Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  I can’t say anything to comfort him, to tell him it ain’t true, that it’s all in his imagination, because of course I think of John Crowe, Tommy’s oldest and only real friend in Yankalillee, someone who had known him as a kid and had been there for him after he came back from the war.

  John Crowe has died violently, the Red Steer wiping him off the face of the earth. Shit! Tommy thinks John Crowe’s death was because of him, because of their friendship. I have to say something to try to help him.

  ‘Dad, it doesn’t work like that!’ I protest. ‘They were soldiers, they knew they could be killed any day!’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘It’s just in your mind! You have to let it come out. You have to say their names!’

  Tommy doesn’t look up for a long time, then he does. ‘You know something, Mole?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve tried, I can’t remember them. I can see them plain as anything, their faces, the way they laughed.’ He looks up, there are tears running down his cheeks, ‘But I can’t remember their fucking names! Them blokes saved me life more than once and I can’t remember their names!’

  I get out of my sleeping bag and sit down beside him and put my arm around him. It’s the first time I’ve held him in my whole life. He’s still skin and bone, still the same drover’s dog Nancy met at the railway station when he come out of the repat hospital. I can feel his thinness against my chest and along the inside of my arms, the bone through the sinew and skin. ‘I’m sorry I said that, you don’t have to do nothing. Let your mates stay buried in your heart, best place for them to be, best memorial they could have.’

  Tommy sniffs and pulls away, ‘Christ, a man’s a bloody sheila. Can’t even tell a story proper without blubbing.’ He wipes his hands across his eyes and then his fist under his nose.

  ‘There’s a bit of rabbit, it’s cold but it’s something to chew on. You’ll feel better with something to eat.’ Tommy sniffs again, ‘Nah, better keep it, need it termorra.’

  ‘I seen a couple of possums earlier, ringtails, I’ll go get ’em when it’s first light. What say, a bit a possum stew make a nice change, eh?’ I know Tommy isn’t into shooting the wildlife but we’ve had possum in an emergency before and it tastes good if you cook them real slow.

  Tommy laughs, then sniffs, ‘You’re a bonzer bloke,

  Mole.’

  We chew on the rabbit and I decide to make another billy. It’ll leave just enough tea to make him a mug in the morning, though there’ll be no sugar. The moon is now past the canopy opening and it’s pretty dark, the bush around us is silent except for the burble of the water in the little creek and the occasional crack of a log on the fire where the flames throw yellow slabs of light onto Tommy’s broken face.

  The cold meal, hot tea and a cigarette seem to pick him up a bit. ‘You know when you read about Changi in books and that and on the films, it looks pretty terrible. But after what we’d been through, Malaya, Parit Sulong, that and the past week on the island, Changi was a doddle. There’s nearly 15,000 of us and another 37,000 Poms, local volunteers and some Dutch prisoners of war down the road a bit and, what’s more, the Japs decide to behave themselves a bit better now they’ve got the Chinese civilian population to kill.

  ‘There’s one bit of good news. Our commander Major General Bennett’s escaped. He’s got away in a small boat after the surrender. Most of the officers think it’s a poor show that he blew through, leaving them to face the music. Also, some of the blokes are pretty pissed off and are calling him a yellow-belly. But that’s not how most of us feel. He fought hard as any of us and was a bloody good leader. By escaping, far as we were concerned, he’d set a good example. What’s the point in putting a crackerjack general in a concentration camp for the rest of the war?

  ‘Later we heard that when he got back to Australia he copped a fair amount of shit for deserting his troops. But that was bullshit, it’s everyone’s duty to escape and I reckon the top brass just made a scapegoat out of him to cover their own backsides for the debacle of Singapore. It was them that decided to send raw recruits to fight. If Bennett hadn’t trained us in jungle warfare, Christ knows what would have happened. Maybe those blokes are right, Australia may have eventually been invaded. I still reckon if the recruits that came after Malaya had been trained better and the same with the Brits and the Indians, we could have defeated the Japanese. As it turned out, we bloody nearly did anyway.’

