The Fairmiles were soon ready again to resume their raiding. After resisting for nearly a week, Muar had finally been overrun. This time they were going to Batu Pahat, to where 45 Indian Brigade had fallen back. They knew that somewhere in the same vicinity was the luckless 53rd Brigade, the body of troops they had accompanied from Britain, who only a week earlier had, like the Indians, been thrust straight off the boats and into combat, woefully ill-prepared.
Mid-afternoon, two army trucks full of Royal Marines arrived at the foot of the wharf. The sailors watched the heavily armed soldiers dismount and form two groups, while two officers came smartly along the wharf and asked the whereabouts of the boats’ commanders. After a brief conference on the dockside one of them, a familiar Royal Naval Lieutenant, boarded 310 and disappeared below, while the other, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Warren, called his unit to loose order and marched them along the wharf, where they began to heave their kit up to the sailors and board the Fairmiles.
Len caught sight of Jack Kindred loosening the bow ropes on the other boat. He called out, ‘Good luck, Jack! See you later – whenever that is.’
‘Not if I see you first, mate.’
Len watched as 311 started its engines, cast off and manoeuvred out into the stream. 310 followed suit, and together the two motor launches headed out to sea. The topsides of both vessels were covered in troops, perhaps forty on each, seated along the deck, clinging to the stanchions or anything structural. They seemed to relish the occasion, leaning into the warm breeze with their eyes closed as the two boats settled into their cruise at half speed and headed into the evening.
★ ★ ★
Len was on deck smoking when the Fairmile reached Batu Pahat. It was clear that the wharves had been attacked, and one of the auxiliary vessels belonging to Coastal Operations had been hit. Smoke was still coming from the side of the ship, and, on shore, men were working, some manhandling debris into the water while others manoeuvred sandbags into the bomb cavities. A barge that had been holed in an earlier raid lay half sunk, hanging on by its ropes from part of the wharf. The ML tied up beside newly established anti-aircraft defences, a simple sandbagged emplacement with a single Bren gun pointing skyward, manned by an Indian soldier lying in firing position and scanning the sky with a fearful look on his face. While both boats lay up under nets, Len did the same, more or less, sweeping the sky for aircraft while the officers were once again in conference.
★ ★ ★
They lay up under nets all day, but as soon as night fell, both boats slipped their moorings and headed up the coast. They moved slowly, each Fairmile towing a line of three requisitioned local fishing boats, each with a group of Marines on board. They were to be dropped near Parit Jawa, to make their way inland and harass the enemy behind his lines and frustrate his advance towards Batu Pahat, and in doing so relieve the pressure on the defenders.
Nearing the danger zone now, Tim and Len stood at their guns on the open bridge wings of the Fairmile as the Coxswain steered it towards the hostile shore. Alongside the Coxswain were both the ML’s officers and the Royal Navy Lieutenant who had just boarded ML310. This was Richard Pool, another of Repulse’s survivors, who had served briefly on HDML1062 and now acted as a staff officer attached to Local Operations. Pool was directing the landing.
Len opened his ammunition locker, pulled out a belt and locked it into his weapon. He ran his hand over it and touched the safety with a finger. This was much better than being tossed around the bowels of a slow-moving target for the Luftwaffe. While he now had some control over his circumstances, though, what he really wanted was to see his enemy when they shot at one another.
He leaned back against the rail and lit a cigarette. He could feel the drag of the towed boats. He had begun to appreciate the tropics, impressed that even in the most uncomfortable of conditions there was beauty. Like tonight. The sea was calm, but sometimes the rain pelted down out of a Stygian blackness, saturating the sea and lashing the boat violently. Then there had been magic: moments when a half-moon was suddenly exposed, illuminating clouds and the seascape in burnished silver.
They slowed.
Now they were just being rained on, in a steady downpour that Len hoped would end soon. He shrugged his oilskin a bit closer. He’d mislaid his sou’wester and, to keep the rain from running down his neck now, he wore a tin hat instead. It wasn’t working. God damn it! If he wasn’t damp with sweat, he was saturated in bloody rain. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the silhouettes around him, gaining small satisfaction in the knowledge that they were bound to be at least as wet as he was.
