CHAPTER 14   

Padang

If the docks at Keppel Harbor during Singapore’s dying moments as a free city were the very picture of chaos, the scenes at Emmahaven Harbor, Padang, during late February and early March were little better. In some ways, Padang was worse. Though there had been bombs falling on evacuees in Singapore, the order maintained by the British military, in the main the Royal Navy, had been exemplary. Comparatively, the naked displays of humanity’s worst impulses under intense duress were far more prevalent at Emmahaven.

Having survived extreme trials at sea and over land, the escapees that descended upon the waiting ships were, understandably, impatient to finish the drill. The men and women grappling for passage were driven by the primal urge for safety, and the fragrance of this panic permeated the docks. These people desired nothing more than to be taken far from the Japanese invaders. The race to board the few available ships, including a pair of Royal Navy destroyers along with three cruisers and civilian vessels of varying sizes and seaworthiness, resulted in mayhem unworthy of a military operation—even that of a bedraggled, multiservice force in disgraced retreat. Officers ditched lower-ranking men to secure places on the departing vessels. Violent arguments broke out over the dwindling berths. The Dutch administrators and local citizenry were flabbergasted by the unmilitary displays.

Upon war’s end, a secret report on the Sumatran experience was prepared by the British War Ministry. It pulled no punches in describing the horrific behavior displayed in Padang.

The behaviour [sic] of our troops from senior officers to privates was in many cases deplorable.… An accepted rule was that all should go forward in the order of arrival in Sumatra, each considering he was just as worthy an escaper as the neighbor and had just as important a fund of knowledge and experience to carry away. In other words the average individual had no desire to be evacuated before those who had won the boat race but stuck up for his own place in the evacuation. However, when he saw staff officers jumping ahead of him, heard of telegrams ordering surplus medical and PWD personnel forward in priority, saw civilians who travelled with the military organization only when it was the quickest means of transport going ahead on their own, his anxiety was very noticeable.

In a different section of this report the tut-tutting practically leaps from the page. “In Sumatra, until men came along who put their own personal safety last, those who had a finger in any organization very often managed to do the work to their own benefit. This was especially true in Padang where it was frequently noticed that those ‘on the spot’ managed to get on board ships after a shorter wait than the rest.”

Meanwhile, the situation was exacerbated, at least in the minds of the British and Dutch, by a group of rampaging Australians, many of whom had deserted in Singapore and found their way to Padang, pulled in by the gravitational force of rumored escape ships. They turned lawless once there, stealing from soldiers and civilians alike, ransacking the homes of Dutch controllers looking for valuables to hawk, and selling weapons (mostly pilfered) to locals, a high crime in the minds of the Dutch. The marauding Aussies also got drunk and shot off their guns at random, which—in addition to their thievery—made for a lack of safety in the streets of Padang.

A different postwar, top secret British report on the performance of the Dutch in Sumatra noted that their overall assistance was very good “before disgraceful scenes [from Commonwealth soldiers] which attended departure of… ships for Ceylon.… They were so annoyed at this subsequently it was reported that their aim was to be clear of everyone as quickly as possible.”

The selfishness and dishonorable conduct reached its nadir with the escape of the SS Rooseboom, a Dutch steamer bound for India. Brigadier Archie Paris, who had been granted special status to leave Singapore early, had escaped on a private yacht owned by one Scottish soldier, Major Angus MacDonald, and skippered by another, Captain Mike Blackwood. The favoritism appeared to go to Paris’ head. He shoved his way onto the Rooseboom, commandeering the entire officers’ quarters on board for himself, MacDonald, and Blackwood, along with a handful of select staffers—many of whom were pulled out of order ahead of those who preceded them in the queue. Loud complaints were voiced and everyone involved was left with a sour taste in their mouths, especially the lower ranks passed over for boarding. Many swore to themselves “they will not take orders from such men in the future,” as the aforementioned report noted in its synopsis.

Others used their pull to bully their way aboard, including Major Reginald Nunn of the PWD and his wife, Gertrude, who earlier selflessly had stayed on Pompong Island instead of fleeing on the doomed Tanjong Pinang. Doris Lim found her way onto the ship as well. The other reporters had left on a boat to Australia to chase the war, but she preferred to sail for presumed safety in India. The Rooseboom pulled out for Batavia on February 27, chased by the catcalls of the angry people left behind.

