Close to the Wind

by David B Hill

The men scanned the yard and identified their marshalling point as ‘British Military, Army and Navy’. There they joined a group of mostly British seamen, but there were Australians too, soldiers and sailors of various ranks milling about in a semi-agitated state. The tenor of the conversation seemed to be about the allocation of resources, how long certain individuals had been waiting, and how much traffic had departed without any of them being included. Johnny deduced that someone somewhere was trying to organise transport for the whole body, but that they would be moved according to priorities. For Reservists that did not augur well.

  ‘Bugger that,’ declared Jock, as the three discussed their options. ‘I say we find our own transport and make our own way to … whatever that damned place is called.’

  Johnny looked at Len, who stood waiting for instructions. If anything, he too was for continuing.

  ‘Well, we won’t get away before most of these people,’ Johnny said. ‘They’ve been here longer, and are regular Navy. Let’s see what we can do for ourselves meantime.’

  Len thought about the Singapore dollars still stuffed into his pockets. ‘We could hire a vehicle.’

  ‘Now there’s an idea, Lenny,’ Jock said.

  They debated the option some more, but finally decided they had to put their trust in the hands of others. Johnny spoke to one of the Military Police and was told a likely departure time for any available transport was several hours away. With that in mind, the three were directed to an adjacent barracks, where they found stretcher beds and mattresses. They flung themselves down and, as the evening began to give way to night, descended rapidly into another deep, exhausted sleep.

  ★ ★ ★

  The following morning, while they and others among the waiting men were lined up for an issue of tea and bread, a car arrived and took Johnny away to the Commodore’s office. It happened so fast they barely had time to arrange to meet later.

  ‘Don’t leave town without me, gentlemen,’ Johnny told them. ‘I’ll be back.’

  ‘And that was the last they saw of him,’ intoned Jock, in his best impersonation of Orson Welles, as they watched Johnny’s car follow a lorry out the barracks’ gate.

  ‘Let’s hope not.’

  For most of that day, they felt idle. The constant stream of men into the barracks somehow seemed to exceed the transport’s capacity to take them away. They queued endlessly – for meals, for the latrines, for news or any sign of movement – and they got nowhere. Across the city the bombing continued, and more than once they had to dive for cover to avoid attracting the attention of marauding enemy aircraft. It wasn’t until the end of the day that the sailors were told they would be put on transport the following day, and stood down.

  By evening they were both anxious for Johnny to return. Neither Len nor Jock welcomed the idea that they would be forced to carry on without him. Tacitly avoiding the subject, they were talking instead about the route across Java that would take them to Tjilatjap, when he reappeared: a car had dropped him off outside the mess. The three took tins of steaming coffee back to their barracks, where they sat and talked. At first Johnny baulked at their entreaties for him to tell his story, but they convinced him that, even if they were captured, nobody would suspect the two sailors of being privy to any military secrets.

  ‘They flew me to Surabaya, to brief the Americans on the Admiral and the situation with the crew,’ Johnny told them. ‘It wasn’t easy. There’s a lot going on. They’re going to try and send a sub.’

  ‘I hope they make it in time,’ said Jock.

  ‘Well … there’s more.’ Johnny looked at his two companions intently, certain that what he was about to tell them would not demoralise them, now that he knew them well.

  ‘The ABDA fleet’s been destroyed, and the Admiral is dead. It was a disaster.’

  He went on.

  ‘Both Dutch cruisers have been sunk. Houston and Perth may have escaped, but the destroyer escorts have been sunk or have scattered. Exeter is damaged and heading to the Sunda Strait under escort.’

  ‘Good luck to her,’ muttered Len.

  Exeter had special meaning to the Kiwis. Together with Ajax and the New Zealand light cruiser Achilles, she had brought about the destruction of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in the first Naval action of the war.

  For a while they talked, discussing the timetable that would be needed to effect a rescue of the men they had left behind, and the likelihood of success. Eventually, they sat in silence.

  ‘The Commodore has ordered everybody to be out of Batavia by midday tomorrow,’ Johnny said. ‘Judging from what I saw coming in just now, there don’t seem to be too many men left to move anyway.’

