One Common Enemy

by Jim McLoughlin

  ‘The water’s gone off.’

  ‘How long to get ashore?’

  ‘Couple of hours.’

  ‘More like another day. It’s not as close as it looks.’

  ‘Bollocks to that. I’m not spending another bloody day in this boat.’

  So we made one last attempt to row. But we were too weak. And there was little wind, so we had to sit it out and let nature take its course. That was sheer hell, seeing land right in front of us and not being able to reach it. And all the time, as we stared and waited, the land drew closer. By late afternoon we could see green hills and palm trees. They looked so exotic it was breathtaking. Seabirds wheeled and squawked overhead.

  ‘The air smells different,’ someone observed.

  ‘That’s what land smells like.’

  The heady, sweet scent of tropical vegetation was intoxicating and frustrating.

  ‘We’re not going to drift that far before dark,’ I said.

  ‘Yes we will,’ the RAF chap answered.

  The sun went down and blotted out our gorgeous view of palm trees and green hills, toying painfully with our hope. Of all the long nights we’d spent in that God-forsaken boat, that was certainly the longest. No one slept. We were too keyed up, talking about what the next morning might bring.

  During the night we drifted a little closer to shore, but not nearly close enough for our liking. At dawn, the land was right there in full and tantalising view again, yet it still remained beyond our grasp.

  During the afternoon a four-engine flying boat appeared. Many of us wept as it banked and swept around us in a bellowing turn, its wingtip floats just above the water. It was all brilliant silver in the morning sun, and when we saw the Union Jack painted on its fuselage we knew that we were going to be rescued. It was just a matter of how.

  Frail and unsteady as we were, all of us managed to stand up and wave as that majestic machine circled. A figure waved back from one of its windows. Someone grabbed the board with SOS Water marked on it in white lead. Tragically, Laconia’s engineer and bosun were no longer with us to help hold up their sign. The flying boat headed briefly for the land before returning to roar past us like it was on a bombing run. A lifejacket wrapped around a big linen bag like a pillowcase dropped from its hull and splashed into the water just a few yards from our boat. It was a fantastic shot! Unfortunately, the bag broke open as it struck the water, scattering its contents of apples, tomatoes and pears. The wind was up again and the precious fruit bobbed away from us on the choppy waves.

  One of the group from the stern dived over the side, retrieved the bag and two or three pieces of fruit, then swam back to us. When he hauled himself over the gunwale and back into the boat, I was suspicious of his unexpected display of strength after everything we’d been through. Freckles was quick to echo my concern.

  ‘Goodness, how did he have the strength to do that?’ she asked.

  I do believe people played God in that boat. But my doubts were quickly swept aside when someone found a note inside the bag and read it aloud:

  Okay, help coming. You are 60 miles south of Monrovia.

  ‘Anyone know where Monrovia is?’

  ‘Isn’t that in Europe?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very African. Perhaps this isn’t the African coast after all.’

  ‘This is Africa all right.’

  But it wasn’t important. All we cared about was that help was coming. That flying boat was a Godsend, it really was. It thundered over us several more times, then flew off and disappeared, leaving us to drift and wonder aloud.

  ‘Why didn’t they just set down on the water?’

  ‘Too choppy.’

  ‘Who do you think will come and rescue us?’

  ‘A British ship I should think.’

  ‘I don’t want to be on no more bleedin’ ships,’ a sailor said.

  ‘Me either,’ I agreed with feeling.

  ‘If the sea calms down later on, the flying boat might come back.’

  ‘That would be something. Imagine flying away from here on that beautiful aeroplane!’

  By mid-afternoon we could see waves crashing against rocks, sending plumes of white spray into the air and booming in the distance. It didn’t look too safe to me.

  ‘That’s no place for a small boat in among that lot. Getting in there’s going to be tricky,’ I said to another navy bloke. But something had caught his eye.

  ‘I think there’s a beach,’ he said. ‘See? There’s one spot where there’s no spray. That means no rocks.’