It was so dark that the only reference to any horizon was the spray where heavy rain hit the water around them. He listened to the officers talking in low tones, the voice of Richard Pool conspicuously public school. Pool had a tendency to refer to ‘the crew’, with a certain emphasis, then pause before continuing, as if pondering the validity of the term. The shoreline was not yet discernible, but from somewhere a few miles inland came the muted sound of artillery. Len heard a call from the bridge and reached forward, releasing the safety catch on his weapon. He could now see some of the men in the kolehs, bailing out water using their helmets. The ML slowed still further as it closed to about fifty yards of a faint line of small waves breaking on the shore. Maynard ordered the engines to neutral, allowing the ML to glide slowly through the water, beam on to the shore, its weapons on the starboard side trained on the beach. The Aldis lamp on the bridge flashed a signal, and the kolehs cast off their ropes. The soldiers produced paddles and quickly began to pull for the shore. Rain and an almost flat sea made the conditions perfect: if they could get to shore and conceal the boats before the rain stopped, there would be no signs of their landing.
Len felt the boat rock gently from side to side, its engines idling. The shallowing seabed cast up modest crests that peaked before breaking softly along the shoreline. A lamp blinked twice quickly from the dark line of jungle beyond. At once the engines re-engaged, and the boat began to move again, slowly astern, and turn out to sea. The eighty men on the beach disappeared into the jungle, inland towards Bakri.
Jock appeared beside Len. ‘Help them get these ropes in, Lenny, and look lively. Let’s get out of here.’
The ML picked up speed and turned to the south. They expected to make Batu Pahat in easy time.
Going below, Len joined Tim and several others clutching mugs of chicken noodle soup: Charlie’s specialty. Charlie had killed and plucked the bird on board. There had been a lot of squawking this time, and feathers still occasionally floated up out of nowhere. Sitting in the wardroom, the crew talked among themselves, about ordinary people, the planters and their families.
‘Did you hear about McMillan’s crew?’ asked Jock.
‘You mean the refugees?’ This was from Johnno.
‘What refugees?’ Jackie joined in.
‘He and Johnny Bull were up around Swettenham somewhere,’ Johnno told them. ‘They came across a planter and his family in a koleh, way out to sea heading south.’
‘You mean to Singapore?’ Len asked him.
‘Yep. With a couple of locals. They must have sailed three hundred miles or more.’
‘So they saved them?’ Jackie again.
‘Course they did, you stupid bugger.’ Tim had joined the conversation.
‘But the locals headed back to shore, apparently,’ added Jock, slowly shaking his head.
‘You must be joking,’ said Len.
That had been a few days ago. The battle front was already much further south. They had all heard the stories by now: civilians shot, women raped and natives beheaded. Malays or Indians; it didn’t matter, but especially the Chinese, for whom, they learned, the Japanese had a particularly vicious contempt.
Len went up on deck again so he could cool down. Hot soup had that effect on a person in the tropics. He stood into the wind, luxuriating in its coolness. It wasn’t just cooling; it was cleansing, sharpening his thinking. He listened to the engines and felt their power beneath his feet. It made his teeth vibrate. He felt a nudge on his arm. It was Tim, offering a cigarette. The two of them lit up and stood smoking silently, gazing out into the darkness and letting the wind snatch the smoke from their lips.
★ ★ ★
By the end of the third week of January the Japanese had repeated their exercise in Muar; they had encircled Batu Pahat, and were now only fifty miles from Singapore.
As, one by one, the coastal towns and ports were evacuated in front of the enemy advance, the role of the MLs changed, from one of offensive raiding to relief and rescue. All the crew, Len included, thought that evacuation brought more risks than infiltration. Len felt more secure sneaking up a river with a boat full of armed men than sneaking back down it loaded with the wounded and dispirited. Being among the cowed and bleeding made Len feel vulnerable: not to attack any more but to inadequacy and the incontrovertible realisation that he could do little by himself. Watching men bleed and die did much to focus the senses. What Len most needed to do was reject any sense of futility and stand strong. Kia kaha, as Haami had put it.
Muar had been the first time Tim or Len understood what it meant to be in a land war: when they first heard enemy artillery coming towards them, explosions crunching down the road like giant footsteps, getting closer and closer as the resistance shrank towards them. Now, barely a week later, they were continually dodging the enemy’s close attention, working in the dark to snatch his prey from the beaches.
