Bryce Courtenay - Smoky Joes Cafe

Unknown Bryce Courtenay - Smoky Joes CafIntroductionThommo returns from Vietnam to an Australia that regards him as a mercenary guilty of war crimes. He begins to develop all kinds of] physical and mental problems, and thinks it must only be him until he finds he is not alone. Ten mates, all who remain of his platoon who fought and died her the Battle of Long Tan, are affected the same way Now Thommo and his mates are eleven angry) men out for revenge. They rope in an ex-Viet Cong with special skills and his own secret agenda Theyre the Dirty Dozen, just like the movie Only its real life, and theyre so screwed up they probably couldnt fight their way out of a we paper bag.That is, until a woman of character steps in Wendys infant daughter is dying and needs bone-marrow transplant. Hell hath no fury a she sets out to mould this bunch of ex-jungle fighters into a unit that will fight for justice, ] fair means or foul.Weapons Training by Bruce Dawe on pages 68-69,from Condolences of the Season, is reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Australia.The Australian experience in the Vietnam war was very different to that of the American one and so this book has been a very personal journey for me, an intellectual fact finding tour that leaves me extremely proud of the way our boys accomplished a difficult and controversial job in Vietnam.Vietnam was a very different kind of war and one we probably shouldnt have been involved in. Be that as it may, our nations reluctant acceptance as worthy warriors of the young men who returned from Vietnam simply wasnt justified.A revision of our negative attitude towards their Vietnam experience is long overdue.I hope you enjoy the story, which, of course, is a work of fiction. My eleven platoon characters are also wholly fictional and do not in any way portray any of the infantrymen who fought at Long Tan and who remain alive. However, the effort undertaken to portray the Vietnam experience is as close to the truth as, I believe, diligent research could make it.A great many people need to be thanked for their help in getting the hard facts right and in sharing their experiences for my benefit. First among these is Celia Jarvis, who accomplished a remarkable amount of research in a short time and did so with admirable patience and good humour. My special thanks to Graham Walker, a Vietnam veteran himself, for his counsel and guidance throughout.Others, in alphabetical order, who were generous with information and who gave their permission to use their own Vietnam experiences, written or otherwise, are Bob Buick MM, Wayne Cowan, Rod Cozins, Owen Denmeade, PeterJames, Terry Loftus, Tim McCoomb, Mike McDermitt, Gary McMahon, Ross Mangano, Ern Marshall, Stanley Morrie MBE, Harry Smith ME, Keith White, Tony White, Barry Wright and Admiral E.R. Zumwalt Jnr.I especially thank the Granville office in Sydney of the Vietnam Veterans Federation who were enormously helpful in organising for me to interview a number of veterans, all of whom I thank for speaking so candidly about their post Vietnam experience. Also, the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia for making available various papers and submissions to the government on the effects of Agent Orange and other veteran health issues.For the marijuana/cannabis information, my thanks go to Robert Long of the Nimbin Hemp Embassy and to the authors of various websites on the Internet. For the information on bone-marrow transplants, I am grateful to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Sydney.I also thank those authors who have gone before me and who have written so well on the Vietnam war. Bob Buick and Gary McKay, All Guts and No Glory; Terry Burstall, The Soldiers Story; Lex McAulay, The Battle of Long Tan; Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, The Australian Army and the Vietnam Sixth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment 1965-85. All that remains is to thank Robert Sessions, my publisher at Penguin Books, and my editor, Kay Ronai, who, realising this was a difficult story for me to write, helped more than I can say.Nightmares, dont tell me about them. Every night as it begins to grow dark I open a bottle of Scotch. I tell myself, if I can get pissed enough they wont come. Ill be so motherless, so brain dead by the time I crawl into the misery of sleep that my subconscious will leave me alone, let me get through the night without the terror.It works sometimes, but not often enough. Its the night noises; I wake to a noise, any noise, and the anxiety builds. Before I know it, Im up with the knife and on patrol around our living quarters upstairs, then downstairs to the cafe, then into the backyard and the storage shed, I even check the pavement outside Smoky Joes before I come back to bed and lie awake shaking like a sheila. I sleep with a Confederate Bowie, a real bastard of a knife, a copy of the standard army issue used by the Confederate troops in the American Civil War.I took it off a Yank Marine at Vung Tau. He was so pissed he could hardly stand up and he reckoned hed been dudded by a bar girl and it looked like he was about to use it on her. I grabbed his arm and took the knife just as the provosts, the military police, arrived. They took him away and I still had the knife. I reckoned Id earned it anyway. The little whore lost no time demonstrating how grateful she was to me neither.The Confederate has an eleven-inch blade forged from Damascus steel, it lies safe under my pillow where I can get to it fast. If the bastards come for me Im ready. Wendy has begged me to throw it away. Shes terrified Ill wake up screaming, like Ive done a hundred times already, and use it before Im truly awake.On her, me, the kid.More than once Ive wrecked the joint before Ive woke up properly. Or Ive grabbed her and covered her with my body screaming, Hold on, Mo, the dustoffs coming, youre gunna be okay! Hold on, please, Mo, I love you, mate! Dont fucking die on me, you bastard! Looking down at Wendy, Nog AK47s going off, crackle-pop-crackle-pop-pop-pop, our machine gun, brrrrrrrr-bam-bam-bam, the noise all about me, grunts shouting, firing every which way, the noise of the dustoff blades putta-putta-putta-putta as the helicopter comes in to pick up the wounded, her head is missing, blood