by Peter Watt
Donald did not reply. He knew the comment was a way of reminding him why he had agreed to cooperate with the representative of the Australian government sitting at the table with him. Donald had not wanted to act as the intermediary between Sergeant Jessica Duffy and the government contact, as he had been in love with Jessica before the war. He had convinced himself it was all over when she had taken vows as a Catholic nun, but she had unexpectedly reappeared in his life the year before – and she was no longer a nun.
‘Does Curtin think we might still be under threat from invasion?’ Donald asked, forcing his thoughts away from Jessica.
‘He does,’ Saxby replied. ‘But he feels that the outcome of a clash in the Bismarck Sea might decide the future. If we win he feels that the Japs will be forced to concede any real hope of remaining in New Guinea. It is vital that the PM has all the intelligence coming out of MacArthur’s HQ.’
‘You know what you ask of Sergeant Duffy is dangerous,’ Donald cautioned.
‘I believe that she is a patriotic Australian and as such accepts the risks,’ Saxby said. ‘We all have to make sacrifices.’
Donald looked at the well-fed public servant with contempt. Saxby was not risking his life; he led a safe and comfortable existence. Donald did too, but he felt guilt for his own protected role in Australia. He was fit enough to serve in the armed forces but his father had ensured his job had been classified as essential, exempting him from military service. As time had gone on Donald had come to accept that his father had been right. Donald had been instrumental in the organisation of provisions for the American allies sent to Australia. It was true that this had proved to be extremely lucrative, but it was still an essential role. Nothing was black and white in his world, and it was in the grey areas that the Macintosh financial empire thrived.
The two men ate the sandwiches of devon and tomato sauce when they were placed before them, and Donald was glad that he would be going home to a hearty steak at the end of the day, washed down with a bottle of good champagne.
Saxby finished his tea and sandwiches, reached for his hat and bid Donald a good day, leaving the young man to consider his upcoming meeting with Jessica Duffy. He was fortunate that Olivia Barrington, the woman who had shared his bed, had been posted back to the United States in her role as a Red Cross nurse. It made life less complicated if he did not have to lie about who he was meeting in Brisbane. They had parted more friends than lovers, and both knew the affair had run its course.
*
The heat of the tropical day shimmered like water across the hard-packed earthen airstrip where Pilot Officer Charles Huntley’s twin-engine Beaufighter was parked, ready for action. Milne Bay was not Charles’s choice of postings as it took him far from the comforts of his old life in Sydney. As he sat in the shade of his tent he held a letter that made the terrible isolation even harder to bear: he was now the father of a healthy baby boy. As he had not received a single letter from his estranged wife since he had enlisted, he was not surprised that the correspondence had come from his brother-in-law, Donald Macintosh. Charles felt a wave of relief at the news. He had had a terrible suspicion that David Macintosh was the father of his wife’s child, but the date of the baby’s birth proved he could not be as, by Charles’s calculations, the man had not been in Sydney at the right time. The boy must be his.
A fellow RAAF pilot ducked under the tent he shared with Charles and flung his cap on his own camp stretcher, plonking himself on a stool beside his cot.
‘Good news, I hope,’ he said, observing the expression on his friend’s face.
‘I have just been informed that I have been promoted to fatherhood,’ Charles answered with a broad smile. In his late twenties, Charles was almost a decade older than most of the pilots in the squadron, and his colleagues had already starting calling him Dad for that reason.
‘Jolly good show, old chap,’ his tent mate said, rising to slap him on the back. ‘That means you will have to shout the mess. Nothing much else happening around this hellhole at the moment.’
Just then a young orderly room clerk poked his head into the tent. ‘You are required immediately at the briefing tent. Big flap on.’
The two pilots glanced at each other quizzically. Charles shrugged and they both ambled over to a larger tent set back in the jungle. Charles had heard bits and pieces at the intelligence briefings that suggested the Japanese were mustering a substantial naval force to reinforce their garrisons in New Guinea. The last he had heard was that American fighters and bombers had clashed with the Japanese navy and air force over the Bismarck Sea. He guessed that this urgent briefing would have something to do with that.
