Torrance- Escape From Singapore

by Onbekend

  ‘Yes, I can hear you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Torrance returned the handset to the cradle and palmed a couple of paper clips before squeezing past the colonel to the door. ‘Sorry about that, sir.’

  Grimacing, the colonel wafted at the smoky air with a clipboard. ‘Who ordered you to test the line in my office, Torrance?’

  ‘Er… Mr Weir, sir.’

  ‘Mr Weir’s been missing since he went out on patrol last night.’

  ‘He has?’

  The colonel nodded.

  ‘I mean to say, I’m aware of that,’ Torrance corrected himself hastily. ‘And do you know, just before he went out, he said to me: “Damn it, Torrance, I’ve just thought of something. I’ve been meaning to test all the telephone lines in and out of the barracks and I never got around to it. If I don’t make it back, would you do it for me?”’

  ‘Torrance?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘If I catch you using my telephone to make personal calls one more time, I’ll have them throw you back into the detention barracks at Lucknow. And this time I’ll see to it they throw away the key.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Torrance stood to attention, saluted the colonel, and opened the door.

  ‘Torrance?’

  He turned back. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’re going out with Mr Piggott and his squad tonight, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell them I said “Good luck”.’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir.’ Torrance exited, pulling the door to behind him.

  He returned to his barracks hut, where Rossi and MacRae were on their way out. ‘Get a move on, Slugger. Piggy wants us at the quartermaster’s hut five minutes ago.’

  ‘Be with you in a minute.’ Torrance made a pretence of going into his own locker until they had both left, leaving him with the hut to himself. He immediately switched his attention to MacRae’s locker. Two minutes’ work with the paper clips bypassed the lock. Within he found pin-up girls stuck to the inside of the door – not nearly as classy as the pin-ups in Torrance’s own locker, he decided with satisfaction – a badly packed kitbag full of dirty laundry; a ditty bag containing tins of Blanco, Brasso and boot polish; a tub of Brylcreem; and a jar of Tiger Balm. There was no sign of the tickets. Torrance closed the locker and headed to the quartermaster’s stores.

  Within, the quartermaster sergeant was distributing arms and ammunition. ‘Give MacRae a Bren, Sar’nt,’ ordered Piggott. ‘Rossi, you can be his number two.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rossi stuffed two Bren magazines in both of his utility pouches and took the spare barrel that Cochrane handed him. Before hefting the Bren on one shoulder, MacRae took the spare parts wallet that came with it and another four Bren magazines. Another seventeen Bren magazines were distributed around the rest of the squad, along with Mills bombs, Number 27 smoke grenades, and rounds of ·303 ammunition.

  The Number Eighteen wireless set came in its own rucksack-style carrying case, with a canvas hood to keep the rain off and a separate satchel for the headphones, microphone, ground aerial key and plug assembly. Quinn hefted the wireless on his back. ‘Strewth! The bloody thing weighs a ton!’

  Everyone turned to stare at him.

  ‘Which I already knew because I lifted one on that wireless training course I attended,’ added Quinn. ‘I’d just forgotten how heavy it was, that’s all. It’s been a while.’

  ‘Maybe I should take the wireless?’ offered Shapiro. Helping Quinn shrug off the set, he weighed it in one hand for a moment, before shrugging it on his own back.

  ‘You’ve been on the wireless training course?’ Torrance asked Rossi in a low voice. The Glaswegian nodded. ‘Good. I’d hate for Bluey and Solly to humph that thing all the way to Istana Mimpi and back if there isn’t at least one person with us who knows how to use it.’

  ‘I’m no’ promising any miracles, mind,’ murmured Rossi. ‘You know how those things are more trouble than they’re worth. Range up to ten miles my arse! One mile, more like, and that’s on a good day.’

  The quartermaster sergeant handed out ration packs, Piggott checked they had all filled their water canteens, and they marched outside to where a Bedford three-tonne lorry was parked. White sat behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Bloody hell, Blanco!’ said Torrance. ‘Don’t tell me you’re coming with us?’

  ‘Only as far as the MacRitchie Reservoir,’ said White. ‘From there on you’re on yer own. My orders are to bring the lorry back to barracks.’

