Uncle's Story

Chapter Three

‘Hei runga, hei raro! Hii haa, hii haa.’

The karanga, the ritual call of the women, came arcing from Poho o Rawiri meeting house to where Sam, George and Turei were waiting at the gateway. George and Turei were so nervous they were looking at their feet.

‘Okay, boys,’ Arapeta said. ‘Time for action. Turei, you and George look up. Your people want to see you the way you will be in Vietnam. Proud. Eager. Men.’

‘I’d much rather face the enemy than go through this,’ Turei said to Sam. ‘I’m used to being around the back digging the hangi, not coming through the front gate.’

‘Did you have to do this, Dad?’ Sam gestured at the marae and the huge crowd. ‘Does everything have to be a big production number?’

‘I want them to see what my son has become,’ Arapeta answered. ‘A soldier going to war, just like his father did.’ He grasped Sam’s hand in a firm handshake. ‘I am very proud of you, Son. This will make you into a man. It is the happiest day of my life.’

Arapeta pulled Sam into a tight embrace. He searched in Sam’s eyes for his soul.

‘That’s the trouble with Dad,’ Sam thought. ‘Always trying to get into my skin.’

Sam shut Arapeta out. He commanded his soul to hide in the shadows, far away from his father’s probing gaze where it could not be seen.

‘Toia mai, te waka! Ki te urunga, te waka! Ki te takotoranga i takoto ai, te waka!’

The surging sound of the welcoming haka burst across the air. Arapeta motioned to the black-scarved women in front of him to lead the ope onto the marae. Arapeta had assembled a formidable number of supporters for the occasion: two of his ex-Maori Battalion mates, Claude and Kepa, would help him lead some 50 other men and women from Maori military families of the district. On this day Arapeta would ritually present Sam, George and Turei into the hands of General Collinson, Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Collinson knew a publicity opportunity when he saw one. He had flown up to Gisborne with Army news media to film the occasion.

As the ope moved onto the marae, Sam saw his mother, Florence, and that his sister Patty had wriggled away from her and was running to him. He put his arms around her and ruffled her hair.

‘You look so lovely,’ Sam said. ‘What a pretty dress.’

‘I’m wearing this just for you. When are you coming back?’

‘Not for a long time, sweetheart. But do you know what I’m going to do? I’m taking a photo of you with me and I’m going to put it in the pocket nearest to my heart. You’re my best girl.’

At that moment Arapeta looked at Patty. The ritual entry was over and now the speeches would begin.

‘Pat,’ Dad said, ‘go back to your mother and little brother Monty.’

Arapeta began issuing his instructions. A nod of his head here. A look of the eye and a jerk of his head there. The men would be up in the front. The three boys would be with them. The women, children and everybody else would be behind.

Patty gave Sam a quick kiss and was gone.

‘This has been how my father has been all his life,’ Sam thought. ‘Up in the front. Always ordering. Never asking. And this is how I’ve lived my life, like everybody else, following his orders. But going to Vietnam is something I am doing for myself. I’m going there for me, so that I can prove —’

Sam couldn’t find the words. Prove what?

The ope took their seats and the speechmaking began. Hemi, the elder for Poho o Rawiri, opened the proceedings, addressing all his remarks to Arapeta and recalling his exploits when he had commanded the 28th Battalion. Claude, one of the ex-Battalion elders replied, and then came General Collinson. His sentiments were all about the appropriateness of a son of Arapeta Mahana following in his father’s footsteps. Sam remembered that General Collinson had been one of Dad’s commanding officers during the Second World War; one of the ironies that Dad loved to recount was that Collinson had sired only daughters.

‘Blowed if I know why we’re here,’ Turei said to George. ‘Nobody’s interested in us. Why don’t we sneak off to the pub and let Sam and his Dad hog the limelight.’

‘Don’t include me in this circus,’ said Sam. ‘This is Dad’s show. It’s got nothing to do with me. He’s the man in the middle of the ring. We’re just his show ponies.’

Some people started to titter and Arapeta made a short snap with his hand: ‘Don’t spoil it, Son.’

Sam’s remark wasn’t the only disturbance. There was a commotion in the crowd. George and Turei’s mothers had come after all. They were dead against their sons joining up — particularly Lilly, Turei’s Mum —and blamed Arapeta for not stopping them. Arapeta looked at them impassively. If they had come to cause trouble, so be it.

Arapeta motioned to his mate, Kepa, that it was his turn to speak. By this time, the day had become overcast. Clouds were advancing across the sky. The last speech was coming from the local people of the marae — next would be Arapeta’s turn, and it would be over.

Finally, ‘Tihei mauriora!’ Arapeta cried. ‘I sneeze and it is life!’

He grasped his carved walking stick and levered himself upward. He seemed to lift the sky up with his back.

‘Turuki turuki, paneke paneke. Tenei te tangata puhuruhuru.’

Sam watched Arapeta’s performance. This was one arena in which nobody could compete with him. When he walked to the centre of the marae, all eyes were on him. He began to speak and his authority hushed the world. He ceased being a man and, instead, became a God incarnate. No wonder men followed him into battle.

‘Our ancestors have always been fighters,’ Arapeta began. ‘The Maori has never been loath to fight. In World War Two our people volunteered to go and fight Hitler, and our contribution was unequalled by any other race or people drawn into the conflict. On 13 March 1940, the 28th Maori Battalion was given the word that we were on active service. We left Wellington for Europe on the Aquitania on 1 May. I will never forget how moving it was. We could still hear the Ngati Poneke girls singing “Now Is the Hour” when we were way out to sea.’

Arapeta pointed his carved drill stick at some of the old men in the crowd.

‘We were all boys,’ he said. ‘Boys from the farms, boys from small maraes all over the country, boys who came out of the scrub and were still learning how to be men. We were all in C Company, weren’t we, boys? They called us the Ngati Kaupois, the Cowboys.’

‘Ka tika,’ the old men called. ‘That is true.’

‘On 29 November 1940, we were ordered to the Middle East to join the First Echelon. Can you remember? We went via Greece where we had the first taste of battle at Olympus Pass, and had our victory in the sight of the Gods of Greece. After that first battle, we became men.’

Arapeta began to walk back and forward in front of the old soldiers, pausing before Hemi, the elder for Poho o Rawiri. Ribboned medals fluttered in the breeze.

‘We tasted battle again at Crete, didn’t we, Hemi! You were there! I saw you fighting against the Germans.’

Hemi straightened up. ‘Ae,’ he answered. ‘The Germans had their Air Force above us and their troops on the ground. At Suda Bay we led the bayonet charge which decimated the Germans. We bayoneted over 100 in the kind of close-quarter fighting that comes natural to us. That’s where we gained our reputation as fearless in the face of battle. Ae, ae.’

Arapeta moved on quickly, eyeballing another old soldier, pointing his stick at General Collinson.

‘But it was in the desert campaign in Egypt and Libya that our Battalion truly made its mark, wasn’t it, boys. I was your officer —’ Arapeta caught General Collinson’s eye. ‘I mean no disrespect, Sir, but we did not need Pakeha to lead us. We had our own men, good men, abler men than many Pakeha.’

A murmur of approval ran through the crowd:

‘Yes, that’s right, Arapeta, stick it to the Pakeha.’

General Collinson remained impassive, though he inclined slightly towards his aide: ‘The cheeky old bastard.’

‘We had our trial by fire at El Alamein — and survived,’ Arapeta continued. ‘We fought at Sidi Mgherreb. The Battalion took a total of 1123 prisoners; we lost five killed and eleven wounded. In February 1942, the 28th Battalion was ordered to Syria. While we were there, Rommel attacked the Eighth Army in Libya, so back we went to help those other fellas out. At Mersa Matruh, while all the good guys were moving out, we were moving in. We saw Rommel’s columns of German vehicles approaching us and the 21st Panzer Division encircling us. E hika, we were surrounded. But we got out of that little scrape and were soon back on our feet. You remember Munassib, boys, where we killed over 500 Hun? After that came Tripoli, Medenine and Tebaga Gap.’

All his life Sam had heard the old stories of the Maori Battalion’s exploits. At every retelling the stories had become more epic — and Sam and his generation had diminished at every telling.

‘Then came the battle for Point 209,’ Arapeta said.

In the waning day the old soldiers moaned like a desolate wind.

‘We were with Pita Awatere and it was he who committed C Company to the attack. The attack started at 5 p.m. that night. Our mate, Moana Ngarimu, lost his life there, clearing the area of two machine-gun posts. The Germans tried to counter-attack, to push us back. We ran out of grenades and picked up stones and used them instead. By 5 o’clock the next day we had won the point. Pita was given his Military Cross there. Moana was awarded, posthumously, the Victoria Cross.’

The marae erupted with calls. ‘Ae! Ae! Ka tika!’

Arapeta proceeded quickly, thrusting into the heart of the memories.

‘After that was Takrouna. What a battle that was! Our mate, Lance-Corporal Manahi, should have received a Victoria Cross for his work there, but he didn’t. However, His Majesty saw fit to award me the Military Cross. After that, I was with Commander Awatere in Europe to continue the fight at the Sangro River and Monte Cassino.’

Skilled soldier and skilled orator, Arapeta paused and looked around the marae. He was accustomed to being listened to. He had learned well how to hold people in the palm of his hand. He did everything with style and with precision. He was used to asserting his mana over the likes, yes, even of General Collinson. The pause, however, allowed George and Turei’s mothers to force themselves to the front of the crowd.

‘You know we are against this,’ Turei’s mother, Lilly, called. ‘If our boys die in Vietnam, their deaths will be on your head, Arapeta.’

Arapeta looked at her. Of the two mothers Lilly was the one to watch carefully — she could cause trouble, had always been outspoken, and her words came straight from the hip. She was only a woman, and tiny to boot, but Lilly was fearless and her words had a habit of sounding confrontational and had to be parried. Already the crowd were murmuring. Leadership was all about convincing people that you could lead them anywhere and get them there safely — even if you couldn’t.

‘Your boys will not die,’ Arapeta answered. ‘How do I know? I know my son. Like me, he is a leader, and he will bring your boys back safely to you, just as I brought my men safely back to their mothers. This I promise you.’

There was a gasp as the people on the marae absorbed Arapeta’s awesome confidence, his arrogance, his assumption of god-like invincibility. As if he could make promises on behalf of his son.

‘Kaati,’ Arapeta said. ‘Enough.’

He turned to the three boys. With a dramatic gesture, he drew a line in the air with the carved stick, joining them with General Collinson and the Army brass present.

‘Ka tuwhera te tawaha o te riri, kaore e titiro ki te ao marama. When the gates of war have been flung open, no man takes notice of the light of reason. This ancient proverb comes alive again today with the decision our three boys have made to fight in Vietnam. It is good to see three of this generation carrying on the tradition of their forebears from the Maori Battalion. Boys, we who are left of the Maori Battalion salute you for your courage and your valour. You, my own son, will maintain the fighting spirit that will ensure that the Maori does not become as weak as women.’

Arapeta held the assembly in the palm of his hand. He encompassed the whole marae in his gaze.

‘War parties, before setting off to war, were always made sacred to their mission. I bring you three boys under the tapu of Tumatauenga, the God of War. Fight for the honour of your tribe! Fight until there is no enemy left standing! Go to battle! Go! Go! Go!’

The words barked across the marae and echoed around the surrounding hills. They pulled the storm clouds closer.

With a rhetorical flourish, Arapeta leapt into the air. His eyeballs protruded. Spittle foamed from his mouth. He began a haka, the fierce declamation of Maori men.

‘Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora ka ora!’

Immediately, old soldiers leapt to their feet and joined him. Old joints fused. Blood that had been slowed by beer and easy living fired again. The sparks ran like flames, boiling the veins.

‘Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora ka ora!’

Sam took his place beside Arapeta and the crowd roared its approval. They believed Sam was supporting his father. He may have been, but he was also asserting his independence from the man who had ruled his life since the day he was born. His fists were bunched. The veins of his neck were taut. His eyes bulged as he looked at Arapeta.

And Arapeta knew. He sensed Sam’s anger. He roared with laughter.

‘So you think you’re better than me, son? You’ll never be better.’

The two men turned to each other, doing the haka as if they were opponents.

‘Tenei te tangata puhuruhuru nana nei whakawhiti te ra!’

The crowd was on its feet, roaring and cheering its approval and, at that moment, the storm burst overhead.

‘Aa, haupane, kaupane, haupane kaupane whiti te ra —’

The God of War himself had come to join the haka.

Chapter Four

And then the RNZAF Bristol freighter was flying out of Te Kore, The Void, and descending through Te Po, the many gradations of The Night. The night began to be streaked with light, speckled, mottled, fusing and coalescing one pool of light with another. All of a sudden a blinding flash irradiated the darkness. The sun was there, leaping like an ignited match to burn a hole in the seam between sea and sky.

‘Ara! Ki te ao marama,’ Sam whispered to himself. ‘Look, the day is coming.’

No matter how many times he had seen the coming of light, Sam still felt awed by its relentless majesty. As a young boy, he often sat on the sacred mountain, Hikurangi, the first place on the earth to be lit by the sun. There he would raise his face to the sun’s, filled with wonder that all its energy was coming from a molten orb of fire far on the other side of the universe. He knew that this sun had already skimmed Hikurangi, its beams refracted like a laser to burn its way toward Vietnam.

Other men of Victor Company had woken too, and were looking below at the South China Sea. The water shimmered vermilion, then purple, then cerulean blue tinged with crimson until, with a rush, from out of opalescence came the daylight.

Tuia i runga, tuia i raro.

The world was being constructed again.

Tuia i roto, tuia i waho.

The top and bottom, bound together by the light.

Tuia i te here tangata ka rongo te Ao.

Now the outer framework and inner framework. Fixed firmly, the knots soldered by the shafts of the sun.

The promise of life, the impulse of history, was reborn.

Sam woke George and Turei.

‘Sarge, I was having such a great dream,’ George said. ‘She was six foot, a red hot mamma and —’

Turei looked at Sam and yawned. ‘Yes, thank you, Sarge, I’ll have the chicken not the beef selection, if I may, and could you give me the wine they’re serving in First Class?’

Below, like a swimmer rising out of the sea, Vietnam. Ahead, Phuoc Tuy Province, east of Saigon.

The forward doors of the Bristol Freighter opened and the heat of Vietnam poured in. The assault distended veins, popped sweat glands and licked up all the moisture from your skin surfaces. Sam felt his body trying to defend itself: shutting his eyelids, making him hold his breath, sealing itself off. But the heat was patient. It knew that some time he would have to breathe in. When, at last, Sam let out the last cool breath remaining and took another, Vietnam rushed in. Sucked him dry. Propelled its molten pain through every vessel and vein in his body, shredded his eyes and slithered into his scrotum until he was completely possessed.

‘From now on,’ the heat said, ‘you’re mine. I’ll be in every breath you take and you will never escape from me. Never.’

‘Get the men out, Sergeant Mahana,’ Lieutenant Haapu ordered.

‘You heard the lieutenant,’ Sam called.

The company began to disembark, disgorging like fish to flap in the sun.

Sam put a hand up against the glare. The sun was a baleful eye that never blinked. The heat, like the glare, owned him also. His feet touched the tarmac of Vung Tau airbase.

‘Holy Hone Hika,’ he whispered.

US combat and military aircraft were everywhere. They loomed all around and above him. On either side were serried ranks of the fighter bombers. Armament experts were loading them with Thud missiles. On another runway were F-4C Phantom MiG combat air patrol fighters. Elsewhere, helicopter squadrons, cargo and transport planes and spotter craft glinted in the sun.

Turei whistled under his breath.

‘This must be Vietnam the movie. So where’s John Wayne?’

At that moment Sam’s ears were split by the high-pitched whine of turbines as two Iroquois helicopter gunship convoys took off from the field. One by one the pilots pulled pitch. The choppers shuddered, the noses dropped down then, tails up, began pulling away from the ground. Sam saw a machine-gunner, hunched over his weapon, sitting at an open door, still strapping himself in.

The blades of the gunship slapped the air hard. Pop pop pop.

But there was no time to enjoy the view. Immigration procedures had been set up at the American Transit Camp, where companies of Yanks and Aussies were also waiting to go forward into the war zone.

Sam was struck by the sudden quiet. The American boys were confused, disoriented, shit scared. Unlike the Kiwis and Aussies, most of the Americans were conscripts who had been drafted in, straight from civvy street via six weeks of basic training. The US Army made conscripts four promises. They would shave your head, give you a rifle, and send you to Vietnam. The rest was up to you. How you fitted yourself into the infrastructure of your unit was your responsibility. Which part of the battle zone, who you ended up fighting next to and whether or not your relationships would be happy was not part of the contract. Like as not your dope-smoking section commander was somebody who got to that position not because of his abilities but because he had been there a little bit longer than you. Who knows? At some point he might be struck by a bullet through the cranium and you might have to take over from him. Whatever, your experience of Vietnam, its boredom, horror and impact, was in the lap of wilful gods. They might send you out on a patrol that would lead you to My Lai. Or they might send some other bastard on patrol to My Lai.

And the fourth promise? The Army guaranteed that you would be returned home. Whether in one piece or many pieces, alive or dead, that could not be guaranteed. That was up to you. All the American conscript wanted to do was to serve time and, God willing, not return home in a sealed casket draped with the American flag.

Nobody wanted to be the last mother’s son killed in Vietnam.

‘I’m sweating like a fucken pig,’ Turei moaned.

At Lieutenant Haapu’s order, Sam had mustered the company to meet Major Worsnop, their Commanding Officer, and his Second in Command, Captain Fellowes.

‘Company, ’shun!’

Major Worsnop inspected the ranks. Captain Fellowes followed a few steps behind him — and paused in front of Sam.

‘You’re Arapeta Mahana’s son, aren’t you?’

‘No matter how I try,’ Sam thought, ‘I will never be able to escape my father.’

‘I was present at your farewell on Poho O Rawiri marae,’ Captain Fellowes said, ‘Your father certainly put us in our place. I’m sure you’ll prove to be as good a soldier as he was. Like father, like son.’

‘At ease, men,’ Major Worsnop said. ‘Very soon you’ll be moved to our New Zealand and Australian Task Force base at Nui Dat. When we and the Aussies entered the war, the US Commander in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, assigned Phuoc Tuy province as the primary area for our operations against the Vietcong. Vung Tau is the supply base and Nui Dat is the fire base. The command capacity includes three Australian infantry battalions, the Royal Australian Air Force’s 9 Squadron — Iroquois helicopters, Caribou and Hercules transport squadrons — and a Canberra bomber squadron. The American backup comprises heavy self-propelled artillery batteries, helicopter units and ground attack aircraft — everything from F-4 Phantom jets and AC47 gunships to OV1 Bird Dog observer aircraft.’ Major Worsnop paused, a twinkle in his eye. ‘And then there’s us.’

