The third beauty lured me over to her place, an impressive house not far from the Kapasan pasar. There she plied me with refreshing palm wine and all kinds of Javanese treats. We flirted briefly and she led me to her bedroom, where the oil lamps were burning low. She blew out the lamp at the window and as we lay down naked on her bed, a voice inside warned me to keep my pistol within arm’s reach. As we were making love, I caught sight of two hooded figures passing her open window, followed seconds later by fumbling at her front door. My lover wrapped herself tightly around me and stirred the flames of passion, yet still I felt uneasy. Suddenly the bedroom door swung open and a man carrying a Sten gun peered in. In a flash, I grabbed my Colt and fired. He doubled over and fell down dead. I pressed the pistol to my lover’s throat.
‘You filthy bitch!’ I hissed.
‘No, don’t shoot,’ she cried out in fear. ‘I do not know this man!’
‘Then why did you blow out the lamp at the window?’ I snarled.
I leapt from the bed and pulled on my underpants, just in time to see another man enter the house. Before he could aim his tommy gun at me, I shot him dead. Then I turned my pistol on the woman and put a bullet between her eyes. She was thrown back onto the bed and, with a rattle in her throat, she died. I quickly pulled on the rest of my clothes and – pistol in my left hand, knife in my right – I ventured outside. I scanned the street for pemudas, but saw only a few curious bystanders. I went back inside and retrieved the Sten gun and the tommy gun from their dead owners. With both weapons slung over my shoulder, I made for the main road and took a becak back to barracks.
The guard at the gate looked at me in surprise. Then the duty commander appeared and asked suspiciously, ‘Hey, Intel, are you out there fighting a one-man war?’
Hadji
One morning they brought in an important political prisoner for me to interrogate. Like Sukarno, he was a qualified engineer and they had been exiled together under Dutch colonial rule. Piet Dikotta ordered me to treat this prisoner with all due respect. On no account was I to rough him up. To interrogate such a man effectively took thorough preparation and I had a stack of books brought to my room: works on politics in Indonesian, High Javanese, Malay, English and Dutch. My office-cum-sleeping quarters became a library, complete with musty odour. It took me a month to skim through all those pages. This friend of Sukarno’s was a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, so I called him Hadji. He was given his own room at the rear of our headquarters but was warned in no uncertain terms that he would be shot dead if he tried to escape. I gave him ten notebooks and a fountain pen and told him to write a full account of the political situation of the period. Every so often I would read what he had written and, if I thought he was lying, I would punish him by denying him meals for a couple of days. Then I would send one of my informers to bring me the tastiest Chinese dishes from local restaurants so that I could torment Hadji by eating them right in front of him. Eventually, he could stand it no longer and begged me to give him some food.
‘Hadji, I will bring you the finest meals imaginable, but only after you write down what you know about the political objectives and military targets of Masyumi, the Communists and the Nationalists. I will go through everything with a fine-tooth comb and if I discover a single lie, you will not be given so much as a grain of rice. Is that clear?’
I even forced the man to write through the night until he fell asleep with the pen in his hand. Eventually, I was able to extract the truth from him about every political matter of relevance to us. Piet Dikotta passed on these comprehensive and complex reports to the highest naval authorities.
Crocodile fodder
The reports arriving daily at headquarters were none too encouraging. A column of marines had been mowed down by Indonesian Army units. A squad of nine marines on sweeping operations had been ambushed by a company commanded by the notorious Major Djarot Soebiantoro. Their limbs had been severed, their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. They were then tied to plantain trunks and thrown into the infested waters of Kali Solo as fodder for the crocodiles and iguanas. Another reconnaissance patrol found itself outnumbered and was all but wiped out. A single marine, an Indo by the name of Kling Logeman, lived to tell the tale and ran to seek help, hand pressed to his bayonet wound to stop his guts spilling out. He passed a couple of kampongs on his way, but the villagers pelted him with stones. In desperation, he staggered on, found his way back to the main force and was able to report what had happened before collapsing. A mobile sick bay saved his life.
