by David B Hill
They waited until after the All Clear, then slipped their mooring and, along with ML311, went back to Telok Ayer to refuel. Len and Tim, along with Harry Swift and several others, worked together rolling forty-four-gallon drums along the dock and manually pumped petrol into the tanks of each Fairmile. The sweat poured off them. As the three paused to catch their breath and wipe the sweat from their brow, Johnny Bull came down the gangplank of HDML1062 and crossed the railway tracks towards them.
‘How are you gentlemen?’
Johnny looked at them both – brown, oil-stained and glistening with sweat. They both gave a desultory salute.
‘Doing our best, sir.’
‘I know. Good on you. A little ship is a bloody good place to be. Carry on,’ he said, and walked off towards Laburnum.
‘Smaller target,’ said Len.
‘Fewer officers,’ replied Tim.
They watched Sub-Lieutenant Bull disappear onto the headquarters vessel.
‘I like Johnny. He’s got more bottle than Maynard,’ Jackie commented.
Parts of Johnny’s service record read like a comic opera. First posted to a Yangtze River gunboat, he held the rank of Probationary Temporary Sub-Lieutenant in the Volunteer Reserve, which sounded more appropriate to Gilbert and Sullivan than the Royal Navy. He was a natural leader, and now second-in-command on HDML1062 under another New Zealander, Colin McMillan.
★ ★ ★
In the late afternoon of 15 January, the crew were all back from leave and the boats back under nets on their mooring when a launch carrying two staff officers arrived. The ML crews mustered and were informed that they would be sailing that night on a mission up the east coast of Malaya to evacuate units being overrun by the Japanese advance. The launch returned to shore, and on board the MLs preparations for departure began. Len looked over to Tim. It had been barely twenty-four hours since they had been sitting having a beer on Collier Quay. Things were beginning to heat up. They gave each other the thumbs up, and turned back to their tasks.
★ ★ ★
The voyage north was uneventful, and the crew took confidence in their boat. The ML had two huge V-12 petrol engines, 1260 bhp, which were gradually brought to a cruising speed of 18.5 knots, by which time most of the crew were topside, standing grinning at each other with the elation of the moment. At 112 feet, the boat also had the ability to manoeuvre at speed, something they had grown familiar with at Portland, and they leaned keenly now into the turns as Maynard explored the vessel’s character. Each Fairmile was armed with a single three-pounder on the foredeck, two .303-calibre Lewis guns aft and a light machine gun on either side of the bridge. Before the light disappeared each crew tested all the weapons with live ammunition, everybody on deck watching and assessing the competence of the other gun crews. At half speed they could cruise the length of Malaya without refuelling, but after nearly ten hours they slowed engines, turned into the coast and entered the mouth of a river. When they tied up beneath the Customs House clock tower in Muar, the sun was rising. It was clear that bombing here had been fierce.
ML310 had hardly touched the bomb-damaged wharf when the Commanding Officer and his deputy jumped ashore and headed towards the Harbour Master’s office. On board, Jock gave instructions, and the crew moved quietly to secure the boat and erect the nets. Len helped to square away the ropes aft, and watched 311 arrive and tie up. The crews took the opportunity to check their boats. They checked the hull and seals, then the petrol tanks were dipped and oil levels checked. They replenished their petrol supply from what they found available on the wharf – every effort was needed to preserve the stored resources back on the island.
The two Fairmiles lay across the road from an arcade of shops that stretched along the town’s waterfront. Muar had a very different atmosphere to Singapore, being much smaller, and the sound of battle was disconcertingly close. The Japanese advance from the north and west had reached the outskirts of the town; using captured boats, the Japanese had now landed troops to the south and were attempting to surround the town and the defenders. The sharp report of artillery fired in salvoes and the thump of mortars was clear, along with various sounds of impact. In the gaps between came the crackle of small arms.
