It was the year they turned sixteen, and were finally allowed to think of dating, that war broke out in Asia. When the news first reached the Tablelands, the boys and their friends all crowded outside the post office each morning for the latest morning. They would pour over the newspapers, dissecting every little detail and, in the manner of teenage boys, postulated about how they would do better and show those yellow bastards who was boss.
The old men listened and simply shook their heads. Wasn't World War II supposed to be the war to end all wars? And yet here they were, unfortunate to live to see the second war since that 'last' war. World War II had shaped the Tablelands; when the Army established training camps and stationed troops on the tablelands, prosperity followed. The timber mills supplied the lumber for the buildings, all able bodied men were involved in the construction of new townships, and growing population led to the development of large scale farming.
The benefits that the Tablelands saw from the war, still didn't make up for the shadow. Too many fathers, brothers, and sons never came home, and their tombstones sat above empty graves in the war cemetery.
Like all the other teenage boys, Stephen and Robert became addicted to news of the war. They watched with envy as boys they'd gone to school with lined up at the train station, rucksacks slung over shoulders and heads topped with slouch hats. Some older faces joined the newly enlisted troops as men from the farms took the opportunity to travel and see more of the world. With this first wave of enlistment the boys waved goodbye to their highschool teacher, Mr Simmons. It wasn't that he wanted to fight, he told the boys in his class, but that he wanted to learn; learn about human nature, about the world, about the reality of war previously only read about in text books and sensationalised in newspapers. After learning, he told his students, he wanted to teach them of what he had discovered so that they would have sufficient information with which to make such a monumental decision.
For the first few months of the war, while Mr Simmons was undergoing basic training, letters arrived at the school on a weekly basis. The principal would read them to the school during Monday morning assembly and then pin the letter to the school notice board for the wider community to read. When Mr Simmons completed his training and was sent to Vietnam his letters stopped arriving with regularity. Sometimes there would be no word for weeks and then several letters would arrive all at once. Luckily he had a habit of dating the envelope so the letters could be opened and read in chronological order. Initially, he had introduced his students to the men in his regiment; charming anecdotes about the personalities and nicknames accompanied with light hearted complaints about undesirable personal habits and the occasional reflection on the similarity between the Vietnamese jungles and the Tablelands. It wasn't long though until a letter arrived that was very short and sombre in nature.
In the letter he simply wrote:
I have no words to describe a death during war. There is no peaceful passing. No knowledge that death is looking your way. No time to accept your fate and meet death openly with a head held high. Here, death is a sneak thief who steals your dignity with your life. Maybe we died the moment we stepped on this foreign soil and all we have done these last months is wait for death to find us and collect his dues.
It wasn't until many weeks later that the community found out this letter was his last, and had arrived after his parents were already informed of his death. They lived in Melbourne, but had travelled to Brisbane to see their son off for what would be their last visit with him.
Mr Simmons' death was the first to rock the community. For the elderly it was reminiscent of previous wars while for the younger generations it was their first experience with losing someone to war.
What a shared love interest couldn't achieve, the death of a teacher could; both boys grew up... and grew apart.
Robert was hot with war rage; determined to avenge his teacher and peers, to fight to free the innocents from the yellow devil who would commit such atrocities against mankind. He became obsessed with Mr Simmons' final letter, standing in front of the school notice board for nearly a week as he reread the few words. One day something seemed to click for him and had anyone been paying particular attention they would have notice him straightening his back, squaring his shoulders and muttering vowing to foil the sneak thief. He was still only sixteen when he visited the MacDuggin's farm and inspected their new litter of kelpie x border collie pups, selecting a red merle pup with a perky ears and mottled splodges over his eyes.
He was seventeen when he started training the pup, ambitiously named Rex, in earnest. Secretly taking off into the rainforest as both he and the pup exercised their five senses in an jungle environment. He was barely eighteen when he packed his bags, and he and Rex hopped a train to Brisbane to enlist.
After nearly 12 months of training, Robert and Rex transferred to Vietnam as a Scout dog and Handler team. They worked well together and Rex's intelligence kept he and his human partner safe for over six months. The merle canine was so successful at sniffing out ambushes and booby traps that their unit would jokingly grumble about having no work to do; Rex would sniff out the ambush and alert Robert, who would then call in their coordinates for an air strike. Meanwhile the remaining members of their unit would start a pool on how many gooks would be flushed out of the jungle by the barrage from the RAAF, or Royal Australian Airforce.
Word of their partnership spread and Rex became known as the 'Mighty Merle' and Robert as the 'Merle's Mate'. With the increased fame came an increased feeling of invulnerability... and an increasingly higher bounty placed on their heads.
Admidst footage of gaunt, grim faced men, of burnt out villages, and of blood stained medics, footage of a brave pup and his handsome handler were a bright spark in war correspondence. When a civilian journalist was sent to their unit, she fell for Robert's charm and then for Rex's personality. A video of Rex herding local chickens into the General's tent was picked up by news stations around the world. Everyone fell in love with the dog with the cheeky grin and cheered when the General was chased out of his tent in the process of changing. The video continued to show Rex receiving a lecture of epic proportions with his ears perked, tongue lolling, and tail gently flopping on the dirt. At the end of the lecture, the General turned his attention to Robert which is when the world fell in love with the intelligent canine. Placid as long as the tirade was directed at himself, Rex became ferocious in defense of his handler. Planting himself firmly between his handler and his commander, Rex bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes at the angry General. Such loyalty couldn't be faulted and the General put the entire punishment on Rex's shoulders; disciplinary action taken and resulting in Rex being sentenced to collect eggs from the chickens for a week. Later footage showed the Kelpie Border Collie cross gently picking up the eggs and carrying them across the compound to the mess tent with his jaunty tail held high in the air.
When tales of the Mighty Merle made Australian news, journalists of print, television, and radio reached out to the Tablelands for interviews; wanting to know about Robert's childhood and what it was about growing up in the Australian tropics that made him so formidable in the Vietnamese jungle.
Journalists who spoke to the community heard tales of Robert's cheeky nature, his fondness for pranks, and his heart of gold that just need a bit of redirection to appear. His tight friendship with Julie was unmasked and the girl found herself unexpectedly paired up with the war hero as the love interest to his heroically dashing male lead status.
When her delicately blushing face appeared on national television, the country fell in love with the shy sweetheart of their favourite soldier. Young girls around Australia cried into their pillows as their crush was announced to be head over heels for his love.
So caught up in the tragic romance between a soldier and his childhood sweetheart, no one noticed the silence that would befall everyone when asked who Robert's closest friends were when growing up. Without fail, everyone interviewed would hem and haw, looking away slightly before leaping into yet another hilarious anecdote of Robert's youthful follies.
No one wanted to reveal that the war hero's closest friend was currently in jail for refusing his conscription papers.
(A/N: so, I totally underestimated how much of an intro this would be. *sighs* Arc 2:1:3 will be posted in a few hours and will finally conclude the world plot. Any guesses as to which character the MC will be? Hint: the character has been introduced in either Arc 2:1:1 or Arc 2:1:2. *drum rolls*
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The Harmony of the Spheres
RomanceA Transmigration Novel of Seven Arcs. Nicholas Kim's future unfolded after his death. Despite thinking his rescue of the drowning child was just pure instinct, and his subsequent death merely an unfortunate consequence, the world regarded him as a...
