Made in Australia

By Chris Kennedy

"Australia and Ireland....two great countries joined at the funny-bone."

At a rundown Municipal swimming pool, an overweight, sixty year old swimming coach squints at the sky and dreams of his only son representing Australia in the Olympic Games...

...and so begins the compelling and hilarious times of Max O'Bannion, a story to make you laugh and cry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Kennedy
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458088987

Chris Kennedy

A Webster Award winner and three-time Dragon Award finalist, Chris Kennedy is a Science Fiction/Fantasy author, speaker, and small-press publisher who has written over 55 books and published more than 500 others. Chris lives in Coinjock, North Carolina, with his wife, Sheellah.

Book preview

Chapter 1

'Asiatics can't swim…!' The voice echoed in Max O'Bannion's head and woke him from a deep sleep.

His mind was playing tricks on him.

The rear of the aeroplane smelled of oil and new uniforms.

Max unclipped his seatbelt and twisted slowly in the canvas seat. Sunset was gone, leaving a red pencil-edge on the horizon. The window of the RAAF Hercules was the size of a porthole and down below, various islands of some place, probably Asia, were scattered across the ocean.

The propellers looked to be spinning too slowly but obviously they weren't. It was what they call an optical illusion.

Anyway, four lazy propellers keeping two hundred tons of scrap metal in the air… how was that possible…?

Mr Simkins in Physics had tried to explain it to the class; a blackboard with chalk drawings of aeroplane wings and arrows for what he called vectors of forces, none of which made much sense to Max.

The thought of Simkins in his baggy trousers reminded him of Homebush Boys High and the school reminded him of his suburb and the suburb reminded him of his street and his street reminded him of his house and always it came back to the same thing.

His father.

In his mind's eye, Max only saw his old man, George O'Bannion, in one place. On the front verandah, talking to his mates.

'Asiatics can't swim!'

George O'Bannion said stuff like that quite often. He always called Asians Asiatics, without malice.

'You can't say that,' Max remembered himself calling out from the kitchen.

He was about thirteen years old at that stage and his voice had begun to break. It had a gentle fog-horn quality.

'I can say whatever I like,' his dad would yell back. 'Asiatics can't swim!'

' No… the word Asiatics. It's bad grammar. It's not a word. It's not in the dictionary.'

'What is it then, if it's not a word…?' George would raise his eyebrows to amuse his mates.

'I don't know. 'Asiatic' is a word; it's an adjective. You can't use it as a noun.'

'I said the word, didn't I?

'Yeah.'

'And you understood it…?'

'Yeah.'

'So it's a word! It's a term that refers to the Asian race.'

'It doesn't matter if I understood it, if it's not in the dictionary.'

'What would you rather have,' his father would say, '…word you can understand that's not in the dictionary, or a word that's in the dictionary that you can't understand? The dictionary is full of ridiculous words that people can't understand and never bloody use.'

'What words in particular?' Max would croak.

'Look them up. You're the dictionary expert. More important, how are those sausages coming along?'

'Getting there.'

That was back in the early 60s and George O'Bannion would know, if anyone did, whether Asians could swim or not. He was the most respected swimming coach in the western suburbs of Sydney. He taught a generation of children at his various pools; pools with their peeling paint and lump-rusted hand railings.

Anyway, it was before the days of political correctness when a person had to be careful about what they said about Asiatics. George would have seen political correctness as a form of dishonesty and he hated dishonesty in any form. If you think something, have the guts to say it.

George O'Bannion wasn't built for politics.

George's mates would generally nod a wise nod, sip on their beer or drag on their cigarettes with smiling eyes. Fags they called them; never cigarettes.

Frank Crealey pointed a nicotine-stained finger towards the kitchen. 'That kid of yours will go places. Knowing about adjectives and nouns and stuff.'

'Yeah. And he'll go there soon if he doesn't have more respect for his old man!'

They would all laugh, even Max from the kitchen with his croaky child-man voice. The average night would go that way.

