by David B Hill
‘What a bloody shambles,’ Johnny said, and left the cabin, shaking his head. Nobody was quite sure whether he was referring to the mess room or the campaign.
Henderson told Len to ‘get rid of it,’ and, with Pool following on, disappeared back into the officers’ wardroom.
During the mission, the enemy had engaged with only a single gun, which had registered the only hit on either vessel. Incredibly, it appeared that this shell had passed through the hull and one of the petrol tanks before stopping. Fortunately, the petrol tanks on the Fairmiles were self-sealing, so there had been no explosion. On inspection, the sailors found that one of the steering cables had been damaged, and a number of its strands had been severed. There was no other damage to report. They inspected the shell closely. Eventually, Len took the thing up on deck and considered his options.
Smoke drifted across the boat, causing his eyes and nostrils to sting. Huge concentrations of thick black smoke continued to mass overhead, melding with the monsoon clouds. He could hear explosions, so close and methodical in rhythm that he guessed they were demolition charges. Or mortars. On the dock, go-downs lay smouldering. As he stared, a squad of men in uniform sent a truck straight off the wharf and into the sea, where it floated briefly before sinking rapidly into the oily waters. As Len watched, another truck rolled into view, pushed by another squad of men, who sent this one straight into the sea too. The shell began to weigh more heavily in his hands.
He thought of Lofty, then held the shell over the side of the boat and let it go. He watched as it splashed into the oily waters and disappeared.
★ ★ ★
Late on the afternoon of the following day, 10 February, Richard Pool arrived down on the docks in his car, bringing news of the next mission. Len watched as Johnny Bull and Malcolm Henderson were joined in the wardroom of 310 by Ernest Christmas and Victor Clark commanding 311, Kiwi Colin McMillan commanding HDML1062 and Angus Rose commanding HDML1063. When Johnny and Malcolm Henderson mustered their crew together, Johnny didn’t waste his words.
‘Can you hear me?’
His crew nodded in unison.
‘Right. We’re out of here. We have twenty-four hours. We’re sailing for Java, and I want everything shipshape. There will be extra equipment and stores, and some “special” passengers.’
He paused for effect.
‘And we will be among the last to leave.’
He raised his eyebrows, and offered a long stare. Everybody understood the risk it implied. They would be evacuating, but at the last moment. Would they get out the door before it closed?
Dismissed, the men set to once more, most stripped to their shorts, preparing the vessel. They were not quick, but deliberate. Careful. Tim joined Len, and together they disassembled the gun and checked the barrel lining for any effects of the recent action. With heads down and arses up, as the Chief Petty Officer on the Alynbank used to say, they absorbed little of what was going on around them. Only when they were sent ashore to help load drums of fuel was Len able to take stock of the bigger picture. Crew and soldiers from a transport company beavered away for most of the second day, unloading some Browning large-calibre machine guns being dispatched by the Air Force, as well as a number of anonymous crates, and storing them below decks. They were challenged to maintain the boat’s trim as it settled lower in the water.
Thick smoke drifted across the docks. The go-downs smouldered, and new fires added to the mass, which rose and billowed to form the huge, lumpen cloud covering virtually the whole island, and threatening to black out the sun. Across the city, buildings lay collapsed and whole blocks lay in ruins. Japanese bombers continued to attack against desultory anti-aircraft defence, and their fighter pilots continued to get under the defences to strafe the streets and terrorise the citizens.
Len knew the bombing was getting close when the local anti-aircraft batteries started up, and closer still when they went to rapid fire. Now, as they rolled petrol drums alongside the vessels to refuel them, the men began to hear the sound of mortars from somewhere inside the line between Bukit Timah Road and the Reservoir, a few miles away. For this reason, once refuelled, the launches moved back to moorings. The sailors could see the stress on the waterfront was reaching intolerable proportions, and the evacuation of civilians was putting enormous pressure on the authorities.
Their own evacuation was planned for the 12th, but it was cancelled at the last minute, and the men on the launches stood down. In the late afternoon, some, including Len, were granted restricted shore leave.
