Hayward Point of the Spear

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62309-692-2
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 230 Seiten

Five years after World War II, beautiful and exotic Malaya is torn by rebellion. Corporal John Barr and his men are at the 'point of the spear' as they search for the battle-hardened and elusive communist terrorist forces led by the ruthless Major Goh Chu. Gruelling patrols deep into the jungle-covered mountains of a dangerous land force them to depend on each other for their very lives.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayward, Dave

Leseproben

1
The platoon came steeply downhill off the ridge. In the valley the slope eased. It had been a day like all the others – hot and humid; the air heavy and lifeless, foetid with a million years of decay. They were in virgin jungle. Magnificent trees towered above them, the closely woven branches forming a dense canopy no sunlight could penetrate. They moved in a hushed, gloomy light. It reminded Corporal John Barr of a huge, ancient cathedral. The undergrowth was light and it was easy going. Their feet made little noise on the soft leaf-mould. They moved carefully, quietly, spaced well apart. They did not talk. Dressed identically in filthy, sweat-soaked, uniforms; rubber-soled canvas boots, long trousers, shirts with sleeves down, soft, misshapen hats; only their dirty hands and faces were bare. Each man carried five or six pouches on a webbing waist-belt and a big pack on his back. All held loaded weapons at the ready, not slung, but carried in both hands. The greens, browns and blacks of clothing, equipment and weapons blended with the jungle. There was an air of menace about their steady, silent advance. Number Ten Platoon of Delta Company of the First Battalion, the New Zealand Infantry Regiment, was at work. Two Section was leading. The two scouts probed forward, senses alert. The lead scout, Private Archie Kurangi, was particularly good at this – you could almost see his nose twitching like a dog on a scent. The section commander, Corporal John Barr, followed, alert for their signals. Every man searched the jungle as he passed; they had learnt to look ‘through it, not at it’. Each stayed within sight of the man behind – checked with every visual sweep – if you lost him you stopped until he caught up. The crakk, crakk of rifle fire shattered the afternoon. Two shots – .303, John assessed. Immediately the hysterical chattering of Archie’s sub-machine gun followed. Someone yelled “Contact front!” and the cry was repeated down the column. Throwing off packs, Two Section reacted as drilled. Corporal Barr ran forward until he could see the scouts then ducked behind a tree. He could hear the Bren gun team running up on his left, the higher ground, and the rifle group on his right. “Arch?” he called into the sudden quiet. “Sentry. He’s run. Track contours the hill.” The enemy fired at the sound of their voices; two rifles, then a machinegun. Bullets crakked overhead or whacked into trees. “Ants!” John shouted and Private Anthony Shepperd stood upright and fired the Bren at the enemy position – from the hip, a full magazine of twenty-eight big bullets. Lieutenant Garth Haswell, the platoon commander, threw himself down beside John. “One sentry,” John told him. “But now a bloody machinegun.” “They’ll try to hold us while they scarper,” Haswell panted. He had sprinted forward from his position in the column. “I’ve sent Sugar round to the left and Dug’s gone right for the stream. You flush them.” The platoon needed to move quickly. If the enemy reacted in the usual way they would not stay to fight but escape on planned routes to vanish in the jungle. Haswell had sent his two unengaged sections ranging left and right to flank them. Now John’s section had to charge and ‘flush’ them before they could organise their withdrawal. “Rifles move,” he shouted. At his words the Bren team and the scouts fired; suppressive fire to cover the move. The four men of the rifle group charged forward through the sparse undergrowth. John ran hard to join them. Adrenaline surged in his veins. The job of the Infantry – ‘to close with and destroy the enemy’ – hard, dangerous work unchanged for centuries. Whether armed with stone axe or modern rifle the fear-inspired exhilaration was the same. This particular enemy, however, had no intention of being ‘closed with’ let alone ‘destroyed’. Shots came at them but they jinked and dodged as they ran and no one was hit. After fifteen yards or so, without orders, they stopped, knelt and began a rapid fire at the enemy position. Covered by this, the Bren and scout teams came crashing past on the left. The Bren fired again. John leapt to his feet and charged on. He burst into a small clearing containing a single attap-roofed shelter. From the far side two khaki-clad figures fired several rapid shots. He heard a sickening slap and Private Mad-Dog Miller went down. With four