Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 28 January 1942
The War Relief Dance
By Elaine Sampson, aged nine and a half
Yesterday our school had a dance for Comforts for Soldiers. At lunchtime we took all our books off the shelves and the boys moved the desks in front of the blackboard so they would not be in the way.
We had good music. Mr Henderson played the mouth organ and Mrs Harrington the banjo. We paid a penny to dance. A good time was had by all.
We raised one shilling and eightpence halfpenny. The halfpenny was because Billy Snogs only had a halfpenny but we decided he could dance anyway because he is the tallest boy in class and can dance like Frank Sinatra does in the movies, except he wears shorts instead. We will buy pencils for the soldiers so they can write to their families. The girls wanted to buy soap too but the boys voted no.
SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF SINGAPORE, 29 JANUARY 1942
NANCY
The bomb hit with the first shreds of daylight. Nancy had been asleep, propped against Moira. She woke as the boat shuddered, twisted, then forged on. Gavin woke with a start and began to whimper. Around them women screamed, or hugged themselves, frozen with fear. Children wailed, in protest and terror.
‘What’s happened?’ Nancy’s voice was hoarse with thirst, her dress damp with sweat.
Something hit the water nearby, so close they could feel the swell the instant before the explosion knocked them sideways. Even the children were silent. Nancy held her breath too, waiting for the ship to sink.
It didn’t. Nancy rummaged under the end of the bedding for their life jackets.
Another explosion. Another. The ship lurched upwards, sideways, twisted in the water, but the walls around them stayed intact. Nancy found Moira’s hand. The older woman was silent, holding Gavin to her, his ears jammed between her body and her free hand to shield him from the noise. He gave small hiccupping cries, too caught up in the surrounding terror to properly cry.
Another sound, like cloth ripping. A splintered hole appeared in the deck above them. Nancy peered around, wondering if the bullets had penetrated below the deck, but there was no sign of blood on any of the women and children in the dimness of the hold.
They waited, now hearing only sobbing children and men’s yells from overhead. I’m getting good at waiting, thought Nancy. More shouts from above, the sound of running feet, the chatter of gunfire. Explosions on either side of them …
Was it minutes or hours? She thought the latter, but time had lost its meaning. Was it minutes or hours before her ringing ears registered that the bombs had stopped, the throaty roar was dropping as the planes receded?
The hatch was opened wider. ‘Everyone all right down there?’
No one answered, then a woman called back, ‘Seem to be. Was the ship hit?’
‘Bit of damage aft. Nothing to stop us though. It’s safe to come on deck if you want some air.’
Nancy grabbed Gavin and made her way towards the companionway before too many could crowd the way, climbed with one hand on the rail, the other holding Gavin. As she emerged through the hatch, she took a deep breath of fresh and smoky air and felt some of her sweat dry.
‘Water over there, love.’ A sailor nodded towards a drum amidships.
‘Thank you.’
Moira appeared beside her as she helped herself to water, drank fast and deeply before the drum too was crowded. She’d had enough of bodies pressing against her.
‘Do you think it’s safe to give Gavin a drink of water?’
‘Better not.’ Moira took him from her. ‘I’ll feed him. Let’s go forwards. It should be less crowded there.’
The deck was rough with bullet splinters below their feet. Smoke pillowed the rear of the ship. They passed a lifeboat. Moira gave a small laugh. ‘Well, we won’t be using that.’
‘Why not? Oh, I see.’ The wood was ripped so badly that there was no way the boat would float. Nancy thought of the life jackets under their bedding. She should have brought them with her. But they’d look ridiculous carrying them around. As if they expected defeat. Not keeping up the side, she thought vaguely. Poor show, what.
It was cooler in the small space forwards. There was even a little early-morning shade next to a wooden crate. Gavin fed, nuzzling for comfort long after the feed had finished. Moira let him, sitting back against the bulkhead, her eyes closed.
Nancy went over to the rail and peered out across the ocean. Singapore had vanished. Over on one side there was a thin blue line of land. An island, she thought, trying to remember the scatter of Malaya’s outcrops on the map that had hung in Ben’s study back at the plantation, might hang there still.
Who was living in the house now? A Japanese officer? Or would the house be abandoned, too far out of the way? No, she thought. The Japanese will want the plantation to keep producing the precious rubber. A new manager would live there, a local man, perhaps even the foreman who had been effectively doing the job during Ben’s absences.
She gazed back the way they had come again, searching the sky for planes. Over on the horizon was a larger shape she took to be a destroyer, and three more ships, one larger and two slightly smaller than theirs. Was the destroyer protecting them? But no one had shot the enemy planes from the sky.
Something bobbed, perhaps fifty yards away. At first she thought it was another crate, then realised it was too round, with spikes, like a too-fat echidna.
A mine. She had seen them on newsreels. The ship had to touch the mine, didn’t it, before the mine blew up? This looked to be too far away to be an immediate danger. But there might be — must be — more.
But at least there were no more planes …
Something rose above the thin line of the island. A bird, she thought. Another and another …
Bombers.
