by Anne Connor
The blisters on Jock’s hands had healed and hardened. The pick he was given was a blunt cast-off from the First World War. He rested the smooth handle on his bony shoulder, considering the large rock before him. Hitting its centre would be the trick. He swung the pick, up and then down again with all his might. When the tip hit the rock, it bounced off and pain reverberated in every joint in his body. He was glad Horry was further along the road and didn’t witness his feeble attempt. The big boulders he left for the stronger men in the team. He had more success with the smaller ones. After the rocks had been broken, they were thrown to the side of the road. Then a group followed, flattening the surface. A tar truck trailed behind spilling boiling bitumen over the roads. The stench from the black goo hung in the air.
During their morning smoko, Jock and the crew found shade under large trees with roots hanging from the branches. Brown leaves crumbled under heavy army supply boots. The sound of planes came from the south-west. Stan looked to the sky, using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare.
‘American Kittyhawks?’
‘About bloody time,’ said Snowy and leaned back on a tree stump drawing on his cigarette.
At first, Jock was reminded of penny-bungers, until he saw small explosions of dirt and shattered leaves and branches along the road they’d just cleared. Dense droning from engines increased and Jock noticed they were different from the Australian and American aircraft. Huge formations of planes, silver planes with red dots on their sides blackened the sky.
‘Shit! They’re the Japanese!’ he said, almost to himself. Then yelled it louder. ‘IT’S THE JAPS!’
Jock’s ears ached from the sound of the bombing and strafing. The thunderous noise made it hard for him to think with any clarity. It was hard to work out from what direction the planes were coming. It seemed as if they were shooting from the north and the south, from the east and the west. He saw men jump into open trucks and he joined them. Yabby Young flew into the driver’s seat and headed towards the wharf. They were two vehicles short because earlier in the morning, two trucks had headed back to Larrimah Barracks to pick up extra men. The soldiers piled in close together like sheep to the slaughter. Sweaty arms and legs entangled. The corrugated road made the ride hellish. Yabby drove at break-neck speed causing bodies to bounce around.
‘Fuckin’ hell Yabby, if the Japs don’t kill us you will,’ yelled Stan.
Jock landed heavily on the metal tray again and again, his bony elbows, knees and shoulders taking the full force of the impact. His body ached and all he thought of was that he didn’t want to die. Not now, don’t let me die now. My wife and son need me. I want to see my boy grow up. His ears rang with the sound of bombs and strafing. Explosions reverberated through the truck and his body and the sky darkened even more. The trucks sped along the foot of Stokes Hill.
As the harbour came into sight, debris covered the road causing the convoy to reduce speed. Men began yelling and jumping off the moving vehicles, some rolling then crawling for cover under bushes, behind fences or stone walls. Jock rushed towards the wharf where the explosives carrier the MV Neptuna was on fire and engulfed in black mushroom clouds. He watched bombs drop onto the carrier. The explosions rocked the ground, and he was thrown backwards. Those on board the Neptuna jumped into the burning water, black with oil; many were on fire. The scorched men’s screams pierced somewhere deep inside him. Strafing along the water’s edge picked off anyone trying to run for cover. Jock scrambled into the nearest slit trench, curled into a ball, put his hands over his head and attempted to say the Rosary. He could only remember Hail Mary full of grace … and he repeated those five words in his head over and over. A 500-pound bomb dropped close by, then another and another, causing him to rattle around like a cork in an empty bottle. He thrashed against the sides of the trench, his shoulders and hips taking the full force. He tried to stay still, but with every explosion, he was thrown against the hard rock wall of the ditch and pummelled from head to foot. He didn’t know how long it was before he realised hell had subsided.
