Chapter 1 Sword Expert; Prelude to Invasion; Gaol; Stuart of Matapan;....

THE SWORD EXPERT OF KURE

Kinji Kano is a sword expert.

Surrounded by sword blades, hafts and scabbards, he squatted on the floor of his tiny room-at his feet a whetting stone and a bowl of water. Laying aside the shining blade he was sharpening, he rose and bowed in deference to his visitors.

Kinji Kano said that his ancestors had been sword sharpeners in Japan for more than three hundred and fifty years. He loves swords. The art of sharpening them, of tempering and caring for them has been handed down from generation to generation through the centuries. Always has he been a student of swords. He knows the histories of the very famous blades and the names of their equally well-known makers.

The story of the sword in Japan is as old as the story of Japan itself. During the Kamiyo or "Divine Era"-before the Emperor Jimmu Tenno was born of the Sun Goddess-swords were made from copper mixed with other base metals. They were long, double-edged and straight and were made in the Kinki area of Central Japan but they were not good swords because the art of tempering was then unknown.

Later, steel was used for sword making. It was imported by Japanese from China and from Siam, but this was in the days before iron ore was discovered in the sands of some of the rivers of the Shimane Prefecture. This wm ore was called Tamahagane or Satetsu and it became famous because all the finest swords of Japan were made from it. In no other parts of the country has metal been found possessing all the admirable qualities of Tamahagane.

During the Sengoku or revolutionary era the single-edged blade was introduced. The warrior class carried this type of sword but it was awkward to use in battle because it was from six to seven feet long. A powerful horseman was able to wield it but it was seldom if ever used by foot soldiers who carried lances or used bows and arrows.

Some of the Japanese warriors in olden times were men of great strength and size but even so these heavy long-bladed weapons often proved a disadvantage in battle. During the Kamakura period, about six hundred years ago, the blade was reduced to three feet six inches to four feet, and was reduced further during the Tokugawa period about two hundred and fifty years later when it became customary for warriors to carry two short swords instead of a long one.

There were many famous sword makers in Japan before the Spanish and Portuguese came to these shores seeking trade and loot. Early in the Tokugawa era - about three hundred and fifty years ago - many Spanish ships sailed out of the ports of Central and South America crossed the Pacific and came to Japan. They taught Western methods of refining metal and even imported ore from European mines, but apparently they were careful not to divulge the process for making the famed Toledo blade. The Oriental craftsmen found the foreign metal too brittle and they were soon to revert to the Japanese technique of sword making.

Some Japanese families have had swords in their possession for three hundred and four hundred years, sometimes even longer. It is unlawful to retain swords now and they are required to be surrendered as weapons of war.

Many of the ancient family swords have not been destroyed. They are stored in armouries under military control. Some day, perhaps, they will be returned to their owners.

In Japan there was a time, long ago, when swords were regarded only as weapons for self defence. Two very famous sword makers lived in Japan towards the end of the Kamakura era. A quaint story is told of them when they were students. One, Soshu-Masamune made swords which lacked all evil characteristics and killed only when the wearer was attacked, but the other, whose name was Ise-Muramasa, made swords which were destined to shed the blood of innocent victims. Blades made by these two famous makers were placed side by side in a stream. Straw borne down by the current was severed by Ise-Muramasa's evil sword but it would float by undamaged after striking the keen-edged blade of Soshu-Masamune.

Swords were made by hand in ancient times. During the Meiji and Taisho eras sword making became almost a lost art and it was not until early in the Showa or present era that it was revived. It is said that before the Manchurian incident there were only fifty to sixty men in Japan who knew the technique of sword making. During Japan's war of aggressive expansion thousands of swords were manufactured in factories in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto but they were of poor quality. On the island of Shikoku these swords are now being beaten into ploughshares and the munitions factories from which they were produced, are making lathes, saws and saw benches which will be used f or milling timber to build houses to shelter thousands of homeless Japanese.

