The Interpreter from Java

by Alfred Birney

  ‘Jangan sinjo Arto! Jangan sinjo Arto! Minta ampun, itu anak tidak salah!’ they begged. ‘No, Arto! Don’t! Have mercy, Arto. The child is innocent!’

  The two women clung to me so tightly that I could not raise my rifle. ‘Enough, Arto!’ Mama shouted reproachfully. ‘That child has done nothing wrong! She was born to your sister Ella and Joshida, the Sakura Japanese she went out with after Kamei was killed. Arto, I order you, do not lay a finger on that child!’

  ‘Where is Ella?’ I shouted furiously.

  ‘At the pasar!’

  Mama told me how Dutch troops had liberated Ella and Ina during the Police Action, and that Ina had moved to Batavia with her husband and children.

  ‘Aduh, you have grown even more heartless than you were as a policeman. I am shocked by your cruelty. How many people have you killed? Uncle Soen and Pah Tjillih are worried about you. Pah Tjillih has been asking after you. Go to see him! And leave poor little Josta in peace!’

  *

  It was gone six in the evening and already dark when Babu Tenie woke me. Feeling listless, I got up and took a refreshing bath, then put on my khaki dress uniform and headed for the Marines Club on Tunjungan. I went straight up to the bar and ordered ten shots of brandy. The Indo barmaid looked me up and down and said, ‘I only serve blond, blue-eyed Dutch boys.’

  Furious, I went in search of the manager and complained about the conduct of his personnel. He too was angry and took the girl to task. ‘Hey, are you refusing to serve this marine because his hair is not blond and his eyes are not blue? What kind of nonsense is this? Serve him this minute, or take your things and leave. Understood?’

  The Indo girl’s cheeks turned red with shame. She poured my brandies, and I paid and took my full tray to a table by the loudspeaker at the corner of the dancefloor, where I settled down to enjoy my drinks to the music of Glenn Miller, Harry James, Artie Shaw, the Andrew Sisters, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland and, last but not least, Vera Lynn.

  The incident with the barmaid heightened the feeling that I did not belong in this racist, colonial society. From an early age, I had seen all kinds of American movies and watched countless newsreels with glimpses of life in Holland. From my conversations with Dutch lads and letters from the Dutch girls who wrote to me, I had an idea of how people in Holland lived and what they thought of people whose skin was not white. That was where my future lay.

  Buried alive

  After a couple of pleasant days, it was time to return to the front. I signed off with the senior NCO at Firefly Barracks and was handed a bag of letters to take back to the lads at SHQ-II. A jeep took me to Gubeng station, where I caught the train to Jember.

  On arrival, the first thing I did was read through the recent combat and counterintelligence reports. Gangs of Indonesian guerrillas had been on the rampage, all the more troubling since they were no longer sparing their own people. The local police had their hands full providing emergency assistance, while marines patrolled the region, day and night.

  Late one afternoon, I was out on the front porch, smoking and shooting the breeze with a couple of the lads when a Chinaman came staggering into the compound, battered and bruised. A couple of chaps leapt up and went to his aid. They cleaned his wounds with boracic lotion, disinfected them with sulpha, and patched him up as best they could. As he was being tended to, he answered my questions.

  He lived a mile or so from Mangli. That morning, nine guerrillas had appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to assault him. As he lay on the ground, groaning with pain, the attackers raped his wife and daughter and worked them over with knives and bayonets. His wife was killed, but his daughter, a girl of eighteen, survived. Those savages then decided to bury her alive before they moved on. The poor father staggered to the main road that runs from Mangli to Jember and was lucky enough to flag down a passing dokar. That was how he had managed to reach us.

  Wasting no time, we formed an assault squad, eight-man strong. The Chinaman came with us. When we arrived at his house, I jumped out of the vehicle and helped him down, so that he could point out the spot where they had buried his daughter. Carefully, we began to dig. In the heat of the moment, no one had thought to bring a spade, so we had to scrape away the soil with our bayonets and helmets.