Meanwhile, I was conducting raids in the most notorious kampongs around Surabaya. Our team arrested and jailed entire gangs of infiltrators and double agents. Interrogating them was tough going. Flushed with victory, our captives knew that the world was turning against the Netherlands and that decolonization could no longer be stopped. We were sore losers and subjected those extremists to ever more punishing treatment. Christmas came and went in a cycle of raids, arrests, interrogations and incarcerations.
The first day of 1949 was fast approaching and with it came a lull in our activities. Good news from the front was scarce. Indonesian forces had stepped up their guerrilla operations and the Big Shit was casting around for fresh tactics. I was given New Year’s Eve off to go home and celebrate with Mama, Ella and the rest of the family. I turned up in combat uniform, armed with rifle, bayonet and fighting knife. Mama saw the glazed look in my eyes. ‘What’s wrong, Arto?’ she asked. ‘Your thoughts are far, far away and not with us.’
‘I don’t know any more, Mama. All this hunting, killing and fighting… when will it end? I have many friends among the marines. They have told me about life in Holland, how people there are not put down for being brown-skinned or born out of wedlock. Life there is so very different, Mama, and I am starting to feel like I don’t fit in here. I no longer feel senang. This country, this people, all these wars. Every minute of every hour of every day, I have to fight to stay alive. My enemies are everywhere. But come, Mama. It’s New Year’s Eve. For what it’s worth, let’s celebrate together.’
Mama said nothing. Tears welled up in her eyes. That dear woman could sense that we were drifting apart.
In those days, fireworks were strictly forbidden. The only loud blasts to be heard came from a rifle or machine gun, wielded by friend or foe. The mood was grim and, though people celebrated across the city, there was little in the way of elation or spontaneity. I didn’t even wait for the clock to strike midnight, but took my leave of Mama and the rest shortly after eleven and flagged down a becak to take me on a long detour to headquarters on Karang Menjangan. Traffic was light and most of the traders had shut up shop. Only restaurants, bars and other places to eat and drink were still open. Here and there, I saw drunken marines and KNIL soldiers staggering across the street. The police were out in force and could occasionally be seen chasing down suspects, guns blazing.
I asked the becak driver to stop outside the Marines Club, gave him a hefty tip and told him to wait for me. With my M1 at the ready, I crossed the street and tracked a group of shooting policemen. A marine came up to me and shouted, ‘Look out! Pelopors! I heard shots from the dark alley by the Aurora store!’
We ran into the alley together and I asked one of the policemen ducking for cover where the enemy was located. He pointed in the direction of Pasar Blauran. I told my fellow marine that we had better return to Tunjungan, since hunting down infiltrators among crowds of shoppers would be a hopeless task for the pair of us. I wandered back to the Marines Club only to find driver and becak gone.
For want of something better to do, I walked into the club and got tanked up on booze. Though everyone was wishing each other Happy New Year, the atmosphere was muted. I felt miserable, like a ship cut adrift, and my mood was no better by the time I arrived back at headquarters in the wee small hours. Clearly no one there had felt the need to sleep a wink. Wide awake, they all wished each other a prosperous 1949 and every strength for the battles ahead. Many a
marine remembered his fallen and wounded comrades.
I had little chance to mull things over. The call for ‘standby’ went up again and in no time we were back in our fighting vehicles on the way to carry out raids in some godforsaken neighbourhoods of the city. Tips from informers, double agents and assorted scum led to several arrests. All interpreters present had orders to interrogate suspects on the spot. None of us held back.
A hole in the ground
On the first of January yet more prisoners were transferred from the front to headquarters. My department was tasked with interrogating a Jap by the name of Toshiba. In his glory days, he had belonged to the Sakura organization and after the capitulation he became a foreman, constructing bunkers and other fortifications for the Indonesian Army. He also trained their Demolition Group. I was ordered to attend to him personally.
