Chapter Twenty
Going the Rap Way

It is true to say that the work of the engineers in providing suitable sanitary camps and regular supplies of fresh water has always helped materially in keeping up the health of the troops, and their own. There remains to be explained away, however, the long queues at the regimental aid post of an early morning and the heights to which sick and hospital graphs have been known to soar. The RAP way, though longer than any other method known to the soldier, was the safest and surest as a means to getting home. There was, for instance, one sapper who, having got mixed up in a town brawl, came off second best. A big black eye and a badly bruised thumb took him to the RAP smartly next morning at 0630 sharp. At 0710 hours he received attention. Said the doctor, 'You've got a chance.' 'What!' said the too eager sapper, 'of being boarded?' 'Oh, no,' replied the cheerful medico, 'of living.'

Parades for inoculations, vaccinations, blood groups, boards, reboards, more reboards and dental, these were our closest contacts with the army medicos. We recall that stirring cry of the orderly corporal in the bright, warm mornings of Fiji, 'Anybody sick ?' There would be a stirring as of the seven sleepers and the tentaitve lifting of mosquito nets. 'What's your number ?' asked the corporal helpfully as he wrote your name, woefully misspelled, in the sick book. 'Now, get a move on, parade in five minutes.' At 0625 a sleepy band might straggle out to be marched, still dormant, over to the RAP. Strange how the habit seemed to wear off as the months went by

Of course the doctor often became-annoyed at the tardiness of the field company. He was a very busy lad those mornings, but we had a good excuse. There were shift workers who needed attention and one could become a shift worker for the occasion. Not unnaturally one can't go on blowing holes without getting hit sometimes. Accidents will happen on the job too. People get hit with all sorts of things. One sapper finally 'made it' with a perpetual headache received by connecting with a lump of tubular steel. Another fell over a bank on a dark night and got a headache. Headaches are hard things to localise. Then we used to hear of a new disease called 'fibrositis.' This was not a headache, or a heartache, but a backache. It varied in position according as to whether one leaned on an engine or sat on a shovel. However, it was a good line and sounded mighty serious. Suva side was not good for" rheumatickies.' It was the wet side. The invigorating sunshine of Namaka was required to make us 'lean, bronzed and hardy 'in the traditional 3rd Div. style.

There was one big bogey for the Fiji boys, the dreaded hookworm. Legends about hookworms were something like fishermen's yarns and some mighty fish could have been caught on the hookworms of the sizes we heard about. The little Indian boys who helped in the cookhouse were allegedly worm-eaten to a remarkable extent. In fact we recall that the US cooks would have no dealings with these bright lads, probably on that account. But the strict injunctions to keep your boots on were reasonably well kept and even digging in soapstone and other kinds of Fijian dirt did not manage to worry us to any extent. The hookworm caught up on us years after, however, and took his toll. We were on Nissan then. The battalions had been found to be with hookworm. Stories of hospital dosage reached our ears and rumour grew big. Then one day we had a gentle jab in the thumb, a slide of blood taken and an eosinophilia count made. If we had more than five per cent, of these we were unlucky and had a spot of the doings and an entry on our malaria card, just to show that we'd had something anyway.

Malaria was not common, though field park at Guadalcanal had several cases. Here the miasma of the Matanikau and a lot of extra hard work lowered resistance. With other companies the little yellow atebrin pill contrived to keep us going, and until page break

Purely domestic. An improvised washing machine in use by engineer personnel and a daiiy laundry scene in any river or freshwater stream near a New Zealand camp. This particular one was taken at the camp at Maravari, Vella Lavella

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The principal feature of the allied cemetery on Vella Lavclla was a chapel built by the natives as a goodwill gesture. After the cessation of hostilities the bodies of servicemen were all removed to the New Zealand cemetery in New Caledonia

Allied 'buddies' beside the airstrip on Nissan, with transport and fighter planes parked in the background

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'Gertrude' was an improvised screening and washing plant which was made entirely from seraj and salvaged materials by Work"! Services engineers in New Caledonia. Below is yet another splendid example of engineer improvisation—a dragline winch

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A scene on the Népoui wharf duiring unloading operations and a view of the furniture shop in New Caledonia where serviceable chairs of various designs were made from native materials

page 121we got back to New Zealand there were few who suffered from 'Snafu's 'folly.

Considering the number and variety of native plagues with which we were threatened in the Solomons it is remarkable that more than five per cent, of the engineers staggered back home. There was one circular telling us what to expect—anything from elephantiasis to bed-bugs. We had had bed-bugs in Fiji though. How happily we recall squeezing the life out of the little brutes who squatted gloatingly in the top corners of the mosquito nets each morning. Elephantiasis, or any of the intermediate scourges, were a different matter. However, the fat malarial control man assured us that the mosquito doing the damage was easily distinguished and that he would deal with it. We have to thank him and his colleagues, occasionally boarded with us, for doing so effectively. We did lend an occasional practical helping hand by filling in bad breeding holes with the bulldozer.