A murmur of amusement swept through the room.

‘The New Zealand involvement in this war may be small by comparison with our Allies but we play an important part in the overall effort. As you soldiers all know, it’s not size that counts but what you do with it.’

The whole company erupted into whistles and cheers. Major Worsnop didn’t look the kind of bloke to crack such a funny. He waited for the commotion to die down.

‘Men, you are all now part of the ANZAC Battalion. You represent our government’s wish to assist the government of South Vietnam against Communist aggression. That is your job. My job, however, is more personal. I want to impress upon you that your command group is here to make sure that we do our job together. None of us is alone. We are all a team. If one of us falls, the rest carry him out. Let’s all try to get through this war together. If you can, try to get on with the Australian personnel at Nui Dat.

‘Welcome to Vietnam.’

‘Okay, boys, saddle up and move out.’

Victor Company boarded a convoy of six trucks, escorted by Australian Army armoured personnel carriers, travelling to Nui Dat. Lieutenant Haapu assigned the last truck to Sam and his men.

‘Once you’re aboard, Sergeant,’ he ordered, ‘get your men to load and cock weapons.’

‘Already?’ George gestured at his rifle.

‘Yes,’ Sam said, ‘and watch where you point that thing. I don’t want to start this war with your barrel up my bum.’

The convoy rumbled through the gates and defensive perimeters of the airbase. Away from the port, Vung Tau had a surprising strength and beauty — an arrogance, almost. The French had founded the town as a Customs post, but by the 1890s it had become a prosperous little seaside resort. Bureaucrats and businessmen from Saigon, only 12-kilometres west, recreated the ambience of the French Riviera there; the sprawling villas, palm trees, beaches and bars almost persuaded you that the French still held sway.

George gave a low wolf whistle. ‘Sarge, get a look at that.’

A young woman had come out of an office building. She wore the ao dai, a sheath dress over white trousers. Her face was glazed to perfection. If she smiled, it would split and crack.

‘I thought you went for bigger women,’ Sam said.

‘Right now any woman would do.’

‘That’s not what you felt about my sister when you had your chance with her,’ Turei said.

Turei’s sister, Emma, was big.

‘Well,’ George pursed his lips, ‘actually —’

‘You bastard,’ Turei answered with mock anger. ‘I thought that kid of hers looked like you.’

The convoy moved through the more crowded and poverty stricken outskirts of the town. Here the locals seemed to know you were coming and, without even looking behind, stepped neatly to one side as you passed. In this country, the road rules were simple. If you were the big guy you had right of way. Everybody else — motor scooter, rickshaw, pedestrian — gave way. All, that is, except the kids who ran after the trucks.

‘Watch that none of them throw you an apple,’ Sam said. ‘If they do, throw it back. It might look like an apple, might be red and round like an apple, but some of their apples have a habit of going boom.’

The convoy sped into open country, and the temperature soared to 30°C. Soon they left the sealed roads behind, and the red laterite dust swirled in. Sam moved down the truck to see Turei.

‘I’ll be okay,’ Turei said. ‘If I don’t die of the heat I’ll be sure to die of asthma.’

‘Count yourselves lucky it’s not the monsoon season,’ Sam said.

‘So my third option is to drown? Oh, great.’

Sam moved back to his seat. He had expected dense jungle terrain — not this. For as far as the eye could see was open landscape which looked as if it had been cracked open by an unforgiving sun. But no ordinary sun had scarred and defoliated this land. It had been ravaged by bombings, chemicals and military firepower.

Half an hour later, the open country gave way to secondary jungle terrain, interspersed with rubber and bamboo. The convoy climbed to 200 metres above sea level. A swampy area of mangroves was coming up. Ahead was a bridge.

Sam’s sixth sense was alerted. The roading conditions were slowing the trucks down. The fourth and fifth vehicles in the convoy had lagged, leaving a dangerous gap in the convoy. The cover closed like the fingers of a fist.

‘Pick it up,’ Sam swore. ‘Pick it up.’

He watched as the lead armoured vehicle crossed the bridge. The first truck, under Captain Fellowes’ command, lumbered over. The second truck approached and negotiated its way across.

The bridge exploded. Isolated from the convoy, the three lead vehicles came under machine-gun fire from a nearby hill.

‘Everybody out,’ Sam ordered. ‘Right side, right side.’ He indicated the side of the truck away from the line of fire. He held his rifle high and dived out, hit the ground and rolled.

Tracer bullets ripped into the canvas canopy of the truck. Ahead he heard a boom. Saw an orange ball of fire as Captain Fellowes’ truck was hit — but the men had managed to get out first.

There was no cover on the road. Sam kept rolling over the side and into a field of elephant grass. Next minute he felt somebody colliding with him. Turei.

‘Can’t you find your own cover?’ Sam asked.

Another body barrelled into him.

‘Is there room for one more?’ George asked.

Raising his head, Sam saw Lieutenant Haapu signalling to him.

‘Take out that enemy position.’

Sam acknowledged the order. Made the signal to George and Turei to move on his command. Counted one, two, three. Lifted himself off the ground and sprinted through the elephant grass, his body propelled by pure adrenalin. He waited in the lee of the road for George and Turei. They joined him, and all three went up and over, rifles at their shoulders, diving for cover on the other side of the road.

That’s when a shadow settled over Sam like a big dark bird.

He looked up. The whole world had changed to whirlwind and deafening thunder. Something with murderous wings was settling, scything the sun, cutting it to shreds.

Slack-mouthed, George mouthed a word of awe. Fu-uck.

Immediately above was a hovering Huey Cobra gunship. It was so close that Sam felt he needed only to extend his hands upward and he would touch it. The turbines were whining, a battle cry, a high pitched scream, the noise driving into Sam’s brain. The whole world was vibrating, shattering to pieces.

The gunship dipped, its nose down and tail up. It bristled with an arsenal of miniguns, rocket pods and chin turret guns. The gunners were hanging from the two side doors.

All of a sudden the chopper bucked. Something clicked and dropped from its underbelly and, with a whoosh, a rocket flared away from the gunship. There was another bucking movement and a second rocket was on its way. The rockets trailed blue smoke across the mangroves and up towards the enemy. Then the target area erupted into juddering explosions. The hillside sizzled and smoked.

The enemy fire stopped. With a lazy insolence, the chopper turned at right angles. Its front windscreen flashed. It dipped and sidled off and over the swamp. The gunners strafed the area with tracers. At the last moment the sun glinted off a painting of a cartoon bird: Woody Woodpecker. With a cheeky wag of its tail the chopper lifted away and over the terrain.

Within seconds the convoy secured its position and Captain Fellowes stood the company down. It was almost as if the attack had never happened.

That evening, Victor Company put up its tents in the rubber plantation that was part of Nui Dat. An hour later, Sam sat with George and Turei in the Mess. Kiwis and Diggers ate in rowdy groups, but Aussies with Aussies and Kiwis with Kiwis.

‘Even in war time,’ Sam thought, ‘our friendly rivalry still exists. And if it sometimes boils over into baiting each other and punching each other, hey, that’s the way it’s always been.’

‘Man, Sarge, this food is the best,’ George said. ‘If I can’t have a woman at least food is the next best thing, eh? What do you reckon, Turei?’

But Turei was in the middle of an eyeballing competition with a red-headed Aussie who had taken a dislike to him.

‘The bastard’s trying to stare me out,’ Turei said.

Before he could do anything about it, through the Mess came a group of six airmen. In the middle was a tall, smiling, blond pilot. An Aussie soldier yelled: ‘Hey, Harper! Over here!’

The pilot nodded and made his way through the tables. He passed so close to the Kiwis that Sam could have reached out and touched him. Some of the men in the Mess began to whistle and stamp. One of them started to sing: ‘Ha-ha-ha haha!’ Others join in. ‘Ha-ha-ha haha! That’s Woody Woodpecker’s song!’

The blond pilot bowed low at the waist and pretended to be surprised at such adulation. That’s when everybody began to chuck bread rolls at him. Laughing, the pilot put up his hands to protect himself. He caught a roll in mid air and threw it back. As he did so, Sam made out the words USAF and the outline of a pair of wings on his jacket.

Chapter Five

Victor Company’s training cycle started every day at 0500 hours with PT, wrestling and hand-to-hand combat exercises. Rappelling, climbing and classes on Escape and Evasion came next, followed in the afternoons by weapons recognition and drills, demolitions, map reading, compass and night movement. Platoon and section manoeuvres kept the company’s field skills honed sharp.

Not that Turei, whose position was grenadier, needed much extra practice. He was quickly an expert on placing claymore mines, and Captain Fellowes couldn’t get over his pinpoint targeting.

‘If only he knew,’ Sam said, ‘how much practice you’ve already had.’

‘I’ll say,’ George laughed. ‘All those assaults on police stations when you were a gang member, bro!’

The most important weapon and main fire support at platoon level, however, was the M60 general-purpose machine-gun — and in Sam’s platoon the two-man gun team of Mandy Manderson and Jock Johanssen were considered the best. Their skill might mean the difference between winning and losing the close-range fire fights favoured by the Vietcong. Should Manderson become a casualty, Johanssen would take control of the weapon.

‘I know you’re just a rifleman waiting for your chance to handle this baby,’ Manderson would say to him, ‘but you’ve got one hope and that’s no hope.’

‘Shit. I may have to do the job myself and rig it so you have a little acc-i-dent.’

The physical training was balanced with company and platoon briefings, map reconaissance and other lectures on field operations in Vietnam.

‘Gentlemen,’ Major Worsnop said, ‘Phuoc Tuy is bordered by the South China Sea and Saigon River estuaries. The population is just over 100,000, mainly concentrated along Routes 15, 23 and 44. Baria and Dat Do are the main urban centres but the major part of the population is rural. They are all around us. There are more of them than there are of us. And at least 25 per cent of them have family members on both sides of the conflict. What does this mean to us? It means that someone who looks friendly and acts friendly may not be friendly. One in four people you meet in the civilian population may well be, in fact, the enemy. But you won’t know it.’

He waited for this piece of information to sink in.

‘Why won’t you? Because some of them will appear during the day as simple villagers working in their fields. At night, however, they may become local National Liberation Front militia undertaking guerrilla activities. At the simplest level, they may simply be gathering intelligence on our strength and size to pass on to the professional Communist forces in the area. This is why, unlike the Americans, we do not have local Vietnamese civilians working as cooks and cleaners at Nui Dat. The enemy mortar attacks are close enough as it is.’

The men laughed. Over the last few nights, Nui Dat had been subjected to frequent Vietcong bomb drops.

‘The citizenry may be actively laying mines and preparing punji stake traps. Worse still, they may also be acting as local guides for the Communist main force units, allowing them to penetrate throughout our field of operation. Some will be armed.’

Major Worsnop paused. He ratcheted his briefing up a notch.

‘I spoke earlier of the professional Communist forces in the area. I repeat, gentlemen, that on this score there are also more of them than there are of us, and they have great cover — at least three quarters of Phuoc Tuy is jungle. Our intelligence tells us that the Communists have two provincial force battalions in the area made up of locally raised soldiers with modern — I repeat, modern — infantry weapons. Don’t believe the movies which portray them as some kind of peasant army. They are highly trained, remarkably adaptable to the terrain and extremely mobile.

‘As well as these two — D440 and D445 — the Communists have three regular-force CVC regiments in the area. These are the most dangerous of all the Communist forces in Phuoc Tuy. They are primarily professionals, like us: trained soldiers mainly from North Vietnam. They are well equipped and well supported by a rocket battalion. They have air backup from Hanoi. Never forget that we are outnumbered. The Communists are a formidable enemy and it would be a mistake to under-estimate them.

‘So why are we here, and what can we do against superior numbers? We are here to try to maintain the upper hand. Our strategy is to stay on the defensive but, primarily, to go on planned offensive operations. To maintain unrelenting operations so as to prevent the enemy from even thinking of mounting any major operation against us. How? By blocking their supply routes, their access to Dat Do and Baria. By ambushing them as they move. By mounting major operations against their bases. By ensuring they can’t gain even as much as a toehold in this province. Are there any questions?’

There was a silence. Sam put up his hand.

‘Sir, the men want to know when they can expect their first operation.’

‘It will come soon enough.’

Victor Company’s activities escalated to perimeter duty, maintenance of the barbed wire defences and intense patrolling of the immediate vicinity of Nui Dat. Very soon, Second Platoon, under Lieutenant Haapu, also found itself undertaking operational reconnaissance of Phuoc Tuy, maintaining a regular pattern of drive-throughs to establish the Allied presence in villages and towns, and keep the enemy back.

But it wasn’t all work. Nui Dat was well set up for sport and recreation and there was an outdoor theatre that Sam thought was surely an open invitation to some Vietcong gunner, if he got close enough, to aim his mortar at the screen. One evening, they even watched A Yank in Vietnam. Sam couldn’t believe it. It was nuts. There on screen was a helicopter attack, Hollywood style. And there, just beyond the base, a firefight was underway. And he was sitting there with a Coke in his hand and laughing out loud. What he didn’t know was that his laughter caught the attention of the blond American chopper pilot. As Harper looked through the crowd, a US Gunship ‘Spooky’ C47 roared overhead. Its fuselage was mounted with banks of electric powered miniguns that buzzed and poured out lines of tracer across the night sky. Harper saw a dark young guy, trying to stop from laughing so much. By some trick of perspective the tracers illuminated Sam’s profile with a halo of fireflies. Something about him touched Harper, so that long after the gunship had swung low and away Sam’s image remained on his retina.

One morning, Sam was brought face to face with the complex nature of the war and the terror of the local population trapped between opposing armies in a perpetual war zone.

‘Get the boys ready,’ Leiutenant Haapu said. ‘The ARVN Vietnam Army have a search-and-destroy mission taking place at a village on the coast. They’ve radioed for back-up.’

On the way out to the trucks, Sam saw a shimmering green insect flailing in the dust, desperately trying to escape from attacking scorpions.

Even before the convoy arrived, Sam could smell the violence. At the run, weapon cocked, Sam led the men through the village square. Two of the houses were on fire and some of the villagers were screaming. Sam saw an ARVN soldier lift the butt of his rifle and club an old man with it. The old man fell.

Sam took up a position next to an Aussie veteran.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘The ARVN are rockin’ and rollin’ with the slopes.’

Sam was stunned at the ferocity of the ARVN search. But, after all, they came to war with a history that Sam could not comprehend. They had been fighting the Communists since World War Two. Maybe their fathers had been killed, their brothers and sisters had been killed, perhaps their children had been killed in the bitter battle with the North. Screaming obscenities, they were herding the villagers into the square.

‘This village,’ the Aussie continued, ‘has been resistant to the ARVN for some time now. Ever since their headman was killed’ — he looked over at one of the ARVN commanders. ‘By that bastard over there, actually. The ARVN doesn’t like resistance, even though they may have been the cause of it, so they keep coming back to give these villagers special treatment. This is the third time I’ve been here and I’m bloody sick of it. I came to Vietnam to protect the locals against the Communists. I didn’t think I’d have to watch them being done over by their own.’

Four hours later, the villagers were still confined in the square. The sun was beating down, slashing their faces with heat. The ARVN commander refused them water and food and kept up a constant barrage of physical and verbal harassment. Every now and then, one of the villagers was led off into the surrounding trees. A rifle cracked.

‘Scare tactics,’ the Aussie veteran said. ‘Take somebody away, pretend to shoot them and hope that one of the villagers will break down and admit they’re operating a Communist cell. But these people aren’t scared by us. Look at their eyes —’

Sam tried to see what the Aussie was seeing. The villagers weren’t in fact looking at the ARVN or the cordon of soldiers surrounding them. They were watching the hills. There Sam saw their real fear.

‘You catch on quick. The villagers get fucked by us, they get fucked by the Vietcong, they get fucked by anybody who passes through. There they are, trying to get on with their lives, working the paddy fields or looking after their livestock. Next minute we come in, flying our little flags, pretending to be their saviours but roughing them up in the process. If it’s not us it’s the Americans. We round them up, cordon off their village, search their houses, upset their lives and interrogate them. Our mates, the ARVN over there, kill their cattle or water buffalo to make them talk. Sometimes we imprison them and shoot them if we suspect they’re holding out on information. Or some peasant who has a vendetta against another peasant will whisper to the ARVN that his neighbour is a collaborator with the Vietcong. Next minute, bang, and Mr Innocent Neighbour is shot in the head and falls down dead.’

The Aussie veteran pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered one to Sam. ‘The name’s Jim.’

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Sam and, thanks, but I don’t smoke.’

‘We’re supposed to be fighting for them,’ Jim continued, ‘but you know what really sucks? We’re shit scared of them at the same time. We embark on these search-and-destroy missions, looking for evidence of the enemy, and all the while the villagers are waiting for us to do our job and get out. And who are left in the villages? The policeman is gone. The school teacher is gone. The local priest is gone. All probably executed in the early days by one side or the other for suspected collaboration. Only the old and the very young are left. But we’re still scared of them — and you know why? Because it’s so difficult to see the difference between a Vietnamese and a Vietcong. Our suspicions feed our fears. Before you know it we start thinking they’re shit, they’re dogs and we’re treating them like that — so don’t think it’s just the ARVN. Maybe we’ve just come back from a mission and some of our buddies have been killed. Maybe we’ve picked up the pieces after they’ve trodden on a mine. Pushed somebody’s brains back into his skull before putting what’s left of him into a body bag. So we’re all juiced up, hopped up with some kind of rage and need to have revenge. We start thinking, “This boy may be only five years old, but he could kill me.” Or, “This old lady looks like a nice friendly grandmother but, who knows, she may have a grenade up her sleeve.” So we knock them around and, just to make sure, kick them again. Then somebody gets trigger happy. Some American high on dope happens to let loose with his M16, all because a villager is reaching for something that looks like a grenade. Or some grunt ups his flame-thrower and fries some bystander to hell. Or we see somebody running into his house to protect his family when we arrive and we think, “They must all be enemy,” and we’re firing a 40mm grenade in through the window whether they are or not. Before you know it, the whole platoon is shooting up a village, setting it on fire, killing whoever happens to be in the way.’

Jim took a long draw on his cigarette.

