For the next minute or so the launch limped through the rain-slashed night, the note of the engine rising and falling as it sucked at an empty tank. Then it died altogether, and the only sound was the hiss of the rain on the waves as the launch glided silently under her own momentum.
‘Lefty?’
‘Aye?’
‘See if you can find any life jackets.’
Rossi slung his rifle from his shoulder and was heading down the hatch when the launch came to a sudden halt. Sheridan was thrown against Torrance, who was thrown against the helm. Rossi was pitched headlong into the cabin with a cry that was cut off by a splash.
‘Have we run aground?’ asked Kerr.
‘I think we must’ve done,’ said Torrance. ‘Let’s hope it’s the shore, and not a sandbank in the middle of the strait!’ He took the boathook and leaned over the side, prodding at the water below. The boathook was about eight feet long, and half the shaft still showed above the waves lapping against the hull when it touched bottom. Torrance peered into the rain-lashed water in front of the boat’s prow. Through the slashing rain, he could just make out a fringe of palm trees, silhouetted against an indigo sky. He steeled himself, and vaulted over the gunwale, landing up to his chest in the warm water. The others followed and they waded ashore. The mud sucked at their feet until at last they waded through the surf and staggered on to firmer ground where a plantation of coconut palms fringed the shore.
Torrance reached for his cigarette case, but his smokes were sodden. He threw them away with a curse.
‘Anyone know where we are?’ asked Kerr.
‘Somewhere between Muar and Batu Pahat,’ said Rossi.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ said Torrance. ‘The coast road must pass by here somewhere. We head inland till we find it, then follow it till we come to a settlement.’
They set off. By the time they emerged on the other side of the plantation, the rain had stopped though it continued to drip from the trees, and the first hint of dawn was in the sky. A canal ran along the far side of the plantation: they followed it until they came to a footbridge, crossed over, found some railway tracks on the other side, and a tarmac road running parallel to them. They were following the road when they heard someone approaching behind them.
‘Prob’ly some of our lads,’ said Torrance.
They stood staring at one another.
‘Mind you,’ added Torrance, ‘no harm in getting off the road till we’re sure.’
They retreated into the shadows beneath the trees, just in time: seconds later, a company of Japanese soldiers cycled past in formation. Torrance and his companions remained crouched in the undergrowth until they were sure the Japanese had gone by.
‘Those were Japs!’ said Grant.
‘Safely behind our own lines, did you say?’ sneered Kerr.
Torrance could scarcely believe it. ‘We’re well south of the border between Malacca and Johore. I thought the Japs hadn’t invaded Johore yet?’
A convoy of lorries with Japanese flags on the bonnet motored past, heading south. No sooner had that disappeared than a dispatch rider roared back the other way.
The next person to come along the road was a Malay youth in a sarong and a T-shirt, riding a bicycle. Leaving the others hiding in the trees, Torrance managed to flag him down.
‘You’re British!’ the Malay exclaimed before Torrance could say anything.
‘Yeah,’ said Torrance. ‘Where am I?’
‘My village, Parit Jawa, is less than a mile down this road. But you should stay away, tuan – there are many Japan mans there.’
‘When did they get here?’
‘On Saturday. There was much fighting in Muar, eight miles up the coast, the day before.’
‘Any other British soldiers around here?’
‘There were white soldiers in Bakri yesterday. I went there to make a delivery, but they told me to turn back, said it was too dangerous.’
‘Where’s Bakri from here?’ asked Torrance.
‘Five miles inland.’ The Malay pointed into the rubber trees on the opposite side of the road. ‘Cut north-east across the plantation until you come to a road, then turn left and follow it. That way you will not have to go into Parit Jawa.’
‘Thanks.’ Torrance thrust some Straits dollars into the Malay’s hands.
‘There is no need for that, tuan.’
‘Take it! You’ve earned it. Just keep your mouth shut about having seen me, and don’t flash that money about when there are Japs around – they’ll want to know where you got it.’
The Malay went on his way, and Torrance went back into the shadows beneath the trees to tell Sheridan and the others what he had learned.
