Enemy Camp

by Hill, David

  Funny to think of the Japs arguing with one another. A bit like our lot and the Yanks, I suppose.

  December 1942

  TUESDAY, 1 DECEMBER Only twenty-four days until Christmas! Only sixteen days until the summer holidays!

  We might be going away. Dad says we’re on the list of the committee which organises holidays for troops’ families. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. And my thumbs and toes.

  There was a new poster up outside the police station: KEEP OUR SECRETS SECRET, and a cartoon of Hitler and a Jap general, with their hands up to their ears, listening.

  Dad got home early. He’ll be flat-out soon, building the second compound. More navy and air force prisoners are due. Some have been in hospital; some have arrived on other ships. There are over six hundred of them now, for our one hundred guards to keep an eye on.

  ‘We’ve got guards who are just nineteen,’ Dad told Mum. ‘The Nips don’t like taking orders from a kid. A few of them just ignore our young fellows; it makes them wild.’

  I thought of that Jap who’d stood watching Barry and Clarry and me on Saturday. He was an officer. I wonder if Dad knows anything about him?

  WEDNESDAY, 2 DECEMBER First practice for our school break-up concert. Someone is going to dress up as Britannia, and the rest of us will sing and march past her. We’ve started learning our songs. Miss Mutter banged away on the school piano; the black keys seemed to turn pale when she touched them.

  THURSDAY, 3 DECEMBER Boring day at school. Quiet day at the camp. Dad got home early again.

  The civvie prisoners are working OK, he said after tea. (It’s like listening to the BBC sometimes, listening to Dad!) They’re building the second compound.

  That bloke from Switzerland who checks if the Jap prisoners are properly treated has been at the camp. ‘Decent enough chap,’ my father said, ‘but the military prisoners won’t say anything to him, and the civvie ones are nervous, in case they’re called traitors.’

  ‘Have you got anyone else to interpret yet?’ my mum asked. She had an old patched blanket spread over the other end of the table, and was ironing sheets on it.

  Dad snorted. ‘You’ll never guess who some bright spark suggested: Daphne Proctor! Jap soldiers having orders passed on to them by a woman — it would be a deadly insult.’

  Susan Proctor’s mother. Gosh. If any of the Proctors tried to give me orders, I’d feel insulted, too.

  FRIDAY, 4 DECEMBER Hope they open the swimming baths this summer. They were closed because of the polio scare last year; they didn’t want lots of kids mixing together.

  More rehearsing for our break-up concert. Barry and I are going to be soldiers, and march past whoever Britannia is. ‘You are emblems of our allegiance,’ Mr White told us. (That means we are examples of loyalty; I looked it up in the class dictionary at lunchtime.)

  There was a notice at assembly for kids who live out Morrison’s Bush way. The Home Guard are practising blowing up bridges; they’ll have to do that if the Japs ever invade, to slow them down. So some roads may be closed. Barry and Clarry and I might ride out to look tomorrow. It’s a fair way, though, and the shingle road will be hard on our tyres.

  I went to the Morrises’ this afternoon. Clarry had just had a leg massage. His braces were off; they leave big red marks on his skin, but otherwise his legs look pretty normal. Some kids with polio, their legs shrink and get twisted. He was putting on his socks and shoes. Barry and I pretended to faint at the smell, so Clarry whacked his big brother with one of his braces. That kid is vicious!

  No cards tonight. Mr Morris is train-driving again.

  SATURDAY, 5 DECEMBER We didn’t ride out to Morrison’s Bush because it rained. (It sometimes rains a lot in Featherston!) So I spent the morning reading. I’ve finished Bruce’s astronomy book. Did you know the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy in the universe? There’s another one, called Andromeda, that scientists have discovered, and they think there could be more. Amazing.

  In the afternoon I played Sink the German Navy with Barry and Clarry the Cheat. Mum came over, too; she and Mrs Morris yakked and darned clothes. The Morrises are all in a really good mood; I’ll tell you why later.

  The pictures again tonight. It was Rewi’s Last Stand, a New Zealand film about a Maori chief who fought the British a hundred years ago.

  Mr Morris and his family smiled all the way home. They’d got a letter from Wellington Hospital today, saying that reports on Clarry’s polio show that he’s recovering really well, and he almost certainly won’t need those steel rods put in his legs. Isn’t that great?

