See Naples and Die

Patrolling tropical forest is no holiday even in the dry. Now it was the wet, and the sickly green scrub dripped and steamed even though the rain had paused. We were slowly growing mouldy; footrot and jock-itch thrived. Sweat dripped off my nose-tip as I balanced on a pole across a pit latrine wherein faeces and big fat maggots took up equal room.

We decamped and walked up the Muda River and across to Kota Baru on the east coast. The first peacetime elections were to be held and our duty was to dampen any over-enthusiasm amongst the fledgling Malayan People’s Liberation Army. Scuffles and minor rioting did break out but luckily there was also a detachment of Gurkhas, the sound of whose skirling pipes coming down the street caused the mob to melt like magic.

In the morning our Nepalese mates stood in three ranks on the street. Incredibly, a single shot from the rooftops took one of them fair in the back and he died while his mates overran the village looking for the sniper. Blood flowed, for that was the way of it. However, things became a little quieter when the local chapter of the MPLA moved north across the border.

It was the year when a leading Australian communist redefined the word treason and came to offer advice and support to the Malay Chinese striving to fill the political gap without recourse to democracy. They had resisted the Japanese as best they could and suffered badly: now they were to govern, or so they said. Treason? Well, we did have Diggers with us.

We returned to Penang, the old pre-war base, where the storeman handed me a blanket infested with scabies, a kind of mange which establishes itself just under the skin. It must breathe, so that when you sweat heavily the mites protest and you itch like mad. The cure is to stand naked before a medic whilst he paints you all over with a white goo which suffocates the little blighters.

Our time being almost up, my demob group entrained for Singapore, armed to the teeth because derailment and shooting were a distinct possibility—the MPLA was getting organised. To obtain tea at the infrequent halts on the way south, a delegated soldier from each group would hotfoot to the engine with a large tin primed with tea; this was placed under a certain little pipe by the bogie wheels. When you signalled the driver you either got a nice brew or the tin was blasted into space, depending on the driver’s outlook.

Our section finally arrived at the British Military Hospital in Alexandra Road. Its walls were pockmarked with Japanese rifle fire because Indian troops had retreated through it when Singapore was overrun. Their route was contrary to the rules of warfare, of course, but hardly warranted the subsequent bayonet work on staff and patients.

Our troopship had been considerably delayed, and since the devil finds work for idle soldiers, particularly infantrymen, at the BMH we suffered a crash course in nursing and were let loose in the wards. Nobody died. I became a receptionist in the outpatients department of the surgical and medical specialists. One day the captain medic called me over and said, “Have a look at this.” I peered down a soldier’s throat to see the soft palate perforated, indeed hanging in shreds. “Syphilis,” was the laconic comment. Ugh! Lavender Road would never see me!

Ordinary hospital inmates wore white jackets and blue trousers but venereal disease sufferers had to wear all-white outfits. When, during the weekly film show, the cry of needles rang down the corridors, a ghostly crew would rise up from the audience and drift out silently. The matter could get rather complicated at visiting time. A good-looking young woman called in, asking to see Lieutenant so-and-so who, it turned out, was a “white” patient. He yelled down the phone, “Don’t send her up! I’ll come down.” Where he got the blue trousers I don’t know.

I was asked whether I wanted to be released in Singapore and proceed straight home to Adelaide, or go to England with the lads. I chose the latter—something to do with a girl in Edinburgh—and so sailed to England aboard the trooper Georgic, she of the fire-buckled plates along the waterline, having been bombed and sunk by the Germans at Alexandria, then raised and restored for American use. The new mess fittings seemed far too luxurious for our kind. 

We called in at Bombay and there took on board about a hundred Polish refugees. They were packed like livestock right aft in what used to be called steerage. I had travelled thus as a young man and will always remember the continuous rattle and thump of the steering gear. That and the shuddering of the hull so close to the propellers; you’d swear some old tubs had square shafts.

Homing troops can be a surly lot with uncertain discipline. We didn’t take kindly to the Polish section being out of bounds. It was wired off; there were military police to keep us world saviours from fraternising, and nobody seemed to know why. It was a pity, as some of the girls were friendly and many of us had not been close to one of our own kind for a long time.

There was one young woman of no more than eighteen, I guess, who was a real stunner despite her poor clothes. Her features and beautiful blonde hair suggested Norse ancestry. She seemed quite attracted to one of our lads and they would sit together as close as they could on each side of the wire. A night foray landed him in the slammer, which upset everyone.