He went to reach for the letter that informed him of his son’s birth, then realised with superstitious dread that he had somehow dropped it in the scrub on their way to the briefing tent. Charles experienced a sharp pang of apprehension, as the piece of paper had suddenly taken on the status of a lucky talisman. Pilots were a superstitious lot, and many strange objects became lucky tokens to them.
Already he could see the armourers dragging heavy belts of 20 millimetre explosive bullets to the aircraft parked along the strip. Bombs, too, were being loaded onto small trolleys as airmen stripped down to their shorts worked feverishly to arm the deadly snub-nosed, twin-engine bombers the enemy had come to nickname ‘the whispering death’. This was because the sleeve valves in the engines were quieter than the poppet valves of other aircraft. The relative silence of a swooping Beaufighter caught the unsuspecting enemy in a hail of nose-mounted cannon shells and machine gun bullets fired from the wing.
*
The rain had not abated all week, but Major David Macintosh did not mind. At least he and his company were able to shelter from the deluge without fear of being shot at. The battalion’s return from the New Guinea campaign for respite and training had taken them out of the firing line. Now they were posted to the highlands of far north Queensland, west of Cairns, in camps of sturdily erected tents and semi-permanent buildings of timber that housed the quartermaster’s stores, battalion HQ and the vital cookhouse.
David was in the large tent he had established as company HQ. He sat at a small folding table, poring over reports submitted to him from his platoon commanders and those sent down from battalion HQ. David’s promotion had been authorised just before the battalion had withdrawn from the heavy fighting of the New Guinea theatre of operations, and he had been given command of a rifle company and awarded a Military Cross for his actions in North Africa.
When the rain eased David and his men would go back to clearing the heavily forested land to build a parade ground that would also double as a football field, and David was fortunate that in his company were many northern New South Wales soldiers who had been timber cutters before the war.
The posting back to Australian soil meant a chance for men to recover from lingering illnesses such as malaria and scrub typhus, and the Regimental Medical Officer had noted that many of the men were recovering an average forty pounds of weight which they had lost while fighting in the mountains of New Guinea, and then down on the mangrove plains, pushing the Japanese off the large island. In the fighting at Buna, Gona and Sananda more men had been lost in a few weeks than had been killed in all the months on the Kokoda Track. David’s company had lost men he had served with in the deserts of North Africa and the rugged hills of Greece and Syria. It all seemed a lifetime ago but was in fact less than a year.
In one corner of the tent was his company clerk, Corporal Lansing, who also examined the soldiers’ pay books, ration sheets for the catering section and the quartermaster’s stores list for replacement equipment.
The rain pounded on the canvas and ran in rivulets under the duckboard floor, as well as dripping through tiny holes in the tent. Both company commander and clerk suffered damp uniforms, but at least they were not soaked to the skin as they had so often been in New Guinea.
&
nbsp; The flap of the tent was flung open and a rain-drenched soldier wearing his gas cape as a raincoat dragged in a large canvas bag full of mail. He also had a small bundle of paper which David knew was the routine orders from battalion HQ, to be posted on the noticeboard outside the tent. The corporal clerk immediately dropped his clerical duties to open the bag and begin sorting the mail into platoon allocations.
‘Got one for you, boss,’ the corporal said, passing a letter to David.
David also knew immediately who it was from because of the neat handwriting. He opened the letter eagerly and unfolded the two pages. It was from Allison in Sydney, and an image of her face immediately came into his mind. He could visualise the beautiful young woman with her startling green eyes, alabaster skin and raven hair cut stylishly short. Her first piece of news was that his cousin Sarah had given birth to a baby boy. He felt that her estranged husband would be pleased. At least Charles had got something from being married to Sarah – a son of his own blood.
