Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  Mr and Mrs Peaslake send their very best regards and Mud says to send you her love. I do not know if this is right because you and Mud have not met, but Mud says it is because you are my aunt and she is my friend, so I send it anyway.

  Your loving nephew,

  George

  The Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps stared at Mud from their desks. Though it was Saturday morning, all the kids had turned up — even Big Billy, scratching a mosquito bite on his leg. Most had also brought the broom or mop Mud had insisted on; and a bread saw or pen knife too.

  ‘Right, I now declare this meeting come to order,’ said Mud.

  Little Sally put her hand up.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just what you say. Now, I’ve got a list here.’ She held it up. ‘I’m going to pin it on the door. Every Monday we have to bring in something metal that could be melted down to make an aeroplane.’

  ‘What’s metal?’ asked Big Billy.

  ‘Things like saucepans,’ said Mud.

  ‘We ain’t got any except the one to cook potatoes.’

  ‘Corrugated iron then. Old bolts. Tin cans.’

  ‘We got those,’ said Big Billy.

  ‘Tuesday we collect old tyres. Ask at the other houses and see if there are any. Wednesday newspapers, Thursday bottles, Friday is jumble day, anything at home that can be spared that someone else might find a use for. On Saturday at eight o’clock Mr Henderson, the ambulance driver, is going to give first-aid classes at the church hall and everyone’s got to be there.’

  Big Billy brightened at the thought of another morning with no farm work.

  ‘But most importantly,’ Mud stared at the watching children, ‘we’ve got to work out how to stop the enemy if they come to Bellagong.’ She held up a 1932 Boy’s Own Annual. It must belong to one of her brothers, Georg decided. He remembered the one that showed how to make an underwater spear gun in the library back in London.

  ‘We’re going to make our own bayonets,’ said Mud crisply. ‘Now, everyone got your brooms or mops?’

  Little Billy and Sally held up theirs. Big Billy put his hand up. ‘Don’t have no mop left on my mop,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s the stick we want. Now, here’s string and scissors. You’ve got to tie the handle of the knife to the stick in two places, like this. Now while you’re doing that …’

  Mud reached down behind Mrs Rose’s desk and pulled out a limp figure. It was a scarecrow, hay stuffed into old clothes and boots with a face drawn on an old stuffed pillowcase and an ancient hat on top.

  Mud lugged the scarecrow into Mrs Rose’s seat. ‘Right, we’re going to practise bayoneting just like they do in basic training. On the count of three you lift your bayonet, and then you charge.’

  Georg stared, unbelieving. Mud had never seen anyone hurt by war. But he had. People bleeding, dying. Dead.

  ‘One.’ Mud lifted up a broom handle with what looked like a long carving knife strapped to it.

  ‘Two —’

  ‘What on earth is going on here? Mud! Put that down this instant! What has got into you?’

  Mud put down her bayonet and glared defiance at Mrs Rose. ‘It’s the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. You’re not going to play with knives here. Or anywhere.’

  ‘We’re not playing,’ began Mud angrily.

  Mrs Rose’s voice gentled. ‘No, no you’re not, Mud. But no knives. It’s too dangerous — for the little ones,’ she added hurriedly. ‘There is plenty you can leave to adults,’ she said softly. ‘Things aren’t that bad yet, love.’

  She had never called Mud ‘love’ before. The other children put their ‘bayonets’ down uncertainly.

  ‘George, can you take the knives off? Carefully,’ added Mrs Rose. ‘Mud, I know you’re …’ She tried to find the words. ‘This is a wonderful idea.’ She glanced at the metal/paper/glass roster. ‘But there are other things you can do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ said Mrs Rose gently. ‘Now, I think that’s enough for today. Leave the, er, bayonets. I’ll see they get back to your homes safely. And Mud,’ she added, as the others began to file out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Good show,’ she said. ‘It was a bit much, that’s all. But it’s a good show.’

  Mud nodded briefly.

  ‘Have you heard from your brothers?’ Mrs Rose’s voice was a bit too casual.

