The frustration and irritation that visited the men who had missed the draft to Neptune quickly evaporated at the prospect of being retrained for service in fast patrol boats. At last it seemed they were to be allowed to play to their strengths. They spent six weeks at HMS St Christopher, under the command of A.E. Welman, a much-decorated Royal Naval stalwart with a reputation for extreme rigour, and a lofty disdain for colonials. In their element, the men met his challenge with enthusiasm, working up their navigation skills in the Scottish isles and practising manoeuvre, attack and defence tactics to the highest standard. At the end of the six weeks, when asked to volunteer for service in the Far East, they did so without hesitation. Len looked forward to serving on a fast patrol boat, and even Tim found merit in being posted to ‘Singa-bloody-pore’.
‘Not only are we closer to home, but we leave the war behind!’ he postulated.
‘I hope you’re right about that,’ retorted Len under his breath.
It was a smaller group that arrived at the Naval base at Portland on the south coast of England for final training in new Fairmile motor launches. Len, Tim, Jackie Hayward and Jack Kindred were billeted in Brixham over a five-week period, and because they had to wait for delivery of their boats, they obtained leave and rail passes and travelled all over Devon and Cornwall, from Exeter to Land’s End, Penzance and Newquay. Tim even made them go to Mousehole, just to see why it qualified for the name.
When the Fairmiles were finally delivered, they went to sea, and for three weeks they worked up their skills in this new class of high-speed wooden-hulled motor launch, executing search and rescue, escort and anti-submarine patrols. By the end of October they were ready for active service. They had come a long way from the Hauraki Gulf and the Wakakura. When they finally embarked for the Far East, they were filled with self-belief and high expectations.
First, though, the Kiwis had to travel north again, back to Glasgow, where their convoy was assembling. By now Len had developed an affection for the English countryside and took simple pleasure in gazing quietly out at the passing scenery. The others were similarly quiet, no longer the boisterous colonials, but mature realists with combat experience and a stoical appreciation for the meaning of duty. The hedgerows and neatly groomed fields spread out to the skyline on either side of the train. The ploughed soil and rich array of gold, brown and red that coloured woods and coppices heralded the arrival of winter. When they reached the Clyde they couldn’t believe their good fortune to find themselves boarding MV Aorangi for the voyage. Aorangi was familiar as a liner on the New Zealand passenger run. Built in 1924, she had accommodation to rival Aquitania. The Kiwis wasted little time settling in and getting familiar with the ship’s amenities. They were a small part of the Coastal Services draft of four Fairmile crews, fifty-six men, who had to share space with over 2000 other military personnel on board Aorangi. Until departure, they had no idea how many ships might be involved in the convoy, which was called WS.12Z.
WS.12Z sailed on 12 November. Two troopships carried over 4000 soldiers of the British 53rd Infantry Brigade, a small cargo vessel carried ammunition and ordinance, and Sussex had fifty Hurricane fighter aircraft on board, all still in their crates lashed to the decking, as well as twenty-four pilots and other air force personnel to maintain them. This small group of vessels was defended by a changing force of warships and shepherded between rendezvous points, arriving in Freetown thirteen days later. There, the men were not allowed to disembark. By its very nature they knew the convoy was heading for a potential combat zone, and their confinement only heightened the tension. After three days, the convoy continued on towards Durban.
Every day had its routines during the voyage: watch routines, drill routines and routines of eating and exercise. Over three weeks into the voyage, at around midday on 08 December, the men were surprised to be called to muster on deck for a public address. They were even more surprised when a message from the fleet commander was broadcast over the convoy’s Tannoy. Japan had entered the war! There was momentary hubbub as the message was absorbed and understood. In the lull that followed, it was announced further that Singapore itself had been attacked and that the convoy was proceeding with all caution. Instantaneously uproar broke out again, as the ramifications of this were relayed throughout the crowd, and then they were dismissed.
The convoy sailed on, exercising due caution, and eleven days later on 19 December, it arrived in Durban. The men had now been at sea for five weeks – almost as long as the voyage from New Zealand – yet they had travelled only half the distance.
This time they were allowed ashore. They revelled once more in the warmth of the climate and the hospitality of the local people. Dressed in their tropical Number Twos, they ambled along the Durban waterfront, wandered through markets and shopping streets, sat in parks and drank coffee before midday and beer after, but all with uncharacteristic restraint and solemnity. They had a greater sense of themselves now, as being more than simply sailors. They had begun to see themselves as seamen, entirely comfortable on the seven seas.
In Durban they learned of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse north of Singapore on 10 December. The news had been kept from them in the belief that to acknowledge such a loss so soon in the campaign would affect morale. The two great warships had been sunk by the Japanese as soon as they had put to sea, ill-defended and without any air cover.
‘Fuck me,’ Jack Kindred muttered under his breath when they heard the news.
The loss of the two capital ships eliminated the British Navy’s control in the region; it was a blow against empire that destroyed its cutting edge. The sea now belonged to the Japanese, a fact not lost on the sailors. The survival of British territorial and commercial ambitions in the Far East now relied solely on Fortress Singapore.
Then came news of the sinking of Neptune.
On the same day the men had arrived in Durban, 19 December, Neptune had struck a mine off the Libyan coast. Disabled, the light cruiser had drifted further into the minefield, hit a second mine and blown up. There was only one survivor. Among the 764 men who perished were 150 New Zealanders, many of them men from Ngapona. The news did not impact on the convoy at large, but it had a significant impact on the New Zealanders. While no one knew the detail, all knew somebody among the crew, and Len for one sat somewhere between disbelief that so many close friends had perished and the grim realisation that it might happen to him at any time.