Three days out of Padang, just past midnight on March 2, a Japanese torpedo slammed into the Rooseboom, taking most of the five hundred passengers on board to the bottom—including Reginald Nunn, who managed to shove his steadfast wife out of their cabin porthole before succumbing. As with the Tanjong Pinang, which took survivors off Pompong Island only to be sunk on the way to safety, an apparent ship of salvation had been turned into a vessel of death.

Brigadier Paris and the Rooseboom’s captain took charge of a twenty-five-foot wooden lifeboat that was overburdened with about eighty survivors, including a barefoot Doris Lim and Gertrude Nunn. But there were no paddles to propel them, leaving the passengers at the mercy of the current. Days turned into weeks, with no land in sight. Paris could do little to prevent most of the survivors from going mad from thirst and hunger; scores would hurl themselves into the water to end their suffering. Both Doris and Gertrude sat topless in the baking sun, uncaring of propriety, desperately using their shirts as makeshift shade.

Still alive on the raft was a dogged Scottish soldier named Walter Gibson. Gibson had survived the Battle of Slim River in Malaya, where the Japanese had shocked the British by utilizing tanks along a jungle road at night, shattering an entire division. Fleeing into the bush, Gibson and a band of fellow Argyll Regiment soldiers worked their way to the coast, disease and hunger dropping several of them en route. Taking to the sea, Gibson was in the vanguard of the refugee armada that soon would dot the waters off Singapore. Amazingly enough, he had made it all the way to Padang, only to be confronted once more by the overwhelming might of the Japanese military.

Despite shrapnel wounds and a broken collarbone suffered in the torpedo explosions, Gibson saved himself from drowning and made his way onto the raft, one that would be fated to wander aimlessly across a thousand miles of ocean. Once again he would watch as his fellow survivors perished one at a time.

Brigadier Paris slipped into a coma and died a week after the sinking. Captain Mike Blackwood went the next day. Major Angus MacDonald guzzled a cask of brandy he hallucinated to be water, went mad, and slipped over the side. The Dutch captain was killed—stabbed—by one of his own engineers, who apparently had been nursing a grievance for months.

As if the natural attrition wasn’t bad enough, the death rate was aided by a gang of five renegade soldiers who began systematically murdering the weak and dying and throwing them off the raft to extend the meager rations. Gibson, despite his injuries, led a group of a dozen or so of the other survivors to confront the quintet. “It’s them or us,” he said to the others. As they charged across the boat, the soldiers met them with broken bottles and the sharp lids torn from cans of bully beef.

“We struggled, stumbled and rolled, wrestling at the bottom of the boat,” Gibson wrote in his memoir. “We did not seem to put them overboard one by one so much as to rush them overboard in a body.” Several attempted to grab on to the gunwale and pull themselves back into the raft, but Gibson and his mates hammered their fingers until the five killers had slipped beneath the waves.

At one point, sensing they all were about to meet their Lord in person, Gertrude Nunn decided to hold a prayer service. By some miracle, there was a waterlogged Bible on board. Gertrude’s face was blackened by the sun, her voice hoarse with thirst and weakness. But she led the others through the Lord’s Prayer and several hymns, including “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” Gibson wrote that the other men were inexplicably drawn to her, a feeling a psychiatrist later explained to him. “You were all overcome,” the doctor said, “by that urge that seizes every man when he is in danger—the urge to return to the safety of the womb. To all of you, Mrs. Nunn personified the mother.”

She died the following day.

Days later, Gibson tried to commit suicide, but upon leaping into the sea with another soldier, he panicked and thrashed back onto the raft. His compatriot was never seen again. He spent the next several days clinging helplessly to Doris Lim. At one point, the last stirrings of his humanity bubbled to the fore, and as Gibson confessed later, he “was seized by the male urge.” He began to fondle Doris, weak as he was.

“Please let me die in peace,” was her reply.

After more than three weeks at sea, there were but two white men, including Gibson, left on the raft, along with four Javanese and Doris.

Then the Javanese battered the other white soldier to death and ate him.

“Blood dripped from their faces,” Gibson wrote, “as, still chewing, they grinned horribly at us. One of them shouted at us and proffered something he held in his hands.” It was a hunk of the dead man’s flesh. Gibson rightfully feared he was next to be cannibalized, but the raft ran aground, at long last, before the Javanese could kill him for food.

They had landed on Sipora, a small coral island only a hundred miles from where they started in Padang. They had drifted for twenty-six days and a thousand miles, only to land right back in the laps of the Japanese. They were swiftly captured. Gibson was sent back to Padang to become a POW.

