for our elusive enemy. Sometimes we see tracks. Acting on information we swoop on an abo village. Our quarry has just gone, we have been misinformed … Patience and yet more patience, frustration and yet more frustration. Our quarry escapes us, eludes us, perhaps he's laughing at us. Our taua is unlucky. Perhaps I am doomed to be he tangata hinapo—a man unlucky in battle who cannot even find his enemy. The doubts start to come. ‘Himi, old chap, how will you face up to it when you meet the enemy? This isn't New Zealand of olden times. You aren't a warrior. You are almost pakeha in everything but colour. What about your taua? They're civilised like you. Half of them are pakeha anyway and the rest only have a bit more sunburn! If they do sight the enemy, will they be as swift as a bird to catch the first fish—rere a manu tonu, ki te hopu matangohi, kei hoki te ingoa? Who can tell?’ I wonder and think I may never know the answer. For hours at a time, for days on end we have lain in ambushes, tense and strained. This is the worst part of the jungle war, waiting and yet more waiting. Through a small chink in the greenery we watch the track. Dicky Pomana is close to me squinting down the barrel of his bren. We split the section and every four hours we relieve one another laboriously. Taking the best part of twenty minutes to do it, we worm our way out of the position backwards until we can roll down the small bank about twenty-five yards behind the position. Here we relax, stretch and eat some of our cold hard tucker. Because of the cooking smell, the only hot food will be the can of self-heating soup, cooked by lighting a wick running down the centre of the sealed can. At nights we leave the ambush after last light. This is deep jungle. Our enemy is unlikely to move at night. We will be back into position at first light. Lying on the hard ground before sleep steals over me, I think of home—Mum, Dad and the kids and pretty Turei from the farm up the road, lying in the shadow of mighty Hikurangi. It is winter there now. There will be snow on Hikurangi where it pierces the cloud. The boys will be playing football on Whakarua Park this Saturday. The first game of the season. Wish I could be there. And here in our confined little world there are just ten of us, linked by the bond of brotherhood which one finds between men, irrespective of race and colour, when they are dependant daily on one another, perhaps for their very lives. I like these independent jobs. When our whole platoon is operating together I am but a spoke in the wheel. Here I am the hub … but the savour of command is made bitter by lack of success. They say it takes eight hundred man hours of patrolling and ambushing for every terrorist killed. Only if you are lucky will you ever catch a glimpse of this elusive fellow. Then there is a mad minute of action followed by the all-pervading silence of the jungle and nothing has changed—life is as it ever was … Our mad minute was just like that. The communist courier seemed to materialise out of nothingness and come loping along the path towards our ambush. He was so typical of all the descriptions we had received and yet we got a shock. We had waited for such as him for months and then suddenly we weren't sure whether this wasn't a mirage, the figment of an overwrought imagination—a twentieth-century kehua with a flat oriental face and wearing tattered green clothes, hockey boots and a floppy jungle hat. Somehow we had expected something more grandiose, a khaki uniform with red star on his cap. He was close. Suddenly we all seemed to snap out of our dream together. There was no sound from those in ambush yet you could sense the gathering of strength, the tensing of sinew, the tightening of fingers on triggers. And then, as they say in the best books about war, all hell broke loose. The force of the bullets spun the slight body around. He gave a yelp, of surprise and horror, the yelp of a trapped animal, and crumpled into a convulsive little heap. Even though there was no target left in sight, the hail of fire didn't stop for long seconds. Then, as if at a signal, the firing stopped as abruptly as it had begun and we emerged from our hiding place and looked at one another and at this crumpled thing lying on the track bleeding out its last, this thing which we had hunted and hated for so long. But the blooding of the warriors was not yet complete. Even now I relive the moment and see again the scene before me. We turn the terrorist over. Incredibly he is still alive. His chest is a mangled cavity. His mauria ora bubbles form his open mouth as a frothy grey liquid. His lips move but say nothing. He is quite young, with the sallowness which long confinement to the jungle gives. Why is it that I feel no pity for this man, a young man such as myself? Why do I see him through a haze of red? What is