Fifty green army reserve tents run in two parallel lines for 100 yards on a gentle hill surrounded by heavily wooded eucalyptus trees. The hill faces south and on a good day, when the morning mist lifts, the ocean glistens one inviting mile away.

Every year the army reserve runs a bush camp to practice combat manoeuvres against an unnamed enemy, which is the People’s Liberation Army of China. There are four male soldiers per tent and 30 female soldiers who have their own tents. A baton-carrying female corporal stands guard when they shower.

Seven civilians are employed for two weeks to prepare meals, wash dishes and clean the mess tables. It’s good money. We have our own tents. Sergeant Paul Bruggerman, a stores specialist second class, supervises us. This is my third and last camp. I recite Richard Brautigan’s prose in a loud voice while peeling the carrots and potatoes. I’m a 22-year old English Literature major. Back in the world, Paul Bruggerman drives a forklift for a company which makes bed bases. We don’t get on.

This story is of Sergeant Bruggerman and his torch but it’s important to know a little of the officers and soldiers of this company. The majority are in their late teens and 20s. Many are patriots, others like the tax deductible pay. There’s a small clique of psychopaths and rapists. All embrace order, structure and discipline. A few of the officers have degrees in engineering and accounting but most of these weekend warriors scraped through high school. They treat Trang and Tuan, two Vietnamese Australians who do the washing up, as spies and draw white chalk targets on their backs and call them ‘Gooks’. The Vietnam war ended in 1975. Trang and Tuan drink tequila and smoke hash in my tent at night.

One star-cluttered evening after a session with Trang and Tuan, I wander over to the company commander, who is standing hands on hips on the hillside, staring out to sea. Colonel David Haigh is tall, intelligent and a banker. The type of bloke who with whistle in mouth, would have led his company over the top at Ypres, to certain death.

“Good evening, Callum”

“Good evening, Colonel. Beautiful night for a mortar attack”

He looks down his patrician nose at me and walks away. You don’t need to be Carl von Clausewitz to know that two parallel lines of tents strung out on an open hillside, invites all forms of death and destruction. There are no foxholes, sentries or forward communication posts.

Sergeant Bruggerman eats his meals alone. At 45, he’s the old man of the company. He looks like a cross between Ubu Roi and Mr Potato Head, with his skull sunk into his shoulders, giving the impression gravity is his enemy. He wants to be liked and this makes him unlikeable. His pheromones ooze desperation. He tells the story about his grandfathers torch over and over and his dirty jokes aren’t funny. Women avoid him.

Sergeant Bruggerman demotes me from kitchen duties to cleaning the lavatories. See where all that learnin’ gotya, he says and laughs. I now scrub and disinfect ten portaloos every morning and evening. Trang and Tuan think it’s a hell of a joke. I do not perform my lavatorial duties with Zen Buddhist detachment. I perform them like Richard 111.

Orianna Jammal has taken my job. She’s a Scheherazade dream until you get to know her. Long black hair, almond-shaped green eyes, olive skin and a broad Australian accent, which sounds like she’s been driving cattle across the Kimberley Ranges for all of her 18 years. The soldiers stare at her. How could someone or something so beautiful wander amongst them? When serving breakfast, a corporal with a thin Errol Flynn moustache lets his hands wander over her arse and receives a sharp elbow to the eye, sending him sprawling to the ground. Ms Jammal takes no prisoners. More Salome than Scheherazade.

Sergeant Bruggerman finds a love letter sitting on his pillow.

“Dear Paul, how can the sun shine on both of us without telling you what is in my heart? I watch you, a timid girl, and want to talk to you but shyness and my culture forbids it. I yearn tragically for you. As Rumi wrote, “Do not feel feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.” If only I could feel you inside me. Life is beautiful and terrible. Yours O xxx”

He peeks outside of the tent to make sure no one is watching and reads the letter again. It has to be Oriana. She hides her feelings well. Fraternisation is banned.

Sergeant Bruggerman coughs outside my tent. I stash the hash and De Sade’sJustine under my camp stretcher. He pokes his head in followed by his stomach and fat legs and sits on the ground next to my guitar. A supplicant coming to a vizier for advice. A fat boyish smile and the scent of Linx replaces his dislike of me.