The Japanese knew all about Doris Lim’s espionage activity, and they tortured her (as though her recent travails weren’t torture enough) but spared her life. She too was sent to a POW camp, at a cement factory outside of Padang, where she helped to run a clinic. Despite everything that had happened to her, Doris remained fetching, and men in the area began to court her. To gain her freedom, she returned their ardor, and eventually undertook a marriage of convenience with a local Chinese farmer.

One day late in 1944, husband and wife argued, and the farmer stabbed Doris repeatedly, killing her. She had survived war zones and shipwrecks, weeks adrift at sea and hiding in the jungle. But just as it appeared she was relatively safe, death found her, courtesy of the man she lived with. The husband was given all of one year in jail as a sentence.

On March 7, just before Frank’s train pulled into Padang, the SS Pelapo pulled up her anchor and sped away from the port of Emmahaven with fifty servicemen of varying ranks aboard. Unbeknownst to Frank, Geoffrey Brooke, and the others arriving at roughly the same time, she would be the last escape boat out.

If they were to be stuck waiting, at least Padang made for comfortable idleness. The streets were paved, and the shops were well-stocked, as befit a town of sixty thousand inhabitants. As Stanley Saddington of the RAF would recall, Padang had “all the signs of a well-run and peaceful little town.” Towering green mountains up to twelve thousand feet high flanked the city, adding even more beauty to a landscape already featuring an ocean view. There was also a suburbia of sorts, with villages well away from the city center. Some men frequented them, finding “generous (and pliable) Dutch daughters,” in Saddington’s words. The officers were housed in fine hotels, the Centraal and the Oranje, with a local boy to cater to their needs, while the rank and file made do with an old gymnasium. Discipline had been restored to the town after the riotous days of port chaos and nights of Australian rabble-rousing, and the evenings were eerily quiet thanks to an enforced curfew. Schools had canceled classes, performing arts centers shut down, and government services ground to a halt.

With Padang now relatively calm, the first thing that Frank and the RAF men did upon arrival was to report to the few remaining British officers left at the makeshift headquarters at the Eendracht Club. The officer in charge was a Royal Marines colonel named Alan Warren, a tall, ramrod-straight man with a black mustache and “great force of personality,” according to Brooke. Warren asked for volunteers to help the Dutch fighters defend the town. Almost everyone, Frank included, submitted their names for service, but the Dutch commander politely turned them down. The Brits didn’t have any jungle fighting experience, it was explained (of course, some of them did, albeit the slapdash effort to combat Yamashita in Malaya wasn’t something they wanted to highlight on their résumés). They would need to be equipped with arms and gear that couldn’t be spared, and their recent experiences escaping Singapore had left them far from match-fit. Few of the RAF men put up an argument on this score.

The Kiwi C. R. Knowles, for one, would come to the realization that the Dutch show of force was just that—a show, a pretend exercise for morale purposes. “We later fully realized that it was not intended that there should be any worthwhile resistance,” he reported long afterward. The word had come through the jungle from the Japanese—resistance was futile and would be punished. Should the city be declared “open,” it would not be bombed. The Dutch authorities agreed. So the only planes that flew over Padang were reconnaissance planes—ironically, American-built Lockheed 14s, now in the hands of the Japanese.

The Dutch in charge at Padang, and indeed throughout the Netherlands East Indies, struck the other westerners as a curious lot, worthy of both admiration and scorn. All were impressed by their colonization techniques; for example, unlike most British serving across the empire, virtually every Dutch administrator was familiar with local tongues and customs. They “went native” far more readily than Brits and Germans tended to in other parts of the world.

Then there was the matter of bravery. The same report that noted the Dutch disdain for the behavior evinced at Emmahaven also sharply contrasted their fortitude with that of the Brits. In words that must have stung proud Englishmen to write, the report noted, “The Dutch… stayed at their posts although the Japs were rapidly advancing northwards. This was in sharp contrast to the British in Malaya, where officials were evacuated back to Singapore as danger approached.”

At the same time, the Dutch were cursed by soldiers from the Commonwealth for their haughty attitude, their lack of apparent verve in fighting the enemy, and their embrace of Realpolitik when it came to capitulation. During a particularly low moment, a brawl broke out between British and Dutch soldiers, and an English colonel attempting to separate them had his jaw broken. Later in the war, the POWs from the Netherlands would be dismissed as virtual conspirators, model prisoners who rarely attempted resistance or sabotage.