With Australian and Allied troops, Japanese swords have had a very high souvenir value. Even the swords issued to Japanese policemen have been sought. Some have been stolen. It was found necessary to promulgate a routine order forbidding the theft of policemen's swords. Apparently Australian and other troops have tried to buy them on numerous occasions.

There is the story of an Australian transport driver who hailed a Japanese cop, "Hey, George, where the blazes is this joint Otake?" The policeman, who knew not a word of English, bowed and withdrew a small notebook from his pocket. "I am not allowed," he read in a slow and laboured manner, "to sell my sword, because it has been issued to me as part of my uniform."

It is said that one of the ships of a visiting Navy had a sword mounted on plush in a glass case in the ship's stateroom. The officers and crew were very proud of this sword, which was believed to be as valuable as it was alleged to be ancient. Submitted to an expert it proved to be a common police issue weapon. Some think that one member of the crew could have given a satisfactory explanation. The original sword, ancient and rich in historic associations, had been stolen and replaced in the glass cabinet for many weeks without anyone being aware of the change.

Kinji Kano squats on the floor of his tiny room sharpening and valuing swords for Australians, British and Americans. He will give the history of the sword and its makers. Some of these blades, certified as having slain a thousand slaves, will perhaps be given prominent places in the homes of men who served with the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces.

We all have some queer taste or other.

ALAN QUEALE (Second AIF)

PRELUDE TO INVASION

There was perhaps no other news of the Pacific war which, in its implications of our naval strength, the relative weakness of the enemy's, and the whittled-down potency of his Air Force, signified so much as the first combined Allied naval bombardment of the coast of Japan.

There were sea and land operations which prefaced this bold venture and which are matters for the historian; but here the reader can come to sea with the Fleet on that operation which, with carriers and their bombers continuously blasting the air bases of the Japanese Air Force, merged a short time later into the fierce and concentrated Battle Fleet bombardment of Honshu Island itself.

As in most of the major naval battles of the war Australia was represented here, this time by the destroyer Quiberon. The Fleet which formed up off Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, was a formidable one.

Commanded by Admiral Halsey, it comprised, on the American side, about
- thirteen battleships, including
  - Missouri,
  - Arkansas,
  - Nevada, and
  - California,
- twenty-seven cruisers,
- thirty-three carriers, and
- eighty destroyers;
the Royal Navy being represented by the fighting-wise
- King George V,
- Duke of York, and the
- carriers
  - Illustrious,
  - Formidable,
  - Victorious, and
  - Indefatigable.

The objective of this vast array, as indicated by Quiberon's captain to his ship's company, was to smash Japan's air force, finally and irreplaceably. It was the prelude to invasion.

Some hundred miles east of Hokkaido Island. what would appear to an airborne observer as scores of tadpoles with white tails moving in perfect formation, headed westward through the shadow of the night that lay upon the sea. On closer view the myriad white-waked objects resolved into battleships, carriers, cruisers, and destroyers of the Third Pacific Fleet, forging steadily with dreadful purpose towards Japan. In the centre were the precious carriers, surrounded protectively by the bulking battleships, their huge bridges and fighting tops cliffs of steel rearing above the fo'c'sles. Flanking them steamed the fast, heavily-gunned cruisers, with, thrown out well ahead and on either side, the packs of destroyers. The Fleet was compact and forceful, a disciplined fighting unit of proved efficiency.

All night the ships moved in, completely darkened. Those of their crews who were not actually on watch were snatching what sleep they could; with dawn they expected to be fighting for their lives.

With the first glimmerings of light in the sky astern the alarm bells shrilled their summons. Men closed quickly and quietly up at their action stations, shivering with cold. Then it was light, and the shapes of the consort ships gradually formed from the dimness of the sea; the rakish beauty of the destroyers and the harsh ugliness of the battleships.