  After a bowl of chicken soup, garnished with a couple of slivers of bamboo shoot and some grains of rice, they stretched out again on the mattresses and fell into a gloriously deep sleep for a second night. All around them lay scattered piles of personal effects, uniform items and even weapons: evidence of the haste with which people had departed.

  ★ ★ ★

  Len was the first to waken. It was the silence that had disturbed him, as surely as a loud noise would have. No engine noise, no voices. He shook Johnny. ‘Wake up, sir. There’s something going on.’ Then he shook Jock awake too. It took a while. The three sat up, listening. From the direction of Bantam Bay came the sound of heavy artillery. The invasion had begun. The Japanese were landing. It was midnight on 28 February.

  ‘Jesus. There’s something going on all right,’ Johnny said. ‘Get up. Quickly.’

  They grabbed their meagre possessions – Len’s little case, the food and their bundled clothing – and raced downstairs, where they found the barracks virtually deserted: it appeared that, while they had been sleeping, most of the others had gone. The place was now in darkness, and the electricity was apparently no longer functioning. Instead, a huge pile of furniture and documents blazed in the middle of the courtyard, the illuminations and the shadows dancing in grotesque harmony on the surrounding walls. Individuals dashed fleetingly through the smoke. Several vehicles stood with their doors flung open, apparently abandoned. A man came out of the shadows. He threw something into the back of one of the cars, then climbed in and started the engine. In an instant, Jock leapt out and ran up behind the vehicle, holding his revolver out in front of him. He flung open the passenger door and climbed in beside the startled driver. In a moment he was waving to Johnny and Len, who needed no encouragement, and ran to the car.

  ‘Get in,’ Jock said. ‘We may have solved our transport problem.’ To the driver, he waved his gun and said, ‘Get going, laddie. We’re not planning to stay here, are we?’

  The driver laughed and, after a cursory glance at his new passengers, graunched the vehicle into gear and headed out of the now unguarded gate. He wore the uniform of a regular Dutch Army Captain. Len caught him trying to focus on Johnny’s uniform rank and insignia in the gloom out of the corner of his eye.

  Johnny, in turn, tried to get the measure of their benefactor. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant Johnny Bull, Royal New Zealand Navy Volunteer Reserve.’

  The Dutchman crashed another gear and looked squarely at Johnny. ‘Nieuw Zeeland? Zeeland is where I am from! Ha, ha.’

  They sped through empty and ill-lit streets where acronyms such as BTI, PNI or PKI and other slogans could be seen freshly daubed on walls. Johnny asked, ‘What’s the stuff on the walls, my friend? Signals to the Japanese?’

  ‘Ja, ja. Signals, all right. PKI are Communists. PNI are Nationalists. BTI is a front for the peasants. Plenty of people can’t wait to welcome the Japanese.’

  Within an hour they had caught up with the tail end of the evacuation and the convoy that had abandoned them. They had come up against two streams of traffic: one vehicular and largely military, and the other a stream of refugees on foot. Hundreds of people had no choice but to walk – clerks, shopkeepers, maids, houseboys, nannies – pushing handcarts or dragging rickshaws, all piled with life’s necessities
, which included chickens in cages and the odd child. The people’s clothes, the landscape and the clouds and the gorgeous light they reflected suggested a gaiety that Len found incongruous and discomforting. The Dutch colonials themselves drove, as did some of the wealthier Javanese merchants, their cars interspersed with requisitioned buses and trucks filled with men and material. As the road took a long right-hand turn and the traffic stretched out in front of them, they could see in the distance not just the lorries but the Royal Navy uniforms of the men with whom they had been scheduled to travel. Len and Jock did not want to draw attention to their own happy situation, and sat well back in their seats. Both columns were moving at the same pedestrian pace.

  Eventually the foot traffic fell behind, and they were able to make better progress. They came into increasingly hilly and mountainous country, and the road began to pass through vast paddies where the hillsides had been landscaped into the complex irrigated terracing necessary to grow rice. Water lay where paddies had been harvested, reflecting the sky above, as if a hole had been torn in the landscape.