‘All this while the Vietcong are watching from the hills. Sure, the ARVN are probably right that there is a Commie cell here. When we finally leave, flying our pretty little flags and returning to the safety of our own fucken fortress on the hill, you think it’s over for these people? No wonder they’ve been looking at the hills. After we leave and the twilight comes, the hills start to move and, sure enough, in come the Vietcong and it’s their turn to fuck these people. With the help of their spies they round everybody up again. You had a conversation with the Australians? Bang, you’re dead. You were seen passing something to one of the soldiers. Bang. You smiled? Bang, bang, bang. You say the ARVN took one of your sons to join them? Okay, we take your next son to join us. You haven’t got another son? Okay, your daughter will do. Say goodbye to your papa, little girl, we’re your family now. And, just to teach you villagers all a lesson, we gonna take your head man out into the fields. Oh, look, old man, is that your little granddaughter running towards us to save you? Up comes the rifle and bang. But it’s not the head man who falls down dead, it’s his granddaughter. That’s the lesson. Old man better make sure his village behaves better next time or other grandchildren get the chop.

‘On top of all this, all sides are dropping bombs and dumping defoliants on their paddy fields. It’s a no-win situation for these villagers, and they know it. That’s what we’re fighting. A sick, rotten, mean son-of-a-bitch war.’

A few days later, Sam’s platoon was assigned another mission, to patrol the ‘Fence’, a large minefield which ran from Dat Do to the sea, designed to keep the Vietcong away from the population centres and possible sources of weapons supply. It seemed the minefield had also become the source of mines for the Vietcong. They dug them up and sneaked away with them under cover of darkness.

On his second morning there, just before light, Sam came across Jim again. Both men were at the end of their patrol.

‘Gidday, Kiwi. How goes it?’

‘Fine. And you?’

‘Me, I’m on the countdown to return to Australia. Only a coupla weeks to go and I’m out of here, mate. Back to the missus and the kids.’

Jim’s face wrinkled into a grin. Down by the shore children were playing just beyond the perimeter of the minefield.

‘You’re one of them Horis, aren’t you?’ Jim asked. ‘If I came up on you in the dark, and if you weren’t in uniform, I’d probably mistake you for one of them locals.’

‘How would you know I wasn’t,’ Sam answered. ‘The uniform wouldn’t guarantee you anything, would it.’

‘You have learnt fast. That’s the trouble with this war. You can’t be sure of anything. What the enemy looks like. Who the enemy is —’ Jim took out his cigarettes. ‘As soon as I get home I’m giving these up.’

Suddenly, there was a small scream. One of the children had fallen.

‘Bloody kids! Dong lai! Halt. Get outta here!’

Jim flapped his arms and walked over to where the children were playing. As he approached, they ran away like small black animals scurrying into the dawn. The fallen one remained on the ground, and Sam shouted: ‘Jim, no.’

He saw that the children hadn’t been playing at all. They had been trying to lift mines from the field. One of them, the kid lying on the ground, had messed up.

‘Oh, shit,’ Jim said.

The mine the kid dropped was only seconds away from detonation. There was nothing else to do except get between him and the mine, and hope he survived the blast.

‘There, there, son.’

The mine fragmented, cutting Jim and the kid to shreds.

The senselessness of it all. Jim’s death put Sam into a tailspin. The Aussie veteran was the first soldier Sam had known to die in Vietnam. Now he had dreams about the mine exploding. He had been near enough to see the way in which Jim and the child suddenly disintegrated. One minute they were standing there, silhouetted against the dawn. The next moment they were gone. Chunks of meat and scattered bone on the beach. And he was still standing, in a state of shock, with Jim and the kid’s blood falling like rain on his face. What kind of enemy would send kids out to lift their mines for them?

‘It could have been me instead of Jim,’ Sam realised.

On this occasion death had brushed Sam by. But he had felt the eddy of wind as death passed. The next time he might not be so lucky.

So how did you recover from the death of a friend? You got through it minute by minute, day by day. You tried to put it behind you. You got on with the job. You went forward and before you knew it you were in the clear.

One afternoon, Sam, George and Turei came across some men playing half court basketball at the base: the blond American chopper pilot, his co-pilot and another American airman. The Yanks were making a lot of noise asking for the ball and directing the play, and something about the game made Sam pause — the banter and laughter seemed to come from another world. Just as the three Kiwis were about to pass by, the blond pilot saw Sam, remembered a profile illuminated by tracers and, in a moment of spontaneity, sent the ball spinning over to him. The pilot’s grin was free and as wide as Illinois. Somehow it closed the door on Sam’s sadness.

‘Feel like a game?’ the blond pilot asked.

‘Us against you? Gee, I dunno.’

‘Come on,’ the pilot said, ‘I know you want to say yes. Don’t give me such a hard time. Me, Fox and Seymour could do with some guys to play against.’

Sam pretended to play coy and innocent. In on the pretence, George and Turei tried to keep their faces straight.

‘Isn’t basketball your national game?’ Sam asked, kicking at the dust. ‘We don’t play much basketball where we come from. We’re small town boys and you guys are American city folks.’

‘We’ll make it fair,’ the blond pilot said. ‘How about our putting 10 points on the board for you.’

‘Make it 14.’

‘Twelve.’

‘Done,’ Sam said, spitting on his hands. He took off his shirt and the greenstone pendant he wore around his neck.

The Americans laughed with surprise but winked at each other. This was going to be a massacre. The blond pilot shook Sam’s hand.

‘By the way I’m Cliff Harper.’

‘You can call me Sam.’

Harper gave Sam the ball. Before he could even draw breath Sam spun the ball over to George, George passed to Turei in the D who twisted, jumped and slam dunked the ball through the hoop.

‘What the fuck?’ Harper gasped.

‘Two points to us,’ Sam winked at him. ‘Takes us up to 14. You’re still to score. Your ball.’

Harper looked at Sam, stunned. ‘So you don’t play much basketball where you come from? Who taught you guys?’

‘Mormon elders from Brigham Young University.’

‘And I suppose you small town boys never played professionally?’ Harper asked, getting the picture.

‘Had you asked I would have told you,’ Sam answered. ‘We were in our rep team. Can’t you cut the talk and get on with the game?’

Harper roared with laughter. ‘Oh, you sly piece of shit,’ he said.

The game resumed. Harper passed to Seymour but Turei stole the ball from him. Turei was blocked by Fox who passed to Harper who was, Sam had to concede, not a bad player for a Yankee boy. Harper ran the ball into the D. Sam tried to block, there was some jostling —

‘Aren’t you getting a bit too close and personal?’ Harper teased.

Sam stepped back, startled, and Harper pushed past, lifted, and drifted in the ball without touching the hoop.

‘Nothing but net,’ Harper said to Sam. ‘Fourteen to you, two to us.’

The game began again. Sam signed to George and Turei to go man on man. When they scored the next two points, Harper looked at Sam with delight.

‘Hey, guys,’ he called to his team mates. ‘There is a God. At last worthy competition.’

Harper hunkered down. It was getting hot, so he pulled off his T-shirt. Sweat was pouring across his pectorals. He pointed at Sam.

‘I’m gonna make it rain on you all day. You are my bitch.’

The game got serious and had it not been for Harper’s schedule, Sam guessed his side would eventually have been outclassed by the Americans. The heat was ferocious and Turei fumbled, letting the Americans even the score.

Sam changed the strategy. He had always been good at long shots at the hoop. Instead of going for the D he kept on lifting, sighting the ball from outside the D and lobbing it in.

‘Look at that fucker!’ Harper said to Seymour in admiration.

Twenty minutes later, Sam’s team was only just ahead. Harper looked at his watch. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’ He signalled to Fox and Seymour.

‘We gotta go,’ he said to Sam. ‘I’ll save you for another day. Be very afraid.’

Sam grinned and they joined the others at the tap, splashing the water over their bodies and rinsing out their mouths.

‘So what other games do you play?’ Harper asked.

The question was innocent enough but somehow Sam couldn’t resist teasing: ‘American football.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Don’t you know? American football, that’s a traditional Maori sport.’

With a roar of laughter, Harper lunged for Sam and all of a sudden they were sparring, ducking and weaving just out of each other’s reach but sometimes connecting — the warmth of the sun-dried skin grazing the other. Then Sam put up his hands and went to the tap and dashed cold water onto his face. When he turned he saw that Harper had picked up the greenstone pendant.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a hei tiki. My father gave it to me before I left home. It’s been in my family for years. It’s supposed to protect me.’

The hei tiki was in the shape of a man. The sun refracted through the whorls and spirals, lit up the face with its wide eyes and protruding tongue.

‘A hay teekee?’ Harper asked. ‘I can even see the veins.’

When Arapeta had placed it around Sam’s neck, the hei tiki had come alive with his body heat and found a place on his chest where it could settle.

Harper pointed to the penis, curving around the left thigh.

‘And what’s this? And these?’

There were pale spots in the greenstone spurting from the head of the penis to the hei tiki’s shoulders.

‘The name of the hei tiki is Tunui a te Ika. The name commemorates Halley’s Comet. When people saw it in the sky it reminded them of a man’s orgasm when he is making love. As for the pale spots, they’re um, stars …’

Harper looked at Sam to see if he was kidding or not.

‘You’re having me on.’

‘No, it’s true,’ Sam said. He tried to keep his face as straight as possible but, in the end, he couldn’t help it. He doubled up with laughter, and Harper gave in. Turei, George and the others watched, perplexed. Then:

‘I have to go,’ Sam said.

He flicked the cord of the hei tiki over his neck. Felt the hei tiki find its home. Extended his hand to Harper.

‘Thanks for the game.’

Harper’s handshake was firm. ‘Affirmative,’ he grinned. ‘The base is small. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again. You owe me a re-match.’

It was a fair enough expectation but it never happened. Then, a week later, Victory Company was given leave in Vung Tau.

Chapter Six

‘Time to party,’ Turei crowed, rubbing his hands together.

It was four in the afternoon, and Victor Company had just settled into their quarters in Vung Tau. The one thing on everybody’s mind was sex and booze — not Captain Fellowes wasting his time with his cautionary briefing:

‘I know this will go in one ear and out the other, but don’t go anywhere alone, don’t spend all your money, stay out of areas that look dangerous, if you want to have sex with the bar girls wear a condom, and get back before curfew.’

Ha. When Sam, George and Turei formed a threesome and headed into town, staying together was the only piece of advice they intended to keep. As for the rest, well, rules were made to be broken, mate, and surely Captain Fellowes knew that Maori never wore condoms.

By five o’clock the three boys from Waituhi hit the shantytown of bars near the port. George was leading and he suggested a shortcut which found then lost in a maze of narrow passageways between bustling market stalls.

‘You’re supposed to be a scout,’ Turei grumbled, ‘but you can’t even find your way to a fuck.’

The market was filled with flowers for temple offerings, and fruits like pineapples, green papayas, rambutans, mangoes, lychees, breadfruit, guavas, passionfruit, bush limes, custard apples and avocados. Hawkers sold rice, fresh noodles and bean curd. A vendor offered eggs of all kinds: quail eggs, chicken and duck eggs, and preserved eggs covered in a sooty mixture of ash, lime and salt. In another area of the market were baskets crammed with tiny chicks and ducklings, cheeping, wriggling and climbing over each other. Indoors, under a corrugated-iron roof, were fresh fish and meat markets. Fish wriggled and flopped in shallow metal trays. Lobsters with royal blue claws and iridescent purple carapaces lay in heaps. White geese with yellow beaks sat tethered next to black geese with red beaks. There were song birds for sale inside bamboo cages. Clouds of flies rose as customers browsed through lumps of meat. Some looked suspiciously like dog or rat.

George gave a horrified yell as he blundered into a snake pit. The snakes had bright green eyes and shiny green skin. A wizened old man was skinning them. They hissed and struck as he grabbed them and slit them open.

Sam took over the lead as soon as they were through the jumble of stalls. They reached the other marketplace where sex in all its infinite varieties was waiting — a jumble of streets with red-light bars filled with bar girls, pimps and touts. Already trade was brisk, and Sam, George and Turei were just three in a big stream of Yank, Aussie and other soldiers walking through the streets. Girls with big smiles tugged and pulled and called out to them as they passed by.

Some of the girls weren’t, well, exactly pretty. It was remarkable what a little darkness and lighting could do; wanting to be laid also helped. There was nothing like a surfeit of raging hormones coupled with the relaxing effect of bad alcohol to make every girl a real doll.

George saw a call girl to his liking. She was built on the big side which was probably why she wasn’t as busy as her companions. She eyed George and she knew a sucker when she saw one.

‘Whoa up, Neddy,’ George said.

‘You bastard,’ Turei answered. ‘She looks like Emma!’

‘What can I say? Your sister has ruined skinny women for me —’

George approached the girl and chatted to her. She showed the stamp in her health card, indicating she’d had a check-up.

‘You know another two girls for my friends?’ George asked.

The girl put two fingers in her mouth and whistled — and she was soon negotiating with other bar girls who had come running at her signal.

‘All the girls are ready,’ the girl said, ‘just for you Kiwis.’

The three girls dragged the boys into the LOVE FOR YOU HERE BAR, just across the street. Very soon they were in separate cubicles with a girl in each. In deference to Sam’s rank, George gave him the prettiest one, he held on to the big one and Turei had the third. Sam’s girl had him climaxing in seconds.

‘Wah,’ the bar girl smiled, ‘you’ve been waiting a long time for that, eh, soldier boy!’

Half an hour later, Sam made his way down the stairs. The bar was so crowded and filled with smoke and soldiers that he didn’t see Turei until he bumped into him.

‘Yo, bro!’ Turei grinned. ‘Is the Sarge a happy chappie?’

Sam smiled and nodded. ‘So where’s George?’

‘Still upstairs, the bastard,’ Turei said. ‘But I’m going to have his arse. Look at this —’ Turei had been in negotiation with the bar owner and had bought a glass of evil-looking wine.

‘What is it?’ Sam asked.

The bar owner thought Sam was interested. He showed him a small barrel filled with clear liquid. Coiled in the liquid were several fat snakes, a metre long, with brown backs and bellies striped cream and black.

‘Snake wine of course,’ the bar owner said. ‘Makes your manly weapon big and strong. And after you drink wine you eat snake. No good if manly weapon big and strong but does not go all night long. You want some?’

‘No thanks,’ Sam said.

At that moment George joined them. ‘Oh, mateys, I need a drink.’

Sam saw the gleam in Turei’s eye. ‘This is not a good idea,’ he whispered. George hated snakes. But:

‘I’ll get you the house special,’ Turei said, his eyes mischievous. He signalled to the bar owner and pointed to the barrel. ‘Hey, bring us some of your special wine! My pal wants to have a drink.’

The bar owner filled a glass with the snake wine, and George swallowed it down in a second.

‘What’s it taste like?’ Turei asked.

‘Isn’t it what you guys are having? Isn’t it home-made vodka?’ George asked. He downed another glass.

Turei gave Sam an evil wink.

‘While we’re here, we may as well eat,’ he said.

Sam went to warn George but Turei kicked him in the shins.

‘It’s on me,’ Turei said.

He ushered George away to a table so that he couldn’t see the bar owner taking one of the fat brown snakes from the barrel.

Five minutes later, the bar owner placed a plate in front of George. On it lay chopped chunks of meat, brown on top and striped cream and black underneath, fried and doused in a thick sauce.

‘Aren’t you guys eating?’ George asked.

‘We’ve eaten,’ Turei replied quickly.

‘You sure you don’t want any more? This steak is great.’

‘Er, no thanks.’

Sam watched with a queasy stomach as George ate and drank.

‘You like?’ the bar owner asked. ‘You want more?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ George answered.

The bar owner brought the barrel to the table. Turei started to shake with mirth. The bar owner picked up two snakes.

‘Which one? Brown? Or striped?’

‘Oh, you bastard,’ George said to Turei as he threw up.

By ten, the whole of the red-light district was going up like a rocket. George and Turei were half drunk and singing ‘Ten Guitars’ and Sam was in the middle, holding both of them up. They joined up with some other Kiwis and headed for MADAME GODZILLA’S. The place was really jumping. There, after a tussle with some Aussies, including the red-headed guy who’d been eyeballing Turei ever since arriving in Vietnam, they scored a table.

‘You and me, Hori,’ the red-head said, ‘one day we’ll have a go one on one together.’

‘Any time, any place,’ Turei replied.

All of a sudden, through the haze, Sam saw Cliff Harper with his chopper colleague, Fox. They were coming with some girls from the back room. As they pushed aside the beaded curtain and returned to the bar, they were greeted with whistles and grunting noises. Laughing, Fox slapped Harper on the back and made him the focus of the applause. Harper grinned.

Some pretty hot sex had been going on in the back room. Even now, two of the girls were fighting for Harper’s attention. Good-humouredly, he put up his hands: ‘No, ladies, I’ll call it a night.’

The girls were persistent. There was a firm glint in Harper’s eyes as he tried to underline his answer.

‘Then perhaps you want to dance?’

Harper was diplomatic. But after a while, as more girls pressed in on him, frustration showed in his face. He’d had his sex and now he wanted to drink with his pals. And then Sam saw Harper’s fingers moving in a strange way.

Get out of my face, willya?

Sam was taken aback. Harper was signing, in the language normally used among the deaf. Luckily for Harper, some of his chopper mates were willing to take charge of the girls, who flowed away from him as he slumped down in his chair and put his head in his hands. His fingers moved again in sign.

God, Johnny, I’m so bored.

Harper took a swig of his beer. He looked disinterestedly around the bar. Across the room he saw Sam; he squinted his eyes just to make sure, and smiled. He was just about to look away when, impishly, Sam moved his fingers.

Who’s Johnny?

Beer sprayed from Harper’s mouth. He put his glass down in astonishment.

You can read me?

Didn’t you know? Sign language, like basketball, is a Maori tradition.

Harper started to grin.

Now let me guess. I suppose you were taught it by Mormon missionaries?

You got it. Are you with friends?

Yes. You too?

There was a sudden increase in the noise and smoke. Harper gestured helplessly and then made jabbing motions.

The noise in here is too loud. Meet me outside. I wanna talk.

Sam nodded. He grabbed his beer and told George he was going for some air. He pushed and shoved through the crowd, getting love pats all the way, and finally broke free into the street. He watched as Harper extricated himself from his friends and joined him. For a moment the two men stood there, looking at the stars. It didn’t feel awkward. It felt right not to talk. It felt good just to be. Sometimes there was no need to fill the air with words.

‘So who’s Johnny?’ Sam began.

‘My kid brother,’ Harper answered. ‘He was born deaf and dumb. Mom and Dad and the rest of us had to learn how to sign so we could talk to him.’

‘The rest of us?’