He uncurled his hands, crept out of the slit trench and looked around for anyone he knew. He saw Tic, Snowy and men from the trucks crawl out of trenches and from behind walls. Nobody spoke; there was nothing to say; they were dazed, dirty, wounded and bruised; clothes were black and torn. Jock moved towards the harbour, drawn to the carnage, wanting, needing to help, but not knowing what to do. The stink of burning flesh, gunpowder and faeces where men had shat themselves from the sheer horror of it, hung in the air. Salty tears – he realised he must have wept during the attack, but had no idea when. He saw charred body parts torched by the burning oil slicks bash against what was left of the wharf. Men screamed and cried out. Crew members crowded onto what was left of the USS Peary. The midship and stern had been bombed; sailors saluted as the ship with them on it disappeared below the surface of the choppy slate Arafura. He looked around and saw Darwin ablaze; black clouds and smoke made it difficult to see. In time, people found their voices.
‘Help over here. I need help over here,’ yelled Yabby, who was kneeling by a young boy covered in blood.
‘On my way mate, coming,’ Jock replied. Together they carried the youngster and placed him on the back of the truck, now filling with the wounded and dead.
‘You’ll be right there son, someone will take you to the hospital.’
‘Where’s my Dad? We were fishing off the pier,’ the boy asked.
‘He’ll be right,’ answered Jock. Not knowing what else to say.
Jock, Tic and Horry waded chest-deep into the sea, sometimes swimming to retrieve body parts and corpses. Burning oil caused skin to peel. Black and pink flesh hung as if thin paper. Jock and Tic swam together towards two sailors hanging on floating debris.
‘I’ll get this one, you get the other,’ said Jock.
Tic swam further out to a sailor draped over a piece of wood. ‘Gidday mate,’ he said as he swam up beside him. ‘Stick with me, I’ll get you back.’ He placed his arm under the sailor’s chin, ready to swim sidestroke back to shore. The man’s eyes were closed and as his head lolled back onto Tic’s shoulder, he recognised the man as one of the sailors in the poker game when he won the bike.
Jock waited in thigh-deep water ready to help Tic lift the sailor onto the truck before swimming out to salvage more bodies. Jock was covered in greasy black streaks, and blisters from swimming too near the burning oil were beginning to form. Salt and oil filled his mouth. He tried to spit but had no saliva.
Tears streamed down Tic’s face. Jock saw the bottom half of the man in his friend’s headlock had been blown away. As they pulled his remains ashore, soldiers lifted the half-man onto the back of a truck before it sped away.
Again, the sound of the crump, crump, crump, of Mitsubishi engines – enemy planes. Strafing along the water and shore forced Jock to shelter under what was left of the pier. He lost Tic and Horry for the second time. This time, the Japanese focused on the town, leaving the harbour to burn, the boats and jetty to sink. The bombers were swift and efficient. They aimed at the Royal Australian Air Force Base and the communications centre, flying systematically along the streets, bombing everything in their wake.
In another part of town, strafing along the Esplanade caused people to scramble down dangerous cliffs to safer pockets. Three guns at a time began shooting at the enemy. Antiquated fuses marked not to be used in tropical weather caused the ammunition to go under and over the planes. Deafening bombs shook the ground. People yelled, ran and dived into any nook or shelter, slit trenches, gutters, under cliffs. Mushroom clouds from the harbour darkened the sky. Another bomb dropped, a man alone and on fire ran screaming, another bomb fell and another. People were ripped apart, arms and legs flung into trees. Soldiers were shooting, yelling, screaming. Hundreds of overhead silver planes dropped parcels of evil and destruction. Aircraft so low the smiling faces of the Japanese pilots were seen. The face of a child’s doll was smashed, debris was everywhere.
The Royal Australian Air Force Base, town centre – nowhere and no-one was spared. Thirteen warships were sunk. Wharfies were killed and ninety-one sailors died, many not yet twenty.
When the planes faded into the distance, Jock crept out and looked for his mates – anyone. He made his way into town. Black smoke hid the sun. Chaos and panic everywhere; men lay dead in trenches as if they were sleeping, still holding guns as they tried to protect the town.
