Over the last week of January, as the Japanese continued to roll back a disorganised defence, the Naval Officer Commanding Malaya, Rear Admiral Ernest Spooner, was supervising the evacuation of all specialist personnel from Singapore. The launch flotilla engaged in local patrols and ferrying personnel as the scope of their operations became progressively smaller. There was a concern about conserving the 90 octane that the big petrol engines needed. There was also a suspicion that fifth columnists were contaminating the supply. Reinforcements disembarked into an environment of disorder and destruction. They encountered firemen, civilians, even battle-weary troops working to overcome the fires and stem the flow of vital water from burst mains, and discovered an atmosphere of chaos and despondency. Japanese fighters strafed the city unimpeded.
On 31 January, four troopships arrived in Keppel Harbour, carrying the British 18th Division, and intending to disembark them onto the Empire Dock, where some of the worst bomb damage was. Equipment was piling up for want of dispersal, and the landing was anything but orderly. Having spent the night on patrol, Len and the crew on 310 were sitting on deck resting, with mugs of Charlie’s tea between their knees. There was little conversation, but Len for one sat wondering at the value of delivering more men into a campaign that gave every impression of being already lost. Flights of Japanese bombers flew low overhead and sharpened their interest. What were they doing, if not bombing the city? Shortly after, from the Malacca Straits came the sound of action, and a dense column of black smoke began to climb into the sky, inevitably signifying a strike. A series of shouted commands brought the men on ML310 quickly to their feet. They immediately slipped their moorings and put to sea.
The oldest ship in the convoy, Empress of Asia, had fallen behind as the rest of the convoy sped up in order to reach its destination before the Japanese could find them. Isolated, the liner was targeted by Japanese dive-bombers and set ablaze. Happily, the enemy aircraft soon ceased their attack and so, while the convoy carried on, some vessels raced to render assistance to the several thousand troops on board the lame duck. 310 was one of those that arrived at the scene. Under a pall of smoke and with flames billowing out from the rear superstructure of the stricken ship, she took her turn to nose into the bow and take off as many men as she could. Around them floated some of the Empress’s lifeboats, which had been successfully launched, as well as men in life jackets clinging to their sides or grasping at the ropes being flung towards them. Even as Len pulled at the nets that hung down from the ship, steadying them while soldiers swarmed down them to safety, others were jumping from above. Len saw fear in some men’s eyes as they boarded, but most followed his instructions: they stoically made their way aft and sat or stood quietly. Soon, however, 310 was dangerously overloaded, and reversed engines.
The ship was successfully evacuated, and all but sixteen men survived. By the time 310 returned to Keppel Harbour and offloaded the evacuees, Len and the others were exhausted. Remarkably, the Empress of Asia was the only vessel to be sunk on a Singapore convoy. This particular convoy turned out to be the last to bring reinforcements to the island fortress.
That same night, 31 January, the causeway was blown up. Richard Pool came back on board 310 the following morning from the Admiral’s office where he had been working.
‘We blew the causeway last night,’ he announced, and continued describing how he had watched a group of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders cross the causeway, preceded by bagpipes piping ‘Highland Laddie’ before engineers blew a seventy-yard section of it to smithereens.
‘It was magnificent,’ he enthused.
Len shook his head. He continued to be amazed at the British preoccupation with ceremony, even in a city under siege. As far as he could see, the event was not something to be celebrated. Overhead, a huge pall of dense black smoke rising from the burning tank farm at the Naval Base twenty miles away nearly covered the city. Len could feel the walls getting closer.
★ ★ ★
From 01 February, a state of siege prevailed on the island. The media and other authorities were cautioned about even using the word, or being at all defeatist in their language, but when it became apparent shortly afterwards that the Naval fuel dump had been deliberately destroyed to prevent it falling into enemy hands, morale within the desperate population descended to a new low.
On 01 February a new set of orders was issued to the launch flotilla. The Fairmiles and HDMLs were assigned to operate in the Johor Strait, conducting inshore patrols from Pasir Lebar in the west to Pulau Ubin in the east. There were also personnel changes. Lieutenant Maynard was replaced as CO on ML310 by Johnny Bull, who had been promoted after very effective service as Colin McMillan’s First Officer on HDML1062. Tim was glad of the change, as was Len, who wondered if Pool had had anything to do with it. Richard Pool had proved to be a bit of an unknown quantity – he was apparently capable, but still possessed a youthful mix of naivety and ambition. Len had seen Maynard call on him when they were attacked by bombers off Muar, and on occasions, when Maynard had hesitated, Pool or Malcolm Henderson had stepped up and given commands. It was obvious to Len that Pool regarded Maynard a little contemptuously, and his attitude towards the ratings wasn’t much different. Len had learned on Alynbank that Regular Navy was inclined to be that way with Volunteer Reservists.
Sub-Lieutenant Bull RNZNVR was well pleased with his new command. He inherited a crew that had matured into a highly efficient unit. His Executive Officer was solid, the Coxswain enjoyed a lot of respect among the officers as well as the other ratings and the engine room was in good hands. The rest of his crew was self-motivated and required little instruction. Overall, the crew seemed to enjoy their work, and the Fairmile proved the perfect vessel for them – small, quick and responsive.
The crew in turn greeted Johnny’s arrival with enthusiasm – especially the Kiwis. They were serving at last under a Kiwi commander, and they felt their confidence strengthen in their knowledge of the man himself and their shared background.