But in Padang, most of the Dutch and English seemed strangely accepting of their fate. Propaganda radio broadcasts trumpeted that all of Java and Sumatra were already in Japanese hands. This was untrue, but those in charge in Padang swallowed it whole, giving in prematurely to the inevitable. While it was probably the prudent move in the big picture, many of the escapees found themselves stuck, a frustrating position after their incredible efforts to get to the port. They slept fitfully, with their boots on, ready at a moment’s notice to flee. But the word never came.

One ship, a British cruiser, was circling offshore for nearly a week, awaiting the code signal to approach. But the British consul had burned the codebooks in anticipation of the enemy taking the town. Because of this act, no alternative plans to rendezvous elsewhere could be made. When Frank and the boys learned about this, their anger at the ineptitude of their commanders, already sky-high, reached new levels. Frank had already spent months scurrying from one radar malfunction to another while his air force was embarrassed over Singapore, a prelude to the swift fall of a supposed British stronghold. Now his military couldn’t even radio a rescue ship steaming just over the horizon.

The last men to escape Padang snuck away on March 8, as Frank was just getting his bearings in the city. Eighteen men had been ordered to make a break for it by Colonel Warren, as they were deemed more useful continuing the war effort elsewhere than exposing themselves to the mercy of the invaders. The group comprised sixteen British officers, including Brooke and Clarke, the intelligence man, having handed over his Japanese prisoners at last by direct order from Warren, along with a pair of “Asiatics.” Disguised as locals in straw hats, they made a run for it under cover of darkness in a small fishing boat, their spare fuel hidden under palm fronds. The group was nevertheless spotted and strafed from above by one of the Lockheed reconnaissance planes, but they managed to make it, amazingly enough, to Ceylon.

When word of this midnight run found its way to those left behind, it built upon the injustices witnessed during the boarding of the escape ships. What made those men more valuable? Why were their lives to be spared, with the others offered up for capture and (they assumed) certain death or imprisonment without a fight? These decisions are the essence of war, and the men who acknowledged this aspect of military reality accepted their fate with equanimity. Frank never recorded his feeling on the subject one way or the other, but he was hardly a grizzled veteran suffused in the spirit of the bayonet. It’s likely he and the men his age and rank were royally pissed, though he wasn’t the sort to complain much about it.

It was a surreal situation, one made even crazier by a small earthquake that shook the city while the men waited for deliverance. After scrambling out of Singapore, getting off Pompong, and managing by hook and by crook to cross Sumatra to this promised oasis, Frank and the other men now were sitting around, helplessly waiting for the other shoe to drop. There would be no fight to hold the city; instead, the Dutch concentrated on preventing anyone from slipping away. There were small native craft and tugboats scattered about, in much the manner of Keppel Harbor, but the Dutch made them off-limits. “To our dismay,” Frank recalled, “the civilian harbor authorities refused to transfer ownership of these boats to us out of fear of Japanese retribution. They even disabled them.” A handful of men beat the system by volunteering to patrol the harbor to prevent boats from being stolen. Once on the job, these men found a boat they could handle and set out to sea.

One group of twenty-five or so men, including artilleryman and former stockbroker Lieutenant John Purvis and an Australian sergeant and engineer named Stricchino, managed to steal a junk and hit the high seas. But after six weeks they were waylaid by a Dutch vessel, which took them back to Padang as they had been ordered to do by the Japanese. “After all we had been through this was a most heartrending moment,” Purvis later recounted. “And I am afraid the tears rolled down my cheeks as I told them that it was all over because we had been betrayed by the Dutch.”

Into this setting of hopelessness bounded Judy the pointer.

“There’s the sea!” someone yelled when the train carrying the Grasshopper and Dragonfly survivors crested a hill to show Padang glistening on the shore of the Indian Ocean. “What a sight!” remembered Long. “The first ray of hope for nearly a month.” After an overnight journey, the train clanked into the station early on the morning of March 16. The engine hadn’t even stopped before the group was helping each other off and bombarding anyone they passed with questions about getting out on the next ship.

It was a grizzled old local man who broke their hearts. “The last ship left already—you just missed it.” Technically, it had been nine days since the Pelapo had disappeared over the horizon, which is not exactly “just missing it.” But the essence of the old man’s statement was spot-on. After all this group had been through, the critical delay at Singkep and Rengat had cost them everything.