everywhere. Wendys head is Mos head and then it switches around again. But in the nightmare I tell myself, How can me mate live with no head?So here I am, a screwed-up Vietnam veteran. No better or worse than my mates and not quite knowing whats gone wrong. Flashbacks, nightmares, rage, dizzy spells, anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, depression, sometimes long periods of impotence, and a whole heap more, thats me. Bloody pathetic, isnt it?The quacks at Repat shake their heads, say theyve done all the tests and nothing shows up. Veterans Affairs, taking directions from Canberra, who, taking their brief straight from the Pentagon, simply repeat the official line. One bloke who interviews me has this half smile on his face, Mr Thompson, as far as the department is concerned your psychological problems are not caused by your war experience. You have been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Maybe it was something that happened in your childhood, something your mother or father did to you. And as far as Agent Orange is concerned its about as harmless to humans as baby powder.Baby powder? Now thats real funny, but the bastard doesnt know it.Once, wed been out in the jungle for three weeks and we know exactly where we are, weve just used a smoke grenade and a passing chopper has radioed in to give us an accurate location. So we know from looking at the map that theres a lot more deep ahead, at least four days of scrub bashing before the operation is over. Then suddenly a couple of hours further into the boonies and its not there, the jungles missing, a miracle. Instead of visibility of maybe six yards we can see ahead of us for five hundred yards. Everything in front of us is dead and were kicking up this fine white powder. Touch a dead tree and the dust comes down to cover your greens, smells weird too.(Unbeknownst to our intelligence, the Yanks had defoliated the area two weeks previously.) What was supposed to be in the middle of primary rainforest is like a dead world.This was the first time Id seen what Agent Orange could do, though, of course, I had no idea at the time what it was, or how the dense jungle came to be defoliated. Let me tell you, there was nothing left alive. We saw dead bats, birds, spiders, every kind of insect you could imagine and not a green leaf on anything, everything silent, all of it covered with this fine white powder that looked just like baby powder.Id have liked to have told the arsehole in Vets Affairs that story but he wouldnt have listened anyway, theyre experts at nodding your life into non-existence. In Vietnam we fought with the Yanks, though not alongside them. A lot of them were half stoned most of the time, which we soon learned wasnt an addiction but a bloody necessity. At their Blackhorse Base in Long Khanh province, the US Army divided their platoons into potheads and non-potheads. The potheads did the day work and the non-potheads the night work. Though not the Marines, Airborne and Special Forces, the professional soldiers, they stayed clean and as warriors they dont come a lot better. If the Yank conscripts had stayed off Mary Jane, their name for dope, I reckon thered be a lot less names carved on that granite wall theyve got in Washington.We used grog not dope for the same purpose.Frankly, you needed something just to get the jungle and the fear out of your head for a while. You couldnt go into the jungle half stoned, gung-ho, thinking you were John Wayne, and hope to stay alive. No way, grog or dope was always for afterwards.Theres another point I should make here in case you think Im knocking the Yanks. The kids they sent to Vietnam were like eighteen years old, just out of high school, they were still boys. The youngest of our Australian conscripts were closer to twenty-one. Those three or four years make a bloody big difference in a blokes life. Then theres the training. Compared with us, your average Yank recruit hadnt even received the basic instruction for survival in jungle warfare.The Noggies or Nogs, they were the two names we used mostly for the Viet Cong, other names were Charlie, Cong, VC and NVA, they used weed too. But, like the Australians, not when they were fighting. Without the help of one substance or another, I count grog as one of them, the warriors on both sides would have laid down their AK47s, SLRs, M16s or Owen guns and gone home to their wives or girlfriends. That was the whole point of Vietnam, us and the Nogs were shitting ourselves every time we went into the jungle. I once heard a black American sergeant explain what it was like in Vietnam, Your assholes turned inside out like permanent, man!The bloody jungle was the enemy as much as the Viet Cong. Sometimes it was dense with a tall canopy of big trees, like the rainforest in New Guinea, or up North, which wasnt hard to work. But in areas where it had been bombed it became secondary growth with lots of bamboo everywhere, all of it tangled and dense and bloody hard to see into or move through. Or when you fought around the river, the mangrove forests were like a jungle. That is, before the Yanks come up with their big idea.There wasnt only Agent Orange, but Agent Blue, Green, Purple, White, you name it, they had a colour for everything and every colour killed something. They sprayed this shit over the jungle like the monsoon rains had come early. Only this time the clouds were coming from the helicopters and the C123s fitted with spraying arms that swarmed over the jungle like huge insects pissing down on the trees.At the time nobody really asked if it was dangerous, we all reckoned if they were spraying this stuff where we were fighting and even living it couldnt be harmful to us. Nobody in their right mind would put their own troops in danger, would they?The Hygiene Unit at Nui Dat sprayed insecticides like DDT, Malathion and Dieldrin round the camp on anything that moved. They sprayed it in our tents, in our weapon pits, in our kitchens and mess halls and in our latrines. It would be on the plates we ate off and the cups we drank from. Its so toxic, Dieldrin is now banned in every country in the world because its a carcinogenic and deadly to humans.Thats just one of dozens of chemicals used. Of course, we were told the stuff they sprayed everywhere was deadly to insects, leaves, rice