‘Good on you, sir. Welcome aboard,’ Tim said to Johnny, on the group’s behalf.
On 04 February, their confidence was put to the test. It was decided to send two engineer observers on a mission, to reassess the western Straits’ defensive needs and the size and intent of any Japanese force that they might find. The Commander Far East, General Wavell, was firmly of the belief that the Japanese would attack across the Straits from the north-west and head by the most direct route to the heart of the city. General Percival, Commander Singapore and Wavell’s subordinate, did not share this view, believing that the attack would more likely come from the north-east, targeting the strategically important Naval Base. But he had to demonstrate obedience to his superiors, even if he lacked intent, and a reconnaissance was undertaken, and the job was given to ML310.
That night, when darkness descended, the Fairmile shrugged off its camouflage and started its engines. The air was heavy, with low cloud and high humidity, lit only to the north-east by the intense glow of the burning oil tanks. ML311 had already disappeared from its mooring on a mission of its own when the two officer observers arrived, and 310 cast off and headed quietly into the night. The briefing stressed the need for silence throughout the mission, and, to avoid the possibility of detection, the vessel moved at a low speed and kept to the southern side of the strait in the beginning. Eventually, when the ML had reached the end of its assigned passage, it motored even more quietly across to the opposite side and began its journey home. If the enemy had reached the northern shores of the straits, they would be sailing right under his nose.
Tonight Len and Tim had been tasked with manning the forward three-inch gun, as a team. Tim as gun layer opened the ammunition locker and laid and locked a magazine into the weapon’s breech. Len took the gunner’s seat and sat at his gun, occasionally – automatically – running his hand over the weapon, taking reassurance from its familiarity beneath his touch. He cranked it through its firing arc, then sat back into his seat and reached for a cloth to wipe his hands.
The same conditions that were hiding the ML from detection were also obscuring any sign of the enemy. He could be anywhere; except for the gentle throb of the engines under foot and the occasional burble of the exhausts, they heard and saw nothing. The men looked for any clues, and cocked their ears for other sounds, but there was nothing. Once something in the water, animal perhaps, splashed away in the dark. Twice they bumped into a log or something solid. These were heart-pounding moments that passed with a deep breath and a relaxation of the men’s trigger fingers. They were under instructions not to fire unless fired upon.
And so the time passed.
Nothing.
After eight hours of gentle passage, the city’s fires appeared in front of them again, and they were back on a mooring as the sun rose. 311 followed soon after.
Both Fairmile crews were then offered a brief stand-down; some took shore leave while others elected to stay on board. They had acquired an extra dinghy, an inflatable, so about ten men from both boats secured a short-term pass and took off in the two small tenders. Len, Tim and Jackie welcomed Jack Kindred from 311. At the dockyard gates, while they stood in line to present their passes, Lieutenant Pool drove past them in a civilian vehicle, pushing his way through the people thronging the gates, and headed off towards the city on some business or other, offering no acknowledgement at all. Behind Pool’s vehicle came a lorry, one of dozens that continued to be landed, jamming the dockyards. It drew abreast of the men as they emerged onto the street, and Tim yelled out to the driver, ‘Mate, where are you headed?’
‘Raffles ’otel. You looking for a ride? ’op in,’ the Cockney driver replied.
The men clambered into the back of the truck while Len followed Tim up and into the cab. The driver crashed the gears and took off with a lurch.
‘I’ll get my arse kicked, but what the ’ell. In the scheme of things I doubt if any bastard will notice.’
They rarely got beyond first gear. All along the roadside, vehicles lay derelict, damaged or destroyed. Reinforcements that had landed from the Empress of Asia found themselves mixing with parts of the retreating army, which was now filling the city. Leaderless units lay about exhausted, despondent and angry: an anger that was compounded hugely by the spectre of new and unused weapons and equipment being pushed straight off the dock and into the sea. This did nothing for morale. Australian troops in particular, volunteer members of the Australian Imperial Force, newly arrived and with only the most basic of training, became extremely agitated by their assessment of the circumstances, and many could be seen huddled in groups on corners, drinking from bottles, broken glass strewn about them. Some were violently disposed; from one group bottles came flying through the air to land on the road in front of the lorry. Nobody seemed to be keeping discipline.
Away from the shore, the cost of the war to the ordinary citizens again confronted the sailors. More bodies lay on street corners, piled waiting for removal. People scrabbled at rubble, pulling at pieces of bloodied clothing, body parts perhaps, or dragging other items to safety. Len turned away from the sight of an old woman squatting beside the body of her dead husband, wailing dismally and beating herself on the temple with a piece of brick. Nobody was giving her any notice. A cry drew everybody to another section of the wreckage, and the truck moved slowly on. They drove around the Padang, past several anti-aircraft emplacements, and eventually arrived at the entrance of Raffles Hotel. The driver dragged on the handbrake and turned the engine off. Tim and Len shook his hand, wished him luck and joined the others, who were climbing down at the rear.
‘Bugger me. Will you look at that,’ said Johnno, and they all looked to where he was pointing, to see Pool’s car parked under a fan palm to the side of the drive.
‘Come on,’ said somebody. ‘Let’s go and find the bastard. He can buy us a drink!’
They all headed for the entrance. As they climbed the stairs a huge Sikh, in full hotel livery, headed them off, threw up a large hand and barred their way inside.