rifles firing at them the two terrorists turned and ran. It seemed impossible they could escape the hail of bullets, especially when the scouts arrived and Archie gave them a full magazine. One of them staggered, but they ran on. John took a deep, calming breath, steadied the sights of his rifle on the bulging pack of the last man and squeezed the trigger. The legs stopped running and the terrorist slid along the ground. Silence descended. There was a burst of firing from the higher ground to their left, but it was short-lived. The entire action had lasted just nine minutes. Quickly, Two Section and Platoon HQ formed a defensive perimeter around the clearing. The medic worked over Miller. A bullet had smashed his thighbone and his leg had collapsed under him. Running flat out he had crashed into a tree and knocked himself out. The medic thought he’d be OK, provided they got him out as soon as they could. Sergeant Jim Sharpe searched the camp. From the shelter he collected a few cooking utensils and other items; nothing worthwhile by the look of it. He searched the man John had killed, a messy job. The pack held a large bag of rice and he emptied it onto a groundsheet. “Hey, Archie, look at this,” the sergeant exclaimed. Among the grains of rice emptied from the pack two squat 9mm bullets shone in the pale light. “You hit the bugger alright.” The small bullets from the sub-machinegun had failed to penetrate the pack. To the running man they would have felt like a hard blow to the back. The single, powerfully charged 7.62mm bullet from John’s FN rifle had punched right through the pack and the man’s body. There was a huge exit wound in his chest. He had died still running. “I knew I got ‘im,” Archie cried disgustedly. “That’s it! You can stick this bloody Owen gun. I want something that puts ‘em down when I hit ‘em. How about a shotgun, Sergeant?” “I dunno, Arch. They jam a lot. I’ll see what I can do though. Guess you’ve earned it.” Many scouts wanted the big Winchester pump-action shotguns despite the problem with cartridges swelling in the damp. Firing loads of big ball bearings, they were lethal at the short ranges of jungle fighting. Announcing themselves as they approached, the flanking sections rejoined. One Section had seen nothing below the camp, but Three Section had briefly contacted the escaping enemy. A blood trail leading away around the hill indicated they had wounded at least one, but they had taken a casualty themselves. Private John Taatini had been shot in the foot. How that had come about nobody knew, but bullets flew in all directions in a contact and strange things happened. “I tell them to keep their bloody heads down,” Corporal Sugar Robinson grumbled to the assembled ‘O’ (orders) group. “Never thought to tell Taatini to keep his fuckin’ feet down.” Quiet chuckles answered. Lieutenant Garth Haswell passed the radio handset to the signaller and turned to his waiting NCOs. “Right. It’s straight up to the ridge top. Seems there’s a helicopter pad not far along it. There’ll be a heli there before dark. If we make it Miller and Taatini will go out today. If not, they’ll have to wait ‘til morning. HQ is sending a dog team and we’re to follow up. And yes, Intelligence want the body as well.” John Barr groaned. It would be brutal work getting their wounded up the steep slope – now they also had to lug the dead terrorist. The identity and status of every communist terrorist (CT) was carefully documented and the intelligence people wanted to know who had been eliminated. They wanted the body – the whole body. John grinned ruefully. It was rumoured that in similar circumstances the Ghurkhas had simply delivered the head and hands. He could understand why. “Yeah, I know,” Garth continued. “Rifle groups to Jim as stretcher bearers. I’ll take the scouts and you, Dug, and we’ll go like hell for the top and find this pad. John, you lead the push. Sugar, you’re arse-end-charlie. Questions? Right, get to it.” It was bad luck to have two men hit in the brief fight, it was even worse that both had leg wounds and could not walk. Carrying stretchers up a steep, jungle-covered hill was gut-wrenching labour, especially when you were in a hurry. It was hard on the wounded too, even with a full ampoule of morphine in each man. The easiest way to carry the dead CT was also on a stretcher. The difference being comfort didn’t matter to him; he could be tied on. During the time it took to reorganise and make three sturdy stretchers from fresh-cut poles and groundsheets Corporal Robinson found a small, rotund rifleman forming up with the scouts. “What the hell are you doing, Whetu?” he demanded. “I’m training to be a scout, Sugar. This is a good time to get some experience,” Private Whetu answered. The big man stared at the little one in exasperation. Private William (Weta) Whetu gazed back with innocent eyes. A bloody cherub with the mind of a devil, Sugar thought. Whetu was the platoon joker with a genius for...