  ‘I’ll sit in the cab with White,’ Piggott told Cochrane. ‘You ride in the back with the men. Make sure they behave themselves.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Awreet, lads, ye heard the officer. Inna back wi’ ye!’

  ‘What have we volunteered for?’ Rossi muttered to Torrance as they waited their turn to climb over the tailgate.

  ‘You heard Piggy Piggott: we’re on a suicide mission.’

  ‘Is it too late to change my mind?’

  ‘It’s never too late. Just do what I’m gonna do if things get too hairy.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Wait till no one’s looking, then run like hell in the other direction.’

  Climbing over the tailgate, they found a folding assault boat collapsed on the floor, the kind with canvas sides and a flat wooden keel, twelve feet long and just under five feet wide. Torrance and his comrades had practised rowing one on manoeuvres the previous summer. Once they were all arranged on the benches facing one another, Rossi helped Gibson raise the tailgate and clip it in place, and Cochrane thumped his fist against the back of the cab to indicate everyone was aboard and ready for the off. The engine growled into life and the lorry was moving. Through the opening at the back of the tilt, Torrance saw the gates to the barracks drift away behind them, and then they were driving through Tanglin with the botanic gardens on one side and mock-Tudor villas on the other.

  ‘Hold on a minute, fellers,’ said Torrance. ‘If this feller we’re going to collect is a sultan… he’ll have a harem, won’t he?’

  ‘D’you reckon we’ll have to escort his houris to safety as well?’ asked Shapiro.

  ‘’Course we will,’ said Torrance. ‘I mean, if you had a harem of red-hot native bints, you wouldn’t leave ’em for the Japs, would you? No, you’d take them with you.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ said Rossi. ‘This is 1942. Naebody has a harem in this day and age!’

  ‘Whoever it is we’re collecting from the Istana Mimpi, I want you lads on your best behaviour, understood?’ said Cochrane. ‘No swearing, blaspheming or farting in front of the sultan. And if there are any women at Istana Mimpi, I expect ye to treat them all wi’ respect. I’m lookin’ at ye, Torrance.’

  ‘I resent that, Sar’nt. I always treat bints with the greatest of respect.’

  Torrance closed his eyes. He had grabbed a couple of hours’ shut-eye since Hamilton’s briefing, not enough to refresh him, just enough to make him realise how exhausted he was after all the sleep he had missed over the past three days. Before he knew it, he was dreaming of lying on a sun-soaked beach on Bali while beautiful, naked native girls rubbed him with oil…

  He snapped awake and had the disappointment of finding himself in the back of an army lorry with four sweaty Scotsmen, two Australians and a Malay. They had only got as far as Bukit Timah Road. As on Dunearn Road – which he could see across the canal – the traffic was horrendous: all lanes of traffic blocked with slow-moving tailbacks of army lorries, ambulances, universal carriers, and Quad tractors towing twenty-five pounders.

  They folded up the canvas tilt at the sides to try to get some air flowing through the back. Shapiro fanned himself with his slouch hat. Both Rossi and Gibson took out books and started to read.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Quinn asked Rossi.

  ‘It’s a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell.’

  ‘Bertie who?’

  ‘Russell. He’s an English political philosopher.’

 
‘Blimey!’ Quinn turned to Gibson. ‘What about you?’

  ‘It’s called The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.’

  ‘Gesundheit!’ said Shapiro.

  ‘What’s that about, then?’ asked Quinn. ‘The paintings of official war artists?’

  ‘It’s about strategy and tactics.’

  ‘Don’t mind Hoot,’ Torrance told the two Australians. ‘He reckons he’s going to be a general some day.’

  ‘Napoleon said every soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack,’ said Gibson.

  ‘I don’t reckon old Boney can have looked in many soldiers’ packs, then,’ said Torrance. ‘Most of the one’s I’ve seen contain smelly socks and ration packs.’

  ‘He was speaking metaphorically, no’ that I’d expect an ignoramus like ye to understand what that means.’ Gibson waved the slim volume at Torrance. ‘Ye should read this, Slugger. Ye might learn sumptin’.’