‘I’m sorry gentlemen, but this is off limits to everybody but officers. You may not enter.’
They baulked like sheep, bumping into each other before stopping. The Sikh gave Charlie a sideways glance, looking him up and down.
‘Come on, mate,’ Tim said. ‘Just one drink. Our favourite lieutenant is inside, and he’s dying to see us, I’m sure.’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. You may not enter. Only officers may enter.’
And that was that. Uniformed officers of every distinction passed them by, and numerous civilians in linen jackets. The sound of band music wafted from somewhere inside.
Conditions in the city were so dire that most protocols had been modified, if not actually abandoned. The idea of a black-out was redundant now the city was on fire. People fiddled while the city burned. The sailors hoped that they might be allowed into what was an officers’ mess. But no, they weren’t going to get past the Doorman.
‘Fuck them. I’m off to the Mayfair, mates. Who’s coming with me?’ called out Jackie, confident he would not be doing so alone.
‘Count me in, Jackie. I fancy a nice bowl of prawns,’ said Len, who’d developed a genuine taste for the local delicacy.
Others weren’t so enthusiastic for the food.
‘It’s a beer for me! Or two,’ added Tim.
‘And a woman for me,’ shouted Jock. ‘Or two!’
‘Good on ya, Jock.’ They all cried out in unison.
Strangely, there was plenty of alcohol available in Singapore. While all stocks had been ordered to be destroyed, some Customs bond stores had been broken open by bombing and sacked of their contents, and a surprising amount of liquor had found its way onto the streets.
At the Mayfair there was liquor, there were still prawns, and there were the women, of course. Inside, little, if anything, appeared to have changed. Len was a cautious drinker, but he was learning. He was also a slow starter when it came to women. He rather liked to watch people’s social behaviour. Tim was a watcher, but for a different reason. She was called Ava. The two were talking quietly to each other, about the extra machine guns that were to be fitted to their boats and the likely meaning of this, when the air-raid sirens began to wind up.
‘Damn it,’ said Tim. ‘Just when you’re beginning to relax!’
Len went over and shook a couple of the men from their group awake. They reached for their glasses one more time. As the sirens reached the height of their wail, the men who had been upstairs, including an embarrassed Charlie, came back down the stairs, dragging on shirts and doing up belts. The women hustled the sailors to the door and accepted flamboyant gestures of affection and farewell. One last pat on the backside, one last wave – and the sailors were gone, heading back towards the Padang, looking for a ride.
They weren’t so lucky this time. The bombing was intense, and the incendiaries were designed to incinerate the wooden city and its defenders. They walked much of the distance and hitched short rides, standing on the running boards of passing vehicles. At one point, when one pattern of the bombing tracked straight at them, they were obliged to dive into the storm-water ditch by the roadside. The blast scattered dust and grit over them, and the ditch water was foul, but they were safe. When the wave of bombing passed, they got up and moved on.
When they finally reached the docks, they showed their passes to the MPs and headed to where they had left their dinghies, tied up under one of the piers. In doing so, they had to pass through go-downs that had just received a direct hit and were burning fiercely. The heat was so intense that at first they considered another route – but there was none. So they held bits of iron and planking over their heads like umbrellas and raced past the hot spots. The go-down at the end of the wharf had been breached in the attack, and half of it was burning. But the other half offered a better route to their dinghies, and so they took it.
Sirens wailed an All Clear.
As Len and Tim led the way through the debris, they stepped on material that felt like marbles under foot. Len stooped to inspect whatever it was, and stopped. He picked some of it up. ‘Have a look at this, mate.’
Tim stooped down beside him and picked a piece out of Len’s hand. He looked closely at it.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
The others stopped. Len rolled two stones in the palm of his hand for all to see. They glistened yellow in the enflamed light. Others reached down and picked up bits of the stuff.
‘It looks like gold. This is gold. Look at it! It’s bloody gold.’ Tim was almost shouting.
‘Bollocks. Give me a look,’ responded a sceptical Johnno.
The men started to look around, prodding at the shambles with their feet, turning over bits and pieces of debris, inspecting them like policemen looking for clues at a crime scene. In the kaleidoscopic light of a night on fire, they were looking at small ingots of metal about the size of a thumbnail strewn across the floor of the burning warehouse. The fire had caused some of the more exposed lumps to heat up, and a couple of the men who had picked them up yelped in surprise and dropped them straight away. Others turned into better light. It was difficult to tell, but it became clear, as each of them took the opportunity to look more closely, that this was gold. Small ingots of bright yellow twenty-four-carat gold of the sort favoured by Orientals to fill teeth or make jewellery. They traced it to a series of damaged crates.
‘Jesus. What do we do now?’
They stood in a circle around the mess of crates, heads bowed, staring into the lustre scattered at their feet. Mesmerised.
Broken shopfronts and burst warehouses everywhere offered easy pickings to any passer-by. Shore and military police were preoccupied, protecting evacuation zones and what was left of military assets. Nobody was giving a damn about much else these days. What if? Even if the men did pocket the stuff, things were so bad they’d be bloody lucky to survive. So … what the hell? And besides, they had taken their fair share of risk. Were they going to leave this for the Japanese? They were all having similar thoughts. Then Johnno seized the initiative.
‘Come on. Grab a crate and see if we can get it to the boat,’ he instructed.
