Ghosts of the Empire

by Justin Sheedy

  But then one night after lights-out the lights were switched back on. With a bunch of half-awake others, Mick was hustled onto a bus. It trundled down the Pacific Highway through the blacked-out suburbs of Sydney’s lower North Shore, crossing the Harbour Bridge to where, for Mick, it had all begun: Dalgety Wharf, Woolloomooloo.

  Stepping off the bus in almost total darkness, the air of the still, warm night was thick with the smell of salty harbour rot and diesel oil, in Mick’s ears the soft clopping of many feet on wood. When his eyes adjusted, he could make out the iron hull of the ship next to which they stood, its rail high above them. Leading diagonally up towards it was a gang-plank. A grave-sounding young naval officer checked off their names on a clipboard, directing each of them in turn to get aboard with his duffle-bag – and trunk if of officer rank, up on deck each man to be issued with a life-belt to be kept very firmly on at all times. When the Lieutenant asked Mick where his officer’s trunk was, the straightforwardness of Mick’s reply induced chuckles from those who heard it: ‘Uh, bottom o’the ocean, sir.’ Though quite unintended by Mick, it broke the tension of the moment for those nearest on the wharf.

  Though the Lieutenant wasn’t chuckling. His face remained exactly as it had been. He seemed about to say something, though he didn’t. He only motioned Mick up the gang-plank. ‘Name,’ he said to the next in line.

  Up on deck, still in darkness, Mick heard one of the others, a slight smile in the voice…

  ‘No streamer-waving crowds, I see.’

  Then another, softer…

  ‘Seems like the whole world’s gone to sleep.’

  Still another, though this voice clear and resolute…

  ‘To be perfectly frank I had been expecting a band.’

  Mick and many others joined in the laughter.

  *

  There was no more laughter, and not much further talk, not across the Tasman Sea there wasn’t, for the next few days Mick conscious of little except the heaving bow of the ship. He did, however, gain a horrendously full appreciation of where the word ‘chunder’ had come from: apparently an ancient maritime warning to anyone looking out a porthole directly below yours.

  Watch Under.

  Though, as they weren’t even on the menu in the ship’s galley, precisely where all the diced carrots were coming from remained a mystery.

  As the days rolled on and it became apparent to Mick that he wouldn’t actually pass away, he managed to take in a bit of the sea air, and of the strange new world all around him: The RMS Spirit Imperial was a British coal freighter. She steamed in formation with about forty other ships of all sizes, types and nations apparently, and all only as fast as the slowest ship at 6 knots.

  Mick had always pictured a ‘convoy’ as a long line of ships. It was, in fact, box-shaped – defensive against U-boat attack so the word went, five columns of eight across. The Spirit was towards the back of the ‘box’ and all but one from its outer column, the whole convoy performing zig-zags at predetermined points of the hour so as to vex the U-boats. These Mick was required to search for on ‘lookout’ duty, as were all aircrew aboard. Though Mick felt sure the weather would kill them first.

  In the foul seas of the Tasman through which they ploughed, even the largest ships Mick could see were permanently awash, rolling and pitching ahead as if blind. Though in daylight from the outer rim of the convoy, Mick could see that others had it far worse than he did…

  The little ‘Corvettes’ of the Royal Australian Navy, the ‘shepherds’ of the convoy.

  Beyond the outer column they zig-zagged endlessly, ‘sonar scanning’ for the enemy below, so said a crew member of the Spirit. Mick pitied the men aboard them as they bobbed like toys in a bathtub. A bathtub with U-boats in it.

  *

  Auckland, New Zealand

  Down the gang-plank and onto the wharf, Mick saw more than one bloke kneel to kiss Terra Firma on that crisp, clear morning, the hard wooden surface of the wharf sending a phantom pitch and roll up through Mick’s limbs. Still, although confined to the wharf, it was heaven just to be on it.

  Amongst the throng of aircrew alighting from others ships, Mick was supplied with sandwiches and as much fresh milk as he could drink, the day unfolding in a frenzy all around them as the ships of the convoy were madly refuelled and resupplied, convoy members and military vessels swapping positions round the port. Hour after hour, sailors sprinted up and down ever so slightly ahead of the screams of their Chief Petty Officers, a sound all too familiar to Mick from Initial Training days – Only the uniforms were different.