  Sure enough, we unearthed the poor child… and she was still alive! A Japanese bayonet had been rammed through her pelvis. I was about to pull it out, taking the greatest of care, but one of the marines held me back. ‘Leave be, Nolan. That’s a job for a medic. We have already radioed for an ambulance.’

  By the time the ambulance arrived, we had been hanging around for the best part of an hour. The lads had done their best to clean the girl up, rinsing off the mud and sand with water and tea from their flasks. Her mother’s half-stripped body was lying in full view in the front garden. I cut some leaves from a plantain and laid them over her corpse. The poor Chinaman was inconsolable and sobbed the entire time. I searched for footprints and surmised that the culprits were probably Army guerrillas who had taken off in the direction of Rambipuji.

  The Indonesian Army used intimidation of this kind to sap the morale of the locals. Fire-starting was also rife. The peasants were ordered to hand over at least eighty per cent of their harvest to the guerrillas, far more than they had ever surrendered to the Dutch. Anyone who failed to meet their demands was slaughtered.

  The giant

  A few days later, we received reports that a sizeable contingent of Indonesian guerrillas was terrorizing the local population near Genteng. Our commanding officers quickly drew up a plan of attack culminating in a night-time raid. We set out with twenty men. A mile or so from Genteng, we halted our attack vehicles and continued on foot, approaching the enemy with maximum stealth. With only yards to go, we spread out in a pincer movement and then swept through the village, kicking in doors. Every armed man or fleeing pemuda was gunned down. Women and children were spared.

  Then I saw something I will never forget.

  In the middle of the kampong, a giant of a man was standing motionless beside a tong-tong. He was shaking with fear, armed with nothing but a machete. I walked over to interrogate him but I had taken only a few steps when a sergeant charged past me and pumped a full magazine from his jungle carbine into the man’s body. As if by a miracle, the giant remained standing.

  In the moonlight, I counted fifteen holes in his bullet-riddled body. Burning with rage, I turned on the sergeant and yelled, ‘What the fuck were you doing? The man was innocent! I was about to question him but you had to blast him to bits. And you didn’t even finish him off.’

  Over and over, the giant murmured, ‘I’m innocent. I’m innocent.’

  ‘Our orders are to shoot every armed man on sight,’ the sergeant shouted. ‘And from now on, stay out of my business!’

  ‘Another screw-up like that and I’ll have you reported!’ I shouted back.

  At that moment a corporal arrived to calm things down. I pleaded with him to draw his weapon, for God’s sake, and show the poor man some mercy. The corporal aimed his tommy gun at the giant’s forehead and fired a single, fatal shot. The man reeled back and hit the ground. Out of his misery.

  Ill-fated prisoner transport

  On 22 November 1947, Adjutant Mulder granted me a few days’ leave in Surabaya, on condition that I take charge of a trainload of prisoners and hand them over to the Military Police at Wonokromo station. I gathered the interrogation files of the twenty-nine prisoners: mass murderers, rapists, saboteurs and arsonists. We knew from bitter experience that this class of criminal could expect to serve a maximum jail term of six months. We also knew that Judge De la Parra of the court in Surabaya had received death threats in the post: he, his wife, his children and his relatives throughout the Archipelago would be slaughtered unless he handed down lenient sentences to these hardened criminals. It was not uncommon for multiple murderers to be let off for lack of evidence. Verdicts like these did not go down well with the security services – with us, in other wor
ds.

  I accepted this thankless task with great reluctance and Adjutant Mulder assigned three interpreters to assist me: Ong Thwan Hien, a former Chinese trader whose family had been massacred by pemudas, and Harry and Paul Madjoe. The Madjoe brothers were Manadonese and former members of the Indonesian Army. Though I took them on, I had my suspicions and made it clear I would gun them down at the least sign of sabotage. They were to shoot escapees on sight. A moment’s hesitation and they could expect a bullet from me.

  Groeneboer drove the four of us to Jember prison in his jeep. We reported to the guard with our packs and our weapons. In the office, I took the prisoners’ files out of my knapsack and handed them over. The commander took note of the names, ordered a couple of soldiers to prepare those listed for transport and then checked the prisoners personally. Turning to me, he said, ‘Marine, here you have the bastards, all twenty-nine of them. Stick them behind bars in Surabaya for a long, long time. And if you can’t manage that, shoot them all to hell. I wish you and your helpers the very best of luck. Enjoy your leave.’