On the last day of their shore leave, Len, Tim, Jack Kindred and two of their new English mates, Harry Swift and Johnno, a motorman, met once more near the public gardens for a beer. There they were approached by a local African rickshaw driver, a tall, strapping Zulu dressed in native garb: a black warrior with a horned headdress, who offered them a ride. At first they resisted, not wanting to demean the man, but he persuaded them that this was the way he earned a living. He explained that the deal also included their photograph, taken by a confederate conveniently stationed nearby. Somewhat reluctantly, they positioned themselves on and around the rickshaw, but recent events had cast a sombre mood over them all, and Len, for one, found no reason to smile for the camera.
The price turned out to be for one photograph. Since there were five sailors, the debate about the cost for the extra photographs became vigorous, which enlivened them hugely. In the end, they had a copy each when they returned to Aorangi late in the afternoon. That night, 24 December 1941, they sailed for Singapore.
★ ★ ★
The departure was businesslike and without excitement. Len and Tim found their way to a spot beneath a lifeboat, similar to the one where Len and Haami Parata had sat together on the Aquitania. Durban was blacked out, and as they sat silently watching, they could sense more than see the mass of Africa diminish and disappear in the night.
For several days, the convoy was shepherded cautiously across the Indian Ocean towards its final destination. They were joined one night by another troopship carrying almost 5000 more men, from the British 18th Division. Now designated DM.1, this group left the protection of Attu Atoll on 05 January, and on 10 January a fleet of eleven Allied warships met the convoy to escort it for the last days of the voyage. These ships represented one of the first operational responses of the newly formed American British Dutch Australian force, otherwise called ABDA. It included four ships from the Royal Netherlands Navy, one from the Royal Indian Navy and the British light cruiser Exeter, and the Kiwis cheered at the sight of the Australian frigate Vampire. The convoy crossed the Andaman Sea heading east towards the Malay peninsula, using Sumatra as a defensive shield against detection and attack for as long as they could.
January was monsoon season, and the Andaman Sea was an intolerable place of impossible humidity and blinding rainstorms. Almost three weeks had passed at sea as the convoy had ranged slowly closer and closer to its destination, cautiously seeking to avoid any contact with the enemy. Now the proximity to land was beginning to be felt. Pressure systems built and vented. Typically monstrous black clouds roiled vigorously overhead, releasing downpours of heavy rain that came straight down and made the surface of the sea seem to boil before suddenly stopping, when the sea would become oily and flat calm. As the convoy neared its destination, the continuous presence of heavy cumulonimbus weighed oppressively on all the men, who sweated from every pore. Whenever they were able, they made for the upper decks, trying to gather some relief. Standing in the rain was a pleasure.
The ships entered the Malacca Straits on full alert when the call to action stations suddenly came. On board Aorangi there had been drills, but it was quickly understood that this was no drill. They were now well within range of Japanese aircraft. Len and Tim went below deck when the attack began, behind watertight doors, and listened to the sound of bombing and anti-aircraft fire. The assault was short and sharp, and they could do nothing but hang on.
★ ★ ★
The convoy finally arrived at the Straits Settlement on 13 January, when Aorangi passed through the anti-submarine boom and entered Keppel Harbour.
Few of the men knew much about Singapore, which had begun life as a fishing village at the foot of the Malay Penninsula. Len and the other New Zealanders did understand its strategic importance, lying as it did midway on the trade route between Britain and its remote Dominions. And virtually all maritime traffic between Asia and Britain and Europe passed through Singapore. The value of this trade was enhanced by rich deposits of tin and the development of rubber plantations in Malaya itself. While the port and the rubber were substantial prizes for any invader, their loss to Britain would have been incalculable.
In peacetime, the city had flourished as an outpost of Empire, sustaining a cosmopolitan population of native Malays, Chinese and Indians, as well as a wealthy class of British government officials and expatriate merchants and entrepreneurs. At its heart was the busy port. Along the shoreline stretched a field of green, home to the Singapore Cricket Club, and behind that a number of fine civic buildings, including the Supreme Court building with its conspicuous dome easily visible from the harbour. Nothing expressed the triumph of British colonialism more than Raffles Hotel, with its sparkling white facade, linen-suited clientele and decadent atmosphere of cheroots and stengahs. Beyond this impressive centre a sprawl of mostly wooden dwellings, home to Singapore citizens of all ethnicities, stretched out to the edge of the jungle.
Now, in wartime, the old order was being demolished by Japan, intent on expanding its own sphere of influence. In the five weeks since the attack, the Japanese had enjoyed supremacy in the air battle. It seemed that outmoded British aircraft and poor planning had failed to prevent the enemy from bombing the city with impunity; they arrived punctually every day at the same time to do so. Bombers in flights of nine, eighteen, twenty-seven or more systematically carpeted the city’s harbours and their defences with high explosives or incendiaries. All this became dramatically clear when Len and the others prepared to disembark.
There was a large anti-aircraft battery located right beside the dockyard gates. The men saw destroyed and damaged buildings that blazed in and around the dockyard, sending thick smoke skyward to further inflate a huge grey cloud anchored like a dirigible in the sky over the city. Gunners manned anti-aircraft emplacements, and two ambulances stood on the wharf with their doors open.