  ‘I thought you said the Japs were better trained and good fighters. How could you have beaten them?’

  ‘True, but what we hadn’t realised was that they’d crossed Malaya in fifty-six days, fighting some of the fiercest battles in the war. The Muar River and Parit Sulong battle, where my battalion was all but massacred and where an ambush by the 2/30th had taken a heavy toll and, like us, the Japs were exhausted.

  ‘We had more troops on Singapore Island than the Japs, but the difference was that many of ours were fresh to combat and just didn’t have the required training. If they had, we’d have won easy. But anyway, I’ll say this for most of them, they were learning fast and if Percival had held out another day, we might just have turned it around. Towards the end we reckoned we had their measure and a lot of the blokes who’d fought tooth and nail for a week were very bloody bitter when Percival, who we all thought was a fair dinkum fool, threw in the towel when there was still a bit of fight left in all of us.

  ‘Anyway, suddenly we’re POWs and are being taken to Selarang Barracks, which before the war was the home of the Gordon Highlanders. It has been bombed and ransacked and all that is left are the shell of the barracks, cement floors and holes for windows but the roofs are okay, made of flat concrete, so we can sleep on them. There isn’t enough room for everyone so some of us build humpies out of scraps, coconut fronds, stuff we scrounged, and we settle in nice and cosy. Escaping isn’t a possibility, Malaya is held by the Japs one side, so is Indonesia on the other, the Philippines also. Escaping and living in the jungle isn’t an option, be dead in a month trying that on.

  ‘The Japs soon started sending us out as working parties, burying the civilian dead and clearing up the city. It was shit work but they paid us and gave us extra rations. As a corporal, I got fifteen cents a day in Jap occupation money and we receive four ounces of meat and extra rice.

  ‘Then they started to build a Shinto temple in the MacRitchie Reservoir–Bukit Timah area and soon after that the Shonan Chureto War Memorial at Bukit Batok not far from the Ford Motor Factory, where Percival signed the surrender. There were thousands of us working on those two projects, which was better than staying in Changi, though I didn’t get onto one o’ them projects but worked in the city, then the wharves.’

  ‘Funny, the Japs have got a religion. I mean, building that temple. If they killed people the way they did, how come they believed in God?’ I ask Tommy.

  ‘Not just one, they’ve got lots a gods, must be that some of their gods say it’s okay, tell them they can do cruel stuff to other people as long as they’re not Japanese. The Japanese think they’re a superior race anyway. That all other races are inferior. Now we’ve surrendered they think we’re lower even than dogs.’

  ‘You must’ve felt pretty bad building a war memorial to them, like honouring the blokes who’ve been killing and chopping the heads off your mates.’

  To my surprise, Tommy chuckles. ‘Like I said, I wasn’t on that project. Mate, you gotta laugh, the Jap war memorial is this wooden obelisk rising around sixty or seventy feet. One of the blokes working on it told me the story of how he’d gone into the bushes for a crap and he sees this termite nest. “Whacko, what’s this?” he says to himself, “Termites eat wood, don’t they?” So, over the next few days, he and his mates dig up the nest and cart the lot over to the obelisk and bury the termite nest nice ’n’ cosy under it and the termites are set to munching. “We reckoned it would take about a year
to bring it topplin’down,” he says.

  ‘“Big nest?” I ask, “How big was the queen?”

  ‘“Queen? What queen?”

  ‘“Mate, every termite nest has to have a queen. Big fat white grub, can get up to two inches in length.”

  ‘“Shit!” he says, “I saw that! We thought that were just some fat caterpillar that lived in the soil, threw it aside when we’re digging up the nest.” ‘“City blokes, is yiz?”

  ‘“Yeah, mate, most of us on my work gang are from Melbourne, two blokes from Geelong, we didn’t know nothing about a fucking queen.”

  ‘I explain to him that the termites will die without their queen in the nest, that what they done was no good. He looked that disappointed that I promised I wouldn’t tell nobody so they could skite about what they done and everyone would think the war memorial was slowly being sabotaged by them termites. Stories like that are important and are good for morale and here I am playing the spoilsport, being a smart-arse from the bush.

