‘I’m going to report on the injustice being perpetrated upon the coloured troops of the 96th Battalion,’ Pete announced grandly, although he was careful to keep his voice down. ‘Bugger them all, I’m going to write the truth about what’s been going on here. Men barred from town, deprived of their liberty, worked like bloody dogs, and all because they’re black. The army wouldn’t treat their white soldiers like this. It’s bloody shameful.’

‘If that’s the case then I agree with you, Pete,’ Bruce said, not doubting his mate’s veracity for a minute, ‘but who’d publish such a report?’

‘OK, I’m going to write the report,’ Pete corrected himself, ‘but one day I’ll get it out there, I promise you.’ Even as he spoke an idea occurred. ‘I might send it overseas, to England perhaps. War censorship laws aren’t as strictly enforced in Britain as they are here. But it’ll get out there, I’ll make bloody sure it does.’

‘Good on you.’ Bruce admired Pete’s principles, he always had. His principles and his passion and his pursuit of the truth. Pete was a bloody fine journo. ‘Good luck to you, mate.’

Only several days later, something happened that rattled Bruce Desmond. And the first person he thought of was his mate Pete Vickers. This was surely something that should go in Pete’s unauthorised report, he thought. If what Charlie said was true, then this was something the world should know about.

It was late afternoon when he phoned Pete at the Bulletin. ‘Get yourself down to the police station,’ he said urgently, ‘and make it quick. I’m going to have to ring the US military, but I’ll wait until after you’ve heard Charlie’s story.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘You reckon there’s a cover-up with the black soldiers of the 96th? Just wait till you hear what Charlie has to say.’

Charlie Phipps, semi-retired, was a railway porter. A weathered man in his early sixties, he hadn’t always been a porter. In fact, he’d once been assistant station master, but upon retirement he’d been so loath to leave his precious trains that the transport department had humoured him and kept him on as a part-time porter. So Charlie knew everything there was to know about trains and freight cars and the cargo they carried. And he knew how to use his knowledge to his own advantage.