'Show me a Chinese who has won an Olympic gold medal in the pool,' George would say to finish a conversation like that one.

George was a huge man, totally bald long before it was fashionable and every night he would sit on the veranda of his fibro and corrugated iron bungalow with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and talk to his mates until their wives rang up to chase the husbands home. Inside the house, George's son Max would do his homework and cook the evening meal. Mostly meat and three veg, occasionally fish or chicken, sometimes with soup. Max's lamb stew was exceptional according to his father's closest mate Frank Crealey who occasionally stayed for meals. But Max kept lamb stew for special occasions. It was best if you let it simmer all day and young Max had no intention of leaving the gas on all day and risk burning the house down. The house was a box, on a grassy plot without a tree. Near the back fence was a lonely tin shed.

'A house is for keeping the rain off your head,' George used to say. 'A car is just a means of getting from A to B.' They were common expressions. People often said them to pretend their disregard for worldly goods, but George meant it. These days the house in Lidcombe would have been advertised in a colour spread as 'one- for-the-handy-man', or 'a knock-downer', or a 'look-at-the-size-of- the-land', but for them it was their house and Max couldn't remember as a boy any real estate agent ever dropping literature in their mail box. But that was in the 60s.

As his last friend went home George would stub his cigarette on the porch timbers, struggle to his feet and come in for dinner. Max would sometimes get under one arm to help him up.

'And never forget boy - one man's adjective is another man's noun.'

The influx of Italians and Greeks and Lebanese into the surrounding suburbs was killing George's swim-coaching business. He quite liked the 'wogs' but they weren't much interested in swimming. What was worrying George was that the next wave - the Asians - would ruin his trade altogether. Asian kids had even less use for swimming pools or swimming squads or swimming coaches, in those days anyway. George was ready to retire so he took it on the chin but he didn't like the thought of children who weren't water- proof, no matter whether they were I-ties or Asians or Arabs or whatever they were.

In years to come, when he was well and truly grown up - middle aged even - Max thought of George after the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 and imagined what George would have said. 'If Asiatics were better swimmers, hundreds of thousands of them wouldn't be dead now. There were lots of Australians on holidays in Thailand and how many of them got drowned..?'

Old George didn't live to see the Chinese women win twelve out of the sixteen gold medals at the 1994 World Championships in Rome but he would have explained it by branding them drug cheats. And they were.

They were taking dihydrotestosterone. Max memorised the word and dropped it into conversation every now and again, dihydrotestosterone and he watched people's eyes; the way their expression changed slightly and they listened more closely to what he had to say after that. Instant respect. It was just a trick he'd learned years before. At school. A kid who always comes bottom of his class learns tricks.

Max occasionally wondered about those Chinese swimmers. The gold medal winners from 1994. Especially the girl with no waist and those V-shoulders like a stealth bomber. Was she OK? Did she have medical problems and hair in all the wrong places? Had she managed to have children? Or had she collapsed quietly in some Chinese village like Flo Jo, with a death notice that never made it into the newspapers?

He would never forget Flo Jo… Mate! What could a teenage boy say about Flo Jo - Florence Joiner? With her red fingernails and nut skin and silk knickers cut from the American flag? Running world record after world record. Sex on legs. And then Flo Jo dropped dead in 1998 at the age of 38 from a heart seizure at her home in Mission Viejo in California. Funny how he could remember facts like that… Pity that back then they never had any school exams on sporting knowledge.

Anyway, when he was fifteen years old, Max locked himself in his bedroom and for three weeks studied secretly until midnight. He sorted his adverbs from his adjectives and for once didn't come last in his class. He gave his father the school report which said things like 'much improved' and 'turned the corner' and watched his father's body language. He waited for George's chest to puff out but it didn't puff out. Not the way his chest had puffed out when Max had won his first state junior swimming title. George just read the report, gave a grudging nod, tossed it onto the mantelpiece and told young Max he better get to bed. Told him that a swimmer needs his sleep.

