White teeth grinned. 'You okay now, sar.'
'I can't be,' I said.
'Jolly good, sar.'
Red darkness came.
I had set off to sail over a thousand miles to Australia in an open boat. I had barely managed to make two hundred, and most of that in the wrong direction.
The date was May 3rd, 1941. I had been at sea for about a hundred and fifty hours. It was three months since the Destruction of Singapore by the Third Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Aerial Navy.
2.
The Destruction of Singapore
It had been a Utopia of sorts, which the Japanese destroyed.
Designed as a model for other great settlements which would in the future spring up throughout the East, Singapore's white graceful skyscrapers, her systems of shining monorails, her complex of smoothly-run airparks, had been lovingly laid out as an example to our Empire's duskier citizens of the benefits which British rule would eventually bring them.
And Singapore was burning. I am probably the last European to have witnessed her destruction.
After serving on the Portuguese aerial freighter, Palmerin, for a couple of months, I took several berths for single voyages, usually filling in for sick men, or men on leave, until I found myself in Rangoon without any chance of a job. I ran out of money in Rangoon and was willing to begin any kind of employment, even considered enlisting as a private in the army, when I was told by one of my bar acquaintances of a mate's position which had become vacant the night before.
'Chap was killed in a fight in Shari's house,' he said, nodding down the street. 'The skipper started the fight. He's not offering good money, but it could get you somewhere better than Rangoon, eh?'
'Indeed.'
'He's just over there? Want to meet him?'
I agreed. And that was how I came, eventually, to Singapore, though not in the ship on which I had signed.
A greasy Greek merchantman, the Andreas Papadakis, from some disgusting Cypriot port, trading in any marginally lucrative cargo which more fastidious captains would reject, had originally been bound for Bangkok when her engines had given out during an electrical storm which also affected our wireless telephone. We had drifted for two days, trying to make repairs aloft and losing two of our
Crew in the process, by the time the old windbag began to sag badly in the middle and drift towards the ground.
The Papadakis was not much suited to rough weather of any kind and could not be relied upon in even a minor crisis. The gondola cables and our steering cables both were badly in need of repair and we should have waited our moment and come down over water if we hoped for any chance of landing without serious damage, but by now the captain was drunk on retsina and refused to listen to my advice, while the rest of the crew, a mixed bunch of cut-throats from most parts of the Adriatic, were in a panic. I did my best to persuade the captain to let go our remaining gas, but he told me he knew best. The result was that we had begun to drop rapidly as we neared the coast of the Malay Peninsula, the Andreas Papadakis groaning and complaining the whole time and threatening to come apart at the seams.
She shivered and trembled in every section as the captain stared blearily through the forward ports and began, it seemed to me, to argue in Greek with the powers of Fate, on whom he blamed the entire disaster. It was as if he thought he could talk or soothe his way out of the inevitable fact. I kept my hands on the wheel, praying to sight a lake or at least a river, but we were heading over dense jungle. I remember a mass of waving green branches, an appalling screech of metal and wood as they met, a blow to my ribs, which knocked me backwards into the arms of the captain who must have died muttering some wretched Cypriot remonstration.
He saved my life, as it happened, by cushioning my own fall and breaking his back. I came to once or twice while I was being pulled from the wreckage, but only really regained my senses when I woke up in St Mary's Hospital, Changi, Singapore. I had a few broken bones, which were mending, some minor internal injuries, which had been tended to, and I would soon be recovered, thanks to the Airshipmen's Distress Fund, which had paid for my medical, treatment and the period during which I would recuperate.
I had been lucky. There were only two other survivors. Five more had died in one of the native hospitals to which they had been taken.
While I rested, somewhat relieved not to be worrying about work and glad to be in Singapore, where there was every chance of finding decent employment, I began to read about the tensions growing between several of the Great Powers. Japan was disputing territory with Russia. The Russians, even though they were now a republic, had almost as much imperial determination as the Japs. However, we knew nothing of the War until the night of February 22nd, 1941: the night of the attack by Japan's Third Fleet: the night when a British dream of Utopia was destroyed perhaps forever.
We were trying to escape what was left of the colony. An ambulance ship was moored to an improvised mast and the vessel all but filled the blackened, ruined grounds of St Mary's: a huge airship silhouetted against a sky which was ruby red with the flames of a thousand fires. The scene was surreal. I think of it today as the flight from Sodom and Gomorrah, but in Noah's Ark! Tiny figures of patients and staff rushed, panic-stricken, into the vessel's swollen belly while everywhere overhead moved monstrous, implacable Japanese flying ironclads. They had come suddenly, mindless beasts of the upper regions, to seed Singapore with their incendiary spawn.
Our resistance had been impotent. Far away a few searchlight beams wandered about the sky, sometimes showing a dense cloud of smoke from which could be glimpsed a section of one of the vast aerial men-o'-war. Then the three remaining anti-aircraft guns would boom and send up shells, which either missed or exploded harmlessly against the side of the attacking craft. There were several of our monoplanes still buzzing through the blackness at speeds of over four hundred miles an hour, firing uselessly into hulls stronger than steel. They were picked off by tracer bullets shrieking from armored gun-gondolas. I saw a hover gyro whirl like a frightened humming bird out of the flames, and then it, too, was struck by magnesium bullets and went spinning into the flaming chaos below.