  The lance corporal resumed reading, but in no time at all his head lolled onto Shapiro’s shoulder. He twitched in his sleep – perhaps dreaming of being a field marshal – and the book slipped to the collapsible boat beneath their ammo boots. Leaning forward, Zulkifli recovered it and tucked it under the flap of Gibson’s pack resting on his knees. Gibson’s eyes flicked open, and he seized Zulkifli by the wrist.

  ‘Caught ye red-handed, ye thievin’ heathen!’

  ‘He was puttin’ yer book back, ye ignorant bampot!’ said Rossi.

  Gibson looked at the others. They all nodded. The lance corporal sheepishly let go of Zulkifli’s wrist. ‘Sorry.’

  The Malay leaned back in his seat with infinite dignity, eyeing Gibson from under his lashes with unalloyed derision.

  ‘What time are we supposed to reach the reservoir?’ asked Rossi.

  ‘Twenty hundred hours.’ His usually florid ferret-face looking more pallid than usual, Cochrane sat with his eyes closed.

  MacRae glanced at his watch. ‘It’s twenty to seven now. We’re no’ even past the Chinese High School yet.’

  ‘If we’d set out on foot, we’d be there by now,’ said Quinn.

  ‘Not lugging this, we wouldn’t.’ Torrance tapped the toe of one boot against the collapsible boat beneath their feet.

  Grimy and battle-stained, a mob of Australian soldiers marched along the pavement from the direction of Bukit Timah, many of them wearing bloody bandages. Torrance clambered over the tailgate and dropped to the tarmac.

  ‘Torrance!’ Cochrane called after him. ‘Where the hell d’ye think you’re going?’

  ‘Just gonna ask these lads how far this traffic’s backed up.’ Torrance hailed the Australians. ‘Wotcher, lads. Come far?’

  One of them jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘From as far as the Reformatory Road Junction.’

  ‘We’re still holding them there?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘How far back up the road is the traffic like this?’

  ‘There’s a bomb crater across both lanes of the road about fifty yards down from the GEC building. The redcaps have had to divert the traffic onto Dunearn Road, it means there’s only one lane of traffic going each way.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Torrance. The GEC building was up past the racecourse. Gazing up the road, he saw columns of smoke rising in the distance, black specks in the sky, little white puffs blossoming around them as the Japanese bombed Bukit Timah and the British ack-ack batteries retaliated. He thanked God they would not be going that way. ‘All right, thanks mate,’ he told the Australian.

  He was walking back to the Bedford when the traffic started moving again. As the lorry lurched forward, Quinn and Rossi gestured frantically for him to run. Torrance did not bother, as he could see what they could not: after advancing another five yards, the lorry halted again. From the top of Cluny Road to the Adam Road bridge was little more than a hundred and fifty yards, but it took them the best part of an hour to cover it.

  Torrance had climbed back over the tailgate and was dozing, trying to catch up on lost sleep, when he heard the drone of aero engines. Specifically, the drone of a Mitsubishi bomber: even the most tone-deaf ear learned to tell the difference between the sound of Mitsubishi MK4A Kasei 11s and Wright R-1820 Cyclones when one’s life could depend on it. He raised his head over the top of the cab and saw a twin-engined bomber flying right at him, only a couple of hundred feet up. Following the road from the direction of Bukit Timah, it came out of the setting sun. A light winked at Torrance from the cupola in the nose: the muzzle flash of a machine gun.

  ‘Take cover!’ he bawled, vaulting over the side of the lorry.

  Seven

  Wednesday 1830 – Thursday 0500

  Torrance threw himself flat on the tarmac and crawled between the Bedford’s wheels. Quinn and MacRae joined him a moment later. He saw boots hit the tarmac as the others ran for cover, some of them huddling under the covered way in front of a row of Chinese shops. Gibson fired his Thompson around the side of a brick pillar.

  The tarmac rose in a sequence of tiny eruptions where the rounds from the bomber punched through it, tearing along a couple of feet to one side of the Bedford, starring the windscreen of a Quad tractor parked behind. Then the roar of the engines reached a climax as a shadow flitted over the Bedford. There was a crash of noise, the Quad tractor’s fuel tank tearing itself apart, smoke and flame engulfing the vehicle. The sound of aero engines faded as the bomber peeled away, climbing for altitude now.