‘I’m a mid-Western boy. From Illinois. My Dad has a farm a few hours out of Chicago. I’ve got two older sisters, Gloria and June, much older than me. But Mum wanted boys, so poor old Dad had to keep on trying until it happened. I came along twelve years after June, and then Johnny a couple of years later to keep me company. I got to know how to sign so well that in the end Mum and Dad gave up on it and whenever they wanted to talk to him they’d say to me, “Cliff, tell your brother this,” or “Cliff, tell your brother that.” By that stage, however, we were in our teens and he had learnt how to read their lips. But we loved talking together in our own way and it got so bad that it used to annoy the hell out of everyone. “What are you two boys talking about?” Mom would ask. Or June would say, “Are you talking behind my back, Johnny Harper?” I tell you, we had such fun, Johnny and me.’ Harper’s face creased into an expression halfway between happiness and yearning. ‘I miss talking to Johnny. I miss talking to him in our secret language. Sometimes, like back there in the bar, I forget myself and sign as if he’s there. Instead, it was you.’

Harper ran his fingers through his hair. Gleams of gold scattered through the night.

‘I don’t usually shoot my mouth off like this,’ Harper continued. ‘So how about you? How did you learn how to sign?’

‘You know those Mormon elders? One of them, Elder Crowe, coached us in basketball and American gridiron —’

‘You mean you were serious? You’re kidding me!’

‘Kidding you? Man, if you and your helicopter mates want to try to take me, George and Turei out in football you’ll be wasted again — and you’ll be my bitch.’

Cliff Harper spat on his hands. ‘You’re on. But what about the signing?’

‘Well, Elder Crowe was partially deaf and dumb. You know how it is. His words were sometimes kinda thick and knotted, and difficult for the guys in the team to understand. Because I was captain of the team, I learnt to sign and was able to pass on the instructions. Sometimes, just to get Elder Crowe going, I didn’t pass on what he wanted. I remember one game I told the guys what I wanted them to do! Only I made out it had come from him. I sure got it in the neck when we lost.’

Cliff Harper roared with laughter. He leaned back and breathed out.

‘God it’s good to laugh. I mean, really laugh. This war takes it all away and before you know it you’ve forgotten so many things. Like, I’ve suddenly remembered, you know it’ll be the end of Fall right now at Back of the Moon —’

‘Back of the Moon?’

‘The name of the farm,’ Harper answered. ‘The trees that were a blaze of orange and red will have lost their leaves. The cold wind will be coming down slow and easy from the north, just cold enough to snap the steam of your breath as it leaves your mouth. My Dad and Johnny will have taken the cattle to their winter feed in the high country. Soon the snow will come and the blizzards and sleet. We had a grizzly killed some of our cattle last year. I had the sights on it but, wouldn’t you just know it, the rifle froze up on me and jammed. By the time I got the bolt working again that grizzly had gone. I put the dogs on it, but they couldn’t make any headway through the snow. The snow gets to pile up higher than a man. It’ll be up to Johnny to get that grizzly if it comes again. Thank God he missed the draft because of his disability —’ Harper swallowed hard. ‘But there I go again,’ he said ruefully, ‘talking up a storm.’

There was a loud burst of noise from inside the bar, cheers and whistles, and the sound of applause. Harper turned to Sam.

‘Hey! You gotta see this. It’s the floorshow. Madame Godzilla.’

Harper put his right arm around Sam’s shoulders and began to pull him to a window. It happened so easily, this physical pulling in, the weight of Harper’s right arm over Sam’s shoulders, that Sam simply allowed his body to flow into the friendliness of the embrace. When they reached the window, because Sam was shorter, Harper pushed him forward and stood behind him so that Sam could get the best view.

‘Can you see?’

‘Sure.’

The stage was empty, but the pianist was waiting to start up.

‘Why is she called Madame Godzilla?’ Sam asked.

‘You’ll see,’ Harper said.

Inside the bar the patrons were beginning to thump on the tables, setting up a drumming rhythm that reminded Sam of the natives of Skull Island, calling on King Kong to come for the sacrificial maiden. Except that instead of banging three massive strokes on a moon-sized cymbal, somebody held up a little triangle: ting, ting, ting. The deflation of the image made Sam snort with hilarity.

‘Here she comes,’ Harper said.

The bead curtains parted on the stage. Madame Godzilla appeared. She — or was it he — was a big girl. She had poured herself into a black dress way too small and way too high above the knees where a suspicious bunch of coconuts bounced and swung. She was carefully made up and wore an astonishing platinum-blonde wig which obscured one eye. When she smiled several gold teeth flashed inside her betel-stained mouth. She looked vaguely, gruesomely, familiar.

With a kick at the pianist, Madame Godzilla went into her routine.

‘You wanna have luv, soldier boy?’

Bump, grind, swing them pearls, bat those eyelids, Girl, and wink.

‘Introducing the Marilyn Monroe of Vung Tau,’ Cliff said. He was so close, his breath cooled on Sam’s neck.

Madame Godzilla stepped off the stage to mingle with the patrons, and four GIs scrambled to get out of her way. No such luck. She hauled them back with her massive arms, sat one of them on her suspiciously bumpy lap and began to sing:

‘(You lucky son of a beetch!) I wan’ you to luv meee —’

Madame Godzilla was really working her butt, wriggling and rotating and making deep lascivious moans. She dug her fingers, with their three inch nails, into the GI’s crutch — and ouch. Yow. He paled as, to great laughter, she pulled a face and made out that what he had was very difficult to find.

‘I know a trick I do to your stick (if you got one) —

‘I can take you high-ah, fill your desire-ah!’

With a push she sent the GI sprawling and went after bigger fish. But they — bigger or not — weren’t having anything to do with her. Disappointed Madame Godzilla finished her song —

‘I be the best hot love-ah girl in all Vung Tau!’

She fixed the audience with a beady stare. Nobody dared not clap.

Sam turned to Harper.

‘Hey, you were right! I wouldn’t have missed that for the world —’

They were like two boys, hip to hip, hugging each other in a paroxysm of mirth. It was as if they had stolen a watermelon out of Farmer Brown’s garden and escaped his wrath by jumping over the fence and scooting down the road. Or had managed to sneak past the ticket collector at the circus and were watching the aerialists swinging above the crowd in the big three-ring tent. Or were playing hookey from the war and running up a snowy slope with a sled, ready to come zooming down, the cold snapping their laughter into tiny syllabic fragments.

But somebody, Turei, grabbed Sam and pulled him away.

‘There you are, bro! We gotta go!’

‘No wait —’

Turei wasn’t taking no for an answer.

‘C’mon, Sam, you party animal!’

Laughing and protesting at the same time, Sam gestured ruefully at Harper and was gone. He wasn’t to know that his departure hit Harper with a deep sense of loss. As if, coming down the slope on the sled, Sam had fallen off and tumbled away into the snow.

On Victor Company’s return to Nui Dat, Sam was surprised to find Lieutenant Haapu waiting for them.

‘Did your men have a good time, Sergeant? Good. Now it’s time for work. Assemble the men for an urgent briefing.’

Turei looked excitedly at George.

‘Do you think this is what I’m thinking it is?’

Half an hour later, Major Worsnop began the briefing.

‘This is it, men,’ he began. ‘I know you’ve been waiting patiently. Tomorrow our battalion will join with other Australian and American battalions in a major offensive against the Communists.’

The announcement took Sam’s breath away. Some of the men cheered.

‘Victor Company is going in the advance group to set up the base camp. Now is the time to put your training to good purpose. Good luck.’

‘The code name is Operation Bucephalus.’

The men worked deep into the night, preparing for the operation at company, platoon and section level. Every man prepared himself, making his own check of his personal weapon and equipment: helmet and flak jacket, webbing, harness and belt, butt pack, ammunition pouch, pistol belt, water bottles, bayonet or machete, belted machine-gun ammunition. Lightest of all, NZ freeze-dry rations. Just add water and mix. Then it was a matter of waiting for lights out and hoping you could get some sleep.

Sam spent his time reading letters from Arapeta, his mother Florence and his little sister Patty. His father’s letter was formal, expressing the hope that Sam was upholding the mana of the iwi. Florence’s letter looked as if it was spotted with her tears. Patty had sent a drawing of her new pony. She complained that little brother Monty always broke things. The letters made Sam sentimental. He put them aside. For some reason — perhaps loneliness or stress — he thought of Harper.

For the rest of the evening, Sam lay in his bunk looking at the moon. Operation Bucephalus was time for payback. For Sam to take utu for Jim’s death.

In the quiet of the night George began to strum his guitar and sing:

‘E pari ra, nga tai ki te ahau —’

An old World War Two song, the words reminded Sam of his father and Arapeta’s war. Would he prove to be as good as his father?

Suddenly George gave a sharp intake of breath, and began to speak.

Intrigued, Sam joined Turei at George’s side.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Sam asked.

George’s face was drawn and haunted. He pointed to the trees. At first Sam couldn’t see what George was pointing at. Then something moved. Something blinked.

Perched on the branch of one of the trees, maintaining an unwavering stare, was a russet brown owl.

‘I’ve just had a visitor,’ George said, laughing. ‘See? It spoke my name. I don’t think I’m going to get out of this war alive.’

Fearlessly George began to serenade the owl.

‘E hotu ra ko taku manawa—’

The owl stared down at George. Screeched. A harsh cry, freezing the blood.

‘Don’t you like my song?’ George asked.

The owl gave him one last look. Blinked again.

One moment it was there. Next moment, with a rustle, like velvet, it was gone, flying up and into the centre of the moon.

Chapter Seven

Four in the morning. Still dark. Sam felt a tap on his shoulder. Lieutenant Haapu, whispering to him.

‘Time to go. Rouse the men.’

Sam’s feet hit the floor. He was through the tent in a second.

‘Get up, guys. Shower and over to the Mess to eat.’

By 5.00, dawn was approaching. Throughout Nui Dat the Australian and New Zealand battalions prepared to move to Luscombe airfield.

‘On the double. Pick it up. Pick it up.’

At 5.30, Victor Company took up the all-round defensive harbour position at the airfield. The choppers were firing up.

The gunships left first. Reciprocating engines began to turn. Ignition, blue smoke, the smell of petrol fuel. From dead silence to thundering noise in one second. The helicopters rocked, rolled and shimmied as the blades rotated. The sunlight glinted on the whirling rotors. The lead gunship taxied out.

‘Mission control, this is Woody Woodpecker. Radio check over.’

‘Woody Woodpecker, I hear you five by.’

‘Affirmative. We’re lifting off.’

Harper pulled pitch. With a sudden juddering, the nose of the chopper dipped, the tail rose, the rotating blades began to go pop pop pop, and the gunship lifted off the ground. As was his custom, Harper saluted the soldiers below. He promised to do his job and keep the enemy pinned down while the troop insertions were underway. He said a prayer for all those poor bastards who would soon be face to face with the enemy.

‘Come back in one piece, Sam.’

By 6.00 the Australian companies had left. Now it was time for Victor Company.

‘Get ready to move,’ Sam called.

Already, the infantrymen were running at speed to board their assigned craft. Sam saw Lieutenant Haapu shepherding the platoon’s mortar section, orderly, signaller and medic on board the first chopper. Of all the platoon, the signaller was the one man the enemy snipers tried to take out. Without him to relay orders, and call for backup or a dustoff helicopter to pull out the wounded, you were in big trouble.

‘Move, move, move,’ Sam called.

The sun leapt into the sky like a chariot. Sam led his men through its spokes, moving swiftly to board their craft. There, the co-pilot acknowledged Sam with a nod. It was Seymour, one of the American basketball players. He and Sam counted in the men: George, Turei, Mandy Manderson, Jock Johanssen, Red Fleming and six riflemen. All were carrying extra pieces of equipment — disposable single-shot anti-tank rocket launchers that were strapped to their packs. If the enemy thought that bunkers would save them, these babies would get them out.

Sam gave Seymour the thumbs-up. The chopper rose, dipped and joined the battle formation. Six hundred metres below, the ground swept past.

Twenty minutes later, the landscape ahead began to explode and erupt.

‘It’s our artillery,’ Sam reassured the men. ‘They’re giving us cover fire to keep the Vietcong busy while we get in.’

There was a sudden increase in radio traffic, and the clattering air armada began to descend to the landing zone — the most dangerous moment of all for the fleet.

Sam heard the pilot radioing the support gunships.

‘One minute to dump time. Negative enemy sighted on LZ. Gunship Leader, I’m making a final approach for insertion. Is it a go, Woody Woodpecker?’

‘Roger. It’s a go.’

The chopper banked to the left and slid into the side of a dark mountain terrain. In a dizzying rush the ground came up and they were there — hovering above a small patch of barren ground surrounded by jungle. The chopper flared for a stop, swaying six metres off the ground.

Sam caught Red Fleming’s eye. ‘You okay?’ Sam asked.

‘I haven’t pissed my pants, Sarge, if that’s what you mean. Yet.’

Then, as if the pilot had said ‘Whoa’, the chopper was swaying three feet off the ground right above the landing zone.

‘Go go go,’ Seymour called.

In a second Sam had jumped to the ground. The fine red soil was a whirlwind around him as he ran for the nearest cover and hit the dirt, rifle at the ready, waiting for the bullet that would announce an enemy sniper. His heart was beating so hard it interfered with his hearing.

Sam saw the rest of his men dropping to the ground. The chopper rocked forward. It picked up speed, climbing out over the tree line and away. Attempting to fool the enemy into thinking that a landing hadn’t been made. Laying a false trail to some other part of the region.

For the next fifteen minutes, Victor Company kept position as the remaining fleet poured in. At each landing, more troops and supplies. Then it was done — the entire battalion was on the ground.

Everything was quiet. As the last chopper lifted away Sam felt a frightening sense of isolation.

‘Holy Hone Hika,’ he said to himself. ‘This is it. This is really it.’

He was in the killing zone.

Day One

‘Let’s get the men moving,’ Major Worsnop said.

The landing completed, each company of ANZAC Battalion headed out to its assigned operational sector. Sam passed a young Aussie soldier.

‘Makes a change from beating up each other at base, eh?’ the soldier said. ‘Go get ’em, Kiwi.’

‘You too, digger.’

Victor Company’s destination was two hours’ march away in the south-west quadrant. The main distinguishing landmark was Two Horn mountain. The route took them through thick bamboo, then secondary jungle, and finally tall primary jungle. Over to the east, muffled detonations, like distant thunder, indicated that the Americans in Operation Bucephalus hadn’t been so lucky in their landing.

By early afternoon, Victor Company reached its position — Two Horn mountain loomed above them — and set up its base camp. Platoons were sent out to clear the area of enemy. By mid-afternoon the base camp’s defences had been primed: M60 machine-guns and claymore mines were positioned to ensure interlocking fields of fire. Sentries were posted.

At sundown, Major Worsnop called the company together.

‘I have opened our orders and can now tell you why we are here. As you may know, there has been increased enemy activity throughout Phuoc Tuy province. Command have been monitoring it for some time, but our intelligence information has now been able to confirm that enemy activity is being coordinated from a new logistic supply base somewhere here in the vicinity of Two Horn mountain. This base has been supplying Vietcong forces in Long Khanh, Bien Hoa, and Binh Tuy in addition to those in Phuoc Tuy province.

‘Up until now, we have been hitting at the enemy wherever they surface. Operation Bucephalus has been mounted to stop them at the source. In particular, the Americans have had intelligence reports that the enemy buildup is preparatory to an attack on the American airbase at Bien Hoa. Our mission is to stop the Vietcong before this happens. Once their base has been located, joint command will manoeuvre to destroy it.’

He handed over to Captain Fellowes, who gave his lieutenants an area of sweep. Lieutenant Haapu’s was a delta at the heart of an extended river system. A village further up one of the valleys. A whole system of tracks pushing further into the clouds and up into the mountain.

Lieutenant Haapu turned to Sam:

‘You begin patrolling in the morning.’

Sam did not sleep well that night. In this, his platoon’s first field action in Vietnam, the pressure was on him to perform. Could he deliver? Could he lead his men into battle and out? When the dawn flared, Sam saw that the sky was like a sea of opalescent waves, tinged with red and stretching to the end of forever. Within it, from east to west, stretched a broad band of cloud, broken into long, thin parallel masses, as if shoals of fish were seething just below its surface.

‘The mackerel sky,’ Sam whispered.

And he realised that the sky was like a sign — whatever was going to be would be, and whatever was going to happen would happen — and a sense of extraordinary calm came over him. In particular, he remembered the wild-eyed palomino on that day, years ago, when he was in his late teens. Dad and other horsebreakers had mustered a herd of wild mustangs from out of the Rimutaka Ranges. Arapeta was given first pick, and had chosen the palomino. For days he tried to break the stallion in. He used all his resources of wisdom and cunning but, in the end, resorted to the whip. Sam ran out and pulled the whip from him.

‘You think you can do a better job than me?’ Dad asked. ‘If you can tame the horse I will give him to you.’

The next morning, when Sam awoke, he looked up to a mackerel sky. He walked out to the yard where the palomino was corralled.

‘You are king of all stallions,’ Sam said. ‘The world should be your kingdom.’

The stallion’s eyes bulged with anger, and it reared as Sam approached. Its mouth was bloodied from the bit. Its back was still moist from the cuts of the whip.

‘There, there,’ Sam whispered. For over two hours he rubbed ointment into the palomino’s wounds. He talked and talked.

The night before, he had twisted an old bed sheet into a soft rope, to use as reins. He wasn’t planning to use a saddle. Now he placed the rope in the stallion’s mouth and, with a fast leap, mounted.

Dad, Mum, Patty and Monty came to watch the contest.

‘Open the gate, Patty,’ Sam called.

‘What are you doing!’ Dad called. ‘That horse will have you off its back and be away before you get out.’ He tried to stop the gate from opening, but the palomino saw the space, reared, slashing the air with its hooves — and Arapeta cried out and twisted to one side.

With a whinny of passion the stallion charged into the open country. It tried to buck and twist Sam off its back and reach him with its teeth. On and on it ran, thundering across the landscape, making for the hills it so loved. Up the hills it sped, seeking its freedom.

Before Sam knew it, they reached the place where the hills cut sharply into the blue. There in front of them was the mackerel sky.

‘Yes, do it,’ Sam said.

With a hoarse cry the palomino leapt — and was falling into a sky teeming with silvered fish.

Two hours later, Patty saw Sam returning to the farm.

‘Sam’s back! He’s back.’

Sam was walking along the road. He was leading the palomino after him. Arapeta greeted him with pride and delight.

‘You did it, son. You did it.’

Arapeta walked out to reclaim the stallion.

With a sudden yell, Sam lashed at the horse.

‘Go. Get away from here as fast as you can.’

The stallion reared. Turned. Was off and away.

‘What did you do that for!’ Dad asked.

‘You said the horse was mine if I tamed it. Well, I tamed it. I owned it. I let it go.’

Dad had thought he gave the palomino its freedom out of some boyish gesture. Mum, however, knew better. She began to laugh softly.

‘The boy’s soft in the head, Florence,’ Arapeta said. ‘Like you.’

The silvered shoal dived into the sky. The memory fell away.

