by Peter Watt
There was a sudden stir amongst the Chinese fighters. The leader of the escort party, a tough, battle-scarred man who had lost three fingers on one hand, was signalling to his men to be on alert. Karl immediately drew his revolver and scanned the clump of rainforest trees that provided their protection.
Pham glanced over his shoulder and mouthed to Karl, ‘Japs.’
The sentries posted on an outer perimeter had spotted the patrol of seven Japanese soldiers wandering towards the trees across a rice paddy. It was obvious from their relaxed manner that they were not expecting trouble; their arms were slung and they were chatting amongst themselves. However, if they continued into the trees they might easily walk straight into them.
Karl slid over to Pham. ‘What in hell do we do now?’ he whispered.
‘The Chinese have orders to draw off the Japs,’ Pham said, straining to spot the approaching patrol. ‘You and I will slip past them and make it to the village.’
‘Good plan,’ Karl nodded, looking over at the Chinese guerrilla leader urgently signalling to his men to take up fighting positions.
Karl could now hear the chatter of the Japanese soldiers and within seconds he saw the first break through the foliage, almost on top of them. The first soldier was followed by a second and third before the gunfire erupted. The first target to be killed was the soldier carrying the radio set and another burst of fire destroyed the link to their HQ.
‘Now!’ Pham said, rising to his feet and sprinting in a crouch through the trees.
Jack followed, gripping his pistol and hearing the exchange of gunfire behind them. In his haste, he tripped on a tree root, falling heavily, his pistol wrenched from his hand by the impact. He rolled onto his back and, to his horror, saw a young Japanese soldier standing only a couple of feet away. Karl could see the young soldier’s fear and confusion. He must have become separated from the rest of his patrol, but he still had his rifle. His eyes widened at the sight of the big man lying defenceless at his feet and, despite his obvious terror, the soldier raised the rifle to his shoulder and took quick aim at Karl.
The stutter of a light machine gun rent the air and the soldier’s expression changed. The bullets from Pham’s Sten had missed but the shot from the Japanese soldier’s rifle had gone wild, throwing up a small spout of dirt next to Karl’s head. Karl did not hesitate but used all his strength to hurl himself to his feet and straight at the young soldier, who was attempting to chamber another round. Karl knocked the man from his feet and smashed his fist into his face. Then, without hesitating, he drew back his hand and slammed the edge of his knuckles into the soldier’s throat. The young soldier gagged, his eyes bulging, and tried to call out. Karl reached for the finely honed commando knife he carried under his clothes and plunged it deeply into the man’s chest, burying it to the hilt. Blood gushed from the dying soldier’s lips and the life faded from his eyes.
With some effort, Karl withdrew the deadly knife and looked up to see Pham standing a couple of feet away.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, wiping the blade on a tree root. Pham had saved him from certain death and for that Karl was very grateful indeed.
‘Hurry,’ Pham said, turning and hurrying away.
Retrieving his revolver, Karl followed. He was in the Frenchman’s debt now. He would not forget that Pham could have left him to his fate and made for the coast by himself. From there he could have continued with his own mission, but instead he had chosen to save Karl.
Behind them they could hear the continuing sporadic gunfire of the skirmish and Karl realised that the guerrillas were drawing the enemy away from them.
The two men hid themselves outside the village until night fell; then Pham led the way to his contact, whose store was at the edge of the small settlement. They were met by a frightened old man, who ushered them inside.
‘Jap man everywhere,’ he said, glancing around furtively. His store was stocked with a meagre supply of rice bags, trade goods and herbal medicines. ‘Soon they come here.’
Karl knew that the Japanese exacted a bloody and cruel toll on the Chinese population suspected of assisting in acts of sabotage. They were putting this old man and his family in peril.
‘Is the boat ready?’ Pham asked, seemingly oblivious to the old man’s dread.
‘Yes, boat ready. My son will take you across the Gulf.’
‘Good,’ Pham responded. ‘We will go now.’
Relieved, the Chinese trader closed his door and led the two men through the deserted streets to the beach, where a large motorised fishing boat lay at anchor a little way offshore. He signalled with a kerosene lantern, and a small dinghy was launched and rowed to where they stood waiting. A young Chinese man gestured for Karl and Pham to climb aboard and the two men were rowed in silence to the waiting boat.
Aboard, they were met by two other men, who helped them onto the deck. Even in the dark Karl felt uneasy as he recognised Malay being spoken. He had been briefed that the Malay people were mostly pro-Japanese and known to betray escaping prisoners of war.
‘They are Chinese,’ the son of the merchant said, seeing his discomfort. ‘We speak Malay as well as English. I learn from my father, who had good business with the English before the war.’
Reassured, Karl found a secure spot amongst the fishing nets and settled back to snatch some badly needed sleep. But as he dozed off under a brilliantly clear sky, the image of the terrified young Japanese soldier dying with Karl’s knife buried in his chest snapped him back into wakefulness. Karl rubbed his eyes. He had personally killed many Japanese but he sensed that this one would haunt him for the rest of his life. The soldier had been so young and so afraid. It was the first time he had seen a Japanese soldier as a human being, just as frightened of dying in some foreign country as he was. He cursed, settling back to close his eyes, knowing that sleep would elude him this night.
