Moresby
Moresby brothels were all staffed by local women; Moresby bars sold local whisky and rotgut rum and men who fought the common enemy during the day came to town to drink these Moresby brews, fuck these hard-faced highland girls, then fight each other with whatever weapons they carried with them or found handy.
Revolvers, bayonets, native clubs, knives, machetes, rifle butts, fists and feet. Feet encased in military combat boots. Despair for the man knocked down and surrounded by drunken men in combat boots.
Desperate and murderous battles were fought outside the tin-roofed rum shanties, everybody fighting because to be an onlooker here was to be lacking in drunken courage, and always there was the new antagonism the Australians had for the Americans. An antagonism born out of MacArthur’s decision to populate Sydney and Brisbane with his American troops while the Australian men served in the Middle East and Europe, under Churchill’s flag, Great Britain. For the greater good.
There they fought the Germans, Italians and Vichy French, here in Port Moresby they fought the Japanese and the Americans. Brisbane too saw its small share of this internecine hate.
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