Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 9 April 1943
Petrol Warning
Those using their cars for purposes not on their licences will be prosecuted. There will be no more warnings, stated the Chairman of the Gibber’s Creek Fuel Control Board, Councillor Bullant. ‘Travel from your place of work to your home does not come under the category of “business licence”.’
According to Mrs Councillor Ellis, there may still be a problem with the licensing scheme. ‘I am happy to go back to teaching, but when I applied for petrol to get from Sevenoaks to the Gibber’s Creek Central School I was told by the Board that teachers are to “catch a train to their respective schools”. The Board do not appear to realise there never has been a train from Sevenoaks to Gibber’s Creek.’
Mrs Ellis’s son, Rodney, told the Gazette, ‘Mum can ride on my horse with me, but she’s heavy so school might have to start later.’
AERODROME LABOUR CAMP, MALAYA, 11 APRIL 1943
BEN
Ben bounced on his heels, fists out, his eyes on his opponent, blood dripping from his cheek. The flesh about his eye was swelling. He ignored it.
He swerved as a punch hit him in the gut, let himself sink down as if it had winded him, then lashed out. One blow to the nose, the other to the stomach, two more to the shoulders. His opponent fell gasping.
‘One. Two. Three! The winner!’
Ben let the referee lift his arm in triumph, enjoying the cheers. The Japs might have beaten him, but here in the boxing ring he was the champ. He grinned, wiping the blood from his face, then bent down to Corporal Martin.
‘You all right, mate?’
‘Should have known better than to take you on. You’ve got hands like pumpkins.’
‘And feet like a kangaroo’s,’ Ben added for the benefit of anyone listening in the crowd as he helped Martin towards the medic hut. But the blokes were tallying their bets.
He hadn’t bet on himself — that would have been bad form. But the Japanese camp captain gave a basket of fruit to the winner of any of the sports the men organised. Just a way to see who was fittest for the work parties, Ben knew.
As an officer, he wasn’t required to work, but those who did got ten cents a day. You could buy a turtle egg for a cent or a coconut or a few small bananas. Add that to their rations, as well as the vegetables from the gardens, and Ben reckoned he was eating better than when he was part of the Australian Army. And the work wasn’t too crook: an eight-mile march in the heat to what was going to be an aerodrome. But he was used to heat. Days of chopping back the jungle or old rubber plantations, wheeling barrow-loads of gravel to fill in the swamp. If you worked hard enough, you got a cup of coffee as well as lunch. They even had breath to sing on the way home.
Ben deposited Martin, then ambled over to the outdoor kitchen. It was growing dark. The generator began to thud. Lights glowed around the barbed-wire camp perimeter. Ben picked up a pannikin, then stood in line for stew.
‘How’s your face?’
‘Probably looks worse than it is.’
‘Nah. Anything makes your ugly mug look better.’ Curly bent his head and whispered, ‘Cockatoos in place.’
Ben nodded. Cockatoos were lookouts, in case any of the Japanese guards approached. But they rarely did after dark. The shadows of the many men and their chatter were an effective cloak over what was really going on.
He took his stew — dried fish boiled up with rice and vegetables; Cookie was no chef — and sat on one of the blocks of wood, carefully chattering to Curly, their ears alert for any sound inside the hut.
And then it came. A hooting whistle and then a plummy English accent, quiet but clear on the radio waves: ‘… and then manure the cucumbers well for a good crop. To ensure each flower is fertilised …’
Someone called out, ‘I’ll fertilise him.’
‘Shh.’
The chatter rose again. The sounds inside the hut changed to a whistle, a lower voice, and then more clearly, ‘The BBC World Service …’
‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb,’ Ben said softly to Curly.
‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb,’ answered Curly. All around them men spoke similar nonsense as they listened: ‘… where General Bernard Montgomery is sweeping to victory at El Alamein …’
‘Good old Monty,’ whispered Curly. The Australian 9th Division was fighting under Montgomery.
‘… in the biggest raid in Italy so far the RAAF has …’ The radio sank to an indecipherable mutter as the power level fell. Ben could hear the men who helped Ah Chee pile more wood in the boilers.
‘Wish they’d give us some Aussie news,’ said Curly.
‘It’s the BBC. They think all that happens down this way is cricket. If we’re lucky, they might give us the scores.’ Or perhaps events were too bad for the British public to stomach. Ben suspected that just as the bulletins delivered by Tokyo Rose only gave news of Japanese victories, the BBC carefully selected its news too.
The one hard fact was that in their months here they had neither seen nor heard an Allied plane, or even the sound of bombing. Which meant that this part of the world must be surely under Japanese control, the war itself moved elsewhere.
South.
Australian iron ore was desperately needed for the Japanese war effort. Australian coal was essential to smelt the ore, as was Australian copper for wiring, and Australian labour to smelt it, just as the 9th were already labouring for the Japanese. Australia, where Moira and Gavin and Nancy must now be back home at Overflow. He’d heard they’d gone south with time enough to get out. Moira and Nancy would have got Gavin on a ship home even if they’d had to cling to it with their fingernails. But if the Japs were coming after them, then …
… he could do nothing. Sit here, eating fish stew, listening to a secret radio cobbled together from bits and pieces bought from the locals …
Ben stopped eating. ‘Curly?’
‘Mmm?’
‘If we can build a receiver, we can build a transmitter.’
‘What, and tell the cheese and kisses you’re fit and happy?’ They had been allowed to send one Red Cross postcard to their families. Ben hoped his had got through.
‘Tell them what Japanese planes fly over. How many guards. Ah Chee might know more. You never know what bits the blokes in Intelligence can put together.’ Better yet, thought Ben, see if Ah Chee could put them in touch with Malay traders heading to other islands. There’d been rumours that not all the Malays had accepted Japanese rule. If they could smuggle in arms, they could break out of here. Join local guerrillas …
Nah, I’m dreaming, he thought. Or that blow to the head has given me concussion.
But the seed was there. Escape. And fight.