The humidity was suffocating. The sailors waited and watched, while on the dockside a couple of planters appeared to be angrily encouraging a pair of reluctant porters to load bales of rubber onto a barge tied up at the wharf. Otherwise, there was little activity on the waterfront. There were a few non-combatants, local people, porters and drivers who sat idly in the shade, watching, as if the damage and the smoke and the war were of no interest. Len thought they had the look of carrion. The crew had been warned about Japanese sympathisers and other fifth columnists, and they watched these people now with special curiosity. An Army truck ground past the gates, a squad of Indian troops standing and swaying on the back. A street vendor arrived, steering his bicycle through the debris, and began peddling fresh fruit from an icebox strapped to the back. Len watched as he deftly chopped up a fresh pineapple and presented it in a piece of twisted palm leaf. His mouth watered. A truck drove onto the wharf and a group of civilians carrying a variety of hand baggage climbed down from it.
Their officers reappeared, striding back along the pier towards the boat. Maynard disappeared below.
‘There’s been some sort of development,’ Malcolm Henderson told the men. ‘We are going back to Singapore.’
‘Jesus wept. A life on the ocean wave, eh?’ Tim complained.
‘And we’re taking this group of civilians with us,’ Henderson added.
The group, which included several children, came shuffling tentatively towards the boats.
‘At least everything works,’ Len observed. The engines were running well, and the weaponry had passed the firing test.
‘You’re right,’ Henderson affirmed. ‘And sooner or later we’ll be putting it all to use. So look sharp, everybody.’
Anything but sharp in the heat, the men began to move. The passengers were ushered on board and shown below. The crew quickly stripped away the netting, and when first one engine and then the second fired and burst into life, they began to loosen the ropes. Both Fairmiles cast off as enemy shells began landing in the go-downs by the wharf, and they made their way swiftly out into the channel, down river and out to sea.
The two boats fell into line and headed south in broad daylight. The mood on board both vessels sharpened, and everybody scanned sea and sky for any sign of the enemy. They went sufficiently far out that something of an oceanic swell was all that disturbed the MLs’ passage.
Len manned a light machine gun on one side of the bridge, opposite Tim. He stood at his gun, resting his backside on a rail, shielding his cigarette against the wind and his eyes against the sun, scanning the eastern sky for enemy aircraft. His tin helmet was wedged in the gun’s frame in front of him.
God damn it, he thought. If Mum could see me now, she’d have a fit. She hated smoking. But when you are given twenty a day, what can you do? It was currency for some: tradeable for all manner of things. He gazed out over the tropical sea, the weather purpling into black ahead. She’d have my guts for swearing, too, he thought. He flicked his cigarette deftly over the side, and watched it spiral out and back, to drop into the foam. The wake stretched back to where he could see ML311 a couple of hundred yards astern. He thought of his father, and his brother in Egypt. He thought of Ree, and the dead uncles – John, Bill and Charlie – deep in the embrace of Hine Nui Te Pō.
Locked in thought, Len failed to hear the plane until it roared down on top of the vessel. When he looked up in shock and surprise he could clearly see the pilot, hauling back hard on the stick in an effort to climb up and away from any retaliatory fire. The bomb overshot, hit the sea on the port side and exploded, causing a column of water to rise up and fall in a deluge over the boat beneath. Len, stunned by the percussion and drenched to the bone, automatically released his safety, swept the weapon around to aim
at the aircraft and pulled the trigger. A brief stream of machine-gun bullets chased after the fast-disappearing plane.
‘Hold your fire!’ He heard the order. ‘Choose your target. There’s three of them, and they’re coming back for more.’
Len watched the enemy plane as it climbed around, up and back into the sun from where it had come. There it joined two other aircraft, which were beginning to bank and inscribe an arc around the Fairmiles, circling like birds of prey. He brought the stock of his weapon to his shoulder and aimed it at the enemy planes again. He needed to be patient and concentrate; concentrate on focussing his energy as Haami had instructed. He began talking quietly to himself. ‘Come on, you bastards; come on …’
When a second aircraft detached from the group and swooped down to attack the Fairmile on its port side, it was quickly targeted. It kept flying directly towards the speeding boat, firing its own machine guns, before swooping up to release its load.