For Max, those nights in the kitchen, with old George and his mates out the window on the veranda were the best.

Sausages and onions in the fry pan; science homework finished but mostly wrong; the telephone ringing off the hook; some wife enquiring after some old bloke who hadn't finished his beer yet and his father speaking so loud they could hear him streets away.

And laughing!

George had a laugh that could make the windows shake. The scientist who decided that cholesterol was bad for a person obviously never ate sausages and onions on buttered rolls with George and Max O'Bannion, father and son, on the back veranda in the mid 60s.

Most nights hidden away in the kitchen Max would sneak a cigarette for himself and a beer too, even from the age of twelve or younger. His father didn't mind him drinking so much, as long as he drank Reschs, which wasn't a problem since the fridge only ever held Reschs. But if George caught Max smoking he'd go right off.

'A swimmer's lungs are his fuel tank, you stupid little bugger,' he'd say as he clipped him across the ear. 'Treat them accordingly.'

And that's the way the nights used to go, generally topped off with a final statement on the night's proceedings, like…

'And Africans can't swim either. Look at the record book. They can run but they can't swim and no amount of coaching's going to get them there.'

Chapter 2

Max's mother had died in childbirth. His own childbirth. It was a country hospital and it was a public holiday and the doctor was too far away. George had explained the circumstances in a few halting sentences to his son when Max was old enough. Until then he just said that his mother was in heaven.

His father was always very respectful of women. He was a great favourite with the lady swim instructors and other women down at the pool but he never had another girlfriend that Max knew about.

Max had mixed-up feelings about his mother. About her dying while she was giving birth to him. Feelings that he couldn't shake. He wondered if his father felt guilty as well, about making her pregnant but he and his father never talked about it. And quite often, at all sorts of times and in all sorts of crazy places he'd miss his mother, Lorraine, a person he'd never even met. He loved her, he guessed, like he loved his father and he loved Australia.

'What do you think about this conscription George?'

The men rarely spoke about politics. His mate Frank was sitting on the verandah in his usual place and the daily talk about sport had dried up.

'I think it's a good thing, this conscription,' George said.

'My wife doesn't like it.' Frank replied.

'Make men of some of these young slackers.'

'She doesn't want young Eric to get his head blown off. I don't either, for that matter.'

'How does young Eric feel about it?'

'He can't wait to get his hands on a gun but Eric's never been especially bright. Anything to get away from that pastry-chef course.'

'Yeah, well, tell him to keep quiet about the pastry course, or he won't be seeing any guns mate. He'll be in the army kitchen. He'll kill more people than any Vietcong. Poison them.'

Frank would laugh, then think for a long time, then nod.

'And at least he's having a go,' George would say. 'There are two kinds of people in this world Frank.'

'What are they this time, dad?' Max would call out through the window.

'The ones that will have a go and the ones who won't have a go… and shut up you!'

'I'm allowed to have an opinion, aren't I?'

'It's men-talk out here.'

Max would wait until he had the floor again. 'Anyway this war won't last more than three months. Menzies knows what he's talking about. He's a good Prime Minister.'

'Is he?' Frank would say and suck his cigarette down to the bitter butt.

'You know he is. A man don't get to be Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister without having something going for him.'

'If you say so.'

'He can't help it if he's not Billy Hughes.'

'Billy Hughes knew what life was all about. He got us through the First World War, mate.'

'You like him because he was a short-arse. You just don't like tall, silver-tail people with posh accents.'

'You trust them, do ya?'

'Why can't you trust them?'

'Because they fall in love with themselves, mate. Who do you think Bob Menzies is in it for? For us?'

'Bob Menzies has got style about him. Admit it. That's what people want. Style. Menzies is not just a Prime Minister, he's a… a statesman.'

'I'd vote for a bald, short-arse any day,' and George would rub his own bald head.

