by Damien Lewis
“We were hit by two bombs, sir, and sank almost immediately,” Les Searle reported. “Most of the wounded are still on the next island, with ERA Williams in charge. No officer survived, sir. The last, Lieutenant Shellard, died there on the island.”
As far as Les Searle was able to report, the highest surviving crewman from the Dragonfly was an engine room artificer (ERA), one Leonard Walter Williams, the senior operator of the vessel’s mechanical plant. All those above him in rank—from the engineer officer all the way up to the ship’s captain—had lost their lives in the sinking of the Dragonfly and the strafing of the survivors in the water.
“Thank you, Searle,” Commander Hoffman replied. “See my cox’n and have your chaps all moved over here with us. We’ll be better off together. We’ll have another talk later on.”
Commander Hoffman received the dire news with barely a flicker of emotion passing across his granite features. To command in a situation such as this required nerves of steel and a rock-solid demeanor to boot. The good spirits of all of those under him—servicemen, women, and civilians alike—depended upon it. But just about their biggest ever morale booster right now would prove to be Judy, their irrepressible ship’s dog.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the paradise island that they had landed upon was proving a little less than idyllic at close quarters. Defiant yelps from Judy signaled that she’d found yet another jungle creature against which to wage war. Clearing the makeshift camp had forced hordes of snakes out of hiding, not to mention gruesome spiders as big as your hand. Judy of Sussex was proving to be the critter catcher extraordinaire.
She sprang stiff-legged around an unidentified serpent that she’d managed to corner. For its part, the snake had doubtless never set eyes before on such an adversary—a liver-and-white English pointer. Judy feigned an attack, the snake darted its head forward to strike, and she sprang in the other direction, seeking the perfect time to strike. When it came, she darted in lightning fast, attacking with paws and jaws until the battle was very much won.
Then she’d grab the limp form of the serpent in her mouth and carry it proudly to the feet of the chosen one—more often than not a very fortunate Petty Officer White. But with sundown on their first day on Shipwreck Island, Petty Officer White was to have other, more urgent matters to deal with. A new and pressing drama was about to unfold on the island sands.
It was the daughter of the blind evacuee who delivered the news. There were two Dutch ladies in their party, and they were heavily pregnant. It seemed that both were about to give birth. White’s first thoughts were that the Australian nurses should come to the women’s aid, but they were busy tending to the Dragonfly’s wounded. He could expect no help from that quarter. And so it was that the petty officer of the Grasshopper, aided by a tireless ship’s dog, prepared to deliver two babies on an unknown tropical island in the East Java Sea.
Fortunately, White had some prior experience as a makeshift midwife. It was during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War that he’d first lent a hand in bringing new life into the world. His then vessel, the destroyer HMS Grenville, had been docked in Barcelona harbor, and White had been press-ganged into acting as assistant midwife during an unexpected birth aboard ship. How much more difficult could it be, he reasoned, with two births pending and his midwifery suite to be here on Shipwreck Island?
With the blind lady’s daughter helping on one side and Judy lending a sympathetic ear on the other, two baby boys were brought into the world. Around midnight White cut the umbilical cords, using what he had at hand—his bowie knife. In due course the babies would be baptized in the sea, with Judy cavorting in the waters around them. And Petty Officer George Leonard White would glow with pride as the newborns were named George and Leonard after him.
But the hour was fast approaching when George Leonard White would leave this war-torn patch of territory, and not in the company of the dog that he had saved from the Grasshopper’s flooded hold—a dog that was growing to love him.
Just when Judy needed her nearest and dearest most, fate would conspire to tear them apart.
Chapter Ten
The five days the survivors spent on Shipwreck Island were ones of permanent battle. They waged war against the heat, mosquitoes, sand lice, and ravenous ants, plus the venomous scorpions and spiders that seemed to get everywhere they weren’t wanted. With food supplies dwindling and medicines fast running out, the surprise appearance of a wooden sailing ship making directly for their position was greeted with real relief—as long as it would prove friendly.