  With Johnny’s consent Jock broke out the last of the rations, and they shared it with their driver. As they ate he spoke. ‘You. Nieuw Zeelander. What are you doing here in Asia at all?’

  Since the other two were chewing and had their mouths full, Jock offered an explanation. ‘Len’s a New Zealander too. They came to help me.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ The Dutchman was genuine. He caught the Scotsman’s eye in the rear vision mirror.

  ‘You’re Scottish? Some Nieuw Zeelanders helping a Scotsman and the English stop Japanese from occupying a Dutch country somewhere in the crazy East? Hello?’ He shook his head. ‘You know, we Dutch have been pillaging the East Indies and their people for over 300 years, and we wonder why they hate us.’ He crashed a gear. ‘Staying here is madness. We’ve had our chance. Now, it’s their turn.’

  ‘You think this is the end of Dutch control here?’ Jock asked him.

  ‘Isn’t it the end of British control in Malaya? Here, I’m not sure we ever had “control”. Ninety percent of the East Indies Army are native units, and they will not support us. Most of them are looking forward to the Japanese as liberators. Ha, ha, ha!’ He reached into the door adjacent to his seat and pulled out a bottle of what looked like water. Taking a long draught, he handed it to Johnny, who smelled it before taking a tentative draught himself and handing it back to Jock. It was gin, a good over-proof Dutch genever, and it set their stomachs on fire. Len wiped the alcohol from his stinging lips, and settled a little further into his seat.

  ‘The two regiments – mine included – which were defending Batavia have been ordered to fall back around Bandung, and regroup in support of Southern Command. But I will tell you, it is simple. We do not have the numbers. We will put up a fight, for the sake of our reputation or some such … bullshit! But in the end, against the Japanese we will lose. It’s only a matter of time. Hello.’

  Len began to realise that Java and its people offered them no security. The car bounced on over the joins in the concrete road. There was something smoking ahead.

  ‘I’m sorry we are unable to help,’ said Johnny, graciously.

  ‘Ha, ha! I don’t blame you, my friend.’ He slapped Johnny on the knee. ‘If I had a choice I would sail to Australia or Nieuw Zeeland too. And buy a farm; why not? But – ha, ha – I think instead I will end up rotting here dead in the jungle.’

  His gin-fuelled melancholy was unsettling, but they were distracted from the conversation by the lorries in front, and soon they were forced to thread their way through a group of vehicles that had been attacked by Japanese aircraft earlier in the morning. Several native Military Police were waving them on vigorously and, by the roadside, medics still attended wounded and dying. A cluster of covered corpses lay to one side. The enemy had evidently been in control of the air. Once more they would have to keep their eyes open and their wits about them.

  By late afternoon they had made good progress. They were nearing Bandung and knew their benefactor was going no further. Tjilatjap was still the same distance to travel again, but none of them had any doubt that they would engineer a ride, and they still had the Commodore’s transport order. There was no shortage of traffic heading the right way, and virtually all of it was military.

  As they reached what looked like the outskirts of Bandung, they came to a roadblock and had to wait as the lorries in front of them were stopped, their identities checked and their interiors inspected, before they were waved on. The fact that they were a small car attracted the native soldiers, and the Dutch officer in charge waved them to the roadside.

  Their driver got out and got into a fierce conversation with his fellow officer. To the surprise of the anxious sailors, the two Dutchmen burst into laughter, before their driver returned to address them. ‘Here we go again, ja? I am instructed to rejoin my unit at a base higher in the mountains. It’s not so far. We are supposed to wait there for further instructions: basically on how to surrender, I think. Ha, ha.’

  The three reached for their belongings and made as if to get out of the car.

  ‘Ah, no, no no,’ their Dutch friend exhorted. ‘No, no. I will take you to the station. My friend tells me they are loading a troop train for Tjilatjap. You will be fine. Lekke, eh?’

  ‘Lekke?’ responded Johnny. ‘Good? Yes!’