With much back-slapping, the chosen few took to the dinghies, paddled to the docks and clambered up the ladders, keen to make the Mayfair and back within their curfew. Others chose not to leave the boat at all. This time Johnno was among the ones who stayed on board.
‘It’s safer,’ he said. ‘Who knows how much shit you’re going to find.’
The destruction around the docks was near total, and the loss in human life wickedly random. Minutes before their arrival, a bomb had burst not far from the dockyard gates. Burning vehicles blocked their path. The sailors had to wait before they were able to walk around the area; the bomb had landed squarely on the road, which had been crammed with refugees, cutting a swathe through a mass of people. The still-smoking crater presented a wretched scene, with its perimeter of torn bodies, bloodied parts and wailing kin. Len wondered at Johnno’s prescience. They hurried away and hitched a ride with a British soldier driving an empty Bedford.
‘I’ve been two days ferrying everybody down to the bloody wharves,’ the soldier told them. ‘Now I’m ferrying the sailors in the opposite direction. I mean, what’s the point? Tell me then, what’s the bloody point?’
Jock sat beside the driver. He turned and looked him in the eye, and said, ‘Have you ever heard of a beautiful hotel called the Mayfair? A place filled with dusky Eurasian beauties, and where they still know the meaning of cold – as in beer?’
‘No, mate, I haven’t, but if you’re trawling for my interest you have it.’ The soldier crashed a gear. ‘I’ve been driving since yesterday morning, and I’ve had a gutsful. They won’t even notice if I’m AWOL for an hour or two.’
And so he drove them to the Mayfair. Groups of soldiers, apparently leaderless, stood around corners or alleys, bloodied and dirty and showing clear signs of recent combat. They watched the sailors pass with ill-concealed hostility.
They were only a block or two away when they were stopped by air-raid wardens at North Bridge Road. There was a cordon, and, for a while, they all thought the Mayfair had been bombed. They left the truck and, with Jock leading the way, threaded their way along the side of the street, stepping over hose pipes, smouldering timbers and masonry, to reach the door of the hotel. Here they found that it wasn’t the Mayfair that had taken a hit; it was the Fire Station nearby: the building now blazed furiously, the fire being controlled by its own crew.
They bought Lionel, their driver, beers and played the chilli prawn trick on him, watching while his face coloured puce and he gasped for air. To their delight, even after they had given him a beer laced with more chilli sauce, he sat there mopping the sweat from his brow and pretended it wasn’t hot. So they shouted him another beer – without chilli this time.
After only a few hours, the time came to leave. The hostesses knew this was the end, and lined up in a genuine display of gratitude, for the respect the sailors had shown them. Many were crying, the Chinese women especially, distressed at the prospect of Japanese occupation. Jock was crying too; like many Scotsman, when he drank too much he became maudlin. A couple of comrades grasped his arms and guided him away, past the fire. Their new mate Lionel showed his own gratitude, offering to take everybody back to where the dinghies were tied up.
‘Come on, lads. I’m ferrying service personnel. To the wharves. From the wharves. What bloody difference does it make? Hop aboard.’
He drove the sailors back as close to the docks as he could and gave them the thumbs-up as they dis
appeared off into the flickering gloom. They climbed down the ladder to their dinghies, hidden in shadows under the wharf, and paddled out towards the boats.
Keppel Harbour and the length of the Singapore shoreline was crowded with flotsam and blanketed in a heavy oil slick. The orange glow of fires bouncing off the clouds continued to provide an extraordinary display. The two craft began to bump their way through a cluster of boxes and bales floating on the surface, just as an explosion from a burning liquor warehouse nearby lit up the scene.
‘Whoa!’ shouted Tim, loud enough for the men in the other dinghy to hear too, and the two groups stopped paddling. He held up a bundle that had been floating among the bales.
‘Money!’ was all he said. Wordlessly, every man dropped his eyes to the water and scooped up a bundle.
‘Fuck me!’ Jock had recovered his composure.
‘You can say that again,’ Tim retorted with genuine intent.
They looked closely at the bundles in the available light, and couldn’t believe their eyes. It was money – Straits dollars, in large quantities.
