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( Chapter One: ❛ THE MELBOURNE INTERLUDE ❜ )
AUGUST, 1943
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IN 1943, none the wiser, Virginia M. Gloyne was just nineteen years old and there could not count herself as one of the few great Virginias in the world. Much was to live up to; acclaimed author Virginia Woolf, silent movie model Virginia Rappe, the silver screen's Virginia Grey, the Commonwealth of Virginia on the sweet eastern shores of the US, to name a few. She wondered if many men now stationed in Melbourne were born and bred in Virginia state, and if her name would trigger radical memories of scorching summers and comely apple-pie girls that lacked the local brogue of upwardly inflected sentences.
But the suntanned Australian girls suited the twenty-thousand US Marines just fine, and by the day, Melbourne was teaming with more and more of those khaki garrison caps, men like mosquitoes or gnats, buzzing in swarms around social hotspots and down the streets that she once felt safe enough to walk down without getting asked if she was a). single, or b). a "natural blonde". For the young people of the city in particular, Americans represented wealth, glamour and the modernity of the changing times. In some ways, these soldiers matched the Hollywood kind that were plastered all over art-deco style enlistment posters both home and away.
Therefore, the tram out of the city made a fine escape for Virginia, leaving behind the bright flame of Melbourne that drew men in like moths. In the history books, they'd call it THE MELBOURNE INTERLUDE as they rested, convalesced, and refitted from previous combat operations, a time of their life when they for once felt like they were completely invincible as they lit up the towns like bushfire. For the Gloynes, it was an invasion of their home soil — especially for Samuel Gloyne, a devout realist and working policeman, who wanted nothing more than to shield his little girl from the monstrosities of the world that were occurring right on their doorstep, little but a boat's ride away.
Japan's involvement in the second of the world's Great Wars had been a real game changer in the grand scheme of things. The bombings of Pearl Harbour did nothing but drain American morale and equate to another front that the Allies had to fight on, leading to negotiations that would eventually funnel some of the most hard-assed of American men into the Pacific to engage in combat against the Japanese.
For a time, Australia had feared invasion; with most of their best forces were concentrated on foreign shores of different continents, in places like Africa and Europe, the main body of their homeland was left unprotected. Even in cities as far south as her own, people dug air raid shelters in their back yards and practised responding to gas attacks. Cities endured blackouts at night as a defence against bombing raids, which fortunately never came.
The Japanese, however, did eventually reach their Australian shores. In 1942, as well as an air raid on Darwin, Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour, firing torpedoes and sinking one ship, killing twenty sailors. By 1943, though, the direction of the war had changed. Japanese forces were being pushed back in the Pacific, the threat of invasion had surpassed, and the phoney talk among widows in knitting circles eventually died down.
How Company was one of many outfits that had returned from those mythical tropical lands of mosquitoes and names nobody could properly pronounce. Even so much as five months post the Battle of Tenaru, thousand-yard stares still haunted the eyes of the men Virginia often saw in passing — no amount of war games and training drills could have prepared the soldiers for those sweaty nights he spent in the jungle, chewed alive by mosquitos. The bags under their eyes and the tremors in their hands told stories that their mouths couldn't explain, especially not with the listless chain smoking and the cigarette that was a staple to her lips. But from their eyes, novels. Wistful, longing stares.
She could feel that same stare raking her over on the tram that day, honed in on her like a submarine scope. Not choosing to ignore it as she usually would, she searched for the perpetrator. It was unusual to see any Americans on her commute to work, as her job as a switchboard operator was some ways out of town, which, as previously mentioned, was of little interest to Marines who preferred the zealousness of city life. But, see: opposite and to the left, across the aisle. Bingo.
An American serviceman, no surprise there. The first thing she saw, actually, was his uniform, all scrappy and torn, frayed and threadbare at the edges with a diamond-shaped marine insignia on the bicep. Virginia thought that the Marine uniforms were supposed to be much nicer than the baggy Australian army ones, but it seemed, this time she was mistaken, as she had never seen a man so unruly. His hair was shaved fairly close to his scalp on the sides, parted on the edge and long enough on the top to see that it was naturally wavy and a dirty enough blond to seem light brown. Washed out, lewd blue eyes stared back at her, like two glass marbles. He had a bulbous sort of nose that matched the averagely chiselled structure of his face, genetics that had given him a clean cut jaw and not much more.
