Fear Drive My Feet Read Online Free PDF

I pulled the towel about my waist and hobbled barefoot up the
stony creek-bed, back to the camp. When I got there the others were putting on long
trousers and gaiters, rolling down their sleeves, and rubbing their hands and faces
with mosquito-repellent lotion; in short, making all the preparations for evening
which characterize the mosquito-infested camp.
    John Clarke appeared out of the gloom as I was getting dressed. He looked slightly
embarrassed, I thought.
    ‘You aren’t an – er – officer, are you?’ he asked.
    My shirt carried no badges of rank, and his bore none either, though I knew he was
a lieutenant. In fact, hardly anyone wore his rank in those days, partly because
the store never had any badges and also because the Japanese made a feature of trying
to pick officers and N.C.O.s off first, if they could identify them.
    ‘No – I’m only a warrant-officer. Why?’
    ‘Well, you see, we have an officers’ mess here. I’d like you to eat with me, but
of course – ’
    I cut him short. ‘For God’s sake don’t worry about that! Just show me where the other
mess is, and I’ll be O.K.’
    ‘It’s not quite so simple. There’s a headquarters mess, where the sigs and orderly-room
staff and so on eat, and a sergeants’ mess, and of course there’s the men’s mess.
I suppose you’d better eat at the sergeants’ mess.’
    I stared at him. Here were forty or fifty men at the edge of the world, and pretty
well on the edge of eternity too; bound together, one would have thought, by every important tie both of interest and sentiment. And yet, to take their meals, they
split up into four groups. I could see that John’s sense of personal hospitality
was somewhat offended at having to send me to eat elsewhere, but that the system
itself was crazy didn’t seem to occur to him. And, to be quite honest, within a day
or two I had so slipped into the way of things myself that I found nothing ludicrous
in the spectacle of the same atrocious food from one central cookhouse being carried
through the bush among the flies to four different mess-huts. Very few of the absurdities
and injustices of army life worry you much at the time. You can’t buck the system,
so you put up with it, and pretty soon you don’t notice. I don’t think this means
that most people are militaristic at heart. Real militarists are those who seek to
justify the system, and find it good. The vast majority tolerate it because they
have no choice.
    As I finished buttoning up my sleeves John pointed out the sergeants’ mess on the
far side of the camp. The loud clatter of a beaten kerosene-tin announced that tea
was ready.
    ‘You’ll be right, then, will you? I’ll see you later,’ John said, and made off into
the darkness.
    I strolled across to the sergeants’ mess – a rough hut like all the others. A man
was setting fire to little piles of green leaves all round it, making a smoke-screen
to keep the mosquitoes away. A smoky hurricane-lamp spread a shadowy red glow over
the interior. Four stout poles driven into the dirt floor supported the rough table-top
provided by light sticks laid side by side. The five men round the table were perched
in various attitudes of discomfort on old bully-beef cases. They were meditating
quietly, saying nothing at all to each other.
    As I introduced myself and asked whether I could share their meal, they hastily found
another case for me, assuring me I was welcome. They wanted to hear the latest news
from Wau, and would have welcomed the devil himself to supper, I believe, provided
he had brought some diverting gossip with him.
    I looked round the table at my companions as they told me their names. They were all
young men – not one of them out of his twenties – but without exception they were
heavily bearded. For all one could see of their faces they might have been middle-aged.
    Among them was Bill Chaffey, a farmer and Member of Parliament from New South Wales,
with an enormous red bushy beard