‘Time to go find Charlie,’ Lieutenant Haapu said.

Sam nodded. Whatever would be would be. He saw that the platoon was ready to move out. The signaller, Zel Flanagan, made a last-minute check on the radio.

‘The Americans didn’t get any sleep, poor bastards. Twenty casualties from the enemy counter-offensive. The Vietcong were hitting them all night.’

‘Nobody said this was going to be a picnic,’ Lieutenant Haapu said.

An hour later he nodded to Sam:

‘You all know what your job is. Go and do it.’

Sam unrolled the map and showed his men their assigned patrol area, at the farthest extreme of the map.

‘All happy? Everybody know what we’re doing? From now on we restrict our talking and adopt hand signals as communication. Agreed? Then let’s go.’

The patrol drills took over. Scouting in front, George and Red Fleming began to work in tandem, moving and covering each other a short distance ahead of the patrol. Sam followed with Flanagan, the signaller. Mandy Manderson, carrying the M60 machine-gun, and Jock Johanssen came next. Bringing up the rear was Turei, the designated M79-equipped grenadier, and five riflemen under his control — Hempel, Brooks, Jones, Starr and Quincey.

The patrol moved in dispersed formation, five metres or more apart. Three kilometres out, the terrain became close jungle. The temperature rose like an oven. Sunlight pooled and dappled the darkness. The camouflage battledress blended well into the surroundings. Sam checked his map: There should be a track somewhere here. He signalled to George: Here it is.

One up.

The patrol slowed and adjusted itself to the new formation. George and Red Fleming moved ahead. The infantrymen split into two groups, three men on either side of the track. They carried their rifles pointed downwards — no jungle ever had right angles.

We’re here.

The serious business of searching began. Sam did it all by the book. Patrolling to a specific point, stopping, sweeping the area with his binoculars. Setting the next point to patrol to, stopping, using his binoculars, patrolling again to a third point. He kept a tight grid. Forced himself to be patient, not to rush. Took everything easy, 400 metres an hour, looking for any signs of the enemy.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon, George gave a sign:

Something ahead.

The section went to ground. Sam crept up to George’s side, and took out his binoculars. George pointed above the grass. Sam scanned the area.

Across a sunlit clearing was an old graveyard.

Go and look? George signed.

Yes.

One minute George was there, next minute he was gone, crawling through the long grass, into the sun, along the southern side of the graveyard and in.

Five minutes later, George was back.

Bingo. A very intuh-resting and very busy cemetery, boss.

Sam consulted his map. Yes, a village a few kilometres away.

But two recent graves like I’ve never seen before, Sir.

Sam signed for the section to wait, and went with George to investigate.

George’s instincts were right. When Sam pushed his hands into the loose dirt of the first grave, his fingers went right through a corpse liquifying in a nest of seething maggots. But in the second:

‘Hello, hello, what have we here?’ He pulled and saw the edge of a canvas sheet. Scrabbling deeper in the dirt: a munitions cache. Grenades, mines, rockets and explosives.

Pull back.

Sam and George rejoined the men. The adrenalin was pumping hard.

‘Chuck’s bound to come back to re-supply from this little lot,’ Manderson said.

‘We’ll be ready for them,’ Sam answered. ‘Which way will they come?’

‘From the hills by the north track.’

‘Cover?’

‘Optimum. Good elevation above the track. Good concealment. Good sightlines down the track to the next bend. No cover for the enemy.’

Sam took a deep breath. Made the decision.

‘Tell the men to rest. At four we go down and set up the ambush.’

Two hours before trigger time. Sam settled the men.

George was lying on his back when Sam came by.

‘Thinking about the owl?’ Sam asked.

George nodded. His face was shadowed as if by a dark spread of wing.

‘Don’t let it get you down. We’re your mates. We’ll cover your arse.’

George jerked his head to the riflemen. ‘You’ve got a bigger problem,’ he said. ‘We’ve got virgins.’

Sam swore. Shit. He should have thought about it before.

‘Call the men together,’ Sam said.

The section assembled. Brooks and Quincey were shivering.

How do you tell a boy how to kill a man? How do you tell a boy whose only experience of killing is shooting rabbits that war makes killing a man all right? How do you get him to pull the trigger and feel okay about it?

‘Boys, I’ve never had to talk about this before, so you’re going to have to forgive me if I get it wrong. When you signed up, you knew that at some point you might be posted to Vietnam. While you’ve been in the Army you’ve had practice on the range aiming at a target. But this is the real thing, not target practice. This time the bullet won’t splinter the wood. Wherever it hits it will make an impact, wound and kill. If you aim for the centre of the bullseye, your bullet will go through a man’s heart and he will die.’

Hempel blanched and looked as if he was going to be sick.

‘I could tell you that you are doing this as your duty to country and to democracy,’ Sam continued. ‘I will remind you that you are professional soldiers. Neither of those will make killing a man, which is your profession, easy. But he’s not only a man. He’s the enemy. It’s either him or you. And he’s thinking that way too. If you want to live, and want your mates to live, pull the trigger. As for the rest, living with our conscience, call it what you will, we all have our own ways of dealing with that.’

‘What’s yours, Sarge?’ Quincey asked.

Quincey was quivering. Racked up.

What do I do? Sam thought. Shall I tell him? Instead:

‘My advice is for you to remember your training and your rifle drills. Let the procedures take over. Let the rifle do the killing.’

Four o’clock. Sam laid down the ambush. George and Red Fleming were at the top end of the track where the enemy was likely to enter. The rest took up positions overlooking the track. Deliberately, Sam placed Brooks and Quincey as far from the killing area as he could. God willing, if there was any killing to be done this day it would already be done before they were forced to pull the trigger.

Once the ambush was set, Sam primed it. Now it was all a matter of waiting. Of maintaining vigilance and staying so quiet and still that disrupted Nature reasserted itself. So the monkeys skittered and chattered again, the insects chirped and the birds whistled and sang. Somehow, you had to manage absolute stillness, so that snakes, no matter how poisonous, slithered undisturbed across your neck, their weight of coldness and dry scales feathering over your skin.

The sun was spinning in the sky. Suddenly, the birds stopped singing. George signalled.

Charlie’s in the area. Stand to.

Somebody was coming along the track. The tension was like a tightly coiled spring. George signalled again:

No, not Charlie.

An old village woman and her daughter came walking through the sunlight. They passed the hidden infantrymen, entered the cemetery and went to pray at a small shrine. When they returned back past the section, the girl was crying. The woman’s face was enigmatic, as if death was merely part of the passage of life.

The jungle stilled again.

An hour later, the sun was burning a hole in the sky. Sweat was pouring into Sam’s eyes, stinging them with salt. For a moment he lost his concentration, trying to clear his vision. That’s when he sensed that something had changed.

He watched. He listened. Insects were chirping. A small frog: toc toc toc. But the frog was out. There should have been a pause between the second and third toc. There wasn’t.

Coming down the track, not more than 70 metres away, was the enemy. George and Red Fleming must have given the thumbs-down signal, and Sam had missed it. Two men with AK47s at ready. Was that it? No, wait, wait, Sam thought. Steady your nerves. Don’t spring the trap yet.

Now they had passed Sam, so close he could almost sniff their sweat. Couldn’t they smell him?

Wait, wait. Three more enemy were coming in dispersed formation. Where were the first two? Level with Manderson and Johanssen. Don’t get trigger-happy, guys.

Wait. Another two Vietcong. Level with George. Would there be any more? Would there? If he left it too late, the first two enemy would be outside the killing ground. Or Brooks and Quincey would be forced to kill.

Make the decision, Sam. Make it. Make it now.

The contact drills took over.

Sam raised the SRL to his shoulder, his right elbow went up, the left hand gripped the woodwork, the thumb slipped off the safety catch, the foresight moved into the centre of the rear sight and then moved up through the centre of the visible mass.

First pressure, squeeze off, follow through.

The SLR kicked. A loud detonation, and Sam could almost see the bullet hurtling towards its target.

The bullet struck. Pierced the cranium, splintered the bone, made a hole. Out came a spurt of rich red blood. The Vietcong soldier crumpled and fell. Did he have time to utter a word? Perhaps a small oh of surprise? A moment to think of family, of wife, of children before the terrible pain and collapse into death?

No time to think of that now. Manderson and Johanssen’s machine-gun had caught three of the enemy and cut them in two. The rifle group was also active, the deep slow dunk dunk dunk of automatic weapons was close by. Sam saw another enemy go down. Shot in the throat, coughing and gurgling and watching the blood pour out.

But this was too easy. It couldn’t be this easy. It never was.

Christ! Another five enemy were coming down the track. Unleashing shots. Screaming. Shouting. George lobbed a grenade. It looked so ordinary, turning in the air. Boom. The Vietcong were retreating, George and Red Fleming in pursuit. Dunk, dunk, dunk. After a few minutes, they re-emerged on the track and took up a defensive position.

All clear, George signalled.

The section moved onto the track. Already Turei and Mandy Manderson were going through the enemy dead searching them for information. Quincey was vomiting his breakfast. Fox was green around the gills.

Quincey, Sam signed, mop up.

Best to take Quincey’s mind off the killings and get him back on the job. Best to get him handling the dead bodies. The more he looked into the face of Death, the sooner he’d get used to it.

Manderson showed Sam the pickings from the dead. Grenades, packs containing a large quantity of detonators, and documents which indicated that the enemy soldiers were the D440 local battalion.

No map of the enemy base? Sam signed.

No, but one of the dead soldiers is wearing the badge of their 274 regiment.

274 — one of the professional CVC units.

Sam nodded. They’d already been here too long. Time to get out:

Back to base.

Quickly, George led the section out of the area. Turei took Hempel, Brooks and Quincey under his protective wing. Quincey was tear-streaked.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus, oh —’

Back at the base, Sam saw that he had blood on his fatigues and on his skin. He whimpered, scrubbing at it, tearing his skin raw. That night the jungle was loud around him, filled with voices, and he curled himself into a ball, trying to protect himself from their accusations. People always said that with your first kill something died within you. Perhaps in the taking of life, watching it depart from a man who was once living, you also gave everything that was your own innocence.

How do you forgive yourself, Sarge? Hempel had asked.

Sam hadn’t answered, because he had never killed a man either.

Yes, best to think of the rifle, not yourself, doing the killing.

Day Two

The next morning reports came in that the Americans were still pinned down. A number had been killed and many more wounded.

‘Let’s concentrate on our job,’ Captain Fellowes said. ‘The best way we can help the Yanks is to find the enemy — and fast — and force their withdrawal. We knew that 275 and 33 were in the area but we didn’t know about 274. They’ll put up a fight.’

During the night the strategists had considered the evidence of the patrols. No signs of enemy activity or contact had been reported by patrols in the south and east quadrants. Some enemy activity had been found in the far west — but most activity had been reported by Lieutenant Haapu in the north-west quadrant and Sam had been the only one reporting an actual enemy engagement.

Captain Fellowes stabbed the map with a finger:

‘Looks like the north-west has the action. Let’s get back there and find the enemy before they find us.’

The morning was hot and humid. Clouds blanketed the sky. Heat lightning flared in the distance. Lieutenant Haapu cracked on the pace, keeping the platoon on the run to the Vietnamese graveyard. They hugged the landscape, moving swiftly through the jungle. Basic training kicked in again. Even at speed you didn’t fight the jungle. You learnt to glide through so you didn’t break branches. You learnt how to walk and how to listen at the same time. To distinguish between the sounds of a two-legged animal and a four-legged animal.

When the squad arrived at the graveyard, Lieutenant Haapu established a packbase. He marked out Sam’s search area.

‘I want you to sweep the flats and re-entrants around Two Horn mountain. Report back here at 1300 hours. Good hunting.’

Sam gridded his patch. On the first leg, he found a trail and ordered the men to parallel it. They checked out a small group of hootch complexes, with no result. They crossed another trail, moved off into some thick bush for concealment and monitored movement on the trail. Again, no results. On the second leg, Sam ordered the men to move inland through bamboo two to three metres high. Pushing through bamboo at speed could cut you to ribbons.

Still no sign of Chuck.

‘But plenty of bamboo vipers,’ Turei teased George.

‘Fuck off, you bastard,’ George said.

Sam ordered the last leg, a triangulation that led the men through swamp which seethed with leeches. No time to be squeamish. Wait until you get out the other side and then deal to them. Even so, the men shivered with revulsion as, working in pairs, they stripped and zapped the little bastards with glowing cigarettes. Turei yelled with horror when he found one pulsating on his penis.

‘It’s the only thing that will ever suck on your dick,’ George said. ‘And don’t worry, mate. The taste will probably kill it.’

By midday the sky was overcast. Overhead were vapour trails of high-flying aircraft and, in the distance, the sound of intermittent shelling. The temperature soared and every movement made Sam break into a sweat that was made up of half toil, half fear. Waiting for the enemy to pop you. A sniper in the shadowy treeline, sighting down the barrel and squeezing the trigger —

‘Any signs of enemy movements?’ Lieutenant Haapu asked when Sam returned to the packbase. ‘No? That means we’ll all be doing some hiking because the enemy must be up there.’

Lieutenant Haapu pointed to Two Horn mountain. He consulted the map. Saw a village marked on the southern flank of the mountain.

‘Let’s pay a visit.’

The platoon began to climb. A huge cloud front extended across the sky. Just as the platoon entered triple-canopy jungle the air became deathly calm and a breeze began, steady, cool and strong. A smattering of rain fell from the sky, and Sam saw Turei gratefully lift his face and lick the drops into his mouth. The jungle was thick with soaring tree trunks twined with vines. The rain became stronger: birds screeched and flying insects scattered the drops with rainbow wings. A nest of vipers glittered in the rain-stained undergrowth. It was all so beautiful, yet harsh. Halfway up the mountain the jungle thinned out into tall elephant grass. It was astonishing how quickly the sky became pitch black and how strongly the rain fell. The platoon picked its way through a field of green grass. Red flowers opened out like blood-stained hands to catch at the rain. In the middle of war, cruelty and beauty.

Stop. Lieutenant Haapu went to ground.

The platoon had reached a stream, swollen and brown with silt. Beside it, a bumpy red dirt track. On the other side of the stream were misty rain-soaked rice paddies and open fields.

Path to the village? Sam signed.

Affirmative, Lieutenant Haapu returned. ‘This is what we’re going to do, Sergeant. I want you to wait half an hour while the rest of us go round the flank and take up positions overlooking the village. In half an hour, take your men in. Got that? We’ll cover you as necessary and, once you give the all clear, we’ll join you.’

Then he was gone, and with him half the squad. As they left, the underbelly of the sky was split with electrical discharges. The ceiling cracked open and a spear of forked lightning plummeted to the ground. The air crackled with ozone.

‘Guess who’s arrived,’ George said.

His eyes were filled with myths and beings of the Maori past.

‘Te Uiuira,’ Sam answered. The Lightning God.

Village, George signed.

It was dusk and the village was a jumble of shabby bamboo-framed hootches. The huts were roofed with palm fronds and raised from the ground, their backs to the sloping mountain. Rainwater urns collected water under their eaves. In front of each hootch was a wooden pedestal set with offerings to the spirits of wind and sky. Most had verandahs and, below them, enclosures for pigs or poultry. But apart from a silky hen and its chicks, there was no sign of livestock.

Sam saw a villager appear and go around to the garden at the back of his hut. A small group of children as thin as rice stalks ran out and began to play around the village dinh, the small concrete shrine in the middle of the square. If children are playing, Sam thought, the village must be safe. He signed to George and Red Fleming:

Let’s go in. Do not fire unless fired upon.

The section advanced to a cau ki, a monkey bridge with a flimsy handrail. The water in the stream below had a rich smell like damp leaves. As Sam crossed he saw a reflection in the water. His mind flipped to a fairytale about the Little Billy-Goat Gruff clip clopping across a wooden bridge. Underneath the bridge was a troll —

George and Red Fleming went ahead. Cicadas croaked in the water palms, then became silent as the two scouts entered the village. The villager returned from his garden and shouted at the children. Without looking left or right, they ran quickly into their hootches. It was almost as if they had never been there.

Silence descended. Only the rain. Sam always trusted George’s gut instincts and, so far, George had not given any sign that there was any danger. But then two black figures ran out. George pointed them out to Sam: Bring back?

No. Leave to Lieutenant Haapu.

The team patrolled the entire length of the village, alert to every sign that might spell danger. When they reached its northern extremity they patrolled back to the village square where Sam positioned his men defensively in a 360-degree harbour.

He returned to Zel Flanagan: Send the all clear.

Five minutes later, Lieutenant Haapu and the rest of the platoon had still not arrived, but Sam was conscious that all around him the villagers were watching.

From the corner of his eye Sam caught a movement. Through the glistening rain he saw that a candle had been lit in one of the huts. It was moving as if someone was signalling.

The candelight flared and, far away, Sam saw a beautiful chameleon, a creature with an iridescent pale blue body and a yellow throat. As he watched it turned a deep angry blue and then an extraordinary pellucid green. Sam looked through the green of the chameleon’s skin. With a sudden flick it disappeared. In its place was an old woman, holding a candle and looking back at him through the open-weave lattice walls of her hut. She put the candle down, pulled and the wall went up. When Sam looked again, she was sitting on the verandah of her hootch like a wizened Queen of Sheba. She motioned to Sam.

Haere mai. Come.

‘What is this power you have over women?’ George asked.

Sam felt himself compelled to approach.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Flanagan said. ‘You may need somebody to translate.’

The old woman stood up and greeted Sam. Her voice reminded him of singing. Of an aged grand-aunt who lived long ago. He was taken to her once, to the place where she lived, a hut just like this — except that it was called a whare — and she had welcomed him and his mother in a similar singing language. Later that evening, after dinner, he had traced the moko on her chin and listened as she sung him to sleep with oriori, lullabies for children:

Po! Po! E tangi ana ki te kai mana

Waiho me tiki ake ki te Pou, a hou kai

Hei a mai te pakake ki uta ra —

The rain, the shivering trees and, when Sam blinked, he was back in Vietnam and an old lady was looking quizzically at him. Her hair was scraped into a bun. Her teeth were betel-stained. Behind her was an old man, her husband. He had lost a leg and was standing on a crutch. He had a scar running from his left ear to his chin. From the hut came the aroma of wood smoke and cooked rice.

‘What is she saying?’ Sam asked Flanagan.

‘The old mother says that she has been waiting for us,’ Flanagan interpreted.

‘How did she know we were coming?’

‘The hills have eyes. The birds left their shelter at our approach. The hills have ears too. They sent the vibrations as we trod every blade of grass. The old mother invites you inside to have a meal with her.’

At that, the woman’s husband yelled at her.