Lining the rail prior to disembarking, Len and Tim gazed out over the scene. The smoke and destruction wasn’t unfamiliar. The scale of it was though. They were landing into a war zone.
Tim spoke. ‘I think I preferred the old war.’
Len nodded. ‘This looks like a land war to me.’
Tim nodded back. ‘It looks like a short war to me.’
★ ★ ★
On disembarking, the Coastal Services men reported to the local Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve base Laburnum, where a Staff Officer, Commander Pendarvis Frampton, controlled all coastal patrol boat operations. The Laburnum was a relic of the Great War and survivor of the China Station, an old sloop that did not look so out of place moored among the smoking wreckage and the other battle-worn small vessels crowding the Telok Ayer dockside for servicing. The men who drew up on the wharf came from various sources. The four crews sent from Britain discovered how much had changed during their voyage. Malay seamen had been released already from service on the patrol boats, on compassionate grounds, and their places taken by survivors of Prince of Wales and Repulse, who were now standing among them. They also discovered that a number of the officers standing at the rail of Laburnum were Australian or New Zealand members of the Volunteer Naval Reserve.
From the rear rank of the assembly, Len scanned the officers facing him. One of the New Zealand officers seemed familiar. He discreetly nudged Tim and whispered out the side of his mouth, ‘I think I know that bloke.’
Tim waited a moment before risking a reply. ‘Which bloke?’
‘The short bloke.’
‘They’re all bloody short.’
‘Quiet at the back!’ bellowed a Chief Petty Officer, standing beside the officers on the deck.
The two stood impassively, staring straight ahead with the rest of the assembled group. After a few more moments, Len whispered again. ‘The one on the left.’
Tim allowed his eyes to stray to the left, and surreptitiously surveyed a shortish man in his late twenties, who looked back over the group with a keen interest in his eyes and a half smile on his face, apparently pleased at what he saw. Tim thought he too had seen this person before. ‘Must be from home.’
They listened while a Royal Navy officer addressed them. They heard how they were now part of Britain’s Far East defence strategy, tasked with patrolling the waters of coastal Malay, and that they were to be the eyes and ears of Fortress Singapore, guarding against infiltration. It sounded soft; the word ‘invasion’ didn’t enter the speech, but to most the message was implicit. The role was dangerous, and it was vital. The brief ceremony was concluded, the men brought to attention and dismissed.
A number of people turned towards the speaker, including Len and Tim. The man caught their eye. It was the officer they thought they had recognised.
‘Yes, you two!’
The three came face to face in the middle of the dispersing crowd. The two able seamen stiffened and saluted their superior.
‘At ease, at ease,’ he said. ‘Johnny Bull. Don’t I know you two?’ He thrust out his hand to each in turn. ‘You’re RNZVR?’
‘Yes, sir. Len Hill.’
‘Gidday. Tim Hill.’
‘Kiwis. Brothers?’
‘Nah, mate. There’s a few others in this mob too. Kiwis, I mean,’ Tim added.
Johnny cast his eye around the mob and back to the two younger men, his hands on his hips, his cap pitched just slightly to the back of his head.
‘You’ve come from England. You must be Second Echelon. Ngapona boys. Wait a minute. I know! You two were in the pinnace race on Anniversary Day. Beat us by a couple of lengths! The Squadron,’ he said, gesturing towards himself and some other officers: gentlemen sailors of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. ‘We never did train like you fellows.’
‘That’s right,’ said Len. ‘I knew I had seen you before.’
‘You were on the tiller,’ said Johnny, looking at Len. ‘I couldn’t get out from under you for more than a moment. It was a great day’s racing.’
The three men stood smiling, reflecting on the memory, then Johnny stiffened. He told them how he was among the thirty-two New Zealanders in Scheme Y: older, experienced yachtsmen commissioned and sent to Singapore to help command the coastal defences.
‘Been here for over a year now, and this has become a real mess. It’s no use pretending. We are going to have plenty to do. Your sailing mate is up the coast somewhere on survey. You two need to watch yourselves: these Japs mean business. I’ll see you later.’
Did he mean Jack? As he walked away, Len looked at Tim and winked. ‘How about that, eh? Seems like a decent sort of bloke.’
Tim grunted, ‘Yeah, well, I hope they all know what they’re doing.’
With that the two picked up their kit and headed to the Navy office to find out what vessel they would be sailing.
★ ★ ★
To their delight, Len and Tim were immediately assigned to crew one of two Fairmile Motor Launches, ML310 and ML311. These boats were in the service of the Singapore Harbour Board and had been in the water barely a month. They were of wooden construction, 112 feet in length, and powered by two huge twelve-cylinder petrol engines developing 1260 horsepower. They were bigger and faster than the two other Harbour Defence Motor Launches, HDML1062 and HDML1063, and carried twice the armament. The Fairmiles were the very boats these men would have chosen to fight their war.
Len, Tim and Jackie joined ML310’s crew of sixteen. Apart from their Commanding Officer, Sub-Lieutenant Maynard, the crew included Malcolm Henderson from the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve as Executive Officer. Henderson had spent most of 1941 in England training under Scheme Y and had only recently arrived in Singapore as a Sub-Lieutenant himself. A number of sailors were from the Royal Navy, including Motor Mechanic Petty Officer ‘Johnno’ Johncock, and the Coxswain, Andrew ‘Jock’ Brough, a twenty-one-year-old fisherman from Kirkaldie in Scotland. These two had considerable experience as seamen. There were also Irishmen, including Dubliner Ronnie Johnson. Jack Kindred went to ML311, and the rest of the Coastal Services complement were dispersed either to ML311 or to the HDMLs 1062 and 1063.