It took two men to lift one crate comfortably: each weighed about a hundredweight. In the end, it was pretty obvious they could only cope with two crates. At least they had two dinghies. With a great deal of effort, they lugged the crates as far as they could, through the go-down and over to the ladder where the dinghies were. Getting the crates down and into the dinghies was a precarious exercise that nearly failed more than once, but the incentive was more than sufficient. In the end, they paddled back with their prize towards the two Fairmiles, shrouded in nets at their moorings.
As they approached the launches, they held a whispered discussion. Where were they going to hide the gold? They did not want the officers to know about it – they were good blokes, but would be duty-bound to take it seriously. They quickly agreed to follow Jack’s suggestion to secrete it in the transom of 311, where there was an empty paint locker. Everybody on board 311 appeared to be asleep still, so they distracted the watch and gently lowered the crates into this stowage and closed it. As they were performing this task, the men said nothing. They simply shook their heads in amazement, grinned and patted each other on the back. Then they split up and tried to find some sleep.
That night, however, sleep was not something any of the sailors got in any quantity. First thing in the morning, the boat was repositioned in order to fix supplementary armaments to it. The Fairmiles had been designed and built to be adaptable. Weapons and equipment could be reconfigured speedily, bolted to steel strips fixed to the decking, and men now fitted half a dozen extra machine guns to the decking of both vessels. Len helped bring sandbags on board and positioned them around each new fitting, to provide some basic protection. By the late afternoon, when the extra ammunition had been loaded, the vessel was sitting a little lower in the water.
The men anticipated the call to action, but it did not arrive immediately. The Staff Command was still equivocating over where to deploy its resources, and Percival still did not buy into the idea that he was most at risk in the west. He dismissed the initiatives offered by his Chief Engineer, Brigadier Ivan Simson, who recommended a wide range of creative defensive measures. One such involved cannibalising motor vehicles and using the headlights to illuminate the Straits against the possibility of an amphibious assault. Instead, Percival removed a lot of material that had been positioned for the defence of the west and moved it east. Shenton Thomas, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, made his own facile contribution to morale invoking sport as a motivating image, saying ‘We are all in the hands of God, from whom we can get comfort in our anxieties, and the strength to play the man.’
It was decided that there would be no Naval activity in the Straits at night, to leave open fields of fire to the army should an attack of some sort occur. For this reason, the launch flotilla lay idle for a couple of days. The circumstances were tailor-made for an intelligent, resourceful and experienced enemy to attack.
On 08 February, Japanese troops did cross the Straits, and from the north-west, as Wavell had predicted. About 13,000 of them, in two waves. By the following evening, the crews on both Fairmiles were alert and active, stripping the boats for action. The enemy occupied both sides of the Straits, and was preparing to launch another amphibious crossing, and the two Fairmiles were about to sail right into him.
Several members of the same independent company whose officers had made the previous reconnaissance then boarded, to man the extra guns. The sailors on 310 welcomed them with solemn handshakes, and while Charlie provided mugs of hot tea, the launch slipped her mooring. Len looked across to the other Fairmile as both picked up a little speed to meet their ordained start point in time, and saw Jack Kindred in the gloom working on the aft deck. He gave an exaggerated wave, to which Jack responded in kind, and both returned to their tasks with a smile on their faces. It was going to be a while before either could smile again.
Len turned back into the wind and made his way forward to his gun. Tim appeared beside him, slapped him on the back and set about loading. As was his habit, Len ran his hands over the barrel, then over the gun’s breach – first open, then closed. He leaned his right shoulder against the gunstock and reached forward with his right hand for the trigger grip, brass and cool in his grasp. He squinted through the gun sight into the darkness and trained the weapon port and starboard of the bow. Then he brought the safety back a notch and stood easy, wiping his hands.
Behind the two Fairmiles, an eerie light prevailed. There was an overarching glow of orange reflecting off the dense cloud of oil smoke that blanketed the sky. Their passage this time took them down the middle of the strait, at slow speed. To starboard, on the island, the horizon was lit by the city’s fires, but in the middle distance, disturbingly, they saw other flames flickering in the jungle canopy, surely signs of recent combat. Occasionally the bloom of an explosion rose skywards, followed sometimes by a faint report. Len stole a look up at the bridge, where he could see Johnny, Malcolm Henderson and Richard Pool, who had been assigned the role of Gunnery Officer at the last minute. Out in the channel, from where last night’s invasion force had come, it was becoming unfathomably black. Those who manned the port-side guns strained their eyes for any movement. Len swung his gun around and pointed the barrel into the darkness. There was enough movement in the air to make hearing difficult. That, and the low rumble of engine noise. Occasionally there was the sound of a frightened bird beating its way across the water, and from the jungle on the island, the disconcerting crackle of gunfire.
They crept further along the coast. Only half their anxiety for the task was about finding the enemy and destroying him. They had seen his work, and were keen to make him pay. The other half was for their survival.
Len was frustrated – no, irritated – that he had been a target in so many ways and had yet to even see his enemy.
Then suddenly, like an apparition, several small native craft – kolehs – full of armed men appeared from out of the gloom heading towards the island, and forged right across their bow. None of the men in any of the boats had time to think. Those in the kolehs looked up in horror as 310, following agreed procedure, simply rammed the kolehs, which immediately sank. The men on board were flung into the water. Len just had time to train his gun on one unfortunate craft before it disappeared under the Fairmile in two halves. The image of Japanese struggling silently under the weight of their equipment before they too disappeared beneath the water was not one he had anticipated.