paddies, rivers, mozzies, spiders, in fact to everything that grew or breathed except humans.I guess when youre twenty-one years old youll believe just about anything the army tells you. And, if it isnt quite the whole truth, well, what the hell, they just kept denying everything. Shell be right, no worries, trust me, son. Mr Thompson, the quack from Veterans Affairs said, its probably a slight blood disorder, perfectly natural in some people, the severe acne, it will clear up in time, I should think. I remember how he examined the lesions on my cheeks, behind the ears, under the armpits an,, into my groin, deep cysts and acne, blackheads the size of your pinkie nail. Hmm, interesting, is all he said. I showed him how my palms were sweating all the time and took off my shoes and showed him my sweating feet and the peculiar smell that came from them. I pointed to the sores and blisters on the back of my hands.He looks at my hands, hes wearing these thin plastic gloves so he dont have to touch me. It says here youre a mechanic by trade, Mr Thompson. He looks up from the form in front of him, It just could be something youve picked up in the mechanics workshop, probably battery acid.Battery acid! Doesnt he know Id know if Id spilt battery acid over the back of me hands?Ill take the precaution and give you a note to the Shire Health Inspector, he says and starts to write as he continues talking. As for your insomnia and anxiety, its perfectly natural, an adjustment to civilian life. Ill give you a prescription. What the bastard was really saying was, You Vietnam vets oughta pull yerself together. Thats my interpretation, that he thinks were a bunch of wimps and to go home and get on with our lives with the help of a cocktail made up of Moggies, Valium and Scotch.But I digress. I am aware that Vietnam is forgotten history, a sort of national disgrace weve swept under the political-conscience carpet. It was a war where Bob Menzies, who was Prime Minister of Australia at the time and therefore father of the nation, reckoned a bit of a stoush would do our lads the world of good, make real men out of us. Well, if those werent exactly his words, its the same difference. He thought it would be good for Australia, good for the national character, or a similar piece of total and utter bullshit.So, for the moment, if youll forgive the impertinence to Menzies and Holt, who followed him, let me talk about those who were regular army and those, like me, whose names got pulled out of the barrel to go to Vietnam on behalf of the national character and our undying friendship with the U.S. of A.We were the blokes who returned from Vietnam to find that the national character now required that we be treated like a bunch of mercenaries guilty of war crimes. It seems the real heroes were the nice little boys and girls who marched in the Anti-Vietnam rallies chanting slogans, waving the Viet Cong flag and passing a joint around while the cops looked on. We came back to an Australia where smoking dope was fashionable among the young trendies, who thought of themselves as weekend hippies and after-hours flower children.The church, as usual, switched sides, with the Vietnam moratoriums specked with back-to-front collars.Then, of course, there were the trade unions, urged on by the Labor left, who had their digit finger severely up their bums trying to make a stink in Canberra.Well, back home again I soon enough find out that I cant work for any bastard, not even as a builders labourer. Im a qualified, three-certificate mechanic by trade, GM, Ford and Datsun, passed all the courses as well as topped my tech course. Im aware Im no Einstein, but Im not exactly a bird brain neither. But I cant get under a car without going into a blind panic. I try to keep my nose clean as a labourer, but soon enough the building foreman looks at me the wrong way, or in my fevered brain I think he does, and next thing Ive got a fistful of his overalls and his gumboots are a foot off the ground. Being a real big bloke with the post-Vietnam blues is not a likeable combination and Im beginning to hate myself more even than I hate the civilian world Ive come back into.When I first came back I tried running a service station, took over the BP franchise in the small town where I was born in the Riverina. My folk have been here for four generations, long before the irrigation canal. My great-grandfather and his brother Jim came up overland by wagon from Sydney and they started up a blacksmith shop. Jim, it seemed, was a bit fond of the bottle and took up with an Aboriginal gin and went walkabout. Anyway he disappeared from the Thompson family history never to be heard of again. My great-grandfather died working at the anvil and my grandfather took over from him and did the selfsame, died with the blast furnace at his back and a hammer in his hand. If they went to hell the devil wouldve handed them a hammer each and theyd have carried on like nothing had happened. Then my old man turned the smithy into Thompsons Garage, the first petrol pump in town. There have been Thompsons in Currawong Creek since before they dug the first dunny.Well, eventually the old man, carrying on the family tradition, dropped dead while pumping petrol. This was while I was away in Vietnam. BP took over the site and developed it into a state-of-the-art service station just about the time I got back. I come back a bit of a war hero, well in Currawong Creek anyway, where there didnt seem to be any antiVietnam backlash, which says something for the town at least. The Bank of New South Wales give me a loan. Always been a Thompson running things mechanical in this town, the manager says, dead chuffed with himself as I sign my flamin life away as the local BP franchisee.Green and yellow are the BP corporate colours, the colour of the jungle and my own cowardice. Not a very promising start in the service station business with me shitting myself every time I crawl under a ute. Being a BP dealer doesnt last long. Any skills I may have previously possessed in public relations I shat into my greens fighting the Noggies in a rubber plantation at Long Tan. Sure enough, one day I end up chasing a local shire councillor down the street, brandishing a monkey wrench, determined to brain the fat, pompous bastard.My fault, of course, something he said