Kasey relaxed and returned the grin. Rupe was always a calming influence. A big, powerfully built man, mild in temperament, a gentle giant; all the younger ones looked up to Rupe.

At twenty-six, Corporal Rupert Barrett was senior to his newfound buddies in both years and rank, but it made no difference to Rupe, who just took people as he found them. He liked these two boys. But then he liked most of the guys who served in the 96th Battalion’s Company C, those he’d come to know anyway among the close to 200 in number; the troops had bonded during their month-long voyage to Australia. Many of the younger ones had only recently joined up, but this was Rupe’s sixth year of service with the US Army and he felt kind of responsible for the new kids on the block.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Kasey acknowledged, ‘we southern boys should be used to feeling inferior, shouldn’t we?’ The cheeky wink he gave Rupe clearly signalled he was joking; Kasey Davis felt anything but inferior. ‘I guess all we boys should be used to it,’ he said with a gesture that encompassed the entire ship and therefore the entire battalion. ‘Hell, the army don’t even tell us what we’re going to be doing. They don’t even give us weapons.’

Kase was suddenly no longer joking. ‘I mean, we’re supposed to be fuckin’ soldiers and we don’t even have a fuckin’ gun,’ he went on, ‘that don’t seem right to me.’

‘Take it easy, Kase,’ Rupe once more came to the rescue. ‘We’ll find out what we’re going to be doing all in good time. You’ve just got to learn to go with the flow.’

He looked out over the railing at the view below. ‘Hey, there goes our favourite man,’ he said by way of distraction and he pointed at the figure walking down the gangplank. ‘At least we’ll have a rest from our buddy Chuck for a couple of hours. That’s something to be grateful for.’

‘The prick,’ Kasey said, ‘hope he goes to a brothel and gets a massive dose of the clap!’

Willie laughed. He often found Kase funny when Kase was actually being deadly earnest.

Each of the companies constituting the 96th Battalion was commanded by two white officers, and none of the men from Company C had any time for Captain Charles Leroy Maxwell, known to his fellow white officers as ‘Chuck’. In fact, they despised him. Maxwell was a bully who’d made the lives of many insufferable during the long weeks at sea, and the principal whipping boy of his choice had been young Kasey Davis.