Len heard the sound of his own voice – ‘Waiting, waiting’ – and strained his neck upwards, watching for the bomb to drop. When it did, he yelled, and when someone on the bridge – it was Henderson – yelled too, the Coxswain spun the wheel and the ML swung rapidly away to dodge the explosion. Now he and Tim, manning the other gun, had plenty of time to fire a stream of bullets at the fleeing aircraft, which now sought altitude to prepare for another attack. The Fairmiles continued to dodge and weave, and twice more enemy aircraft ignored the gunfire to attack, until one lurched visibly, pulled rapidly away and climbed back to join the other aircraft. Together the planes turned away and headed off back towards Muar.
Len seemed to have crossed a threshold. He could not believe the thrill he felt. This was what Haami had talked about: wana, the thrill of combat. Some of the crew let out a whoop. Len clapped Tim on the back.
Tim said, ‘If they’d come back once more I think we would have got one.’
‘Next time,’ Len told him. He was almost looking forward to it.
But the concentration and noise of combat had concealed from most of them the fact that they had taken a hit; they’d been struck by shrapnel. From below deck came the sound of parents trying to reassure whimpering children. Len had forgotten the civilians on board. When the boat slowed, damage control reported there was some damage to the vessel, but not enough to require them to stop, so Maynard ordered that the ML continue on its original course, and they surged quickly back to speed, anxious to avoid a further attack.
★ ★ ★
It was growing dark as they motored back along the south-west coast of the island; thousands of bats were ascending from the safety of the jungle and forming great clouds in the sky above the canopy. Soon the two little ships were back inside the boom and tying up at Telok Ayer. Their exhausted passengers were released into the care of Red Cross workers.
The port had again been bombed. The Harbour Board’s office was a smoking ruin, and the adjacent gates a twisted mess. An anti-aircraft battery had received a direct hit.
An ambulance backed along the wharf towards them, and Len helped carry a wounded man on a stretcher through the smoke and into the vehicle. They set the man down between another wounded man and a dead one. Len watched the ambulance lurch away and gazed up at the sky. Tim joined him, and offered him a cigarette.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.
‘A gap in the clouds,’ Len replied, wistfully.
Tim looked up and saw nothing but thick smoke and low cloud. It took a moment before he understood Len’s irony.
A block away, behind the docks, a go-down that had been burning fiercely for a day finally collapsed into itself, with a crash that sent embers flying into the sky and a wall of heat radiating out to engulf the unsuspecting.
5
Rising Storm
The Fairmiles were soon ready again to resume their raiding. After resisting for nearly a week, Muar had finally been overrun. This time they were going to Batu Pahat, to where 45 Indian Brigade had fallen back. They knew that somewhere in the same vicinity was the luckless 53rd Brigade, the body of troops they had accompanied from Britain, who only a week earlier had, like the Indians, been thrust straight off the boats and into combat, woefully ill-prepared.
Mid-afternoon, two army trucks full of Royal Marines arrived at the foot of the wharf. The sailors watched the heavily armed soldiers dismount and form two groups, while two officers came smartly along the wharf and asked the whereabouts of the boats’ commanders. After a brief conference on the dockside one of them, a familiar Royal Naval Lieutenant, boarded 310 and disappeared below, while the other, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Warren, called his unit to loose order and marched them along the wharf, where they began to heave their kit up to the sailors and board the Fairmiles.
Len caught sight of Jack Kindred loosening the bow ropes on the other boat. He called out, ‘Good luck, Jack! See you later – whenever that is.’
‘Not if I see you first, mate.’
Len watched as 311 started its engines, cast off and manoeuvred out into the stream. 310 followed suit, and together the two motor launches headed out to sea. The topsides of both vessels were covered in troops, perhaps forty on each, seated along the deck, clinging to the stanchions or anything structural. They seemed to relish the occasion, leaning into the warm breeze with their eyes closed as the two boats settled into their cruise at half speed and headed into the evening.