Our ship was not the latest type. Few hospital ships ever were. The cigar-shaped hull protecting the gasbags was of strong boron-fiberglass, but the two-tiered gondola below was more vulnerable. This gondola contained crew and passenger accommodation, engines, fuel and ballast tanks, and into it we were packing as many human beings as we could. I, of course, almost fully recovered, was helping the doctors and medical staff.
Without much hope of the ship's being able to get away, I helped carry stretchers up one of the two folding staircases lowered from the bowels of the ship. This in itself was a hard enough task, for the vessel was insecurely anchored and it swayed and strained at the dozen or so steel cables holding it to the ground.
The last terrified patient was packed in and the last nurses, carrying bundles of blankets and medical supplies, hurried aboard while airmen unpegged the gangways so they could be folded back into the ship. The stairs began to bounce like a cakewalk at a fair as, with the riggers, I managed to climb into the ship, losing my footing several times, shaken so much I felt my body would fall to pieces.
Suddenly several incendiary bombs struck the hospital at once. The darkness exploded with shouting flame. More bombs burst in the grounds, but incredibly none hit the airship direct. For a moment I was blinded by brilliant silver light and a wave of intense heat struck my face and hands.
From somewhere above I heard the captain shout 'Let slip!' even before the gangway was fully raised.
I clutched and found a handrail, dropped the box I had been carrying and desperately tried to grope my way up the few final rungs before I should be crushed by the automatically closing steps. My vision returned quickly and I saw the cables lashing as if in fury at having to release their grip on the ship.
And then I stood on the embarkation platform itself and my immediate danger was past.
The Crash
Not much later I sighted the large conglomeration of tightly crowded together buildings, which was the port of Surabaya. A busy city of mixed European and Malayan architecture, it was one of the few big ports to survive the decline of conventional shipping in favor of the air-going cargo vessels. Its harbor was still crammed with steamers and the whole place looked unnaturally peaceful in the early morning light. I felt an irrational surge of jealousy, a desire that Surabaya too might one-day experience what Singapore had experienced. What right had this dirty, ugly port to survive when a mighty monument to a humane and idealistic Empire had perished in flames?
I pushed these dreadful ideas from my head. In a few more moments we should be crashing into the sea. Without power of any kind, the ship was going to have great difficulty in landing short of the harbor itself.
The whole vessel suddenly shuddered and I called for the staff to stand by as some patients began to moan questions or whimper in fear. The ship turned and began to drift in a clumsy, barely controlled maneuver and I lost sight of the town altogether. I saw only a stream launch surging over the waves and turning to follow us, leaving a white scar in the sea. There came a peculiar creaking and groaning from overhead as if some unusual strain had been placed on the gasbags and the hull containing them.
We began to drop.
A wailing went up from the patients then and we did our best to reassure them that everything was in order and that soon they would be in safe hospital beds in Surabaya.
I saw the sea shoot up to meet us, and then retreat again. We began to move in a series of shuddering leaps as if riding a gigantic switchback. Somewhere a whole collection of crockery smashed to the deck and it was all I could do to hold myself upright by the safety rail.
And then, to my horror, I saw the roofs of the city below. Our gondola was almost scraping the highest of the buildings as we sped over them. We had missed the sea altogether and were traveling rapidly inland! The captain had left his decision until it was too late.
I heard the intercom buzz and then came the first officer's strained tones. A sudden strong following wind had blown up just as we were about to descend and this had completely thrown out everyone's calculations. The captain intended to try to take the ship right across the island and land in the sea near Djogjakarta, which was the nearest town we were likely to reach, considering the present direction of the wind. However, a lot of gas had already been valved out and we might not be able to gain enough height. In that event we must be prepared for a crash-landing on the ground.
I well knew what that would mean. The ship was considerably overburdened. If she fell from the sky to the land there was every chance we should all be killed.
A patient, wakened from sedation by the first officer's voice, screamed in alarm. A nurse hurried to soothe him.
The ship shivered and her nose came up sharply so that the deck tilted at a steep angle. Then the nose dipped and a few objects not secured began to slide down towards the bow. I jammed my foot against the rail. Through the ports I saw a Dutch flying boat follow us as if trying to make out the reason for our change of plan. Then, perhaps despairing of us, it turned back towards the sea.
Surabaya was behind us. Below us now lay a wide expanse of neat rice paddies, rows of tamarind trees and fields of tall sugar cane. We were so low that I could make out the heads of peasants looking up at us as our shadow moved across their fields. Then I was thrown against the rail as a fresh gust of wind caught the ship and slewed round again, revealing the kapok plantations on the slopes of Java's grim volcanic hillsides.
I thought we were bound to crash into the hills, for they were rising steeply and were beginning to turn into the gray flanks of mountains. From some of these drifted wisps of yellowish white smoke. Instinctively I braced myself, but we just managed to cross the first line of mountains. And ahead I could see denser clouds of pale gray smoke, coiling and boiling like a tangle of lazy serpents.