Toshiba had an arrogant, cynical air about him. He blanked my every question with an emphatic silence. After a while I lost my patience, pulled him from his chair and screamed at him to stand to attention. This he did. I struck him repeatedly in the face until he fell over backwards. As he fell I kicked him in the chest. He croaked and spluttered in pain, and the sight of his bloodied face gave me satisfaction. All the while, I saw myself hanging on the scaffold while a merciless Kenpeitai thug pounded my back with a baseball bat. I could not banish his savage grin from my memory.
The next morning Toshiba became more obliging. Useful intel began to escape his lips in fits and starts. After questioning him a while, I took him into the back garden, where I had noticed a spade propped against one of the outbuildings. I handed it to Toshiba and motioned to him to follow me over to a spot by the tennis court. I pulled out my fighting knife, outlined a rectangle roughly six feet by three, and ordered Toshiba to dig a hole three feet deep. I left him in no doubt that he was digging his own grave. I registered shock in his eyes, but he said nothing and began to dig. When the hole was deep enough, I ordered Toshiba to lie down in it to make sure he would fit. Trembling from head to toe, he obeyed. I nodded my approval and let him clamber back out.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Captain Galliër standing behind me.
‘I say, Nolan,’ he said calmly, ‘do you want to serve twenty years for murder?’
‘Murder?’ I asked indignantly. ‘This slant-eyed piece of shit is a war criminal. He has trained pemudas to systematically massacre marines. Some of our lads have been fed to the crocodiles. Give me the pleasure of slitting this fellow’s throat and booting his damn body into that hole.’
‘No, Nolan, I won’t have it,’ Captain Galliër insisted. ‘A ceasefire has been announced. This bastard is to be taken to Batavia and put on a transport back to Japan, where he will face trial. An Allied tribunal has been installed there.’
I obeyed orders reluctantly and barked at Toshiba to return to his cell.
On patrol with brother Karel
One evening I told Piet Dikotta I was going to the Chinese district downtown on a counterintelligence patrol. I put on my utility uniform, borrowed a Colt .45 pistol from the quartermaster and strapped on my fighting knife, tucking the sheath in my legging. I signed out with the duty officer and walked from Karang Menjangan towards Gubeng Viaduct. On the way I hailed a becak to take me to Kapasan, one of the city’s more notorious neighbourhoods. At the 5th precinct police station, I got off and strolled in to see my brother Karel, who was on duty till early morning. In his office, we chatted over a few cups of strong coffee and the sweet taste of perut ayam and kue lapis. He suggested going on patrol together in and around Kapasan Pasar. The market was always teeming with hardened criminals, opium smugglers and whores, not to mention spies and Indonesian Army infiltrators.
Once Karel had finished his paperwork, he buckled on the holster that held his Colt service revolver and rounded up three Javanese policemen armed with old-fashioned Mannlicher rifles to join him on patrol. Shooting the breeze, we walked in the direction of the pasar, still buzzing with life late in the evening. We feasted our eyes on the stalls as we ambled past. I was able to pick out the infiltrators even in their civvies. They did their best to blend in but when I looked at them long and steady, their nerves gave them away. They were all too familiar with a Marine uniform.
‘Damn it, Arto,’ Karel blurted out, ‘it was so busy at the station, I forgot to ask why you only have your fighting knife strapped to your right leg. Why aren’t you carrying a firearm?’
‘The quartermaster issued me with a Colt .45 and four spare magazines. It’s in my right trouser pocket. Only officers are permitted to wear a gun belt.’
Our conversation ended abruptly as Karel’s men alerted us to a vicious fight a few stalls along. Karel and I rushed over to where a man lay squirming on the ground. His eyes had been gouged out, but I recognized him as one of my best informers, Achmat. The culprit, a Chinaman, stood only a few paces away. His right hand was sticky with blood.
