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Front cover Taken from a photograph of stretcher bearers carrying white flag while returning from battle with wounded soldier in Pozieres, France during World War I 1916. Picture: Australian War Memorial Source: News Limited
Chapter 1
It was uncomfortably cold in the guard room of the First Australian Imperial Force School of Musketry near Lark Hill on the Salisbury Plains of England. Most of the off-duty sentries were huddled around the room’s pot-bellied heater in an effort to keep warm. However, one of the guards, Private Ellis, sat apart from the group at the single table in the room. He was concentrating all of his attention on a small pile of erotic post cards that he had arranged before him on the table, and trying to decide which of the semi clad young women depicted on the cards he liked best.
The corporal in charge of the off-duty sentries entered the room and pushed his way to the front of the group surrounding the heater. He glared across the heads of those around the heater. ‘Private Ellis! I thought you said July was summertime in this bloody country,’ he grumbled.
Private Ellis did not respond.
‘Yeah well, I suppose weather forecasting and tits weren’t part of your university studies, was they, young fellow?’ continued the corporal.
A couple of the off-duty sentries sniggered. The nineteen-year-old Ellis had abandoned the first year of a university degree to join the army, and many of his less educated comrades looked to him for guidance on issues they saw as requiring “educated” knowledge. He could rattle off historical facts about the various places of interest around the Salisbury Plains, and the towns and cities the Australians might visit when they had leave. However, his knowledge regarding the English climate had been brought into serious doubt. This particular reinforcement draft of Australians had arrived in May 1916, and Ellis had confidently predicted barmy summer days would be theirs to enjoy. Instead, the first three months of their stay at Lark Hill had proven to be cold and wet. In addition to this failing, his comrades were delighted to discover his knowledge regarding the female form was so slight as to be almost non-existent. In an effort to address this particular lack of knowledge, several of his older comrades had determined to see to this aspect of his education. The first stage of that process was the provision of the post cards that now held young Ellis’s attention. Indeed, he had just decided that a petite blonde lady, who stared provocatively out at him while displaying her naked breasts, was his favourite when the guard room telephone clanged into life.
The Sergeant of the Guard answered the phone. ‘Guard Room…yes…yes…I’ll get on to it straight away…cheers.’ He hung up the receiver and walked to the table where Ellis was continuing his study of the blonde lady’s ample assets.
‘Private Ellis!’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
The Sergeant glanced over Ellis’s shoulder at the post cards. ‘You like the blonde, I bet,’ he commented.
Ellis grinned. ‘She’s seems very nice,’ he replied bashfully.
‘See too much of that sort of thing at your age young fellow and it will stunt your growth,’ the Sergeant advised loftily. ‘Fortunately, I can save you from yourself, my boy…I’ve a job for you. The phone to the Sergeant’s Mess is out of order…nip across there and see Sergeant Green. Tell him he’s wanted at Battalion Headquarters right away. He’s to report to the 2ic as soon as he gets there…got it?’
‘Got it, Sergeant.’
‘Don’t take a short cut across the parade ground, will you.’
‘No, Sergeant.’ The parade ground was considered a sacred site, only to be visited when one was actually on parade.
‘You know to knock at the Mess door?’ The Sergeants’ Mess, the exclusive domain of the School’s Warrant Officers and Senior Non-Commissioned Officers, the majority of whom were sergeants, was situated across the other side of the parade ground, directly opposite the Guard Room. Ellis as a private soldier would have to knock at the door and wait for one of the members to answer him.
‘Yes, Sergeant, I knock and wait. What do I do if he’s not there? Do you want me to go and look for him?’
‘No, if he isn’t there, come straight back here and tell me. Now get going. The 2ic is not a man to be kept waiting.’
Ellis was a little disappointed to be required even temporarily to forego his lascivious studies. Carefully, he placed post cards back in a grubby envelope and placed it on the table top. He knew very well that the moment he left the room one of the other sentries would purloin the cards and it would be some time before he got another look at them. However, his disappointment was tempered to a degree by the thought of meeting Sergeant Green.
Sergeant Green was one of the many Musketry School instructors, responsible for coaching soldiers as they practised shooting on the School’s many rifle ranges. Like many of the other instructors at the School, Green was a veteran of the recent Gallipoli campaign, and Ellis’s and his comrades were in awe of such men. However, particular revere was reserved for Sergeant Green as rumour had it that during that campaign, he had earned a deadly reputation as a sniper, and gained the nickname of “Killer Green.” Strangely back in Australia, the fame he earned at ANZAC Cove was barely acknowledged. The war correspondents deployed to ANZAC Cove made no mention of Green choosing instead to extol the feats of other AIF snipers, such as Billy Sing who was known as “The Assassin.” Yet so far as Ellis was concerned, there was a much more interesting aspect to Sergeant Green than his status as a marksman, for Green was an Aboriginal, and Ellis, a second-generation white Australian, had never met an Aboriginal.
Quickly, Ellis adjusted his uniform, pulled his slouch hat to the desired angle, and marched purposefully from the Guard Room. Minutes later, he reached the Sergeants’ Mess and ran lightly up the three wooden steps to its front door, knocked loudly, and waited.
Moments later, the door opened and a Warrant Officer peered out. ‘Yes mate,’ the Warrant Officer inquired, ‘who do you want?’
‘Sergeant Green, sir,’ replied Ellis.
‘Right, hang on a moment.’ The Warrant Officer turned back toward the interior of the Mess. ‘Sergeant Green!’ he called. ‘There’s a bloke here to see you.’
Sergeant Robert Green was at that moment buried in the embrace of a large leather covered armchair where he was quietly dozing. For the last two days, he had been coaching soldiers on the range, teaching them not to pull the trigger of their rifle, but to squeeze it. He was tired of telling them not to hold their breath, and a little deaf from the constant rifle fire of his students. The call to the door was an unwanted intrusion to his afternoon off. He opened one eye and focused it toward the main door where the Warrant Officer stood. ‘Bugger,’ he muttered. He sat up and eyed the disturber of his sleep warily. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He stood up and stretched, then with a weary yawn made his way to the Mess door.
Private Ellis had spent his time waiting at the Mess door deep in thought. He was one of many who had joined the AIF in a moment of patriotic fervour heavily spiced with a yearning for adventure. He believed the recruitment propaganda that the king needed his service and as he was proud to have honoured that need. He had yet to experience combat, but he thought it would be very like an exciting game of football, with the protagonists generally being jolly fine chaps who treated each other with respect. It was this thought that started him thinking about the morality of a man who chose to become a sniper. A sniper killed from cover, his victims having little chance to protect themselves, a situation that so far as Ellis was concerned was hardly sportsman like. This thought gave rise to another. Why was it, he theorised to himself, that some of the most famous snipers in the AIF were non-European? Did the fact that Billy Sing was Chinese, and Green an Aboriginal, have anything to do with the two men’s ability to kill in cold blood? He had just about convinced himself that this must be the case when a polite cough returned his concentration to the task at hand.
Sergeant Green blinking in the sunlight stood at the top of the steps. ‘G’Day,’ Green said, ‘what’s up?’
For a moment, Ellis found he could