Storm at Sunset

by Hall, Ian

  The truck bumped and lurched on its way.

  “I dunno Arthur.” Chota was persistent. “Do you know, I woke up in the middle of last night and I could swear that there were grunts and thuds going on up on the roof. For all the world as if there was a hand-to-hand battle going on up there.”

  “Rubbish.” Brownlow sceptically put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “You should take more water with it.”

  And they continued on their way, Chota to some extent reassured.

  ****

  A small reception party waited as the first of the relief missions completed its two 130-mile flight from up-country Semerang. As ‘S for Sugar’ rolled into the dispersal at Kemajoran on an October morning, doctors, nurses and medical orderlies equipped with stretchers, wheelchairs and ambulances stood by as the engines shut down. The cargo door swung open to reveal the substantial figure of Bert Edwards waiting at the entrance, and the medical teams approached to relieve him of his charges.

  The first of the released internees, assisted by willing airmen, slowly made his unsteady way down the aircraft steps, followed by half a dozen similarly frail patients.

  Stretcher cases followed, Bert’s tender ministrations continuing as attendants manoeuvred them from aircraft to ambulance. A gaggle of curious station personnel there to witness this first flight were pressed into service as stretcher bearers. And before long the little convoy was on its way to the tented facility where the patients would be further looked after.

  The Dakota crew began quietly to tidy the cabin, thoughtful after the flight. Freddie Underwood, who’d been assisting with passenger care throughout, was particularly curious.

  “You know what, Bert? There’s one thing that puzzles me. Those people were so quiet. Passive, even. I know that some of them weren’t at all well, but I’d more or less expected the others to be more animated. Happy that they’d been released and brought to safety. Planning their futures. Thinking about picking up their pre-war lives. At the very least I would have expected one or two of them to show some emotion.”

  “They were nervous,” chipped in Dusty. “It’s likely that many of them haven’t flown before.”

  “Yes maybe,” persisted Freddie. “Although you know what most of them did on the journey? They slept. And the rest just gazed into space or at the floor.”

  “I’m not surprised at all,” said Bert. “These people are totally disorientated. They’re still in shock. If they were thinking at all about the future, they’d have been worrying. Certainly, if they’d been wishing for a return to the pre-war status quo they’d have been coming to the realisation that that was a bit of a forlorn hope.”

  They airmen were silent, thoughtful.

  “They were showing emotion, you know,” Bert quietly continued. “But just not the kind you were expecting. They’re afraid; not least of what they’ll find in this strange world outside the barbed wire. Three years of capture, imprisonment, deprivation and fear can’t be wiped away immediately by the mere fact of release. In some ways, a new insecurity is that they have to learn once more about life away from captivity.”

  “I suppose so. But they hardly even spoke. It’s still seems odd to me.” Freddie wasn’t convinced.

  “There was one who talked quite a bit to me,” said Bert, quietly. “And do you know what the subject was?”

  “Go on,” said Dusty.

  “He talked about his friends who weren’t coming out with him. And the friends and relatives he’d left outside and who might not be there now.” Bert paused, and now he was maybe talking to himself as much as to the others. “War’s not just bombs and bullets. The psychological effects can be almost as devastating. And I don’t just mean shell shock. I’m thinking about fear; loneliness; worry. We’re all affected in one way or another.”

  The three of them paused to digest this, standing thoughtfully. But their thoughts were rudely interrupted as a team of loaders roared up with the outbound cargo for the next flight.

  “Come on you chaps.” Ken’s face peered appeared from the flight deck. “We’re due off in ten minutes and we’ve still three more trips to fit in today. Jump to it.”

  The moment of reflection over, they re-entered the world of Dakota operations from Kemajoran, a world that was to fully occupy their waking hours for the foreseeable future.