For some time there had been pulsing across from the carriers a steady throb of sound, which now and then rose to a full-throated, bellowing roar. The planes were warming up. Then the carriers and their attendant destroyers altered course into the wind and increased to flying-off speed. The big ships shot their fighters and bombers off as fast as deck crews and engines could pull them, one every fifteen seconds. Each plane dipped a little as it swept off the carrier's bow, skidded along just above the sea, gaining speed, then with engine roaring pulled its nose up in a tight bank and headed for the zenith.

Quiberon's gun crews, tin-helmeted and life-belted, looking like cowled monks in their anti-flash gear, stood around her guns and watched the planes circling above their carriers, black specks pregnant with doom. She was in the line of flight, and shortly a bunch of bombers came streaming overhead towards the coast of Japan, the massed thunder of their engines a roar that could set blood on fire. The planes flew at different heights, and high up in the pinking sky another squadron sailed across in terrible serenity. As they went, the sun thrust an arc of lurid light above the horizon. It looked like clouds over the Rising Sun today....

Closed up in the first degree the warships waited; and soon the first messengers of a hurt and disturbed enemy began to appear.

Quiberon and the Royal Navy ships were closer inshore than the Americans, and it was the last-named that the red balled planes headed for.

A modem Fleet barrage, in all its scientific exactitude and concentrated intensity, is a fearful thing. The American ships were throwing up a well-nigh impenetrable wall of bursting steel through which few Jap aircraft succeeded in breaking.

Those that did were either shot into the sea, or tactically avoided. One twin-engined bomber headed for the bulking mass of King George V.

He should have known better.

Flying at wave height the plane coursed towards the "battler's" stern -a line of black wing, two propeller arcs, and in the centre, between them, a black nacelle muzzle topped by a glistening greenhouse. The 8-barrelled pom-pom on "Y" turret was waiting. The layer got on and rested the bomber in his cross wires a moment like a fly in a web. The lines of tracer reached out and nailed him.

He was so close that they could see the bits fly. At exactly the right moment the captain ordered his wheel hard-over and the battleship's stem slewed neatly in under the plane. The Jap hit the water on his belly, bounced, hit again, and dissolved into a ball of flame that darted over the water like snakes' tongues.

There were no further attacks.

All that day while daylight lasted the Fleet's planes pasted the shore; their targets were airfields and any conceivable thing of use to the enemy's war effort. Then, with darkness settling over the sea, the great ships gathered in their deadly broods, re-formed station, and in all its organized perfection the Fleet steamed due south towards Honshu. This was to be the big show.

The bombardment was timed to commence at midnight. At 6 p.m. a heavy force consisting of the United States battleships Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada, and California, and two cruisers, plus the Britishers King George V and little Quiberon detached themselves from the main body and set course for the objective. This was a big steelworks only sixty miles north of Tokyo.

Steaming steadily in close formation the battleships drew nearer their target. Every man of the ships' companies appreciated the tremendous import of the job ahead. Sixty short miles from the capital of the enemy's Empire! This was "sailing into Tokyo Bay" with a vengeance. The Jap had taken things lying down these last few days-a few air attacks in insignificant retaliation for all the smothering weight of bombs cascaded upon him-but surely he would be stung into hitting back this time.

After all, even a battleship must steam within about ten miles of its target, and the presence of an enemy Fleet ten miles from the Nip's sacred shores demanded the utmost savagery of repulsion. So the Allied squadron edged in closer to the shore, like a heavyweight boxer closing in on his opponent, ears, eyes, and nerves strained to the highest pitch of efficiency; stations were manned, radar waves searching the void ahead, asdic the depths beneath, and in each of those huge, gaping-mouthed guns jutting from their turrets a round ton of steel and high explosive waiting for the tiny electric spark which would blow it on its avenging way.

At H -45 p.m. the objective was reached and the squadron deployed into firing order. Quiberon and a Royal Navy destroyer took up station slightly off the quarter of the last battleship in the line, and between them and the target; a grandstand position.