'This country will never have another bald, short-arse Prime Minister, George. Take my word for it. We're in the television age mate. Style counts. I won't be voting for any bald, short-arse.'

TV was black and white. The year was 1962. George O'Bannion would have had his chance to vote for plenty of bald, short-arsed Australian Prime Ministers if he'd lived another thirty years or so. But George didn't.

Max often looked back and wondered if Frank Crealey would have changed his mind and voted for Billy McMahon or Johnny Howard, two notable bald, short-arse Prime Ministers. Billy McMahon, despite his stature was an A-grade squash player, which might have swung Frank's vote.

But back in the kitchen in 1962, Max O'Bannion's young ears pricked up at the mention of Prime Ministers. When he was young on his father's knee, George would bump him up and down and tell him that he'd be Prime Minister one day and kids believe stuff like that. George hadn't said it lately but Max remembered and longed for it, as well as the way his dad used to ruffle his stiff hair and kiss him goodnight. All that kid stuff was gone… in an effort to make a man of him.

'Yeah, we've been lucky. He's a good Prime Minister, Bob Menzies.' Frank would finish.

Robert Menzies was the longest-serving Prime Minister in Australia's history. He was a tall, aristocratic man with a thick crop of silver hair and a deep, calm English accent.

Menzies was voted out of government during the Second World War when he proposed drawing a line in the sand at Brisbane in Queensland and defending the country against the invading Japanese from behind it.

'That's Menzies for ya. Just give the Japanese the entire north of the country.'

George O'Bannion didn't fancy that idea and neither did the rest of Australia. Menzies was dumped in favour of Prime Minis- ter John Curtin, who took the Aussie troops further north to New Guinea where they slogged it out with the Japanese amid the mud and mosquitoes of the Kokoda trail.

George O'Bannion lost half his body weight on the Kokoda Trail and caught malaria but he was no different from the rest of his mates. Some people never recovered from the malaria. The fevers came back for the rest their lives. Some people never get over a war either and on hot nights Max lay awake listening to George sweating and calling out in his sleep. Sound travels in a fibro house.

In much the same way that his dad never spoke about his wife's death, his dad never spoke about the war.

None of his friends on the verandah ever talked about the war either. It seemed a point of honour that no Australian men talked about the war. Max, as a twelve year old, wondered if men from other countries ever talked about the war, or was it only Austral- ians who kept their mouths shut? Better still, if women ever fought in a war, would they talk about it? Women seemed happier to talk about private things.

In New Guinea, Australia won the fight but Curtin died soon afterwards and somehow Menzies was voted back in as Prime Minister in 1949 and stayed there until January 1966.

Menzies was in love with the Queen of England and he was in love with the American President JFK, but so was everyone else in Australia. When JFK wanted Australians to help stop the communist march in Vietnam, Prime Minister Bob Menzies first sent him army advisers, then training teams. Then, eventually, when America wanted combat troops and Australia didn't have enough combat troops, Menzies introduced conscription, turned young Aussie boys into soldiers and sent JFK Australian combat troops.

Once he organised this, Bob Menzies retired as Prime Minister and handed over to Harold Holt.

Now if George O'Bannion had a soft spot for any Prime Minister it was Harold Holt. What he liked about Harold Holt was that he drowned off Cheviot Beach in Victoria on a wild Sunday afternoon on the 17th December 1967.

It wasn't only the water and the swimming elements of the disaster that attracted George's attention but, in some ways, it renewed his faith in Australia.

'Don't you love a country where the Prime Minister can drown off a public beach on a Sunday afternoon and no body is ever found?' he would say. There were things George didn't like about Harold Holt while he was alive, like his famous expression 'All the Way with LBJ.'

LBJ was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a bully-boy American President and Harold Holt was sucking up to Lyndon, promising to send as many young conscripted Australian soldiers to Vietnam as Lyndon could use up.