  I thanked him and made the prisoners march to the station in rows of four. Rifles at the ready, we marched on either side of this criminal parade. At the station, I ordered my assistants to guard the prisoners while I arranged for the wagons we needed.

  I approached the Van Gelder brothers, who I knew from our time together in the AMA Police Forces, and asked them for an open cattle truck. They relayed my request to Van Tilburg, their boss, but he refused and said I would have to take a covered goods wagon. I protested. Looking around the yard, there seemed to be enough cattle trucks available.

  ‘Reserved for other purposes,’ Van Tilburg explained.

  I pointed out to him that I was transporting people, not meat, and that this would not be possible in a closed wagon with no ventilation.

  ‘I am in charge around here, Nolan,’ Van Tilburg bit back, ‘and I will decide which wagons to allocate to prisoner transport. Right now, I have this one covered wagon and I will give immediate orders for it to be hitched to the Surabaya train.’

  Left with no choice, I ordered my men to herd the prisoners into the wagon. Of course, I took care not to close the sliding door completely but left a gap of between 10 and 15 inches and secured the bolt with steel wire to allow enough air into the wagon once the train was moving. The four of us took up positions on either side of the small platform at the rear of the wagon, rifles poised.

  November 22, 1947 was a scorching day and it was almost eleven in the morning when the train left the station. The next stop was Bondowoso, followed by Probolinggo. Even when the train was moving, the heat was stifling. In Probolinggo they had to stoke the locomotive and stopped for longer than normal. I jumped off the wagon and went over to some vendors to buy food and drink. As I was walking back, Ong Thwan Hien ran up to me looking rattled. ‘Trouble, Nolan! Something’s up in the wagon!’

  I ran to the door, loosened the steel wire and slid it open. One of the prisoners sprang out and made a run for it. In a flash, I grabbed my M1 and shot him dead. My three helpers trained their rifles on the rest. Around five prisoners were lying unconscious on the wagon floor. I ran to the engine driver and asked him for a bucket of cold water. He gave me one and brought two more buckets himself. I threw the water over all of the prisoners and, to my relief, it seemed to do them good. I ordered my men to keep a close watch. By this time, the situation was attracting all kinds of attention. Gawping bystanders were crowding around the wagon and a few were bending over the dead fugitive. A Marine lieutenant from the tank division, also on leave, began to interfere. When my helpers were distracted for a moment, another prisoner made his escape. As I took aim, the lieutenant knocked my M1 upwards and I shot in the air.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I snarled.

  ‘Let the man run. He has already lost his mind. Just look at him!’

  He had a point. I saw the prisoner scaling the barbed-wire fence around the railway yard. Just as he was about to jump, his strength failed him and he was stuck there. The more he struggled, the deeper the barbs dug into his skin. The officer stopped me shooting the unfortunate prisoner as a coup de grâce and he was left hanging from the barbed-wire to die in agony.

  I called over a couple of street vendors and ordered them to give all their fruit, boiled rice dishes and biscuits to the prisoners. I paid them generously from my own wages and heard them say to each other that they had never got rid of their wares so quickly.

  Checking the prisoners, I discovered that three were in a very bad way. It was another hour before we continued towards Pasuruan. As we crossed a bridge over a deep ravine, another prisoner jumped the train. Ong shot, but missed. I took aim and saw the fugitive plunge into the ravine.

  In Pasuruan I looked in on the twenty-six remaining prisoners, only to find that three had succumbed to the heat. The sun was beating down mercilessly on our helmets. Again I called over a couple of vendors and ordered them to give all their wares to the prisoners. I compensated them generously.

  At Bangil station, I took care of the prisoners in the same way. The heat was so intense that I left the sliding door half-open for the rest of the journey, though I knew it was an invitation to escape. Sure enough, between Bangil and Sidoarjo another two prisoners leapt from the wagon. They paid for their hopeless flight with their lives.

