Defend or Die

by Gillian Chan

I almost didn’t recognize Yank when he turned to face the sergeant. His lips were skinned back from his teeth in a snarl, and his eyes were wide and staring. “If we kill them now, we won’t have to face them again when they’ve been patched up and sent back in,” Yank shouted.

  “Are you mad? That will make us no better than them.” Sergeant Oldham sounded shocked. “Get back in line, Wardlow, and we’ll forget this happened, put it down to battle madness.”

  Yank was muttering to himself, but he did as he was told. The delay had allowed the enemy to pinpoint our position and we were coming under pretty heavy fire, and taking casualties. There was nothing for it but to retreat.

  Ike cried out. I turned towards him, dreading what I might see. Blood was sheeting down his face from above his left eye. I grabbed a field dressing and pressed it to the wound. He yowled and twisted away from me, bringing his own hand up to the wounded area. His fingers grasped something and he pulled and twisted until he pulled out a one-inch piece of shrapnel. “Now you can play nurse,” he said.

  I was glad that he was joking, but the wound looked deep and wide. He slapped the dressing on it and I taped it in place, just as we were given the order to fall back to the bungalows.

  We tried to make a stand there, but it was no good. The Japanese were streaming out of the village to attack and dislodge us. They had no fear and were running as close to the bungalows as they could, lobbing grenades in. Ike was like a whirling dervish, picking them up and throwing them back as fast as he could, but his luck wasn’t going to hold much longer.

  The firing was coming from behind us now. I was praying that the Japanese had not outflanked us and got near the prison, our jumping-off point. A runner came bursting into our bungalow, bleeding from a wound in his arm, and made straight for Sergeant Oldham. He doubled over, his hands on this thighs, gasping for breath. It was almost a minute before he could speak and even then it was hard to make out what he was saying, so it was a surprise to me when Oldham yelled, “We’re retreating, boys. The major’s sent word that the enemy is breaking through by the prison. Follow me!”

  We did. I was dreading going back through the graveyard and across the open ground, convinced that we would come under fire from in front and behind, because, as sure as eggs are eggs, the Japanese would waste no time pouring back into the bungalows.

  Yank didn’t move from his position by the window facing out towards the advancing Japanese soldiers.

  “Come on, Wardlow! It’s time to go.” Sergeant Oldham had stopped in the doorway.

  “No can do, Sarge,” Yank said. His face was still twisted in the manic snarl of earlier. “I’m staying put. I’m going to kill me as many of the Japs as I can!”

  “Yank!” Ike’s voice almost broke. “It’s suicide if you stay.” He moved as if to pull Yank away from the window.

  Without turning, Yank pushed him away. “Go, Ike. Don’t waste time on me. I’m staying. We’re not going to make it out of this, and I won’t be captured!” He was back and firing out of the window as if we no longer existed for him. Nothing did, just his rifle and the advancing Japanese.

  Oldham had watched this exchange but said nothing more. He just waved one arm to indicate that it was now time to move on out.

  I was the last one out and I turned for one final look at Yank. He wasn’t even bothering to duck for cover behind the window frame between shots. He was yelling in a singsong voice, “Come and get me! Catch me if you can!”

  I ran to catch up with the others.

  Sergeant Oldham had found cover behind a low wall and he and the eight men remaining were firing at the bungalows. Since fire was being returned, I knew that Yank must be dead or wounded. I hoped that he had got his wish and taken a few out with him.

  Sergeant Oldham had been taking stock and had a plan. “We’ll split up and head for Stanley Prison in two groups of four.” As he talked, his eyes flicked over each face, making sure that we were taking in what he said. “Corporal Durand didn’t make it, so I want you, Finnigan, to stay with me. We’ll keep most of the ammo and give the rest of you some cover. Understood?”

  His words were greeted with a strangled yelp. It took me a moment to realize that Freddie Durand was the one who had made it. He was the lance corporal’s younger brother. “Can I go back for him, sir?” Tears were gathering in his eyes.

