The news didn’t get any better the next day despite the Royal Navy’s Admiral Phillips reaching Singapore with his fleet. He decided to intercept a second wave of enemy landing ships. He sailed with the battleships the Prince of Wales, the Repulse and four destroyers in a hunt for the Japanese fleet that had hit Thailand and Malaya.
Waller had met Phillips during World War I, and wondered about his capacities. Whereas Waller had seen much conflict in the current war and knew the value of air cover, he was not surprised to learn the British admiral had disdained such aid. A Japanese submarine, the I-65, spotted the British fleet and tailed it, alerting the Japanese air force.
At 11 a.m. on 10 December, nine Japanese planes were sighted at 10,000 feet, flying in single file along the length of the Repulse. The enemy attacked. A bomb hit the catapult deck and exploded in a hangar. Fire broke out below decks. Fifteen minutes later, Phillips radioed for Royal Air Force assistance. At 11.20 a.m. the Prince of Wales was hit by one bomb and four torpedoes, knocking out the ship’s propellers and rudder. An hour later, the RAF air protection had still not arrived. The two ships were in deep trouble, smashed by bombs and torpedoes. The Prince of Wales flooded. Its power was cut. It began to sink. Its strong hull allowed it to stay afloat for an hour. Many sailors were saved but not Admiral Phillips or Captain Leach, the ship’s commanding officer, who went down with the ship. The trailing four destroyers saved 2081 lives, but 326 men on the two ships were lost.
The RAF planes arrived just as the Prince of Wales disappeared below the waterline.
Reading of the depressing news a fortnight later, Waller noted in his diary: ‘The Japanese have now disposed of the only Allied Battleship and Battlecruiser in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. Our call up must be near at hand …’
Coincidentally or otherwise, at this time Waller summoned Collins to his office.
‘I have to account for everything in the outside chance we face an emergency,’ Waller told him. ‘So, I am sorting the trivial, the seemingly small details, and even the big ones that can be handled now so that every sailor knows his duty.’
‘Yes, Captain, sir,’ Collins said, perplexed at what his duty would be.
‘Should we be in danger of … what happened to the Prince of Wales and the Repulse—’
Collins’s shocked expression caused Waller to add, ‘I am confident this will not happen, mind, but it is my job to cover every contingency. Your job will be to take Red Lead with you.’
Collins looked over at the cat, who was playing with a ball of string. She glanced at the two men at the mention of her name. She left the string and wandered with her languid walk over to them.
‘Yes, sir, my honour, sir.’
‘No matter what the situation, you will come to the bridge, or my office, find her and take her off the ship. Understood?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Good. Now take her to a beach for exercise.’
‘Er, Captain, could I do that tomorrow? There is a very big rat the cooks call “Goeballs” in the kitchen terrorising everyone. It has broken into food supplies, gnawed through ropes, even woodwork …’
‘Send Red Lead in. She hasn’t had a kill on the bridge for a week.’
‘That’s because she’s cleared the top deck, Captain. We all reckon she is the best ratter ever.’
‘I’m so pleased we took her on board.’
‘We all are, sir. Whenever she wanders the deck or anywhere on the ship, she is friendly and open with everyone. Even the men who hate cats, or are indifferent to them, receive the same attention. One sailor, Able Seaman Nadler, tried to frighten her. She sidestepped him, moved away 5 yards and sat watching him.’
‘Oh, really? You let that fellow know that he will be removed from this ship if he does it again when we are docked or at sea.’ Waller paused and added with a dark look, ‘The latter means walking the plank, remind Nadler.’
‘Yes, sir. Will do.’
‘Apart from that chap, I think she reminds everyone of home and the things we all miss,’ Waller said, letting his commander’s guard slip a fraction. ‘Her purr is like that of a car engine. It’s warm and soothing.’
Collins took Red Lead below to the kitchen area. The cooks laid out food in three corners of the main storage area. Two cooks positioned themselves high on food cartons to watch. Red Lead had been given a saucer of milk. She’d taken a few sips before she was distracted. Goeballs, itself the size of a small cat, appeared only a few yards from Red Lead. She noticed the rat and went on lapping up the milk. Goeballs wandered to a corner and a lump of bully beef. Satisfied with her drink, Red Lead sat licking her lips and whiskers. She observed Goeballs for almost a minute, and then padded off in a different direction.