that wasnt meant to sound the way it did. Anyway the shit hit the fan. What with me not willing to back down and several of the other big hats in the shire copping a fair share of Thommos aggro. Suddenly the whole towns driving to Fishers Bend twenty clicks up the road to fill up with petrol. BP gimme the bums rush and a Thompson aint running things mechanical no more in Currawong Creek.So, being the brain-damaged fool I am, the next thing I try on is marriage. Im lucky enough to still have my childhood sweetheart, Wendy McDonald, stick with me through all the flak. Her folk own Smoky Joes Cafe, and, while I should have known better and she should have run a mile, we eventually get hitched.Im the luckiest bloke in the world but, of course, it doesnt take long for me to abuse the privilege. I come home pissed more often than not. Im behind six months in the payments to the bank and they foreclose on me.Im now feeling ratshit all the time and getting these bad headaches which make me lose me temper soon as look at anyone. The rash, sweats and acne is getting worse, with no explanations for the reason. The chemist cant do nothing and the local quack shakes his head. Im a flamin mystery to the medical professional and if I wasnt such a big mean bastard, the quack at Veterans Affairs would probably accuse me of malingering so as to cop a disability pension.Wendy and me are fighting. Its not only grogs the reason, Im now into dope as well in an attempt to stay sane, or at least calm. Mixed with grog and pills its not exactly acting like a health cure. Then Wendys old man drops dead in the middle of making a mixed grill for a tourist. Poor old bugger. Like me old man, he died on the job. But Ive got to say this for him, in this one-horse town he played the music he wanted and he died to the strains of The Drifters.Wendy says he called the grease trap hes run since the fifties Smoky Joes, because he never got over the songs of two Yanks, Leiber and Stoller, two Jewish blokes, Yanks, who, it seemed, loved Rockn'Roll, Rhythm and Blues, and jazz.Them two wrote songs that make people want to get up and dance. Not like the bloody rubbish you hear these days, hed snort to anyone he thought didnt dig the music that went all day and half the night in the cafe. Hed point to the jukebox which only had his records in it, hed filled the coin slot with a drop of lead and fixed it so it played continuously without anyone tampering with it. If you didnt like the music at Smoky Joes, tough titty, it was the only cafe in town. The Chinks was the only other place you could go to eat.You cant pay for music like that, her old man would say, its Gods gift, Elvis, The Coasters, ..King and Miss Peggy Lee, now they knew how to sing a number. Mr Leiber and Stoller, hed say their names in a real respectful tone, may have been a couple of Jews but, Im tellin, music-wise they got it right every flamin time. It dont seem to matter to him that most people in Australia havent like heard of some of these musicians. He has, and thats all that matters.I reckon being took to your maker in the middle of a song you dig in a huge way is as good a way to die as a man can get. Like dying to your own background music.Anyhow, we played Peggy Lee and Elvis at the funeral and, after the wake at Smoky Joes, Wendy and me did the washing up and stacked the dead marines in the yard out back and just took up from where the old man left off.We even kept all the old jukebox records and had them transferred to a continuous tape and played them in the same order her old man liked them played. Smoky Joes is about as close to tradition as this pisshole in the dessert we call Currawong Creek will ever get.Well, a man couldnt catch a fly with his mouth open, next thing Wendys fallen pregnant. When shes well and truly up the duff, theres no money for help in the cafe and Im as busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger. Im the short-order cook and serving at the tables, Im chief bottle-washer and Im standing behind the counter, scratching the rash on my crotch and trying to remember to smile at the locals. As well, Im pushing Wendys old girl around in her wheelchair, shes got what she calls her arthritus.The silly old cow spends most of every day chirping instructions at me like a cockatoo with a cuttlefish up its bum. Shes also constantly reminding me that the Dearly Departed, which is how she has now come to address Wendys old man Cec, left Smoky Joes to her and Wendy, that half of the grease trap is hers. Tell me which half and Ill leave it for you to cook and clean and wash up, you stupid old cow! Id say, losing me block.That gets her cackling on a treat, You dont deserve me daughter, youre no-good rubbish, not like your father or the Dearly Departed, salt of the earth them two! For once in her life, shes right on the money. I couldnt get a kick in the balls in a street fight, Im a bloody drongo. In between morning sickness Wendys trying to make peace between us two and Im not doing the right thing by her. So you can see were not exactly playing happy families at Smoky Joes Cafe.The baby is born, its a girl and Im instantly in love and everything seems fine. Then when shes three she starts to slow down, lose energy, it doesnt take too long to know theres something wrong. We take her to the quack and then down to Sydney and shes diagnosed with leukaemia and has to have chemotherapy. If that dont work shell need a bone-marrow transplant. The specialist in Sydney says shes got about a 20 per cent chance of making it. If the chemo doesnt kick in weve got to find a bone-marrow donor. The odds of finding one are enormous and its gunna cost more money than Im likely to make frying bacon & eggs for the rest of me flamin life.Could have happened to any family anywhere, the fat quack at Repat says and shrugs his shoulders. Its not our responsibility anyway, the Veterans Entitlement Act does not include second-generation casualties, youll have to take her to a public hospital. Next patient please, nurse!All I can think is Agent Orange. Agent Orange has done this to my kid, my beautiful little girl! Its my fault. Its Canberras fault. Its them bastards in the Pentagon. Were stuffed. Wendy and me are stuffed for the duration. Nobody wants to know. Our precious little girl is just another statistic.Then one