★ ★ ★
Len was on deck smoking when the Fairmile reached Batu Pahat. It was clear that the wharves had been attacked, and one of the auxiliary vessels belonging to Coastal Operations had been hit. Smoke was still coming from the side of the ship, and, on shore, men were working, some manhandling debris into the water while others manoeuvred sandbags into the bomb cavities. A barge that had been holed in an earlier raid lay half sunk, hanging on by its ropes from part of the wharf. The ML tied up beside newly established anti-aircraft defences, a simple sandbagged emplacement with a single Bren gun pointing skyward, manned by an Indian soldier lying in firing position and scanning the sky with a fearful look on his face. While both boats lay up under nets, Len did the same, more or less, sweeping the sky for aircraft while the officers were once again in conference.
★ ★ ★
They lay up under nets all day, but as soon as night fell, both boats slipped their moorings and headed up the coast. They moved slowly, each Fairmile towing a line of three requisitioned local fishing boats, each with a group of Marines on board. They were to be dropped near Parit Jawa, to make their way inland and harass the enemy behind his lines and frustrate his advance towards Batu Pahat, and in doing so relieve the pressure on the defenders.
Nearing the danger zone now, Tim and Len stood at their guns on the open bridge wings of the Fairmile as the Coxswain steered it towards the hostile shore. Alongside the Coxswain were both the ML’s officers and the Royal Navy Lieutenant who had just boarded ML310. This was Richard Pool, another of Repulse’s survivors, who had served briefly on HDML1062 and now acted as a staff officer attached to Local Operations. Pool was directing the landing.
Len opened his ammunition locker, pulled out a belt and locked it into his weapon. He ran his hand over it and touched the safety with a finger. This was much better than being tossed around the bowels of a slow-moving target for the Luftwaffe. While he now had some control over his circumstances, though, what he really wanted was to see his enemy when they shot at one another.
He leaned back against the rail and lit a cigarette. He could feel the drag of the towed boats. He had begun to appreciate the tropics, impressed that even in the most uncomfortable of conditions there was beauty. Like tonight. The sea was calm, but sometimes the rain pelted down out of a Stygian blackness, saturating the sea and lashing the boat violently. Then there had been magic: moments when a half-moon was suddenly exposed, illuminating clouds and the seascape in burnished silver.
They slowed.
Now they were just being rained on, in a steady downpour tha
t Len hoped would end soon. He shrugged his oilskin a bit closer. He’d mislaid his sou’wester and, to keep the rain from running down his neck now, he wore a tin hat instead. It wasn’t working. God damn it! If he wasn’t damp with sweat, he was saturated in bloody rain. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the silhouettes around him, gaining small satisfaction in the knowledge that they were bound to be at least as wet as he was.
It was so dark that the only reference to any horizon was the spray where heavy rain hit the water around them. He listened to the officers talking in low tones, the voice of Richard Pool conspicuously public school. Pool had a tendency to refer to ‘the crew’, with a certain emphasis, then pause before continuing, as if pondering the validity of the term. The shoreline was not yet discernible, but from somewhere a few miles inland came the muted sound of artillery. Len heard a call from the bridge and reached forward, releasing the safety catch on his weapon. He could now see some of the men in the kolehs, bailing out water using their helmets. The ML slowed still further as it closed to about fifty yards of a faint line of small waves breaking on the shore. Maynard ordered the engines to neutral, allowing the ML to glide slowly through the water, beam on to the shore, its weapons on the starboard side trained on the beach. The Aldis lamp on the bridge flashed a signal, and the kolehs cast off their ropes. The soldiers produced paddles and quickly began to pull for the shore. Rain and an almost flat sea made the conditions perfect: if they could get to shore and conceal the boats before the rain stopped, there would be no signs of their landing.
Len felt the boat rock gently from side to side, its engines idling. The shallowing seabed cast up modest crests that peaked before breaking softly along the shoreline. A lamp blinked twice quickly from the dark line of jungle beyond. At once the engines re-engaged, and the boat began to move again, slowly astern, and turn out to sea. The eighty men on the beach disappeared into the jungle, inland towards Bakri.