by Jean Moran
After that he and Harry had eyed each other speculatively.
‘I trust you don’t mind me saying this, old boy, but you and I look devilishly similar.’
‘To some extent.’
‘And you’re not a queer. I would know.’
Connor smiled at the memory. He didn’t know why they had clicked, but they had, though he did wonder how Harry had made major. Class and position would have had a lot to do with it. Normally he didn’t tolerate upper-class people like Harry, but there was something about him that he liked. No matter their differences, right from the start he’d felt obliged to look out for Harry, to be his friend and try to dissuade him from the worst of his excesses.
*
Her footsteps were so soft that he didn’t wake up. She looked down at him sleeping peacefully, wanting to lie down beside him. If she was to die shortly, she wanted to lie just once more with a man she felt she could trust and love.
On seeing the opium pipe cradled in his arm the smile fell from her face and her retreating footsteps were swifter than those that had brought her there.
Back in her lonely single bed, she bunched the bedding round her chin telling herself that a man with such an addiction was nothing but trouble, yet she couldn’t get him out of her mind. You could help him, she said to herself. Addicts could be weaned off it.
All was flux and bewilderment and habit was a way some people found to cope. In such turbulent times she could not condemn him out of hand. Worse things would happen before this terrible time was over.
*
‘Connor! Where the devil are you?’
Harry sounded angry.
Connor hid the opium pipe in the long grass behind him. He would retrieve it later.
He dived behind the tree and came out the other side. Harry saw him and presumed he’d been to relieve himself.
‘Sorry to interrupt you in full flow, but—’
The sudden barrage from enemy guns lit up the night.
‘Shit!’
Harry ducked one way and Connor the other. Then they were up, running for shelter behind a bastion of sandbags, though only long enough to analyse what was going on and what to do next. Men who had been sleeping came out of their tents, and those on duty began to shoot. The rat-a-tat of a machine-gun out-chirped then silenced the crickets as the branches of trees were blown off or burst into flame.
Ambulance bells jangled, ruining the night and setting nerves on edge. A whole fleet of the cumbersome green vehicles trundled through the main gate, the red and white pole wavering overhead.
Relief etched on their faces, men clinging to the sides jumped off once they were within the hospital grounds. Some fell to their knees, others stood to attention the moment they could, waiting to report and to respond to orders.
Medical staff poured out of the main door of the hospital, the doctors’ white coats flapping, nurses attempting to pin their headdresses to uncombed hair. One or two were wearing no stockings, frowned on usually but in this situation nobody cared. Speed was of the essence.
Connor spotted Rowena and raised his hand in something resembling a salute.
To his surprise, she gave him a blank stare, then looked away, almost as though she wasn’t too sure who he was. He was puzzled but there was no time to ponder.
Stretcher after stretcher was unloaded and it wasn’t too long before the last passed through the main entrance of the old school building.
The barrage stopped to be replaced by enemy planes, diving low, then dropping their bombs, strafing anything that moved with their wing cannon. Bullets pinged all around sending tufts of grass high into the air, and explosions lit the night.
A tired-looking messenger on a beaten-up motorcycle passed Harry his orders, which he tore open and read.
Connor looked straight at the man. ‘How bad is it?’
The messenger was wearing a bandage over one eye. ‘They’ve landed at Tai Koo.’
‘They reached it days ago. Where are they now?’
‘Don’t know the name of the place, but they’re not far behind us.’ His voice shook and Connor was sure he could smell urine.
‘Pissed yourself?’
‘Shit myself, more like.’
‘Get yourself a cup of tea.’
There was no way he was going to tell him to take a bath because they needed to preserve water for drinking just in case it was cut off. None of them would be bathing for the foreseeable future.
Harry shared the content of the written orders. ‘We’re to hold our position, defend the hospital until it’s safe to drive the remaining civilians and medical staff away.’
‘To where?’
‘Victoria Harbour.’
‘Does it still exist?’
Harry shook his head. ‘Buggered if I know.’ He threw back his head and took a great gulp of air. ‘Orders are orders. Christ, I’m dying for a smoke.’
Connor knew he didn’t mean a cigarette and, not wanting to be questioned, he ducked away.
*
The once pristine interior of the hospital stank of blood, vomit and unwashed bodies. Nurses, doctors and other medical staff did their utmost to keep standards up, determinedly calm despite the extreme circumstances.
Like everyone else, Rowena did what she had to do while trying not to puke or break down and yell at every man in the room that they shouldn’t be doing this, that war was not an end unto itself but wholesale destruction.
While she was pushing a man’s intestines back into his abdomen, she forced herself to think of lovely things from her youth, the smell of her parents’ garden, the cheeky grin on the face of her brother, the silly boys who’d set their caps at her, not realising she would never make the kind of wife who kept house, had children and vied with her neighbours as to who had the cleanest windows and the whitest nets.
Blood spurted from beneath her fingers, splattering her white coat and spotting her chin.
Behind her momentarily closed eyelids, she imagined rosebuds. When she opened them again the blood was no less real, smelling metallic, and redder than the rosebuds she’d imagined.