“I need some confidential advice. You’re a university guy, you must know a thing or two”

Colonel Haigh ordered him to put me on lavatory duty but I don’t care. Bruggerman is my enemy and having an enemy passes time. He shows me the letter.

“She’s hot for you, mate,” I say. “Her aloofness is a thin Persian veil behind a woman’s beating heart – and if you’ll pardon the crudity – with a wide-on broader than the Tigris and Euphrates combined. There’s only one thing to do. You gotta write back”

He looks at me with appalling puppy dog eyes and his bulbous head falls into his hands.

“My parents died in a car crash when I was five and I got put in an orphanage. All I got from them was a torch my grandfather gave my Dad, when he fought in the German army in World War Two. My most precious possession. I’d turn it on at night in the dormitory and dream of a family who’d adopt me but they never did. Didn’t do much schoolin’. Can’t write.”

“Well, Paul, I could use my left hand. It won’t look pretty but content beats form any day”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Yeah for $100.00. Cash. I’ll write it tonight and give it to you tomorrow morning so you can sneak it in to her tent. Our secret.”

He rises gingerly on one knee, sways a little and slaps me on the back and drops two $50 notes on the camp stretcher. He wants to shake my hand but realises where my hands have been and leaves whistling. I roll a small joint and with my unruly left hand, put pen to paper.

Dear Oriana,

My tongue is tied and my heart is in turmoil. I return your affections with dividends. I want us to meet tomorrow night at 9.00pm by the dam, where we can talk alone. There are only two positions available to us dear O. Either making love, which renders us happy, or killing ourselves which prevents us from being unhappy. Lets opt for the former. Yours eternally, PB.

xxxxxxx

The day starts with a rooster crowing. I pass the letter to Sergeant Bruggerman who places it on Oriana’s pillow as she prepares breakfast. It’s the second to last day of the camp and the reservists, with tummies full of bacon and eggs, are rehearsing a flanking manoeuvre on an imaginary Chinese infantry regiment of 4000 heavily armed men. There’s a BBQ tomorrow tonight, when each soldier is allowed six cans of beer, and as a special treat, Apocalypse Now will screen.

Trang and Tuan are talking in animated Vietnamese while putting the plates away as I walk past to the latrines with bucket, mop and chemicals in hand.

“The killer awoke before dawn,” I yell. “He put his boots on. He took a face from the ancient gallery and he walked on down the hall”

They make gun fingers and shoot me half a dozen times.

In the far distance, over scrubby farm land dotted with sheep, the reservists spread out and on the breeze, as I stir the chemicals in the bucket, I hear a faint whistle as the 200 men and 30 women of the company firing blanks, engage surprised cows, kangaroos, trees and fences, in a murderous display of farce.

I find three used condoms in one of the portaloos. One I could understand. Two is a stretch but three requires a man of significant stamina and amphetamines. Oriana hammers on the door as I drop the condoms down the hole. She’s waving the letter.

“You know anything about this?”

She’s incandescent with rage which makes her more beautiful, like a tiger cornering its prey. Oriana wants to lead an army of lesbian warriors to destroy the state of Israel. You don’t talk to Oriana. You liaise with her.

“Never seen it before”

“Well some bastard is fucking with my head and when I find out who it is, they’ll be singing falsetto all the way back to barracks”

“Have you considered Bruggerman might be smitten by you. I know …”

“Listen shit for brains, Buggerman said you wrote it”

“Nope. No motivation. No opportunity. Not my handwriting”

Oriana storms off in Trang and Tuan’s direction. I seethe as I mop the last of the portaloos. That spineless idiot dobbed me in. He should have fallen at her feet and told her she was a Mikimoto pearl and he was a deep sea diver for love but the fat prick not only put me on lavatory duty but grassed on me. When tomorrow night falls, the hurly-burly will be done.

xxxxxxx

The sun sets as Sergeant Bruggerman holds Oriana’s hand. They’re running through the Ardenne forest. She’s wearing a low cut peasant dress ripped up the side, showing her strong but shapely feminine legs. Her breasts heave in fear as the American tanks crash through the undergrowth behind them. He pulls the torch from his belt and shines it on the leaf-littered path ahead. They wade across a shallow stream and flee through heavy woodland. They’re safe. Oriana turns towards him and kisses him as a hand smacks him across the face.