The two vessels continued on, cautious and undetected. The Straits were getting narrower, and they were getting closer and closer to the blown causeway and the need to turn back.
Where was the enemy now?
Disquieted, Len wound the safety off. They continued to glide quietly through the water.
The light from the burning oil tanks now made a difference. As they reached the mouth of the Kranji River, flowing from the island into the Straits, they faced a wide stretch of open water. Flames, leaping high into the air at times, occasionally illuminated the whole area. After probing along the waterway for three hours, they were now obliged to turn back. Every man on board knew the risks would now heighten. Len worked his gun’s breech, an act of reassurance. He belted on his harness, hitched the stock to his shoulder and spread his feet. There was no armour on the gun because, in the initial haste to get the MLs seaworthy, the bulletproof shielding had never been fitted. He stood fully exposed on the foredeck, ready for anything, his right hand clamped onto the pistol grip. One of the things that appealed to him as a gunner was that this ‘pistol’ shot a three-pound shell.
The launches made a wide-arced turn across the Straits and reversed direction. Now they were closer to the northern shore. The road from Johor Bahru followed the coast west. From the water they could see movement: a truck convoy, lights shielded, carrying men and material inevitably towards assembly and embarkation. Johnny called for more speed and ordered his Coxswain to track closer and closer to the road. Then, before the enemy was alerted, he ordered fire onto the convoy, but there came no response. Richard Pool had mislaid the whistle with which he was supposed to give the signal to fire! Johnny immediately yelled out, ‘Fire at will!’
At once, a stream of bullets and shells raked the road. Behind them, 311 followed suit. The three-pounder could deliver twenty rounds a minute. Len – almost gleefully – loosed off a cluster of shots: more than he’d fired in his entire war so far. He felt the wana flood his veins, and he and his weapon became one. He could see his own shots striking the shore. All he had to do was adjust his angle. Vehicles stopped, some clearly hit, one exploding in a fireball from which small-calibre ammunition began to shoot out in every direction. Men, some of whom were themselves on fire, could be seen jumping from their trucks. Len sent another half a dozen rounds into the enemy convoy.
Something whanged off his gun barrel. He ducked impulsively.
The boat held its course. There was a shout from the bridge. ‘Starboard, one twenty! Range five hundred. Bring fire onto that building, before they find our range!’
The building they could see as a dark shape on a rise overlooking the road. Len swung his gun right around and fired a cluster of shots shoreward. He watched with satisfaction as they stitched a pattern of explosions across the face of the building. Suddenly, from the shore, a searchlight began to flare, and then a second. As the lamps gathered their intensity, they swung down and swept the water, seeking out the attacking launches. Now the danger from returning fire was acute.
Len didn’t need any orders. He swung the gun around, aiming at the base of the lights. He sent a ranging shot away at a low angle and saw the shell strike in front of the lights. He raised his sight a little and sent off a second shell, but this had no discernible impact. While the sea state was effectively calm, the movement of the boat imposed little handicap. Without hesitation, Len now loosed a fusillade of shells towards the searchlights, and the lamps disappeared in a cluster of explosions. Tim slammed another magazine into the breech. Johnny gave instructions, and Jock brought the launch to full throttle and swung away, reducing its profile from both shores. The Fairmile ducked and weaved until it was obvious that they were hidden by the darkness and out of range. Behind them, the burning trucks, strung out along the northern shore, receded into the distance.
The crew now worked to ready themselves in case of further action. Len was surprised to look down and discover a pile of empty shell casings strewn across the deck beneath his gun. He had been so focussed during the action that he had heard little and seen nothing other than his gun barrel. He kicked the casings over the side. Miraculously, no damage was reported. The boat slowed back to a more stealthy speed and continued to head back towards safety. ML311 was somewhere in the darkness.
In returning, they came to the location of their earlier encounter, running into debris, a section of a smashed boat, material and a single body floating in the water. They stopped and briefly inspected the scene. Then, satisfied that there were no other infiltrators, they motored on without incident for Keppel Harbour, and eventually tied up beside Laburnum.
As 311 tied up alongside them, Johnno emerged from the engine room and came up on deck, breathing deeply and wiping his hands on his overalls.
‘Jesus. That was a bit of fun,’ Tim said, to nobody in particular.
‘Oh yeah? Come and have a look at this then,’ Johnno replied.
His words had an urgency about them, as well as an air of mystery. A couple of the men, including Len and Tim, peered down into the mess room.
‘Jesus,’ Tim said, under his breath.
On the mess-room table lay an unexploded shell.
A call went out for Johnny, who turned out to be in the wardroom preparing to write his report. In response to the men’s summons, he, Henderson and Pool stepped into the mess.
‘How the hell …?’
Johnny was expressing what everybody else was thinking. But in fact, nobody gave a damn about how the shell had got there. They were suddenly very interested in how to get rid of it.
‘Len’s had a bit of experience with bomb disposal, sir,’ Tim suggested.
Len shot Tim a look. They had both helped Lofty get rid of the last one.
Len picked it up. Johnny turned the shell over in Len’s hands. ‘Made in Birmingham’ was clearly stamped on it.
‘What a bloody shambles,’ Johnny said, and left the cabin, shaking his head. Nobody was quite sure whether he was referring to the mess room or the campaign.
Henderson told Len to ‘get rid of it,’ and, with Pool following on, disappeared back into the officers’ wardroom.