  SUNDAY, 6 DECEMBER A sunny day. Hooray! Dad got picked up really early for camp.

  Barry and Clarry and I biked out there after lunch. We had to, because at breakfast Mum suddenly said, ‘Oh, your silly father has left his shaving gear behind!’ In the army, you can get fined if you come on parade looking scruffy, so I said I’d take it out.

  I tucked Dad’s shaving gear inside my shirt, waited for Barry and Clarry, then headed off for the camp. We’d just reached the main highway when the drone of engines rose behind us. Three trucks of Yank soldiers roared past. They held rifles and tommy-guns. Their faces were streaked with black, and some of them looked half-asleep. They must have been returning from night training.

  We waved. They waved back, an arm swung, and something sailed through the air, skidding along the road beside us. Chewing gum!

  There were two pieces each, and since you can’t chew and talk at the same time, we rode the rest of the way in silence.

  There were new fences, alright. New fences and new buildings, with figures in blue moving around them.

  Barry pointed. ‘Are those f-flowers?’

  They were. Trust him to notice first. One of the stretches of ground we’d seen the prisoners working on was now rows of bright reds, yellows, whites. A couple of Nips were picking and putting flowers into old tin buckets while a guard watched. I thought I recognised the little prisoner we’d seen struggling to lift that post, maybe the bloke who’d done that carving for Dad.

  ‘What do they want those for?’ Clarry demanded. ‘Blokes don’t have flowers!’

  We began wheeling our bikes towards the main gates. A wooden barrier blocked the short shingle road now, and a guard stood there. ‘That’s far enough, lads.’

  I pulled Dad’s shaving gear from inside my shirt. ‘My father — Jack MacKenzie — he left this at home. It’s his razor and stuff.’

  The guard grinned. ‘Can’t win the war with whiskers, can we? I’ll pass it on.’

  We pushed our bikes up to the barrier, Clarry bouncing along on his trolley. The guard called over the one escorting the figures with their flower buckets and passed him Dad’s shaving gear.

  We three kids stared. Not at the guard, but at what was happening behind the double barbed-wire fence. The prisoners were fighting.

  Two of them had hold of each other, heaving and grabbing at arms and bodies. A riot!

  Then I realised more blue uniforms were watching, arms crossed or hands on hips. One of the fighters stuck a leg behind the other Nip and twisted him down onto the ground. The watching Japs nodded or clapped. The guy on the ground sprang up; he and the man he’d been fighting bowed to each other. Next minute, two others had taken their places, crouched over with arms stretched out, shuffling around each other.

  The guard chuckled. ‘They love their wrestling, these blokes. Keeps them out of mischief.’

  He looked at Clarry on his trolley. ‘You’re Harry Morris’s youngest boy, aren’t you? How’s things?’

  ‘Good,’ Clarry went. ‘Look.’ Next minute, he had swung his legs off the trolley, grabbed the back of my bike, pulled himself up, and stood there swaying. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his leg braces.

  ‘C-Careful!’ Barry said. I reached a hand towards his younger brother.

  Clarry knocked my hand aside. ‘I can do it.’ He took a step forward, then another. The guard watched. So did a few prisoner
s just inside the gates.

  And so did the same figure we’d seen last time. The officer with the short black hair. His hands were behind his back, eyes fixed on us again. We were closer today, and I could see the burn marks on his face.

  Clarry took a third and fourth step. His lips were pressed together; his arms out wide for balance.

  ‘Your dad says thanks.’ The guard I had given the shaving gear to was calling from inside the gates. ‘Says he’d forget his brains if they weren’t glued in.’

  Clarry fell. His legs gave out, and he went down in a heap on the bare ground. Barry and I dropped our bikes and hurried to him. ‘You c-clown!’ Barry gasped. ‘You m-might b-b-break something!’

  But Clarry was grinning. ‘You see that? I did it. I walked without my braces!’

  The Japs who’d been wrestling were watching now, too. The silent figure just along from them hadn’t moved.

  ‘You OK?’ the guard was asking. ‘You take it easy, son.’

  Clarry couldn’t get the smile off his face. As Barry held him, he waved both hands towards the Jap officer. ‘You see that? I walked!’