  ‘Not for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Mail is unreliable these days. Nothing for three months sometimes, then five letters at once.’ She bit her lip. ‘I got a letter from my husband yesterday. He says he’s safe and well in the prison camp.’

  Everyone in Bellagong knew the news already. But Georg was glad to see the look of hope on Mrs Rose’s face.

  He made himself not count how long it had been since he had seen Mutti. Even one letter in all that time would have been like a miracle.

  ‘Your brothers will be right,’ said Mrs Rose, patting Mud’s arm. ‘Your dad too. Now you go off and play.’

  ‘Play,’ said Mud bitterly, as they headed up the footpath.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Georg. He didn’t say, ‘It was a dumb idea. You can’t let kids like Sally and Little Billy play round with bayonets.’ Instead he asked carefully, ‘Do you mind?’

  Mud shrugged. ‘She’s right. The littlies are too small to fight the Japs.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I would though. If they try to send us to Alice Springs when the Japs come, I won’t go. I’ll hide in the hills if I have to. I won’t let an enemy take an inch of Australian soil.’

  She waited for Georg to agree: to say that he’d fight too.

  George would fight, he thought. But he was Georg, who had run from Germany, had sailed away from England when things got bad. If he had pleaded would Mutti have let him stay, or would Aunt Miriam have worked out how to keep him with her? Was Mutti trying to fight the Nazis now? If he had stayed could he have helped her?

  He didn’t know.

  And now? Now he felt hatred like a warm tide running through his body; felt it link him to Mud, to the whole town and country. He belonged now, because of hate.

  ‘Yes,’ said Georg. ‘I’d fight the Japs too. And we’d win.’

  The Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps met every afternoon after school, under Mrs Rose’s watchful eye in case Mud experimented with bayonets again. They trooped from house to house, collecting for the war effort.

  But it didn’t take long to collect all the scrap from every house in Bellagong, and even from the farmhouses a bike or pony ride away.

  Mud coaxed Mr Henderson, the ambulance driver, into giving first-aid classes one afternoon a week; how to support a broken arm or press a wound to stop it bleeding or use a cricket bat to make a splint, supposing there was a cricket bat around. She pinned up the air-raid precautions from the newspaper on the school door: Keep your head down. Upturned faces draw enemy fire. To avoid concussion, never lean against the walls.

  At last the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps was reduced to knitting squares at lunchtime to sew into blankets for refugees and wounded soldiers. Some of the squares were more hole than wool, and not quite square either. Georg hoped that those who got them realised that even small kids like Sally had worked on them: that they were made with love as well as holes.

  He wished there was a way to send a blanket to Mutti too.

  Chapter 35

  26 April 1942

  Dear Mutti,

  I am going to put this letter in a bottle and throw it into the sea. I know you will not get it but when we meet after the war I want to tell you that I wrote to you.

  I hope you are well and there are no bombs where you are. Aunt Miriam is safe. I got a letter from her at last yesterday. She said that there were no bombs in her part of the country. Her flat is still not bombed either.

  I hope our house
is not bombed but if the government has taken it maybe it is not ever going to be our house again.

  I hope you have enough to eat. There is so much food here it hurts to think you may not have enough, but it said in the newspapers that many people in Europe are hungry. Mrs Peaslake sends lots of cakes to her son and to the Red Cross and to Mud’s brothers and dad. I wish we could send cakes to you too.

  I am working hard at school. I speak English all the time but sometimes when I am alone on the cliffs and the wind is blowing hard I say some of Papa’s poems in Deutsch. I do not forget them or him or you either.

  With oceans of love always,

  Georg

  Autumn turned the orchard gold and red, despite the stubborn greenness of the gumtrees. Mrs Peaslake made rag rugs from the old-clothes basket and cut down a pair of Mr Peaslake’s old trousers to make into shorts for Georg for school. No need to waste cloth, she said, with him growing so fast.

  The school room was in the middle of chanting the six times tables, Georg and Mud helping hear the youngest, when Big Billy yelled from outside.

  ‘Missus! Mrs Rose! Come quickly, Missus!’