‘Rowena.’ A gentle hand landed on her shoulder. Dr Black looked kindly but concerned. ‘There’s nothing more you can do for this poor chap.’
She looked down to see the dressings she’d applied were thick with blood, her hands too.
‘You’ve been on duty for six hours.’
‘So have you.’
‘Take a break. That’s an order.’
*
Outside, the early-morning light softened the brown tents against which tired men sat with their heads on their knees in air thick with smoke. A few of the medical staff lay full stretch on the grass, their arms crossed over their faces. The sound of explosions and firing was edging closer, yet they had to rest, had to operate a small bubble of normality.
Every nerve in Rowena’s body screamed for rest, yet her mind refused to shut down. She was reliving the last few hours, triumphant about those who had survived, traumatised by those she’d been unable to save.
‘Cigarette?’
Her fingers trembled, the cigarette sliding down between her finger joints. She knew it was him, and even though she’d seen the opium pipe she really didn’t care. With hindsight she wished she’d lain down beside him, perhaps even had a puff of the pipe. What did she have to lose? The war was crowding in on them, only explosions and gunfire for now, but soon the slaughter would be here, breathing into their faces.
Connor gripped her wrist so that her hand was steady. He began patting the pockets of his sweat-stained shirt. ‘No matches. Damn.’
‘Never mind.’
With her free hand, which was shaking as much as the other, she sought out the lighter given her by Kim Pheloung and flicked it with her thumb again and again. Connor took it from her, studied the inscription on the bottom, then fired it into life, lighting her cigarette then his.
She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and let her mind soar with the smoke
as she exhaled. Then she laughed.
Connor frowned. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I don’t smoke. Or I didn’t before coming to Hong Kong.’
‘You smoked that first time I saw you.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but only because you’d annoyed me and Kim... Mr Pheloung... offered me a cigarette.’ She looked at her shoes, noted the spots of blood and instantly took another puff. ‘It all seems like a lifetime ago.’
‘Seventeen days.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Seventeen days between Pearl Harbor and today. You know what day it is?’
She looked at him blankly before it came to her. ‘Christmas Day.’
The staff had planned to sing carols for the benefit of the patients, but they hadn’t had time.
‘Did you hear me singing beneath your window the other night?’
Smiling hesitantly, she nodded and debated whether to tell him that she’d seen him cradling an opium pipe. She decided not to mention it. Not everyone continued the habits they’d picked up in war and perhaps he wouldn’t either. Instead she said, ‘You made me feel like Juliet.’
He threw back his head. ‘Hah! Romeo and Juliet. Now there’s a thing.’
She saw his smile slip away as he turned his head, his craggy face and deep-set eyes seeming to see beyond the boundary of trees. A dust cloud shrouded them. It was suddenly accompanied by the sound of gunfire, a tidal wave of men flowing beneath the branches.
‘Go inside. Now!’ He pressed the lighter into her hand, turned away and broke into a run. ‘Get inside,’ he shouted, more urgently, over his shoulder.
She hesitated long enough to see him racing towards the main gate, bellowing orders all the way.
Gunfire sounded from all around, not a barrage, but rifles and machine-guns, bullets pinging close by, and met with the opposing gunfire of the troops guarding the hospital entrance.
The attack they’d feared was inevitable had come. Rowena ran back to where she would be needed the most.
*
At first Connor felt gut-wrenching nausea, but once the adrenalin had kicked in, his mind and body were in unison. He’d heard it said that being in a battle was like sex: fear of failure and excitement set the blood racing and the heart beating faster.
‘Get down behind those bloody sandbags. Mark your target. They’re coming. You there, don’t gawp, get your head down or it’ll be blown off!’ Harry Gracey came running from the other direction, his long legs eating up the ground. His face was haggard, his eyes sunken. ‘This is it then, Sergeant Major Connor O’Connor.’
*
Fear lending speed to her feet, Rowena dashed into the main ward and shouted, ‘They’re coming. The Japanese are coming.’
Nobody moved until Alice flapped her hands in mute helplessness. ‘What do we do?’
The gentle hand of Dr Black landed on Rowena’s shoulder. ‘There’s nothing we can do but carry on.’
None of those listening could help but be calmed by what he said and the way he said it. Everyone went back to what they’d been doing, regardless of the fact that all hell was breaking loose outside.
‘No Christmas turkey today, then?’ asked the man who had been blinded by an exploding shell.
Another responded. ‘No, mate, unless you count us. We’re the bloody Christmas turkeys and about to be stuffed!’
Those patients still savvy enough to know what was happening could tell from the return fire that they were outnumbered.
Just before midday and against a back noise of bombardment, Dr Black approached Major Gracey and asked if it was possible for them to evacuate the hospital and perhaps surrender as far away from it as possible. ‘I did protest about the army setting up within the grounds of the hospital. I believed then as I believe now that it could only serve to draw enemy fire. It seems that I was right.’
Harry Gracey refused. ‘I’d love to, old chap, but I have my orders.’
From the ward window at the front of the hospital, Rowena heard what had been said and saw the unyielding rigidity of their jaws, the stiffness of their bodies. It was like watching two male buffalo about to lock horns and do each other serious injury.
