‘What now?’ Danny asked, confused, holding back. ‘You just told me to piss off.’
‘You might as well know what you’re going to miss before you go,’ she said archly, pulling at his arm.
‘But . . . but . . . ah, aren’t you . . . you know, a . . . ?’
‘Virgin? Don’t be such an arrogant prick!’
CHAPTER THREE
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY men – mostly but not exclusively Australian prisoners of war – had gathered at the camp gate, not knowing what to expect, or for that manner what to do if it were suddenly flung open and they were free to leave. Did they march to Bangkok, leaving behind those mates too sick or fearful to fend for themselves? Or did they sit tight and wait? Freedom, coming so unexpectedly, had completely flummoxed them.
That morning, when they’d received double rations for breakfast, they immediately thought that the Japs wanted something they couldn’t beat out of them, but what that might be was pure speculation. The prisoners had become accustomed to the irrational behaviour of the enemy and had long since given up trying to guess their motives for doing just about anything. They had simply reached the conclusion that the oriental and occidental minds work very differently. But the double rations had heralded the appearance of the Japanese commandant, Colonel Mori, at tenko or rollcall, a highly unusual occurrence. Without any fanfare or fuss and with not the least show of emotion he’d simply announced, ‘War over! Japan suwenda! All men now flends! All men go home!’ Then he snapped a salute and returned to his office. It was as if everything was perfectly normal, and it was this sense of the ordinary that confused the prisoners – nothing and everything had suddenly changed.
Soon after the announcement, Lieutenant Hiro, who had been in charge of the airport work gangs, walked up to Danny. As his right hand automatically rose to his forehead, Danny realised that he need no longer salute the Japanese soldier. At the same moment, he understood that the announcement of peace must have had a similarly profound effect on the Japs, who, with the exception of two guards who remained at the gate, had abandoned their normal duties and passively returned to their barracks to wait their turn to be incarcerated. They were no longer members of a master race with the power to inflict random and cruel punishments on those they regarded as their inferiors. The sudden loss of authority must have caused them to feel as strangely dispossessed and ambivalent as the Australian prisoners of war now felt with their newfound liberty and power.
Lieutenant Hiro unsmilingly addressed Danny in Japanese. One of the main reasons Danny had been a successful negotiator was because he’d taken the trouble to learn the enemy’s language, down to the argot the guards used. As far as it was possible for an Occidental, he understood their peculiar way of thinking, which had often saved the men under his command from needless punishment and bloodshed. ‘Watashitachi wa kore kara tomodachi ni nareru yo [We can be friends now],’ Lieutenant Hiro said, and offered his hand to Danny.
‘Sore wa zettai ni muri da yo [That will never be possible], Hiro-san,’ Danny replied, ignoring his hand.
The officer, showing not the slightest reaction, announced in Japanese, ‘No more work. All Japanese go to barracks.’ He proffered a small bunch of keys. ‘Rice store house . . . also Led Closs.’
‘Red Cross?’ In the time they’d been in captivity they’d received just one Red Cross handout, each box to be shared between four men. Danny knew that as prisoners of war they were entitled to receive one Red Cross parcel per man per month. Initially there had been six hundred prisoners in the camp . . . He did a rough calculation, using forty months of captivity instead of forty-two, that was 24 000 Red Cross food parcels, less the 150 they’d distributed. The bastards had stolen well over 23 000 parcels.
‘Led Closs box,’ Lieutenant Hiro explained.
‘How many?’
‘Many. Maybe four hundred, maybe more.’
‘Jesus!’
Danny knew it was pointless asking him what had happened to the remainder. Hiro snapped to attention and bowed, then turned and marched briskly towards headquarters. Danny pocketed the keys, deciding that rather than distribute the Red Cross parcels, he’d tell the head cook, Corporal Alan Phillips, about them and instruct him to include the food content in the men’s daily rations. The other items, such as writing paper and pencils, sewing kits and cigarettes, would be issued to the men as they left the mess hut, each with a dixie can containing something more than just boiled rice, edible weeds and a tiny scrap (if they were lucky) of gristly meat.