They skirted around the west side of the town, cutting through a rubber plantation, and joined the road to Bakri a mile to the north. As they marched up the road, the sky ahead became increasingly light, silhouetting a pyramid-shaped hill up ahead. By the time they had passed where the road curved around the foot of the hill, the sun was over the horizon, its warmth soon putting the chill of the previous night to flight. An hour later, they spotted lorries parked a few hundred yards up ahead, and ducked off the road. Advancing through the trees, they saw that the lorries were guarded by Japanese soldiers. By now, however, they could hear the crackle of small-arms fire, no more than a mile away.
‘Sounds like someone’s getting melted,’ whispered Rossi.
‘Let’s hope it’s the Japs, and not our lads,’ murmured Torrance.
They trudged towards the sound of gunfire, which grew increasingly sporadic the closer they got to it, until all they could hear was the occasional stray shot. Then Torrance saw a couple of figures running towards them through the trees. Rossi had seen them too, and the two of them ducked behind the trunk of a rubber tree, motioning the others to take cover. Torrance levelled his Thompson and pushed the safety catch forward. The men racing towards them turned out to be Japanese, one of them clutching a bleeding shoulder. When they saw Torrance and his companions, one of them shouted ‘Yabai!’ and they both veered away. Torrance could easily have cut them both down with a single burst before they were out of sight, but some instinct told him to let them go: mercy, perhaps, mingled with the thought that if he opened fire, it might draw the attention of other Japanese soldiers, in greater numbers and less of a hurry to get away.
‘Something’s put the fear of God into them,’ said Rossi.
‘Yeah,’ said Torrance. ‘Let’s hope it was our lads.’ Gesturing for the others to follow, he advanced cautiously now, knowing too well how trigger-happy men could be in the aftermath of a battle. The ground beneath the trees sloped upwards, and presently a shot from up ahead had them plunging for cover again.
‘That was a Lee-Enfield,’ said Torrance.
‘The Japs don’t appear to be averse to picking up British guns,’ said Rossi, crouching beside him.
That gave Torrance pause for thought, but some instinct persuaded him to cup his hands around his mouth and call in the direction of the shot, ‘We’re British!’
‘My arse!’ a reassuringly Australian voice called back. ‘Tell us another!’
‘We are!’
‘Prove it!’
‘If I was a Jap, would I be able to say, “Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry”?’
That gave the Australian pause for thought in turn; a few moments passed before he yelled back, ‘Show yourselves!’
‘Nice and easy, now!’ shouted another. ‘Keep your hands where we can see ’em!’
Torrance handed his Thompson to Kerr. ‘Keep the others out of sight till I call for you.’
For once the lance corporal did not argue. Torrance stood, keeping his hands well above his head, and began to walk up through the trees towards the bushes where the shot had come from.
‘What about your mates?’ demanded a voice from the bushes.
‘I’ll call for them when I know you’re not gonna take any more potshots
at them.’
‘You’re a bloody Pom!’
‘Yeah. We got separated from our mob twelve days ago – we’ve been trying to get back to our lines ever since.’
‘Twelve days ago! Twelve days ago, the Poms were on the other side of Kuala Lumpur.’
‘Don’t I know it!’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Six, including a woman doctor.’
‘A sheila? Starve the bardies! All right, tell them to come out.’
Torrance gestured for the others to join them. As they emerged, three Australians in battle-stained khaki drills and steel Brodie helmets rose up from the bushes. ‘You fellers stay here,’ one of them – a corporal – told the other two. ‘I’ll take them to Mr Jennings.’
Torrance and his companions followed the corporal over the crest of the ridge to the other side, where the ground was littered with fresh corpses. Nearly all of them were Japanese, Torrance was pleased to see. Australian soldiers moved amongst the bodies, looking for Australian wounded to take to their regimental aid post, and Japanese wounded to put out of their misery with bayonets.
‘No mercy for the enemy, corporal?’ asked Sheridan.
‘We tried being merciful to the Nippos to begin with. Japs that aren’t quite dead have got a nasty habit of whipping grenades out and trying to take a few of us with them when they commit harry-kirry.’