  CHAPTER 14

  Aircraftman Brownlow and a few of his fellow erks leaned on the veranda balustrade outside their newly requisitioned bungalow admiring the view. Their work was finished for the day and Brownlow nudged his companion, indicating a shadowy figure who was gesturing suggestively to the group of airmen in the fast-fading dusk. “She’s yours for two bob, mate. Fancy a bit?”

  “Cor, not half. I reckon I can still remember how!”

  A bit more ribald banter flew between the boys before another figure emerged from the gloom and approached the girl.

  “There now, look, Arthur. You’re too late. You’ll have to wait a quarter of an hour until she’s free again.”

  “That long?! She’s not for me, anyway. Might catch something.”

  Brownlow grinned as the soldier approached the local lady of the night. “Lucky chap.”

  But as the soldier exchanged words with the girl and gestured with his rifle, it became apparent that he was not a customer. With no more than a mild protest, she scuttled off around the corner and disappeared. For the time being, anyway. But the girl was a persistent fly and would, they were sure, not easily give up the opportunity for trade amongst the new arrivals who had suddenly swelled the numbers of potential punters on her patch. The airmen had seen her before and had no doubt that she would soon be back.

  The guard continued his rounds. Like those who, the airmen had subsequently learned, had seen off intruders from their hotel roof a week ago, he was a Seaforth Highlander, a part of the Batavia-based garrison which had been posted in to look after the ground side of the operation in the area. Among other duties they were responsible for security in the city, and that included guarding the airmen.

  But there were sceptical men who found it difficult to believe that guerilla fighters had been about to lob hand grenades through the rafters of their hotel. It was still not altogether clear to many of the newcomers that they needed guarding, and some resented it.

  “Bloody curfew,” commented Ray Fox on an adjacent veranda. “It really cramps your style, doesn’t it?”

  Freddy Underwood nodded in agreement. The two sergeants were accommodated in another bungalow in the same general area as the airmen, and the sergeants’ mess had been set up in a nearby hotel. Just around the corner was the Hotel des Galleries, which was now masquerading as the officers’ mess.

  “No, I’m just not sure what to make of this place Ray. One minute we hear that there are dangers lurking around every corner; the next we’re chatting happily to the locals.”

  Regardless of whether the squadron’s airmen were in an odd situation in the town, at work the position was crystal clear. Evacuation tasks were keeping them fully occupied and they had already found themselves shocked by some of the sights they had seen. The people they had brought out had been a mixed bag. Some could barely walk and had needed assistance to climb the short flight of steps to the aircraft. They were pitifully emaciated in most cases, and many bore the swollen limbs of beri-beri.

  Inside the cabin many had found the slope of the old tail-dragger’s fuselage floor almost too much to manage and had needed all available assisting hands to get them to their seats. Some had been on stretchers, grievously ill, and here Bert Edwards had been in his element, expertly marshalling the other crew members as he organised the care required for his patients. To the distress and disappointment of them all, several hadn’t survived the journeys despite the big man’s efforts.

  Weather didn’t make things easier. Indeed the persistent tropical turbulence, even at intensities which would barely register with hardened Dakota crews, proved continuously troublesome to ex-internees with frail
digestions. Despite the crews’ best efforts, there was almost always some air-sickness and, as they rapidly learned, one ill passenger often set the rest going. A continuously wearing experience for those who flew daily.

  The squadron was now flying at an exceptional rate, bringing out passengers in increasing numbers with each passing day. Relentless fatigue was the inevitable result. But the offsetting beauty of the work was already becoming apparent, with the occasional reward being the thin, grateful smile of a released internee well enough to manage it.

  After work, and especially for those lodging in the city, came the incongruity. Their housing, originally belonging to Dutch colonists, had in the main been occupied for the past few years by conquering Japanese forces and was in a poor state. Water supply was intermittent, as was electricity. The city, which for centuries had been the pearl of the Netherlands East Indies, had been thoroughly neglected for the duration. Buildings were shabby and, to a greater or lesser extent, in disrepair, while the canals which had originally formed an attractive feature of Batavia had become clogged and allowed to deteriorate until they were little more than muddy and fetid drains.