Tonight was no exception. ML310 motored quietly into the bay and entered the river below Batu Pahat, with the crew standing at their guns. Upriver, the town was burning fiercely, and the noise occasionally reached them when something flammable ignited with a boom, or a building collapsed, and flames and cinders billowed skywards. The jungle canopy created remarkable silhouettes that reflected wildly in the water. Pounded by artillery, bombed and machine-gunned from the air night and day, the town centre was now virtually destroyed. The defenders were preparing to break out, and ML310 was searching for escapees.
Slowly, the Fairmile crept upstream, hugging the shore, searching for a part of the bank with a gap in the trees where they could hide. They were to rendezvous with some Australian infantry, who they understood were being pushed towards them, ahead of the enemy advance. Ahead of them upriver, Len and Tim could hear gunfire, the crackle of small arms and the distinctive crump of mortars. The ML found a suitable place beneath some sort of embankment and nosed into the bank. Two men in the dinghy helped, poling with a gaff to assess the final depth and hauling a mooring rope to a tree onshore.
Len reached out and grasped a tree, straining to pull the boat to it as best he could. He secured a rope around the thickest section of the plant, then stepped on it with one foot, to test it. He hated getting this close to the jungle. He imagined pythons dangling from every tree, or a cobra curled up in the branches, and turned his covered torch onto the foliage, just in case.
‘Put that bloody thing out,’ hissed a voice from the bridge of the Fairmile, and Jock appeared at Len’s side. ‘Here, I’ll give you a hand to put the net up. We’re going to have to wait.’
The deck crew worked together to spread the camouflage nets over the vessel, before settling in for the rest of the night. They weren’t sure how long they would have to wait. The boat was blacked out, and conversation was conducted at a whisper.
Tim came over to Len, sat down beside him and handed him a cigarette. They lit up over a single match and smoked silently beneath the netting, cupping the cigarettes in their fists, listening to the jungle. For once, it wasn’t raining.
Their smoke drifted away.
Suddenly, unexpected noise and movement unhinged their sense of security. A monkey screamed from across the other side of the river, while above them bats glided silently through the trees. Something ruffled the water next to the boat, and both men went to the rail to look. Under the water, something big flicked away out of their sight.
‘I hate this stuff,’ Tim whispered.
A voice carried to them from somewhere along the berm. Len elbowed Tim. ‘Shhh.’
An order hissed from the bridge. ‘Put those fags out. Now!’
They heard the voice again. There was something authoritative about it; it was a staccato monotone, not the melodic language of the local Malays.
Then they heard more voices.
‘Fuck,’ Len whispered. ‘Japs!’
‘Shut up.’ Jock appeared beside them. ‘Whoever they are, they’re on our side of the fucking river! No noise. No smoking. Stand by your weapons and don’t move!’
Silently, the whole crew took defensive positions around the vessel, some armed with rifles and pistols. Len made his way up to the bridge, to his own weapon. The bastards are right on the other side of the berm, he thought. I can feel it.
He ran his hands over his weapon. Everything felt fine. Everything looked all right, as far as he could see in the faint orange glow. He reached down and wiped his hands on the rag he had wedged into the locker for the purpose, and looked down to where Jock was loosening the ropes, in case they needed to flee.
Even the animal noises had stopped now, and only the distant noises of the burning town carried across the water to where the Fairmile lay. But the silence seemed artificial. Apprehension weighed heavily on the men.
Then, the unmistakable sound of someone urinating into the river carried to the anxious crew. The little bastard was pissing only a few yards away. From behind the berm, somebody shouted. This second man appeared as a shape in the darkness, on top of the berm. He shouted again. The first little bastard shouted back. There was no mistake now. They were Japanese.
The individual by the river called out again.
The tension was stretching to breaking point.
The men on the Fairmile listened as the man made his way back from the water’s edge, complaining about something – or so it sounded. He clambered up the berm, and then the two figures disappeared down the other side, talking loudly to each other, until their voices could no longer be heard.
The tension remained, though Len for one allowed himself a deep breath. He could use a fag now. If the Japs were here, where were the bloody Australians? Nobody moved. Everybody kept vigilant, and held their fingers over their triggers. Their hearts leapt when some bird or animal let out a shriek in the darkness, victim to a predator.
Then all hell broke loose.