  ‘Carpe diem,’ added Jock. ‘My mother taught me that.’

  The engine started. Johnny looked anxiously back at the Dutchman, who burst out laughing again and grabbed his genever from the pocket in the car door. With a wave of his arm, the officer at the roadblock let them pass.

  ‘Time to go,’ the driver called gaily, driving off in the direction that his fellow Dutchman had indicated.

  ★ ★ ★

  In the end, they didn’t get much closer to the station before the vehicle was stopped again. After a final round of genever and much back-slapping, they parted company with their saviour, who drove off with the road transport heading for the interior and the mountains, where the Dutch military command had relocated. The three sailors found their own way for the last mile, joining a stream of evacuees dressed in the uniforms of various Allied units, heading for the station. By the time they got there, they were drenched in sweat and hungry. Nationalist PNI signs decorated the walls. The station was loosely channelled turmoil, yet Johnny somehow found his way through the melee to seek out the train’s controller and present the ABDA transport order. The freshly printed document from the freshly minted authority impressed the man; the Commodore’s signature secured all three of them seats together in a second-class carriage.

  As they made their way towards their platform, they agreed to separate and scrounge some food, paid for with some of Len’s dollars. When they met again they had bananas, skewers of chicken and packages of boiled rice, each neatly wrapped in banana leaf, purchased from vendors who had been doing good business with the busy traffic. They forced their way through the crowd to reach their carriage, squeezing past soldiers in the corridor to reach their seats, but found others already sitting there. Two were young midshipmen of the Royal Navy, survivors of HMS Jupiter, and the other an odd character, a Javanese in a uniform of the Dutch military but devoid of rank. With a bit of negotiation and the enticement of shared food, they found themselves seated, gnawing at chicken or shovelling a wad of rice into their mouths by hand: as they had seen the locals do, but without the skill.

  They had only been seated for a few moments when the train gave a sudden movement, accompanied by the crash and jangle of carriages taking up the tension, and the whole lot started to move. Graunching and squealing, and slowly at first, the train gained momentum, though it took some time before they reached any sort of speed. The smell of the coal smoke took Len straight back to England. For a while all six men, squeezed into four seats, sat in silence and gazed out the window. Glistening paddies stretched across the valley floor, the shoots of the new season’s rice harvest beginning to
poke through the water.

  Johnny broke the silence first. ‘When did you leave Singapore?’ he asked of the other young Naval officers.

  ‘The 11th of February. On the last convoy.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Jock.

  ‘What do you think we’ll find in Tjilatjap, sir?’ continued the young officer.

  Len thought it a silly question as soon as it had been asked. Who could tell? It was another evacuation. Anything could happen: something Johnny confirmed now.

  ‘I’ve no idea, but we’ll have to stay sharp if we don’t want to be left behind.’

  The silence returned. All but the Dutch soldier sat considering their Singapore experience.

  ★ ★ ★

  The lurching of the train woke Len to a spice-laden smell: smoke from the Javanese’s kretek. The local cigarettes were made of a delicious blend of tobacco and clove that Len found particularly seductive, as he no longer had any cigarettes himself.

  A hand reached across the gloom and offered the packet. A match followed. Len drew deeply of the sweet-flavoured smoke, and listened as the tobacco within crackled peculiarly. He tasted sweetness again on his lips, and nodded towards his benefactor in gratitude. He handed back the packet.

  ‘No, no. Keep them. I have more.’ The Javanese held up his hand in refusal.

  ‘Good on you, mate. I appreciate it. You speak good English.’

  ‘I went to a missionary school. I chose English over German.’

  As Len smoked, he tried to capture some of the detail of his companion in the poor light. ‘What happened?’ he asked, gesturing at the man’s clothes. ‘A uniform without insignia?’

  The Javanese gave no indication he had heard, so Len let the question sit. They finished their cigarettes.

  ‘I am, or have been, a member of the Dutch East Indies Army,’ the man said. ‘A captain of infantry in the KNIL. They offered us the chance to go home to our families. It came at a cost.’

  Len was taken aback.

  Now Johnny spoke – he must have been listening.