In a mixture of Chinese and Malay, Karel asked him what had happened. Still seething with anger, he replied that Achmat had slept with his prostitute without his knowledge and a fight had broken out. As a precaution, I drew my pistol and released the safety catch, ready to fire. Karel turned pale. ‘Careful, Arto!’ he called to me in Dutch. ‘This man is a notorious kuntao fighter.’
Sure enough, the Chinaman was readying himself to attack, cursing the Marines in his native tongue. He ran towards me at speed, the fingers of his right hand poised to stab me in the eyes. Even before Karel – a first-class pencak fighter – could intervene, I put a bullet straight between the man’s eyes. He fell back with a short cry, all set to join Achmat on the road to Valhalla. In a blind rage, I pumped all eight rounds from my magazine into his quivering body, then pulled out a fresh magazine and reloaded my pistol. At the sight of this bloodbath, Karel turned white as a sheet and threw up. His constables, who had witnessed the whole thing, stood there speechless, knees knocking. ‘You surprise me, brother,’ I sneered. ‘This much blood never used to turn your stomach You beat me till the blood poured from my nose and mouth. I don’t remember you throwing up then.’
‘Shut your mouth, idiot!’ Karel snapped at me.
I grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Come on, Karel. Now you’ve finished vomiting, what do you say we head down the road for a beer? You look like you could use one.’
Non-active duty
In January 1949 a truce was agreed and the Second Police Action was coming to an end. Conferences were being held to settle political differences and every serviceman was beginning to feel that he had fought on for nothing. Commands, routine orders and marching orders were relaxed. The intelligence units of the Marine Brigade Security Service and the KNIL switched their focus to gathering political intelligence instead of military intelligence, though the enemy were constantly breaching the truce and continued to wage their guerrilla war. More than ever, Surabaya found itself confronted with an influx of Indonesian Army infiltrators and other militants. Interpreters and marines continued to lose their lives, and we laid them to rest in the Marine cemetery. A sense of defeat began to weigh on us.
My father was buried not far from the military cemetery. I paid regular visits to tend his grave, pray and put fresh flowers in the marble vases by his headstone.
At this time my duties mainly consisted of office work: interrogating prisoners and translating political pamphlets and documents. In the evening, I engaged in counter-espionage and went on the occasional raid patrol.
Six months later, all interpreters and marines were pulled back from frontline positions to GHQ. Everyone had to hand in their weapons, combat gear and transport gear. Interpreters and informers alike were put on non-active duty from July 1949. As interpreters, we were given references and three months’ additional pay. Informers received a bonus of sorts, paid in rupiah banknotes that bore the face of Sukarno, and were granted permission to return to their kampongs in the city or the desas beyond. Those chaps were at risk of being liquidated and some of them, wit
h permission of course, chose to stay on at the barracks and do household chores.
At a short ceremony, Captain Galliër gave me my references and thanked me for services rendered. Many of us struggled to hold ourselves together and, as I handed in my weapons to the quartermaster, tears were rolling down my cheeks too. This was not lost on the corporal in question. ‘Ah yes, Nolan, I can well imagine how you must feel,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Through the years you and your weapon have become one. You used it often and maintained it well. Without your M1, you would have rotted away beneath the sods long ago. Saying goodbye to your weapon is tough, but it will come to us all before long. Those pelopors will soon have their Merdeka and there’s bugger all we can do about it. Damn it, man, it’s a lousy state of affairs. Soon I’ll be on the boat home and then what?’
‘At least you Dutch lads can look forward to a safe passage home. What about all the Indos who have fought so hard for Queen and Country? Where do we go? I have been fighting ever since the Japanese occupation, and what thanks do I get? The chance to hang around here and be gunned down with not a single marine for back-up? Politics is a filthy game. All through the ages us soldiers have been left to do the dirty work for our lords and masters, men who have never heard a bullet whistle past their ears.’
Bitter and in the lowest of spirits, I headed for Piet Dikotta’s office. He saw me coming through the open door and came to meet me like a true brother in times of need.
The Interpreter from Java Page 39