*
Sister Megan Cain loved her work in the Medical Air Evacuation Transport Unit. Her role as an evacuation nurse with the RAAF meant saving lives and that’s why she had become a nurse in the first place. She was standing aboard the twin-engined transport plane; racks of seriously ill and wounded soldiers ran along each side of the cramped interior of the aircraft. She was the only nurse on this flight and she had six patients in her care, one of whom was particularly special to her, as he was the air force doctor who had saved her life when she had been struck with scrub typhus in the heavily forested region of the island they had been working from, transporting patients to hospitals in Milne Bay and Port Moresby.
Flight Lieutenant Charles Crawford lay on his back, sweating and feverish. A fellow physician had diagnosed dengue fever and ordered his evacuation to Port Moresby. Crawford was a handsome man in his mid-thirties, and before the war he had had a prosperous practice in Sydney’s Macquarie Street.
Megan felt the bumps and shudders as the aircraft fought the hot thermals coming up from the tropical land over which they were flying. Dr Crawford moaned and Megan placed a cool, damp cloth on his forehead – it was all she could do while they were in transit. In his delirious state the doctor reached out and caught her hand. Hoping that none of her other patients would require her attention, she remained by him until he relaxed his grip and let her go.
Megan stood back, feeling guilty. She knew from the other nurses’ gossip that Dr Crawford was a divorced man with no children. Apparently his socialite wife had left him for another man when he had enlisted. He was a tragic and romantic figure to the nurses who worked with him, and Megan knew him to be a gentle, caring man who was highly regarded for his professional skill. It had been he who had quickly diagnosed Megan when she’d become ill, and it had been he who had held her hand during the feverish hours when it seemed possible she might die. After her recovery she had noticed his looks of interest and had felt herself return that interest. Megan had to acknowledge the fact that she was strongly attracted to the doctor and that only made her feel more guilty about Lukas.
‘S
ister,’ croaked a young soldier with malaria. ‘Could I have some water, please?’
Megan retrieved a bottle of chlorinated water for her patient, who half-sat up to drink the bitter liquid. She held his head so that he could sip the water and found herself thinking about Lukas. Worse still, she found herself comparing Lukas with Charles Crawford.
The two men were so different. Lukas could have honourably returned to Australia years earlier after his service with his father’s regiment, but he had opted to stay on in the dangerous job of running the gauntlet of enemy naval and air forces to resupply isolated positions in the islands. He was very much like his father – a fearless fighter who would have been at home with the old pirates of yore – and that was very much his appeal. Megan suspected that Lukas was more interested in fighting than settling down. Since that terrible day when she had miscarried their baby, something had changed in their relationship. Megan no longer felt close to Lukas and without real intimacy their relationship could not heal from their loss. When Megan felt she could not stand her grief, Charles had been the one to comfort her. And she had found in him the support she so desperately needed.
Charles was an established and successful doctor, handsome and rumoured to be very well off; he was steady and reliable, and not in the least likely to get bored with family life after the first shine had worn off. Megan knew that Charles would stand by her; no matter what happened. More than that, however, she had strong feelings for him and sensed that the two of them would be happy and content together. After this war was over, Megan wanted a quiet life; she’d had more than enough of her share of adventures. Somehow, though, she suspected Lukas would be bored by that.
The aircraft hit another thermal and the water from the bottle splashed over her young soldier. She went to apologise but he smiled weakly.
‘That’s all right, sister,’ he said. ‘Saves me having a bath when we get to Moresby.’
She smiled back and felt a lump in her throat. She had seen so many young men mutilated or sick beyond hope who had never complained of their condition. They were just glad to see a smiling female face and feel a soft hand on their brows before they died. She was, to her patients, the mother, wife or lover they would never see again.
Within the hour the Moresby airfield loomed under the transport aircraft and the undercarriage touched down on the hot surface. Megan gave instructions as her patients were lifted from the aircraft to be conveyed to the hospital. As she watched Charles Crawford being wheeled into the ambulance she knew she had made a hard decision. She loved Lukas but she understood deep in her heart that their relationship had changed. They wanted different things from life and he couldn’t be the husband and father of her children that she needed. Now she had to tell him, which was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life.
*
The Riverside ploughed its way through the tropical waters without incident. The engine thumped away as regular as a heartbeat. Lukas had been able to locate firing tables for the mortar, which he studied carefully, attempting to memorise critical elevations and traverses for the tubelike weapon he had once heard his father refer to as an ‘educated drainpipe’; an expression he had picked up in the trenches of the last war.
‘We’re about a day from the target area,’ Mel Jones grunted, wiping oil from his hands with a dirty rag and looking over Lukas’s shoulder at the firing tables. ‘You reckon you’ll do any good with the tube?’
‘Hope so,’ Lukas replied. ‘It’s the only artillery support we’re going to have on this crazy mission.’
‘Speaking of being crazy,’ Mel said, tucking the oily rag in his waistband. ‘Here comes your old man.’
When Lukas looked up he noticed for the first time how grey his father’s hair was becoming.
