Томас Кенэлли - The Widow and Her Hero

I made a line of my fellows below the ridge, and put three men down to the right to enfilade with a silenced Bren, and similarly three down to the left with their Stens. We looked out from amongst the volcanic rocks and foliage on the slope, and we could see the Japanese landing on the wide-open rocky, shingly beach, on the side where the coconut plantation grew wild, and they were exposed to anyone with weapons. A few seemed to have started a casual approach, but without any urgency, and I said to everyone, These jokers aren’t a danger. They’re ambling along. If we just hold fire and lie low.

Because we had pandanus and cactus palm and wild sago, as well as papayas and beetle nut and broad-leaf banana trees to hide behind, we could reposition ourselves better than they could. We watched the troops come walking in an orderly way over the volcanic rocks of the beach and into the coconut groves. They were still highly visible. They looked strange and innocent, spread out that way, as if you shouldn’t take advantage of them. They didn’t expect anything to happen. That was it. They looked like they might slope back to their barges at any stage.

Could we be struck twice by the same curse? It seems we could. The sort of thing that happens amongst recruits, but I suppose fear and excitement made all of us recruits. Someone slipped his safety catch while his finger was on the trigger of his Sten – everyone knows you shouldn’t do that. But the Sten fired silently, with a little hiss. It wouldn’t have mattered had no target been struck. The Japanese might have heard a sound like a few hard pellets of rain, that’s all. Except the bullets killed the captain that was leading, and his batman at his side. The Japanese looked at the two of them, pole-axed, not knowing where this damage came from. The rest of us began to fire and made a pitiful shambles of the advancing men. Then some of them became soldiers and hugged the ground, and others dragged their dead captain and their wounded into shelter. Even we could see that some were shattered, nearly cut in two, and their blood seemed to stain everyone near them. It was shocking what silenced Stens could do.

Another younger officer came up to take the captain’s place. He showed himself to be pretty competent. He kept his troops down and told them to direct fire to the hill, he’d worked out we were there. Full marks to him. He decided to stay low, and we could hear shouted and relayed orders. The afternoon thunderstorm rained on them and us both, clearing away the memory of their dead captain. Out on the beach, we could see the Japanese flogging some Malays into carrying the captain’s body to the barge. They beat the poor natives all the way across the stones, with half an eye on the hill all the time, worried about us, worried about our silent weapons.

I took a roll-call and two of our fellows, I discovered, hadn’t made it back through the jungle to us. They were a young army sergeant, Kelly, and an English fellow I hadn’t got to know so well because he had a quiet nature and seemed to choose chiefly to talk to his fellow Pom, Rufus. His name was Lieutenant Carlaw, and he had been assistant to Lower in teaching us how to ride the SBs. I hoped Kelly and Carlaw would join us on the hill once night fell. Then we could all slip away to one of the other islands, maybe Proma NE3, and we could hide there and creep back over here at night and wait for the rendezvous with the sub. I could see Proma from our position. Across the water it looked good to me – even thicker cover than NE1. But it seemed to lack a beach, at least on this side. Well, we’d just have to presume one existed on the blind-side.

When it was dark, Filmer and I sent the others off over the hill to fetch their folboats and drag them down to the beach on the east side of NE1. We were conscious that if the Japanese had landed there, we would have needed to fight for them. Leaving, the fellows moved as Rufus had taught them, flitting like ghosts. We saw a patrol boat circling the island, but Jockey timed it and it appeared off the eastern beach only every few hours. I went down to send all but one folboat away. In the acute dark, we had been able to find only seven of the vessels, not enough for all. We had been trained how to handle this. Three of the boats would need to tow a passenger, and we used the stratagem in each case of a pair of trousers stuffed with coconut husks, the passenger floating in the Y and holding on as he was dragged through the water. Jockey and I were leaving last so we weren’t burdened in this way. We went back to Hammock Hill after the first six boats got off and waited till the last hour and minute, 3.45 a.m., for Kelly and Carlaw to turn up. It was such a little, intimate island. We had to presume they’d been killed or captured. Otherwise, we reckoned, they’d easily be able to find their way back to our hill.

At the last we smashed the Bolton radio we weren’t able to use because the code had been sunk in the junk or was with the Boss. But we all had walkie-talkies in our boats for contacting the Orca when it turned up. We had packed the folboat so tight with supplies, there wasn’t really room for my legs, so I paddled kneeling.

Pushing off the beach with Jockey, I felt a real dingo. Lieutenant Carlaw was apparently an Oxford graduate in Middle Eastern Studies. Kelly was only twenty years old, and an athlete, and a handsome kid, a bright one too. We made a very nice little beach on the west side of NE3 – Proma – twenty minutes before dawn.

By morning, we were on NE3 and had all our folboats under cover and were making a dump for all our gear. We made a camp on the crest amongst cactus palms and pandanus and undergrowth netted by creepers. But from it we could see anyone coming from any direction. We drew breath and we hoped, and were more tired than we’d ever been from such a short paddle. Some slept – it was the fight and the sleepless night that had worn them out.

But I watched everything that was happening on NE1. Soon the daylight woke everyone and I was joined in that exercise of watching. I think we felt like people whose house, Serapem, had been taken over and we didn’t approve of what the new owners were doing.

Then we saw one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. We saw Lieutenant Carlaw running down out of the thick cover on the hill on NE1, sprinting south into scattered palm trees with just a pistol in his hand. There was no sign of Private Kelly. The first thing I thought was, I hardly know him well enough. I heard Jockey groaning, Jesus, Jesus! Poor bastard!

The enemy were all over our hill over there, that’s where Carlaw was running from, down into the clearing, amongst the papayas and coconut trees, but wide open, a clear target amongst the volcanic rocks. He was making for the sea. He could run, that boy, a beautiful runner, and he could probably swim strongly too, and intended to reach another island. We saw him weaving. You could hear them firing at him, and by the rocks on the edge of the sea he turned. We saw him twice take clear aim and fire, and the Japanese were coming close to him not only down the ridge from the hill but from the place where their barges were too. And now he was out of shots, so he threw his pistol away, and he just stood there and blessed himself – I hadn’t even known he was a Tyke, in fact, because he was English I believed he wasn’t – and a number of shots lifted him and threw him down the last decline to the sea. And everyone on our new place NE3 was groaning, Poor bastard, poor bastard! And then there was a second of mercy, when one of the Malay fishermen came up and took Carlaw in his arms and looked down in his eyes, but the Japs ended that with blows of their rifle butts.