During the mission, the enemy had engaged with only a single gun, which had registered the only hit on either vessel. Incredibly, it appeared that this shell had passed through the hull and one of the petrol tanks before stopping. Fortunately, the petrol tanks on the Fairmiles were self-sealing, so there had been no explosion. On inspection, the sailors found that one of the steering cables had been damaged, and a number of its strands had been severed. There was no other damage to report. They inspected the shell closely. Eventually, Len took the thing up on deck and considered his options.
Smoke drifted across the boat, causing his eyes and nostrils to sting. Huge concentrations of thick black smoke continued to mass overhead, melding with the monsoon clouds. He could hear explosions, so close and methodical in rhythm that he guessed they were demolition charges. Or mortars. On the dock, go-downs lay smouldering. As he stared, a squad of men in uniform sent a truck straight off the wharf and into the sea, where it floated briefly before sinking rapidly into the oily waters. As Len watched, another truck rolled into view, pushed by another squad of men, who sent this one straight into the sea too. The shell began to weigh more heavily in his hands.
He thought of Lofty, then held the shell over the side of the boat and let it go. He watched as it splashed into the oily waters and disappeared.
★ ★ ★
Late on the afternoon of the following day, 10 February, Richard Pool arrived down on the docks in his car, bringing news of the next mission. Len watched as Johnny Bull and Malcolm Henderson were joined in the wardroom of 310 by Ernest Christmas and Victor Clark commanding 311, Kiwi Colin McMillan commanding HDML1062 and Angus Rose commanding HDML1063. When Johnny and Malcolm Henderson mustered their crew together, Johnny didn’t waste his words.
His crew nodded in unison.
‘Right. We’re out of here. We have twenty-four hours. We’re sailing for Java, and I want everything shipshape. There will be extra equipment and stores, and some “special” passengers.’
He paused for effect.
‘And we will be among the last to leave.’
He raised his eyebrows, and offered a long stare. Everybody understood the risk it implied. They would be evacuating, but at the last moment. Would they get out the door before it closed?
Dismissed, the men set to once more, most stripped to their shorts, preparing the vessel. They were not quick, but deliberate. Careful. Tim joined Len, and together they disassembled the gun and checked the barrel lining for any effects of the recent action. With heads down and arses up, as the Chief Petty Officer on the Alynbank used to say, they absorbed little of what was going on around them. Only when they were sent ashore to help load drums of fuel was Len able to take stock of the bigger picture. Crew and soldiers from a transport company beavered away for most of the second day, unloading some Browning large-calibre machine guns being dispatched by the Air Force, as well as a number of anonymous crates, and storing them below decks. They were challenged to maintain the boat’s trim as it settled lower in the water.
Thick smoke drifted across the docks. The go-downs smouldered, and new fires added to the mass, which rose and billowed to form the huge, lumpen cloud covering virtually the whole island, and threatening to black out the sun. Across the city, buildings lay collapsed and whole blocks lay in ruins. Japanese bombers continued to attack against desultory anti-aircraft defence, and their fighter pilots continued to get under the defences to strafe the streets and terrorise the citizens.
Len knew the bombing was getting close when the local anti-aircraft batteries started up, and closer still when they went to rapid fire. Now, as they rolled petrol drums alongside the vessels to refuel them, the men began to hear the sound of mortars from somewhere inside the line between Bukit Timah Road and the Reservoir, a few miles away. For this reason, once refuelled, the launches moved back to moorings. The sailors could see the stress on the waterfront was reaching intolerable proportions, and the evacuation of civilians was putting enormous pressure on the authorities.
Their own evacuation was planned for the 12th, but it was cancelled at the last minute, and the men on the launches stood down. In the late afternoon, some, including Len, were granted restricted shore leave.
With much back-slapping, the chosen few took to the dinghies, paddled to the docks and clambered up the ladders, keen to make the Mayfair and back within their curfew. Others chose not to leave the boat at all. This time Johnno was among the ones who stayed on board.
‘It’s safer,’ he said. ‘Who knows how much shit you’re going to find.’
The destruction around the docks was near total, and the loss in human life wickedly random. Minutes before their arrival, a bomb had burst not far from the dockyard gates. Burning vehicles blocked their path. The sailors had to wait before they were able to walk around the area; the bomb had landed squarely on the road, which had been crammed with refugees, cutting a swathe through a mass of people. The still-smoking crater presented a wretched scene, with its perimeter of torn bodies, bloodied parts and wailing kin. Len wondered at Johnno’s prescience. They hurried away and hitched a ride with a British soldier driving an empty Bedford.
‘I’ve been two days ferrying everybody down to the bloody wharves,’ the soldier told them. ‘Now I’m ferrying the sailors in the opposite direction. I mean, what’s the point? Tell me then, what’s the bloody point?’
Jock sat beside the driver. He turned and looked him in the eye, and said, ‘Have you ever heard of a beautiful hotel called the Mayfair? A place filled with dusky Eurasian beauties, and where they still know the meaning of cold – as in beer?’
‘No, mate, I haven’t, but if you’re trawling for my interest you have it.’ The soldier crashed a gear. ‘I’ve been driving since yesterday morning, and I’ve had a gutsful. They won’t even notice if I’m AWOL for an hour or two.’
And so he drove them to the Mayfair. Groups of soldiers, apparently leaderless, stood around corners or alleys, bloodied and dirty and showing clear signs of recent combat. They watched the sailors pass with ill-concealed hostility.