It was the weather that made the RAP book bulk so large in the sappers' lives. If seriously affected by the heat, one might even go 'troppo,' but for the majority getting malua was sufficient. Malua is no more than utter weariness of the flesh; it is not everyone who can maintain the completely 'gone' effect so well as to cultivate over a period of months imaginary budgerigars, mongooses or boy friends. Overwork came second only to the weather as a potent cause of illness as well as of malua. One interesting development from the damp weather was the moulds and fungoid growths which did not confine themselves to clothing in kitbags but attacked even the skin of the sapper. For these ailments paint was provided in three colours, brilliant green, purple and brown. But the usual acute shortage of supply made it often necessary to accept weaker substitutes such as the pink stuff called calamine. Anything from sunburn to mosquito bites would be accorded this last treatment. One man in spite of warnings, got 'bitten' badly by the black sap of the New Caledonian acajou and as a result was badly tied up inside. Black widow spiders also were a constant threat to the exposed portions of the anatomy, and their bites unpleasant. Then there were the strange 'caterpillar' rashes which the sweaty sappers of Nissan found it necessary to scratch so vigorously and the even more severe ankle rashes caused by the red mites of Mono tickling up the hairy legs. Even the universal panacea of hot water was not sufficient page 122for these ailments. What the poor old natives did without medical attention we wonder, but if the evacuee natives of Nissan were any criterion we are thankful that we had an RAP wallah with us. Of all the skin troubles, probably the commonest and certainly the most annoying was tinia or footrot. Requests were made to make use of basins of disinfectant placed neatly in the showers, but the showers were themselves a potent means of spreading this complaint, for, after all, who could deny himself a shower after a day's digging in sweat. Baby powder was a surer prophylactic than most.

A particularly rich source of RAP complaints was found in the games we played. Football grounds in Suva and Namaka areas sent many a fine lad home to New Zealand with concussion or broken bones; and if they couldn't do that much for us they gave trouble to the RAP attendant sufficient to bring forth boardees as late as two years after the Fijian injuries. The sick book after Wednesday sports usually showed an appreciable bump up and indeed, as a refuge for those who did not want any compulsory sport of the army variety, the RAP was well known to the CSM. It is also on record that even a certain medico found it desirable, after the brigade sports, to have himself granted three days light duty from lifting heavy weights.

We remember with delight those early morning visions amid the gaiac or the mahogany when the patient patients were at last rewarded. The engineer's doctor was at one with his patients in that he was tired as well as honest. His ministrations, strangely enough, were required not so much for the old men of the outfits as for some younger malingerers. At one stage of the tour a powerful factor became operative on regular LD's and ED's— the prospect of being sent to the infantry. A remarkable improvement in the general health of certain sappers was immediately recorded and a powerful amount of work put in for about a week. Amazing revelations of RAP grafting by one or two was the immediate fruit of this attack on engineer prerogatives and some few did actually land among the infantry to afflict others with their 'belly-aching.'

Summed up, we often felt bad, but hope that we never looked quite so bad as the jungle soldier on the 1943 Div. Christmas card. He, poor chap, was doubtless graded out. In spite of all the complaints—and they were legion—we note with gratitude page 123that the chaps who had the all-day job of running an RAP were without exception jolly hard workers. Maybe they didn't all condescend to remember all the aches and pains, real and imaginary, with which we were afflicted, but they were sympathetic. In and out of hours the RAP man had as many calls as a milkman. That he should occasionally have 'done his scone 'is hardly surprising; that, on the other hand, he should have been so willing at all times to dash up and take our temperatures, or feel our pulses, or bandage our sores, or squeeze our boils, is most worthy of a few well chosen words. We salute his gory memory.

Nice Work—and Do they Get It?
The engineers have hairy ears
And hairy harried faces.
Robust and rough, they do their stuff
In all the toughest places.

For they're the babies zvho take the raps,
The boobs zvho probe for the booby traps,
The scouts ahead of the scouting lines,
Cutting the wires and hunting mines.
And they're the playboys, gay and bright,
Who crack pillboxes with dynamite,
And they're the fellers who fell the trees
While the bullets hum like a hive of bees.

The engineers they grease the gears
The army transport runs on,
And foot by foot build roads they put
The trucks and tanks and guns on.

For they're the lugs who lug the most
Of loads they land on a hostile coast.
And they're the guys when equipment fails
Who scratch out a ditch with their fingernails.
You'll find them up on the mountain crags
And down in the jungle clearing snags
Where the black snakes coil and the snipers lurk
Engineers, doing the dirty work!

The engineers are cavaliers
Who joust with logs and boulders,
A task that's done with half a ton
Of junk upon their shoulders.

For they're the buckos zvho buck a Way
Through stubborn granite and sticky clay
With pick and shovel they break their backs
After—or under—the bomb attacks.
They drill for water through desert dunes
And over the rivers they toss pontoons,
They slap down runways in fields of mud
And some of the ooze is the ooze of blood.

—(From a poem by Berton Braley in Australian Services Magazine.)