  “No!” Oldham’s reply was fierce. “You’ll only get yourself killed too, and for what? The only thing you can do for your brother now is survive.” He looked at each of us in turn. “What I’ve said applies to you lot too. If someone goes down, you have to leave him. You’ll be under heavy fire and if you stop for any reason, you’ll just give the enemy an easy target. Are we clear?” He stared hard at us until everyone had either nodded or mumbled agreement.

  Ike went in the first group.

  Oldham handed me a Bren gun. He had a Lewis and we started firing in bursts back at the bungalow.

  “Keep moving along the line,” Oldham yelled to me over the noise of our guns. “We can try and fool them into thinking that we’re all pinned down here. That way they won’t know that the others are trying to make it back.”

  I don’t know how long we kept that up, but it seemed like hours. We were running low on ammo and then some shots started coming from a machine gun behind us. We were pinned down.

  Oldham was sweating — the only sign on his face of how serious our predicament was. I started to speak, but he angrily gestured to me to be quiet. I didn’t know why at first. Then he said, “Listen to the machine gun. Time how long he fires before he reloads. When the next lull comes we’re going to run like the hounds of hell are after us, boyo. Agreed?”

  We did just that, and where my longer legs gave me speed, Oldham kept up with a kind of scampering run. He was grinning like a maniac and kept yelling, “Woof, woof!” at me.

  It was then that I tripped and hit the ground hard. I was winded and struggling for breath, trying to get to my feet, sure that any minute the machine gunner would start aiming directly for me.

  Rough hands pulled at me. Sergeant Oldham had ignored his own instructions and had stopped and was doing his best to yank me to my feet.

  “Come on, Finnigan!” he yelled. “Come on, you big lout. I’m not leaving you here.”

  It was hard. There were near misses, but we made it back to Stanley Prison. My legs were bleeding from small scratches and my ribs were going to hurt like hell soon from the fall, but I was in one piece.

  Sergeant Oldham was in similar shape, perhaps even more out of breath than I was, but he still pulled it together enough to ask Major Parker if we were the last back. The major was counting everyone back in, tear tracks on his cheeks. “No,” he said. “Sergeant MacDonell and Lance Sergeant Ross are still out there.”

  I wanted to go and find Ike and make sure that he had made it back safely, but something held me there. We stood without speaking until finally MacDonell and Ross came limping in.

  We made our way back to Stanley Fort to find the others and regroup, knowing that we’d probably make our last stand there. The Japanese seemed unstoppable. We had fought all through the afternoon, lost God knows how many men, and yet again gained nothing.

  I couldn’t resist asking Sergeant Oldham why he had stopped for me, when he had told us specifically that we weren’t to do that.

  He gave me a sly, sideways look. “You’ve improved so much, Finnigan, I didn’t want to see all that new soldierly know-how wasted.” His moustache twitched and I could have sworn he was fighting hard not to smile. “Anyway, a little chap like me isn’t going to provide much of a target.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I grinned at the old bastard, but all he did was harrumph and look away.

  It was chaotic back at the fort, but I found Ike having his shrapnel wound stitched up. On the way back, he’d got a bullet graze on the other side of his head.

  “Yank?” Oldham had obviously been watching the other men come in and hadn’t seen him.

 
; I shook my head and told him what had happened.

  He whistled through his teeth and said, “What a foolhardy, brave guy! And you, you and Oldham, you’re up there in the bravery stakes too, staying behind so we could get away.”

  I laughed and pooh-poohed that. “I’m not brave,” I said. “I was just following orders!” I told Ike about Oldham stopping for me.

  Ike shook his head and whistled through his teeth again. “Now that is brave. Did you thank him?”

  I felt shame wash over me. I hadn’t.

  “Make sure you do, Jacko, because whatever you may think of him, the sergeant has looked out for us all throughout this mess.”

  Sham Shui Po Camp, Kowloon, January 1943

  It took a while for the numbers to be known, but in that mad, magnificent charge and battle on Christmas Day, 26 men were killed and 75 were wounded out of the 120 who went in. Math is not my strong point. I can’t tell you what percentage that is. I just know it was too many. And for what? We might have slowed them down a little, but we knew before we went in that the Japanese had won.