Although their letters had never gone beyond the bounds of friendship, David hoped to see a lot of Allison if and when he was in Sydney again. They had met at a party at the Macintosh residence to celebrate his return from the Middle East the previous year; her husband had been killed flying in the battle to save Milne Bay. Allison now worked as a legal secretary for none other than his beloved ‘Uncle’ Sean Duffy after she had transferred to his legal practice six months earlier. At the end of the letter Allison mentioned that Sean was not a well man, and she hoped that David could return to Sydney to see him. David was upset to read this news as the man had been the only father he’d known for as long as he could remember. However, only a miracle would get him leave to travel to Sydney at this stage of the return as they established their battalion area.
Just then David saw the miracle staring him in the face – in the freshly delivered RO’s on his desk. Amongst the list of names of battalion personnel to attend courses was his own. He was to be sent to Sydney to attend an officers’ course, substantiating his promotion to major. David wanted to whoop with joy but knew that was not conduct becoming a company commander; instead he simply broke into a broad smile that creased his rugged, weather-beaten face. He was only in his mid-twenties, tall, broad shouldered and physically tough, but his eyes told a different story. His eyes were those of an old soul.
Two
Death came whispering over the Bismarck Sea to strike the Japanese fleet. It also flew high above with the big, four-engine bombers and American P38 Lightning fighters.
Charles Huntley’s stomach-churning fear was gone as he made a sweeping turn to drop down and level off at five hundred feet. In his gun sights was the stern of a Japanese destroyer and he was vaguely aware of the tracer rising towards him and tiny men running around on the deck of the enemy fighting ship. A hundred yards away he opened up with his cannon and machine guns, aiming at the bridge of the destroyer. His strafing run took him from stem to stern, raking the ship with gunfire, causing his own aircraft to shudder from the heavy recoil. The objective of the head-on attack was to inflict damage on the ship and obliterate anyone on the bridge, putting the ship’s command out of action.
Charles pulled on the controls to rise just above the ship’s mast. He could feel the slight shudder of incoming small-arms fire hitting the fuselage. He needed to avoid enemy fire from other craft in the sea which was crowded with destroyers and troopships whose decks were packed with soldiers preparing to disembark in landing craft.
Charles was startled as fuel drop tanks hurtled past his aircraft from the higher flying American fighters. They discarded them for more manoeuvrability in dogfights with Japanese fighter aircraft sent to disrupt the Allied attack on the invasion convoy.
‘Look at that, skipper!’ Charles heard over his headset. It was the voice of his radio wireless operator, Sergeant Ted Reid, who was busily reloading the aircraft’s cannon with 40 pound drums of ammunition, behind him in the cramped aircraft.
Charles swung around to see American B25 light bombers skimming across the sea. From their noses poured a deadly hail of machine gun bullets as their two 500 pound bombs were released to skip across the waters and slam into the sides of Japanese ships with devastating explosions. The sea was boiling with death as missiles from high-flying bombers caused huge columns of water to spout, nearly engulfing the low-flying RAAF Beaufighters and B25 light bombers. Enemy ships were exploding, burning and slowly sinking, and the sea was full of the bobbing heads of Japanese sailors and soldiers who had abandoned their doomed vessels.
Where ever Charles turned his attention beyond the cockpit he could see aircraft swooping, wheeling and diving. He shuddered when he noticed the great red circle on fighters above and realised that the Japanese fighters were engaging in the fight, attempting to intercept the low flying light bombers and Beaufighters. But the American fighter pilots fought desperately to prevent the interference.
‘Look out, skipper, Jap fighter three o’clock high,’ Charles heard his observer scream down the intercom headset.
Charles swung his head and could see the deadly Japanese Zero firing its 20 millimetre cannon at them. He executed a desperate manoeuvre, tipping his fighter bomber on its right wing as the stream of tracer ripped past to splash in spouts in the sea only five hundred feet below. He knew that he could not outfly the faster, lighter Zero and was stunned to see it suddenly ripped apart in an exploding fireball. From the corner of his eye he saw an American Lightning fighter swoop past, and Charles found himself saying a heartfelt thankyou under his breath.