‘The old man doesn’t want us to come in,’ Flanagan explained, ‘but she’s insisting on it. She’s reminding him that she’s the one who wears the pants.’

Sam paused. He felt himself falling, as if he was going through a looking glass, and he remembered again the whare of his grand aunt. Like that house, this one also had mats on the floor, but instead of greenstone and feather cloaks it had an altar with a house God. Placated with offerings, the house God brought good fortune.

The old woman showed Sam the front room. A shrine, with yellowed photographs of loved ones. In front of each, a bowl containing money and tidbits of favourite foods, dedicated to the family’s ancestors. Through a window, a small temple in the backyard to appease wandering spirits.

‘Pho?’ the old woman asked Sam.

She led him into her kitchen. The old man stumped after her. To one side was a cooking area. A large ceramic urn, emblazoned with a dragon and filled with water, sat near the fire.

‘The old mother asks if you are hungry,’ Flanagan said.

The woman crouched over a charcoal burner. She was so skinny that when she hunched over, folds of loose skin wrinkled around her knees.

‘An com?’

She pulled Sam towards a pot that was simmering on the burner, put handfuls of noodles into a couple of bowls, then lifted the lid off one of the pots. Large bones bobbed about in the simmering liquid. Pushing these aside with a ladle, the old woman scooped up broth and poured it over the noodles. Next came handfuls of bean sprouts, slivers of meat and an array of garnishes. The soup looked salty and spicy.

At that moment there was a disturbance. Lieutenant Haapu arrived. When the old woman saw him, she raised a bowl to him. Lieutenant Haapu shot Sam an angry glance. Then he turned to the old woman, and in a gesture that was part tenderness, part sadness, shook his head. He had captured the two black-clad figures who’d run from the village. When they saw that the old woman was offering food, they spat at her. Defiant, she came out of her hut and began to berate them. The two captives retreated as if her anger had become physical and was pushing them back.

‘The old mother is telling them,’ Flanagan said, ‘that they should know she is a supporter of the Vietcong. Didn’t her sons and daughters go gladly to fight for them? And her grandchildren? And what is her reward? She knows that one of her daughters is dead but can the Vietcong tell her where she is buried? The old woman wants to know so she can visit her daughter’s grave before Tet, and invite her spirit to be at peace. She would offer food and fruit to nourish her daughter’s spirit. But she cannot and her daughter has become a wandering soul. She is one for whom no incense burns. There is also a son who is missing. The old mother thinks that he, also, has been hy sinh, sacrificed to death.’

The old woman stopped, exhausted. Her chin came up. She looked to the mountains. She began speaking again.

‘While the old mother supports the Communists, she is angry with them at the moment. A few days ago they turned up and, for some reason, they took her prized sow. She wants it back.’

As if that wasn’t enough, the old woman looked at Lieutenant Haapu, Sam and the rest of the platoon and began to chastise them too.

‘The old mother wants to remind us,’ Flanagan said, smiling, ‘that she is still our enemy. When the French ruled the country she had no sympathy for them — they killed her father. Neither does she have any sympathy for us.’

‘That means that she could poison you with her food,’ Turei said. ‘Or, at the very least, give you crook guts.’

The old woman must have sensed Turei’s concern. She gave a look of contempt. With a theatrical moan, she clutched at her throat and pretended to die. Then, recovering, she pulled Sam, Lieutenant Haapu and Flanagan back into the hut.

Eat! Eat! she motioned.

‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘If we are the enemy, why does the old mother want to feed us? One day we might meet her children in battle and kill them.’

‘The old mother asks why you presume you might kill her children?’ Flanagan said. ‘They might kill you.’

The rain began to hammer down.

‘We’ve stayed here long enough,’ Lieutenant Haapu said. ‘It’s time to move out.’

Sam bowed and thanked the old woman for her food. Her face was wan and eternal:

You are a boy. You were hungry, like all boys, and all boys must eat.

‘Go rejoin your men,’ Lieutenant Haapu said to Sam.

His voice hissed out. He could not look Sam in the eye. Halfway across the village square Sam turned back. He saw that the old couple were lighting joss sticks and placing them in the brass incense urn. Cupping her palms like a lotus bud, the old woman began to pray. That’s when Lieutenant Haapu grabbed her arm, manhandled her down the steps of her hut and threw her in the mud. The old woman squealed like a bird as she fell. Her husband rushed to protect her. Lieutenant Haapu pushed the old man to the ground and raised the butt of his rifle.

‘What the hell,’ Sam thought.

Next moment, the hut was on fire. Within a minute it was completely alight. Silhouetted, the old couple cradled themselves, weeping.

Sam grabbed Lieutenant Haapu’s arm.

‘If I were you,’ Lieutenant Haapu said, ‘I wouldn’t say anything, Sergeant. Now get your men together and let’s get the fuck out of here. Now.’

Only when the platoon had cleared the village did Lieutenant Haapu pull the men in for a meeting.

‘Our mission has always been to find the enemy. He saw us go into the village. He has seen us coming out. He will assume we are returning to home base. He knows we like to be nice and dry, so he’ll think it’s safe to visit the village after we’ve cleared the area. Well, he has a surprise waiting for him. We’re staying and we’re setting up a night ambush.’

‘I want to know why you did that back there,’ Sam asked. ‘That old couple did nothing to us, they —’

Lieutenant Haapu jabbed at Sam, pushing him back.

‘Concentrate on the job ahead. There’s a crossroad not far from here. That’s where we’ll lay our ambush. Let’s get it done before it gets too dark. And you’d better pray, Sergeant, that we’re successful — or, if we aren’t, that the Vietcong will be persuaded by the little charade I pulled back there. Can’t you see what you did? When you accepted the old woman’s hospitality and food you signed her and her husband’s death warrant.’

The dark fell quickly, darkness and rain. The jungle closed in, and Sam felt fear setting in. The ambush had been primed and an hour had passed. Although the men were only ten metres apart, all had been swallowed up into the maw of the night.

Sam knew that George was to his left and Flanagan to his right. One second he had seen George raising a hand in a wave and the next second he was gone. Sam strained his eyes to see George again.

‘How long have I been lying here?’

He began to feel disoriented. His imagination started to play tricks. Maybe he was alone, lying there all by himself and everybody else had gone somewhere else. Or perhaps, right at this very moment, an enemy soldier was sliding snakelike upon George, slitting his throat, and would soon be on his way to despatch Sam. He saw Charlie rearing up out of the wet bushes, bayonet in hand, plunging the bayonet down —

Get a grip on yourself, man.

Sam closed his eyes tightly. He thought of Hempel, Brooks, Jones, Starr and Quincey, all filled with the same fears and hallucinations. He felt ashamed of himself. And he hoped that Lieutenant Haapu was wrong about putting the old woman and her husband at risk of reprisals from the Vietcong. He hugged himself tightly, praying for himself and for the old couple.

‘Please God, please God, fix the world firmly again, the top with the bottom, tuia i runga, tuia i raro. Bind it so that it returns to the way it was, tuia i roto, tuia i waho. Let the old mother and her husband be woven within the frame of your protection, please, God, please.’

Then Sam saw Charlie was coming down the track. The prayer remained unfinished, the frame was burst apart.

Sam’s body flooded with adrenalin. He felt as if he was drowning. He lifted his head above the waves, gulped for air and reached for his rifle. Lieutenant Haapu had guessed right. The enemy, thinking they had the jungle to themselves, were talking and laughing as they came. Their torchlights stabbed through the darkness. And now the enemy were passing. Some in pairs. Rifles pointing down. Relaxed. Smoking.

A pencil beam flashed in Sam’s eyes and he was temporarily blinded.

Sam slipped off the safety catch. The enemy had already passed George to his right, and Sam realised that it was up to Lieutenant Haapu, further down the track, to his left, to spring the ambush.

‘Damn, I should be counting. How many have passed?’

Two Charlie, four Charlie, six Charlie, eight Charlie, ten Charlie, twelve Charlie, fourteen Charlie. Hell, how many more before the bag is full?

Come on, Lieutenant, fire the fucken flare.

A distinctive pop and sudden flash, and there it was. The flare turned the jungle a ghastly white. In the blinding light, the enemy were caught like opossums in the headlights of a truck. Caught in mid-stride, grinning. Trapped in mid-conversation, talking of life, love and the whole damn universe. As the flare blossomed around them, they froze in surprise and bewilderment. All hell broke loose as, from Lundigan’s direction, heavy firing shattered the night. In the split second that followed, Sam grabbed the claymore clacker, pulled the safety wire, pressed the tit and fired. Crump. The jungle erupted in a blinding orange flash and a pall of jet-black smoke. The sudden crash of the exploding claymore mines sprayed the killing zone with thousands of ball bearings. The ground shook with the impact. The air was filled with screaming voices.

Another flare went up. Sam heard Manderson and Johanssen begin their deadly work. Their machine-gun hammered out a steady stream of tracer bullets, and six Vietcong were cut down, throwing up their arms, opening their mouths to take their last breath before falling through the rain. All around him, Sam could hear the dunk dunk dunk as Hempel, Brooks, Jones, Starr and Quincey joined the battle.

‘We’ve got ’em,’ Sam thought. ‘They’re right in the middle of the killing area.’

Sam felt an absurd sense of joy and relief, almost as if he could laugh at the triumph of the attack. But the enemy were reacting now, fighting back, yelling orders to get off the track. They became shadows dancing in and out of the flashfire, taking up positions and returning fire. Somewhere a rocket launcher began its rain of fire.

‘Wait for the telltale flash in the darkness’, Sam thought. ‘Sight it. Squeeze.’

A crack, the bullet was on its way, taking an enemy soldier in his face, right behind his left eye, shredding the cornea, coming through the roof of his mouth, the hard palate, through the tongue, hitting the right side of the jaw and blowing it out. The soldier fell, choking.

But Sam had been targeted. Across the track, an enemy soldier stood and screamed, and threw a grenade. Sam watched it as it tumbled towards him — but the grenade fell short, bounced against a tree and fell back on the track. Shrapnel flew; after it came the enemy soldier, bayonet at the ready.

Fuck fire control.

Sam let off one, two, three, four, five shots in quick succession. His rifle recoiled at each delivery. The first shot took the soldier in the arm, spinning him off balance. The second whizzed under his armpit. The third went through his right lung and exited through the right side of his back, blowing out a huge hole. The soldier staggered back. The fourth shot caught him in the face and he spun to the ground.

‘Spare me a death like that,’ Sam prayed. ‘When I go, spare my face. Make it fast and through the heart.’

The enemy was in full retreat. An enemy machine gunner gave covering fire. The tracer bullets, green and white dots in the blackness, floated towards Sam, hypnotising, beautiful. Then with chilling speed they were flashing about him with a crack, a thump. He hit the mud. Panic overpowered him as green tracers crossed over his face and chest, not more than a few centimetres above him. He breathed in as deep as he could and thought:

‘This would be a bad time to get a boner.’

As suddenly as it had begun, the ambush was over. The jungle settled into silence. Sam was panting and dripping with sweat. The area smelt of cordite and burned powder, the sweet copper smell of blood.

Sam heard Flanagan come up beside him. Lieutenant Haapu had radioed:

‘Break contact. Secure the area.’

The mop-up was completed by midnight. The platoon had suffered no casualties. Fifteen Vietcong were dead, three had been captured. It was obvious that many more had been wounded but Charlie had managed to carry all except one whose brains had been half shot out.

‘When do you think he’s going to die?’

‘What do you think, Medic?’ Lieutenant Haapu asked.

‘He’s not going to last, Sir.’

Lieutenant Haapu nodded. He gave orders for George to lead the platoon out of the area. He and Sam would stay behind with the dying soldier and catch up.

Sam watched the platoon disappear into the darkness and the rain. The Vietcong soldier knew what was coming and he began to whimper. Lieutenant Haapu knelt beside him and cradled him.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.

The soldier tried to sit up, as if to convince Lieutenant Haapu that he was not dying, but he collapsed again. Blood was forming bubbles of foam at his mouth as he breathed. His eyes started to glass over.

‘Hold him tight,’ Lieutenant Haapu ordered Sam.

Sam knelt in front of the soldier and embraced him. The soldier looked deeply at Sam — why should he die — and tears spilled from his eyes. He cried for a long time and, then, he sighed and let his head loll against Sam’s chest like a lover. One of his hands found Sam’s hei tiki and gripped it.

‘Yes, that’s right. Hold tight.’

Lieutenant Haapu moved behind the soldier. He took out his Bowie knife and said a prayer. He thought back to times when he had been lead man on the chain at the Whakatu Freezing Works. The sheep would come into the killing pens, and he and his mates would walk among them and —

With a quick slash, Lieutenant Haapu slit the soldier’s throat.

Sam felt the soldier’s fingers unclasp the greenstone.

And all there was, was rain.

Day Three

The wind and rain squalled and shrieked through the night like banshees. Exhausted Sam tried to sleep. The squad had arrived back at base at midnight and, although they had been lucky, others in Victor Company hadn’t. One of the platoon had been crossing a T-junction when the enemy had ambushed them. One man had been killed and two others wounded.

Sam moaned and, finally, entered a world that was not quite sleep, not quite wakefulness. It was like being in twilight limbo. How long would his luck hold? The jungle became jewelled with menace and he heard an owl call out: cu cu cu cu. He had a phantom premonition of George falling into a bamboo pit, punji stakes puncturing his chest.

‘Oh, God, and we have to go back on patrol again tomorrow. Will that be the day when the owl comes?’

Around 4.00 a.m., Sam was still tossing and turning. The jungle had become truly demonic. Cobras rose, flared their hoods, hissed and struck. They were advancing on him, striking again and again. They struck at his defences, opening him up in all his vulnerability.

And it was as if Arapeta had been waiting for this very moment when his son was vulnerable and susceptible to attack. Through the terrible coil of his nightmares, Sam saw his father loping through the darkness and launching himself at him. Disarmed and defenceless, Sam melted into the embrace.

‘Dad!’

Then he saw the obscene smile on Arapeta’s face. Before he could stop him, Arapeta had put his fingers into Sam’s mouth, as if to prise it open. Sam started to laugh and push Arapeta away. But Arapeta was strong and now had both hands in Sam’s mouth, forcing the jaws wider. With mounting terror, Sam heard his jawbone splinter and crack. Eyes bulging, he felt Arapeta’s left hand going down past his tongue, around his tonsils and into his throat. Then the right hand, sliding in.

‘Open wide, son, and let Daddy in.’

The veins in Sam’s neck began to break and shred. Sweat popped like blisters on his skin. He couldn’t breathe and his heart was labouring, its pulsations bursting in his ears. He began to choke, and tried to vomit his father out of him. It was all happening so quickly: now Arapeta was up to his armpits in Sam’s mouth, the hair of his armpits grazing Sam’s lips. And Dad’s face was level with his, slick and moist in some unholy kiss. He looked at Sam —

With a cry, Sam fought himself awake. His heart was pumping and he was sucking the air into his lungs. He saw a blood red dawn — the mackerel sky again. And he began to shiver with grief and fear as he remembered what happened a few days after he had let the golden palomino go.

Dad had been acting strangely all that week. He was always absent from the farm, never returning until late at night. Curious, Sam asked Florence:

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘You should know better than to anger your father,’ Mum answered. ‘Do your chores, Sam. You’ll find out soon enough.’

Mum’s words made Sam uneasy. One night he stayed up to talk to his father. Dad was buoyant and pleased with himself.

‘Where’ve you been, Dad?’

‘Breaking in horses,’ Arapeta answered. ‘I’ve got a really good one for myself. I’ll show it to you one day. Once I’ve broken it in. It’s a real fighter.’ Dad laughed at some private joke and ruffled Sam’s hair. ‘You’ll see, son. Won’t be long now.’

Three days later, Sam was doing some repairs on the barn. He was on the roof, and Monty and Patty were on the ground, furious that he wouldn’t let them come up on the ladder.

‘No, you can’t come up. What happens if you fall off?’

‘I won’t fall,’ Monty pleaded. ‘Patty might though, because she’s a girl and girls are always hopeless and can’t do anything.’

At that, of course, a fight broke out between them. Sam, laughing, straightened up. The sun dazzled in his eyes and he put up a hand to shade them. Far off, he saw Dad riding back down the road to the homestead. Monty and Patty saw him too and were off, shouting:

‘Daddy! Daddy!’

Sam clambered off the roof and joined Patty as Arapeta reigned up.

He saw that Mum had come onto the verandah and was watching, her arms folded against her chest as she were holding herself in.

‘Is this your new horse?’ Sam asked.

Arapeta’s eyes gleamed under the brim of his hat. ‘Yes it is.’

Sam took a step forward. He saw that his father had had to lay the whip to it. ‘Wow, he really fought you, didn’t he!’

He laid his hands along the horse. Its back was caked with dried blood. Then the horse whinnied and something stabbed at Sam’s memory. He looked at the horse again, and stepped back as if he had been struck.

Once, it had been a golden palomino, king of all stallions.

Sam’s blood was beating in his temples as he watched his father dismount.

‘Bloody useless animal,’ Arapeta said. ‘I thought he’d be a good horse to keep, but look at him. No good to me at all.’

Arapeta swung his rifle up and, casually, without even sighting, blew the palomino’s brains out. The horse crumpled on its front knees. For a moment it panted, then it keeled over into the dust. Somebody was screaming and Sam knew it was Mum. She came running from the verandah and pulled Monty and Patty to her.

Sam took a step towards the palomino. He looked into its eyes and saw a golden sun going down. He knelt there in the dust, bewildered and trying to understand. And he heard his mother cry:

‘You had to do that, Arapeta, didn’t you?’

‘Do what?’

‘You had to do that to your son. Catch that stallion again. Break it. You had to be the king stallion. The black stallion.’

‘You never make sense, Florence,’ Arapeta said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Sam gave a cry, and backed away from Arapeta. Next moment, he was running. Anywhere, as long as he could get away. Into the open country, across the landscape, making for the hills he loved. Up the hills he ran and, before he knew it, he had reached the place where the hills cut sharply into the blue. There in front of him was the mackerel sky and shoals of silver fish were scattering the light. When he reached the place he jumped and was falling into the sky, the mackerel opening and scattering, flash, flash, flash all around him.

‘Why did you do it, Dad?’

And now, three hours later, Sam was back on patrol, dazzled by the sun and the silvered sky, climbing Two Horn mountain.

And there it was again, the track to the village.

Sam smiled as, in his mind’s eye, he saw the old woman waiting for him on the verandah of her hut. He imagined her shaking her head at all the disturbance the platoon was making in Nature. Hadn’t she said the hills had ears? The hills had eyes? Sam could almost hear the slap-slap of her footsteps as she went to the well to fetch water for cooking:

You are a boy. You are hungry like all boys, and boys must eat.