  In the late afternoon and on the rail of the Spirit once again, Mick watched as two destroyers of the Royal New Zealand Navy filed proudly by, a damn impressive sight, he thought, for a country so small. Speaking to some Kiwi aircrew who’d just joined the ship, they assured him that hundreds of their mates had just boarded other ships in the convoy…

  ‘Nice to see a few Australians in the Air Training Scheme,’ one winked.

  As they watched the rolling hills of Auckland harbour slide away, it struck Mick that he hadn’t seen anything of his departure from his own homeland – too busy getting sorted below decks and then, from the porthole glances he’d stolen, nothing: a blacked-out ship down the harbour of a blacked-out city, and then they’d been through the Heads.

  That night out of New Zealand, the announcement was made: They’d be crossing the Pacific and into the Atlantic via the Panama Canal. Arrival port in England to be announced after Colón, at the far end of the Canal. No San Francisco.

  Anyway, Colón was rumoured to be ‘exotic’.

  *

  As the Pacific Ocean churned past, Mick was beginning to gather that, for the young men of the Scheme like himself, the route to England and the type of ship you got were a matter of purest luck.

  Amongst those who weren’t still being seasick, the talk was about the truly magnificent ships they might have got, an Australian Sergeant-Pilot by the name of Matthews being the self-appointed expert on the subject: The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth had transported troops out of Sydney Harbour earlier in the year, he said, though the Aquitania was considered the plum ride: She’d transported troops to the last war in actual luxury – ‘Or strike me down!’ he vowed. She’d made this very trip just recently, he said, not in convoy though; too fast for one: 35 knots! No error, a floating palace that could outrun U-boats.

  The Spirit was not and could not. Yet as far as Mick O’Regan was concerned it did have one brilliant feature.

  Bernard.

  The ship’s Steward was a slim man of about forty with close-cropped greying hair and a white, brass-buttoned tunic. Though he sounded English he was an Australian by birth, so said Sergeant Matthews, and anyway he’d spent his whole life at sea. Mick’s first impression of Bernard was of a man who never stopped moving, who, despite the appalling conditions of those first weeks, was always immaculately dressed and never seasick. It was only after Mick had made some sort of recovery that he’d been able to focus on this individual who’d kept him and the aircrew boys alive, basically: Mick had learnt from the ship’s doctor that the sort of chronic vomiting they’d just been through could lead to something called Acute Dehydration then total system collapse and death. Yet Bernard had looked after them. He’d plied them with iced water, kept them eating, plus maybe most importantly, feeling washed and human. Mick thanked the man one day out of New Zealand.

  ‘What’s kept you boys from going under,’ countered the steward, ‘is you’re all so dis-gustingly fit…’

  There’d been a few jokes going round about Bernard…

  The fact he’d kept up breakfast in bed for them even though they were on the mend had a few of the lads on the defensive; conferring upon him the nickname ‘Mother’ Bernard. Yet the rumours ebbed away when it sank in that this man had the respect of the ship’s crew, hard as nails, and when the aircrew boys realised the simple truth…

  Aircrew had to make this ocean crossing once. Under
military orders now, they no longer had any choice, yet it was one crossing only. Mother Bernard had done it many times already. Although a member of the Merchant Marine, he was a civilian: He’d had the choice. And had chosen to continue even after war had broken out.

  The lads had joked, initially, about Bernard’s morning insistence on addressing the young Sergeants as ‘sir’ – As Sergeants, they were not entitled to that. However, with the U-boat ‘Wolfpacks’ drawing closer, the Sergeants were now calling Bernard ‘sir’, and quite sincerely. No longer Mother.

  Mick was surprised to have a small cabin to himself.

  ‘The right of your rank,’ explained Bernard. ‘Coffee as usual, sir?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Bernard.’

  ‘Oh, and a word of practical wisdom to you, sir…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Accept the small mercies the system offers you. While it does. Usual breakfast, sir?’

  Mick had never known anything like it, and wasn’t complaining… Delicious strong coffee, sugar-dusted grapefruit, ham and eggs – plus iced water with everything.