He wasn't staring at her face anymore, though, not matter how angelic it could have possibly looked in Melbourne's morning glow. The cold sunlight poured through the tram's pane glass windows, too early in the day for it to warm her skin rather than just light it up. Although the American's head remained as still as it could in the constantly rocking carriage, his eyeline had shifted, downwards.
She didn't notice until she looked down, also. Her entire right leg was exposed, pearly porcelain skin salaciously on show, right up to the hilt of her thigh where there was a thin, lace garter snugly holding up her stocking. Looking like some sort of pin-up from the nose of a plane, her face flooding innocently with rosiness from embarrassment. She tossed her skirts back over her leg where they had obviously ridden up as she'd been sat down, surveying the area with a quick glance to check that nobody else had payed enough attention to recognise her indignity.
When her eyes once again met that of the Marine, a lone cigarette was dangling from his lower lip. There was the tiny metallic clink of a zippo as he opened up the lighter and cupped the end of the cigarette with his hand, pinching the hickory end between his teeth. Releasing smoke from his mouth in a plume, she watched the corner of his mouth twitch and curl, lifting up towards the apple of his cheek as he smirked at her, his eyes flickering back down towards her now-modest leg and then to her eyes again. He leaned back and pressed his head against the wall behind him, his jaw lifting slightly upwards. She swallowed.
There was a plink, and it was her stop. She stood immediately and disembarked, but not before catching her hand on her railing beside the entryway to cast a final glance at him over her shoulder. There was only one word on her lips as she hurried towards the switchboard station as quickly as her legs would carry her, her hair flying behind her like the white flag of surrender, handsome.
However, Virginia couldn't exactly see what all these women saw in the Marines to make them go so khaki whacky; even her closest friend, Jackie Badger, was entranced by the spell they cast over their hometown, sending the tempo of the city into mass hysteria. Very few Australians could afford to travel overseas, and they got their ideas about Americans from the Hollywood movies which were extremely popular in Australia, which meant they were absolutely infatuated by the idea of these men; Virginia didn't understand, and nor did the men. Statistically, there were twenty brawls per night between Australian and American servicemen as their rivalries reached an all time high — worst was the Battle of Brisbane in November 1942 where allies turned on one another in the streets. Virginia's go-to duet partner for the piano, Gordon Love, had a brother who died in that battle on Australian soil. He was the only fatality.
But there were a medley of things that meant that the Marines were disliked in Melbourne: for starters, the US dress greens were far more appealing than Aussie ones, nicely fitted on the shoulders and the arms, tailored to each man. Australian home front guards were given ill-fitting regulation khakis that often either sat too snugly or didn't sit anywhere at all. Like a government-induced bribe, the US Army provided their soldiers with silk stockings and candy, which they handed out to Australian women, as it was part of their PX — the Marines were paid better and had access to consumer items that were expensive and highly rationed for everyone else; food, alcohol, cigarettes, hams, turkey, ice cream, chocolate, and nylon stockings were all at low prices. There was a girl who lived on her street called Elsa Smoke who'd dated a Yank just to buy ham cheaply through him.
The Australians were unaccustomed to the American way of life, as were the Americans to the Australian one. The American custom of "caressing girls in public" and smooching their sweethearts in the streets made the old veterans of the Great War scoff and grouse: they're overpaid, oversexed, and over here, was what they said, repeated like a mantra.
Those men were just no good for girls like her with their suave accents and American tans, sending the local girls into a bright gleam of hysteria as they hurried around like gaggles of geese with their bobby socks and swing skirts. Plain as flour Virginia Gloyne always promised she'd never do anything just because other people were doing it, damning herself to floral tea dresses and brogue shoes even though those kitten heels were so stellar. Besides, these Marines had been lounging around in her hometown for long enough for her to hear all sorts of tall tails of their adventures in the jungle — nine months was one heck of a long time. People carried children for that long. She'd seen it happen. It was like everyone's lives were being flaunted in her face on a constant carousel of pre-wartime bliss.
How could one maintain a commitment when the world is literally falling apart? she'd think to herself, How could one maintain any kind of commitment at all? it's all in the wrongness of the world. In eventual tragedy, those trivial little love stories would be subverted by the painful reality of mankind — realistically, there are things more important than true love when there are people dying in concentration camps, even if those things do seem half a world away.