He walked through twisted, tangled metal, broken concrete, shattered glass, the dead and wounded, and broken china and furniture. Skeletons of buildings stood where once a town thrived. Footpaths and roads were strewn with mangled corrugated iron, bricks and metal. Jock found it hard to work out where he was. The place was flattened and carpeted with rubble. He helped, most people did, trying to put out fires, but with limited resources, no leadership or direction – it was a matter of moving wreckage from one pile to another.
Amidst the carnage, he realised he was near the post office, telephone exchange and the cable office. A car on its roof, crushed and crumbled, had ended up where the post office counter used to be. He remembered his conversation with the Postmaster, Hurtle Bald, on the day he posted Bess and Cleary’s Christmas parcel.
‘Except for a direct hit, this bomb shelter is the safest place to be in an air raid,’ Bald had said.
On that day, Jock watched the ground being excavated five feet deep, thirteen feet long and three feet wide. Two railway irons running its full length were dropped in to reinforce the sandbags. A galvanised iron lid had covered the slit trench.
As Jock walked among the ruins, he was amazed at the enemy’s accurate aim. A 500-pound bomb had landed right on top of the shelter, killing the nine employees of the civilian communications’ base. Battered, bleeding and covered with dirt, Hurtle Bald was in a sitting position on the ground. His arms and legs looked broken. Iris, Hurtle’s eighteen-year-old daughter, lay a distance from the crater with part of her head blown away. Jock remembered overhearing Iris making plans to see her friends at the Star Theatre the following Saturday night. Further on lay Emily Young, who had stayed in Darwin because she didn’t want to leave her husband Jim, who owned a garage in Smith Street. Emily’s head was caved in. The man hanging in the fork of a tree was unrecognisable.
Rescuers at the scene pulled the curtains from the post office windows and Jock helped cover the women’s bodies until they were placed on stretchers and driven to the mortuary.
It took forty-two minutes for Darwin to be broken.
As Jock had floated on his own in the billabong that morning, dreaming of happier times with Bess and joking with his mates, four Japanese fighter ships dropped anchor two hundred and thirty-six miles off the coast. Zeros, Vals and Kates hovered over flight decks; engines roared – deafening. Propellers turned gradually at first, rotating at full speed within seconds. One by one, they took off, wheels folded. The morning sun gleamed on shiny wings. They gathered into formations and headed for their targets with their Commander Captain Mitsuo Fuchida’s orders ringing in their ears, ‘Kill anything that moves.’
At 9.30 am, Father John McGrath, a missionary on Melville Island, phoned the Darwin Wireless Station alerting them to a large number of planes passing over, heading south. Lou Curnock, officer-in-charge, took the call then phoned the Royal Australian Air Force Base to relay Father McGrath’s message.
‘A large number of planes, high in the sky, just passed over Melville Island.’
‘Don’t worry. We are expecting Catalina’s from Timor,’ said a scratchy voice on the other end of the phone.
‘How many are you expecting?’
‘Half-a-dozen.’
‘Well, a large number isn’t half-a-dozen,’ said McGrath.
‘We don’t want any information from you. We have the situation in hand.’
Frustrated at not being taken seriously, Curnock hung up and began to call the navy when the first swarm of Zeros dropped their bombs. Ear-splitting bombs fell again and again and again. Everywhere, what they described as nip planes.
The next morning, trucks picked up the dead and drove them to Mindil Beach where hundreds of bodies were waiting to be buried. With not enough functioning equipment to bury the corpses in time, stray dogs feasted on the carcasses, now flyblown and so bloated in the heat they looked too big for their clothes. Faces had changed. They were taut as balloons, turning from grey to purple, then in time to black.
Jock had spent the night in the shell of the Bank of New South Wales building in Smith Street. Windows had exploded and half the roof had been blown away. He cleared broken glass, twisted metal and sheets of timber to find a spot at the back of a wall where he could rest. The brick building was the safest place to shelter for the night. A sign, CASHMANS written in large letters, rested on the shop next door. Sheets of corrugated iron lay on the roof of the veranda.