  By the time we reached Sidoarjo, two more men had perished in the heat. This made a total of five. Yet another prisoner made a break for it. I fired a warning shot and, when that was ignored, I shot to kill: yet another casualty of the damned prison transport I had been forced to take charge of when all I wanted was to go home on leave.

  Late in the afternoon, the train finally pulled into Wonokromo station in Surabaya, where the Military Police were waiting for us. I handed over the remaining eighteen prisoners and five dead bodies to them, along with the prisoners’ files. Then I went to the stationmaster’s office and called my senior commander, Captain Groeneveld of the Marine Corps. I gave him a brief account of the transport, the six fugitives and the five deaths. ‘Nolan,’ he replied, ‘you have always shown initiative. Continue to do so now and act in good conscience. If you encounter any more difficulties, you can count on my support. Get the Marine Corps Military Police involved. Good luck, my boy!’

  My next call was to the offices of the Red Cross in Surabaya, asking them to take care of the five bodies in the wagon. By this time, my helpers had begun to fret about the consequences of our ill-fated assignment. I did my best to reassure them and made another call, this time to the duty commander of the Marine Corps Military Police in Surabaya, and told him what had happened. By then it was dark and, not to complicate matters further, he suggested I should first take a day of leave before reporting to barracks to await further developments.

  A couple of Military Police officers gave us a lift to the centre of Surabaya in their half-track. On the way we talked about what had happened. Those lads said it would have been better all round if every last prisoner had died. They dropped us off close to the Marines Club on Tunjungan and we thanked them for the lift.

  I took my leave of the Madjoe brothers and Ong Thwan Hien, who went off to see their families. I scrabbled together my gear and my weapons and entered the Marines Club. First, I found myself a quiet spot close to the bar, put my kit down on a chair and my steel helmet on the table. Then I went up and ordered a dozen shots from the barmaid. She looked at me in surprise.

  ‘Have you come straight from the front?’ she said. ‘What a sight! You look terrible!’

  I gave her a dazed look and took the tray of shots back to my table. I swallowed down my order, taking a long time between drinks as my thoughts drifted back over the day’s events.

  Half-drunk, I left around ten. I waved down a becak and ordered the driver to take me home. I was in luck: Mama was already asleep. Babu Tenie was shocked to see the state I was in and prepared a bath for me. She washed my clothes and hung them out to dry.

  I sl
ept for much of the day and, even after waking, I stayed in bed staring into space. Kokkie Tas brought me food now and then. When Mama came to ask what was wrong with me, I told her I was tired. As evening approached, I ordered a becak to take me back to the Marines Club, where this time I got tanked up on whisky. Strangely, I saw no one I knew at the club that night. I left feeling uneasy and had a becak drop me at the barracks on Porongstraat. I staggered up to the barrier and reported to the duty officer.

  ‘Hey Nolan, what’s this I hear? Had a spot of bad luck with a prisoner transport? You’re three sheets to the wind, man. Where’s the good in that?’

  ‘Bad luck? Yes, you might say that. Spoke to Captain Groeneveld on the phone yesterday,’ I said. ‘My entire leave is up the spout.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, you’re in the same boat as a bunch of lads from another prisoner transport,’ the officer continued.

  ‘What?’ I shouted, shaken from my stupor. ‘There was another transport?’

  The duty officer tried to reassure me, offered me a cigarette and a chair to sit down on. I badly needed that chair. A corporal came to sit with me and gave me a mug of strong coffee and a tin of K rations. As I wolfed down macaroni with ham and cheese, the officer told me that a second transport had left from Bondowoso after mine, with no fewer than one hundred prisoners on board. They had also been packed into covered goods wagons with no ventilation and half of them had suffocated.

  After digesting that horror story, I wove my way down the corridor to the dorm. I dumped my kit next to my camp bed, hung my rifle in the belts and lay down, fully clothed, boots and all. I fell into a deep and immediate sleep.

  The next morning I woke with a pounding headache. I stripped to my underpants and headed for the washrooms, where a long, cold shower washed away my hangover. In the mess, I met the lads from the second prisoner transport, including a lieutenant, a sergeant major and a marine first class. After breakfast we had a cheerless conversation about our situation.