Close to the Wind

by David B Hill

  Jock appeared beside Len. ‘Help them get these ropes in, Lenny, and look lively. Let’s get out of here.’

  The ML picked up speed and turned to the south. They expected to make Batu Pahat in easy time.

  Going below, Len joined Tim and several others clutching mugs of chicken noodle soup: Charlie’s specialty. Charlie had killed and plucked the bird on board. There had been a lot of squawking this time, and feathers still occasionally floated up out of nowhere. Sitting in the wardroom, the crew talked among themselves, about ordinary people, the planters and their families.

  ‘Did you hear about McMillan’s crew?’ asked Jock.

  ‘You mean the refugees?’ This was from Johnno.

  ‘What refugees?’ Jackie joined in.

  ‘He and Johnny Bull were up around Swettenham somewhere,’ Johnno told them. ‘They came across a planter and his family in a koleh, way out to sea heading south.’

  ‘You mean to Singapore?’ Len asked him.

  ‘Yep. With a couple of locals. They must have sailed three hundred miles or more.’

  ‘So they saved them?’ Jackie again.

  ‘Course they did, you stupid bugger.’ Tim had joined the conversation.

  ‘But the locals headed back to shore, apparently,’ added Jock, slowly shaking his head.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Len.

  That had been a few days ago. The battle front was already much further south. They had all heard the stories by now: civilians shot, women raped and natives beheaded. Malays or Indians; it didn’t matter, but especially the Chinese, for whom, they learned, the Japanese had a particularly vicious contempt.

  Len went up on deck again so he could cool down. Hot soup had that effect on a person in the tropics. He stood into the wind, luxuriating in its coolness. It wasn’t just cooling; it was cleansing, sharpening his thinking. He listened to the engines and felt their power beneath his feet. It made his teeth vibrate. He felt a nudge on his arm. It was Tim, offering a cigarette. The two of them lit up and stood smoking silently, gazing out into the darkness and letting the wind snatch the smoke from their lips.

  ★ ★ ★

  By the end of the third week of January the Japanese had repeated their exercise in Muar; they had encircled Batu Pahat, and were now only fifty miles from Singapore.

  As, one by one, the coastal towns and ports were evacuated in front of the enemy advance, the role of the MLs changed, from one of offensive raiding to relief and rescue. All the crew, Len included, thought that evacuation brought more risks than infiltration. Len felt more secure sneaking up a river with a boat full of armed men than sneaking back down it loaded with the wounded and dispirited. Being among the cowed and bleeding made Len feel vulnerable: not to attack any more but to inadequacy and the incontrovertible realisation that he could do little by himself. Watching men bleed and die did much to focus the senses. What Len most needed to do was reject any sense of futility and stand strong. Kia kaha, as Haami had put it.

  Muar had been the first time Tim or Len understood what it meant to be in a land war: when they first heard enemy artillery coming towards them, explosions crunching down the road like giant footsteps, getting closer and closer as the resistance shrank towards them. Now, barely a week later, they were continually dodging the enemy’s close attention, working in the dark to snatch his prey from the beaches.

  Tonight was no exception. ML310 motored quietly into the bay and entered the river below Batu Pahat, with the crew standing at their guns. Upriver, the town was burning fiercely, and the noise occasionally reached them when something flammable ignited with a boom, or a building collapsed, and flames and cinders billowed skywards. The jungle canopy created remarkable silhouettes that reflected wildly in the water. Pounded by artillery, bombed and machine-gunned from the air night and day, the town centre was now virtually destroyed. The defenders were preparing to break out, and ML310 was searching for escapees.

  Slowly, the Fairmile crept upstream, hugging the shore, searching for a part of the bank with a gap in the trees where they could hide. They were to rendezvous with some Australian infantry, who they understood were being pushed towards them, ahead of the enemy advance. Ahead of them upriver, Len and Tim could hear gunfire, the crackle of small arms and the distinctive crump of mortars. The ML found a suitable place beneath some sort of embankment and nosed into the bank. Two men in the dinghy helped, poling with a gaff to assess the final depth and hauling a mooring rope to a tree onshore.