  ‘A little something I picked up in Canada, sir.’

  ‘You must have travelled widely, Bernard,’ Mick commented between mouthfuls of citrus.

  ‘Oh, everywhere,’ the man replied, laying out Mick’s uniform for the day. ‘It’s been wonderful.’

  Mick hesistated before continuing. ‘But now… with the U-boats out there… Aren’t you scared?’

  The steward’s tone remained light.

  ‘Oh, terrified, sir.’

  ‘And yet you keep doing trip after trip…’

  ‘As will you where you’re headed, sir.’ He arranged and inspected Mick’s tunic on a hanger. ‘One concentrates on the job at hand.’

  Mick pondered on this, breathing the steam off his coffee as the man continued.

  ‘…Nothing special about me, dear boy. Just a volunteer like yourself. Neither of us had to… And now that we have, if you considered the dangers, well, you’d go under, wouldn’t you. So you don’t.’

  Mick took a slow sip. ‘What keeps you going, Bernard? I mean, you, personally…’

  ‘I suppose one takes pride in serving, sir,’ he said, folding a shirt. ‘And in doing what one can – while one can – for those who deserve so much better.’

  *

  Calmer conditions hinted after the convoy swung north. It came as a welcome farewell to the week’s eastward heading along the ‘Roaring Forties’ towards the tip of South America, infamous latitudes, Sergeant Matthews vowed.

  With short, thick red hair and freckly pale skin, Dave Matthews was a tubby sort of bloke and unlike anyone Mick had ever seen: You couldn’t exactly miss him amongst so many fit-looking types; from a bit of a double-chin, his body thickened downwards to an obvious paunch in front and, in profile, well, quite simply he had no arse. Just a straight line joining his back to his legs. Evidently he’d been a Rugby League player, so Mick could only assume he’d been a pretty skillful one. And he was a good bloke, too: Despite seeming to ‘throw’ himself at everything and being a walking encyclopedia on anything you cared to talk about, he never seemed to rub anybody up the wrong way. Perhaps as he proved right on the money with anything he did talk about…

  He told a few still poorly blokes not to worry; with every mile further north, they’d feel better and better. And they did. The days were now warming. ‘The Pacific’, he assured, meant ‘peaceful’.

  With a deckchair in the sun and full health returning to aircrew, so did morale. When off lookout duty, the hours were passed at Poker, Crown and Anchor, assorted games of chance. Shorts and shirts were adopted. However, though the days were turning balmy and quite bearable, Mick felt the tension subsiding being replaced by another: They were steaming closer to the ‘U-boat packs’ every minute.

  In the face of this prospect, a mental escape was devised.

  Two-Up on the aft deck.

  All the way up the coast of South America, Sergeant Matthews and one called Toohey got rich. Mick at first assumed the game’s founding and capitalising duo had joined forces being both from Queensland. Though he began to suspect the pair had simply conceded that, while they might swindle the whole ship, they’d never swindle each other.

  The Australian game of even odds was in full swing every day from 11. Mick had seen it before, but had never played it. When the ‘Ringie’ called Come in Spinner, one from the crowd encircling entered the ring with two pennies on a small wooden board called a ‘kip’. Then came Fair-Go, the toss, a hush, the pennies came down, spun and settled, the result was called, and mayhem recommenced as serious money changed hands all round. You bet on heads or tails, one of each was all bets off. If the pennies went overboard, the Spinner ran two laps of the ring with his pants off to huge applause. All the while, at the Spinner’s odds of seven and a half to one for three heads or tails in a row, Ringies Matthews and Toohey were raking it in.

  The crossing of the Equator went barely noticed. And though he’d never laughed so much in his life – even when obliged to do his own pants-off laps – Pilot Officer O’Regan settled with the realisation that Matthews and Toohey had either missed their true calling as con-artists, or had just done a very good job…

  They had taken the cargo’s mind off their destination for a while.

  December 1941

  The arrival of the convoy off the coast of Panama coincided with a news flash. Picked up in the Spirit’s radio shack, the details of the bulletin were broadcast on the Tannoy speaker address system over the whole ship. It was the Captain.