It was clearly a local vessel. The island was part of what was then known as the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), at that time under the control of a Dutch colonial government, and so the ship was very likely crewed by those friendly to the Dutch, which meant on the side of the Allies. The tongkang—a traditional trading boat with twin masts, battered sails, and a “putt-putt” motor—steered part the wreckage of the Grasshopper into the shallows. She dropped anchor, and a party came ashore.
The local Dutch administrator—he would become known to the many Allied escapees whom he helped simply as Dutchy—had sent the ship from the nearby island of Singkep, to investigate if there were any survivors who needed rescuing. Via the tongkang the crew of the gunboats—plus the Royal Marines, the Australian nurses, the women and children, two newborn babies, the surviving wounded, and one ship’s dog—were ferried across to Dutchy’s headquarters in the small settlement of Dabo on Singkep.
In spite of the obvious risks—if, or more likely when, the Japanese caught up with him, he knew full well what his likely reward would be—Dutchy had started an escape pipeline, providing food, water, boats, and guidance to all who were passing through “his” islands. The advice he offered to Commander Hoffman was this: his party should follow the route of those who had gone before, making for the nearby landmass of Sumatra and from there by ship either west to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), off the coast of British-held India, or south to Australia.
Singkep Island lay a little more than 100 kilometers from Sumatra’s east coast. Dutchy would be able to provide a large tongkang for the voyage. The beauty of the shallow-draft wooden craft was that they were equally suited to navigating the many rivers that crisscross the islands of this region, for their onward escape route would involve journeying up one such waterway.
The intended destination, Sumatra, is the sixth largest island in the world. A landmass of 473,481 square kilometers and some 1,790 kilometers in length, it consists of dense jungle and soaring mountain ranges cut through with turbulent rivers. Dutchy’s tongkang would take them first to their east coast landfall on Sumatra, from where they would need to traverse the entire breadth of the island—some 350 kilometers of river, mountain, and jungle—to reach the port city of Padang on the far side. From there Allied ships were reportedly taking off evacuees, for Sumatra had yet to fall to the Japanese.
The journey that lay before the escapees was a daunting one, to put it mildly. But the only alternative if they stayed put was to be taken prisoner by the enemy. After what the Yangtze River veterans had witnessed of Japanese atrocities in China and what all had heard and seen since during the fall of Singapore, anything was preferable to being taken captive. Most took heed of Dutchy’s advice and prepared for the long journey that lay ahead.
But Petty Officer White, along with two others of the Grasshopper’s crew—Engineer Thompson and Able Seaman Lee—decided otherwise. White figured that with the Japanese having taken Singapore, they would turn their attentions to the next big prize in the region: Sumatra. The massive island had stupendous reserves of natural resources, most notably rich deposits of gold, coal, and oil. In the time it would take the escapees to reach her west coast, White feared Sumatra would have been overrun by the enemy.
Though none of them could know it yet, White’s suspicions were well founded. The day after the fall of Singapore the Japanese had dropped paratroopers on the strategically important city of Palembang, South Sumatra
’s capital. In seizing Palembang they had taken a key airport to which the RAF had withdrawn many of its aircraft just prior to the fall of Singapore. Palembang offered the Japanese a staging post from which to occupy every major town and city across Sumatra. Already Japanese troop transports had set sail for the island’s coast, seeking to sweep westward and overrun the entire territory.
A seaman through and through, White argued that the only possible route to safety lay by whatever boat they could get their hands on, sailing west toward India. It was a seemingly impossible sea journey of some 2,680 miles, but better that than get cut off by the advancing Japanese forces as they took Sumatra, with nowhere left to run or to hide. Few cared to join him, and so it was that White and his two fellows parted company with the main body of survivors—Judy included.
Much that it tortured him to leave Judy, it was inconceivable that White might take her with him. The Dragonfly and Grasshopper might have been sunk and shipwrecked, their sailors left bereft of any ship, but Judy remained very much a Royal Navy ship’s dog. The ship’s crew remained her family, and she their mascot and guide. Judy would be going with them overland to Sumatra’s west coast and, they hoped, a seagoing passage to safety.