  Mrs Rose ran out. The children poured out behind her. Had Big Billy been bitten by a snake? A big red-bellied black was supposed to live under the school room but only Mud had seen it. Or had he got a splinter in his foot?

  Big Billy pointed at the sky.

  Georg could hear it now — the stutter of a plane.

  Bomber!

  He peered over at the part of the sky where Big Billy pointed. There it was: only a speck, but undoubtedly a plane.

  No plane had ever flown over Bellagong in all the time he’d been here. Don’t panic, he told himself. It might be one of ours. No reason to think a Jap plane could be all the way down here, so far from north Australia.

  The sound grew louder. His skin prickled, like it knew to be scared before his mind could take it in.

  He gazed around. No underground station, like there had been in London, to hide in here, not even a cellar.

  The plane drew closer.

  ‘Cor,’ said Little Billy. ‘It’s a Jap plane!’

  ‘It can’t be,’ said Mud. ‘The Japanese are miles away. Up north.’

  Big Billy pointed. Now they could all see it: the round Japanese insignia under the wings. The plane was smaller than a German bomber, almost a big kite. You could imagine the wind buffeting it across the sky.

  Enemy, thought Georg. The enemy had found him again, halfway across the world. Suddenly he wished that hatred could burn; that his thoughts alone could send that plane in flames to the ground.

  The plane drew closer, and closer still. It was as though a rope was pulling it towards the school.

  ‘It’s coming here!’ yelled Mud.

  ‘Inside, now!’ cried Mrs Rose. ‘Under your desks!’

  ‘No!’ Georg shouted.

  The children stopped. Mrs Rose stopped too. He fumbled for words that would convince them. ‘Bombers aim for buildings. We’ll be safer in the paddocks.’

  He tried to remember the instructions pasted on the door. But Mud had taken over.

  ‘Everyone get behind something — behind the fence. Lie down. Faces down.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Rose was panting, as though she had already raced across the paddocks. ‘Everyone behind the fence.’

  They began to run. Sally stumbled. Georg hauled the child up and found that Mud had her other arm. Together they half dragged her through the gate in the paling fence between the school building and the paddock.

  ‘Down,’ ordered Mud. The child covered her head with her arms. The others were all lying down now, a line of bodies, their heads to the wall, their faces down. Elizabeth wouldn’t have saved the little kids. The thought came from nowhere. Elizabeth needed a governess to look after her. But Mud took charge.

  Mud pointed upwards. The plane was almost on them now, its engine like a monster’s purr.

  ‘It’s coming here,’ she whispered to Georg. ‘For Bellagong.’

  He nodded. One small town in a wilderness of bush and paddocks. The pilot was aiming for them.

  He knew from the air raids in London that planes strafed, sending bullets from the sky, as well as bombs. Would whoever was up there shoot them all?

  One bomb had brought down a three-storey block of flats. One bomb could destroy this small school and half the town too.

  The plane was above them now. He peered up, trying to see the pilot’s face through the cockpit. But the sunlight behind was too bright, gleaming off the glass.

  Jap, thought Georg. Dirty rotten Jap.

  ‘If it fires bullets at us we have to run,’ he gasped.

  Mud moved to cover Sally protectively. ‘Try to make it to the trees?’

  Georg nodded.

  He waited for the bomb to fall, for the school to shatter just as the buildings had shattered back in London. The plane’s shadow passed over them, a blackness on the ground.

  Was the pilot saving his bombs for Bellagong? But as he watched the plane passed the town too, so low it almost brushed the treetops, then rose higher, and higher still.

  He waited for it to turn back, to bomb or strafe them on the next go round. But it headed back into the blue towards the sea. Its engine sounded like a washing machine now, not a roar, and then just a faint stutter in the distance again.

  Mrs Rose stood up. She and Mud helped the smallest children to their feet, brushing off the grass. Georg stood too. He felt empty, as though his body might float away.

  The enemy was here.

  ‘It was a Jap spotter plane, not a bomber,’ said Mr Peaslake wearily, as Georg sat eating after-school bread and jam in the kitchen. ‘I went down to the phone box and called the coast watch, but they already knew. They said not to talk about it.’