“Wakey wakey you fat fuck, you dobbed me in”

Morning is breaking and the scent of toast and bacon is heavy in the air. Sergeant Bruggerman has slept in. Trang and Tuan are laughing in the mess tent and in their sing song language, I make out the word ‘Oriana’ and more laughter.

“Nothing I could do,” he says, looking like a discombobulated Mr Potato Head in a sleeping bag. “She’s a demon. I said the first thing that came in to my head”

“Of course she’s angry. She’s looking for the truth. God knows how many women have searched for that in men’s dull eyes. Instead of denying it, tell her tonight during the movie”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really, really think so,” and smile as I part the tent flaps, grab my bucket, mop and chemicals and make my way to the portaloos.

The company spends the day cleaning weapons and packing the gear. I get the portaloos ready to be towed away. Excitement stirs through the camp, knowing tomorrow we’ll be on the buses back to the big city, where in a week’s time this will be a memory. But now, it’s like the build up to Christmas Night and there’s frisson between some of the men and women; of things done or to be done; of things said or maybe better left unsaid. And like last nights on previous army camps, the contraband bottles of spirits rise to the top of the backpacks, because as any hard fighting man and woman knows, six cans of beer ain’t going to touch the sides.

Evening falls slowly as the company enjoy their steak, sausages, bread and tomato sauce, washed down with cans of cold beer. By the third can, the voices are loud, bordering on raucous as Colonel David Haigh stands on a chair and congratulates the troops on their professionalism and dedication. If the faecal matter ever hits the fan, he says, and the communists land with an army of 500,000 men supported by tanks and artillery, he knows the reservists of this fine company will do their duty. There’s three cheers for the Colonel and then 230 arses of various shapes and sizes – minus those who have snuck off in to the forest – take to the benches to watch the movie.

I stand at the back sipping a Pimms and Dry with cucumber as Robert Duvall gives his speech about loving the smell of napalm. Sergeant Bruggerman moves like a knight on a chessboard and sits behind Oriana. A mob of 30 well behaved sheep slowly make their way up the hill and walk through the benches as if returning to the theatre armed with popcorn from the candy bar. They turn their attention to the movie and stand mesmerised. Apart from the occasional bleat, they’re a benevolent counter balance to the on-screen bloodshed.

I make my way slowly to Sergeant Bruggerman’s tent and take his torch from his backpack and head to the dam, stealthily bypassing a copulating couple on the way. I turn the torch on and marvel at what this object has seen. From shellfire in the forests of Belgium and Germany, to be passed lovingly from father to son and on to Paul. Who, in a lonely child’s hand played it across the dormitory walls of an orphanage, waiting for saviours who never came. And now he is about to confess his love to a lesbian surrounded by sheep, watching a cow being dismembered by a machete, as The Door’s sound track reaches its crescendo.

The torch makes a a ‘bok’ sound as it hits the water. It shines upwards as it sinks and radiates white light through the eucalypts, as if the Lady of the Lake is about to arise. I walk away back to the camp and the movie and the napalming of the jungle.

xxxxxx

Sergeant Bruggerman doesn’t confess his desire for Oriana. He spends the night looking for his torch. Have you seen my torch? He asks drunken soldiers peeing next to their tents. He asks Trang and Tuan, who giggle. He’s misery on fat legs slouching from tent to tent, asking the same question over and over. I go to bed but I’m awake at 3.30am. He’s crying in his tent. I could try fish his torch out of the dam but it’s ten feet down. I roll on my side and go back to sleep.

In the morning, I tell Paul how sorry I am as the blue buses arrive. I make my way to the back bench seat. It’s a three hour trip to the city. I’ll read some Derrida and have a nap. Paul sits up the front and stares straight ahead as the bus pulls out. Oriana leaves her seat and sits next to him. She consoles him as the gearbox grinds from third to fourth gear.