As the crew boarded ML310, air-raid sirens began to wail to the north, on the other side of the island. When everyone had boarded, Malcolm Henderson addressed them.
‘We need to get the boat off the pier and onto an anchorage in the roads. If they come here …’. He hesitated. ‘When they come here, we sure as hell don’t want to be sitting around. If anything else happens, we want to be first out the door.’
The informality of the brief address did not diminish its gravity. It was the Aussie way, the what and the wherefore in few words. The men, all experienced seamen now, disappeared to their stations and prepared to cast off. Len heard ML311’s engines start up with a deep-throated burble of exhaust and water. A cloud of blue smoke wafted over him. His own boat’s engines fired, creating their own cloud of smoke, and everything vibrated, before settling into rhythm. He stood by his ropes, waiting for the order to cast off. He looked up to the bridge, where the Commanding Officer Sub-Lieutenant Maynard and the Coxswain Jock Brough stood at the helm. Then the shouted instructions came.
‘Stand by for’ard.’
‘Standing by for’ard.’
‘Stand by aft.’
‘Standing by aft.’
‘Cast off aft.’
At the same time, in response to an order shouted down the pipe, the engines engaged, the helm spun and the stern of the boat began to swing away from the pier.
‘Cast off for’ard.’
Another instruction put the engines in neutral, and the helm whirled again, before another call, and the boat slowly reversed. The Fairmile pulled away from the pier completely and followed ML311, gliding swiftly away to the other side of the roads. There they tied up among several vessels close under the lee of Pulau Bukom and erected their camouflage nets, to better avoid the attention of enemy aircraft. Keppel Harbour was not a sanctuary but a target.
While plans were still being settled on shore for the operational deployment of the Fairmiles and the HDMLs, on board their newly assembled crews scuttled about ensuring the equipment was serviceable and everything was secure before watches were set. Then they took stock of their boat. The Fairmile itself had bunk berths, but Len found it impossible to sleep in the tiny space, in a constant sweat and with the odour of fresh varnish still present in the air. Most of the sailors preferred to find space on deck.
The boat had become liveable mostly through the efforts of the Chinese cook they called Charlie Chan, after the fictional detective. It was customary in the Far East that each crew member make a small contribution to enable the employment of a local skilled in domestic arts such as bargaining for food, cooking and laundry. When the new crew assembled on ML310, they inherited Charlie for this purpose. Charlie was a dark horse, able to speak enough English to bargain, but not enough to explain where he was from. There was talk of him being Kuomintang, having escaped from China on one of the many gunboats that had been evacuated ahead of the Japanese advances. Vessels from Hong Kong and the China Station now lay in Singapore’s harbours. In fact Johnny Bull had spent most of 1941 serving on one, HMS Scorpion. Whatever Charlie’s origin, he was OK. Charlie ensured that the odour of wok-fried garlic chicken and vegetables permeated the ML, eventually displacing that of the varnish, and he provided vital translation services ashore.
At a number of levels life went on in Singapore as if nothing untoward was happening. Local government officials and military staff officers practised their stiff upper lip, while censorship of the press and public statements concealed the truth. In spite of the circumstances, the men put it to the Executive Officer that he could afford to give them all a leave pass. Their Commanding Officer Sub-Lieutenant Maynard was unwilling, but when Executive Officer Henderson spoke up on their behalf, he conceded, forced to acknowledge that they had just spent weeks at sea. The first group of eight immediately took off before he changed his mind. They had twenty-four hours.
When Len and Tim’s group received pay and leave passes, they headed past the MPs and warehousing to exit the port gates. There were over sixty large warehouses – locally called ‘go-downs’ – along the Telok Ayer waterfront, filled with rubber, copra and other products, much of it highly flammable. Many of the go-downs were burning, so the air was full of smoke, the odour of burning rubber and the sound of bicycle bells ringing and men shouting. They walked straight through the gates into a stationary mass of humanity laden with baggage which appeared to stretch the length of the Telok Ayer dock towards Keppel Harbour, where the evacuating vessels lay. Many of them were Chinese or Indian businessmen or Eurasians, who had travelled by bicycle or rickshaw, while a number in lorries, buses and private vehicles sat swamped by the crowd. Mostly these were British. Len guessed they were planters and their wives and families, and other displaced people, marshalled by MPs with batons as they inched towards the newly arrived ships. Military vehicles, staff cars sounding their horns urgently and convoys of lorries carrying newly landed material forced their way in the opposite direction through the throng. The civilian population had nowhere to go, and were forced to tolerate the destruction and the breakdown in services, dodging fire engines and bomb craters, fallen buildings and blocked streets. They suffered the deaths of loved ones, killed en masse from the undefended skies, yet still held on to the tenuous belief that the city itself would never fall.
The seven men made their way out of the docks towards the city. They decided to take rickshaws, Tim, Len and Jock choosing to share one, given they were all the same size. Economical, Lofty would have called it. In fact, the three of them were almost exactly the same age, too, born in 1920 within a month of one another.