‘Got it all worked out?’ Jack asked with a smile.
‘We’ll find out when I drop the first bomb down the tube,’ Lukas answered, closing the tables. ‘Mel says we’re about a day from the village.’
Jack was suddenly serious and he squatted down on the deck beside his son.
‘That means you will have to steer a course to put us east of the village,’ he said. ‘We will have to find a secure place to land and then make our way on foot to the village. We’ll need to carry out a recon before launching our raid.’
‘Do you have a plan?’ Lukas asked.
‘I will have one, as soon as I carry out the recon,’ Jack replied. ‘We can’t just barge in firing from the hip or the Nips might kill their prisoners. Private Rabasumbi will go with me on the recon while the rest of the section will remain with you, guarding the boat. When we return I will issue orders.’ Jack was suddenly distracted by something. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, reaching forward to touch a small leather pouch hanging from a leather strip around his son’s neck.
‘I keep Megan’s engagement ring in it,’ Lukas answered self-consciously. ‘It’s a kind of good-luck token.’
Jack nodded his understanding. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said gently. ‘I’m your dad, and it’s my job to look after you, remember that.’ Lukas felt his father’s strong hand on his shoulder. ‘I only have one son, and he is bloody precious to me.’ Lukas could hear the emotion in his father’s voice. ‘But what you and I are doing is a family thing. Ilsa shares our blood.’
‘I know, Dad,’ Lukas said, touched and surprised by his father’s uncharacteristic display of emotion. ‘You and I will get her back – no matter what.’
Jack took his hand off his son’s shoulder and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. ‘Bloody sun makes your eyes water,’ he said.
*
Lukas took the helm for the last leg up the coast, seeking out a safe place to anchor. The sun was low on the horizon but night was still an hour away when one of Jack’s PIB men shouted from the bow. He had spotted something and Jack hurried forward with his binoculars.
A native canoe manned by two men came into view.
‘Probably out fishing,’ Jack said to Corporal Gari, who had taken up a position next to him. ‘Better to get to them before they reach shore and alert any Japs in the area.’ He turned to Lukas and beckoned towards the canoe, now making its way to the shore.
Lukas opened up the throttle and the Riverside strained to run down the fleeing canoe. Within a few minutes they had overtaken the two terrified New Guinean men in the canoe. Jack could see a couple of large fish at their feet. He yelled to them to stop and the two frightened men automatically raised their hands in surrender. Jack spoke to them in pidgin and the men responded in the same language.
‘Are there Japanese soldiers in your village?’ Jack asked after ascertaining where they were from. They both said yes and that the Japanese were bad men.
Jack knew that the New Guineans would have said the same about them had positions been reversed.
‘Don’t trust them,’ Corporal Gari growled, fingering the trigger on the Bren gun trained on the helpless men. ‘We should kill them now, before they can row to the village and warn the Japanese.’
Jack considered this proposition. It was war and these men were a threat to his mission. ‘I will give you men two shillings each if you row back that way and only return to your village in one day’s time,’ he said, retrieving two silver coins from his pocket and holding them up for examination. ‘If you return any earlier, I will kill you.’
The two fishermen did not need to consider the conditions of the bargain, saying straightaway that they would prefer the money.
‘Do the Japanese men have any white prisoners?’ Jack asked, still holding the coins.
‘One man they behead,’ one of the fishermen answered, licking his lips. ‘They have a white woman still.’
Jack felt his heart skip a beat. Ilsa was still alive, or had been when the men had left the village early that morning to fish. Jack continued questioning the men and learned how many Japanese he was up against; they told him that the Japanese were dissatisfied with being left behind. T
hey could not tell Jack much more, and he would still have to carry out his reconnaissance of the village. Jack threw the money down to the two men, who eagerly caught it and just as eagerly pushed off, paddling as fast as they could in the direction Jack had indicated.
‘They will betray us,’ Corporal Gari muttered in disgust.
‘I don’t think so,’ Jack said, noting the ripples of tide close in shore. ‘The wind and tide are against them, and it will take at least two days for them to return if they continue in the direction I told them to go.’
Corporal Gari gazed after the canoe and nodded with grim satisfaction.
*
‘Petty Officer Fuji!’ Lieutenant Yoshi bellowed. ‘Report to me immediately.’
Fuji scrambled to put on his shirt and trousers. In the bunk beside his own, Oshiro was still sleeping, recovering from his ordeal days earlier. Fuji had been able to take his friend’s shifts without their commanding officer noticing, but the double duties had taken a toll on him and he was groggy as he slipped on his boots.
Stumbling outside into the rain, Fuji covered the short distance between his hut and that of his commanding officer. He climbed up the steps and stood outside the entrance, awaiting further orders.
‘Come in, Petty Officer,’ Lieutenant Yoshi commanded.
Fuji entered the room and bowed at the waist in the most respectful manner he could.
‘I have had a message from naval headquarters. We are finally to be rid of our prisoner today,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Now we can get on with serving our Emperor in the way we were trained and not as mere gaolers. It is your duty to prepare the woman for handover.’ He then went on to explain what Fuji must do.