The Naked Island | Page 6

now, not a bloody rabble! It blasted us straight on to the end of the
vaccination queue. It was our first experience of a sergeant major.
"Stick by me, kid," said Tarzan, TH look after you." Three minutes
later a woman doctor pricked the huge man's sun-tanned arm with her
needle. Uttering a small sigh, Tarzan swayed dizzily on his feet and
crashed, all six feet four of him, to the ground in a faint.
"Mug lair," commented the milkman dispassionately as he sur veyed
the prostrate giant. He held out his arm to the woman doctor. I followed
suit. Then bereft of my protector, who still lay uncon sciousI was
marched off with the rest of the squad to the sleeping quarters. Marched
off to the accompaniment of howls from all sides of "You'll be sorry,
rookie, you'll be sorry," and to the recruiting sergeant's frenzied shouts
of, "You're in die Army now. Come on there: pick it up. Left, right, left,
right." I wasn't at all sure that this bedlam was what I'd bargained for.
Certainly it gave no indication of my ever killing Germans.
Our sleeping quarters turned out to be the pigpens of the Royal
Agricultural Showground of Sydney. These had been whitewashed
with nice dean whitewash and contained all the usual fittings for
sleeping and hanging clothes and storing toothbrushes that most
concrete pigpens do. Two men moved into each pen, presumably
working on the refreshing military principle that two adult males equal
one prize pig.
My companion was the ex-milkman. He was about nineteen, was very
little more than five feet in height, sported a green shirt, brown slacks, a
thin white belt with a silver buckle stamped "1940" on its front and
"Made in Japan" on its back, and he had no teeth at all.
"Don't like them drills," he explained, "so I got em all whipped out.
Bloke at Newtown done it for a quid."
I had a brief and shocking vision of the dental gentleman at Newtown
whipping out thirty-two teeth for a quid. Meantime, the victim of this
atrocity, apparently quite unmoved, asked me my name. Glad of the

change of conversation, I said: "Russ, what's yours?" and he said, Cyril,
only his friends called him Mick. "You call me Mick," he added
sociably.
There was a bellow at the doorway our old friend the recruiting
sergeant. "Right," he roared, "five volunteers wanted for a job." And
while men scattered in every direction or hid behind the walls of their
pens he detailed them off, pointing with a stubby nicotine- stained
finger, "You . . . you . . . you . . ."
"Meet you in the dyke," Mick hissed, and fled. Heading for the
opposite door, and ignoring the frenzied shouts of the sergeant as he
called after me, "Hey you ... that fair-haired blokel" I too fled, and a
few seconds later met Mick in the latrines.
"Nice place youVe got here," I told him, as I surveyed the row of
thunder-boxes and appreciated the skill with which a long line of
military minds had thus contrived to deny the ex-civilian even this his
last and most trusted place of privacy.
Mick grunted indifferently. "Glad you tricked old Mud-Guts," he said.
"Heard him screaming for you."
I asked had he himself had any difficulty in escaping the sergeant. Mick
gave his white belt a contemptuous tug.
"The day that mug cops me," he declared, "I'll take a running jump at
meself," and having thus confidently disposed of the ser geant, he
added: "Where to now? Can't stop here all day." And, having not the
least inclination to dispute this statement, I sug gested a swim. Mick
agreed readily.
"See you back at the sty," he said. Without more ado we pro ceeded,
independently, back to our pen. There I took my trunks out of the small
suitcase I'd brought with me.
"Aw, Jesus," said Mick, "I haven't got any togs." "Hire some down
there," I suggested. Mick shook his head. "Can t," he explained, "got no

dough."
"That's all right," I told him.- "I've got twelve bob. That should see us
through. Come on, let's go." For a second Mick looked quite
embarrassed at this offer, and then grinned a completely toothless grin.
"You got a mate with you?" he queried. I said I hadn t.
"What say we stick together then?" he suggested. I said I thought it was
a good idea.
"Right," concluded Mick, "let's go for a swim."
We waited only long enough to discuss what we should do with our
toilet gear and spare clothes, finally deciding to leave them all together
in my bag in the pen, and headed out erf the barracks.
"Leave pass?" demanded the guard at the gate.
"Don't be bloody