Blue McAlpine
Moura
via Gibber’s Creek
6 February 1945
Flinty Mack
Rock Farm
Rocky Valley
Dearest Flinty,
It is sweet of you and Matilda to worry about me, but truly, I am quite all right. You would be proud of me — I knitted a whole cardigan last week, holding the wool in my overall pocket as I went around the factory. We have a new biscuit, ‘Aussie Crunchies: a tough biscuit for a tough land’. They’ve got chunks of choko stewed with ginger, honey, thinly sliced then dried and chopped. It tastes just like dried pears. Well, it doesn’t, quite, but it doesn’t taste of choko. Though of course chokos don’t taste of anything, much.
Really, my life is not just work! I even went to the dance last Saturday, though with all the Land Girls we women outnumbered the men nineteen to one. I counted! I trotted around the floor with old Dr Archibald, then danced with Andy. It’s very useful having a resident brother-in-law at times like these.
It was a wonderful spread, quite worth the two shillings we paid for supper. It is amazing what women can do with no eggs or butter or cream. I made a pavlova with my sugar ration and Drinkwater cream. Mah and I get so sick of the smell of sugar in the factory that I never seem to use all of it for myself. It was a fine pavlova, if I say so myself, and filled with cream and strawberries it looked a treat.
It was a worry to see Dr Archibald so tired, but there is no possibility of getting anyone to help him. There has been a bad measles outbreak. Two girls have died and a boy left deaf, and it still hasn’t run its course. I’m glad Mah’s two got it so lightly before the war, as they’ll have immunity now. Dr Archibald says it’s a very virulent form of the disease.
Sorry, I meant to be telling you about the dance, not going on about measles. I even dyed my legs and put a seam up the back to look like I was wearing stockings. Thank goodness it didn’t rain till AFTER the dance, as within ten seconds my legs were streaming brown!
Give my love to Sandy and to the boys and to Nicola, and truly, don’t worry about me. I am fine.
Your loving sister-in-law,
Blue
DEATH MARCH, MALAYA, FEBRUARY 1945
BEN
The Allies bombed the camp one morning — American planes, appearing over the island’s hill. Craters burped dust. Bullets scraped along the ground.
Ben grabbed a forty-four-gallon drum, hauled it inside their hut near a wall and crouched down behind it. ‘Over here!’ he yelled.
Others followed his example. It was the only shelter they could make.
‘Haven’t the Yanks seen the POW sign?’ muttered someone in his ear. Curly, still alive too, a stick of a man with enormous green eyes.
Ben didn’t answer. The sign must be impossible to miss.
But still the bombs dropped.
At last the planes vanished.
‘What do you think?’ Curly heaved himself onto Ben’s bunk. ‘Think our lot is going to take Malaya back yet?’
‘Don’t know.’ They still had the radio, despite the danger; still heard the BBC World Service most nights, the sentries leaving guard duty to the dogs after dark. Dogs could not tell anyone they’d heard a radio. The POWs knew the Allies had landed in Burma, that the Soviet Red Army was winning on the Russian front, sweeping through the Crimea, Bucharest and Poland. On 6 June the previous year, Allied forces had stormed the beaches of France in ‘D-day’. Rome had been liberated, Belgium, Paris; the Americans were surging across the Pacific — even Japan itself was bombed.
But here each night the day’s dead were placed on the top bunks, safe from dogs; buried in a single trench come morning, with brief prayers and a salute. Men more skeletons than men, dead of malaria, infected ulcers, diseases, all compounded by starvation.
‘Can’t get much worse than this,’ said Curly. ‘Means it’s gotta get better. Don’t you think?’
Ben said nothing.
‘Don’t give up, matey. You just keep thinking of that home of yours. Your missus waiting, and your nipper. What’s his name again?’
‘Gavin.’ He knew what Curly was doing, what they all did for each other now. When a mate gave up he died. So you got him talking about home. Talk about home and think that he could live.
He should talk to Curly too. Curly came from Brisbane. Ask him about hunting prawns on a moonless night, down at Moreton Bay. Joke with him about his kilt — back at home Curly played bagpipes in the Brisbane Pipe Band. Talk to him …
He didn’t.
The next morning Curly was dead.
The soldiers burnt the entire camp that day, after the work party had staggered out. No warning, just the torches biting at the bamboo walls and thatch. The sick escaped out onto the road. Mostly. Running, being carried.
There was no chance to grab their meagre possessions, not that there was much to take — a few blankets, pannikins, the precious radio and transmitter.
The Japanese pointed, shouted. The men marched along the roads, and then through swamps. If a man fell, he was shot where he lay or bayoneted. There was no food, or not for them. The Japanese had supply camps, with bags of rice. The prisoners scavenged bamboo shoots, banana shoots, and once a python the guards let them cook in return for half the meat.
The guards were hungry too. Gaunt. Not starving. Yet.
This land could not support so many people, and so much war as well.
They marched at night and through the day, stopping only when the guards needed a rest. Those who did not get up after the stop were shot, if they were lucky; bayoneted if they were not.
Another camp. Ben felt a flare of hope. Food? A bed? But even as he watched, the huts in front of them erupted into flame.
More prisoners stumbled out towards them, starved, naked apart from scraps of rag.
A guard thrust a pack at him. Ben tried to lift it, couldn’t. One of the prisoners from the new camp helped him. They managed to carry it between them, along a road now, white in the night.
‘Thanks.’ He could manage one word. And a step. Another step. Another.
The man said, ‘I know you.’
Ben glanced at him — brown face, no whiskers, a coolie hat he must have woven himself from straw, some shreds of shorts — finally found the face he’d known. ‘Dr McAlpine?’
Memories. The last Christmas party at Drinkwater before he left for the new job. The tables laid with food: roast turkey, hams, corned lamb. His mouth was suddenly flooded with saliva. Salads in great big heaping dishes and loaves of bread. Butter. Cheese. Jam rolls and whipped cream.
He thrust the memory away and found another: Andy McAlpine introducing his kid brother, Joseph McAlpine, newly fledged as a doctor, and the girl he was to marry, who had an elephant and a factory …
Ben said, ‘I remember you too,’ as more memories came flooding in, the scent of rain on dirt, Mum’s laughter in the kitchen, the smooth lapping of the flooded river’s tangled daughters that gave their place its name. Overflow. Next year … no, before that … he would be there, with Moira and with Gavin. He’d have to get Gavin up on a horse, if Dad hadn’t already done it. Or Nancy — she’d have been the one. Gavin probably had his own pony already. They’d ride together, and Moira too, riding in the cool of night as the Cross turned over.
‘Watch out!’ said Dr McAlpine sharply, as the log leapt out at him.
He fell.