Len was fascinated by all the peculiar headgear – turbans in various colours, coolie hats, Muslim pillboxes, military caps, berets, sailors’ hats and even the odd slouched hat. Then there were the smells. Frangipani flowered resolutely in the face of the ruin, releasing an aroma so concentrated that when Len was able to draw in the rich perfumes, he was transported. Charcoal smoke from roadside cooking fires proved similarly pleasant, more so when laced with the smell of chicken, beef or pork, frying in garlic, peanut oil and the fragrant spices of the East. Occasionally other less agreeable odours presented themselves: rotting vegetation, roadside waste or the stinking durian fruit. Every now and then the stench of death assailed them again, signalling their passage through another bomb site.
Rickshaws clogged the roads heading towards Keppel Harbour, overloaded with people or cargo, driven by incongruously thin Chinese men labouring hard to push down, one pedal at a time. The sailors were going the other way, along Fullerton Road, where their driver indicated Change Alley and the towering Fullerton Building. They crossed the Singapore River and headed up High Street, skirting the grassy Padang, which had served as the cricket ground and now hosted anti-aircraft batteries, and travelling past imposing administrative buildings, before they saw a sign that said ‘Hill Street’.
‘Stop!’ shouted Tim and Len simultaneously. ‘This seems as good a place as any.’
It was beginning to get dark.
‘How do we get back from here?’ Len asked their driver. He pointed out the bridge back across the river, while a group of people started to cross the road to engage the sailors, beggars asking for money and street vendors selling food and even souvenir items, as if there wasn’t a war on. Fans, coolie hats, joss sticks, and curious little packages of rolled leaves, tied with string.
‘What do you do with those?’ Len asked, about this last item.
‘Bidi, sir. Cigarette. You smoke. One dollar,’ said the seller, thrusting a packet into Len’s hand.
‘One dollar. One dollar.’
Everything was a dollar.
Tim fished out a dollar from his pocket to buy a Chinese fan made of sandalwood from a vendor draped in fabrics and immediately became the centre of attention.
Len called to him over the melee. ‘That’ll be useful.’
Tim raised his eyebrows. ‘Ava, mate.’
Girls were the last thing on Len’s mind, but Ava was clearly never far from Tim’s, and he could hardly be blamed. Len called her face to mind now. With her hair typically arranged in a French roll, Ava’s beauty was classical. Her voice was low and smoky and her laugh rich like velvet, and she exuded a gentle grace that Len found almost bewitching. Not for the first time he found himself taking check of his thoughts. He considered Tim’s unlikely gesture, 6000 miles and a world away from home, and felt a lump in his throat. He thought he should probably buy a fan for his mother, but the vendors turned away from his group to concentrate on another group of sailors arriving behind them.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Harry. ‘There’s got to be a bar around here somewhere.’ Harry was a career Navy man, who knew these things instinctively.
Suddenly an Indian gentleman thrust himself right into the middle of the small cluster of thirsty sailors.
‘A bar, sir? I can take you to a very fine bar, sir, and it’s not far from here. No, sir, not far at all, in fact.’
‘Jammy bastard can read minds,’ said Harry to the others. But they needed no further encouragement.
To the Indian, Harry said ‘Lead on, sir!’ And the small group fell in behind the Sikh. Fortunately it wasn’t far.
The Mayfair was a solid, four-storeyed Edwardian building of block and stucco, standing across the road from the main Singapore fire station on Hill Street. The floors above were apparently guest rooms, while at street level there was a small reception area, behind which was a large dining room and bar, where dark panelled walls and ceilings were dimly lit with red paper lanterns hanging above each table. The place was empty, and with a whoop of satisfaction the men, still accompanied by the Sikh, made straight for the bar. A Chinese man stood up from behind the counter, where he had been placing glasses. Jackie Hayward affected the accent of an officer.
‘Six of your finest ales, my man, and don’t spare the horses.’
The barman stared blankly back at Jackie.
‘Try plain English, Jackie,’ said Tim.
Jackie held up six fingers in front of the barman and said ‘Beer’.
Without a glimmer of acknowledgement, the man reached back under the bar and began to place six glasses on the top. He then presented six bottles of beer.
Tim reached out and picked the first one up.
‘Come on, mate!’ he exclaimed. ‘We can’t drink that. It’s bloody warm.’
The communications became more animated, but with much gesturing and a bit of help from the friendly Sikh, ice appeared. The barman made to place the ice in the glasses, but was stopped instantly by a shout from Jock.
‘No, no. Don’t do that, mate. Stick the bottles in it. I don’t want to die of some unknown disease.’
They all finally sat down at a large circular table and several ice buckets appeared, stamped with a suitably impressive champagne house label, filled with ice and bottled Tiger. Nobody could be bothered waiting for the first beer to cool properly, and the caps soon came off with a pop. As the day progressed, managing the beer and the ice became an exact science, requiring close attention. They discovered that the circular table centre rotated, and were thus able to send beer or cigarettes around the group with ease, sometimes at high speed and with spectacular results. Between the cool beer and the ceiling fan whirring away overhead, they began to feel quite relaxed.
They had noticed several Asian women arrive, dressed in silken cheongsams split alluringly up the leg, and dallying in the vicinity of the bar. One of them brought menus to the table. These offered a meal list in Chinese, Malay and English, each choice with a number beside it. Len browsed the extensive choice until he came to number sixty-five – chilli prawns. He immediately chose it. He’d never had prawns before, but had heard all about them. All the others followed suit – six orders of chilli prawns and rice. When it arrived, it proved to be a huge amount of food. A handsome plate of fat, shelled prawns in a red chilli sauce sat in front of each man, but when they looked for cutlery, there were only chopsticks to hand. More hand signals followed; spoons and forks appeared, and the men began to shovel the untried delicacy into their mouths. It only took a moment for the first reaction.