When the moment of departure came—the Sumatra-bound party was the first to leave Singkep—White felt overwhelmed with sadness. But oddly, Judy appeared to understand all that was going on around her and didn’t seem particularly troubled. She sat before White, dark head held high, nose pointed very much at his, her calm eyes locked with his gaze. She had on her face a serene and untroubled look. It was as if she had always known when their hour of parting would be at hand and why.
White had yet to find a boat with which he and his fellows might try to make good their escape. Dutchy had promised to secure one, but they were in acutely short supply. Everyone wanted an escape boat right now. For a moment he wondered whether he wouldn’t be better off joining the main party, heading west to Sumatra. But he felt in his bones that journey would not go well. Somehow, he sensed that Judy knew that too but that she would go to her fate with her family regardless and loyal to the last.
With a final lick of White’s hand—her signature gesture of love and now of farewell—Judy turned away to board the waiting tongkang.
During the short and largely uneventful sea voyage to Sumatra, Judy settled into the company of an old friend, Les Searle. Searle had formed the nucleus of a tight-knit group that included Jock Devani, a typically tough Glaswegian seaman who seemed to fear nothing on this earth. Jock was a scoundrel and a scrounger without rival, skills that would come to the fore in the bitter months ahead. As for Judy, she appeared like an aristocrat among their rough and ready company, but strangely she seemed to fit in well with this group of born survivors.
The tongkang on which they were embarked was under a Chinese captain and crew, so those like Judy who were veterans of the Yangtze were back with the countrymen they knew so well. The interior of the ancient ship was lit by only one lantern, which swung gently to and fro. The hold was clearly designed for carrying cargo, as opposed to human—or canine—passengers. It consisted of an empty and echoing shell that ran the entire length of the ship, but at least there was room enough on the bare wooden boards for all to lie down.
It was dark, airless, and evil-smelling, the odor of unwashed bodies and recent trauma mixing with the scent of tar and rotting timbers. Fear and shock have their own smells, ones that Judy was becoming ever more acquainted with as her family’s fortunes became ever more dire. Dogs rely chiefly on the emotional part of their brains. As a result they can read human emotions extraordinarily well and probably better than we read one another. From our body language and the smells we give off, they pick up on our emotional state very quickly.
The state of mind of those crammed aboard that tongkang belowdecks—defeated, shipwrecked, shocked, and on the run—was very clear to Judy. But there was also a new scent on the dank air in that vessel’s hold—one of a faint yet carefully nurtured hope. At least the escapees were on the move again, and even better, they were hidden by the ship’s main deck from any marauding Japanese warplanes.
Even the giant cockroaches that scuttled across the wooden boards were preferable to the ravenous ants of Shipwreck Island or their nighttime brothers in arms, the swarms of dive-bombing mosquitoes. Hope springs eternal in the human heart and in that of our canine soul mates, and with each puff of wind in the tongkang’s sails those sheltering in her hold dared to indulge a dream of escape and of home.
The tongkang reached the gaping mouth of the Indragiri River without mishap. Unlike the Yangtze, which is a vital transport artery for much of the Chinese interior, Sumatra’s Indragiri River is a waterway of far lesser size or importance. Its situation is also unlike that of the temperate climes of China’s mighty waterway. Lying on the very equator, which cuts Sumatra in two, the Indragiri is baking hot, sluggish, and torpid, especially on its lower reaches.
As the tongkang pushed inland, there was the flash of a white belly and a splash to left and right as huge crocodiles slid off the mudflats that litter the river and into the muddy brown waters. It would be well-nigh impossible for an inexperienced crew to navigate the Indragiri, which is plagued by shallows and strong currents. Luckily, the Chinese captain was a veteran trader, and he and his crew had sailed this way many times before.
Amid the stifling heat and the windless calm of the jungle that crowded in from either bank, the boatload of escapees chugged upriver, every turn of the ship’s engine taking them closer to their end destination—the port of Padang and the Allied ships waiting to carry them to safety. To either side lay dense forest inhabited by any number of exotic species: the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran orangutan, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran elephant, the Malayan sun bear, and more.