  Len reached out and grasped a tree, straining to pull the boat to it as best he could. He secured a rope around the thickest section of the plant, then stepped on it with one foot, to test it. He hated getting this close to the jungle. He imagined pythons dangling from every tree, or a cobra curled up in the branches, and turned his covered torch onto the foliage, just in case.

  ‘Put that bloody thing out,’ hissed a voice from the bridge of the Fairmile, and Jock appeared at Len’s side. ‘Here, I’ll give you a hand to put the net up. We’re going to have to wait.’

  The deck crew worked together to spread the camouflage nets over the vessel, before settling in for the rest of the night. They weren’t sure how long they would have to wait. The boat was blacked out, and conversation was conducted at a whisper.

  Tim came over to Len, sat down beside him and handed him a cigarette. They lit up over a single match and smoked silently beneath the netting, cupping the cigarettes in their fists, listening to the jungle. For once, it wasn’t raining.

  Their smoke drifted away.

  Suddenly, unexpected noise and movement unhinged their sense of security. A monkey screamed from across the other side of the river, while above them bats glided silently through the trees. Something ruffled the water next to the boat, and both men went to the rail to look. Under the water, something big flicked away out of their sight.

  ‘I hate this stuff,’ Tim whispered.

  A voice carried to them from somewhere along the berm. Len elbowed Tim. ‘Shhh.’

  An order hissed from the bridge. ‘Put those fags out. Now!’

  They heard the voice again. There was something authoritative about it; it was a staccato monotone, not the melodic language of the local Malays.

  Then they heard more voices.

  ‘Fuck,’ Len whispered. ‘Japs!’

  ‘Shut up.’ Jock appeared beside them. ‘Whoever they are, they’re on our side of the fucking river! No noise. No smoking. Stand by your weapons and don’t move!’

  Silently, the whole crew took defensive positions around the vessel, some armed with rifles and pistols. Len made his way up to the bridge, to his own weapon. The bastards are right on the other side of the berm, he thought. I can feel it.

  He ran his hands over his weapon. Everything felt fine. Everything looked all right, as far as he could see in the faint orange glow. He reached down and wiped his hands on the rag he had wedged into the locker for the purpose, and looked down to where Jock was loosening the ropes, in case they needed to flee.

  Even the animal noises had stopped now, and only the distant noises of the burning town carried across the water to where the Fairmile lay. But the silence seemed artificial. Apprehension weighed heavily on the men.

  Then, the unmistakable sound of someone urinating into the river carried to the anxious crew. The little bastard was pissing only a few yards away. From behind the berm, somebody shouted. This second man appeared as a shape in the darkness, on top of the berm. He shouted again. The first little bastard shouted back. There was no mistake now. They were Japanese.

  The individual by the river called out again.

  The tension was stretching to breaking point.

  The men on the Fairmile listened as the man made his way back from the water’s edge, complaining about something – or so it sounded. He clambered up the berm, and then the two figures disappeared down the other side, talking loudly to each other, until their voices could no longer be heard.

  The tension remained, though L
en for one allowed himself a deep breath. He could use a fag now. If the Japs were here, where were the bloody Australians? Nobody moved. Everybody kept vigilant, and held their fingers over their triggers. Their hearts leapt when some bird or animal let out a shriek in the darkness, victim to a predator.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  A distant shout was drowned suddenly in a loud explosion, followed by several more explosions of similar intensity. Mortars! Only two hundred yards from the hidden sailors, maybe closer, the Japanese had placed a mortar battery and were targeting the river bank opposite. The Aussies must have been prevented from breaking out upriver, and were now virtually surrounded on the north side of the river, pounded by enemy artillery from the southern side located only yards from their hidden rescuers. The helplessness the crew felt at their situation was subsumed by their focus on survival, so they sat silent and unmoving, concealed in the mangroves, while events took their course.