morning early, while Im hosing the pavement outside the Smoky Joe, a ute pulls up. Hey, Thommo! a voice calls out. Ow goin, mate? Its Shorty di Maggio, same name as the baseball player who married Marilyn Monroe. He was our platoon sergeant and an army regular who had fought in the Malayan Emergency up Till 1960, then stayed in the army afterwards. He was our sergeant in Company of the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, His job was to whip us into shape and get us combat-ready in Australia. I gotta hand it to the bastard, he did the job real good.I remember the first time he stood in front of a bunch of us blokes whod just marched in from the school of infantry. He brought us all to attention. Platoon! Lissen in, he says. This is your life from now on, youve joined the army and you will visit exotic and strange places like this shithole they call Vietnam and, when required, you will kill. That, gentlemen, is your mission.Shortys folks own a farm about the other side of Fishers Bend in the irrigation area. Currawong Creek is in the Dry, we dont have irrigation. I havent seen Shorty di Maggio since before Anna was born and here he is, same as ever.Well, to cut a long story short, I fry him a plate of bacon eggs and throw in a bit of tomato, couple of snags, toast. He then proceeds to tell me hes been to see the two other blokes in the Riverina who came back from Vietnam and who were in our platoon and hes organising a reunion. He doesnt ask what I think of this idea, hes still the sergeant, which I guess when youve been in the regular army is a lifetime habit. Youre not too interested in some grunts opinion. How about we use Smoky Joes Cafe for the big event? Theres also seven of the blokes coming up from Sydney, he says. Animal, Flow Murray, Bongface, Gazza, Killer Kowolski, Ocker Barrett and Macca. Mate, itll be like the movie, The Dirty Dozen. All of us back together!There are others in the platoon, of course. Of the original thirty men there are those who died in battle, some are Geographicals, which in our post-Vietnam lingo means theyve gone bush or taken up a wandering lifestyle, and then there are some whove settled their lot, got their shit together or never lost it and dont want the renewed memories. So all of us means Shortys found some of the platoon who were at Long Tan and wants a reunion, though Christ knows why.I know better than to ask.Jesus, Thommo, he grins, youre big and ugly enough to be a dead ringer for Lee Marvin.Counting Spags and Lawsy from down the road thats only eleven of us, I say. You cant have The DirtyEleven, it dont work.Yeah, well, you know what I mean, I couldnt locate the four others who were with us in the battle, he says, impatient to continue. Fifteen of our platoon were Long Tan survivors so hes done pretty good.Fair enough, I say.Shortys anxious to go on, jerking his thumb in the direction of the pub, Pubs practically next door where we can all stay the night, Spags and Lawsy, me too.Well be too pissed to drive home and the Sydney blokes will need late night and early mornin drinking partners anyway. Can the pub take twelve?I dont remind him its eleven. He can put us in army cots, keeps them out the back in the shed, three to a room, Ill book for ten, I can stay home.Nah, twelve, you stay with us, we may end up with a stripper.I laugh, Not in this town, mate. The last stripper who come here turned out to be a poofter in drag. Righto, but book for twelve anyway, Shorty says, Never know your luck in the big city.I think about the glasses they gunna break and the mess Im gunna have to clean up before Wendy gets home, but its only a passing thought. Im real pleased at the notion of the piss-up. Itll be good to see some of me Vietnam mates again, blokes who understand, whove been there.Besides, Thommo, you might as well make a buck out of the catering, Shorty says. Ill bring the wine, its me old mans own. Well all throw in two bucks each for the food, another ten each for the other grog and a few bags of ice. The wine is irrigation plonk, but not too bad. Well only have to drink it if we run out of beer after the pubs closed, bloody sight better than most of the piss the local wogs make, even if I say so myself.I dont point out to him that he qualifies as a local wog as well. Shorty is built like a brick shithouse and is your born natural leader, and wog is not a term of endearment that suits him like it might most Eyetalians, Greeks or Lebbos. He used to say he joined the army to get away from his old man, who was trying to turn him back into an Eyetalian. He once told me, Me old mans a Sicilian and they only ever have one nationality and one home, some mud-cracked, crow-infested village up in the hills back of Bisacquino where they all end up killing each other and calling it tradition. Besides, Shorty must be a throwback or something, because hes not your usual wog, hes got fair hair and blue eyes. He says it must have come about when the Greeks invaded Sicily about a thousand or so years ago. It seems that in those days the Greeks were blond with blue eyes like him. I persuade Wendy to take Anna and spend the night with a girlfriend. I order in the grog, get in extra tucker, buns and mince for hamburgers and I bum a dozen wine glasses from Willy McGregor. Hes dead chuffed at the overnight and agrees to leave a couple of cases of Flag Ale upstairs after the pub closes in case the boys get thirsty during the night.Well, the night at Smoky Joes is a big success or failure depending on how you look at it. It turns out most of us are in much the same boat since we got back. Cant settle down, hold a job, several of the guys are divorced. Were like a farmyard full of old chicks comparing our various ailments at the Country Hens Association Dinner.Suddenly I realise Im not alone, that my mates are going through the same hell as me. Its not just my imagination. Same headaches, rashes, panic attacks, nightmares, shit fights with wives, girlfriends or bosses, skin complaints, irrational behaviour, feeling half crook all the time. Some of my mates have been through the same tests and been told the usual bullshit about their psychological problems being their mothers fault and that Agent Orange is harmless.Were halfway pissed when Shorty calls us to attention by standing on his chair. Righto, lemme speak! he