  The natives of the city were proving an awkward mixture of the very friendly and the sullen. The airmen had received an outline brief on the political background to the operation, and were now seeing daily and tangible evidence of the underlying tensions in the many slogans scrawled on walls and tramcars:

  ‘Better to the hell than to be colonised again.’

  ‘Any effort to dominate us will be extinguished with our blood.’

  And the clincher: ‘Any nation has an absolute right to maintain their national independence.’

  In the light of hard evidence that powerful currents swam below the surface, the men grumblingly accepted the curfew. And they had, for the time being, banished any serious thoughts they might earlier have harboured of early repatriation. Although they naturally still speculated occasionally, and it was to this subject that the two sergeants turned one evening as they finished off their beers.

  “You can imagine the scene in the Air Ministry,” said Freddie, “if they ever get round to thinking of getting us back home. Some chinless group captain – a scribbler most probably – will raise the question with a Foreign Office official about the length of time we’re likely to be here.”

  Ray immediately cottoned on to the spirit of the scene. “Yes, and I bet the pinstriped wonder will come back with an answer. ‘Your 31 Squadron – didn’t I hear that they’re doing jolly well out there? I should think it’s all too complicated to replace them. Just leave ’em there for the duration.’”

  The two men chuckled as they drained their glasses and watched another Seaforth Highlander patrol past.

  “Cheers!”

  The toast was to going home. But they were coming to terms with the fact that it would still be a time yet.

  CHAPTER 15

  Operations picked up pace as the dry season gave way to monsoon, with crews finding they had very little free time.

  “Bandoeng for you tomorrow, Ken.” It was the voice of the ops controller telling him of his crew’s next detail.

  “Okay, mate. A bit of a milk run.”

  “That’s right. You can do it in your sleep.”

  “Yes … well …” Despite his casual acceptance of the task and its seemingly routine nature, Ken knew that these trips were never mundane. Bandoeng lay some 120 miles south of Batavia – about 35 minutes flying time – and the crews on the run would normally fly at least two return trips in the day. The southern town was about 2,000 feet above sea level, and with its pleasant climate had apparently been a favourite hill station pre-war for the Dutch colonists. Since the beginning of their mission the squadron’s job had been to bring out released POWs from the area, and they had already counted their grateful passengers into many hundreds. But soon after the runs started, rebel activity between Bandoeng and the capital had increased, making any form of road transport hazardous.

  The army was finding it impossible to get convoys through and the city’s population had virtually come under siege. So now the outbound flights were also used for resupply, with the Daks being crammed with stores for the garrison as well as clothing, bedding and food for the detainees awaiting repatriation. Indeed, Bandoeng’s survival for almost a year was to be due almost entirely to airlift.

  The town’s landing strip was guarded by a ring of mountains and volcanoes reaching up to over 3,000 feet, so it was by no means a simple airfield to get into and out of. Weather which saw each day start fine and clear would invariably deteriorate rapidly as the hot monsoon up-draughts began to take hold. By early afternoon the uplands would be covered by a boiling mass of cumulonimbus cloud, and crews could almost set their clocks by the arrival of each day’s first thunderstorm. The rocky tops were obscured and the narrow passes between the peaks saw cloud-bases almost at treetop level, with torrential rain reducing visibility alarmingly. Add to that the crashing turbulence as their old airframes bucked and lurched in air stirred both by the storms and by the wind over the rugged peaks, and it had rapidly become obvious that, routine or not, these trips were no mere ‘milk runs’.

  Ken was silent, his mind full of thoughts. Flight Sergeant Ray Fox, their co-pilot, had already fallen victim to Java’s treacherous flying conditions. Ray, who had left theb5m to be given his own crew and promotion, had been the captain of an aircraft flying the Bandoeng run a couple of weeks previously and had run into weather. The irony was that he would still have been alive if he’d obeyed the order for all Australians on secondment to the RAF to return to their parent service, and for a moment Ken wondered what this was telling him about his own dubious situation. But just as quickly, he banished the thought; his place was with his comrades.