Everybody who could be was on the upper deck to watch-this was something not to be missed. Cotton-wool was plugged into ears, and the padded earpieces of helmets buckled tightly into place. Time crept on. The great ships moved implacably on through the night, in line astern, directors trained on an invisible point to starboard, director layers laid on their artificial horizons, the squatting turrets pointing the same way, their open-mouthed snouts cocked up sniffing tentatively towards the target. The night was perfectly still, the only sounds the whisper of the wind in the rigging and the swish and gurgle of the water along their sides.

The navigator on Quiberon's bridge said softly to the captain: "Twenty-four hundred, sir."

Abruptly, the whole black night erupted into flame and rocked with sound. A sheet of orange flame belched along the whole line, great long stabs of fire that showed fiery red on the smoke that followed and harshly outlined for a brief moment the smoke-wreathed hulls. The battleships heeled with the sudden back thrust of exploding cordite and a mighty, stunning roar thundered into the night. Again and again the guns flashed, not the indeterminate rumble of haphazard firing, but the timed crash of controlled broadsides. Across the sea a line of vicious red bursts edged the shore.

For twenty minutes the satanic serenade went on, a roaring tumult that beat on the eardrums with a physical pain. A mile one way, a mile back again, those awful juggernauts ploughed, pounding the Japanese steelworks systematically to a twisted ruin.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the firing ceased. Stillness fell once more on the night. Soon even the acrid stench of burnt cordite had drifted astern. But ashore, over the steelworks, waxing fingers of red light relieved the darkness.

The turrets of the battleships followed their directors round, the reeking guns settling finally with a satisfied shrug into the familiar fore and aft position. With practised ease, completely untouched, each unit resumed its cruising station and eastward the squadron steamed to rendezvous with the main Fleet.

Shortly afterwards, with the Fleet still off Honshu, the news of Hiroshima's atom bomb came through. But not before a hostile naval force, for the first time in history, had bombarded the coast of Japan-with an Australian ship there to see it.

J. E. MACDONNELL (R.A.N.)

THE GAOL

ALREADY the recollection of Changi Gaol has mercifully begun to fade. But the hard outlines of its walls, the very core of the imprisonment, can never be quite forgotten. Grim, relentless, the Gaol still stands in the memory, as it stands today on a hillside of Singapore, a fitting monument to the misery of those who lately lived and died behind its concrete barriers.

From the start every man knew the Gaol. He had trudged past it on the first march from the surrendered city. He had noted its vast battlements and iron grilles and had muttered, "God help the poor cows in there." His camp was Selarang a mile or so farther on and he thanked his stars for it. But he had not eluded the Gaol.

From all the vantage points of his new home, as he gazed southward towards Australia and lost freedom, its grey tower cut into the sky, a constant symbol of Japanese domination. Like a great ship the Gaol rose above a sea of palms, motionless and inscrutable. Yet somehow it had an air of romantic mystery. The very massiveness of its unyielding masonry, coupled with the tales of horror within its vaults, carried a feeling of awe. In the Gaol were the civilians, men, women, and children, while the Japanese lived in small cottage, clustered about its walls.

Sometimes a man hurried up with the news: "Tom's been pinched outside the wire." Worried voices would ask: "Where have the Nips taken him?" And the reply - "To the Gaol."

To the Gaol! That was bad. Tom might not be coming back, not for a long time.

But as the weeks passed, the Gaol, like everything else in Changi, became just part of the landscape. Even the clock, whose solemn bell tolled out the passage of the hours, ceased to be a reminder of his doom. It was put to a useful purpose, a test of vision.

"What's the time, Dig?" a thin man might ask. With a nod towards the clock, the big chap would answer: "Can't you see the clock?"