  He was right. There was a small white beach between the rocks and a jungle-covered headland. But the breeze swung around to blow offshore and we drifted out to sea again. Our fragile morale crumbled when the sound of the surf disappeared along with our beach and people began cursing. The sea was reluctant to set us free.

  The offshore breeze tormented us for most of the afternoon, and then swung around to blow us back in again. The light was fading and the wind was really stirring up the waves. The boat moved steadily toward the shoreline, the booming of the surf increased and spumes were being flung up by the rocks like white beacons in the gathering darkness. That spray got me very edgy. Then a large wave reared up behind us and we weren’t in a lifeboat anymore, we were in a surfboat! We were really moving. It was all very nerve-wracking, what with the looming darkness, the boat lurching on the big roller beneath us, and the booming of the surf ahead. Everyone was hanging on for dear life. But the sailor at the tiller skillfully kept us pointing at the beach.

  ‘We’re going in!

  ‘Don’t let it broach!’

  Apart from hitting the rocks, broaching was my biggest fear. I had a fleeting vision of us all drowning a few yards from salvation. Then, right underneath my feet, the bow struck sand and another wave caught up with us to slew the boat sideways. The chap at the tiller lost control and the boat pitched upwards and then rolled violently onto its side. We were catapulted into the shallows where the waves were crashing onto the beach. It was mayhem. We were a cursing heap of humanity, tossed out like so much garbage on a tropical beach in the middle of nowhere. Most of us pulled ourselves through the wet sand on our stomachs, just like in the movies. One or two tried to stand up, but tottered about wildly before collapsing into the waves again. We were completely done in. I crawled until I finally felt the sand go dry, and I gave up. I couldn’t move another inch.

  ‘Everyone all right?’

  ‘I don’t believe it. We made it.’

  We lay there for ages in the darkness, trying to comprehend that we were actually on land. My bitten leg was throbbing so badly it felt as if it was going to burst open. I had putrid sores and weeping boils all over me and they were full of coarse sand and shell grit. Even the slightest movement felt like someone was attacking my open wounds with sandpaper. Everyone was moaning and groaning and shivering. I attempted to stand up, pushing myself slowly onto my feet. After almost a month at sea, the beach felt as though it heaved beneath me and I promptly fell like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t even take a single step.

  Gradually we gathered our wits. A few people went back to the boat, which was wallowing on its side in the shallows. They retrieved various bits and pieces, clothes and tins, things like that, and some of our remaining water. Then we decided to stay on the beach until morning, which suited me fine because I knew I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even crawl. So we huddled together for security, knowing we had survived the sea but unsure if we were really safe. The surf boomed in front of us while God knows what lurked in the jungle behind us. I think a few people were already asleep sitting up.

  ‘What’s that?’ an anxious voice suddenly whispered.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I saw a light.’

  That really got our nerves going, but soon we could all see it, a lantern light swinging and swaying along the beach toward us. I can still picture that light and how my imagination ran off into terrifying thoughts of wild savages hunting us down. People of m
y generation grew up believing there were still cannibals in Africa. Then we heard voices speaking a language we didn’t recognise and our desperate band huddled closer together with growing apprehension.

  ‘What’s going to happen here?’ I muttered to Freckles.

  ‘They’re natives, look,’ she said.

  The mysterious group approached and formed a half-circle around us, chattering away to one another and pointing at us in the glaring yellow light of their lantern. They were an imposing bunch, all bulky, muscle-bound Negro men, quite short and stocky with deep brown skin that looked like it had been polished. A few of them had white paint or tattoos on their faces and arms. They were dressed in odd scraps of clothing, a torn shirt here, threadbare trousers there. Some were bare-chested with colourful sarongs wrapped around their lower bodies. One man had an ancient peaked cap perched on his round head. We quickly realised that he was their leader. We could understand a little of what he was saying, with scraps of English all muddled up with his own language.

  Behind him, others were jabbering away and laughing and giggling among themselves, seemingly with relief.

  ‘We cry,’ the big leader bloke said to us. ‘Watch you longa time on water, not reach poor people. Two days cry for you in village.’