Ptui!
Jackie spat a prawn out onto the table. Len looked at him in amazement.
Ptui!
Jack Kindred gasped and grabbed his throat. Tim delivered a second prawn into his mouth at once, before it became clear that he too was suddenly in the grip of something unexpected. But he neither spat nor swallowed. Instead, he kept chewing slowly, while his eyes filled with tears. Len too had his mouth full. The flesh was firm and meaty, and not as strongly flavoured as lobster, but no sooner had he made this assessment than the heat of the chilli began to bite. It engulfed the inside of his mouth with a burning intensity that was beyond anything he had experienced, and his eyes too began to water. When he swallowed, the fire descended down his gullet, while simultaneously burning fiercely on in his mouth. Somebody beat their fist on the tabletop while gasping for air. Harry managed a strangulated ‘Jesus!’
Tim was unable to respond, reaching instead for his beer. They all did the same and took several long draughts, which turned out to make no difference whatever to the effect of the chilli. If anything, the heat actually intensified. Without thinking, Jackie Hayward thrust his hand into the bucket and stuck a piece of ice in his mouth, prompting a couple of others to do the same. Watching the uninitiated sailors undergo this baptism of fire from the shadowed recesses of the dining room, the women in the cheongsams tittered into their hands and stifled their laughter on one another’s shoulders. Len found that the more he ate the less intense the chilli – or at least the intensity stopped increasing – and so he ate on, albeit slowly. One by one, most of the others managed to follow suit, until they had demolished the entire meal, at which point the women began clapping and laughing wholeheartedly, before whisking the empty plates away.
By midnight, the men’s indulgence had taken its course. They decided as a group to leave and explore the city; some had left already. They roused Jock, who had fallen asleep in his chair. At the cash booth, Len watched the cashier’s hands move swiftly across the abacus, totalling the bill. When he went to join the others, he passed one of the Chinese women standing to the side of the small entrance foyer, and smiled. She smiled back, and raised her eyes. Len followed her gaze, then went outside.
‘So you didn’t fancy her offer either?’ asked Tim.
‘What offer was that?’
‘The offer to go upstairs and explore the carnal delights of the mystic East.’
‘The what? Have you been drinking?’
‘Yes, I have, mate, but not so much that I can’t recognise someone on the game when I see them.’
It took another moment or two before the facts dawned on Len. There had been a lot of women at the bar, and yet no customers had come into the dining room during the whole time they had been there.
‘You mean …?’
‘Yes, mate. It’s a knock shop.’
Len looked around. There were a couple of faces missing from their group. He couldn’t quite be sure who it was. He shook his head.
‘Bugger me.’
‘Now let’s not take this too far,’ Tim replied, his wit lost on a bewildered Len.
‘Come on,’ he said, and, draping an arm over Len’s shoulder, he steered his friend away from the bar.
★ ★ ★
The following morning, Tim and Jackie were sitting with Len in a bar on Collier Quay. It was hardly a bar, really; just a simple bamboo shade roof without walls, covered in a tarpaulin to keep the sun and rain out. Tiger beer and Fraser & Neave soft drinks were kept in an icebox behind a makeshift counter on which sat a glass box filled with snack foods. There was no fan and the air was stifling, but the beer was cheap and cold, and it would do. On the river, below the embankment on which they were sitting, large lighters chugged past, empty ones heading down and out into the roads to load cargo, full ones heading up to unload.
The three men were tired. None of them had ever heard of a taxi dance until, wandering around shortly after leaving the Mayfair, they had happened upon one hidden behind black-out curtains in a converted cinema. Band music had attracted their attention; inside, they found a five-piece orchestra playing modern dance music, entertaining a crowd of people dancing on a wooden floor. The whole thing was lit with candles. It was a magical scene, so they went over, paid the cashier and were handed a sheet of coupons.
The place was half full. It seemed that most of the people here were men in a uniform of some sort or other, and there were also Asian women – Chinese, Malay, Indian, Tamil – a line of whom sat along one side of the dance floor. While Tim wormed his way to the bar to get the beers, Len watched as men went up to the women and appeared to exchange their coupons for a dance. Brilliant! By the time Tim returned, Len had already sorted out their partners. When they were cleared out of the place by the MPs at closing, the sun was starting to rise.
Now the three of them sat on the Quay in silence, drinking slowly. Money, and time, were running out. They were due back on board at 1600. Len felt another trickle of sweat run down his backbone.
‘I wonder how long this is going to last,’ he said.
Air-raid sirens began to wail. Len drained his glass and stood up.
‘Come on. Let’s get back to the ship. I need a rest.’
He slammed the remaining money he had in his pocket down on the table.
The others scraped back their chairs and stood up. They raised an eyebrow to their host and walked off along the riverside, back towards the harbour, without speaking. Bombs began falling again near the Empire Docks, where some of the troopships had been tied up, but it was over by the time they walked through the gates and down to the pier, where a Naval launch took them across the harbour to their boat. Once on board 310, Len didn’t even bother to undress properly. He kicked off his footwear and stripped off his tunic, then slid into his bunk and fell into a deep sleep within seconds. In four hours it would be his watch.
