R. Burgin - Islands of the Damned

While Florence and her mother talked, Jim and I took turns entertaining her brother with train sounds and piggyback rides up and down the platform. It was the right move.

“They seem to be nice,” Florence’s mother whispered to her daughter. “Anybody who plays with a child like that can’t be all bad.”

When it came time to go and we said our good-byes, Florence’s mother slipped her a twenty-pound note. “I was wondering where we were going to eat,” Jim muttered to me. Florence heard him.

We found another milk bar nearby and the four of us had a pretty good meal by Australian standards—meat pies and milk shakes. When the waitress brought the bill, Jim and I pointed to Florence.

“It’s hers,” we said.

As we got up to go I saw Florence’s eyes flash and her jaw tighten. Just as we got to the cash register, I slipped the bill out of her hand and, as I’d planned all along, paid it myself. We all had a good laugh over that.

The evening was young. The train back to Frankston didn’t leave until 11:55 and the girls’ train to the suburbs left at midnight. So we took a boat ride on the Yarra River. If you get a bunch of Australians together, no matter where, pretty soon they’ll start to sing. So we drifted down the Yarra River, passengers singing “A Boy in Khaki” and “Bye for Now,” and, of course, “Waltzing Matilda.”

At the station, they gave us big hugs, and we agreed to meet the following Saturday at seven p.m. under the station clocks. At six minutes to midnight, Jim and I climbed aboard the train to Frankston, which started rolling almost as soon as we took our seats. Through the window we could see Florence and Doris take off on a dead run. Their train was several platforms over and it left in just five minutes. I noticed Florence had long legs.

Almost every Saturday for the next three months, Jim and I would meet Florence and Doris at Flinders Street. We’d ride around in one of the city’s horse-drawn buggies, cracking American jokes, which the girls seemed to enjoy. Sometimes, we’d pay six pence and walk downstairs to a movie house where they showed continuous newsreels of the war, or we’d go out to Luna Park, an amusement park by the river.

Florence and I spent a lot of time just sitting on benches in the city’s gardens—Melbourne had some of the most beautiful flower gardens in the world—talking about our families, about what was going on in the world and about life before the war. And after. She was easy to talk with.

I found out her father operated a steam shovel in the coal mines at Yollourn North, about ninety miles from Melbourne, and that he had fought in France during World War I, where he had been gassed. I also found out that she was sixteen, not eighteen. She had lied about her age to get a job at a factory making biscuits for the troops. Her boss had been so impressed by her work that he made her assistant floor supervisor over twenty-four other girls, and the company was sending her to night school to study management. So I knew she was smart.

One weekend I rode the train with her to Albert Park, where she lived with her uncle. At her front yard, she stepped inside the gate and swung it closed between us. Then she leaned forward and gave me my first kiss.

We’ve laughed about that over the years—that she had to put the gate between us.

On August 13, my birthday, Jim and I met the girls, and since it was a special day, we had some drinks. Then we all went to the Tivoli Theatre, where they had beautiful dancing girls wearing big feathers and not much else. The show was almost sold out, but we got tickets for the third balcony. I remember stumbling up the stairs, Florence in front of me, counting steps and trying to remember if we had passed the second balcony. I also remember we finished the evening in a movie theater, where Florence held my dizzy head in her lap and gently kissed me.

Something was in the wind. They were picking up the pace of training over the whole division. We started pulling field exercises with the Guadalcanal vets, crawling under barbed wire with our rifles, live ammunition zinging a few feet over our heads. We’d run, hit the deck, get up and run again. We’d practice making landings in rubber boats, all of it as if the enemy were right in front of us. The Guadalcanal vets had already been through it with real Japs. Just hanging around the barracks listening to those guys was an education. They’d tell stories about how they nearly starved to death on Guadalcanal, how they came down with malaria or dysentery, how they had to fight the Japs stationed on the island and then had to fight the reinforcements the Japs brought in. Just good talk between fighting men.

More than anything, we learned about tactics, both ours and the enemy’s. Of course, they’d taught us all that in boot camp and at Camp Elliott—we knew enough that when someone called out “Hit the deck!” we shouldn’t stand there asking questions. But the men from Guadalcanal were an advanced course. They’d been there and they’d done it.

Jap snipers would tie themselves in the treetops. You couldn’t see them, but they were there, watching and waiting. They’d cut fire lanes through the trees, narrow breaks about three or four feet wide at right angles to our line of march. They’d set up a machine gun and when a line of Marines would come along they’d open fire. You’d be like pins in a bowling alley.

Or you’d be moving along a trail, single file, and a Jap would get in behind the last man in the column and bayonet him or slit his throat. You’d never hear him go down. Then they’d get the next man, and the next, picking them off one by one.

I sat and listened whenever they were telling war stories, and I’d ask questions. What happened, when did it happen, how did it happen? I paid attention because I knew that we were soon going into the same situation, or something as bad.

They canceled all leaves, and we could no longer go into the city. I wrote Florence a long letter: “We are pretty busy getting ready for you know what. But from what I can find out we are going to be here for another 3 to 6 weeks…. We are making rubber boat landings up until Friday, I know, but I don’t know what is beyond that.”

We’d been at Camp Balcombe five months. One evening they told us to get our gear together. We were moving out.

We marched out of camp about dusk and hiked all that night. We’d walk for fifty minutes and break for ten, walk fifty minutes and break for ten. In the morning, field cooks met us and had breakfast ready. Then we took off again and hiked all day, fifty and ten all the way. That night we stopped and ate again. Me and Jim Burke figured we were going to spend the night, so we pitched our pup tent. About the time we got it up, someone yelled “Fall in!”

You never saw two Marines tear down a pup tent and get back in formation so fast in your life.

We had a pace we had to maintain, and we wore our full transport packs, upper and lower part, with a bedroll. The whole thing weighed about forty pounds. We were carrying our M1s and I had that .45 strapped to my side and was carrying the butt plate for the mortar. Whenever they hollered “break,” I’d just lean back on that pack and instantly I was gone. I must have slept nine minutes out of every ten-minute break.

We hiked all that second night, and starting the next morning we pulled maneuvers all day long. Sherman tanks, artillery, machine guns, all firing live ammunition, aircraft bombing and strafing out ahead of us. We’d be crawling along on our bellies and they were firing right over our heads. You’d hear the bullets zinging. It was as near combat as you could get.

About four o’clock in the afternoon we started hiking back. Somewhere along the way, they sent trucks out to pick us up, and what a blessing that was. It was Friday afternoon. We’d been at it since Wednesday. And as tired as everyone was, we still went into town on Saturday.