  ‘Years later in the pub in Yankalillee I hear one of the blokes tell the story of the termites. Only it’s now complete. The Jap war memorial has collapsed, eaten away at the foundation, he says, toppled down, nothing left and all of it done in no time flat! He even claims he was one of the original work gang that found the termites. He was a bloke from Bright I’ve known all me life, went to school with him. He worked on the Singapore wharves with me and then went on to the Burma Railway. He wasn’t nowhere near the Jap war memorial, though I don’t remind him.’ Tommy chuckles, ‘I reckon if you can’t bullshit a little on Anzac Day, what’s the point, eh?

  ‘The Japs work us hard but the grub’s just okay and I’ve got enough pay for fags. Apart from the odd bout of the squits, I’m doing okay. Naturally, we all feel a bit ashamed about being captured, being prisoners of war, like, with other blokes still fighting elsewhere. We comfort ourselves that while it’s our duty to escape, the problem is where to? No use escaping unless you can become useful to your own side again. I reckon that’s why the Japs were so relaxed. Short of an uprising to overthrow them, we were trapped on the island for the duration.

  ‘Then I come down with dysentery real bad and I’m sent back to Changi where I meet a bloke who’s got the dreaded lurgy, name ’o Tom Burns and he tells me he’s with a working party on a small island off Singapore city named Pulau Bukum where things are good compared to anywhere else. It’s an island where there’s about a billion gallons of oil stored in these big concrete tanks. All they do is roll drums of oil to be loaded onto the Japanese tankers arriving every few days. He reckons it’s easy enough work once you get used to it and the rations are real grouse, lashings of condensed milk, twenty-five ounces of rice daily, all the bread you can eat and a meat stew for breakfast every morning. It sounds like paradise to me.

  ‘So I get a message to Blades Rigby and the four others and soon they’re sent back to Selarang Barracks for insubordination and general bad behaviour, the only way except for sickness you can get back to Changi in a hurry. The colonel sentences them to be put on the Changi trailer for two weeks. The trailer is a stripped-down truck chassis with tyres down to the canvas and is known as ‘the cart’and is used to haul wood and water and anything else that has to be moved around the camp. It’s pulled by POWs who usually turn out to be one of the larrikin mob on report. Eight blokes are harnessed to the front by traces attached to steel hawsers. It’s back-breaking work, I can tell yer and Blades and the rest o’ them ain’t too happy doing a stint while I’m recovering, sitting back like Jackie in the hospital, munching boiled rice one end and shitting what looks like camp curry out the other.

  ‘With a little help from Tom Burns, we get ourselves onto the island in the harbour and it turns out everything he said is right. The tucker is first class though rollin’ drums is bloody hard work at first. But once you get the knack and with the good grub, our bodies build up to it. Anyway, the Japs give us a smoke every half hour when we were loading a tanker, so it isn’t too bad. We can swim to cool off and we go fishing every day after work. Provided we gave the guards a small part of the catch, most nights we’d have a good feed o’ fish and Sundays we’d have off. Don’t have to do a thing, because the guards want to go off to Singapore to get among the whores so they leave us with our own officers. They even give us mosquito nets and a mattress each to sleep on.

  ‘But all good things come to an end and, for once, it ain’t the Japs’ fault neither. Blades Rigby is a pretty good fisherman and one day he catches this really big fish, maybe twenty pounds, and he wants to trade it with one of the locals for hashish. There ain’t no locals on the island because it’s an oil depot, but sometimes a sampan passes and Blades makes contact by yelling out at the fishermen in their own language. Now he’s got some sort of arrangement he don’t talk about and I think he’s getting something stronger brought in. When you ask him, he just says he’s doing a bit of trading with the nig-nogs, though we never saw anything he bought from them. It isn’t too hard to put two and two together.