When the men reported in to a startled Colonel Warren, he sympathized with their plight, but he was also blunt. Don’t consider fighting—the surrender is already arranged. Don’t try to steal local watercraft—it would be suicidal. Feel free to return to the jungle (but that was hardly an option after the walkabout they had already taken).

The survivors seemed to collectively sag at the knees. “Despondency and despair descended on all,” recalled Long. According to Searle, Judy seemed to sense the depression that hovered over her friends, an intuition of which dogs are fully capable. It was one of the evolutionary advances that led to domestication: humans enjoyed having another creature around that could comprehend their emotions. Judy likely would have tried to be extra friendly and attentive during this period, despite her exhaustion, in order to lift the spirits of her human companions. It was behavior both perfectly habitual and totally in character for this particular pointer.

Hoping against hope, the band spent the night at the dock, scanning the sea, desperately trying to wish a friendly boat into existence. But none came. They were ordered to move en masse into the Dutch school. Many other westerners, including Frank Williams and Peter Hartley, a twenty-one-year-old Royal Army sergeant who had escaped by stolen boat as Singapore fell, were down the street in the Chinese school.

It was Judy who was first aware of the long-dreaded arrival of the enemy. She was lying in the center of the small classroom she had claimed, head resting on forelegs in her natural repose, staring at the door. Searle was drifting in and out of sleep in the corner. He was one of a handful of men who had remained armed throughout their long trek, and he had refused the entreaties from the officers and the Dutch to surrender his sidearm. A few men had rifles as well. Searle had argued bitterly with the others who agreed to disarm and become passive prisoners. He wanted to storm the guards of the small boats and take them by force. “To hell with the Dutch,” was his thought.

But the brass had decided to cooperate. The Dutch authority had saved Searle and the others back in Singkep, so it was a difficult leap for the survivors to suddenly turn on their hosts now, even if it meant impending capture by the Japanese. If Searle was to be honest with himself, he had to admit that he didn’t think his small band of beaten-down men with pistols were capable of taking the boats in the first place. And even if they had taken them, capture or death at sea seemed the likely result. Searle and the others would be forgiven at that point for thinking, If only we had gone with George White when we had the chance.

So the survivors huddled in the elementary school, awaiting the inevitable. When Judy stood up and began to bristle, her lip tensed in a silent snarl, everyone in the room knew that their time was up. Motorcycles were heard, and she started to bark. Searle tore a piece of cloth from his pants and slipped it through Judy’s collar, pulling her closer to him.

A Japanese colonel and his staff soon entered the room with a flourish. The officer had thick glasses and a professorial air, but his sharp staccato burst of words established his immediate command of the situation. He pointed to Judy and said something in Japanese that no one caught, abruptly turned on his heel, and left. Searle and the others with guns were disarmed, and then they were left alone to ponder their fate.

The colonel went to the Chinese school next and took visible glee in smashing a portrait of General Chiang Kai-shek to smithereens. He next proceeded to the office of the head Dutch administrator in Padang, where Colonel Warren gave his impressions:

They strode purposefully in with the air of conquerors, kicking their legs in front of them, their muddy boots striking heavily on the floor, their curved swords jangling as they walked.… These were good fighting men, crude, fierce, proud and confident. There was little about the undersized, myopic Jap in this bunch with the broad flat, yellow faces and long whispy [sic] mustaches.

All night Judy’s group discussed their situation. Everyone had heard the fates of those unfortunate enough to be taken by the Japanese. The Shinto culture that held sway in the IJA at the time sneered at military types who chose surrender over death, and thus the Japanese held little respect for POWs. Japan never ratified the Geneva Conventions, notifying enemy countries through its Foreign Affairs Ministry that the Conventions would be applied mutatis mutandis, i.e., changing only that which needed to be changed. It was an open-ended statement that allowed the Japanese to do whatever they pleased to those who had been captured. Indeed, many defendants at later war crime tribunals knew nothing of the Conventions and were ignorant of the crimes they had committed.

The men in the schools assumed they would be tortured, the women raped, and as for Judy—well, any horror that could be imagined seemed plausible. In the end, they were sure all would be killed. Apprehension, truculence, and despair were the dominant emotions in the Dutch school that night. Judy stuck close to Searle and remained silent.

Frank didn’t record his feelings upon capture, but one thing is certain—these Japanese soldiers would have been the first he had encountered up close so far in the war.

On March 17, Judy, Frank, and the rest left behind in Padang were officially taken prisoner by the invading Japanese army. In the race to escape, they had fallen just short of the finish line.