Alan had been a chef in a Brisbane private school for boys, and ran the prison kitchen staff and the cooks under him with crisp efficiency. He was trusted to dole out precise rice rations to each man, regardless of rank – there could be no exceptions; equal quantities of food were not only a matter of fairness, but also a matter of life and death. Perhaps the most rigid rule of them all was that there could never be any favouritism, and in this, Danny trusted Phillips completely. He also supervised the roster system which ensured that every man in the camp got his turn for an occasional extra helping from the meagre dollops of rice left in the pots after everyone had received his ration.
Danny moved towards the area of the camp gates where the new masters of the universe, the survivors of three and a half years of imprisonment, were milling around entirely unprepared for the mantle of authority. Most of them were wordless, sunk into themselves, almost uncomprehending; too bewildered to cheer. They were as powerless as ever, unable to decide what to do next.
Starving men who are constantly beaten and mistreated find a space in their heads to which they retreat to lick their wounds. There they repair to summon the mental energy to survive. All of them had learnt to treat every unanticipated event with passive, incurious resignation: a severe beating inflicted on a mate working beside you, a sudden incomprehensible outburst of spit-flecked rage directed at you by a camp guard, or a day’s ration withdrawn for some unexplained misdemeanour – all were accepted without comment and with a stoic mindset. All the individual quirks of character had long since been beaten out of them – compassion or any sense of injustice had been buried very deep – and they were, for the most part, hollow men who simply obeyed instructions.
But there are always a few men who manage somehow to keep their heads and not succumb entirely to despair; men who, when called upon, will still reach out to a severely beaten friend and help him to his feet in front of his smirking tormentor, knowing that it could well cost them their own lives. In such circumstances their actions are downright foolish, but for some unknown reason many earn the grudging respect of the enemy and manage to stay alive against all odds.
Among the mob during that first hour of liberation was a prisoner named Paul Jones, known to most of the onlookers as a competent medic in the camp hospital. He now walked towards the flagpole at the entrance to the camp carrying a small rice bag. Jones – nicknamed ‘Spike’ after the American bandleader Spike Jones, famous for his demented percussion and crazy satires – was a tiny man further diminished by four years of starvation. Some wag had given him the nickname instead of the ubiquitous ‘Taffy’ because in civilian life he’d been a kettle drummer in his colliery brass band. Spike Jones wasn’t in any sense made of the stuff of heroes; a quiet, reserved type, you’d have thought he wouldn’t have said boo to a mouse. Reaching the flagpole, he placed the bag at his feet, then brazenly began to haul down the Japanese flag, the despised fried-egg symbol that had fluttered so menacingly above their heads during their captivity. When the Japanese flag was finally within his grasp he untied it and dropped it in a heap at his feet.
As the senior NCO and therefore the highest ranking Allied prisoner in the camp, Danny hadn’t thought to lower the flag, and felt obscurely ashamed. ‘Well done, Spike!’ he called, loping towards the flagpole with several others who had suddenly become aware of what was going on. ‘You’ve shamed me, mate. Should have been the first thing
I did.’ Stooping, he picked up the Japanese flag and handed it to the little Welshman. ‘Make a great keepsake. Pity we don’t have one of our own to replace it.’
‘Oh, but that we do, Sergeant Major,’ Jones replied, removing a Union Jack from the bag. ‘It’s not the Welsh dragon, mind —’
‘Jesus, Spike, where’d you get that? It could’ve cost you your life!’
‘Two years ago Micky Sopworth, a Geordie lad – miner like meself – gave it to me in the hospital. He was dying of dengue fever. “Fly it when we beat the boogers,” he begged me. I made a false bottom on the bandage bin; with the flag folded flat you couldn’t hardly tell the difference.’
‘Go ahead then.’ Danny pointed to the Union Jack. ‘Let’s get the true colours flying.’