Lyndon's wife had a ridiculous name - Lady Bird Johnson. Also LBJ. George didn't like tizzy names or people who sucked up to bullies, particularly by donating them young Australian boys and so he didn't like Harold Holt. Yet when Harold disappeared in a wild surf off Cheviot Beach in Victoria on that fateful Sunday afternoon, George suddenly had more respect for the guy.

The Australian public were at the same time horrified, amazed and amused at the drowning. Jokes did the rounds about Chinese submarines and CIA helicopters but George knew Cheviot Beach well enough to know that Chinese submarines weren't necessary. Any lone swimmer who took on the Cheviot surf on a day like that, was either brave or stupid.

In years to come, it was reliably suggested that Harold's girl friend was on the beach at the time and Harold was addicted to hypnotic pain killers for his bad back. So, a fifty-eight year old bloke full of hypnotic pain killers showing off to his girlfriend in a wild surf was probably a reasonable explanation for what happened; and easy for most men to understand. Let the man who hasn't shown off to his girlfriend cast the first stone.

George was sad that someone should lose their life but happy that Australia could still be a wild and dangerous place. There were too many powder-puff countries around.

Max O'Bannion flew over Australia and saw it for real, for the first time, at the age of nineteen, in 1970, out of the window of the Air Force Hercules.

Mate, Australia as a country wasn't instantly lovable. It was like a char-grilled desert with a few cities clinging to the edges. Hardly anyone lived in the centre; just some Aboriginal tribes and a few cattle stations separated by thousands of miles and occasional businesses catering to the tourist trade.

There were no four-wheel drives in 1970, no German back- packers, or Japanese tourist buses. No crocodile-shaped hotels. In the silver, tin-can aeroplane, one hundred teenage boys in uniform sat around the walls facing a helicopter wedged between them. The helicopter was roped in but it slumped and lurched every time the plane hit turbulence. There was no insulation. The engine noise from the four propeller-driven engines was deafening and the boys carried their lunch in shoe boxes on their lap.

From his first glance at Australia, he couldn't look away. To think he felt so Australian, but before today he never knew what it looked like!

From that height the land looked like a red ocean. He could see the waves in the land, the eddies, the rips, the pipelines, the lumps, the scars. And it went on forever! For four hours, going at three hundred and fifty miles an hour, he looked out for houses, cars, road, trees, dams, anything. But there were none. Just hour after hour of red dirt and rock, stretching in every direction. He only turned away when the sun went down and a black shadow rippled across the land. His neck ached.

The Australia Max knew was a few suburbs around Burwood and Homebush in Sydney. Just like any big city - peeling paint, clogged traffic, low real estate values. How anyone could love a strip of dirty shops on Parramatta Road… but a person can and a person can feel homesick for them and a person can want to defend them. Just like a person can miss the black line along the bottom of a swimming pool. Max had been following that black line every day for fifteen years and already he was missing it. Perhaps not the black line so much but it was during those four hours each day that his mind used to wander and perhaps his mind needed to wander. He missed other things he thought he wouldn't, like the taste of salt water and the smell of chlorine.

Max laid his head back against the bulkhead in the gloom and felt the engine vibrations through his skull. Thirty thousand feet above the Torres Strait; it was at least another five hours flying through night skies before they would land.

Being conscripted into the army in Australia was like the lottery. Birth dates were put on marbles and the marbles were drawn out of a barrel.

When Max's birthday marble rolled out of the barrel and he was conscripted, he was stunned. A normal person would have considered the possibility and prepared himself mentally, but for Max it was like that car accident you never thought you were going to have.

Max went through the lectures at Puckapunyal about the 'Domino Theory', the medicals and the tough Canungra jungle training centre in a daze, crawling through mud and jogging up hills in hob-nailed boots and all he could think was, how many years would this be? How could he continue his swimming training? Where would he train? How many years until the Munich Olympics? How many months, how many days? How many years to the Olympic Games after that? How old would he be by that time? It filled his head week after week until something came along to sweep it all away.