  No movement from the man. A guard had begun calling out to him, signalling him to move. The Jap took no notice. His eyes remained on Clarry. After another few seconds, he turned and walked away.

  MONDAY, 7 DECEMBER So of course Clarry was all stiff and sore today. He begged Barry and me not to tell his parents. ‘They won’t let me go in the trolley again if they know.’

  ‘I’m the one who will g-get into t-trouble!’ Barry told him. I pretended to be annoyed, too, but I kept remembering the look on Clarry’s face when he took those steps.

  Physical drill at school. We boys marched around the playground, then we did star-jumps on the spot. So of course Anzac ‘accidentally’ hit Terry on the ear, and Terry ‘accidentally’ kicked Anzac on the ankle.

  Mum did more ironing after tea. Dad sat by the table, turning the little fish carving over. The Jap had even given it tiny whiskers.

  He nodded when I told him about the flowers. ‘They put them in their huts. Every hut has got an altar-thing they’ve made, for their ancestors. Major Parsons doesn’t have any problem with it. Hope the new camp commandant feels the same when he comes.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Funny, isn’t it? The Nips fight like maniacs. They charge Yank machine-guns with just their rifles. Yet they grow flowers. And Bruce tells me some of them are writing poetry.’

  I tried to imagine soldiers writing poetry. ‘We saw some of them wrestling.’

  My father grinned. ‘I told a couple who speak English how Jim Dryden from Featherston won a wrestling medal at the Empire Games. They seemed pretty impressed.’

  I remembered something from yesterday. ‘There’s this officer who watches us.’ I described the slim, scarred figure.

  Dad nodded. ‘Ito — or some name like that. He’s an air force lieutenant. His plane got shot down while he was attacking a Yank aircraft carrier. He tried to swim away from the boat they sent to pick him up, but he passed out and they dragged him on board.’

  ‘What makes young men like that?’ Mum sighed as she folded up the ironing blanket.

  ‘Ito’s a tough bloke,’ Dad went on. ‘Sharp as a tack. Major Parsons is trying hard to get him to see things our way. Anything we can do to understand each other a bit could avoid trouble later on.’

  He stared at the wall. ‘Because trouble is never far away out there.’

  TUESDAY, 8 DECEMBER Nothing.

  WEDNESDAY, 9 DECEMBER Just nine days until the summer holidays!

  The break-up concert is next Thursday. Every class, including the primers, is going to march past whoever is being Britannia. Dad is getting Barry and me some battledress tunics to wear, so we look like soldiers. We’ve got heaps of songs to sing: ‘Maori Battalion, March to Victory’; an American one called ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, because some of the Yanks may come. Miss Mutter bangs away on the piano and tells everyone exactly what to do — so everyone does exactly what they’re told.

  I got a shock today. We were going back into Room Six after morning playtime, and Susan Proctor suddenly said, ‘Mummy thinks your father is wonderful at the camp, Ewen.’ I didn’t say anything. Why was she talking to me? What did she know about Dad and the camp? Maybe it has something to do with Mrs Proctor speaking Japanese? Anyway, I’m glad they think my dad is good. He is! He’s as good as rich Mr Proctor. (I bet snobby Susan wouldn’t like me saying that.)

  We wrote in our journals. I’m going to use mine all up if I keep going like this. Then we talked about what we were writing. ‘These are personal documents, remember,’ Mr White told us. ‘But would anyone like to mention what they are recording?’

  Anzac said he was listing everything he wanted for Christmas. Barry said he was writing about polio. I hadn’t known that. Some kids have written hardly anything. I thought I was going to be like them, remember?

  Another shock after school. Barry and I were heading home when a bunch of high-school kids biked past in a hurry. One yelled: ‘There’s Japs down at the railway station!’

  For a moment, I had this weird idea that we should rush back to school and dive into the air-raid shelters. Instead, we tore off after them.

  About twenty people were already at the railway yards, watching: adults and high-school kids, and a few from Featherston Primary.

  There were ten … twelve Japs in their blue uniforms, unloading sacks of something from a railway wagon and carrying them to a couple of lorries. Half a dozen guards with rifles and bayonets stood around. A few prisoners glanced at the crowd watching them, but most kept their eyes on the ground. I couldn’t see any I recognised.

