“Retreat!” Max heard. “Retreat!”
“Come on!” he yelled, grabbing Arnie and David and dragging them behind him. “We’re getting out of here now!”
Max’s leg held him back just enough that his friends ran past him, but he followed as fast as he could. He could feel the bullets whizzing past, so close, so very close, and David turned to pull him along.
“Hurry up, Max! Let’s go!”
The next moment passed in a blur that burned into every one of Max’s senses. David was facing him, reaching for him, when suddenly his eyes flew open in an almost comical expression of disbelief.
Then he dropped like a stone.
Max fell beside him, screaming David’s name, pumping his chest and pleading for him to Breathe! Breathe! despite the savage hole shot right between his eyes. Seconds later Arnie knelt beside him, shaking David’s body while bullets thudded into the earth all around them.
“We gotta go! We gotta go!” Arnie sobbed beside him. “Come on, Max!”
But Max stared at David’s body, unable to move. He couldn’t leave him there. How could he do that? With all his strength, he threw David over his shoulder and started to run, feeling the dear weight of his brother-in-law jarring against him every step of the way. Arnie ran ahead of them, yelling encouragement. Then suddenly Max jerked, his leg giving way when a bullet struck him, and both he and David tumbled across the field, his gun rolling off on its own.
Arnie looked back, panicked, but Max shook his head. “Run, Arnie! Keep running!”
David’s body lay a few feet ahead. Max couldn’t stop now. If he left David behind, he might as well die. Digging his fingertips into the dirt, he dragged his body toward David’s. Then he froze, stopped by the black leather boot appearing in his vision. He looked up, straight into the barrel of a Japanese gun.
“Kōfuku!” the soldier screamed. He looked so young, Max thought. Barely old enough to be shaving. “Kōfuku!”
Through his shock, Max saw David’s still form just ahead. All he could think was, I’m so sorry, Hannah. I’m so sorry, Hannah.
A slow, smug smile spread expectantly across the face of the soldier, and Max dropped his face to the dirt, his empty hands held to the sides in surrender. There was no use in pleading. There was no escape.
He felt the hot metal barrel of the gun shove against the back of his head, then he closed his eyes, waiting. The rifle’s bolt opened then shut with a final click.
Then Max said goodbye.
1,689 OF DEFENDERS CAPTURED BY JAPS AS GARRISON FELL
Ralston Presents Figures in Commons Based Upon Reports from Nipponese Government; Original Contingent Totalled 1,985 All Ranks
By WILLIAM MARCHINGTON (Staff Writer, The Globe and Mail.) Ottawa, Feb. 25, 1942. – Only 296 Canadians from the contingent that, with the British, made such a gallant fight to save Hong Kong must be considered dead and missing, according to a brief statement given to the House today by Defense Minister J. L. Ralston.
At the end of the question hour, Colonel Ralston rose to announce that, according to a message received directly from the Canadian Minister at Buenos Aires, Hon. W. F. A. Turgeon, and which had been relayed to him from the Argentine Legation at Tokyo, the Japanese Government said a total of 1,689 Canadians had been made prisoners.
No names of those taken prisoner or of the casualties were yet available.
PART THREE — 1942 —
sixteen MOLLY
Richard Caolan Ryan,” I said firmly into the phone. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
Across the newsroom, Ian looked up. I glanced away, offering a tight smile.
After what felt like forever, the woman returned to the line. “Thank you for holding,” she said, her voice dry of emotion. How many of these types of phone calls was she receiving every day? “Now, what was the name?”
I closed my eyes, trying to contain my frustration. For two months, ever since Ian had wordlessly handed me The Globe and Mail article about the Battle of Hong Kong, I had been calling the Red Cross and government offices, always asking the same questions, always receiving the same answers.
“Corporal Richard Caolan Ryan. C Force, D Company,” I said. “He was in the Battle of Hong Kong. Can you tell me if he’s a prisoner of war, please?”