Suddenly, George and Red Fleming stopped, raised their hands in warning and went to ground. The platoon hit the deck. Sam low-crawled to George’s side. A short moment later he was joined by Lieutenant Haapu.

Village ahead. George signed. Something doesn’t match up.

Sam took out his binoculars and swept the village. It looked exactly like it did yesterday. The same bridge. The same cluster of hootches. The village square and the well. Then he realised that there was no sign of life, either human or beast. Nothing. And he smelt, rather than saw, ash on the air, something still burning.

Villagers, where are they?

Lieutenant Haapu looked at Sam. His eyes told Sam that he already knew what had happened. He signalled to George:

Take Hempel and Brooks. Go forward, investigate and secure village.

Sam saw images he didn’t really want to think about. He started to stand, but Lieutenant Haapu pulled him back. His face was grim.

Not you, Sergeant Mahana. You stay.

Helpless, Sam watched as George melted away to the right and up in the direction of the village. The sky filled with dragonflies, their glittering wings whirring like silver knives. They cut the air with foreboding.

Half an hour later, George reported in:

Come in. Village secured.

No sooner was Sam in sight of the village than he knew it had been visited by the Vietcong. Even from the small bridge leading to the square, he could smell that some of the hootches had been torched. The paths between some of the huts were strewn with litter, as if each hut had been searched and vandalised. The most chilling aspect, however, was the silence and stillness. Nothing moved. Not even a chicken scratching the dust.

Ahead, George was waiting. His face was waxen. Hempel was retching. Brooks was sitting on the ground, staring at nothing.

‘I’ll have your report,’ Lieutenant Haapu said.

‘The villagers are dead, Sir. Men, women and the children. Even the animals have been slaughtered. It must have happened either last night or this morning. They were beaten and then shot. Their bodies are all in a field at the back.’

‘Nobody left at all?’

George looked at Sam — and in that moment, Sam knew.

‘Two, Sir, but —’

In the distance, Sam saw that the platoon’s medic, Vickers, was ministering to two old people, who sat opposite each other, tied to two stakes under the hot sun.

‘No, merciful God —’

George tried to stop him: ‘Sam, matey, they’re not a pretty sight.’

‘Take your hands off me.’

Sam ran across the sunlight. As he ran he saw the old woman lifting her head to him. He fell on his knees before her. In one horrifying second he saw her blood splattered dress and knew what the enemy had done to her. They had cut her stomach open. Her intestines had spilled out and every time she breathed or swallowed they flipped and moved around like earthworms. Black flies buzzed angrily around her head. They swooped at Sam, angry that he had interrupted their feasting. Already, their eggs were pupating, hatching in the raw slit of her skin.

Even so, it was not her own condition the old woman was worried about. She motioned to her husband. He, also, had been gutted. Vickers had tried as best he could to minimise the pain, and was wrapping triangular bandages around the old man’s stomach to contain the guts. As he moved to help the woman she whimpered and motioned to Sam.

Look what they did to my husband.

‘I’ve given them both shots against the pain,’ Vickers said. ‘How they’ve endured so long I do not know. The old woman wanted me to work on her husband first. But she’s the one whose condition is worst. There’s nothing much I can do except make them as comfortable as I can. God, I wish they’d just die. But, apparently, they’ve been arguing over who should go first.’

Vickers’s lips creased into a sad grin. Sam could see he was simply at a loss as to what to do. He kept looking at the woman’s entrails.

‘It’s no use,’ Vickers said.

The old woman must have understood. Her face was laced with the fine cobwebs of pain. She put a hand on the medic’s left arm to comfort him and thank him. Sam began to moan, rocking backwards and forwards. Spittle formed on his lips.

‘It’s my fault, oh Jesus,’ he cried.

‘How did this happen?’ Lieutenant Haapu asked.

He motioned to Flanagan to speak with her.

‘The old mother says the Vietcong came this morning,’ Flanagan said. They were angry that we had ambushed their men and killed them. They set fire to the whole village. They shot everything that moved. They took the villagers out the back and executed them. The Vietcong were told that the old mother and her husband had given us a meal. For this, they made the old couple watch the executions. Then they did this to them. This is the slow way of dying. Not so easy and as painless as a bullet through the head. The enemy wanted them to really suffer for having offered us food.’

The old woman lapsed into silence. The effort of talking had exhausted her. She looked at her husband and murmured to Flanagan.

‘She wants me to tell her husband to hurry up and die.’

The old mother started to cough. Her intestines danced in the dust. Sam ran to an urn, cupped his hands in the water and returned with it. He smeared the water on the old woman’s lips. She opened her mouth and sucked on his fingers.

Ah, rainwater. It is always so cool.

Sam dripped water over the old woman’s forehead. She lifted her face gratefully to the sparkling drops.

‘I caused this,’ Sam said. ‘I caused this to happen. Your village to be destroyed. You and your husband to die —’

‘No, it was me,’ Lieutenant Haapu said.

The old woman looked at them both.

You must bear your pain. I must bear mine.

She motioned to Sam to come closer. Their noses and foreheads touched. The blue mist of age edged her eyes. She whispered to him.

‘She is telling you not to be sad,’ Flanagan said. ‘The day before we entered the village she consulted her lunar calendar and it told her that that day would be unlucky, the next would be unlucky but — ah — the third day would be a lucky day.’

‘Why lucky?’

‘Can’t you see? Today is the day on which she will die.’

At that moment the woman’s husband began to shout and yell.

‘The old father wants us to shoot them,’ Flanagan told Lieutenant Haapu. ‘He’s asking us why we’re waiting. Do we relish their pain? Why can’t we be merciful and rid them of this miserable existence. He wants us to shoot the old mother first.’

The old woman started yelling back. Flanagan’s lips creased with the humour of it.

‘The old mother is saying “Oh no you don’t!” to her husband. She doesn’t trust him one bit. For all she knows he might recover once she’s dead and he’ll go over to his old girlfriend’s village and set up house with her. And now he’s saying he just wants to make sure she’s dead because he’s sick and tired of always listening to her.’

Lieutenant Haapu turned to Sam. ‘I want you to take the platoon out of the village. Wait for me by the bridge.’

‘No.’

‘That’s an order, Sergeant.’

Sam felt tears spring to his eyes. ‘No, Lieutenant. I am responsible for this. Let me do the job.’

Lieutenant Haapu hesitated, then nodded.

‘Before you go, the old mother wants to leave you two gifts,’ Flanagan told Lieutenant Haapu. ‘The first is the whereabouts of the enemy base. It is up there between the twin peaks. They have tunnelled into the mountain. The second gift is to tell you that to live you need two things — rice and clean water. But if you want to live well you need three more — a garden, a pigsty and a fishpond.’

Lieutenant Haapu saluted the old woman and moved toward the waiting platoon. ‘Okay, everybody, grab your shit. We’re out of here.’

Sam watched as the men retreated. The seconds passed. He took out his pistol. The old woman saw it and sighed with gladness. She asserted her strength, indicating with an insistent motion towards her husband:

Him first, do you hear? He is not as strong as I am. It would be easier for me to look upon his face in death than for him to look on mine in death. It would break his heart.

Sam looked away. The old woman’s voice rose in anger.

Please, women are stronger than men. They have stronger bodies. They have stronger hearts. Let me give my husband this last gift of my strength and my love.

Sam paused and nodded. The man started to protest, then threw up his hands in exasperation.

Sam shot him. The old man slumped in his arms.

Sam turned to the old woman. She smiled a serene smile.

I used to wash my prized sow three times a day.

She took Sam’s pistol hand and pushed the nozzle against her temple.

Quick. My husband is already too far along the path and I must catch up with him.

The sound of the pistol cracked across the hills.

Utu. There must be revenge.

An hour later, Lieutenant Haapu signalled for a halt. The thick, jungled mountain looked immense, the twin peaks like horns. Clouds draped the peaks like dark veils.

‘Time to split up,’ Lieutenant Haapu said. ‘Sergeant Mahana, you take the right spur, search, but do not make contact. I’ll take the left spur. We rendezvous at the top at 1600.’ Lieutenant Haapu paused, then smiled at Sam. ‘I know you’re still hurting for what happened to the old woman and her husband.’

‘It was my fault.’

‘It was as much mine as yours. I didn’t have to order an overnight ambush. But I did. I’m supposed to make the hard choices. That’s what I’m paid for. It’s my job.’

Sam turned to his team, who were champing at the bit.

‘Ready to go, Sarge.’

‘Okay,’ Sam nodded. ‘Diamond.’

George and Red Fleming led the team out and up the side of the valley. In a horizontal line, on the cross, came Sam, Flanagan, Manderson and Johanssen. Turei and the rifle group covered the rear. Soon they were clawing through huge trees and up rugged, boulder-strewn terrain towards the twin peaks where the ridge split and formed another valley with its own drainage system.

Ahead, George was waiting for Sam’s instructions.

Take the left ridge, Sam signed.

Suddenly, Red Fleming put up his hand and knelt, weapon at ready. He motioned to Sam.

Come see.

Fleming had stumbled on a trail, zig-zagging through head-high shrubbery and bush, which showed signs of recent movement. Sam signalled to his men to get off the track and follow at single file, parallel to it. The men dropped down from the track some ten metres and resumed their search. It was hard to keep sight of the track, but even harder to keep the intervals between the men. The switchbacks were so tight that often they were forced to bunch up.

Half an hour later, Sam signalled for the team to take a break. George slumped to the ground, rolling his eyes with gratitude.

‘Phew. Hard work, boss.’

Suddenly Sam felt a tug at his elbow. It was Flanagan, and his eyes were as round as saucers. He put his finger to his lips and pointed towards the flank.

‘What the hell?’

Manderson was sitting on the ground with his feet out in front of him and he had laid his rifle across his ankles so he could slip out of his machine-gun harness. The shoulder pads were off his shoulders and he had become rigid. Johanssen, off Manderson’s right, had laid his weapon against Manderson’s ankle. The riflemen were playing at being statues, immobile, in whatever position they were in.

Turei, who had been assigned to pull drag, was waving furiously.

Freeze. Enemy in sight.

It was uncanny. The entire group had become motionless, as if freeze- framed.

Sam turned his head. Slowly. A millimetre at a time, until he could see what Turei had picked up. On the other side of the cover the track doglegged up to the top of the ridge. There was a hole in the green bush in front of him. A VC — and he was looking through the hole!

For a moment Sam panicked. The enemy platoon must have been only a few minutes behind them on the track. Following? No. Then what were they doing? His heart was beating so fast he couldn’t believe that the Vietcong soldier couldn’t hear it. Nor could he believe that the soldier could not see him. It was like playing a game of hide and seek. The Chuck was going to laugh soon: ‘Peekaboo! I can see you!’

Sam realised it was his face camouflage that was saving him. The enemy soldier was moving his head back and forth, trying to look past all the leaves to see what was on Sam’s side of the bush. Then he continued on.

There was no time for relief. Another Charlie had stepped up. Sam froze again, staring back, trying to squint his eyes so that the whites weren’t showing. The Vietcong soldier seemed to connect.

‘If he puts his gun up,’ Sam thought, ‘I’ve got to roll, grab my rifle and fire.’

The enemy soldier bopped on by.

Sam signed to the team:

Good boys. Keep laying dog.

An entire Vietcong platoon passed on the track.

Five minutes later, when the last Charlie had disappeared over the ridge, Sam signed again:

All clear.

The team collapsed to the ground.

‘This time, I really pissed my pants,’ Turei said.

Quincey and Hempel were doubled up, trying not to laugh. Jones was on his back, his feet waggling in the air. Sam let them release their tensions. Then the thought struck him:

‘They must be going back to base.’

Sam and George scrambled up onto the ridge. There, they low-crawled to the top, and Sam tracked the Vietcong patrol with his binoculars as they entered the treeline. All of a sudden, they were gone. The track was empty.

‘Where did they go?’

The sweat was pouring down Sam’s forehead as he tried to find the enemy patrol again. There they were, hugging the slopes and moving further down the mountain and between the twin peaks.

‘Shouldn’t we follow?’ George asked. ‘Play tag?’

Sam shook his head. ‘We might get too close.’

Almost as if on cue, one of the Vietcong soldiers looked back and seemed to see a flash from Sam’s binoculars. All Sam’s nerves screamed in his head. But the soldier had seen something much closer by — monkeys began to screech and yell and move like a river away from the enemy platoon.

Sam and George went back to the section.

‘George and I are going ahead to follow the enemy. Hempel, you come too. The rest of you, wait here. Flanagan, radio Lieutenant Haapu and tell him we have an enemy sighting and probability of the base not far from here.’

He signalled to George to lead the way. They moved swiftly, keeping to the track. The monkeys were still screaming and chattering and racing in the treetops above them like disturbed dreams. The Vietcong flitted through the vegetation.

Stop, George signalled.

The enemy had totally disappeared, swallowed up as if they had never been there at all. The track ahead was clear of footprints. George, Sam and Hempel backtracked. George sniffed the air. His head swivelled and he signed:

They went down there.

Swiftly, George left the track. His head bobbed only a few metres ahead of Sam and Hempel. All of a sudden, he was in the middle of a group of wild pigs, snuffling around in the bush. With a gasp, George put up his arms, stepped sideways and fell. And Sam looked for the owl:

‘No, you can’t have him.’

In a panic, Sam ran to see where George had fallen. His friend looked up at him:

Sam, don’t come any closer.

George was in a pit of decomposing bodies. The pigs had been feeding off them. The corpses wore the uniforms of American soldiers. They were crawling with maggots, and George’s fall had thrown up a cloud of stench and gas. With his left hand, George pointed something out to Sam. A trip wire was connected to one of the bodies. Three other bodies were lined up in a perfect row and wired to blow. Behind the bodies was a black ditch.

A concealed tunnel.

Sam’s mind tracked past the tunnel. Behind it there would be tunnel-like bunkers dug into the side of the bank, the outworks of a defensive system of tunnels going down into the valley.

‘This is it,’ he thought. ‘We’ve found the outer defensive perimeter of the enemy base.’

Sam heard Hempel coming up beside him. Hempel took one look at George and the pit of decomposing bodies and, next moment, was turning and retching and —

Stop him, Sarge, George signed. The whole place is booby-trapped.

It was too late.

‘Oh shit —’

A hole opened up under Hempel. The grass was falling into it. With a gesture of resignation, Hempel fell.

Silence.

When Sam went to look he saw Hempel in the middle of a carefully laid tiger pit. It was lined with metre-high punji stakes of fire-hardened bamboo, sharpened to a point and smeared with human faeces. Hempel lay skewered. One stake had pierced his throat. Another punctured his left shoulder. Still another was protruding from his stomach. The wounds were spilling with blood. His eyes looked up at Sam, bewildered, like a fawn’s. Then they rolled up into white. Hempel opened his mouth and blood fountained out.

‘Oh no,’ Sam thought. ‘Not one of my virgins —’

Quickly Sam helped George out of the tiger pit and then down to Hempel.

‘He’s dead. Sarge, the sonofabitch is dead.’

George was shivering and shaking as Sam let down a rope to pull Hempel’s body up. For a stunned moment both men sat there, looking at him.

‘Jeez, Sarge, close his eyes willya?’

And, oh, Hempel’s body was still warm and the blood was still so red, so red.

More minutes went by. ‘I’ve lost a man. I’m a man down.’

Then Sam motioned to George: ‘Come on.’

‘Are we taking Hempel back?’

Sam’s face was grim but determined. ‘Let’s find the enemy base first, for Hempel’s sake. He’s not going to die for nothing.’

George helped Sam lift Hempel’s body into the low branches where pigs couldn’t reach him. They entered the concealed tunnel and followed it as it sloped underground. All of a sudden there was an opening ahead. When Sam crept up to the opening the dirt started to crumble and he almost fell.

He was at the top of a cliff. Below was a hidden valley, and towering above it were the twin horns of the mountain. In the middle of the valley was the enemy base.

‘This is for you, Hempel.’

Sam took down the details — the sitings of defence positions, possible minefields, gun emplacements, concealed bunkers interconnected with tunnels, camouflaged fighting pits and spider holes. He looked for the likely command post. Then, once it was done, Sam signed to George that they should return to the patrol. When Quincey saw Hempel’s blood-stained body he began to sob.

‘Quincey,’ Sam said through gritted teeth. ‘Stop it man.’

‘It’s all right for you, you bastard,’ Quincey said, ‘but Hempel was my mate.’

‘Well Hempel’s gone, and we’re here, and the best thing you can do as his mate is to do your job.’

Sam turned to Flanagan: ‘Get me Lieutenant Haapu on the radio.’

The radio clicked and buzzed.

‘Sir, we’ve found it.’

The platoon returned to the village. The battalion had begun to reposition there and gunship convoys were landing men and military supplies.

Sam stood alone in the field behind the village where his men had buried the old woman and her husband.

The sun slipped away. The sky turned shades of purple, pink and gold. The trees of the jungle rapidly darkened into shadow. The moon, pale and round, had come up, although it was still not yet dark. Sam had heard that in Vietnam the moon was very beautiful, but he had not expected it to be so wan and luminous. Wild dogs were baying and, in that time between light and darkness, Sam could hear the spirits moving, whispering in the rivers and washing in the sea. They were sighing all around him in the stones and whistling in the trees, as if glad to have dominion. This was the time when Maori believed that the spirits of the dead began their long voyage to Te Reinga. There, at the northernmost tip of Aotearoa, they waited for the sun to go down. Already, perhaps, the old father had reached that promontory overlooking the sea where the spirits leapt from this world into the next. Had the old mother reached him in time?

Sam’s eyes prickled with tears.

‘I hope you caught up with your husband, old mother.’

Then he turned on his heel and returned to his men. They were waiting at the landing zone. All around them choppers were spinning, darting, their blades glistening like the wings of iridescent fireflies. Hempel’s body lay waiting to be flown back to Nui Dat.

‘Are you all set, Sergeant?’ Lieutenant Haapu asked.

Sam nodded. He saw that Major Worsnop, Captain Fellowes and all Victor Company had mustered. He also saw Cliff Harper was there. In the rush and the roar of the world —

Hello, Sam. Cliff signed.

Sam lifted his face. God, I feel so alone —

I’m here for you.

Major Worsnop turned to the platoon.

‘It is never easy to lose a friend,’ he said. ‘It is never easy to lose a good soldier. We ask the Lord to take John Hempel into his care. Hempel, you are going home now.’

Major Worsnop led the salute. A guard of honour let off a rifle volley as Sam, George, Quincey, Brooks, Jones and Starr picked up Hempel’s poor broken body and lifted it into the chopper. Harper slipped into the pilot’s seat. The engine started up, the rotors whined. All the ihi, the mana, the wehi and sorrow flooded into Sam and before he knew it he was leading George and Turei in a haka to Hempel.