A bomb blast blew the windows inwards, frames broken like matchsticks, glass flying through the air and onto the beds, injuring those patients who could not move.
Rowena was knocked to the floor. She saw her knees were bleeding, cut by shards of glass.
She heard the panic around her, more explosions, gunfire and the screams of injured men. Another blast, and clods of lawn flew through the broken window. Her immediate thought was that this could be the last day of her life. Suddenly something hit the back of her neck. Her gasp almost turned to laughter when she saw a Christmas bauble roll across the floor, unscathed.
One man after another was brought in bleeding and worn out. The sound of explosions and gunfire was less prolonged, especially the return fire of their men manning the machine-guns. Nobody wanted to say it out loud, but the defence of the hospital was drawing swiftly and inexorably to a close.
‘They’ll have to surrender,’ said a patient. ‘It can’t go on.’
‘It won’t. You can tell we’re finished. Bloody well finished.’
‘What’s likely to happen?’ Though she was shaking, Alice’s voice held firm.
Rowena’s eyes hovered over the injured men lying helpless in their beds, the nurses carrying on with their duties, the orderlies, non-combatants, some conscientious objectors and Chinese locals who hated the Japanese for the wholesale massacre in Nanking.
They deserved to survive, but Alice had asked a serious question.
‘The Japanese have a code of honour called bushido. I read it somewhere,’ she added, in response to Alice’s enquiring look. ‘We need to appeal to their sense of honour. Nobody can be as bad as we’ve heard they are. There has to be some human decency in them somewhere. We throw ourselves on their mercy. This is a hospital after all. My plan is that everyone wears a Red Cross armband. Can you check that we still have some in store?’
Alice told an orderly to go and look. ‘Keep everyone busy. That’s the plan. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Rowena, and began her round, checking wounds, marking the notes for the senior doctors, an ulcer here, a suppuration, an oozing that could be infection, a wound that was slowly beginning to knit into a scar.
She did her best to present a courageous exterior to hide the terror she was feeling. Although she wanted to believe the enemy would respect the medical staff and the injured men, there was no guarantee.
The orderly returned with the armbands and Alice put him in charge of distributing them. Manufactured from stiff cotton, they were for the Chinese and other volunteers, to give them some kind of immunity when transporting patients close to enemy lines. Until now there had been no need for them because the Allied army had not been operating close to enemy lines. Their effectiveness would be proved now the enemy was on their doorstep. Rowena only hoped they would work.
*
Rapid gunfire preceded the enemy’s arrival, bustling little men, dressed in pale khaki, thrusting bayonets at anyone still daring to put up a fight. Splattered with the blood of their men, Connor and Harry fell back to the tents where men were piling sandbags in a useless redoubt.
Harry aimed his revolver over the top, got the Japanese officer in his sight and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
Connor steadied his rifle.
‘Stop.’ Harry laid a hand over his. ‘It’s over.’
From where they were, it was as if the world stood still. The only scene filling their sight was that of the machine-gunners being bayoneted, some by as many as three Japanese soldiers, plunging naked steel into their guts then sawing through their necks.
‘I have to stop this.’
Harry’s voice was hushed but held immense strength.
Connor knew it wasn’t his business to question the actions of a senior officer, but at least he could add some suppor
t – however futile it might be.
For Connor the only light moment in all of this was seeing a pure white handkerchief tied onto the bayonet of his gun and held aloft. Harry strode out from behind the redoubt and Connor followed at his right hand.
‘If I die, remember your promise you’ll get my remains back to England. My mother would appreciate it. I would appreciate it.’
‘I might have to kill a few Nips before that happens so I may not be around myself.’
Harry’s lips twisted into something that only partially resembled a grin. It might have been a grimace. ‘You’re a brick, Connor.’
‘Say that again?’
‘No more jokes. You heard what I said.’
With Harry leading them, waving a white flag, the men fell in, faces bloodied and blackened by a mixture of sweat and dirt.
The butt of a Japanese rifle slammed against the side of Harry’s head, sending him down on buckled knees. A second butt slammed against the other side. Connor was given the same treatment. They lay on the ground, waiting for disembowelment or beheading, surrounded by a forest of bayonets poised and ready to strike.
‘This is it,’ Connor said. ‘And there’s bugger-all I can do about it.’
He did not close his eyes, but smiled up at the assembled imperial soldiers with their black eyes and their moon-shaped faces, his last view of life as he waited for death to strike.
Another soldier barged in, and raised the butt of his rifle.
‘So much for getting you home,’ Connor murmured, and everything went black.
*
A phalanx of conquering Japanese soldiers stood squarely on the lawn in front of the hospital, officers at the front, swords hanging at their sides.
Bravely, Dr Black and his second in command stood at the top of the steps leading to the entrance, wearing their white coats over their uniforms. More male medical staff stood behind them, then the nurses. Rowena had voiced her intention to stay on the ward, hoping her presence would help calm the patients.
Alice and two other nurses stayed with her, the three softly singing ‘Away in a Manger’ as they worked, their voices made oddly sweeter by fear.