"What clock? " says the thin man. The big man looks at him pityingly: "Struth, your eyes must be bad. I can see the big hand easy and the Eye Clinic's got me on marmite." Then they would both peer at the clock, covering one eye then the other, hoping that the vitamin blindness was not gaining ground.

For the staff officers, charged with the responsibility of preserving discipline-and life in Changi, the Gaol retained its menace. For there, in the Conference House, the Japanese held court and issued their decrees. To the staff officers the Gaol was the battle ground on which they fought successive generals, Fukue, Arimura, Saito, in the unremitting struggle for better conditions. If a special conference was called, the official party, protected by carrying a flag, would march down the winding road while the camp waited. Perhaps it was another party for Thailand, another concentration in the Barrack Square, another execution. No one would know until the officers came back from that seat of all infamy - the Gaol.

So it was that in April 1944 when the orders came, "All prisoners, except those for a small hospital camp, to move to the Gaol within one month", they were received with astonishment and dismay. The civilians were moving; no one begrudged them that. Now it was the prisoners' turn.

Rapid calculations were made. The Gaol had been built for six hundred native criminals. The prisoners of war numbered some seven thousand. Such crowding, even for the Japanese, was out of the question. With relief they heard that permission had been granted for the erection of numerous atap huts in and around the Gaol to accommodate the overflow. Most huts were already in use in Selarang. No matter; they must be moved.

To assist in this tremendous undertaking the Japanese had graciously consented to supply motor transport: two trucks. For the rest, for the thousand other things, water piping, paving stones, hospital equipment, yeast-making plants, the theatre, kitchen gear, workshop plant - they were to be moved by hand.

Once again the Japanese had commanded the impossible. The impossible would be accomplished. The prisoners rose, sick and half starved as they were, and welded themselves into one mighty group. For them their direst moments had always been their finest. And they were fine now. From morning till night throughout that month the trailer teams bent their backs. A fine spirit was abroad. In the allotted time, to the wonderment of the enemy, the job was done. The Gaol had claimed them at last!

I Who can forget that first sight of the Gaol as the walls loomed upward and he passed through the steel gate for the first time; the clanking of feet echoing in the tunnel under the tower with the trailer creaking behind; the sudden burst into the harsh sunlight of the courtyard?

Here the teams would pause, panting and sweating. "Well, mate, we're in," someone would say in an effort to express what all were feeling. Members of the advance party gathering round would be asked: "How is she, Jack. She don't look so hot?" There was but one answer: "Bloody terrible."

But if the Gaol were depressing the immediate surroundings were more so. From piles of dusty rubbish the huts were emerging, some finished, some mere roofless shells, some lying, strewn in broken sections. Thousands of men laboured between stacks of broken furniture and heaps of clay from the new latrine holes. Carpenters cursed and built huts without nails or hammers, plumbers spat and installed pipes without wrenches, bank clerks dug post-holes without shovels and miners carried water in leaking buckets. Orders were given, orders were countermanded and General Saito, a somewhat shabby overlord, strode like an emperor amid the chaos of ruins.

Deep in the Gaol the men were settling in. Three to a cell in the long multiple-storied wings, sixty or more in the workrooms, and a couple of companies in the deluxe European block. Even now the air was filled with a stinking density, the atmosphere of steam laundries plus the interior of other people's socks. The corridors resounded with shouts and the clang of boots on iron staircases.

"Where the hell are you going?" You could hear it everywhere.

"Is this cell 14 on A3?"

"You're off the track, mate. This is Bi."

"Then where the something is A3?"

"How should I something know where A something 3 something is. It ain't something here, that's all."

In the kitchen the cooks were turning out the first steam-cooked rice. No time for elaborate doover making or fancy menus now. At the doors hundreds of orderlies lined up for hundreds of pots of rice and stew while others tottered out with cauldrons of tea swaying on bamboo poles.

"Gangway-'ot tea," they shouted. The crowd jostled and milled about them, fighting to get in, fighting to get out.