A staff sergeant called him out of parade one morning. It had to be something serious. You don't get called out of parade for small things.

'Private O'Bannion?'

'Yes sir.'

'Fall out. Report immediately to the Captain's office.'

'Why sir?'

'Just do it private.'

'Yes sir.'

Max's father George had collapsed at Lidcombe Oval during a Magpies game. He was on a ventilator in Concord hospital, in the intensive care ward. Max got compassionate leave and flew down to Sydney the next day.

Max could vaguely remember George shaking his hand and patting his uniformed arm and saying he was proud of him. The new uniform hung on Max like a sack. He was a tall skinny kid, all hands and feet and ears, but strong. He could bench press a Volkswagen.

George had just regained consciousness and looked much better with flushed cheeks and bright eyes and Max couldn't hide his excitement that his father might beat the odds after all, despite what the doctors and nurses had said. If you were a fighter, you could beat anything. He found himself praying.

Doctor's couldn't say someone was going to die in the next twenty-four hours or so. No one could be so certain. Where there's life there's hope. Medical specialists don't know everything.

But in that case they did.

George died in the early hours of the next morning. Lung cancer. Too many fags.

George's mate Frank Crealey gave Max an awkward hug at the funeral and both their eyes were wet.

'Get on the aeroplane, mate,' Frank said. 'When the time's right, I'll clear out his stuff and stick it in the shed down the back yard.'

'Thanks Frank.'

'Want me to sell the house or rent it?'

'Shit, don't sell it!'

'Good. I'll give it a lick of paint and get L.J.Hooker to rent it. I'll make sure they get a nice family - a school teacher or something.'

'You don't have time to be doing all that.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Go make this country a safer place boy.'

'Send me the bill for the painting.'

'You've paid already. All that gourmet cookin.'

'Good on you Frank.'

After the funeral, Max couldn't wait to leave for Vietnam. To get out of the house and out of the suburb, out of the country. Sydney was a foreign city without the old man.

Chapter 3

The canvas fold-out seats around the walls of the Hercules were more comfortable than they looked and the soldiers bobbed shoulder to shoulder in the gloom.

Max tried to say something to the guy on one side and then the guy on the other but they were both half asleep.

He stretched his legs and his shoulders and his fingers and his toes. He didn't feel like sleeping.

He called out to the boy across the way but the engine noise was too loud and the soldier just nodded and tried to smile. He was a pale boy with thick glasses and a soft round face. He looked lonely too.

Max struggled across the plane and sat next to him. The boy held out his hand and shook. It was an enthusiastic shake but his hand was small and bony and disappeared into Max's huge paw.

'Laurence Wren,' he yelled.

'Max O'Bannion… pleased to meet you.'

'I didn't think you could get into the army if you wore glasses Laurence?' Max had to start the conversation somewhere.

'Yeah, normally but I didn't wear them for the test. I memorised the eye chart.'

'You what?'

'I memorised the eye chart.'

'You've got your own eye chart?'

'I'm a medical student. All eye charts are the same. You can get around most things like high blood pressure, bad hearing, flat feet, if you know what you're doing.'

'You must be very keen to go to Vietnam, Laurence.'

'Yeah, I guess I am… aren't you?'

'I was conscripted,' Max said with a laugh.'I didn't have a say in it.'

'That's not the point. I was conscripted as well.'

'You could have deferred until after your medical studies.'

'I could have.'

'Maybe you should have!' Max raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

'Should I?'

'Most people would.'

Max wasn't happy about the way that came out but half the problem was having to yell over the engine noise. Laurence didn't answer. There was no way to tell if he was angry or not.

Laurence looked the brainy type. Glasses, big head, pale skin, stick-insect body. Brains were hard to hide.

'So what's your philosophy on this Vietnam war situation then, Max?'

Philosophy? Max might have been dumb but he wasn't silly.

He raised his eyebrows and countered, 'What's yours?'