Clearly, any journey overland would present its own daunting challenges to those aboard the tongkang. The Indragiri rises into a fast-flowing and angry torrent at its source in the towering Barisan Mountains, which form the backbone of the island of Sumatra. As the tongkang hit the lower reaches of this highland waterway, navigation became ever more challenging. Eventually they reached the tiny settlement of Rengar, near where the Ombilin and Sinamar rivers converge to swell the Indragiri’s waters, and from there no boat of any real size could go any farther.
Judy, Les Searle, and Jock Devani—plus other assorted gunboat men, soldiers, civilians, and the wounded who were able to travel—duly put ashore. The advice from the locals in Rengar was simple: from there on the journey west could be continued only by land. Sticking to the course of the river, the travelers should be able to make it through the mountains—which at their dizzying heights rose to 3,800-meter peaks—to a railhead that rose at Sawahluento, on the far side. From there it would be an easy 80-kilometer train ride into Padang, the port from which they hoped to sail to safety.
But the locals also had worrying news. Even as far inland as this isolated riverside settlement, one besieged by impenetrable jungle on all sides, reports of the war were filtering through. Japanese forces had landed in the south and were already marching inexorably northward. In effect, the escapees had a race on their hands to see who would be the first to reach their goal—themselves or the forces of the Japanese Imperial Army.
There was clearly no time to waste. Fashioning makeshift stretchers from branches cut from the nearest trees, the party set off north along the river, with Judy of Sussex naturally taking up the lead. In their desperation to reach Padang ahead of the enemy, few preparations could be made for the journey. As they pushed deeper into the jungle that lined the beaten track, all signs of civilization were quickly lost behind them. The forest crowded around—thick, claustrophobic, and brooding.
From the deck of the tongkang there had been something wholly exotic and noble about the dramatic jungle-clad slopes. From within and with some 200 kilometers of such terrain lying ahead of them, it was an entirely different story. Massive, wall-like roots of the tropical giants—s
o-called buttress roots, which anchor the tree in the thin soil—blocked their path. Stumbling into one in heavy military boots sent an eerie noise like a hollow drumbeat echoing through the dark jungle.
At the head of the ragged column of humanity Les Searle felt as if the very trees had eyes and were watching. He was more than glad to have Judy in the vanguard, ears perked up and alert for any danger. Where she led, the rest followed as she tried to pick a navigable path through the sodden terrain. The only clear route was the track running by the river, but much of the ground this close to the thundering waterway was boggy and waterlogged. Bright green vegetation gave way unexpectedly, revealing the quagmire that lurked below.
Having four paws was a massive advantage right now. The soft pads on Judy’s feet helped spread her weight, and having four points of hold on the ground lent her far greater agility than her two-footed companions had. No doubt about it, in such terrain a dog made an invaluable pathfinder.
Blessed with speed, power, and a fine sense of balance, Judy could shift her body weight about rapidly to avoid being sucked under or trapped. Her powerful hindquarters, which in canines are equipped with large and long muscles, could deliver fast movement—forward jumps, springs to the side, even backward flips—almost instantly. Storing energy in muscles and tendons and with the hind knees flexed most of the time, a dog can use its limbs like springs, propelling it out of trouble.
As Judy forged a route ahead, quartering back and forth to check for any dangers, she appeared convinced that the entire party was in her care. She also seemed suffused with a sense of urgency. Every now and again she’d pause and glance back at Les Searle and Jock Devani, a look of laserlike intensity on her features, as she signaled them onward. Come on. Hurry. The route’s clear. No time to waste.
Back at their point of disembarkation on the river, Jock Devani had somehow managed to find and liberate the distinctive gold-braided cap of an officer of the Royal Navy. He had it perched at a jaunty angle on his head, and that somewhat belied the desperate straits the party found themselves in. That distinctive golden cap acted like a visual marker for Judy whenever she got ahead of herself and felt the need to check if her two-legged fellows were still following her.