The Long Green Shore
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Average rating5
Everyone was very casual about it—carefully laconic. For the old soldiers it was another move—there had been plenty like this before—they knew what was coming. But the new men could sense the breath of the unknown and mysterious enemy—the shadows of the long green shore—and violence and death they did not know but had often dreamed about. Written in 1947 but not published until 1995, John Hepworth's debut novel is a gripping account of Australian soldiers fighting in New Guinea at the end of World War II. The product of Hepworth's own experience, The Long Green Shore recounts the lives—and deaths—of a group of soldiers battling the Japanese in the rain-soaked jungle. In sublime prose, it captures the terror and the monotony of war. On its publication The Long Green Shore was met with immediate critical acclaim. It was recognised as one of the world's great war novels.
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Author John Hepworth wrote this novel after he returned from a stint in Papua New Guinea towards the end of World War 2. Lloyd Jones writes in the introduction that he won an award in a literary competition in 1949 but was later rejected by one publisher, so he put the manuscript away and got on with his life. Jones states that Norman Mailer persisted with The Naked and The Dead and as they say the rest is history. I read The Naked and The Dead for the first and only time in 2015 and could not work out the praise. It seemed so forced. Long pages of fairly meaningless banter between the two major characters, and the end just seemed ridiculous.
Years later, this novel The Long Green Shore was published not long after the author's death in 1995 and to some much acclaim, deservedly so in my opinion. As Lloyd writes in his Introduction, “Between moments of barbarity and banality are occasions of great beauty, and for much of the time The Long Green Shore is young solders paean to the puzzling thrill of being alive.” I got that while reading the book. The Australianness of the banter between mates, the way they articulated “the puzzling thrill” of both the fun times and the bad times. It all came together in mostly short vignettes that seamlessly led us through these young men's lives in a pointless action at the end of WW2.
At one point, the boys discuss foreigners of the allied type.
“There was a good deal of discussion about the Yanks. They are all right – they fight well, when they can throw a couple of hundred tonnes of high explosive into a position. They live too well – compared to us, that is. They get too much money – compared with us. They talk as though no one else was fighting the war. They take our girls. ‘Over-dressed, over-paid, over-sexed and over here'”
Foreigners of the enemy type.
“The enemy is always strange and there is a faint awfulness about the place he has been. For you can never imagine the enemy as just a man – if you could, perhaps you would never kill him.”
Being attacked and watching a mate get hit.
“The innocent, pattering of rain run across the water and patters over Fluffy's body. He is still laughing – he drops his rifle- it splashes into the river – he is holding his stomach with both hands – laughing or screaming - he staggers on – laughing or screaming. He falls as he tries to run up the muddy bank – his hands still under him, the mud – the mud is in his mouth, but he is still laughing – or screaming...it goes on and on.”
How their war is viewed by those not there.
“You who know war in a romantic dream, or in the sob stories of newspapers, might imagine it is only the thunder of bombardment or the terrors of the charge which breaks a soldiers will and manhood; but the slow burning acid of monotony and sterile days can be bad, or worse. You live constantly with a small fear that can never be spoken, and never become real, but can never be dispelled.”
Watching someone lose their mind.
“He moaned and cried.... on and on it went.... you couldn't shut your ears to that sound-it seemed to swell somewhere from inside you, yourself, and on and on, horribly, inanely, and forever.”
It is a novel that packs a punch. It is beautifully written, it has its moments of humour and profound sadness, it is the right length at only 183 pages, it does not overstay its welcome, it is highly recommended.