  The Japanese kept up the barrage. The shells continued to sail right over the boat, until, as dawn was beginning to lighten the sky, the assault faltered, then stopped altogether. The silence was again disquieting. Len strained to listen, to hear any movement from the enemy. Behind him, the sound of small arms could be heard from the other side of the estuary.

  Nobody could be sure what was happening, but the orders were to stay at full alert. Only when the sun was well up, and there had been no sound of activity for several hours, did things change. A couple of the ratings were instructed to climb to the top of the berm and see what was going on. They reported back that there was no sign of the Japanese. However, while there was plenty of action on the opposite side of the river the Fairmile remained at serious risk of attack, and so Maynard decided that they would stay concealed for the rest of the day. In the late morning, nine aircraft appeared and dropped bombs on the town, and in the mid-afternoon the town was raided again. Each time the crew watched as Japanese aircraft swooped, released their load at the end of the dive and flew straight over the top of them, before climbing back to rejoin the attack. The sailors could look up and see the underbelly of the planes overhead, but they knew that the pilots could see nothing of the sailors below.

  Only after dark did the crew lower the ML’s nets and dare to make a move. Then, Maynard ordered the engines started. They worried about the noise until they settled down into their rhythm, and the vessel began to ride the downstream current as quickly and as quietly as it could. They clung to the treeline until sea and sky melded once more, and then headed out to the security of the open sea and darkness.

  ★ ★ ★

  An hour passed. Len was at his second favourite position on deck, behind the fo’c’sle, smoking. Looking towards the shore, he could see the glow of distant fires. Often while at sea at night they saw artillery exchanges, orange flashes of high explosives or the brilliance of flares illuminating a distant landscape. ML310 was cruising south again at sixteen knots – not quite optimum speed – as if anticipating something. It came in the form of a radio message. Len saw the vexed look on Maynard’s face as he and his deputy turned to the chart table. This was followed shortly by instruction to the Coxswain. The boat immediately arced towards the coast, and the crew was instructed once more to strip for action. They were to attempt another extraction, only a few miles south of where they had been. Len flicked his cigarette over the side and went to his station. He ran his hands over his weapon, reached down and wiped his hands on the rag.

  Within ten minutes the shore fires seemed much closer – whole villages were now blazing like beacons along the coast. Five more minutes and they were close enough to see shell-bursts in the distant jungle: sudden blooms of high explosive. Eventually, drawing ever closer to shore, and moving more slowly, they began to hear the action, the sound carried offshore by the breeze. The same wind brought the benefit of carrying their own engine noise away. Their speed slowed to a crawl, and by the time they could see the shoreline and find the meet point, it had begun to rain again. The Fairmile dropped a plough and swung into the wind. Maynard ordered the engines stopped and relative silence fell, save for the crump of mortars and the sound of artillery inland, against the persistent hiss of rain falling on a moderate sea. They had sixty minutes to wait before the rendezvous. About forty minutes in, they began to detect movement in the jungle.

  Suddenly a number of shadows emerged and moved rapidly down the sand towards the water. A voice shouted out, ‘Don’t shoot. We’re Aussies. Don’t shoot.’

  A shot rang out. All movement stopped.

  ‘We’re Aussies, fuck ya!’

  ‘What’s the password?’ Henderson shouted out.

  ‘Illawarra, mate,’ came the reply. ‘Ulladulla. I dunno what the fucking password is; nobody told me. We’re not Japs, and neither are you.’

  The men from the jungle began to move more cautiously towards the boat – tall men, big men in slouch hats.

  Maynard turned to his First Officer, who spoke for him. ‘Get those men on board. Now! Get a rope ashore. How many are there?’

  Sailors jumped into the water and waded to the beach to assist. They strung a rope from a stanchion at the stern to shore and tied it to a palm. One after the other, soldiers were helped into the water and pulled along the rope to the launch, where they were hauled aboard. They were all in an extreme state of exhaustion, their uniforms torn and stained, but still clutching their small arms. Another group of about eight more soldiers came out of the jungle onto the beach. Then another. In all, over forty men emerged onto the beach.