I heard her shuffling papers in the background.
“Hmm,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t see his name here.”
“What about Maxim Dreyfus? Arnold Schwartz? They were both medics with D Company. Or David Bohmer? They were all there.”
“I’m sorry, miss. If they’re on the Red Cross list, their families will be notified,” she said. “This is all the information I have.”
But no one I knew had been notified by either the Red Cross or the government. It had been over two months since the battle, and we existed day to day in the dark, not knowing how we should be grieving.
“I understand. Thank you.” I hung up and dropped my head, digging my fingernails into my skull while I held in a scream. How could no one have any answers? They couldn’t have simply disappeared, could they?
Ian appeared at my desk and placed a cup of tea in front of me. “Just because their names aren’t on the list, that doesn’t mean they’re gone,” he said gently. “Keep in mind that Emperor Hirohito started this war without agreeing to the Geneva Convention, which makes it difficult for the Red Cross to access their POW camps, let alone get proper lists of prisoners.”
He was such a good friend. So patient. Before all this had happened, we’d gotten much closer, even going to dinner and the movies a couple of times. We’d had a lot of fun together. But he looked sad these days, his normal energy sapped by the distance I’d placed between us. Everything in my world had changed since Christmas. I had retreated from everyone, including him.
“I know,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I glanced blearily up at the clock on the wall, noticing it was almost five o’clock. I’d gotten practically nothing done all day. At my right stood a stack of paper I had barely touched.
“Have you eaten anything today?” he asked, eyeing the unopened bagged lunch at my left.
“I guess I forgot,” I said lamely. “Thanks for the tea.” I gulped it down then gathered my things. “I need to stop and get some rations, then go through more of these POW lists from the Red Cross.”
I stepped outside, bundled against the raw March cold, and started walking, my mind returning to Christmas as it so often did.
Every day for two weeks, Mum, Dad, and I had shivered beside the stove in the living room, three blankets piled over us as Mum and I knit socks for soldiers and listened to the radio, with its ongoing reports of what the press were calling the Battle of Hong Kong. The cold stiffened our fingers, but it was the awful waiting that made our stitches uneven. We sat in stony silence as the announcer shouted into his microphone about dive-bombing Japanese planes and relentless shelling, reminding us repeatedly that our men were vastly outnumbered. He rattled off the word casualties over and over, but no one said how many there were. No one said anything about our boys.
Finally, on the afternoon of Christmas Day, the British surrendered to the Japanese.
Dad had huffed with disgust. “They had to. The Canadians never would have surrendered.”
Despite my relief that there would be no more fighting, I still felt sick. We had no idea what had really happened out there. Where was Richie? Where were Max, Arnie, David, and the others? Had they survived? And what did surrender entail? Nobody seemed to know anything about that. It wasn’t until February that we finally learned the majority of C Force had been taken as prisoners of war. The rest were either dead or presumed dead.
Recently, telegrams had begun to trickle into homes, notifying families about the fate of their sons. Every time the mail came, my heart stopped in my throat. We still hadn’t heard a peep about Richie.
Fortunately, we did hear from my other brothers fairly often. Their letters were comforting to receive, though we knew little about where t
hey were coming from, since they weren’t allowed to write specifics. We did know Mark and the Royal Regiment had moved from Iceland to somewhere in England, but that they still hadn’t seen action. Mark was the calmest of all my brothers, but as the war worsened, even his frustration became obvious.
Seems an awful waste not to put us to use somewhere…
Jimmy wrote sporadically, and I was glad to read that he seemed to be enjoying his winter overseas.
Weather’s so bad all the flights are grounded, and the squadron’s been out clearing runways. I never thought I’d be happy to see snow, but it reminds me of home. Still no news of Richie?
Liam’s letters from the St. Lawrence frightened me most of all. He was still sailing across the freezing Atlantic, shielding merchant ships and chasing down U-boats.