  Stanley Peninsula, December 25–26, 1941

  There was no last stand.

  We were still skirmishing with the Japanese through the evening when around about 2030 hours a big staff car with a white flag waving from its side window came up with the news that the governor of Hong Kong had officially surrendered at 1515 hours. Five hours ago, right when we were in the middle of fighting our way back from Stanley Village.

  Brigadier Wallis, stiff-necked to the end, wouldn’t believe it and wanted it in writing, but the fighting stopped. The Japanese guns fell silent and so did ours. The two sides made no contact with each other then.

  I felt numb, hollowed out, with no idea what to do next.

  Sergeant Oldham rounded up what was left of our platoon, made sure we all found some food.

  “Right, boys,” he said. “You are going to go into Stanley Barracks and find yourselves nice clean beds, which you will dirty up because there’s no water for washing, and you will sleep. That is a direct order! Tomorrow morning you will come and find me at 0900 hours sharp.”

  We were like ghosts — too tired and drained to talk. All we were good for was following orders. So that is what we did.

  The next morning I waited for the Japanese to appear, to come and crow over us, but they didn’t. We’d probably hit them as hard as they’d hit us. We eyed each other up, but nothing more. We didn’t know then about the massacres or what happened at the temporary hospital in St. Stephen’s College.

  Sergeant Oldham was waiting for us outside the barracks at 0900 hours. None of us were late. He had rounded up shovels from somewhere and handed us each one, before leading us back to the ground we had fought over only yesterday. We buried our dead where they lay. The sergeant collected their identification discs. No one said very much.

  Freddie Durand fell to his knees and cried when he found his brother lying behind one of the gravestones in the cemetery. Our lance corporal looked much younger in death, no worries wrinkling his forehead. Ike and I got busy on a grave while Sergeant Oldham talked softly to Freddie, telling him that he needed to concentrate on surviving now, so that someone could go home and tell their parents what had happened.

  We found Yank in the bungalow beneath the window. He had taken a shot to the head. When I glanced out I could see he had got his wish. There was a pile of Japanese bodies outside. I wanted to run out and find the nearest Jap and bayonet him, stab him repeatedly. Something must have shown on my face, because Sergeant Oldham covered Yank’s face with a towel. He looked at me hard. “Can you do this, Finnigan?”

  I took a long, shuddering breath and fought to regain control. I didn’t trust myself to speak, but I nodded and knelt down beside Yank, lifted him into my arms and staggered out to the grave we had prepared.

  “Look,” Ike said. He pointed towards a plume of smoke that was rising from the beach. “The Japs are taking care of their dead too.”

  I knew then that among them would be someone just like me, someone who had lost good friends.

  Sergeant Oldham came up beside me, dug his shovel into the ground and rested his chin on its handle. “In the thick of battle, you forget that they’re men like us, soldiers following orders, don’t you, boyo?”

  “You do, Sarge.” His words echoed my thoughts exactly.

  We stood there silently, leaning on our shovels, reluctant to move on. I turned so that I faced him. “I wonder what comes next.”

  With his head on one side, Sergeant Oldham said, “The mundane first. I got orders in the morning’s meeting that we are to take our weapons and lay them down in the storeroom in the fort. Then we wait, boyo, we just wait to see what they do.”

  I shivered. The future was uncertain. We were prisoners and no one had any idea how long we would be in captivity. The brutality I’d seen from the Japanese scared me, almost more than the fighting I’d been through.

  “Sarge,” I said, “I’m scared of what’s coming next and whether I can get through it.”

  “We’re all scared, Jack, but you can’t show it. As to getting through this, I got you through the fighting, didn’t I, boyo? So, I promise I’ll get you through this.” Tapping his nose with his finger, Sergeant Oldham walked over to where Ike was digging.

  I believed him. I had to.

