Chapter 36

As good as McDonald was, he was no match for us. We made it back to his hidey-hole around dusk. I had pinpointed where we were supposed to meet him using my compass and we moved well to his right before circling around behind him. He had been expecting Wilf or my unit to be coming from the north or east. South-west, and he got the shock of his life when Tremblay tapped him on the shoulder. When he calmed down, he was his good-natured still cantankerous self, but I wondered what it must have been for him lying up all this time on his own, not knowing when or if any of us would make it back to him. The sub was due off shore around midnight and so we had a bit of time to kill. I made my report to him and he carefully took down everything and he proceeded to encode it ready for the transmission to the sub when it surfaced.

We had saved our rations and had another three days up our sleeves. There didn’t seem to be any point in taking them all back according to some in my team until I pointed out that if the sub was delayed or worse still seen, it could be a week or more before another attempt was made to take us off the mainland. I suggested that we wait until we made radio contact and the rafts were on the beach before scoffing some of the food. After all we didn’t want those burly sailors to have to carry extra weight in their rafts if they didn’t have to.

As night closed in, it became even more obvious that Wilf’s team was not going to make it back to McDonald’s Outpost as it had been affectionally named. I wasn’t surprised. Wilf was the sort of person who would make the most of the allocated time to explore all possibilities. I was pretty confident that our training had been good enough for his team to have gone unnoticed by the Japanese, still there was a nagging doubt that lingered. At midnight McDonald used his radio and made almost instant contact. He quickly passed on my report so that if anything happened to us between here and the sub, at least some knowledge would go back to the powers that be who sent us on this wild goose chase. Wilf had judged McDonald’s location to a nicety and by the time the men from the sub in their rafts arrived, my team was on the beach waiting for them. I had decided to stay behind, contrary to Wilf’s orders. McDonald had seemed a bit uneasy when we had arrived and he may have had another two nights and days on his own. He was grateful for my decision. I would stand watch over him as his safety was paramount to enable Wilf’s team to make it out of Burma.

Wilf’s team arrived in two parts, all bar two of them on the third night in Burmese jungle. I heard them coming. They travelled quietly but my ears had become attuned to the noises around McDonald’s outpost. There was nothing to do during the day except listen. The seven men came and sat down exhausted. Six of them had taken it in turns to act as a crutch for Logan who was nursing a massively swollen ankle. Logan was a big man and that fact alone had taken its toll on the others. Their report wasn’t exactly encouraging. They had hit the railway midday the day before almost by accident. Logan, the person on point tumbled down into a cutting carved into the hillside, pitching headlong forward crashing onto the line below. Luckily there were no Japanese in the area at the time. He was lucky to have just escaped with just a sprained ankle. A decision had to be made then and there. Logan was to be taken back that night but the team in two parts would quickly check up and down the line to see what the lay of the land was. Wilf and Christensen would head south-east and make their own way back. The remaining six would head north-west for a shorter distance then come back and grab Logan from where he was to layup for the rest of the day and then head back to McDonald that night. It would take a full twenty-four hours probably to get him back. Quite logically the larger group were given the compass and the torch. Wilf kept his walkie talkie.

The report of the men who had just arrived was pretty disappointing from a military perspective. Again, McDonald wrote it down and encoded it. To the north-west of what we labelled as Logan’s Folly, the line wound its way through jungle over small bridges and on to flatlands. It was in these open expanses that the Japanese were. They desperately needed to keep the line open and had placed a number of anti-aircraft bunkers to protect it from bombing runs. These bunkers were also located at what looked like quite established encampments that the jungle seemed to be trying to take back. Harvey seemed to think that these may have been where the construction crews for the line had been based. The team had to skirt around all these anti-aircraft points by some distance and that meant that they didn’t get far along the line before having to turn back. They reckon that they had seen enough though, as the anti-aircraft guns could be depressed low enough to take care of any ground force assault.

I sent the seven of them onwards down to the beach before we had even made contact with the sub. With Logan’s injury they needed as much time as possible to get there. I could have made them wait until the following night when possibly Christensen and Wilf returned but it was better to get as many out as soon as possible. The sub surfaced and the message was passed on. I had no way of knowing whether the men were picked up or not as it had been decided that one short message per night could only be allowed to occur. I would not know until the following night if they had made it to the beach in time. All McDonald and I could do was wait and hope that the last two would arrive back from the railway line in time for the last trip to the sub. If not McDonald and I would be going on our own.

I had checked my watch for the umpteenth time as the time ticked down to midnight. The sub would be surfacing and we were to be left with the unavoidable option of just the two of us leaving. The plan was simple. We would signal to be picked up and leave straight away for the beach. The tide was going against us and that meant the sub couldn’t get in as close as normal. It also meant that the raft, and there would only be one needed, would be further out, leaving us with a longer trek across the sand. The moon was fuller and no sign of clouds so we would be exposed as we hightailed it to the shallows and relative safety. The worst part was that if we didn’t respond to the signal from the sub, then they would assume that we had been compromised and would leave without sending a raft.

Right on time the call came through and McDonald responded. We had nothing to report except that two people were to be picked up and the remaining two had not made it back. McDonald hesitated after packing the set up. At one stage we had contemplated leaving the radio set behind buried in the jungle. However, Wilf had insisted that we take it back as nothing should be left behind indicating anyone had been here. It seemed farcical as I helped McDonald load it on his back. The radio was irrelevant; we were leaving two men behind and they would be evidence enough.

There was no hope of seeing a torch signalled message telling us to wait because Wilf had handed that over to the rest of his team. Grim faced, McDonald and I made our way down the ridge and onto the lowlands. I’d never felt more defeated in my life than when we hit the beach. Somewhere out in the dark a raft was waiting for us. Somewhere behind us, we had left two men. I had known Christensen for more than a year, but Wilf, strangely enough, was the one I would miss more.

I watched the breakers and saw the raft as a black mass among the whiteness. It was time to go. Suddenly my walkie talkie crackled. I put the receiver to my ear. Words, faint words came through, “Tell the bastards to wait, will you. We’re half an hour from the beach.”

I was about to order McDonald to radio the sub, however he already had the radio off his back and was twiddling with knobs. I told him to make sure the sailors didn’t turn around, and then I raced back up the route we had just walked. I didn’t worry about noise and pushed through the undergrowth with abandon. A little way in, I spotted them. Wilf was staggering under Christensen’s weight. He had him slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and was trudging methodically, placing one foot in front of the other. When I reached them, I quickly put Christensen over my shoulder and the relief must have been great as Wilf staggered a little falling to his knees. He rose slowly and gasped “He’s out to it, got malaria, a bad dose. Been carrying him all day. The boat still here?” I nodded. He continued, “Let’s get the bloody hell out of here.”

He was still carrying his rifle in one hand and had Christensen’s slung over one shoulder. I looked at his other hand and in the light of my torch I saw that it was bleeding. I was about to look at it but he pulled his hand away. His eyes seemed to sink lower into his face. There was anger and hurt in them. We made it to the beach and with the sailor’s help we managed to get everyone aboard. Wilf lay below the gunnels of the raft and his bleeding hand fell open. In it was a piece of metal that had been cutting into the skin causing all the bleeding. He saw me staring and quickly shut his hand and in the faint moonlight I saw tears in his eyes. The metal was one of a pair of a dead meat ticket that all of us wore.