  ‘Well, this Jap sergeant sees the big fish and wants it for his mess. He points to the fish, “Morta coy!” he shouts at Blades, which means “bring it here”. Blades doesn’t want to give it to him. I’m nervous because I know Rigby’s nerves are a bit frazzled as he hasn’t had the stuff he uses for a few days and we’re all staying out of his way.

  ‘The Jap sergeant insists and starts to shout, takes out his bayonet and, walking right up to Blades, pushes the tip of the blade into his gut. I shout out, “Give him the fuckin’ fish, mate!” because I know what’s about to happen. Blades has a knife he’s made out of a bit of steel from an oil drum. I told you before how he tipped me over when I come at him with a bayonet. If he flips the Jap, it will mean the sergeant has lost face and we’ll all be in serious trouble. You just don’t muck about with the guards.

  ‘I give a sigh of relief and I’m not the only one, because Blades nods and smiles at the Jap and he makes to hand the fish over. It’s heavy and has this bit of twine through its gills to carry it. So the Jap puts his bayonet back and takes the fish by the twine. He’s holding it and he’s smiling, then he does this little bow and says “Ichi ban number one”, which means “good on ya” in POW Japanese. Blades grins back and next thing the Jap corporal sinks to his knees with his throat cut. I reckon he’s well dead before his head hits the ground.

  ‘Our officer is told to call a parade for that evening and Blades is brought in front of us. His hands are tied behind his back and he’s made to kneel in the dirt, then a Jap officer starts to rant and rave in their lingo. We don’t understand a word, but he’s practically foaming at the mouth and we get the drift all right.

  ‘He takes out his sword and executes Blades Rigby. It takes him three blows to hack off his head while we’re all standing to attention. Then this Jap sergeant brings the officer a ceremonial cloth and he wipes the sword and puts it back in its scabbard and marches off.

  ‘We’re known to be Blades Rigby’s mates and the Japs reckon we might make trouble so the five of us are sent back to Selarang Barracks and put on the cart. Even though we’d done nothing wrong.’

  I think to myself, that’s another of Tommy’s mates that’s died a violent death. No wonder he’s all screwed up. Once you get something like that in your head and think it’s you that’s put the curse on them, there’s no stoppin’ your imagination. Tommy feels guilty, he thinks it’s him. That’s why, except for John Crowe, he’s always been a loner.

  Even with us kids. We always thought it was him and the grog. We thought he didn’t love us, didn’t give a shit about us. When he took me into the bush, he was more a teacher than a father and he never hugged me or showed me any affection. Now I see it’s not that at all. In his head Tommy reckons he’s protecting us if he stays away. If he doesn’t show us he loves and cares about us, then we’re safe.

  Tommy continues on, ‘Reckon, if we weren’t
so fit and built-up from rolling oil drums and the good tucker at the oil depot, the cart would have done us in. There’s supposed to be eight harnessed in, but they’ve cut it down to us five and a bloke from the 30th Battalion who turns out to be a real pain in the arse. Anyway, with two men short, by the end of each day we’re well and truly buggered.

  ‘After we come off the cart, we work on the construction of a poultry farm. We’re up to our ankles shovelling chicken shit and if you so much as look sideways at an egg, you’re put on report. Things are getting tedious now that we’re no longer in the workers’ paradise on Pulau Bukum. I forgot to say, before being kicked off the island, we tried to bury Blades Rigby but the Japs wouldn’t give us his body. Who knows what the bastards done with him, probably dumped him in the harbour for the sharks to feast on.

  ‘Anyway, around the end of April the Japs want three thousand men for a working party. Word has it that it’s away from the island and the facilities are good and there’s plenty of food and the work is easy.

  ‘We volunteer straight off for the Jap working party, but are turned down on account of being branded as larrikins. A Force, which is the name of the mob that went away, are put together like a mini brigade with three battalions, the correct number of officers and with Brigadier Varley in charge. They parade and march off happy as Larry ’cause they’ve got it made. It turns out later they’re sent to Burma to work on some railway the Japs are building.’

  ‘You mean the Burma Railway? You know, where Mr Gee was?’ I ask Tommy, excited.