A distant shout was drowned suddenly in a loud explosion, followed by several more explosions of similar intensity. Mortars! Only two hundred yards from the hidden sailors, maybe closer, the Japanese had placed a mortar battery and were targeting the river bank opposite. The Aussies must have been prevented from breaking out upriver, and were now virtually surrounded on the north side of the river, pounded by enemy artillery from the southern side located only yards from their hidden rescuers. The helplessness the crew felt at their situation was subsumed by their focus on survival, so they sat silent and unmoving, concealed in the mangroves, while events took their course.
The Japanese kept up the barrage. The shells continued to sail right over the boat, until, as dawn was beginning to lighten the sky, the assault faltered, then stopped altogether. The silence was again disquieting. Len strained to listen, to hear any movement from the enemy. Behind him, the sound of small arms could be heard from the other side of the estuary.
Nobody could be sure what was happening, but the orders were to stay at full alert. Only when the sun was well up, and there had been no sound of activity for several hours, did things change. A couple of the ratings were instructed to climb to the top of the berm and see what was going on. They reported back that there was no sign of the Japanese. However, while there was plenty of action on the opposite side of the river the Fairmile remained at serious risk of attack, and so Maynard decided that they would stay concealed for the rest of the day. In the late morning, nine aircraft appeared and dropped bombs on the town, and in the mid-afternoon the town was raided again. Each time the crew watched as Japanese aircraft swooped, released their load at the end of the dive and flew straight over the top of them, before climbing back to rejoin the attack. The sailors could look up and see the underbelly of the planes overhead, but they knew that the pilots could see nothing of the sailors below.
Only after dark did the crew lower the ML’s nets and dare to make a move. Then, Maynard ordered the engines started. They worried about the noise until they settled down into their rhythm, and the vessel began to ride the downstream current as quickly and as quietly as it could. They clung to the treeline until sea and sky melded once more, and then headed out to the security of the open sea and darkness.
★ ★ ★
An hour passed. Len was at his second favourite position on deck, behind the fo’c’sle, smoking. Looking towards the shore, he could see the glow of distant fires. Often while at sea at night they saw artillery exchanges, orange flashes of high explosives or the brilliance of flares illuminating a distant landscape. ML310 was cruising south again at sixteen knots – not quite optimum speed – as if anticipating something. It came in the form of a radio message. Len saw the vexed look on Maynard’s face as he and his deputy turned to the chart table. This was followed shortly by instruction to the Coxswain. The boat immediately arced towards the coast, and the crew was instructed once more to strip for action. They were to attempt another extraction, only a few miles south of where they had been. Len flicked his cigarette over the side and went to his station. He ran his hands over his weapon, reached down and wiped his hands on the rag.
Within ten minutes the shore fires seemed much closer – whole villages were now blazing like beacons along the coast. Five more minutes and they were close enough to see shell-bursts in the distant jungle: sudden blooms of high explosive. Eventually, drawing ever closer to shore, and moving more slowly, they began to hear the action, the sound carried offshore by the breeze. The same wind brought the benefit of carrying their own engine noise away. Their speed slowed to a crawl, and by the time they could see the shoreline and find the meet point, it had begun to rain again. The Fairmile dropped a plough and swung into the wind. Maynard ordered the engines stopped and relative silence fell, save for the crump of mortars and the sound of artillery inland, against the persistent hiss of rain falling on a moderate sea. They had sixty minutes to wait before the rendezvous. About forty minutes in, they began to detect movement in the jungle.
Suddenly a number of shadows emerged and moved rapidly down the sand towards the water. A voice shouted out, ‘Don’t shoot. We’re Aussies. Don’t shoot.’
A shot rang out. All movement stopped.
‘We’re Aussies, fuck ya!’
‘What’s the password?’ Henderson shouted out.
‘Illawarra, mate,’ came the reply. ‘Ulladulla. I dunno what the fucking password is; nobody told me. We’re not Japs, and neither are you.’
The men from the jungle began to move more cautiously towards the boat – tall men, big men in slouch hats.
Maynard turned to his First Officer, who spoke for him. ‘Get those men on board. Now! Get a rope ashore. How many are there?’
Sailors jumped into the water and waded to the beach to assist. They strung a rope from a stanchion at the stern to shore and tied it to a palm. One after the other, soldiers were helped into the water and pulled along the rope to the launch, where they were hauled aboard. They were all in an extreme state of exhaustion, their uniforms torn and stained, but still clutching their small arms. Another group of about eight more soldiers came out of the jungle onto the beach. Then another. In all, over forty men emerged onto the beach.