★ ★ ★
Len woke to the sound of air-raid sirens. His heart missed a beat. There had been plenty of air-raid drills during the long voyage, but it took him a moment to remember he was in Singapore and this was real. He sat up too quickly and banged his head on the bunk above. Jamming his feet into his boots, he grabbed his life jacket and tin hat and scrambled topside, just as the command for ‘All hands to action stations’ was issued.
They waited until after the All Clear, then slipped their mooring and, along with ML311, went back to Telok Ayer to refuel. Len and Tim, along with Harry Swift and several others, worked together rolling forty-four-gallon drums along the dock and manually pumped petrol into the tanks of each Fairmile. The sweat poured off them. As the three paused to catch their breath and wipe the sweat from their brow, Johnny Bull came down the gangplank of HDML1062 and crossed the railway tracks towards them.
‘How are you gentlemen?’
Johnny looked at them both – brown, oil-stained and glistening with sweat. They both gave a desultory salute.
‘Doing our best, sir.’
‘I know. Good on you. A little ship is a bloody good place to be. Carry on,’ he said, and walked off towards Laburnum.
‘Smaller target,’ said Len.
‘Fewer officers,’ replied Tim.
They watched Sub-Lieutenant Bull disappear onto the headquarters vessel.
‘I like Johnny. He’s got more bottle than Maynard,’ Jackie commented.
Parts of Johnny’s service record read like a comic opera. First posted to a Yangtze River gunboat, he held the rank of Probationary Temporary Sub-Lieutenant in the Volunteer Reserve, which sounded more appropriate to Gilbert and Sullivan than the Royal Navy. He was a natural leader, and now second-in-command on HDML1062 under another New Zealander, Colin McMillan.
★ ★ ★
In the late afternoon of 15 January, the crew were all back from leave and the boats back under nets on their mooring when a launch carrying two staff officers arrived. The ML crews mustered and were informed that they would be sailing that night on a mission up the east coast of Malaya to evacuate units being overrun by the Japanese advance. The launch returned to shore, and on board the MLs preparations for departure began. Len looked over to Tim. It had been barely twenty-four hours since they had been sitting having a beer on Collier Quay. Things were beginning to heat up. They gave each other the thumbs up, and turned back to their tasks.
★ ★ ★
The voyage north was uneventful, and the crew took confidence in their boat. The ML had two huge V-12 petrol engines, 1260 bhp, which were gradually brought to a cruising speed of 18.5 knots, by which time most of the crew were topside, standing grinning at each other with the elation of the moment. At 112 feet, the boat also had the ability to manoeuvre at speed, something they had grown familiar with at Portland, and they leaned keenly now into the turns as Maynard explored the vessel’s character. Each Fairmile was armed with a single three-pounder on the foredeck, two .303-calibre Lewis guns aft and a light machine gun on either side of the bridge. Before the light disappeared each crew tested all the weapons with live ammunition, everybody on deck watching and assessing the competence of the other gun crews. At half speed they could cruise the length of Malaya without refuelling, but after nearly ten hours they slowed engines, turned into the coast and entered the mouth of a river. When they tied up beneath the Customs House clock tower in Muar, the sun was rising. It was clear that bombing here had been fierce.
ML310 had hardly touched the bomb-damaged wharf when the Commanding Officer and his deputy jumped ashore and headed towards the Harbour Master’s office. On board, Jock gave instructions, and the crew moved quietly to secure the boat and erect the nets. Len helped to square away the ropes aft, and watched 311 arrive and tie up. The crews took the opportunity to check their boats. They checked the hull and seals, then the petrol tanks were dipped and oil levels checked. They replenished their petrol supply from what they found available on the wharf – every effort was needed to preserve the stored resources back on the island.
The two Fairmiles lay across the road from an arcade of shops that stretched along the town’s waterfront. Muar had a very different atmosphere to Singapore, being much smaller, and the sound of battle was disconcertingly close. The Japanese advance from the north and west had reached the outskirts of the town; using captured boats, the Japanese had now landed troops to the south and were attempting to surround the town and the defenders. The sharp report of artillery fired in salvoes and the thump of mortars was clear, along with various sounds of impact. In the gaps between came the crackle of small arms.
The humidity was suffocating. The sailors waited and watched, while on the dockside a couple of planters appeared to be angrily encouraging a pair of reluctant porters to load bales of rubber onto a barge tied up at the wharf. Otherwise, there was little activity on the waterfront. There were a few non-combatants, local people, porters and drivers who sat idly in the shade, watching, as if the damage and the smoke and the war were of no interest. Len thought they had the look of carrion. The crew had been warned about Japanese sympathisers and other fifth columnists, and they watched these people now with special curiosity. An Army truck ground past the gates, a squad of Indian troops standing and swaying on the back. A street vendor arrived, steering his bicycle through the debris, and began peddling fresh fruit from an icebox strapped to the back. Len watched as he deftly chopped up a fresh pineapple and presented it in a piece of twisted palm leaf. His mouth watered. A truck drove onto the wharf and a group of civilians carrying a variety of hand baggage climbed down from it.
Their officers reappeared, striding back along the pier towards the boat. Maynard disappeared below.
‘There’s been some sort of development,’ Malcolm Henderson told the men. ‘We are going back to Singapore.’
‘Jesus wept. A life on the ocean wave, eh?’ Tim complained.
‘And we’re taking this group of civilians with us,’ Henderson added.