‘Here we go again.’
They hauled wads into each dinghy, filling their pockets and stuffing the rest into their shirts. When they reached their vessel, they hurried below and hid their prize. Len filled a pillowslip with his share, and then placed it at the back of his hanging locker. Then he found a place on deck, lay himself down and, not for the first time, abandoned himself to an exhausted sleep. In his dreams, he, Tim and the others, along with the ladies from the Mayfair, were engaged in a mad dervish-like dance among bloodied victims and their mourners, in a swirling maelstrom along blasted roadways that swept them all up until they disappeared into a cloud of infinite blackness.
★ ★ ★
The day after their planned departure, Len and the launch crews were still lying idle at the docks, as were crew on dozens of other small craft, waiting for the order to sail. Their frustration was palpable. Everything and everyone was ready, so there was little activity and not much communication between the sailors.
‘This is pissing me off,’ grumbled Tim in an empty moment. I wish we were out of here.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ replied Len, mindful, as were they all, of the risks.
‘Yeah, well, I’m not sure I want to hang around here much longer,’ said Jackie.
As if to justify Jackie, a salvo of mortar rounds burst nearby and rifle fire rattled through the adjacent streets. It was the stillness before the storm.
The three Kiwis on ML310 sat under netting, trying to deal with the space between frustration and anticipation, oblivious to the fact that elsewhere even the most senior officers were struggling with similar conflicting emotions.
At his desk in Fort Canning, Rear Admiral Spooner sat staring at the calendar, thinking. Friday, 13 February 1942. He had upheld the best traditions of the service. Now, he was about to deliver himself to be evacuated. Previously he had written a short, poignant letter to Vice-Admiral Peter Cazelet, a personal friend, in case he did not succeed.
My Dear Cazelet,
Singapore will probably be captured tonight or tomorrow. The story of ineptitude, bad generalship etc. is drawing to a close. I am sending with this 3 trunks, (tin) and one short (?) box of mine and my wife’s. Please take to Batavia and turn over to Collins or to my wife who is staying with Lady Sanson at Bandoeng. My wife left here in Scout last night. I am getting away all the Sailors and Officers I can in the various patrol boats, and intend to follow myself in an ML at the last, and not be captured.
The present state of affairs was started by the AIF who just turned tail, became a rabble and let the Japs walk in unopposed.
My Marines have been cut up. The young N Officers in MLs and Fairmiles have been splendid.
A certain number of Officers and sailors may come with you. As they come in from various boats and jobs all over the island am sorting them out as boat crews and getting surplus away – I do not intend to be taken prisoner if I can help it.
You must go by midnight – all good luck and tell my wife I’ll follow soon.
Yours,
etc
Now it was his turn.
He called for his driver. He then sought out Percival – finding him in his office. Conway Pulford, the Air Force Commander and a friend of Percival, was also there, making his farewells.
‘Goodbye, Percival. I suppose you and I will be blamed for this, but God knows we’ve done our best with what we’ve been given,’ Spooner said.
Percival, condemned to conduct the surrender and become a prisoner of the Japanese, came out from behind his desk. The men shook hands briefly.
‘Good luck,’ Percival said perfunctorily, and returned to the task of stuffing papers into a sack.
The men parted company. The Admiral found his driver, called his Aide-de-Camp, and together they made for Keppel Harbour.
★ ★ ★
When the Admiral arrived at the docks the sun had long settled. He found that public order had all but collapsed, and the previously ordered evacuation was facing breakdown. A panicked mob that had gathered outside the dock gates had to be forcibly parted by military police, to allow vital military traffic onto the docks. When the Admiral’s car arrived at the wharf and could go no further, the Admiral invited his driver, New Zealander Petty Officer Arthur Bale, to accompany him, along with Ian Stonor, a Lieutenant of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders serving as his Aide-de-Camp, and together the three men walked through the cordon of MPs. Nonplussed to find nobody on board 310, they made their way below. It was about 11 p.m.