  Then there was a hell of a racket as they performed a wild, uninhibited dance in the eerie lantern light on the beach, with our ramshackle boat floundering in the surf behind them. And while they rejoiced around us, we simply sat on the sand and cried our hearts out. It really hit us that we had survived and we were just swamped by a boiling mix of relief, happiness, terrible sadness, pain and illness. A dam wall seemed to have burst inside us. In between our gut-wrenching sobs we drew breath and laughed, then went back to our sobbing.

  When we settled down, someone asked where we were. The leader chap told us we were in West Africa.

  ‘Liberia,’ he said. ‘This place, Liberia.’

  Liberia. Well, bloody hell. What about that, then?

  We really had made it to Africa. Werner Hartenstein didn’t think we would make it, but we’d rowed, sailed and drifted 700 miles in an open boat.

  The leader gave instructions to his men, and one of them approached me with a big grin. Without so much as a word, he slung me over his shoulder as if I was an empty sack. To him I probably was. There wasn’t much left of me, just skin and bone. From his shoulder I noticed the men were in awe of Freckles.

  Maybe they’ve never seen a white woman before.

  One of them approached her with what almost amounted to reverence, stooping down to piggyback her effortlessly. She too was utterly wasted away.

  ‘Stay with white mammy,’ I instructed my chap.

  ‘White mammy, white mammy,’ Freckles’ man echoed. Maybe he thought I was her husband or something, I’m not sure, but he got a good grip on her.

  ‘Walk bare feet very bad,’ the boss man told us. ‘Worms get inside feet for very bad trouble.’

  This seemed odd because he and his band were barefoot, but we gathered there were parasites in the soil that would invade any splits or sores in the soles of our feet. Many of us had been barefoot throughout the voyage and our feet were in a very bad state, so I was pretty pleased to be hanging over the shoulders of one of those burly blokes. Others who were too weak to walk also got picked up and carried. Those who still wore the remnants of their shoes and socks hobbled along on weakened, unsteady legs.

  The boss led the way from the beach, holding up his lantern as he followed a narrow path through the jungle. All I could see was the strong, confident feet of the bloke carrying me, but I felt damp jungle foliage brushing against my head and feet. I could hear the strident chirping of crickets or cicadas. And the crashing surf faded until there was just the excited chatter of the Negroes and the groans of their exhausted cargo. We went through the jungle for what seemed a long time. The humidity was stifling away from the coast.

  Then we emerged from the narrow jungle path into an African village that looked for all the world like the set from one of those old Saturday matinee Tarzan adventures. When I lifted my head I felt certain I had died and moved on to another world, a strange new place where I would start my life again as someone else. There was an open square and a number of small straw huts arranged in a semi-circle, with cooking fires and tall flame sticks burning in front of them. Pungent wood smoke hung in the heavy, humid air. Shy women and children emerged from the darkness to watch our pathetic little procession stagger into their lives.

  Our rescuers carried us to a raised platform in a huge communal shelter at the centre of the village square. It had a straw roof but no walls, I guess for ventilation in the suffocating heat. We just collapsed there, a heap of spent humanity, some of us barely conscious. A crowd of villagers gathered around to stare at us. We must have looked ghastly in the flickering light of their flame sticks. We were wet from the surf, caked in salt and covered in sores. We were as alien to them as they were to us. The women had colourful designs painted on their bodies. I was ignorant of other cultures then, and felt a little intimidated, unsure of what they had in mind.

  Those people were absolutely marvellous to us. After they had satisfied their initial curiosity, they brought us all kinds of fruit and some coconut milk. I couldn’t face any of it. My body, I’m sure, was very close to packing up completely. It had grown accustomed to not having food and was feeding on itself, eating the life out of me from the inside. I drank a few mouthfuls of the water from the lifeboat, nothing more. I don’t think anyone else ate or drank much, either. Our tongues were too swollen and our mouths too sore to chew on anything.