  ‘But everyone saw it.’

  ‘Only in Bellagong.’ He shrugged. ‘Government doesn’t want people to panic, I suppose. Doesn’t want everyone knowing there are Jap planes about.’

  ‘But where did the plane come from?’ Planes needed fuel. New Guinea was too far away for a plane to fly in one hop. And that one had looked so small.

  Mr Peaslake hesitated. Mrs Peaslake turned from the stove where she was stirring apple sauce for bottling. ‘He’s seen worse in the Blitz,’ she said softly.

  ‘Rumour has it that there are Jap subs all along the coast. Big ones. Big enough to send out aircraft to scout the area.’

  Georg sat still. ‘The Japanese are going to invade here?’

  He waited for Mr Peaslake to say, ‘Of course not.’ But all he said was, ‘Probably not. Any invasion will come from the north. The Japs need supply lines to keep their army in food and fuel if they are to get here. MacArthur’s Yanks are between us and them now. I reckon the Japs are looking for targets. Ships, factories to bomb or torpedo before they try to invade.’ He gave Georg a half-smile. ‘There are none of those in Bellagong, at any rate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Georg. He meant, ‘Thank you for telling me the truth.’

  The enemy was in their sea, that happy sea where he had learned to swim. It was in the sky, where they had flown their kites.

  Nowhere is safe, thought Georg. The enemy can be anywhere.

  Chapter 36

  April 1942

  Dear Mum and Dad and George,

  It’s a sunny Sunday morn here. I’ve got Mum’s socks on my feet and her fruitcake in me too and just smelled the gumleaf George sent me so I almost feel like I’m with all of you.

  We had some good laughs at the concert last night. The VAD girls put on a turn with their blue frocks on back to front and gas masks back to front too. They did a burlesque of ‘The Way the Army Does It’, marching backwards then bending down and touching their toes, showing six inches of white skin between their stocking top and undies so we howled for more. (Maybe you’d better skip that bit, Mum. Oops, you’ve already read it.)

  Rumour has it that there might be some Cairo leave (and Captain Censor, leave t
hat bit in, won’t you? The enemy has to know we’re somewhere in this neighbourhood) coming on, so watch out, Cairo. Should be able to pick up something for you all. How about a mummy for Mummy? Maybe I’ll send a camel back to see if the cousins can shear one of them as good as a sheep.

  Well, I’d better go in case the war grinds to a halt without me. Give my love next door and my special love to all of you, and a hug for the dogs too, but only if they’ve had a bath. We’re a fussy lot in the AIF.

  Alan

  The very young and the old men left in Bellagong, including Mr Peaslake, dug the school air-raid shelter later that afternoon. It was just a narrow trench, about two yards deep, behind the school fence, with steps cut into the soil to get down into it, and logs propped across it to keep off the worst of the debris if a plane came again and this time bombed the school.

  The children watched. Little Sally sucked her thumb. Big Billy ate Georg’s leftover sandwiches. Mrs Peaslake always gave him too many. Maybe she guessed that he shared them with Big Billy.

  ‘Needs corrugated iron on top,’ said Mud. ‘That’s what they have on top of Anderson shelters in England.’

  ‘Got some left over from the old chook house —’ began one of the men.

  ‘No,’ said Georg quickly.

  Everyone stared at him.

  ‘I … I saw a shelter once that was bombed. The corrugated iron collapsed. It hurt one of the people …’ He didn’t want to say more. It wasn’t needed anyway.

  ‘No corrugated iron then,’ boomed Mr Peaslake.

  Mud looked at the work as though she wanted to help. ‘I’m going to become a plane spotter,’ she said abruptly to Georg.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s in the paper. I cut it out to show you.’ She fumbled in her pocket. ‘They say children can do it — you don’t have to be grown up. We have to have a local spotting station — that can be the school — and we can spend the lunch hour searching for planes. If you see one you have to write down if it’s an Oxford or Anson — you can tell by the wing shape — or what sort of enemy plane it is.’