The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth Page A

Fluffy’s body slumps. He is silent.
    The blood still runs from him, staining the jungle green of his trousers black. It is running into the hostile river—licked up and flicked away in the alien current.
    We should all have died in that river but, by the normal miracle of war, we survive.
    Brogan is dead. Fluffy is dying. Young Sunny, the drag man, turned back and made the other bank, though with three bullets in one thigh. The Log has a bullet burn across his shoulders—Griffo goes to him.
    All the others are safe. They have vanished—blended and gone into the silence and the jungle and the dripping leaf.
    Old Whispering John is there, crouching against a stump, his eyes fixed on Bishie crouching ahead of him. Old John’s dirty teeth are showing in a fixed little grin. The webbing pouches on his chest are riddled, and there are even bullet burns on his shirt. Later he is going to show them and boast about them: ‘How’s that, eh? The old soldier gets through, eh?’
    â€˜Funny,’ he’ll say with ill-concealed gloating. ‘Young Fluffy, his first up and he cops it, and me, the old soldier, I walk right through it with not a scratch. Funny, eh?’
    Harry Drew sends a swift whisper into the silence of the trees: ‘Laird, take over for a while—watch Pez and Janos.’
    The whisper goes from tongue to tongue in leaf and branch and fern.
    Harry Drew slides round the tree and flops down beside Regan: ‘How are you feeling?’
    â€˜OK,’ shivers Regan.
    Harry puts his arm around the kid’s shoulders—thin shoulders.
    â€˜Come on, kid—everyone feels as bad first time. Will you come with me—stick with me?’
    â€˜Sure, Harry,’ says Regan.
    Sure, Harry! You are God, here on this muddy track, if you can beat these wasps of wrath away—if you can walk like Christ and unafraid—if you can keep me from death—or, better still, if you can keep me from fear of it showing in my eyes. Sure, Harry!
    Harry Drew leaves the tree in the peculiar crouching crab-like run of the soldier under fire. He pauses by a tree, dodges on and falls into the shadows of the shrub. A few seconds later Regan follows him with a valiant imitation of that same run. He pauses faithfully by the same tree, dodges on and falls panting heavily in the shadow of the same bush a few feet from Harry Drew.
    â€˜OK, kid?’ says Harry.
    Regan manages to grin through his parched lips.
    â€˜Sure, Harry.’

5
    But we must be inconstant to the earth—there’s the pity and the terror of it. We must rise—and never more reluctant from a lover’s bed. A red cross is drawn on a map and we must go there. The sky is grey and the jungle crouches, bland and waiting. The wet drips incessantly, implacably, imperturbably from the leaf—charting the passage of eternity.
    Pez and Janos crouch against the bole of a tree and talk it over. They crouch on their haunches, crouch on their toes—ready. They do not look at each other—they watch the jungle. They whisper from the corners of their mouths. The rifle and the Owen are held loosely in their hands—ready.
    â€˜They might open with mortars,’ insists Pez. ‘It’d be a hell of a thing to walk into your own mortars.’
    â€˜They won’t,’ says Janos. ‘They’d wait for us to call for them—and we’ve got no line back across the river. They know we’re here somewhere. They wouldn’t use mortars unless we called for them. We’ve got to get that gun.’
    â€˜They might just open up.’
    â€˜The longer we wait the less chance we’ve got!’
    â€˜Where do you reckon the gun is?’
    â€˜About three or four hundred yards down—can’t be far from the bank.’
    â€˜They might be strong.’
    â€˜Probably just a gun crew.’
    â€˜They’ll know we’re here.’
    â€˜We know they’re