‘Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora —’

Feet stamping. Eyes bulging. Crouched and slapping thighs with hands.

‘It is death, it is death, it is life, it is life —’

Spittle arcing out, sweat far flung into the air.

Harper felt the grief of the moment.

‘Ker-rist! Why am I crying for some soldier I don’t even know.’

Harper looked down at Sam and saluted. The chopper lifted, turning the landing zone into a place of whirlwinds.

Day Four

By sun-up the battalion was in position for the attack on the enemy base. They had deployed on the ridge facing the twin horns, looking down into the valley. Major Worsnop looked at his watch. Okay, let’s get the show underway. He ordered the two-battery artillery barrage assault to soften up the enemy before his boys went in.

‘Box grid and column fire,’ he commanded.

There was half a minute’s silence as the message was radioed. Then:

‘On the way over.’

Overhead, Sam heard the rounds approaching. The barrage hit the south side of the enemy base in one big twelve-round orange crruump. More rounds followed, whistling overhead, working from south to north, the shells impacting on the enemy position. A few seconds later the detonations reached Sam and the ground lurched.

‘How can the enemy survive all this?’

The barrage was devastating to watch. It seemed to go on for hours. Then the last rounds impacted. The roar of the detonations receded. The smoke drifted away from the killing ground.

Suddenly there was a lull. The sun burnt off the clouds — an astonishing interlude of beauty and radiance. And Sam remembered when he had a chorus part in a high school musical put on by those Mormon elders from Brigham Young University:

Mine eyes have seen the glory

of the coming of the Lord,

he is trampling out the vintage

where the grapes of wrath are stored!

As if they had been waiting in the wings to join the chorus, an air strike of F-4 Phantom jets descended, whistling down on the wind.

‘Wow, Sarge,’ Turei whispered, ‘just look at those beauties —’

From his grand-tier cinemascope seat, Sam watched the jets as they made their approach. They came screaming towards the twin peaks and through the gap between the horns. As they swooped over the ridge they released their rockets — so close that Sam could see the stabilising fins pop out. He followed their trails as they tracked down towards their target.

A whistling sound was followed by the thunk, thunk, thunk as the rockets hit the enemy base in splendid stereophonic sound. Concentric rings emanated from the explosion. The Phantoms increased power, fighting against the G-forces as they sought the sky.

A second later came the boom, boom, boom of the explosions. The earth heaved and swayed.

A second strike was ordered in. It carried bombs and napalm — called bom bi by the Vietnamese because when the mother bom detonated it spawned 600 baby bombs.

The enemy base brought in its ground-to-air defences. One of the jets, levelled into its bombing run, was hit. It just managed to clear the ridge, its slipstream parting Sam’s hair, trailing smoke. Sam saw the pilot struggling to eject.

‘Come on, man. Get out. Get —’

The Phantom exploded, raining the sky with burning debris.

But now helicopter gunships had swooped down from the north-west. They flew in a daisy chain, like the corps of an American ballet. Their movements were choreographed with skill and beauty as they bled off elevation. For a moment they disappeared before popping up over the ridge, black carapaced flying gun platforms, their front windows flashing in the sunlight.

‘Hey,’ George called. ‘I see an old friend.’

Woody Woodpecker was on the case again. As he passed overhead Sam saw the gunners so near, leaning out of their doors, that he could reach out and shake hands with them. Down into the valley of Death rode Woody Woodpecker. As Harper swung in low over the contact zone, the gunners opened up:

Glory, glory hallelujah

glory, glory hallelujah

glory, glory hallelujah

God’s truth is marching on!

‘Now it’s our turn,’ Sam said.

He saw it was almost time for Victor Company to go in. ‘Come on Captain Fellowes, give the order to engage.’

At that moment, Sam saw the tarantula. He picked it up. The spider had always been an important symbol to the Mahana family. It was a kaitiaki. A protecter. The spider evoked memories of Riripeti, the spider woman of Waituhi, whom some had called Artemis.

‘E Riripeti, kia ora,’ Sam said.

The spider seemed to be smelling him. Sam brought it up to his face. The spider touched him gently with its legs. In a sudden movement it turned and faced the enemy base. It reared, taking up the attack position.

This was it. This was the moment.

Sam took a deep breath. With all his power he invoked Tumatauenga, God of War, Tu, the eater of man, to come to the battle. It was time for reprisal, for utu to be exacted. Sam’s breath hissed out. He hurled his words across the twin peaks.

‘Contact front.’

Sam sprinted forward. He let the M79 fall under his arm, supported by its strap, so he could use his rifle and bayonet more easily in the close contact with the enemy. His gut was in a knot, and steady breathing had become hard labour, but he felt no fear. He remembered that whoever got the most punch out the fastest got the upper hand. Wax the enemy before he waxed you. He touched his greenstone pendant. It leapt in his hands, searing him with its heat.

‘I refuse to die today.’

Sam led his platoon down the slope towards the enemy base. He could see the enemy fire patterns, the interlocking fields of automatic weapon fire sweeping at ground level. He wanted to cry out a warning to the company, ‘Don’t get trapped.’ All he could hope for was that the gunners, jet fighters and gunships had knocked most of the defences out. Across the contact zone, firefights were breaking out like displays of violently beautiful fireworks. Tracers flowed back and forth. The air was filled with the noise of the ground attack, pops and cracks like popcorn popping and, every now and then, a puff and an orange mushroom explosion.

Why does war always look so beautiful?

Suddenly, Sam looked up and saw that a gunship had been hit by an enemy B-40 rocket in the tail section. Hydraulic fluid was spraying everywhere. And the enemy gunner had the chopper in his sights and was following it down. Sam’s heart lurched. Was it Woody Woodpecker? No, it was Harper’s mate, Fox, who was in trouble.

Fox’s voice came over Harper’s headphones.

‘We’ve been zeroed —’

A 12.7 round hit the doorframe above Fox’s head. The next round hit the forward post near the starboard door gunner. Another hit right next to Fox. The rest of the rounds were smacking into the engine cowlings.

‘They’re going down,’ Harper whispered.

Fox’s gunship started shuddering and losing height. It drifted away from the battle zone towards the jungle, the props chewing the shit out of the treetops.

‘Pull up, Fox, pull up.’

It was too late. Fox’s helicopter erupted into an instantaneous sheet of flame.

And that glorious Battle Hymn of the Republic came booming into Cliff Harper’s head, a patriotic hymn filled with the valor of martyrdom, swelling out on the wings of angels from all the wars that Americans had ever been involved in:

In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea,

as he died to make men holy,

let us die to make men free!

The gunship fell from the sky to Sam’s left, but there was no time to take a look. His men were running into trouble.

‘Make smoke,’ Sam commanded.

He heard the plop and whine of smoke canisters, but the enemy had already zeroed him. Through the smoke came the unmistakable sound of enemy rounds breaking the sound barrier. The rounds clapped around his head. He felt a hot crack close to his right cheek and ear, then several others like a string of cracks together. Then a bomb went off and the soldier who detonated it virtually disappeared. One of the men near him had both his head and helmet taken off but his heart kept pumping, spraying blood through the air. Others near him were blown into the air the way they are in cartoons, legs still running. Sam felt a wet rain lick across his face. Tasted someone’s blood on his lips.

There were booby traps everywhere. A big-ditch bank was ahead and, to the left, barbed wire in rolls. Some of the advance team had been caught up in it or had tried to evade the wire by running down lanes where fire was targeted.

‘Turei!’ Sam called. He saw that George was caught in the wire. ‘Don’t let the owl get him.’

Turei nodded. He saw the enemy machine-gun team manning the lane. Up went the rocket launcher to his shoulder and —

‘Bye bye Charlie.’

Sam helped George out of the barbed wire.

‘Thanks, Sarge.’ They began to run again. Bullets were cracking around them.

There were tripwires all over the place. It was all a matter of luck. If it wasn’t your day you ran into the wire and boom you were blown to bits. Or looking at a smoking stump where your leg had been.

Stumbling, Sam looked down and saw a man’s head, eyes still open, rolling in the red dust. Another soldier, coming up from behind, kicked at the head and it sailed above the ground like a bizarre football.

Sam dropped to one knee. For a moment he was disoriented by a shell grazing his head. A lane of fire opened up before him. George, beside him, was covering off his left rear shoulder. Then Turei was there at his right.

‘Er, boss,’ Turei said, ‘I don’t like this movie. Let’s go next door and see something that isn’t so noisy.’

They were really going through their ammunition, spraying the area in front of them, peppering and stitching up the base — and it really was like movie time, when the good guys came riding into the sleepy town and helped the defenceless villagers against the bad gringo guys.

Sam placed his rifle beside him, swung the M79 into his right shoulder and fired. Six grenades soared and exploded, showering the Vietcong with metal shrapnel. Then he was up and running again, George and Turei with him all the way. Ahead the grenades were going off like fireworks in the air, Roman candles, golden showers, Fourth of July, Guy Fawke’s Day —

All around Sam, the troops of Victor Company were advancing.

A line of little spouts tracked towards Sam in the red dust. Jesus! Transfixed, paralysed, he watched as rounds went right around him.

‘Oh, you are one lucky son of a bitch.’

He raised his rifle and let a whole magazine fly towards the bullets’ source. Empty magazines were scattered where soldiers had been reaching and slamming them in, emptying one and reaching for another, slamming it in and emptying it — just letting the rounds fly. By return, a ferocious barrage of enemy machine-gun fire erupted from the front, red-hot slithers of metal and B-40 rockets. The soldier next to Sam was cut in half at the waist. No time to think about that. Just keep moving. Fire from the hip, keep firing, and change magazines.

‘Was it like this for Dad, when he was in the Maori Battalion?’

All of a sudden, Sam was through the base’s defensive perimeter and in among the bunker system. Charlie was popping up everywhere.

Aim, squeeze the trigger, let off the shot. Aim, squeeze, and another Chuck goes to Vietnam Heaven. Take down as many enemy as you could before they hugged you by your belt.

All around him, other soldiers were engaging in hand to hand combat.

Magazine empty. Ahead an enemy soldier was charging him. Sam reached for a new magazine and hit the release on the bolt receiver. Oh, shit. His rifle had jammed.

The enemy soldier raised his rifle. Incredibly, it jammed too.

With a cry, Sam launched himself at the man. The stench of the soldier overpowered him as they grappled at close quarters. Then the concussion from an exploding bomb kicked them and hurled them into the air. Dazed, Sam sat up. The Vietcong was crawling towards him, knife in hand. He raised it and —

George was there, shooting the enemy soldier in the mouth, unclipping a grenade, pulling out its pin and throwing it into a Vietcong bunker.

Boom, and smoke exploded out of the opening.

Sin loi, enemy soldiers. Too bad.

Sam rolled and dived for the rifle that still smoked in the hands of a dead comrade. Ahead, the enemy were beating feet, breaking contact, spilling out of the bunkers and running before the assault. An image came into Sam’s mind of having jumped into a chicken coop: All those chickens.

Men were firing, firing, firing. One of the chickens sprayed blood and lost a wing. Another had its head shot off and was flapping around, a headless chicken, running off into the distance.

And Sam was in among the bunkers, lifting his bullet stream and directing it down into the enemy who cowered there. He saw the pleading look as he blew a Vietcong soldier out of his Ho Chi Minh sandals. Twisting to his right, he fired into another bunker where three of the enemy had thrown themselves together to protect each other. All around him, Sam’s team was in a feeding frenzy. Throwing grenades like lethal fruit. Moving through the smoke and destruction and firing at anything at all. If it moves, fuck it.

There was no concept of time. It was winding up before him and unwinding behind him. He was running to breast some finishing tape and Dad was cheering: Go, son!

He was tired, sucking massive air, and the adrenalin was absolutely coming through his ears. He was living a lifetime of stark terror. He kept firing and firing. An infantryman near him had a flame thrower, but he was shot in the face as he lifted it. Another bullet, crack, and his spinal cord was severed.

Enraged, Sam picked up the flame thrower, flicked the switch and sent the flame into the enemy foxhole. Take that, arseholes.

Five screaming figures, human torches, spilled up and over the lip of the hole. Their bodies danced like candles. Sam saw his mother putting her hands to her eyes. She didn’t want to look. And the tape was in front of him and —

‘You did it, Sam, you won!’

Sam heard somebody screaming. Out of control, Quincey was running amok through the enemy base, laughing his head off. The sound was like a buzzsaw and it cut through Sam’s bloodlust.

OhmyGod.

He looked around him. The sheer lunacy. The sheer madness. And all of a sudden silence fell. All except Quincey, still laughing, gun spent, but still pressing the trigger.

Glory, glory hallelujah

glory, glory hallelujah

glory, glory hallelujah

His truth is marching on!

After the battle, there was a cloudy cooling breeze. It was mop-up time. The attack had reaped a bitter harvest.

‘If I ever wanted to picture Hell, this must be what it’s like,’ Sam thought.

Everything moved into slow motion. Rapid casualty evacuations were occurring. Dust, grass and other debris swirled in the air as choppers ferried the wounded back to Vung Tau. On the ground medics rushed to administer morphine, to stabilise the wounds, stem the bleeding or resuscitate hearts. Men shook and screamed. There was blood everywhere, and the powerful stench of open wounds. One man’s flesh had been fireballed off his face, neck and shoulders. Another looked as if his torso was a leg of pork, filleted open. His bicep muscle was visible and yellow sinews poked out from his wounds.

Sam saw Lieutenant Haapu beside one of the wounded who was making a hacking sound and dribbling blood from his mouth. The soldier had been smacked hard and his chest had been turned to mush. Lying next to him was a soldier who had his back blown out. He was dying.

‘Mum, have you come to get me? Is it time to go home now?’

Further along, a priest administered last rites to another soldier.

‘Please don’t talk to me, Padre,’ the soldier whimpered. ‘I’m not dying, I’m not dying, please, I’m not —’

The dead lay waiting in baskets covered with blood-splattered ponchos. Soldiers on detail loaded the bodies into a Chinook. Sam saw a head fall from a basket and roll like a melon in the dust. Turning away, he tripped over a boot and saw a foot in it. For a moment he had the absurd notion that he should take the foot with him and ask if anybody wanted it.

Lost a foot? Will this one do?

His thoughts were interrupted by the whining of another Chinook as it worked with rigging straps to ferry away one of the downed gunships. He heard a voice shrieking above the thunder of the chopper:

‘Lai dai! Lai dai! Come here, you Charlie bastards, and lie the fuck down.’

Enemy prisoners were being herded brutally into a makeshift compound. Some had half their clothes blown off. Others had suffered grievous wounds.

Sam moved on towards the enemy bunkers. In some of them the bodies were so mangled they didn’t look human at all. Some had been fused together, monstrous creations of war with three heads and flame-soldered tentacles for arms. How many enemy were dead? Sam didn’t know. He saw drag marks where some had tried to carry their friends in the headlong escape from the attack.

In a daze, Sam moved to the lip of a foxhole and sat down. He bowed his head in his hands. Then, across the sunlight, he saw Turei advancing on George with a small snake, waggling it furiously.

In the middle of all this — an absurdity.

‘Come on, George, you’re not afraid of a liddle wee baby snake, are you?’

‘Get away from me, Turei.’

Turei lifted the snake to his eyes and looked sadly at it. ‘Did you hear that little wee baby snake?’ He looked deep into the snake’s eyes and then threw it.

With a yelp, George stepped back. The snake fell through the open neck of his shirt.

George gave an unearthly scream. ‘I’ve been bitten.’

He yanked off his shirt and the snake fell out. Turei was apoplectic with mirth.

‘Stop acting like a baby. Can’t you see it’s dead?’

George’s breathing slowed. He looked at the snake. Then rounded on Turei and socked him in the mouth.

‘I go through a battle and I don’t have one mark on me,’ Turei said. ‘The only wound I have is when my best pal hits me in the jaw.’

Sam smiled, ruefully. In war there were no winners or losers. There were only the living and the dead.

And he was jolted straight back to the battle — he saw a discarded flame thrower and realised the foxhole looked familiar. He had picked that very flame thrower up, flicked the switch and sent flames into the foxhole. Five screaming figures had spilled out, their bodies burning, burning, burning, their flesh sizzling and flaming as he watched.

Five may have died on the open ground but another five had been incinerated where they lay. With mounting horror, Sam saw all of the burnt soldiers were Vietnamese women.

‘Oh, no. Oh, no, please, no.’

Sam remembered the old mother and an appalling possibility came to him that one of these girls might have been her daughter. He had already killed the old mother. Had he also killed her daughter? With a cry he jumped into the foxhole.

‘I’m so sorry, oh, I am so sorry.’

He cradled the charred bodies, pulling them over him. One of the girls had averted her face from the flames, perfect amid the carnage. In her hands she held a letter.

Flanagan was there, calming Sam down. Sam gave him the letter.

‘It’s to her boyfriend,’ Flanagan said. He began to read it:

‘My love, there is a plate of perfect roundness. The plate has a Chinese pattern etched in shades of blue. It shows two lovers pursued through a glade of drifting willows. The brushstrokes are delicate like eyelashes. The lovers look so strange, so remote and, if you turn the rim you can follow their flight across river, mountain and bridge. They are running away hand in hand, unlike you and I my love, separated by this war. But I think of you as I turn the plate and watch the two lovers running away across bridge, river and mountain. Perhaps, when the war is over we will be like them at the end of their journey because — there they are! Two birds released from an outstretched hand, flung into the sky, free! Free! Free —’

With despair, Sam realised the place had become a black cloud and the air was filled with buzzing.

Where do the flies come from? How do they know?

Before Sam knew what he was doing he was striking out at the seething cloud. It re-formed around him, angry, bloated and crazed with blood.

‘No, you can’t have them yet. I won’t let you have them.’

His face was streaming with tears.

‘Sarge, snap out of it,’ Flanagan said. ‘This is war, Sarge. War.’

Three hours later, Major Worsnop ordered the destruction of the enemy base and its ammunition supply.

‘The place is tripwired and booby-trapped and enough men have already been killed this day. Let’s send it back to Hell where it belongs.’

The detonation, when it came, was like an eruption. By the time it was finished, night had fallen. Phosphorus flares were lit at the landing zone. The choppers flew in to pick up the battalion for return to Nui Dat. Dozens of them sat there, like horses champing at the bit.

The men sprinted through the dust. The gunships lifted off into the setting sun. Sam looked down at the mangled mess that had been the enemy base. He should have felt elation. He saw that Flanagan had taken a small book from his shirt pocket and was reading it intently. When he was finished, he handed the book to Sam.

Pity them, the souls of the lost thousands

They must set forth for unknown shores.

They are the ones for whom no incense burns

Desolate, they wander night after night.