A sandy-haired young subaltern, Lieutenant Jennings, was talking to a sergeant when the corporal approached with the five Argylls and Sheridan. Seeing her, Jennings broke off. ‘Corporal! Where did this woman come from?’
‘Better ask this feller here.’ The corporal indicated Torrance.
Before Torrance could reply, however, Kerr stepped in, thrusting Torrance’s Thompson back into his arms. Stamping to attention in front of Jennings, he gave him his most regimental salute. ‘Corporal Kerr, sir, Second Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. I’m in command of this detachment.’
‘Haven’t you got more sense than to bring a woman into the battle zone, corporal?’
‘Begging your pardon, lieutenant, sir, but I’ve been trying to bring her out of it for the past twelve days. We got separated frae our mob at the Slim River and we’ve been trying to rejoin them ever since.’
Sheridan stepped forward. ‘I’m Dr Kay Sheridan, lootenant. I had the bad luck to find myself caught behind the Japanese lines. These fellers have been kind enough to bring me to safety.’
‘Fair dinkum. I’ll have one of my blokes take you to the DAA. He’ll arrange for you to be sent back to safety and for the rest of these gentlemen to be returned to their own mob.’
‘DAA?’ asked Sheridan.
‘Deputy Assistant Adjutant,’ explained Torrance. ‘The staff officer responsible for rounding up lost sheep and sending them back to the right flock, amongst other things.’
‘Venables!’ called Jennings.
A brawny Australian corporal sauntered over. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘We’ve got some Pommy stragglers here. Take them to Brigade HQ.’
As they trudged down through the trees behind Corporal Venables, Torrance had to cuff his cheeks to hide the tears of relief that prickled his eyes. After twelve days behind enemy lines, they were safe and back with the Allies. All the stress and strain of the past fortnight, which he had held bottled up inside for so long, now threatened to overwhelm him. All right, Charlie old son, pull yourself together, he told himself. Just a few more minutes… Report to the DAA, scrounge a bite to eat, a cuppa tea and a fag, then crawl into the back of whatever lorry they can find space for you in and sleep until you get back to your own mob.
The cigarette, perhaps, did not have to wait. ‘Got any fags?’ he asked Venables.
The corporal took out a pack and proffered it to him. Torrance took one and plugged it in the corner of his mouth. ‘Light?’
Venables lit the cigarette for him with a match, before lighting one for himself.
‘Ta.’ Torrance took a drag with immense satisfaction.
Venables grinned. ‘You blokes look like you’ve had a pretty rough time of it.’
‘It was no picnic. You fellers look like you’ve been in the wars yourself.’
‘Nothin’ we couldn’t handle. The Nippos tried to sneak around our flanks last night. We managed to squeeze them between our A and B Companies this morning… well, you saw for yourself how that turned out for them.’
‘What’s the situation here?’ asked Kerr.
‘The situation?’ echoed Venables. ‘The situation is it’s a bloody dog’s breakfast. The Two-twenty-ninth Battalion were sent here to shore up the Forty-fifth Brigade when they were attacked by a couple of hundred Jap infantrymen probing their lines. The brass seemed to think the Indians were panicking. Well, they weren’t panicking, and it wasn’t a couple of hundred Jap infantrymen they were up against, neither. It was a couple of thousand Imperial Guards and the Indians were in the fight of their lives. So they sent us in. Shore up the Forty-fifth Brigade?’ snorted Venables. ‘We’ve got Japs to the north of us, Japs to the south and Japs to the west and Buckley’s chance of keeping the road leading east open long enough for the Two-twenty-ninth to pull out, let alone pull out ourselves.’
At the foot of the hill they emerged on to a tarmac road, marching along it for a few hundred yards. They passed a regimental aid post, a tent with a red cross on it erected under the trees by the road, fronted by a low enclosure of sandbags. The space within the enclosure was crowded with wounded men, Indian sepoys as well as Australians. Medical orderlies moved amongst them in the mottled shade of an awning of camouflage scrim, applying dressings and dispensing morphine.