  At first, nobody spoke. Then some of the high-school boys started whispering and nudging one another. Next minute, one called out: ‘Work faster, Tojo!’ Another yelled: ‘You Japs are weak!’

  The prisoners kept their heads down. Two of the guards turned towards the boys. A man next to Barry and me went, ‘That’s enough from you kids. If you want to be big and brave, there’s better ways to do it.’ And a woman called, ‘Peter Clark, you go home this minute, or I’ll tell your mother and she’ll whack your backside!’

  Some of us laughed, including a couple of the guards. The high-school boys looked a bit stupid, then wandered off. I don’t know if the prisoners thought we were laughing at them; they just kept unloading the sacks.

  When we got to the Morrises’ Clarry was standing on the doorstep. His leg braces were off again. As we came up the path, he took a wobbly step onto the verandah, then another, and grabbed the railing.

  ‘I’m going to walk without my braces every day.’ He glanced behind him. ‘Don’t tell Mum.’

  ‘You want a hand?’ I asked, as he turned himself around.

  Clarry glared. ‘No! I’m going to do it!’

  He tottered back towards the doorway. His braces were against the hall wall. He folded himself down on his backside, and started putting them on. If his polio ever comes back, it will be the most unfair thing in the world.

  THURSDAY, 10 DECEMBER There’s been a big fire in a mental hospital down near Dunedin. More than thirty women have died. They were all locked in their wards or their rooms, and they couldn’t escape when the fire started. The windows had metal bars over them. It must have been awful.

  If there’s ever a fire or an earthquake in a place where Clarry is, could he get out? He was talking yesterday afternoon about how when the doctors tested him for polio they kept sticking a big needle in his back, taking some of the fluid in his spine. It really hurt, but he said he wouldn’t mind it hurting like that all the time, if only he could ride a bike and play cricket again.

  They’re still working flat-out to finish the second compound at camp, Dad told Mum and me. ‘At least we’ve got a proper water supply now. Some of the military prisoners wouldn’t touch it until Major Parsons drank a couple of glasses in front of them. Must have thought we were trying to poison them.’

  Dad blew a smoke rin
g. ‘He’s been a good CO, the major. The Jap officers are starting to listen to him. He finishes up tomorrow, though. The new camp commandant is an ex-regular army bloke. Fought in the Great War. Hope he’s OK.’

  I’m reading a book from the library. It’s about an American Indian called Deerfoot who is a terrific hunter and warrior. We could use him against the Nips.

  FRIDAY, 11 DECEMBER A week until the holidays. A fortnight until Christmas. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed about our going away. Dunno whether I’ll keep my journal going next year.

  Air-raid practice at school. ‘Sheltersh!’ Miss Mutter kept yelling. ‘Move fasht!’

  ‘How does she eat Christmas dinner with no teeth?’ Terry muttered as we filed into the trenches.

  ‘What did you shay, shon?’ demanded Miss Mutter. Terry looked terrified.

  Concert rehearsal this afternoon — and Snobby Susan is going to be Britannia! I’ll have to salute her!

  Barry and I were passing the town hall on the way home when my friend went ‘L-Listen!’ I heard it a second later. A rumbling and clanking sound, like a bulldozer or something, coming from the next street.

  We hurried up to the corner. Then we stopped and stared again. A tank was grinding towards us.

  Not a tank. A tractor, with big steel plates bolted along its sides and over its front and back. There was a slit in front with a gun barrel poking through it. A Home Guard bloke was driving; another one sat behind the gun. Rifles stuck out through other slits in the sides.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Dad. ‘Secret weapon, son.’ He grinned. ‘They’re hoping if the Nips invade and see it, they’ll die laughing.’

  SATURDAY, 12 DECEMBER Dad was home today. He’s back at camp tomorrow: some of the civilian prisoners are being put to work making concrete chimneys for houses, and he’ll show them how to do it. He said we can bike out there with him.

  Barry and Clarry came around. Dad spent a while teaching us how to salute properly, so we can do it in the concert. ‘Fingers and thumb in straight line. Right hand shortest way up to just above the right eyebrow, then longest way down in a half-circle, until you’re properly at attention again.’ He showed us how, with his good arm. ‘None of these silly little flicks like the Yanks do.’