"Gangway-'ot tea, you Dutch --------"

To which the Dutch replied simply with sober truculence: "Gang-vay-'ot tea."

Somewhere, high on the iron grilles which let the fetid air rise between the cells, men were spreading their rags in preparation for the night. Nearly overpowered by the stench rising from below, they retaliated by dropping cigarette butts on the inhabitants of the lower grilles.

All hopeful sleepers, even as their heads touched the concrete, felt the unmistakable crawling and sharp nips of the other residents of Changi Gaol. Bugs, and, by the million, more bugs. From their crevices in the concrete and between the grids, they marshalled their battalions for mass assault. It was B-day for the insect militia.

Meanwhile in the courtyards a few remnants of the once prosperous concert party were doing their best with songs, dances and jokes until formal lights out. "Formal", since the lights had already failed in a final attempt to make an appalling situation quite intolerable.

The more fortunate, outside the walls, were hunting for level places in the huts on which to sleep. Suffocated by their useless furniture and equally dismayed by their change of fortunes the officers gasped for air and fought bugs. In one or two places colonels and their juniors, whose misfortune it was to try and organize this bedlam, snapped each other's heads off as they pored over plans.

At the extreme edge of the allotted area the hospital was trying to function. Those with dysentery and malaria lay shoulder to shoulder on wooden trestles one hundred metres long. The surgical cases were propped on beds crammed in wherever there was shelter. Medical orderlies brought food and attention, swearing as they tripped over roots still growing in the earthen floors of the wards.

Thus passed the first nights in Changi prison, too sordid for exaggeration, too depressing for ordinary language. But by then these prisoners were professional dwellers in adversity. They had already spent two years behind the wire. The mistakes and anguish of the early months of captivity had taught them, at the cost of lives, the lessons of adaptability. The situation existed, it had to be dealt with: that was all.

So the carpenters made hammers from bits of iron and nails from barbed wire; the plumbers fashioned wrenches from lengths of piping while the engineers turned steel lockers into a complete range of hardware. The librarians ranged books on their coconut-fibre shelves and the bookbinders unravelled fire hose, threaded it into needles made from the spokes of bicycle wheels and started sewing the decaying volumes. The hospital built its operating theatre and X-ray plant. The chemists began dispensing without drugs and the doctors started healing without medicines. From top to bottom of the Gaol the fight for greater comfort went on. The fight was won. That innate faculty for cheerfulness and pride in the makeshift could not long remain dormant in men of such peculiar qualities as the British soldiery.

Soon the plans for a giant theatre, towering even above the Gaol walls, were put in hand. While awaiting its completion the actors staged road shows on improvised stages at which prominent Gaol personalities were interviewed on a wholly non-existent radio hook-up in the session "In Clink To-night". Duettists performed that most brilliant Changi song, "Mad Wogs and Englishmen are Locked in the Local Clink".

Once humour returned the comer had been turned. And when an Australian reported that he had seen with his own eyes, fair dinkum, honour bright, a smiling Dutchman, all knew that all was well.

Changi days were not especially different from other Changi days. When the last stars were battling with the dawn a squad of buglers shattered the gloom with an amazing series of notes representing they averred, the Japanese equivalent to Reveille. All those not out on early shift working parties would thereupon stir themselves.

Scarcely had they done so when the mess orderlies would begin their irritating chant, ."Come and get it." They were referring to a pint of hot water, said to resemble tea, half a pint of ground rice stewed overnight, and a small object, about the size of a piece on a draughts board, made of compressed rice fried in palm oil-the ubiquitous doover. This hearty "break" of a fast of thirteen hours was consumed by the slow eaters in two minutes. Thereafter it was the main topic of conversation until, like the turn of the tide when the ebb draws back the flow, it was replaced by anticipations of lunch.

Breakfast over, the buglers again rent the air and the working parties were marshalled and sent off. Thereafter they were seen no more until they stumped back, tired and dirty, at the end of another day.