They were only a block or two away when they were stopped by air-raid wardens at North Bridge Road. There was a cordon, and, for a while, they all thought the Mayfair had been bombed. They left the truck and, with Jock leading the way, threaded their way along the side of the street, stepping over hose pipes, smouldering timbers and masonry, to reach the door of the hotel. Here they found that it wasn’t the Mayfair that had taken a hit; it was the Fire Station nearby: the building now blazed furiously, the fire being controlled by its own crew.
They bought Lionel, their driver, beers and played the chilli prawn trick on him, watching while his face coloured puce and he gasped for air. To their delight, even after they had given him a beer laced with more chilli sauce, he sat there mopping the sweat from his brow and pretended it wasn’t hot. So they shouted him another beer – without chilli this time.
After only a few hours, the time came to leave. The hostesses knew this was the end, and lined up in a genuine display of gratitude, for the respect the sailors had shown them. Many were crying, the Chinese women especially, distressed at the prospect of Japanese occupation. Jock was crying too; like many Scotsman, when he drank too much he became maudlin. A couple of comrades grasped his arms and guided him away, past the fire. Their new mate Lionel showed his own gratitude, offering to take everybody back to where the dinghies were tied up.
‘Come on, lads. I’m ferrying service personnel. To the wharves. From the wharves. What bloody difference does it make? Hop aboard.’
He drove the sailors back as close to the docks as he could and gave them the thumbs-up as they disappeared off into the flickering gloom. They climbed down the ladder to their dinghies, hidden in shadows under the wharf, and paddled out towards the boats.
Keppel Harbour and the length of the Singapore shoreline was crowded with flotsam and blanketed in a heavy oil slick. The orange glow of fires bouncing off the clouds continued to provide an extraordinary display. The two craft began to bump their way through a cluster of boxes and bales floating on the surface, just as an explosion from a burning liquor warehouse nearby lit up the scene.
‘Whoa!’ shouted Tim, loud enough for the men in the other dinghy to hear too, and the two groups stopped paddling. He held up a bundle that had been floating among the bales.
‘Money!’ was all he said. Wordlessly, every man dropped his eyes to the water and scooped up a bundle.
‘Fuck me!’ Jock had recovered his composure.
‘You can say that again,’ Tim retorted with genuine intent.
They looked closely at the bundles in the available light, and couldn’t believe their eyes. It was money – Straits dollars, in large quantities.
‘Here we go again.’
They hauled wads into each dinghy, filling their pockets and stuffing the rest into their shirts. When they reached their vessel, they hurried below and hid their prize. Len filled a pillowslip with his share, and then placed it at the back of his hanging locker. Then he found a place on deck, lay himself down and, not for the first time, abandoned himself to an exhausted sleep. In his dreams, he, Tim and the others, along with the ladies from the Mayfair, were engaged in a mad dervish-like dance among bloodied victims and their mourners, in a swirling maelstrom along blasted roadways that swept them all up until they disappeared into a cloud of infinite blackness.
★ ★ ★
The day after their planned departure, Len and the launch crews were still lying idle at the docks, as were crew on dozens of other small craft, waiting for the order to sail. Their frustration was palpable. Everything and everyone was ready, so there was little activity and not much communication between the sailors.
‘This is pissing me off,’ grumbled Tim in an empty moment. I wish we were out of here.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ replied Len, mindful, as were they all, of the risks.
‘Yeah, well, I’m not sure I want to hang around here much longer,’ said Jackie.
As if to justify Jackie, a salvo of mortar rounds burst nearby and rifle fire rattled through the adjacent streets. It was the stillness before the storm.
The three Kiwis on ML310 sat under netting, trying to deal with the space between frustration and anticipation, oblivious to the fact that elsewhere even the most senior officers were struggling with similar conflicting emotions.
At his desk in Fort Canning, Rear Admiral Spooner sat staring at the calendar, thinking. Friday, 13 February 1942. He had upheld the best traditions of the service. Now, he was about to deliver himself to be evacuated. Previously he had written a short, poignant letter to Vice-Admiral Peter Cazelet, a personal friend, in case he did not succeed.
My Dear Cazelet,
Singapore will probably be captured tonight or tomorrow. The story of ineptitude, bad generalship etc. is drawing to a close. I am sending with this 3 trunks, (tin) and one short (?) box of mine and my wife’s. Please take to Batavia and turn over to Collins or to my wife who is staying with Lady Sanson at Bandoeng. My wife left here in Scout last night. I am getting away all the Sailors and Officers I can in the various patrol boats, and intend to follow myself in an ML at the last, and not be captured.
The present state of affairs was started by the AIF who just turned tail, became a rabble and let the Japs walk in unopposed.
My Marines have been cut up. The young N Officers in MLs and Fairmiles have been splendid.
A certain number of Officers and sailors may come with you. As they come in from various boats and jobs all over the island am sorting them out as boat crews and getting surplus away – I do not intend to be taken prisoner if I can help it.
You must go by midnight – all good luck and tell my wife I’ll follow soon.
Yours,
etc
Now it was his turn.
He called for his driver. He then sought out Percival – finding him in his office. Conway Pulford, the Air Force Commander and a friend of Percival, was also there, making his farewells.
‘Goodbye, Percival. I suppose you and I will be blamed for this, but God knows we’ve done our best with what we’ve been given,’ Spooner said.