The group, which included several children, came shuffling tentatively towards the boats.
‘At least everything works,’ Len observed. The engines were running well, and the weaponry had passed the firing test.
‘You’re right,’ Henderson affirmed. ‘And sooner or later we’ll be putting it all to use. So look sharp, everybody.’
Anything but sharp in the heat, the men began to move. The passengers were ushered on board and shown below. The crew quickly stripped away the netting, and when first one engine and then the second fired and burst into life, they began to loosen the ropes. Both Fairmiles cast off as enemy shells began landing in the go-downs by the wharf, and they made their way swiftly out into the channel, down river and out to sea.
The two boats fell into line and headed south in broad daylight. The mood on board both vessels sharpened, and everybody scanned sea and sky for any sign of the enemy. They went sufficiently far out that something of an oceanic swell was all that disturbed the MLs’ passage.
Len manned a light machine gun on one side of the bridge, opposite Tim. He stood at his gun, resting his backside on a rail, shielding his cigarette against the wind and his eyes against the sun, scanning the eastern sky for enemy aircraft. His tin helmet was wedged in the gun’s frame in front of him.
God damn it, he thought. If Mum could see me now, she’d have a fit. She hated smoking. But when you are given twenty a day, what can you do? It was currency for some: tradeable for all manner of things. He gazed out over the tropical sea, the weather purpling into black ahead. She’d have my guts for swearing, too, he thought. He flicked his cigarette deftly over the side, and watched it spiral out and back, to drop into the foam. The wake stretched back to where he could see ML311 a couple of hundred yards astern. He thought of his father, and his brother in Egypt. He thought of Ree, and the dead uncles – John, Bill and Charlie – deep in the embrace of Hine Nui Te Pō.
Locked in thought, Len failed to hear the plane until it roared down on top of the vessel. When he looked up in shock and surprise he could clearly see the pilot, hauling back hard on the stick in an effort to climb up and away from any retaliatory fire. The bomb overshot, hit the sea on the port side and exploded, causing a column of water to rise up and fall in a deluge over the boat beneath. Len, stunned by the percussion and drenched to the bone, automatically released his safety, swept the weapon around to aim at the aircraft and pulled the trigger. A brief stream of machine-gun bullets chased after the fast-disappearing plane.
‘Hold your fire!’ He heard the order. ‘Choose your target. There’s three of them, and they’re coming back for more.’
Len watched the enemy plane as it climbed around, up and back into the sun from where it had come. There it joined two other aircraft, which were beginning to bank and inscribe an arc around the Fairmiles, circling like birds of prey. He brought the stock of his weapon to his shoulder and aimed it at the enemy planes again. He needed to be patient and concentrate; concentrate on focussing his energy as Haami had instructed. He began talking quietly to himself. ‘Come on, you bastards; come on …’
When a second aircraft detached from the group and swooped down to attack the Fairmile on its port side, it was quickly targeted. It kept flying directly towards the speeding boat, firing its own machine guns, before swooping up to release its load.
Len heard the sound of his own voice – ‘Waiting, waiting’ – and strained his neck upwards, watching for the bomb to drop. When it did, he yelled, and when someone on the bridge – it was Henderson – yelled too, the Coxswain spun the wheel and the ML swung rapidly away to dodge the explosion. Now he and Tim, manning the other gun, had plenty of time to fire a stream of bullets at the fleeing aircraft, which now sought altitude to prepare for another attack. The Fairmiles continued to dodge and weave, and twice more enemy aircraft ignored the gunfire to attack, until one lurched visibly, pulled rapidly away and climbed back to join the other aircraft. Together the planes turned away and headed off back towards Muar.
Len seemed to have crossed a threshold. He could not believe the thrill he felt. This was what Haami had talked about: wana, the thrill of combat. Some of the crew let out a whoop. Len clapped Tim on the back.
Tim said, ‘If they’d come back once more I think we would have got one.’
‘Next time,’ Len told him. He was almost looking forward to it.
But the concentration and noise of combat had concealed from most of them the fact that they had taken a hit; they’d been struck by shrapnel. From below deck came the sound of parents trying to reassure whimpering children. Len had forgotten the civilians on board. When the boat slowed, damage control reported there was some damage to the vessel, but not enough to require them to stop, so Maynard ordered that the ML continue on its original course, and they surged quickly back to speed, anxious to avoid a further attack.
★ ★ ★
It was growing dark as they motored back along the south-west coast of the island; thousands of bats were ascending from the safety of the jungle and forming great clouds in the sky above the canopy. Soon the two little ships were back inside the boom and tying up at Telok Ayer. Their exhausted passengers were released into the care of Red Cross workers.
The port had again been bombed. The Harbour Board’s office was a smoking ruin, and the adjacent gates a twisted mess. An anti-aircraft battery had received a direct hit.
An ambulance backed along the wharf towards them, and Len helped carry a wounded man on a stretcher through the smoke and into the vehicle. They set the man down between another wounded man and a dead one. Len watched the ambulance lurch away and gazed up at the sky. Tim joined him, and offered him a cigarette.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.
‘A gap in the clouds,’ Len replied, wistfully.
Tim looked up and saw nothing but thick smoke and low cloud. It took a moment before he understood Len’s irony.
A block away, behind the docks, a go-down that had been burning fiercely for a day finally collapsed into itself, with a crash that sent embers flying into the sky and a wall of heat radiating out to engulf the unsuspecting.