We called in at Naples to offload our refugees. In the morning, just across the wharf, about fifty yards away, a single train lay waiting with steam up. The locomotive was coupled to roofed cattle trucks, the ones with ventilation gaps near the top, and of course big sliding doors with iron-bar fastenings. The doors were open; we could see straw on the floor and what might be packing cases.

Around mid-morning a crowd filed down our ship’s gangway and were ushered across to the waiting trucks by Italian police. It was our refugees, and there were some old folk and even babies amongst them. The police had a job to load up the trucks, for there was much protest and milling about. One young fellow tried to run away but was caught. The last to be pushed into the truck directly opposite us was the girl we all knew. She waved; her headscarf slipped back and we could see the shining gold.

The last of the refugees’ meagre possessions were thrown into the trucks; the big doors rolled shut and iron bars slammed across. Our lads didn’t like it a bit; they had been catcalling until most of the troops and even some of the crew joined in. The redcaps hesitated to interfere because the atmosphere was electric. A little later the train chuffed away down the track and tension eased onboard.

It was January and the way home to Poland lay through Austria and Czechoslovakia, much of it over high snow-covered mountains. We wondered how our refugees would fare. It was a time when, you may remember, Russia dominated those regions, and maybe they wouldn’t have arrived home anyway, for many such were regarded as traitors and liquidated on Stalin’s orders for fear that communism might become infected. Many displaced people sent back to Russia from the West by the Allies never arrived. 

The matter lingered in my mind as, having docked at Southampton, I viewed England’s melting patches of grimy snow from a steam-heated railway carriage as we rattled on to York Castle for demobilisation. Having been measured for our shoddy demob suits, we passed along the tables signing for this, that, and some back pay. On the wall behind the last one was a sign—“Do not salute.” One of our group, always a prickly bloke, said to the seated lieutenant, “Is that so? You mean I’m no longer in the army?” The officer smiled and nodded amicably. “Well, let me tell you …” he continued, but we grabbed and shushed him before any harm was done. Anyway, it seemed that His Majesty had no further use for us.

So, I went on up to Scotland eager to be reunited with my girl: but I’d been away too long. Maybe I should have gone straight from Singapore to my native land after all. But you know how it is; one thing leads to another.

It was actually eighteen years before I finally stepped ashore in Adelaide—my birthplace—via East Africa and South Arabia; the sort of itinerary required of a semi-educated bloke where better qualified people wouldn’t go: or indeed a “brutal British Tommy with his bayonet dripping blood” (MPLA leaflet). Back home it seemed that I was just another Pommie bastard, so after a while I went on up to Papua New Guinea and didn’t leave until, ten years later, the place became dysfunctional. I went to Darwin where things were little better and I only survived there for a year: but then perhaps it’s just me, hey?

During my soldiering I had been given a rifle and all the ammo I could carry and told to go and defend freedom. For us the word safety was never used, and so it was interesting now to be at the Sale sports ground looking up at John Howard on the balcony telling us about his new plan. There was a huge banner proclaiming—Towards a Safer Australia. The PM wore a bulletproof jacket and in earnest tones addressed a crowd of country folk and farmers who had grown up with a gun behind the kitchen door. Gun control was to include registration and a buy-back scheme for newly prohibited types of firearms; something which New Zealand had recently tried and abandoned because it accomplished nothing.

Finally, a section of the crowd (“rednecks” said the Herald Sun) moustached a left forefinger across its upper lip, extended the right arm, palm down, and roared, “Sieg heil! Sieg heil!” It was the first and last meeting of its kind. What kind of advice had Howard been given?

Not long before, Australia had imported 500,000 Eastern bloc semi-automatic assault rifles easily converted to full auto—some even with a folding bayonet attached—as part of a beef deal with China. At a gun show in Brisbane you could buy one for $120 complete with a case of ammo, merely on production of a driving licence. From statistics available after the famous buy-back it seems that some 250,000 of these remain underground. Our crims, of course, have no trouble with gun control. As for myself, should a returned serviceman feel somewhat offended? My male line thinks so. Anyway, I have just renewed my shooter’s licence—$200 to hunt foxes and rabbits!

Oh! Before I go; you don’t have to be a Polish refugee to see Naples and die. Some time back, when napoli was slang for syphilis, the saying was, Vedi napoli e poi muori. Of course, he of the shredded throat in BMH Singapore no doubt made a penicillin recovery.