In a Beaufighter not far from Charles’s own aircraft a war photographer balanced his camera on the head of the pilot, standing behind him without a harness and filming the battle through the nose cockpit. Damian Parer’s short documentary would be in Australian cinemas within weeks under the title The Battle for the Bismarck Sea.
‘Time to go home, Sergeant Reid,’ Charles called to his crewman through the intercom.
Already other Beaufighters were peeling away, ammunition spent, and navigating back to Milne Bay. Time had lost all meaning during the battle and only now, with the loud drone of the twin engines either side of him, did Charles have time to reflect on how close they had come. Already Sergeant Reid was reporting that they had taken a lot of small-arms fire and were lucky to be in the air at all. Charles prayed that the luck he had had today would stay with him and he would one day return home to hold his newborn son in his arms.
*
Many thousands of miles south in the sleepy country town of Goulburn on a property just outside of town Sarah Huntley stared down at the sickly baby in her lap. His premature birth had left the baby boy teetering on the verge of death, and only urgent medical intervention had kept him alive. But he now appeared to be growing stronger if his loud bawling was anything to go by. Sarah gazed down at the baby in her arms as he suckled on her breast and felt nothing but frustration and resentment at his existence.
‘Valery, take the baby,’ Sarah commanded to the woman hovering anxiously nearby. Valery Keevers was an experienced nanny who had been hired to care for the newborn baby. She was a single woman in her early thirties and her face was etched with concern. She stepped forward and gently took the baby from Sarah’s arms.
‘I will engage a wet nurse for Michael,’ she said, rocking the crying boy in her arms. ‘There is a young mother in Goulburn who has lost her baby and needs the money. Her husband has been killed in the war.’
‘I will trust your judgement,’ Sarah said, buttoning her blouse and wondering why she could feel no maternal bonds with this new life. In fact, she had come to resent the baby’s demands for attention when she knew that her real role in life was managing the considerable family fortune from its base in Sydney. For the last two months of her confinement in the rural backblocks she had received reports that her brother Donald was being looked to by the shareholders as the centre of power in the Macintosh comp
anies. She bridled at being left out of the important decision-making all because of a squalling infant. She needed to return to Sydney as soon as possible. Valery Keevers could act as a de facto mother to Michael: she seemed to have a bond with the infant already. The fact that Sarah’s estranged husband Charles considered the baby his was an asset, as she could always use Michael as a means to control him in the future – should he survive the war.
The cold had begun to sweep the plains around Goulburn and soon it would bring snow to the villages higher up in the hills, but Sarah was warmed by the thought that she could now return to Sydney and resume her role as the future leader of the Macintosh financial empire.
*
The railway journey across the vast Nullarbor desert from west to east was an exhausting ordeal. The carriages were uncomfortable and crowded with khaki-uniformed Australian soldiers and white-jacketed sailors. Sleep was impossible as the train clack-clacked loudly, throwing off coal smoke as it traversed the steel rails that spanned the nation.
Amidst the passengers was a small group of civilians, and amongst those non-military passengers was an older Canadian man, a young Chinese woman holding a baby girl, and a European boy around five years old. Cyril Blacksmith had been an aircraft engineer but was now retired. His Chinese wife, Po, was considerably younger, and he had become a father later in life. Their daughter, Lan, was a beautiful child of Eurasian appearance and could have passed as a life-sized doll. She had attracted admiring attention from some of the older servicemen travelling on the train, men who had not seen their own children in years. The little girl was a reminder of what they had left behind in order to serve their country in its darkest hour, fighting for its very survival.
So far 1943 had not seen any real change in the Pacific war, although newspapers reported that the Germans were taking reverses on the Eastern Front against the Russians. Late last year the church bells had rung out across Britain for the first time in years to celebrate Montgomery’s great desert victory in the second battle of El Alamein. The Germans under Rommel had been defeated and pushed back across the top of North Africa.