56

On Christmas Day, 1941, Hong Kong was surrendered to the Imperial Army of Japan, and Patrick was forever parted from his closest friend. The German armies were surviving their first Russian winter and occupied all of Europe to the Spanish frontier. Their reluctant ally, Vichy France, controlled North Africa, and Cairo was still threatened, although the Battle of Tobruk had eased the pressure.

In the Pacific, the Japanese had signed a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union and then, on 7 December, virtually destroyed the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. This act threw the United States squarely into the war as Britain’s ally. The Philippines were being invaded and would soon capitulate. Malaya was also invaded, and Singapore would soon fall. Britain was battered but still in the fight, and rumours abounded that Japan was invading the Aleutian Islands. A submarine had bombarded a lighthouse on Vancouver Island and, it was said, killed a cow.

Patrick MacQueen was still in his berth on a train near Calgary, not far from where he had been born. He was a probationary sub-lieutenant of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (Temporary), and the train was heading for Vancouver. Patrick’s ultimate destination—and that of more than one hundred other “subbies” from across Canada—was the Naval College of HMCS Royal Roads, near Esquimalt.

Patrick didn’t even know what a “Roads’” was, and he was suffering from such a hangover that he didn’t care. Christmas Eve had been riotous on the train. The only thing that marked Patrick from his companions was a fading suntan. His arm was fully recovered, he was now nineteen years old, and the prospects for victory looked pretty slim. The progress of events makes other events inevitable. There is only the past, the present, and the perhaps, as Tennessee Williams might say.

His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Royal Roads was a castle.

Train windows can be mirrors of the past, and Patrick MacQueen recalled the bleak snow-swept prairies from his early childhood. Having recently been looking at oleanders and pink beaches in Bermuda, he found the view even more awesome and thought of the German soldiers freezing on the steppes of Russia. How could anyone survive, let alone fight, a war? He felt no delight in their suffering, even if they were the enemy.

The small town where he had been born was named Trochu, after a French general. It had been settled by cavalry officers, following the collapse of Bonaparte’s Second Empire. Not one of them knew anything about the Canadian west, but all of them knew a great deal about horses. Some local ranchers still bear those aristocratic names. Patrick’s father had stepped off the train into the mud of Trochu, in 1920, escorting his bride from Nova Scotia. The culture shock must have been significant, but they survived until the Depression and the Dust Bowl drove them back to the east in 1930. But more important than the Eastern Front, or his birthplace, was Patrick’s headache. During a stopover in Winnipeg, the subbies had loaded up with bottles of liquor for a party—and now the price was being paid. The curtains were still drawn around the berth, but the wheels clattered underneath and the crowd sounded noisy again. He would rather have stayed in the berth all day, but Mother Nature drove him forth. He emerged to face a ragged cheer, and then he felt sick.

It is an agreeable fantasy that a group of men haphazardly thrown together in the same uniform create instant bonds of camaraderie. In varying degrees, the young men on the train considered themselves the latest model of the Lords of the Universe, but the relationships within the group were cautious as each tried to assess his own level. The war was changing many of the standards by which one judged one’s fellow man, but those standards have a remarkable resilience. The navy was particularly reluctant to change; its entire outlook was dominated by the attitudes of the British Royal Navy.

Although those traditional attitudes were not necessarily incorrect, they were becoming increasingly more difficult to enforce. Some of these subbies felt quite at home—those from private schools or English backgrounds, or from Victoria itself. The few promoted from the lower deck felt awkward but knew that their time would come. To others, it was merely an irritating interruption of their lives and they quickly adapted, considering it better than being drafted into the army.

These young sorts were dressed in a black uniform with eight gold buttons on the jacket and a wavy stripe of gold braid on each cuff. Their trousers were high waisted, and their shirts were white linen, with double cuffs and a detachable stiff collar. The cap had a shiny peak with a large badge in gold thread (preferably from Gieves of London) surrounded by a crown. They wore or carried brown leather gloves and were not permitted to carry parcels or packages in public. The greatcoat was long, with a double row of buttons on each shoulder, on each of which sat the subby’s epaulette of rank. These young men were the lowest on the totem pole of the Naval Officer Corps—but they were on the pole, nonetheless.

En route to their castle, they piled out of the railway carriages in Vancouver station. They all wore their greatcoats with white scarves at the throat; some wore shiny Half Wellington boots. Patrick MacQueen stepped through a cloud of steam and onto the platform. The roof of the station arched high above, and alongside the train was another train readying to leave. Patrick looked up at a window and found himself frozen in a tableau.

The window at which he gazed was dirty; steam rose around it like a shroud. Pressed against the glass was the flattened nose of a small oriental girl, her little eyes looking at Patrick with a shocking directness and bewilderment. Her small mouth formed an O and her little hands were outspread, so he could see the faint lines of her palms. Her black hair was cut in bangs across her forehead, just as Patrick’s little sister used to wear hers. They looked at one another across an infinity—he in his black and gold uniform, and she in a faded little blouse.

“Hurry up, sir, the bus is waiting,” shouted someone down the platform. Patrick glanced at a petty officer, then turned to wave at the little girl. She was being hustled aside by a stern man, obviously her father, who turned his back. Patrick hastened to follow his companions, passing another group of orientals carrying luggage and looking distraught. He smiled at them, but they ignored him.

“C’mon, Pat!” shouted an irrepressibly boyish sub-lieutenant named Freddie Seaton. “You’re holding up the whole goddamn war!”

The ferryboat from Vancouver to Victoria was the first time that many of these men had been to sea—actually the first time that many had even seen the sea. It started to rain, and then to sleet. Their visions of a winter in sunny Victoria were dampened when this then turned into large flakes of snow. It was dark, they were cold, and their feet were wet when the buses swung between the gatehouses of HMCS Royal Roads and up the long tree-lined driveway to the castle. This had been built by the Dunsmore family, who had named it Hatley Park. It was to be the subbies’ home for the next four months. No Lord of the Universe could have asked for more, but it was also inhabited by demons from the Royal Navy known innocently as instructors.

To the instructors, a temporary probationary sub-lieutenant RCNVR was akin to the barnacles one scraped off the hull of a ship after a long voyage—of no discernible use and a thundering nuisance.

Their first gainful employment was to shovel the heavy, wet snow from the entire parade square. That set the tone.