An Australian sergeant identified himself, and explained that the men were remnants of an anti-tank company defending the rear of the retreating Westforce. He conducted some sort of quick muster, after which Maynard made the decision to leave. Many of the soldiers were wounded. Some of their company had been left behind, killed or wounded, captured or lost in the fighting. Nothing seemed capable of stopping the Japanese.
Singapore was now only fifty miles away.
As the Fairmile headed away from the rendezvous with its party of evacuees, Maynard and Henderson met with the sergeant in the tiny wardroom below. It didn’t take long for the ratings to find out what had happened from other soldiers. Len listened carefully while one of the Australians described the chaos.
‘We were refused permission to withdraw, and then we were attacked in the rear. The only way out was west, to the coast.’
When they were finally ordered to make their way to a rendezvous point, they were almost encircled, and the battle had become a race to escape that they seemed destined to lose.
‘We lost a lot of men. We thought we were buggered.’
The sailors handed out hot black tea and collected empty mugs. Plenty of tea spilt on the deck, to mix with the blood of the wounded, but nobody complained, and the rain that had masked their evacuation quickly washed it away. The Fairmile headed south at half speed, slinking along the coast towards Singapore.
Len steadied himself against the boat’s movements, studying the forlorn picture. Exhausted soldiers sat along the deck, squeezed against the gunwale with their backs to the superstructure. Others dangled their legs over the side, propped up against a stanchion, not caring if their feet were wet. Len thought that perhaps they found it soothing. All had Tūmatauenga’s red-rimmed stare of battle fatigue, and gazed out into the darkness, unseeing and unspeaking, as the Fairmile powered them to safety. The noise of the engines frustrated all conversation, allowing them to retreat further within themselves.
★ ★ ★
Inside the anti-submarine net, 310 made its way into Keppel Harbour and nosed into the dock, where two ratings onshore grabbed the rope and threw it over a bollard. Two ratings from the boat now stepped ashore and carried another rope aft, placing it over a second bollard, and while the stern was being brought into the mooring, medical personnel on the wharf were already jumping across the divide and seeking out the needy. Some Australian nurses appeared, clearly newly arrived. Len noticed with amazement how Jock Brough hovered over them like a hawk, solicitous to their every need, but not for a moment letting them onto his boat. The Law of the Sea would not allow women on board, and the Coxswain was a staunch enforcer of this rule, even if those women were nurses.
‘Hallelujah,’ said one of the wounded, on hearing the nurses’ accents. ‘We’re back in Australia already.’
Next to them, the old Laburnum lay, still tied up at the dock, while around them the continuous destruction wrought by the enemy was all too apparent. More go-downs had been hit. Several that had been full of raw sugar burned fiercely with an unmistakable odour that happily overcame the smell of burning rubber and the nauseating stench of death, if only temporarily. The Japanese were concentrating raids on the docks and Navy facilities, attempting to disrupt any landing of troops or material and to destroy means of escape. At the Naval base on the northern side of the island, demolition teams had already destroyed equipment, including the heavy lift cranes, but the floating and dry docks still functioned. The order was given to reprioritise the maintenance schedule and get all vessels that could be floated made seaworthy and employed in evacuation. The timing was crucial, because over the next few days, air raids increased in size and frequency. The air force’s old Buffalos had been destroyed on the ground, and its remaining Hurricanes were too few to stop the Japanese in the air. Refugees from the mainland were pouring over the Johor Causeway in increasingly unmanageable numbers, and the city was forced to accommodate another half a million people. The place was not as they had left it.
As the soldiers were shepherded away, a shore party of sailors returned, reporting all sorts of problems. The traffic was so chaotic it had taken them an hour to travel a distance that had previously taken minutes. They were complaining that half their time had been spent in traffic, and only a few hours spent drinking. Most roads were blocked by fallen buildings, debris or fire hoses. Others were blocked with people. Maynard was circumspect about granting further shore leave.
Tim and Len stood before him now, pleading their case. Tim nudged Len as he petitioned their Commanding Officer. ‘We’ll only go half the distance, sir. No problem.’