  Everything was a blur after that. I half heard a few of our group talking with the head man, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. And a deafening downpour set in, which only added to my confusion. It absolutely belted down and poured off the hut’s straw roof like a waterfall. Instead of cooling the air down, though, it seemed to get hotter and stickier, making it hard to breath. Then swarms of mosquitoes attacked us. Their bites were ferocious and unrelenting. I just lay on that platform listening to the rain and little scraps of meaningless conversation. Then I sank into a deep, black void, the sleep of the near-dead.

  The next morning was like waking up in some extra­ordinary lost age, a forgotten time from another century. Strangely, it was the quietness that woke me. The village seemed to be holding its breath. There was no sound, no movement. For a month the mournful sound of Atlantic waves against the hull of our wooden boat had been the background to our misery, and the sudden absence of sound and motion made me feel uneasy and off balance. The sensation gradually passed as the village stirred and, although it all seemed unreal, it was extremely beautiful to watch.

  It got light very slowly because the sky was like lead, still swollen with dark, brooding rain clouds. I smiled when a cockerel crowed; we were part of civilisation again. The war and all its horror seemed remote and the utter simplicity of the timeless place was extremely pleasant. Dogs emerged to sniff and scratch their way around the village. People came out of the smaller huts to light cooking fires. Except for small children with swollen bellies, who peered at us from a little way off, the villagers no longer payed attention to the sorry collection of survivors in their communal hut. The smell of damp wood burning reached me through the open sides of the long hut, mixing with the rich scent of steaming tropical vegetation. And soon I could smell food cooking, but there were still no stirrings of hunger inside me.

  Then my mind slipped out of gear and a dreamy, soothing peace came over me. I was aware of plans being made around me, of people talking and moving about, but I was unable to participate. It was more than just a vague detachment. I was in another place altogether. I’ve read descriptions of so-called out-of-body experiences, and it was a little like that in some ways. There was a peculiar sense of being there while seeing and hearing everything from afar. I wasn’t hallucinating like I had in the boat, but I was certainly adrift. I could feel, yet was numb at th
e same time.

  I heard little snatches of the conversation between the village headman and a few of our group, something about a trading post further along the coast. A name, Grand Bassa, was repeated a number of times. Then a group of Negro men led a few of the more able survivors out of the village. The rest of us watched them go from our positions on the platform.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Freckles asked me. I couldn’t answer.

  Later, in the afternoon, a native runner brought a letter to the headman, who then came and talked to us in a very excited way.

  ‘Boats coming from Bassa,’ I heard him say.

  I had no idea what this meant, so I continued to lie there while a flurry of activity started up around me. Our group was getting up, collecting meagre possessions and preparing themselves to move on. I couldn’t work out why they would want to do that. I just watched them. I must have seemed totally useless. Well, I was. Then one of the village men came to me and, smiling all the time, gently helped me to my feet. He knew I couldn’t walk so he hoisted me onto his back. Another man stooped to carry Freckles piggyback.

  They took us back to the beach where we’d landed the night before. Our boat was still there, tipped on its side with the surf rolling in against the peeling grey paint and filthy weed and barnacles that encrusted the hull. It was a shambles, and very sad to see. I had no great affection for it, but it had seen us safely to Africa.

  We sat on the beach for what seemed like ages. Then a fleet of native outrigger canoes came gliding along the coast. They had tall, majestic sails that made me wonder if I was in some kind of nautical heaven. When the chap who had carried me to the beach picked me up again and waded powerfully into the water toward them, it finally sank in that those big canoes had come to collect us. I didn’t want to get in an open boat again, but it was completely out of my hands.

  I was lifted into one of the canoes and sat facing the stern as several Negro crewmen mucked about with the giant sail towering over me. There was a lot of singing and shouting and good humour, like they were making a festive occasion of it. I didn’t feel too festive, though. Being in that canoe brought old fears rushing back, and I started panicking. The hull was nothing more than a hollowed-out tree trunk with curved branches for outriggers. It was just wide enough for one person to sit between the gunwales and it rode so low that water was slopping in over the sides.