A little further on there was a swathe of open ground on their right, what the Malays called a padang. Probably it had been a field or a meadow until a year ago, but it had been allowed to go to seed, and now russet anthills rose like towering islands from a sea of weeds. Several lorries, a couple of Bren carriers and a Marmon-Herrington armoured car were parked close to the road, and facing out across the padang on the opposite side of the road a white bungalow stood in its own neatly trimmed garden. Half a dozen khaki-drab Ford staff cars were parked in front of the bungalow along with a wireless truck, and a motorcycle dispatch rider stood astride his Norton, talking to one of the sentries on guard at the gate. It did not take a genius to work out that this was brigade headquarters.
They were a hundred yards from the bungalow when Torrance heard the drone of aero-engines and twisted to see a dive-bomber appear over the crest of the ridge they had just descended. It banked steeply, coming in low over the padang – there was no mistaking the rising-sun emblem painted on its white wings – before turning to follow the line of staff cars parked in front of the bungalow.
‘Geddown!’ Torrance grabbed Sheridan and pulled her down to the tarmac.
As the bomber swooped low over the bungalow, it released an aerial torpedo from the underside of its fuselage. Raising his head, Torrance watched as if mesmerized by the sight of the torpedo descending almost lazily through the air before plunging through the bungalow’s roof. The building erupted in a ball of flame. Torrance ducked his head again, folding his arms over it. A blast of hot air washed across his back, and a deafening roar hammered his ears. Pieces of burning debris rained down all around him.
‘Everyone okay?’ he asked the others. They all nodded.
As the smoke and dust cleared, they glanced to where the bungalow had stood. There was no sign of it now, just a low circle of charred and smouldering timber around a large crater. The staff cars which had been parked in front of it were on fire. A brigadier staggered aimlessly like a drunk. His uniform, reduced to tatters, was drenched with blood. How he had survived at all was a mystery to Torrance, one of those little quirks of high explosive, he supposed. The brigadier’s case was less pressing than that of another officer who ran around with blood jetting from the stump of his arm. Body parts lay amongst the debris scattered across the road. One man, li
terally blown in half, lay beside the road, his naked waist and twisted legs here, his head – still attached to half his chest and one arm – there. Something crimson and glistening dangled from the branches of a nearby tree. Torrance had seen some horrors over the past month, but this was enough to make even him gag. Other men lay nearby, so horrifically maimed it seemed impossible they had survived even this long.
Sheridan hurried across to the man who had lost an arm. ‘Charlie, give me something to stanch the flow of blood.’
‘Will a field dressing do?’
‘It’ll have to. Primsie, don’t just stand there. Didn’t I see a hospital tent back there?’
‘RAP, ma’am. Regimental Aid Post.’
‘Never mind what it’s called. Run and get help.’
The medical officer and his orderlies soon arrived to help Sheridan. For the next few minutes, the most useful thing the five Argylls could do was apply thumbs where directed to help the orderlies tie off dressings as tightly and neatly as possible in an effort to stanch the blood that jetted from dozens of dreadful injuries.
The medical officer examined a badly injured artillery major. ‘Nothing more I can do for him here,’ he pronounced after dressing his wound. ‘Get him to the CCS at Yong Peng, PDQ!’
‘Give us a hand, mate!’ Venables called to Torrance.
They carried the major across to one of the lorries parked on the padang and laid him gently in the back, before jumping down to the tarmac.
Venables looked at Torrance in surprise, and jerked his head into the back of the lorry. ‘Aren’t you going with him? Plenty of room in there. This could be your ticket out of here.’
Torrance gazed into the back of the lorry. No Lavender Street prostitute’s open arms had ever looked more inviting. Then he turned and looked to where Sheridan, Rossi, Grant, MacLeod and Kerr were still helping with the other wounded. ‘There’s room for another wounded man in there,’ he told Venables. ‘We can send the doc to the rear at the same time.’
‘Ahh, shit, mate, you’re right there,’ said Venables. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’
The Name of Valour Page 19