  Sham Shui Po Camp, Kowloon, January 1943

  I said I’d write what happened to bring me here and I’ve done it — not a moment too soon.

  A group of us have been isolated, checked over medically, inoculated against God knows what and now we’re waiting. We’re on the next draft to be sent to Japan.

  We’re the first Canadians to go. I don’t want to go, don’t want to leave Ike and Paddy behind. Sergeant Oldham is in the draft too, and so is Killer. All his bullying of others for their food has just served to make him fitter than them. There’s rough justice for you.

  I’ve decided not to risk taking my account with me. The pages are so ragged that I don’t know that they would survive a sea journey and I don’t know what to expect once we’re in Japan. There are rumours that we are going to be put to work in mines and factories. I’m dreading it because I can’t imagine that the conditions will be any better than here, and they will probably be worse.

  Once I finish this last entry, I’m going to smuggle this account out to Ike. He and Paddy are staying here. They’ve promised they’ll keep it safe.

  Epilogue

  Toronto, Ontario, February 1946

  I finally did it yesterday, went to Spadina Avenue and found Caplans’ Deli.

  I’d only been home three days from the hospital and the family was all over me the whole time. It was a continual party, neighbours coming and going, my buddies from school, Father Donovan from the church, Sergeant Donaghue. From what I gathered, Ma had been keeping everyone updated when she came back from visiting me in hospital, but they all wanted to see me. What could I do? She was so happy and Tom was proud too. He kept calling me a hero and clapping me on the back. I didn’t blame them, not after the worry they’d been through. They’d heard nothing from November 1941 until nearly a year later when my name showed up as being a prisoner in Hong Kong. Even then they never got a letter from me.

  They wrote weekly, Ma said, but I never got a single one of those letters. They’re probably mouldering away even now in a post office in Hong Kong, or maybe the Japanese burned them — who knows? Just one letter would have meant so much. Tom told me that Alice wrote too. She had asked him how to address her letters, but they never arrived either.

  They never knew that I had been shipped to Japan to work in the coal mine at Omine. Even when the war ended, they didn’t get a telegram to say I was safe and in an American hospital in the Philippines until nearly three months later, and by then I was judged well enough to be shipped back home.

  When I finally made it back to Canada in December 1945, there was so much to catch up on, even though I was stuck in hospital sti
ll. Ma came to visit often and she always brought either Tom or one of the girls with her, so I learned all that had happened since I’d been gone. Tom was married and had a little boy now. I was touched that he and his wife had called him Jack, after me, but it made me sad, since they probably thought that I wasn’t coming back.

  My sisters were going out with young men now. One of them was an Air Force guy who’d spent time in a German POW camp, so he knew a bit about what I’d been through, only the Germans were never as brutal as the Japanese. Bernadette didn’t have a young man, of course; she’d gone to be a nun just like she always wanted, and was a novice at Marymount now — Sister Immaculata. I promised Ma that I’d go and see her on the next visiting day.

  I could hardly cope with the constant flow of people. The noise, the food and the questions — especially the questions — were too much. Everyone meant well, but there was no way that I could describe it to them, not really. Unless they’d been there, there was no way that anyone could understand what it was like — fighting over the same damn piece of land, watching men break under the strain, seeing men beaten to death, being beaten yourself to within an inch of your life, being crammed into the hold of a ship for what seemed like forever and with hardly any air, labouring in a mine and being so hungry and cold that you can’t imagine ever feeling warm again, or ever feeling like a human being again.

  It was the pity in people’s eyes that was the hardest to take. I knew that I was a shadow of the old Jacko, the lanky teenager who made a joke out of everything, who was athletic and popular. I was down to 90 pounds when we were liberated — a shambling skeleton dressed in rags. I’m back up some, but I can’t eat any more, not like I used to do. Too much food makes me sick. My scars are visible too, hinting at things that most polite people would shy away from mentioning. Most are hidden, like the thin ones across my back from the Kamloops Kid’s stick, but the one on my face and my busted nose are there for everyone to see. No one says anything, but their eyes slide off my face as if they are embarrassed.