  Just hours previously, said the English voice, aircraft of the Japanese Imperial Navy had, en masse, bombed and torpedoed the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour in the Hawaiian Islands. As a result of this unprovoked attack, he said, the United States of America were now at war with Japan, which meant that Britain and the British Empire were also. With as yet unconfirmed reports of Japanese movements south towards British, American and Dutch possessions in the Pacific, now Australian and New Zealand personnel aboard the Spirit could expect to be re-routed back to that theatre – Singapore most likely – in due course. In the meantime, however, they would be staying with the Spirit, which would be staying with the convoy, destination, still England. That, the voice concluded, was ‘all’.

  Well, Mick privately concluded: That was that… Advanced Flying Unit somewhere in Britain then back home; your next stage after AFU was your Operational Training Unit and where were the nearest OTUs to Singapore? In mainland Australia! On the rail of the Spirit, the green jungled coast of Panama so close he could smell it all rotten and musty, Mick had to chuckle: An Australian OTU meant he could end up as close to home as Bankstown on the outskirts of Sydney. Home again.

  Little Bridie would go bananas. Only this time in a good way.

  *

  Stepping down off the ship, Mick’s first impression of Panama City was of a sprawl of white-washed buildings with red-tiled roofs – Spanish colonial style said Bernard, palm trees, white-garbed locals on donkeys, U.S. Servicemen and heat. A heat that might have wholly sapped him if he hadn’t been so relieved for the feel of solid earth under foot once again. Mick had never known this kind of humidity. It actually made it hard to draw breath, a condition for which, as they’d come to expect of him by now, Sir Bernard had a Miracle Cure.

  A local remedy, he explained, with his own twist, naturally…

  White rum, orange and pineapple juice, a dash of lemon, and plenty of crushed ice. His secret ingredient was the mint.

  By the time the Spirit Imperial was on her way through the Panama Canal, the boys were insisting Bernard join them for one daily on the aft deck. As the ship passed sedately through the locks, channels and lakes of the Canal, no U-boat threat so no lookout duty, there was time to relax, chat, get a tan and watch the jungled hills as they passed close by. At times the noise became fantastic, yet only from the insect and birdlife on parade – Bernard knew all their varieties
by name.

  *

  There were always going to be jokes about Colón. The port at the east end of the Canal, according to Bernard the Spanish had named it after their word for Christopher Columbus. Matthews agreed, but maintained the place had, in any event, been known as the ‘Arsehole of the New World’ by mariners ever since.

  Even Bernard confirmed that the city had gained world renown, during the construction of the Panama Railway, for its fatal marsh diseases spread by its equally famous mosquitos and rats – larger vermin including crocodiles and alligators. Most of the diseases had by now been eradicated, he assured, as had many of the crocodiles. Yet it had remained Bernard’s solemn duty to enlighten the aircrew boys regarding the city’s many brothels, about which there were two golden rules.

  Golden Rule Number 1. Don’t.

  Golden Rule Number 2. Don’t.

  There had also evidently been a golden rule concerning the local Tequila.

  ‘Alas,’ conceded Bernard, ‘no one seems to remember what it was…’

  Mick made a last check of his Summer Service Dress in the cabin mirror. Though retaining the normal dark blue cap, this uniform was tan-coloured and of a lighter material to best blues. It felt good, only the second time he’d worn it with wings sewn onto the chest. Bernard tendered his approval, though suggested Mick wear the forage instead of his peaked cap so as to blend in with the Sergeants and lower his chance of being singled out by local pick-pockets.

  The Palais d’Ersulie had been another Bernard tip, his pick of the town’s plethora of shady dives.

  ‘One of the performers there is quite remarkable,’ he’d advised as he picked some speck off Mick’s tunic shoulder, a parting wink in the mirror.

  Mick considered the small gilded card Bernard had left with him. ‘The Pal-aze der… Palayze derse… What sort of place is this?’

  ‘Saints pre serve-us,’ sighed Bernard, a warmly indulgent smile. ‘Palay Der-suhlee.’ Peering back from the cabin hatchway a moment:

  ‘And you’ll see what it is, dear boy… You’ll see.’