Our last sail to England, we were loaded up with depth charges and we had to store them on the forward decks. That meant the enemy planes could easily have spotted them if they came low enough. I tell you, one shot from them and… Oh, boy. That was the worst week of my life, I can easily say. By the time we arrived, I could practically recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards.
I pushed the thoughts of black water and frozen decks aside as I headed up the street toward my house. I had just passed the Dreyfus house when I heard their door creak open.
“Molly?”
I turned, and my heart went to my throat seeing Mrs. Dreyfus’s obvious grief. “Is it Max?” I cried, racing toward her.
She stood back and motioned for me to come inside, where the house was warm but still. I caught my breath, seeing Hannah sitting in the corner of the living room, her face a small, white oval in the darkness. She clutched a telegram in her hands.
I rushed to her side. “Oh, Hannah! What’s happened?”
“David,” she whispered. “Christmas Day. I thought… I thought maybe he—”
I threw my arms around her, wishing there was something I could do, something I could say, but all I could do was hold her tight, weeping with her while she clung to me. My mind returned to the day at the beach when a smiling, eager David had offered Hannah his arm to walk her home, and my heart broke. My dear, beautiful friend was a widow at twenty-seven. Her three young children had lost their father. Nothing would ever be the same.
“He’s gone, Molly,” she cried, her shoulders heaving with grief. “How can he be gone?”
I barely felt the cold when I finally left her house. In a fog, I walked through the door of my own, my head pounding, all my limbs weighted by cement. I took off my coat and boots and started toward the stairs, needing to be alone.
But then I heard a strangled sound coming from the living room, and I stopped on the stairs. Dread pooled in my stomach as I peeked into the room.
“Mum?”
She was wrapped in Dad’s arms, and both of them were weeping. He held out a trembling hand, his fingers practically crushing a small telegram. I willed myself to reach for that piece of paper, and fresh tears sprang to my eyes as I skimmed the lines.
WE REGRET TO INFORM THAT YOUR SON, CORPORAL RICHARD CAOLAN RYAN, DIED OF WOUNDS ON THE 25TH OF DECEMBER 1941 AT ST. STEPHEN’S HOSPITAL, ON HONG KONG ISLAND.
seventeen MOLLY
Richie was gone. David was gone. No one had heard anything about Max. I tried to convince myself he was safe someplace, just stuck in a POW camp. For me, it was easier to think of him living behind bars than to imagine a world where he no longer existed. But I had no proof.
For weeks afterward, I tried to visit Hannah every day, to sit with her for a few hours at least. Sometimes I stayed overnight. Being together helped us both.
“Thank you, Molly,” she said quietly when I arrived one day in May. She hurried over to relieve me of my bag of rationed groceries. I’d picked them up for her on my way over from the Red Cross, where I’d been volunteering on Saturdays to help assemble parcels for the POWs. “I just put the kids down for a nap, so I have a quiet hour to spend with you.”
I filled her kettle. With only two ounces of tea rationed per person in a week, we’d gotten used to just drinking hot water, sometimes with a little dried fruit thrown in for taste.
“I thought Clara was coming over,” I said as Hannah unpacked the food, waiting for the water to boil.
Clara’s husband, Arnie, had been on the list of POWs that had finally come back from the Red Cross, and I’d wanted to talk with her. Ever since Christmas, I had researched all I could about the camps, including the ones in Canada.
Hannah bit her lip and folded the empty grocery bag. “She’s not coming,” she said, looking at me through eyes that had aged years in a few months. “She got another telegram yesterday. Arnie got sick, apparently. He died.”
I felt a stab of pain for Clara. Arnie and I hadn’t been overly close, but he still made up part of my memories of that wonderful summer of 1933, teaching me about newspapers, teasing David about all his talk of shoes, and I knew he and Max had been close.
“What did he die of?” I asked.
“They called it an ‘unspecified illness.’ ” She busied herself, pouring the water and bringing cups to the kitchen table.