Percival, condemned to conduct the surrender and become a prisoner of the Japanese, came out from behind his desk. The men shook hands briefly.
‘Good luck,’ Percival said perfunctorily, and returned to the task of stuffing papers into a sack.
The men parted company. The Admiral found his driver, called his Aide-de-Camp, and together they made for Keppel Harbour.
★ ★ ★
When the Admiral arrived at the docks the sun had long settled. He found that public order had all but collapsed, and the previously ordered evacuation was facing breakdown. A panicked mob that had gathered outside the dock gates had to be forcibly parted by military police, to allow vital military traffic onto the docks. When the Admiral’s car arrived at the wharf and could go no further, the Admiral invited his driver, New Zealander Petty Officer Arthur Bale, to accompany him, along with Ian Stonor, a Lieutenant of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders serving as his Aide-de-Camp, and together the three men walked through the cordon of MPs. Nonplussed to find nobody on board 310, they made their way below. It was about 11 p.m.
The crew boarded shortly after, having attended a briefing together with the crews of the other launches on board ML311. Richard Pool introduced Johnny Bull to the Admiral as ‘Wavy Navy’, but the Admiral seemed not to be influenced by Pool’s subtle inflection. ‘I know you’ll do a fine job, Commander,’ he said, indicating his deference to Bull as CO.
Several vehicles arrived on the docks, and the chosen evacuees began to assemble. Jock Brough called out names from the list given him by Pool, and men began to file on board their appointed vessel. They included Johnny’s immediate superior, Naval Commander Pendarvis Frampton; Wing Commander George Atkins RAFVR, accompanied by a group of aircraft artificers; and three sergeants of the Royal Engineers. Others refused to board at all when they saw the heavily loaded vessels, preferring to take their chances of survival on land rather than at sea. So the available space was offered to some Royal Marines helping maintain order on the dockside. They eagerly accepted.
Johnny worked simply and with assurance, in spite of the presence of the Admiral and ranking officers of other services. His crew also worked with practised ease, against the background of chaos.
The sailors were occupied instructing the soldiers on stowage and safety when Len saw an army Bedford with a closed canopy push its way through the crowd and stop along the wharf a short distance from the Fairmiles. An officer dismounted from the passenger side of the cab, and from the rear four armed soldiers dismounted, hauling a struggling figure with them. Len watched out of the corner of his eye as the officer stood in front of the man and spoke to him. Whatever passed between them seemed to agitate the prisoner dramatically.
‘What the hell are you men doing?’ came a shout from the Coxswain. ‘We haven’t got all bloody night! Get on with it!’
The sailors got on with it, but Len was distracted when a shot rang out, and he was dumbfounded to turn and see a body tumble into the harbour. One of the soldiers lowered a pistol.
‘For fuck’s sake, Lenny. Pull your finger out!’
Len raised his hand in acknowledgement, but looked back to where the shot had come from, hardly able to believe his eyes; the body was now floating among the debris in the water. The five men from the Bedford – a senior Air Force officer and four military police – walked towards the ML and Len, now thoroughly confused, watched them climb aboard. He saw the Admiral and his Aide-de-Camp emerge on the bridge deck above and call out a greeting.
‘Ah, Pulford. You made it. Let the Air Vice Marshall through, gentlemen.’
Shortly after there was a lull in the activity, and Len, Tim and Jackie met up with Jack Kindred.
‘Did you see what I saw?’ Len asked the others.
‘No, mate. What are you talking about?’ Tim replied. But before there was time for Len to explain, Johnny Bull and Ernest Christmas commanding 311 called the four into conversation.
‘One of Ernie’s crew is AWOL,’ Johnny Bull said to them. ‘I’m not sure why, but he’s short of a gunner for his three-pounder. Which one of you is going to go and help Jack?’
He was clearly addressing the gunners. Tim looked at Len, while Len looked down at the ground and shook his head.
‘I’ll go,’ said Tim. ‘Len’ll be all right.’ He winked at his mate.
Len was still shaking his head when Johnny said, ‘OK, grab your stuff. We have to leave now, if we are going at all.’
Jack punched Tim on the arm and said, ‘Good on you, mate. I’ll go and sort out a locker for you.’
Tim turned to Len and thrust out his hand. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, eh? I can feel these bastards breathing down my neck.’
It was a very apt analogy. They could feel the heat from the blazing refinery and storage tanks on Pulau Brani.
‘Good luck, mate.’
‘Yeah, good luck,’ said Len. Then the words of Haami Parata sprang to his mind, and he spoke them aloud – ‘Kia kaha.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Tim.
‘Stand strong! That’s what it means. My Māori mate told me that in combat your ancestors stand behind you. It’s quite empowering when you think about it.’
Len shook his friend’s hand and added, ‘Just make sure that the people behind you are your ancestors.’
When Tim shouldered his kit and stepped across onto the other vessel, Len felt a familiar dread grab at his entrails. His diaphragm contracted involuntarily. He thought he had learned to subjugate the wehi. Why it gripped him now he did not know. Perhaps it was the fog of war – its uncertainty – brought home by seeing British soldiers shooting their own men. He said nothing about it.
There wasn’t much else to say, but Tim said it.
‘It’s been fun so far.’
‘You think so? Look after yourself, mate.’
‘Good on you, Len. I’ll be seeing you.’
‘Not if I see you first.’