He didn’t sleep. The slightest movement caused pain from the burns and he was on alert for more attacks. At daybreak, the sound of gunfire alarmed him. He soon realised the shooting was ground-fire and he crept along on his stomach taking the tops off blisters on his thighs, shins and arms. He peered through a hole in the wall that had once been a window. Through a cloud of dust, he saw a provost martial driving an army jeep with the canvas top ripped and blowing in the wind as if a half-mast flag. A military policeman stood in the passenger seat hanging onto the windscreen, shooting into the air. Jock kept out of sight and waited until they passed, then crept out into the street – hungry, thirsty, confused and on his own again.
Further along the road, more provosts carted out fridges, foodstuffs, furniture, radios and linen from empty houses. While the household goods were stacked into canvas-covered army trucks, armed guards stood on the footpath. Jock walked on; more looting took place in other parts of town. Police and soldiers scavenged household items. We’re in shock, Jock thought as he watched people dazed, ignoring the looting around them.
On the way back to his barracks, Jock caught up to a couple of Royal Australian Air Force men. Their uniforms were torn, their skin scratched and blackened. One had a bandaged arm in a sling made from an air force shirt.
‘Where you off to?’ asked Jock.
‘Orders are to walk half a mile along the road to Adelaide River, then half a mile into the bush,’ said the one with his arm in the sling.
‘That’s right, then we’re to stay put and they’ll come and give us food and water and tell us what to do next,’ said the other. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and waved his arm in the direction of the town. ‘Not safe in there, mate. There’s looting and the provosts have taken over the place and they’re as mad as blazes.’ He looked at his friend who was nodding in agreement.
‘Last night, they were drinking at what was left of The Don, walking through streets, drinking out of bottles and shooting at signs, headlights out of vehicles, pieces of corrugated iron, anything…’
‘You’d be safer with us, mate,’ said the other.
‘No thanks, trying to get to Winnellie. I’ll keep going, thanks all the same.’ Jock waved and walked on.
There was no direction coming from the Administrator, Aubrey Abbott. Earlier on, Jock had seen him and his wife driving along the road to Adelaide River. Wooden boxes filled their car and were tied to the roof.
The barracks were deserted when he got there; not a soul was around. Jock looked for water and food first and saw how Winnellie had taken its fair share of battering from the raids. A number of buildings were still standing, though others had been flattened. He found what was left of the kitchen and helped himself to fresh water and tins of sardines. He hadn’t eaten or had water for nearly two days. He rested on a piece of rubble in the shade of one of the few trees left standing, ate, drank and wondered what to do next.
‘Oi Jock, got a drink for a couple of old mates?’
Tic and Horry walked out of a shattered building at the far end of the barracks. They were dirty and their uniforms were torn. Ot
her than that, Jock was pleased to see they were in good shape.
‘Well there’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Jock said.
‘We thought you might come back here,’ said Tic.
‘Just like a battered old homin’ pigeon,’ said Horry with a big grin on his face.
Jock was pleased to be the focus of Horry’s insults again.
‘Orders were to go bush,’ said Tic.
‘Go bush,’ said Jock. ‘A couple of RAAFies said they were told to go a mile along the road and half a mile in the bush and to stay put.’
‘Nah mate!’ said Horry as he kicked a piece of rubble on the ground. ‘You’ve got it wrong. The orders are just to go bush. They came from a digger who got the order from someone at the RAAF base, who got it from someone else. It was for everyone, not just RAAFies.’
‘Going bush doesn’t give me confidence we will be found and given food and water,’ Jock said. He pointed to what was left of the kitchen. ‘We have food and enough water here for a while, so there is no benefit to traipsing off into the bush. I say we stay put until rations run out and then decide what happens next. Orders may have come through by then.’
Tic and Horry nodded in agreement. While they were the same rank, Jock’s maturity took over and the two younger men looked up to him.
As day three broke, Jock, Tic and Horry walked into town to help, moving rubble and throwing it into trucks to be carted away. The streets in the central part of the settlement were covered in debris and Jock knew it was important to have cleared routes for defence force vehicles and ambulances.
