, to benefit from his obvious courage.

‘I guess this is the end,' I sighed.

Jimmy Oldcorn didn't reply at first, then he said quietly, ‘We cain't make it on our own, Jacko.'

‘You can say that in spades!' I replied.

‘We gotta work together, brother.'

I fell silent, trying to think what we could possibly do that would make the slightest difference. Together or on our own, we were powerless. ‘Mate, we're stuffed,' I said at last. ‘Rooted.'

‘Rooted?' he questioned.

‘It means we're fucked, up shit creek . . . it's Australian.'

‘Rooted! Hey, dat's good, man! I'm rooted.' Pronounced in his mellifluous voice it sounded round and substantial.

‘No, that's not the same thing,' I said. ‘When you say “
I'm
rooted” it means you're tired. “
We're
rooted” means we're stuffed, finished, washed up.' I laughed, continuing. ‘“Get rooted” means piss off, beat it, scram. “I've been rooted” means I've been cheated or badly done by. “I rooted her” means I had sex with a woman.'

‘Whoa, man, dat Aus-tray-lee-an a mighty strange language for sure!' A sudden silence followed until eventually he said quietly, ‘Don't do nothin', ain't nothin' gonna happen – den we surely be rooted, man.'

‘What do you propose then, mate?' I said with just a touch of sarcasm.

‘Pro-pose?' Again, his voice gave the word a kind of energy of its own. ‘I pro-pose yoh and me begin a move-a-ment.'

‘Movement?' I tried to laugh. ‘Neither of us can walk.'

He didn't appear to hear me, or if he did he missed or ignored the play on words. Now he spread his hand to take in the dark cave and its miserable occupants. ‘Ain't nobody here but us got the strength, Brother Jacko.'

Strength! Me? What a joke!
The bastard must be mad!
I thought to myself. ‘Look, mate, I'm a private, I do what I'm told and don't ask questions.'

‘Dat good, man, me too.' He paused, then announced, ‘Private James Pentecost Oldcorn, 24th Infantry Nigger Regiment, US 25th Infantry Division.'

‘So, Jimmy, you're all black blokes, the whole flamin' regiment?' I asked, surprised.

‘Negro,' he corrected. Even though he'd used the word ‘nigger' against himself, he was letting me know the correct form of address for someone of colour.

‘Negro,' I said, accepting his correction. Then, wishing to change the subject, I asked, ‘This
movement
, what will you call it?'

He thought for a while and again I wondered to myself if he was, you know, a bit simple. ‘Operation Get Offa Yo' Arse,' he said finally, chuckling as he said the words.

I thought for a moment, then to humour him said, ‘Ogoya.'

‘Huh? What yoh say? O-go-a?'

‘It's an acronym,' I explained. ‘Like you take the first letter of each word and they add up to something you can pronounce, a kind of shorthand for the whole title: O – operation, G – get, O – off, Y – your, A – arse, Ogoya!' It was a word trick Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had once taught me.