shouts, tinging the lip of his wine glass with the blade of a knife. Its the same old Shorty di Maggio, platoon sergeant, always organising the mob. Reminding us, just by the way he stands, that hes permanent army and were nashos. Though there was no difference in Vietnam, some of the nashos scrubbed up a damn sight better than the regulars and Shorty knows it.Once when he was briefing us before going out on patrol he said, Its your flamin duty to die for yer country and its mine to see you dont.In Vietnam they said it was a corporals war because in the jungle the corporal was the section leader, but I gotta tell, Shorty near ran the battalion and here hes at it again. Of all of us he seems the least affected or perhaps is best able to cope with civilian life. If hes had the rashes or acted irrational or suffers insomnia like the rest of us he dont say. Shorty always had his shit tightly packed together in an airtight plastic container, nothing seems to have changed. Finstance, weve all took to wearing our hair a bit long with sideburns down our cheeks and hes still got an army brushcut, short back sides, with his sideburns in line with the top of his ears.Thommos in trouble! he begins right off. No, not Thommo, he corrects, Thommos five-year-old kid, Thommos little girl, Anna. Shes got leukaemia and now has to have a bone-marrow transplant. First weve got to find a donor whos suitable and then weve got to find the bread for the operation!Hey! Wait a minute, I protest, I aint said nothing to nobody about Anna, about our little girl!Dont have to, mate! Shorty says, his eyes sharp.Were not going to let your little girlie go down the gurgler because the gold braid in the Pentagon and all the Presidents men and their Canberra toadies wont take no responsibility! You know and they know its AO whats done this to your little girl. Screw the FBI!VCIA, I correct.Both, he shoots back, weve got brothers in the States.Yeah, well, I mumble, feeling foolish, its not your responsibility.Thats where youre dead wrong, mate, Flow Murray chips in. Couldve happened to any of us the same as it done to your kid! My little girlie was born with this nasty rash all over her body that wont go away. He turns to the others, Yeah, man, lets do it for Thommo!Jesus, hes barely heard this weird proposal from Shorty and already hes all piss and wind. Flow gets his nickname because his surname is the same as the Murray River, the area where he comes from. Thats in the first place, in the second he gets it because hell always go with the flow. He doesnt have an opinion of his own. Someone says, Lets dip our heads in a bucket of piss so Charlie cant smell us? and Flow goes looking for a bucket to piss in. Hes what youd call easily led, or maybe easygoing is a kinder way of putting it.But now he goes off like a string of crackers on Chinese New Year, what are we going to do? Sit back and cop the shit the Penta-fuckin-gons throwing at us or what? he yells, fist in the air.Jesus, Flow, put a sock in it, will? I say.Flows right, Shorty says, though he knows Flows little ways as well as I do. Then several others also mumble their agreement. And whats more, Shorty announces, Ive got the plan of action!Here we go, Gazza says, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Bloody sergeants got a plan. Gawd help us!We all laugh.Whoa, I say, not so bloody fast! Do you blokes know what kind of money it takes for a bone-marrow transplant?Shorty looks at me. Yeah, mate, I do. But its not just you, Thommo. Were not just doing this for you and your kid. He looks around, his gaze resting in turn on each of us. Its like the old days before the platoon went on patrol. Hes getting us ready, leaching the fear out of us. Were gunna have to fight these miserable bastards, well start with Canberra and then well take on the Yanks if we have to! He pauses, Its about justice, about givin us a fair go.Who, us? Fight them? Macca protests, Come off it, mate, were a bunch of no-hopers, the brain dead, Vietnam vets, the forgotten legion! Who are you kidding?Shorty turns around sharply. No one, mate, Im not kidding. Matter of fact, Ive never been more serious.There are blokes in America same as us, their vets are copping the same shit from the top brass in the Pentagon. Well get in touch. Thommos kids going to die!Hey, steady on, mate, I say.Sorry, Thommo, but lets face the facts, mate. If she dont get a marrow transplant... He doesnt finish and looks about the room. It wont just be her! he says angrily, There are other kids too and some of us as well! He shrugs his shoulders. Someones got to do it, take responsibility, and we know it aint gunna be those ingrates in Canberra or Washington!Fight Canberra! Washington? It will take millions!Ocker Barrett exclaims.So?So wheres the money going to come from? Lawsy, whos a lawyer in Griffith, asks, You won the Opera House lottery or something?We can get it, the money, Shorty persists.How? Where? several of us shout at the same time, my voice the loudest, Im still annoyed at what hes said about my little girl.Shorty puts up his hand to silence us, then waits Till were all concentrating on him. Dope. Marijuana! he says, calm as all get-out.Were all, you know, stunned. Dope, weed, selling it? Us? Shorty must have gone troppo.Then he continues, The nice clean little part-time hippies who marched in protest against us cant get enough of the stuff. Its the fashionable drug among the brave and the beautiful, the little boys and girls who think their protest marches won the war.What about the dock workers who went on strike, useless bastards wouldnt load supplies to Vietnam?Lawsy adds.Yeah, them too, Shorty says impatiently, though I sense hes not too interested in including the dock workers, whove been screwing the nation around for generations anyway.There are two little valleys on the farm thats never been cultivated, he continues. Mostly scrub and not too rocky, the soils good, needs a bit of work and a drop of nitrate, thats all. Its hard to see from the air, nobody ever goes there, about seventy acres in all.Shorty looks around, Do you have any idea how much dope you can harvest on seventy acres irrigated? he asks.Shit a brick! says Spags Belgiovani, whos from another local Italian farming family just outside Griffith.Shorty, it turns out, has taken over the family farm