'The Communist stronghold is in China. If the Communists take over Vietnam they will roll through the countries to the south and eventually to Australia. I think our autonomy and our way of life is worth fighting for and maybe even dying for.'

'The Domino Theory,' Max said and mentally patted himself on the back.

'Exactly. So where do you stand on the Domino Theory?' Laurence watched him and measured him.

Max scratched his head and looked longingly at the seat he'd vacated on the other side of the plane. 'The only question I've got is, why would the Chinese want to come down to Australia?'

'Simple. We have resources. Iron ore, uranium. We have open spaces.'

'And what if we're wrong?' Max shrugged. 'What if the Chinese don't intend to come to Australia?'

'So if you have doubts, why are you on this plane?'

'I told you. I'm conscripted, mate,' Max yelled over the noise. ‘Because they'll put me in jail if I don't go.'

'A moral person must have a philosophy for going to war and a philosophy for living his life. The trouble is, Max, that most of the soldiers on this plane are here because they're looking for excitement, or they don't want to appear gutless…' Laurence was yelling over the noise as well. His head seemed too big for his thin neck. He was a carbon copy of the captain of Max's school debating team. Max was never invited into the debating team.

'…They don't want to look like cowards, or let anyone in their home town think they didn't have the guts to go to Vietnam. Not good reasons for going to war, don't you think? It's the same reason most young soldiers have marched off to most wars from time immemorial.' Laurence sat there eagerly waiting for an answer.

Too deep for Max. He pointed at his ears… too much noise.

He squeezed Laurence's arm in a friendly way, stood up and moved back towards his own seat.

Max could have admitted something else to Laurence but bit his tongue. Just between himself and the gatepost, geography wasn't his best subject and Max wasn't sure if, given a map, he could even find where Vietnam was.

Within ten minutes Max was sound asleep, sitting upright, his head vibrating on the bulkhead. The next thing he felt was Laurence shaking his shoulder. 'Max…! Hey Max..!'

It must have been three hours later. The plane must have landed already without waking him up.

The back doors of the Hercules were wide open and the steamy, pungent air was already causing Max to sweat. The propellers were still turning and the rest of the soldiers were clambering down the metal ramp.

'Thanks Laurie.'

'Laurence.'

'Sorry,' Max raised his eyebrows.

'I prefer Laurence.'

Max laughed. 'No problem Laurence; as long as you don't call me Maxwell.'

Through the heat haze Max could see dirt, helicopters and palm trees.

It took all day to collect their kit and be assigned a bed in a tent of twenty.

'That's lucky. They've given us beds side by side,' Laurence chirped.

'How about that,' and Max hid the wince.

They unpacked their gear and Max stuffed his paperwork into a metal drawer in his bedside table.

'I've not seen so much paperwork since my first day in boarding school.' Laurence was filling it in already.

'Except at boarding school they don't give you a gun, mate,' Max said.

'At my boarding school they did. We had drill on the parade ground every morning.' Laurence mentioned the name of the school but Max didn't know one boarding school from another. Homebush Boys never played sport against the GPS Schools. The GPS had a competition of their own. They played rugby and did rowing. Even fencing at some of them.

While the other men made their beds and stowed their gear, Max stretched out on the bed and breathed in deeply, his eyes half shut like a lizard. People complained about the heat and the humidity in Sydney at the height of summer but this was the wet season in Vietnam and, mate, this was something else.

With his eyes shut, Max didn't see the three men enter the tent. They were older, perhaps in their mid-thirties. They wore military boots and trousers but with singlets which displayed their oily muscles and they walked in close formation.

The new intake noticed them one by one and stiffened uncertainly as they walked past.

The man in front was obviously the boss… the leader… the officer in charge.

'Alright scum! Everyone on your feet. Stand to attention beside your beds! Let's have a look at you,' he barked in a broad Australian accent.