The ship jerked her nose up again and we ascended a few feet. The damaged tail planes caused us to make a crazy zigzag over the landscape and I could see our elongated shadow moving erratically below. Then our motion steadied, but it seemed inevitable to me that we must soon crash into one of the many semi-active volcanoes, which dominated Java's interior.
I was unprepared for the next lurch and I lost my grip on the rail as we started to go up rapidly. Clambering to my feet I saw that the ship had released her water ballast. It sprayed like a sudden rainstorm over the dusty slopes of the mountains. Perhaps, after all, we would make the sea on the other side.
But a few moments later the captain's voice came through the loudspeakers. It was calm enough under the circumstances. It told us that we were going to have to lighten the ship as much as possible. We were to make ready all non-essential materials and the crew would collect them from us in a couple of minutes.
Frantically we stumbled about the ward gathering up everything, which could be thrown overboard. Eventually we had handed to the airshipmen a great pile of books, food, medical supplies, clothing, bedding, oxygen cylinders and more. All went overboard.
And the ship rose barely enough to clear the next range of mountains.
I wondered if the captain would ask for volunteers to jump from the ship next. We were by this time flying over a bleak and barren wasteland of cold lava ridges, with not so much as a clump of palms to break our descent should we crash. The tension in the wards had increased again and those patients not still asleep were talking in high, panicky voices.
Some of the questions were difficult to answer. Among the 'non-essential' materials taken from us had been the bodies of those who had died in transit.
But even this act of desperate callousness had bought us very little time.
The intercom crackled again. The first officer began to speak.
'Please ready yourselves for - Oh, God!'
The next moment I saw the gray mountainside rushing towards us and before we fully realized it, we were engulfed in clouds of white-white smoke and our keel was making a frightful screaming sound as it scraped the sides of the cliff.
The screams of the patients joined the scream of the ship itself. I heard a monstrous creaking noise and then I was flung away from the rail and felt myself sliding towards the bunks.
The vessel bounced and juddered, seemed to gain height for a moment and then came down with a horrifying crack, which sent the bunks crashing loose from their moorings. I had the impression of waving arms and legs, of terrified faces. I heard trays of instruments clattering and saw bodies flying about like rag dolls. A great wail filled my ears and then the ship rolled, went up again and came down for the last time. In a flailing mass of bodies I was flung towards the starboard side. I saw my head rushing towards a fiberglass strut near the observation ports. I tried to put out my hands to stop the impact, but the bodies and objects on top of me trapped them. There came the final crash of impact and I remember being filled with an almost cheerful sense of relief that I had been killed and the ordeal was over at last.
4.
Prisoners
I think I must have awakened briefly once and heard peculiar squeaky voices babbling from somewhere far away and I realized that the hydrogen was escaping and thus causing the speakers to talk in high-pitched tones. Deciding that I was alive and sure to be rescued, I fell back into unconsciousness.
When I next awoke I tried to move but could not. I thought that perhaps my back was broken, for there was little sensation save for the impression that something heavy was pressing down on me.
Because of this pressure I found it very difficult to breathe in deeply enough to shout for the help that I was sure must be near, for I could hear people moving about quite close by.
The voices were no longer squeaky but they were not familiar either. I listened carefully. The voices were shouting some variant of Malay difficult for me to understand. I thought at first that the local peasantry, the sulphur ga
therers who work the volcanoes, had come to rescue us. I could smell the acrid smoke and it made breathing even harder. My next attempt to cry out failed. Then I heard more shouts.
And the shouts were followed by sharp reports, which I did recognize. Gun shots.
With a feeling of terrible impotence I tried to move my head to see what was happening.
The shouting stopped. There was stillness. Then a thin, hysterical scream. Another shot. Silence. A Malay voice giving rapid, savage commands.
Painfully, at last, I managed to turn my head and peer out of a jumble of twisted struts and wreckage. I saw bodies impaled on jagged shards of fiberglass and beyond them a pall of smoke through which dim figures moved. As the smoke cleared I saw bright flashes of green, red and yellow
Silk. These Malays were not sulphur-gatherers that were certain.
Then I saw them clearly. They were clad in the familiar style of Malay bandits and pirates from Koto Raja to Timor. They wore richly colored sarongs and embroidered jackets. On their heads were pitjis, turbans or wide coolie hats. There were sandals of painted leather on their brown feet and their bodies were crossed with bandoliers of cartridges. At their belts hung bolstered revolvers, knives and parangs and they had rifles in their hands. I saw one come towards me, a look of cruel hatred frozen on his features. I dropped my head and shut my eyes, hearing him poke about in the wreckage above me. I heard a shot close to my face and thought he had fired at me, but the bullet landed in a corpse lying on top of me. He moved away.
I looked up again.
The bandits were herding the survivors down the mountain. Through the smoke I could see nurses in smudged, torn white uniforms, doctors still dressed in medical overalls or in shirtsleeves, airshipmen in sky blue, staggering ahead of their captors. But there were no patients among them. I watched in dazed despair until the smoke swallowed them up.
The Steel Tsar Page 2