and his old man has gone back to Sicily to retire and be a proper Mafioso again. Hes got enough dosh stashed away to last the distance and to make him the Consuleri or mayor of his mountain village and die properly from a blast of buckshot while hes eating pasta with chilli and cabanossi.Basically, with the irrigation, the farm hes left his only son is rice, but the old man added a few vines and a couple of citrus orchards. What Shortys inherited is a pretty good proposition, he sells his crop to the Rice Board at a guaranteed price, hes his own boss and he doesnt have to worry about a quid. What hes proposing, from his point of view, is pretty amazing. I mean, from where I sit, hes got everything to lose and I cant see hes got anything to gain.Ive got someone I want you blokes to meet, Shorty suddenly announces, Be back in a months..Shorty hops down from his chair and leaves the cafe and we start to get into the piss and argue about the merits of his surprising proposition. After a few minutes I stand up and bring the room to silence by shouting louder than the rest of the mob. Im a bit pissed but I know what Im saying. Look, its not on, fellas. What Shortys proposed is serious. I stop and look about me. Were not the men we used to be and were not up against the provosts, the real cops will be onto us faster than you can wipe your arse one up, one down and one to polish. We have trouble enough keeping our own shit together, I for one, if the truth be known, couldnt get a fuck in a brothel. I dont want you blokes risking your freedom for me. I pause, Wendy and me will manage somehow, but what Shortys proposing, well, its just not on, no way, Jose.Bullshit! Killer Kowolski shouts. Hes ridden all the way from Sydney on his Harley and belongs to a bikie gang called Vets from Hell, which is painted on the back of his leather jacket. The gang is made up mostly of blokes who fought in Vietnam. We gunna do it, Thommo, bugger yiz!Yeah, shit yes! everyone shouts and then Bongface jumps on the table. Hes a skinny little runt but you wouldnt want to pick him or have a blue with him. Before he joined the regular army he fought in Jimmy Sharmans boxing troupe as a bantamweight, doing all the country shows. Hes accustomed to going into the ring with big bastards off the land who are being egged on by their mates to have a go at the little Abo. He dont take no crap, no matter how big ugly his opponent is. Most Aborigines are more white-coloured than black these days, but Bongface looks like hes almost a pure blood and, I know, hes dead proud of the fact. When he smiles, his big white teeth take over his entire face and it makes you want to laugh, even if youre on patrol in the jungle quietly shitting yourself.Most of his tribe are supposed to be able to track real good but Bongface grew up in Redfern and couldnt find an elephants track in the snow. Maybe thats exaggerating a bit cause hes a bloody good scout, but he aint exactly your didgeridoo-totin tribesman. Abos werent conscripted for Vietnam in the beginning, but like I said hed volunteered and was a regular like Shorty. He has this sort of peripheral vision, something his kind is supposed to have and we dont. Like almost being able to see out the back of your head. He was the scout in our platoon and more than once he got us out of serious trouble, seen some movement in his flank we wouldnt have picked up, hit the deck and started firing. Being a scout is the shit job, youre the first to die if anything goes wrong. A mine, a booby trap, sniper, ambush, he is the first to cop the lot. Bongface would smile, I reckon the thing Im most scared of is some dopey grunt from another battalion comin across me in the jungle, blasting me off the flamin planet thinking Im a Nog.Im a section leader, thats a corporal in the old army, and I gotta tell, I always felt a damn sight safer with the old Bongface up front having a gander before signalling us on.His nickname come from this Chinese bong he bought from a Yank who got it in Hong Kong on and . It became like his signature. He dont drink so he took to dope. Wed cover for him when the provosts come snooping sniffin. Wed be having a quiet grog or seven and hed sit and pull contentedly on the mouthpiece of his bong. I remember how it had this red-enamel dragon decoration on the side and would be goin gurgle-gurgle as he pulled the smoke through it and along the rubber tube. You could see him relaxing, getting the shit out of his system. Sometimes hed giggle to himself like he knew something we didnt. Hence his name, Bongface Andrews.Well, hes on the table and hes holding a can of Coke up and says, Im the only bloke here thats not pissed so I got the right to speak. Matter o fact, I aint even stoned. We all shut up right off. It aint like him to come forward, hes normally real quiet and dont say much at the best of times.Its only now, with him holding the Coke, that I remember hed never get on the piss. I mean hed go along on a leave pass, but hed drink Coke all night.Once, when I asked him why, he said, Yeah, well, blackfellas cant take the piss, Thommo, not like whitefellas, we aint built right for it.Its just beer, mate. Yank piss, Noggies Noggin,couldnt make a schoolgirl uncross her legs.Nah, Thommo, that stuff dont work for us, its whats destroying my people. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty amazing admission to make on his part.Now I look down at where hes been sitting and see he has brought a dozen cans of Coke along. I feel ashamed, I shouldve remembered, theres all the Coke he can drink and then some in the fridge. I shouldve told him to help himself, loaded him up for the duration. He can have a smoke too. Ive got some top weed, though hes probably got his own but is too shy to roll himself a joint now weve been parted a while. I can see he hasnt brought his bong along. Typical of the little bugger, probably thought the party might go on a bit and the local gendarmes could poke a face in and wed all be compromised.Funny that, hey, a bloke can get pissed as a newt, throw up on the pavement, go home and beat the shit out of his wife, so the neighbours have to call the cops. They turn up and put him to bed and persuade his missus not to lay charges, because basically hes a good bloke and is on the committee of the RSL. Then everybody goes home and