Len looked at his friend and shook his head. Humour was lost on the CO. Eventually Maynard gave up, and granted several hours’ shore leave. They headed off into the city while the MLs returned to their moorings off Pulau Brani.
★ ★ ★
If there had been any sense of their being outmanoeuvred by escalating Japanese aggression previously, that had changed now, replaced by incontrovertible evidence that the city and its defences were being systematically destroyed. As they made their way along the harbour’s edge, they were stopped frequently to allow emergency vehicles right of way, or heavy machinery to clear the road. Burning debris was being bulldozed into piles. Bodies, too, dozens of bodies, lay beside the road in some sort of order, as if to spite the chaos. A Chinese man sat on the road cradling the body of his wife and wailing uncontrollably while their small child clung desperately to the dead woman’s clothing. Elsewhere lay unclaimed limbs and body parts, too grim to handle. The sailors were assaulted by the insufferable odour of decomposing bodies beneath the wreckage, and by the heat that flared occasionally from the fires raging all along the way.
Groups of civilians continued to wend their way through the destruction. Many were carrying children or old people; others were hauling rickshaws or handcarts piled with their modest possessions, away from the destruction of the inner city to the relative safety of the outskirts. Malays who customarily worked on the island had been relieved of their duties and allowed to return to the mainland to protect their families.
Tim, Len, Jackie, Jock and Jack Kindred decided to head away from the water, walking several blocks before selecting a bar, The Golden Orchid. The fancy name concealed the fact that the bar was a hole-in-the-wall, a one-man operation so small that they practically filled the place. The owner made them welcome and put a bowl of unshelled peanuts on the board that served as a bar in front of them. Cold beers in cold glasses had them all exclaim in feigned ecstasy, and no little surprise, especially as there was clearly no electricity. No ceiling fans. No radio. No fridge.
‘Must be an ice box,’ Jock said. ‘Bloody good businessman.’
Len was first away to the toilet. While he was looking for the WC, he noticed a large mobile refrigeration unit a short distance away behind the bar, with a military generator chugging along beside it. He stood at the urinal and watched through the louvred windows as the barman left the bar, opened the door of the fridge unit and carried out a dozen beers. Shortly after, two ambulance men arrived and carried a body on a stretcher out from the same unit. Len had become so inured to the spectre of war, he wasn’t sure if he was appalled or amused. Back at the bar he said nothing, but raised his glass with the rest of them.
‘Absent friends,’ Len said. They all took a long draught.
Jack raised his glass again. ‘Lofty.’ And they all drank again.
Jock topped up his glass, put his bottle down and sniffed at his hand.
‘Why do I smell … formaldehyde?’
At this precise moment, air-raid sirens began to wind up eerily. It was 2 p.m.; the Japanese were nothing if not punctual.
The bar owner immediately began to flap, literally, in his efforts to force the men out onto the street, but they remained staunchly in their seats. Len reached out with his arms and touched both sides of the bar. The walls were closing in. This was not England. This was Singapore, where the enemy was so close now his hot breath could be felt. He imagined himself as a crayfish, wedged in his crevice.
By now the sirens were wailing.
‘It would be damned bad luck for a bomb to land on this bar. It’s the smallest in the Far East,’ Tim said. ‘I reckon we’re as safe here as anywhere. Five more Tigers, thanks, mate.’
The barman capitulated and the beers arrived as anti-aircraft fire began to concentrate.
Jackie said, ‘I hope we’re far enough away from the dock.’
The sirens stopped, but there was no bombing, just the familiar sound of defensive fire, which began to dissipate then stopped completely. From within the little bar, they could see that the air was filled with paper: thousands of leaflets, which fluttered down and piled in small drifts in the street. The barman went out and gathered some and brought them inside.
In bold type at the top was the word ‘ADMONITION’, and below that was a carefully worded message from the Japanese: propaganda justifying their aggression and encouraging Britain to surrender her army and her territories.
I imagine the state of mind of you who have done so well your duty, isolated without any rescue and now surrounded by our army …
There’s nothing wrong with my state of mind! Len thought. I know who my enemy is. Everywhere I look I see the results of his destruction. I know my duty.
The sirens began to wail again, announcing the All Clear. Len read on:
Upon my words we don’t kill you, treat you as officers and soldiers if you come to us.
But if you resist against us we will give you swords.