His hair was cut to his scalp. He strutted out in front and did the talking. He was the tallest and the heaviest and he looked from side to side with a confident smirk as he swaggered along the line of beds.

Max stood with everyone else. Here it comes, Max thought. The scene from every war movie where the Sergeant Major comes in to chew out the raw recruits.

'Are you soldier-boys getting younger, or what?' the big one yelled and the other two laughed in agreement. 'I love young boys. How old are you son?' He poked one of the skinny kids in the chest.

'Twenty-one sir.'

'Jesus, you look fourteen.'

The kid swallowed and gave a limp smile.

'Anyway. I'd like to welcome you all to Vietnam. Land of drugs, guns, Agent Orange, sudden death and… Asian women.'

These blokes didn't look entirely right to Max. A Sergeant Major doesn't walk around in a singlet. A Sergeant Major wears his stripes to bed. In fact, these blokes looked a little drunk. Unshaven. There was something mean and nasty about all three of them, like stray dogs.

'The only trouble is,' the big fella continued, 'here in Nui Dat we're surrounded by barbed wire and paddy fields and we don't get any women and that's a problem for a person like me that has a warm heart and craves a little affection. So what I do, each time we get a batch of new recruits is, I chose one new recruit to sleep with me, to keep me company on those long nights. Someone to share the little things with. Someone I can kiss on the cheek. And that's why I'm here today. To choose one of you lucky blokes to be my special someone.'

There were a few chuckles and general unrest which was silenced by his vicious yell.

'Shut up! Stand to attention!'

Everyone in the room was dumbstruck. Undecided, they stood straight.

The three men walked the length of the room, staring intently at each soldier as they went. The only sound was the heavy clatter of their boots on the timber floor.

'I choose… you…!' The big bloke spoke in a quiet voice and then pointed straight at Laurence Wren whose eyes became even bigger behind his thick glasses. 'He's a cutie. Bring him, Rusty!'

Rusty was the smaller of the two henchmen but he was compact and had the jerky movements and restless footwork of a punch-drunk boxer. His offsider was tall and skinny and before Laurence could move they pounced on him and in an instant twisted and lifted him on their shoulders like a Persian carpet.

Laurence was stunned. Rusty was strong and so was his offsider. 'Let me down! Bastards! Leave me alone!' Laurence yelled when he could get the words out. The others said nothing, only stared.

Max's voice cut through the quiet. 'Put him down!!' he said.

The big bloke, whose name turned out to be Rodney Slade, turned on Max in the silence with a frozen Doberman smile.

'Who said that?'

Max wasn't scared of big dogs. He'd grown up around them. His father George was a gentle guy but wasn't frightened of anything and he led by example. Dogs had dangerous heads but they had thin legs. Max once saw George sit on a vicious Alsatian dog and the argument was over. Then George gave the dog some sausages and they became friends.

'Come on… who said that?' Rodney walked along the line.

'I did!' Max said.

Rod Slade hailed from Perth and had worked the Kimberly Mines until the age of thirty, before the Vietnam War offered him the opportunity to see the world. Rod had been in Vietnam for two years, twelve months in Vung Tau and the same in Nui Dat and he was generally respected, even feared. He was mad. He had no plans of continuing his world travels. Rod liked Vietnam. He had neutralised a lot of enemy and he was an exception to the Australian male rule… Rod was only too happy to talk about what he did in the war.

'Say it again!'

'I said, put him down.' Max said quietly.

'That's brave talk, my young friend!'

Rodney walked up to Max and pushed him savagely in the chest. The thump rocked Max back onto the bunk. His bottom hit the mattress where the noisy springs sprung and he found himself on his way back up.

Something else George had taught him was to stay out of fights but if a fight is inevitable, always throw the first punch.

And punches are about timing. Like a golf shot. The best shots come from the easiest swings. Pumping iron for five years with the swim squad played its part.

Max's punch caught Rodney Slade just below the left eye and the bone crumpled under his knuckles. Max felt bad before the man hit the floor but