The crew boarded shortly after, having attended a briefing together with the crews of the other launches on board ML311. Richard Pool introduced Johnny Bull to the Admiral as ‘Wavy Navy’, but the Admiral seemed not to be influenced by Pool’s subtle inflection. ‘I know you’ll do a fine job, Commander,’ he said, indicating his deference to Bull as CO.
Several vehicles arrived on the docks, and the chosen evacuees began to assemble. Jock Brough called out names from the list given him by Pool, and men began to file on board their appointed vessel. They included Johnny’s immediate superior, Naval Commander Pendarvis Frampton; Wing Commander George Atkins RAFVR, accompanied by a group of aircraft artificers; and three sergeants of the Royal Engineers. Others refused to board at all when they saw the heavily loaded vessels, preferring to take their chances of survival on land rather than at sea. So the available space was offered to some Royal Marines helping maintain order on the dockside. They eagerly accepted.
Johnny worked simply and with assurance, in spite of the presence of the Admiral and ranking officers of other services. His crew also worked with practised ease, against the background of chaos.
The sailors were occupied instructing the soldiers on stowage and safety when Len saw an army Bedford with a closed canopy push its way through the crowd and stop along the wharf a short distance from the Fairmiles. An officer dismounted from the passenger side of the cab, and from the rear four armed soldiers dismounted, hauling a struggling figure with them. Len watched out of the corner of his eye as the officer stood in front of the man and spoke to him. Whatever passed between them seemed to agitate the prisoner dramatically.
‘What the hell are you men doing?’ came a shout from the Coxswain. ‘We haven’t got all bloody night! Get on with it!’
The sailors got on with it, but Len was distracted when a shot rang out, and he was dumbfounded to turn and see a body tumble into the harbour. One of the soldiers lowered a pistol.
‘For fuck’s sake, Lenny. Pull your finger out!’
Len raised his hand in acknowledgement, but looked back to where the shot had come from, hardly able to believe his eyes; the body was now floating among the debris in the water. The five men from the Bedford – a senior Air Force officer and four military police – walked towards the ML and Len, now thoroughly confused, watched them climb aboard. He saw the Admiral and his Aide-de-Camp emerge on the bridge dec
k above and call out a greeting.
‘Ah, Pulford. You made it. Let the Air Vice Marshall through, gentlemen.’
Shortly after there was a lull in the activity, and Len, Tim and Jackie met up with Jack Kindred.
‘Did you see what I saw?’ Len asked the others.
‘No, mate. What are you talking about?’ Tim replied. But before there was time for Len to explain, Johnny Bull and Ernest Christmas commanding 311 called the four into conversation.
‘One of Ernie’s crew is AWOL,’ Johnny Bull said to them. ‘I’m not sure why, but he’s short of a gunner for his three-pounder. Which one of you is going to go and help Jack?’
He was clearly addressing the gunners. Tim looked at Len, while Len looked down at the ground and shook his head.
‘I’ll go,’ said Tim. ‘Len’ll be all right.’ He winked at his mate.
Len was still shaking his head when Johnny said, ‘OK, grab your stuff. We have to leave now, if we are going at all.’
Jack punched Tim on the arm and said, ‘Good on you, mate. I’ll go and sort out a locker for you.’
Tim turned to Len and thrust out his hand. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, eh? I can feel these bastards breathing down my neck.’
It was a very apt analogy. They could feel the heat from the blazing refinery and storage tanks on Pulau Brani.
‘Good luck, mate.’
‘Yeah, good luck,’ said Len. Then the words of Haami Parata sprang to his mind, and he spoke them aloud – ‘Kia kaha.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Tim.
‘Stand strong! That’s what it means. My Māori mate told me that in combat your ancestors stand behind you. It’s quite empowering when you think about it.’
Len shook his friend’s hand and added, ‘Just make sure that the people behind you are your ancestors.’
When Tim shouldered his kit and stepped across onto the other vessel, Len felt a familiar dread grab at his entrails. His diaphragm contracted involuntarily. He thought he had learned to subjugate the wehi. Why it gripped him now he did not know. Perhaps it was the fog of war – its uncertainty – brought home by seeing British soldiers shooting their own men. He said nothing about it.