The cooks thought she, like them, may have considered Goeballs too big to tackle. Red Lead was nowhere in sight. Two minutes later they spotted her climbing on boxes, putting her 2 yards above Goeballs. Red Lead took seconds balancing with her derriere wobbling and tail straight out. Then she pounced, landing hard on Goeballs’s back, winding the rodent. Red Lead bit the back of the rat’s neck several times as it choked on the beef it had been swallowing.
Goeballs lay motionless, blood and beef oozing from its mouth. Red Lead rolled it over and attempted to carry it off, but it seemed too big to drag. The cooks clapped and cheered, startling Red Lead. They clambered down from the cartons and made a fuss of her. She meowed at the appreciation.
Following Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the British battleships, all remaining Allied warships were combined into a single fleet, under the command of a Dutch admiral, in an effort to defend the Dutch East Indies. Waller was disgruntled, even though he had predicted this development.
‘I don’t know the Dutch command,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘British or American control would be more acceptable but this means we are operating Empire by Empire rather than in Australia’s direct interest. There is no doubt in my mind, and the minds of all my officers, that we should be patrolling Australia’s coast primarily as we shall, in all likelihood, be under threat from our invaders to the north …’
On 16 December Waller sat in his cabin reading intelligence from other ships about the Japanese attack on Burma from southern Thailand with the aim of capturing the British airfields at Victoria Point and Mergui. The two-pronged plan was to cross the mountains on the Thai–Burma border at Three Pagodas Pass and at Mae Sot, which were about 300 miles apart.
‘Mae Sot, my dear Red Lead,’ Waller said, looking over his glasses and raising his voice a little at the cat sitting in her hammock cleaning herself. ‘That is your hometown! The great Nippon army will be there by now. Thank goodness that Anna’s father took you from there. You might now be meowing with a distinctive Japanese accent.’
The cat looked over at Waller blankly for a few seconds and went on washing.
‘Yes, I agree,’ Waller said, ‘I endorse your self-bathing after your rat kills.’
Waller continued reading. A cable from an Australian frigate skipper assessed that the Japanese aimed to push the limited British forces west towards Rangoon, the Burmese capital.
A few days later this assessment was supported by newspaper and other intelligence reports. Apart from striking Burma, taking the Philippines, and conquering the tiny island of Penang off the Malaya coast, the Japanese war machine seized Guam in the Pacific. They had slid into British Borneo and had their sights also on Hong Kong. The Japanese had slaughtered millions of Chinese since invading China in 1937 and it would give them a special delight to take Hong Kong, which was Chinese in population but controlled by the British.
Christmas 1941 was charged with a sense of anticipation. Waller and his officers were keen to take on the enemy but instead spent 25 December in Sydney Harbour on the No. 1 Buoy in Farm Cove. Sailors with homes less than 50 miles from Sydney were allowed to visit their families. Waller and his officers did the traditional thing and served dinner—roast chicken and turkey—to their sailors seated at tables on the deck. The men were also allowed a measure of rum and a glass of beer. Despite the bunting and other decorations, it was hardly a festive occasion with little laughter and much serious talk about Japan’s rapid advance throughout Southeast Asia.
There was a bright moment when Red Lead wandered along a gun barrel and drew applause. She had something in her mouth. A dozen sailors yelled her name.
‘She’s got a mouse!’ one called. Cheering erupted. Red Lead dropped the mouse to the barrel and played with it for a minute. The confused little creature slipped off the barrel and fell 30 yards to the water below. Loud applause followed. Red Lead did her ‘Now you see me, now you don’t’ act by slipping inside the barrel. One wag, who’d perhaps had too much rum, climbed onto the gun’s turret and manoeuvred the barrel down so that some of the crew could see directly into it. Red Lead duly appeared at the top of the barrel, looking bemused rather than afraid. Sailors moved with cameras to take pictures of the cat in the gun.
Waller turned to surgeon Eric Mortimer.
‘Why is she so confident up there? Totally fearless!’
‘Notice when she moves along the barrel her tail is straight out. She relies on that for balance,’ observed Mortimer.
Waller mused, ‘Short of dancing girls, dogs and a few wins at sea, that cat is a sweet boost for morale, mine included.’
They watched as Red Lead climbed out of the barrel with ease and sauntered along it and back to the deck.