Spike Jones started to tie the flag to the halyard, but he’d been so anxious to unknot the Japanese flag that he hadn’t noticed how it was attached. Danny, watching, said, ‘Here, let me. At home we always flew the flag above the pub. I’ve done it a million times.’ Danny swiftly tied the flag that signalled their liberation to the halyard. ‘Okay, haul her up, Spike – No, wait! What the hell am I thinking?’ He turned to the men who had gathered around. ‘Sergeant Catterns and Corporal Osmonde, get the men on parade for a flag-raising ceremony, here in front of the flagpole, at the double!’
‘Yes, Sergeant Major!’
Some five minutes later, galvanised into action by the two NCOs, fifty men stood at ease in five rows. Danny barked, ‘Attention!’ The men responded as a well-trained group, but most of them were barefoot or wearing sandals made from old rubber tyres, so the coming to attention lacked the percussive effect of hobnailed boots crashing into the dirt. However, it was notable for the earnest expressions on the men’s faces. The hated flag had been toppled and now one of their own was about to be raised. This was something tangible they could grasp.
‘I have called you to attention. Next I will call you to the salute. Then Private Jones will raise the Union Jack and we will all sing the national anthem at the salute!’ he commanded. ‘Company! Salute!’
Danny snapped a salute and, standing at rigid attention, started to sing.
God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King.
The men followed, the anthem growing louder as they watched the flag moving up the flagpole, their discordant voices rising to the familiar words so long absent from their lips. It was as if a dark spell had been broken and they began to understand for the first time that they could, on this day and from this hour, once again act as free men.
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the King!
‘Parade! At ease!’ Danny addressed the men. ‘The Jack may not be exactly the right flag for most of us, but it sits in the left-hand corner of my own flag and that’s good enough for me. I don’t know about you blokes, but who’d have thought that after breakfast on what seemed like just another day of moving rocks and sand, we’d be free men? But we are, and now I want us to observe one minute’s silence for those of our mates who didn’t make it.’
Danny waited until a minute’s silence had passed. ‘Right then,
I don’t know quite what happens next in terms of our liberation but I’m still responsible for you until then, so I guess it’s time for a new set of standing orders. The Japs may have surrendered, but our mob here in the camp are still armed, so do not attempt any retribution. They could as easily kill us all before nightfall if we give them any aggro.’ He paused. ‘There will be no trouble. We’re going home, so let’s not fuck it up now!’ Danny waited a moment to let the message sink in. ‘Dismiss!’ he called, whereupon some of the men let go a ragged cheer as they broke away, while others simply stood and wept, and some few dropped to their knees and silently prayed.
Danny turned away, smiling and offering his hand to Spike Jones. ‘Thank you, Private Jones,’ he said formally. ‘I salute your courage. You’re a bloody brave man. I shall see to it this doesn’t go unmentioned.’
Jones shrugged. ‘It was a promise to me mate, wasn’t it then, Sergeant Major.’
The little medic had broken the evil shackles that had so thoroughly controlled their minds, and Danny now realised that no one, including himself, had yet summoned the courage to walk through the camp gate – a gesture that would symbolise their freedom more powerfully than anything else. The camp gate was an unprepossessing and primitive structure of barbed wire and bamboo, lacking any of the normal fortifications an entrance to a prison compound might have been expected to exhibit. As the senior NCO it was Danny’s duty to be the first man out, if only to stroll a few yards down the road and back. He clapped Spike on the shoulder and pointed at the gate, beyond which the two Jap guards stood. ‘Come on, mate, you and me are going to walk through that bloody gate,’ he said.
As the two of them walked towards the entrance to the camp, they suddenly became aware of the sound of a motorbike approaching. Danny stopped and turned to the little medic. ‘Wait on; could be the first of the cavalry arriving!’ He glanced around and realised that most of the men had spontaneously fallen into formation behind them. They all watched as a military motorcycle with sidecar roared towards the gate and skidded to a halt only a yard or so from where the two Japanese sentries, having laid their rifles hastily at their feet, now stood rigidly to attention saluting.