‘We need to go below.’
‘No.’ Moira’s voice was surprisingly calm among the new tide of screams from the deck behind them. ‘Go and get the life jackets. Bring them back up here.’
‘But we might be hit if we stay up here.’
Moira touched the crate behind them. ‘We can shelter behind this and the bulkhead.’ She looked at Nancy directly. ‘If the ship is sunk, the companionway is going to be blocked with women. We’d have no chance of getting out of there alive.’
Nancy bit her lip, nodded. It should be me thinking that, she thought vaguely. But Moira had far more experience of ships than she had. Though not, she thought, of ones that might soon sink. She slipped between the other passengers, struggled down the companionway, women pushing on either side. They’ll panic if we are hit again, she thought. Moira is right …
She grabbed the life jackets, waited till the worst crush had come down the ladder and then pushed her way back up, along the boat.
‘Back here.’ Moira crouched above Gavin between the crate and the bulkhead. She straightened and slipped on the life jacket, fastening it in front, then resumed her crouch. Gavin gurgled and grabbed at her pearls. She pushed his hand away absently, gave him her finger to chew. ‘Put your life jacket on. If we’re badly hit, swim towards the island. Fast. If you’re near the ship when it goes down, the suction will take you with it. Hopefully one of the other ships will pick us up, if they’re not damaged too.’
‘Moira …’
‘What?’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘What?!’ Moira stared at her. ‘All Australians can swim. All those beaches.’
‘We live hundreds of miles from the beach!’
‘You can’t swim at all?’
‘A bit. Mucking round on the river.’ She’d never swum more than a dozen strokes across a swimming hole. The river was too shallow to swim in, except when it was in flood and too dangerous. No one swam in the billabongs, not with tangles of waterlilies and the chance of bumping into black snakes cooling off.
‘Bloody hell.’ She had never heard Moira swear before. ‘I can’t manage you and Gavin both.’
‘You can swim?’
‘Four-hundred-yard school champion,’ said Moira shortly.
Bully for you and your swimming pool, thought Nancy. She looked at the sea around them. The bombers were almost on them now.
‘Dog paddle or overarm?’
‘Dog paddle.’
Moira looked at the land on the horizon. ‘Dog paddle might get you there. The life jacket will keep you afloat. Once you’re in the water use your hands like paddles and kick like hell. And that,’ she said grimly, ‘is the best swimming lesson I can give you right now.’
‘Perhaps they won’t hit us.’ Nancy tried to count the planes. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five …
The first bomb fell. The ship heaved as the water exploded around them. A plane zoomed lower. The screams from the other end of the boat took on a new note, agony now among the fear.
Time slowed. A dark ball slipped down the blue of sea and sky. Into the funnel of the ship. The ship shuddered. As if it knows, thought Nancy. Then it exploded.
The world shrieked into fragments. The shock rolled both her and Moira across the deck. Instinctively Nancy lunged back, grabbing Gavin, forcing him below her as bullets strafed the deck. She began to roll again, sheltering his body with hers.
The ship was sinking.
Flames danced across the deck behind her.
Another explosion. The ship vanished. What had been solid deck was noise so loud she couldn’t even hear it, was splintering wood and flames. She felt the ship lurch wildly to one side, flinging her against the bulkhead. It lurched again, the prow rising higher and higher against the sky. She saw rather than heard Moira’s yell, ‘Jump!’
The prow was too high and steep now to reach. She stumbled to the side, held Gavin while Moira climbed onto the rail, then passed him up to her, a small wailing ball of baby. Moira jumped, holding the baby high, her bent legs neatly scissoring the water. For a few seconds she vanished, then appeared again, lying on one side, stroking solidly with one arm, Gavin gasping and screaming in the other.
Screaming. He was alive. Tiny, terrified, in the vastness of the sea.
Nancy shut her eyes and jumped.
Water. Green water, which was strange, because it had looked blue. Green and bubbles, so many bubbles. She must be sinking down, onto the bottom of the sea.
No, the other way. She was floating up, a golden, wave-rippled ceiling above her. The life jacket.
She popped through the surface, gasping.
Cold. How could the water be cold here in the tropics? Then realised it was not cold, not really, it was that she had been so hot.
Where there had been a ship was nothing but flames. She wondered if they had more flammable cargo than women and children.
No one could live in that. Ten seconds before, or twenty, she had been there. Moira’s order had saved her life.
The heat burnt her even from here. She turned her face away.
‘Moira!’ she yelled. A wave slapped her face. She realised she had automatically managed more movement in the water than she had ever attempted before.
‘Moira!’ she cried again.
No answer.
She managed to lie, her legs out, dog-paddling her hands. Someone screamed behind her. Not Moira. Another voice yelled, ‘No, no, no, no!’ Someone shrieked, ‘Glenys!’
She couldn’t help them. Couldn’t help anyone but herself. And Moira — hopefully — was swimming like the school champion she had been, holding Gavin up above the waves, towards the distant island.
She bobbed up to make sure she was heading in the right direction, and kicked like mad.