  Torrance waited a few more seconds; no more aeroplanes roared overhead. He crawled out from under the Bedford and shook a fist futilely after the disappearing bomber. ‘Bastard!’ It must have been one of the bombers taking part in the raid on Bukit Timah. Obviously not worried about the possibility of being intercepted by RAF fighters on the flight back to their airfield – probably they had no further to go than Tengah – the pilot must have decided to let his machine-gunners get some shooting practice in by flying down the Bukit Timah Road.

  Torrance climbed onto the running board to look in the cab. The strafing run had clearly frightened White: he flinched like a scalded cat when Torrance appeared beside him.

  ‘No damage, sir?’

  ‘No damage,’ Piggott confirmed from the passenger seat.

  Not all the other vehicles on the road had been so lucky, and Torrance flinched as a bullet-riddled Humber exploded nearby, ducking as a piece of the engine flew past his head. The door at the back of an ambulance opened and an RAMC orderly fell out, his uniform slick with blood. Struggling to his feet, he took a couple of tottering steps before collapsing to the tarmac. Torrance turned away, feeling sick, mostly at the thought of how easily that might have been him. He knew there was nothing more he could do for the injured man, and now his first responsibility was to his own men. As they climbed over the tailgate, he counted them aboard: Cochrane, Gibson, MacRae, Quinn, Shapiro and Zulkifli.

  ‘No one got any new holes in them?’ he asked. Everyone seemed to be all right. Then he realised someone was missing. Looking around, he saw Rossi still standing under the covered way with his nose pressed to the window of a Chinese shoe shop.

  ‘Lefty!’

  ‘They’ve got a pair of shoes just like the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz!’ said Rossi.

  ‘Get in the lorry, you twerp!’

  Once Torrance and Rossi had joined the others in the back, White started the engine again. Ahead of them, a universal carrier was nudging the still-burning wreck of the Humber aside to clear the way. As soon as there was enough space, White squeezed the Bedford through and turned onto the bridge over the canal. The nose-to-tail traffic on Dunearn Road blocked their way to Adam Road. White honked the Bedford’s hooter. The driver of a Quad tractor ignored him. White honked his hooter again, and again. The Quad tractor pulled over, just enough for White to squeeze the Bedford through the gap between the Quad’s bumper and the staff car in front of it, and then the Bedford was free of the traffic and speeding up Adam Road, with mock-Tudor villas flashing past on eithe
r side.

  In a couple of minutes they had reached a roadblock at the Sime Road junction. A corporal of the Norfolk Regiment emerged from the gathering gloom of dusk and flagged them down with a torch. He crossed to speak with Lieutenant Piggott, and presently a runner was dispatched to the corporal’s company headquarters.

  White switched off the engine while they waited. In the silence that followed they heard the rumble of artillery and the crackle of distant small-arms fire.

  Presently the runner returned with a subaltern. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘We’re Pigforce,’ said Piggott.

  The subaltern stared at him. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Pigforce. I was told you were expecting us?’

  ‘First I’ve heard about it.’

  The subaltern referred it to his company commander, and the company commander insisted on checking with his commanding officer. In the end they were ordered to drive up to the golf course, an NCO with a tommy gun riding on the running board.

  The Norfolks had set up their battalion headquarters in the clubhouse. Cochrane, Torrance and the others waited in the car park while Piggott went inside to explain. While they waited, night descended with the suddenness shocking to anyone who had spent a lifetime getting used to a more subtle progression from day via dusk to twilight. The men of Pigforce climbed out of the lorry to stretch their legs. Shapiro lowered the wireless to the ground none too gently and it made a clang.

  ‘Careful with that!’ said Rossi. ‘If ye break the valves, it’s buggered and ye’ve carried yon thing all that way for nothing.’

  ‘We know that!’ said Quinn, and Shapiro nodded. ‘Steady on with the wireless, Solly,’ Quinn added sotto voce.

  ‘How far is it to the reservoir from here?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘It’s just the other side of the golf course, tuan,’ said Zulkifli. ‘In fact, there’s an arm of the lake about half a mile that way that would be a perfect place to launch the boat.’

  ‘Did ye used to work as a groundsman here?’ asked Rossi.

  ‘No, I’m a member.’