  The wreckage of Fox’s aircraft hadn’t been located for a couple of days, and even then had only been seen from the air as an ugly scar on a rocky outcrop and a smear of debris through the jungle canopy. Both would disappear in remarkably short order as rampant jungle vegetation reclaimed its own, and the aircraft’s loss would be consigned to history even more quickly. The dead men’s beds back at Kemajoran had remained empty for barely a couple of days before being taken over by replacements who’d been hurriedly flown in. Ken, and those who were close to the other lost crew members, would miss them. Families back home would receive the dreaded telegrams and, later, a small package of personal effects. But otherwise life would go on. The only way for Ticehurst and his crew to cope was simply to put the images out of their minds and get on with the job in hand.

  They’d all noted from earlier missions that the key to a smooth return to base from Bandoeng on the last sortie of the day was to leave the hill station as early as possible. The weather would be fine for the first rotation, and an early start would permit the fourth trip to be completed before the worst of the day’s cloud built up. That way they could maintain a decent terrain clearance, which not only made the ride more comfortable but also made them less of a target. Getting out of Bandoeng early meant being first in the queue for unloading and replenishing. Which in turn meant being first to land there.

  Thus it was that the following morning found Ken and his crew at the flight-line bright and early, working away feverishly to get their aircraft to the head of the line for take-off from Kemajoran. They’d been woken at the ungodly hour of 3:30 and now, with the sun still well below the horizon, were almost ready. Barring a few last-minute additions, the loading had been completed the evening before; the aircraft was already refuelled and the techies had cleared all the outstanding snags overnight. Thus it was really only a question of updating themselves on the weather and receiving an intelligence briefing before proceeding to their machine and coaxing it into life. Once aboard, they liaised with their groundcrew who already had the starter battery plugged in.

  Their new co-pilot, Keith Smith, was aboard. His crew had been disbanded when his own skipper, Ted Costain, had been posted away. Ted had become in
creasingly eccentric over recent weeks, with his exploits culminating in one trip when the crew found they couldn’t raise the wheels after take-off from their distant destination. The safety pins, which were routinely inserted in the gear retraction mechanism on the ground when the engines were not providing hydraulic power, had apparently been forgotten by the WOp whose duty it had been to remove them before departure. Rather than waste time by returning to land, Ted had spotted a river bank which had looked relatively flat and had plopped the Dak down to have the pins removed. They’d got safely away again and retracted the wheels before continuing to home base, so all had seemed well.

  But the squadron commander hadn’t taken so benevolent a view, and the following morning the captain had found himself standing on what passed for the carpet.

  “That was a stupid thing to do don’t you think, flight lieutenant?”

  “Well it all ended happily, didn’t it?”

  “As it happens, yes. But how did you know the ground was safe and would support the aircraft’s weight? You could easily have broken something or got bogged down.”

  “Judgement. I’ve got a nose for these things. And we didn’t break anything, did we?”

  “More luck than judgement, I’d say. You could easily have ended up losing us an aircraft. Possibly a crew, too. And you’ve heard the intelligence briefings the same as we all have. We’ve simply no idea where there might be hostile forces, and we can’t take chances like that.”

  “Well there weren’t any where I landed. Never saw a soul.”

  Macnamara had seen that he wasn’t getting through to Costain, and had decided that rather than waste any more time they’d just have to agree to differ. But he was in no doubt that if Ted thought he’d been showing good judgement on the previous day’s mission he couldn’t remain on operations. There was only one remedy. And that was a spell of rest and recuperation at the RAF’s off-duty camp up in the cool foothills of the Himalayas. Thus it was that Ted Costain had found himself packing his bags the following day.