“Do you think Max was with him?” The words were out before I could stop them.
Hannah shook her head but didn’t say anything. We rarely spoke of Max anymore. We knew nothing of where or how he was, but I got the impression that Hannah and her parents didn’t hold out much hope.
“How’s Ian?” she asked.
I shrugged. “He’s fine, I guess. I haven’t had much time for him lately. You know, with work, and Dad, and volunteering.”
“And me.”
“You’re one of my top priorities,” I assured her with a smile. “You and Dinah, Jacob, and Aaron.”
“But you and Ian got along great, didn’t you? I remember being so shocked when you actually started dating. In the old days, you couldn’t even stomach a second date with other boys.”
“He’s a good man,” I said, sipping the hot water, sweetened with a bit of apple peel. She would have made the rest of the fruit into something mushy for little Aaron, I imagined. “Very thoughtful.”
“What’s he like?” Hannah asked, sitting back. “Is he smart?”
“He is,” I told her. “And funny. Everyone likes him.”
“Including you?”
“Yes,” I admitted coyly. “Even me.”
She paused. “You can’t wait forever, you know,” she said gently.
“What are you talking about?”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “Max. You can’t wait for him, Molly. He’s gone.”
I braced out of habit, prepared to argue. Anything to help me believe.
“You know,” she said slowly, “I was so mad at you back then.”
Heat rose up my neck, reminded of that night. After the one blunt conversation Hannah and I’d had in her doorway, we had never spoken of it again. I’d thought we’d left it behind. I’d hoped we had. But deep down I knew that moment would haunt us until we exposed it.
“I thought I hated you,” she went on, and a fresh wave of pain rippled through me. “I wanted to. The idea that you might truly love my brother in that way had never occurred to me until that night. The way we were raised, it didn’t seem possible. Sure, I knew you had a crush on him. We all knew you did, I think. But looking back, I guess anyone could see it was more than that. The way he looked at you, the way you were always asking about him… Molly, it took me a long time, but I understand now. You really did love Max. I guess you can’t choose who you love, can you?”
I looked away, suffocating on memories and regret. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I moved on.”
“But it does matter.” Her dark gaze was intent. “I need to apologize.”
“What for?”
Hannah reached across and closed her warm fingers over mine. “I love you so much. You’re my sister.”
“And you’re mine,” I said, glad to finally close the chasm between us. I’d missed he
r so much.
She nodded. “When Max told me he’d kissed you, I was upset, but I guess I also wanted to protect you both, so I pushed you apart from each other, and away from me. You could never really be together that way, and you’d both be hurt so badly when you finally faced that truth. But I had no right to judge you, or to try and manage your life. And I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Hannah,” I said, pulling her into a hug. “It’s all right. I’ve always known it was done out of love.”
She drew back, sniffling. “But you have to stop waiting for him.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she continued.
“I know you are, Molly, whether you admit it or not.” She took a deep breath, settling herself. “When David was killed, I lost my husband, the father of my children, and the love of my life. I feel like I lost half of myself. But the time we did have was wonderful.”
My heart twisted with grief for her.
“I know you want to believe Max will be back. God, Molly, I miss him every single day. I hate not knowing what happened to him. I mean, like your family, we don’t even have a body to bury.” She sniffed again. “But he’s not coming back. You need to move on with your life.”
“Why are you saying this?” I whispered.
“Because I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to miss out on what David and I had.”
I sat back, needing to breathe. To understand. She wanted the best for me, but I still wasn’t sure what to do. We didn’t know about Max. Not for sure. What if he was still out there somewhere?
But I knew what she was saying. How long was I willing to wait? Especially since I knew Max and I never could be together that way even if he returned one day. Was I wasting my life waiting for the impossible? Was I holding on too tight? Could I allow myself to let go? To accept he was gone? Was I strong enough to do that?
Letters Across the Sea Page 18