the cops write it all down as just another Saturday night domestic. On the other hand, smoke a little weed quietly in a corner, minding your own business, and its a drug arrest, a federal offence, youre in the stammer with the key thrown away. Im buggered if I can see how that works. Shorty says its because the government cant get any tax from dope smoking.Thommo, yiz full a shit, Bongface begins real polite. Shortys right, we gotta do something. He brings on his big smile, Maybe were no good at doing nothing much else, but were all experts on covering our arses. We know how to look out for each other. Being aware like of the unexpected and knowing what to do when the shit hits the fan.Dead right, Flow offers again. Right on, mate. Bongface goes on. The government spent a lot of bread training us and we learned it all in Vietnam. If we cant run something like this we couldnt run a chook raffle in a pub full a drunks. Me personally, Ive smoked every kind of weed you can name. I know where to get it, how to hide it, whats the going rate, how to talk to the customer.He shrugs his shoulders, Now all weve got to learn is how to grow it. He turns to Spags Belgiovani, Spags here and Shorty know how to do that, so weve got no problem there neither.He gives us all his humungous smile, If it were anything else, I agree, wed be history, but this thing we can do. We can do this like we done contact drill. Plan everythin properly, react correctly in a crisis and take no chances.Killer Kowolski butts in, Shit yes, we can. We aint gunna break down and mess up if a cop charges one of us with possession.I cant help me self and I think immediately of Flow, how hed go with a big cops hairy fist around his throat. But everyone cheers as Bongface steps down from the table and I keep this thought to myself. Im beginning to get a funny feeling in me gut and Im worried the whole thing is rapidly getting out of hand.Then Shorty walks back into the cafe and hes got this Nog in tow. Little bloke wearing a black suit and tie, like he works in a funeral parlour or something, white shirt, shiny shoes, snakeskin belt, hair lacquered down like a beetles back and one ear missing. Shaved right off at the skull like its been took for a trophy.Jesus, look what the cat brought in, I hear Ocker whisper beside me.Holy shit! Its Macca the other side a me. Then were all too gobsmacked to say anything more.Gentlemen, Shorty announces, this is Nam Tran, hes a Vietnamese migrant and ex-Nog. Er, I mean, NVA Area Commander. He grins, putting his hand on the mans shoulder like theyre buddies. Standing like that, Shortys nearly twice the width but no taller than this little Asian.Nam Tran here sort of slipped through the immigration when no one was looking, Shorty adds. Him, and several of his mates and their families, live in Cabramatta, in Sydney. Now him and his mob also feel a tad aggro about Agent Orange, them being the unwilling victims thereof as well. Nam Tran here wants in. Wants to come on side. His people in Vietnam are still copping the shit from AO and all the herbicides we sprayed on them. Most of the Vietnamese migrants here are having trouble just like us.Back home one in three births has a bad deformity.Theyve got kids in glass jars in the hospitals with two heads. He looks around, fixing his eyes on each of us in turn. Whaddaya say, fellas?Well, theres a bit of discussion, associating with the enemy and so on and so forth, but were all so completely took by surprise that soon enough everybody is nodding agreement. We all know Shorty doesnt do things impulsively, he must have done his homework and checked the little Noggie out. Now he grins, See, I told , Thommo, The Dirty Dozen. He looks around and says, Theres a briefing tomorrow arvo, no more talk tonight. Tonight, gentlemen, we party and if I may be permitted to say so, some of the brothers are missing, but its bloody nice to see all yer ugly mugs again.Christ, what am I going to tell Wendy, I think to myself. She aint gunna like this one little bit.As the night moved on a bit and wed each had a beer or ten, the grog eventually got the better of us and we started to talk about the war. How it was. Nam Trans pulled up a chair and soon enough has a tinnie in his hand. He speaks pretty good English for a Noggie and we kind of forget he isnt one of us, that hes the one whod been trying to kill us not that long ago.Funny that, I dont know how it works, but its like youve shared something no one else can understand, so when its all over, you and the enemy, youre sort of, well, like brothers in arms?Once the blokes reckoned they were with mates who knew what they were talking about, all the stuff you couldnt tell your family starts to come out. The point is, most vets find it bloody hard to make civilian friends, some never do. They develop what is known as the thousand-yard stare, looking into the distance with vacant eyes as though not wanting to engage.Which is true enough.First the conversation goes mostly for laughs, the funny stuff, then later, when the grog has taken a hold, some of the other stuff that is not so funny, the shit, starts to come out.You know what really pisses me off? Killer Kowolski starts off, The flamin movies. People think Vietnam was like the Yank movies.Hey yeah! several of us shout, Right on!Me too, but Ive got a theory. Remember we didnt actually fight with the Yanks and there is a reason why I reckon. They had a different kind of experience in Vietnam. We arrived trained as jungle fighters and they waged war with firepower, the more the better, and it seems it was the only way they knew how to fight.Shoot the crap out of everything, trees, mountains, buildings, tunnels, bridges, even rivers. Im not saying they werent brave. In some ways they were a lot braver than us, theyd go into a fight and stay with it when we would withdraw from enemy contact, prepared to wait for better odds.Maybe it was the right way to fight in Eastern Europe, Russia and East Germany and places like that. But it was a shit of a way to fight in Vietnam, where you seldom came face to face with an enemy that would stand up and fight you front on, weapon for weapon, and so on. So, maybe their movies show some of that experience, the chaos and the firepower, not the long, hard slog in the deep, hunting Noggie, which was our experience.