  An Australian sergeant identified himself, and explained that the men were remnants of an anti-tank company defending the rear of the retreating Westforce. He conducted some sort of quick muster, after which Maynard made the decision to leave. Many of the soldiers were wounded. Some of their company had been left behind, killed or wounded, captured or lost in the fighting. Nothing seemed capable of stopping the Japanese.

  Singapore was now only fifty miles away.

  As the Fairmile headed away from the rendezvous with its party of evacuees, Maynard and Henderson met with the sergeant in the tiny wardroom below. It didn’t take long for the ratings to find out what had happened from other soldiers. Len listened carefully while one of the Australians described the chaos.

  ‘We were refused permission to withdraw, and then we were attacked in the rear. The only way out was west, to the coast.’

  When they were finally ordered to make their way to a rendezvous point, they were almost encircled, and the battle had become a race to escape that they seemed destined to lose.

  ‘We lost a lot of men. We thought we were buggered.’

  The sailors handed out hot black tea and collected empty mugs. Plenty of tea spilt on the deck, to mix with the blood of the wounded, but nobody complained, and the rain that had masked their evacuation quickly washed it away. The Fairmile headed south at half speed, slinking along the coast towards Singapore.

  Len steadied himself against the boat’s movements, studying the forlorn picture. Exhausted soldiers sat along the deck, squeezed against the gunwale with their backs to the superstructure. Others dangled their legs over the side, propped up against a stanchion, not caring if their feet were wet. Len thought that perhaps they found it soothing. All had Tūmatauenga’s red-rimmed stare of battle fatigue, and gazed out into the darkness, unseeing and unspeaking, as the Fairmile powered them to safety. The noise of the engines frustrated all conversation, allowing them to retreat further within themselves.

  ★ ★ ★

  Inside the anti-submarine net, 310 made its way into Keppel Harbour and nosed into the dock, where two ratings onshore grabbed the rope and threw it over a bollard. Two ratings from the boat now stepped ashore and carried another rope aft, placing it over a second bollard, and while the stern was being brought into the mooring, medical personnel on the wharf were already jumping across the divide and seeking out the needy. Some Australian nurses appeared, clearly newly arrived. Len noticed with a
mazement how Jock Brough hovered over them like a hawk, solicitous to their every need, but not for a moment letting them onto his boat. The Law of the Sea would not allow women on board, and the Coxswain was a staunch enforcer of this rule, even if those women were nurses.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ said one of the wounded, on hearing the nurses’ accents. ‘We’re back in Australia already.’

  Next to them, the old Laburnum lay, still tied up at the dock, while around them the continuous destruction wrought by the enemy was all too apparent. More go-downs had been hit. Several that had been full of raw sugar burned fiercely with an unmistakable odour that happily overcame the smell of burning rubber and the nauseating stench of death, if only temporarily. The Japanese were concentrating raids on the docks and Navy facilities, attempting to disrupt any landing of troops or material and to destroy means of escape. At the Naval base on the northern side of the island, demolition teams had already destroyed equipment, including the heavy lift cranes, but the floating and dry docks still functioned. The order was given to reprioritise the maintenance schedule and get all vessels that could be floated made seaworthy and employed in evacuation. The timing was crucial, because over the next few days, air raids increased in size and frequency. The air force’s old Buffalos had been destroyed on the ground, and its remaining Hurricanes were too few to stop the Japanese in the air. Refugees from the mainland were pouring over the Johor Causeway in increasingly unmanageable numbers, and the city was forced to accommodate another half a million people. The place was not as they had left it.

  As the soldiers were shepherded away, a shore party of sailors returned, reporting all sorts of problems. The traffic was so chaotic it had taken them an hour to travel a distance that had previously taken minutes. They were complaining that half their time had been spent in traffic, and only a few hours spent drinking. Most roads were blocked by fallen buildings, debris or fire hoses. Others were blocked with people. Maynard was circumspect about granting further shore leave.