The men behind Danny spread out along the perimeter of the fence on either side of the gate so that they could more easily witness what was about to take place. As they watched, a huge Yank in jungle-green uniform and high boots dismounted almost casually and reached into the sidecar to lift a Tommy gun from its interior. Several grenades were clipped to his waist, a colt .45 automatic was strapped to his thigh, and ammunition belts crossed his chest. His sleeve chevrons indicated that this one-man walking armoury held the rank of master sergeant. The Yank turned to face the gate and stood, feet apart, towering above the two Japanese guards who stared straight ahead, their eyes focused at a point somewhere close to infinity.
‘Open the fucking gate!’ he commanded with a flick of his crew-cut head.
The guards, not understanding, made no move, whereupon the Yank, switching the Tommy gun to his left hand, approached the sentry nearest to him and brought his right hand down hard against the side of the Jap’s head, knocking him off his feet. The watching men gasped. Had anyone raised a hand to a camp guard just a few hours earlier it would have meant certain death. The guard, expecting more, curled up into the foetal position, his arms covering his head, preparing for the boot that must follow. ‘Open!’ the Yank barked at the second terrified Jap, switching the Tommy gun back into his right hand and prodding it in the direction of the gate. Finally understanding, the second guard ran the three steps towards the gate and began to unlatch it.
Along with the flag-raising ceremony, this gratuitous slap was the thing that, many of the watching men would later claim, seemed to switch on something in their heads, and they began to understand that they were no longer prisoners of the Japanese but free men all. Danny himself remarked later when he described the scene that had the big American simply mowed down the two guards with a burst from his machine-gun, like a scene in a John Wayne movie, it may well not have had the same effect on them as the loud and powerful slap.
Having dealt with the guards, the American scanned the men behind the barbed wire. Pathetic, emaciated, bearded, sun-blackened, barefoot, ragged, near-naked prisoners stared back at him. ‘Jesus Christ! What you motherfuckers done to my brothers?’ he exclaimed. Then, in a burst of pure rage, he gripped the second guard by the back of his neck and slammed him face-first into the heavy wooden gatepost, releasing him so that he fell unconscious into the dirt. Without further ado the American swung the gate open, mounted his motorbike, dumped the machine gun
in the sidecar, kick-started the engine, and roared past the two guards, the first of whom had risen to his feet and stood once again at rigid attention in a haze of exhaust smoke. The second was either unconscious or playing dead beside the gatepost. The motorcycle came to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of Danny and Spike Jones, the American sergeant revving the engine once (perhaps to punctuate his arrival) before killing it.
There was nothing to indicate that Danny was the senior NCO in charge – like everyone else he wore a ragged pair of khaki shorts and a pair of crude motor-tyre sandals – so the huge Yank simply included him and Spike Jones in his greeting. ‘Howdy, folks. How y’all doing?’
‘Gidday!’ A dozen or so of the men standing closest responded, while others, murmuring excitedly, approached their lone liberator and his clumsy-looking motorbike, which Danny had now identified as a Harley-Davidson.
The American cast a concerned eye over the skeletal prisoners. ‘Hey, you guys,’ he called out. ‘I’m real sorry, but I got no rations! Thai kids ate all the candy bars.’ Then he indicated the sidecar with a grin. ‘But I got a shit-load o’ Camels and Chesterfields. Help yourselves. You guys mostly from Australia, right? Who’s the head honcho?’
Spike Jones pointed to Danny. ‘Company Sergeant Major Dunn, Sergeant.’
With the news of the cigarettes a couple of dozen prisoners began to move uncertainly towards the motorcycle. They were unaccustomed to acting on their own initiative, even when invited, but when they saw the sidecar heaped with cartons of cigarettes they began to mill, then push and shove, each anxious to lay hold of such unimaginable treasure in case it should disappear in front of their very eyes.
The Story of Danny Dunn Page 9