For those remaining in camp the Japanese had invented a most unpleasant deprivation, the "light duty" ration. On "light duty", lunch was but a formality, a mere dirtying of the dixie with a spoonful of tepid water holding in suspension a leaf or two and sometimes, if you were a mess orderly or a potential Tattersalls winner, an apologetic lump of tapioca root. For this reason many preferred to forgo their day in camp so as not to miss the half-pint of rice served to the pick and shovel workers.

In camp there was always washing to do. The clothes were rubbed on concrete slabs, swirled in a pint of water, then entrusted to the clothes line picket. These gentlemen, whose physical condition was so low that they were incapable of anything beyond sitting down, issued receipts for garments hung on their lines. Thereafter they brooded over them until the sun had done its appointed task.

You may do a hundred things on your day in camp or, mysteriously, you may do nothing. In this event it was not long before you presented yourself at the library for a tattered periodical or novel whose pages were sufficiently in existence to give the reader a broad general idea of its contents.

Without doubt the evening meal called tea", and by the diehards "dinner", was the big event of the day. The hours of solid discussion which preceded it had keyed the eaters to concert pitch. They already knew, from close scrutiny of the supply depot notices, of what rations it would be made.

Five ounces of rice, half an ounce of fish (whose very aroma would have caused panic and mass resignations in the Health Department), six ounces of greens, half an ounce of tapioca, and a particle of oil, so minute as to be unascertainable without the use of logarithms.

Would there be one doover, would there be two? Would it be a thick stew, would it be thin? Would the rice be a "packed three-quarter", or a loose pint. Would she "go a back-up" and if so, how many? These were the questions of the hour and on the answers, one might have thought, hung the fate of nations. But when you are starving, the world, the universe, is food. Food is the metaphor, the idiom, it is almost all there is of life.

So with the cries of "mess parade" excitement ran through the Gaol. Some men had been lined up for half an hour, determined to get the top of the stew or a packed pint before the orderlies, their courage failing with the fast emptying dixie, reduced it to a loose three-quarter.

When all have been served there comes the tensest moment. Is there anything over and if so, what? There will be no surplus doovers, the exact number has been supplied. But there is probably some stew. "Thirty-one to forty-one for stew! " cries the head of the mess. The eleven lucky men line up again. They all have a mess number and they know it. They know also, from the back-up board, the number of the first man due for an extra issue. During that day, for certain, two men have leant on their shovels on the sand of the aerodrome and have been discussing it.

"Are you in the back-up, Charlie?"

"Yeah. I'm thirty-five. Ought to cop stew. She's on thirty-one."

"Some people have all the luck. I missed pap by one this mornin' and it's me birthday."

The disaster of missing pap by one, the delicious expectation of copping a stew and the hope of rice next Sunday unless those of cooks give it all to their mates in the A.A.S.C., will take the dialogue through the rest of the afternoon.

The meal over, shirts must be put on for the evening check parade, a Japanese mockery of an inspection which took place nightly. There had always been a fuss in Changi about shirts since the illicit sale of these precious garments was most embarrassing to the camp command. The daily appearance in Singapore of coolies wearing Red Cross shirts provided a ready answer for the Japanese to the camp's requests for more clothing.

In an endeavour to put a stop to the black-marketing of shirts, which were sold for the most part by the working parties, it was made an offence to leave the Gaol during the day while wearing a shirt. Before any man left the Gaol he was searched three times by the camp police to ensure that he was not concealing a shirt. Only those who could satisfy the doctors that their backs were unable to resist the tropic sun were exempt. For the remainder it was bare shoulders with the chance of a burning or worse -being suddenly overtaken by a malarial rigor in freezing rain blowing up from Sumatra.

But at 6 p.m. each night these orders were reversed. Thereafter it was an offence to leave the Gaol without a shirt. The reason was twofold; to protect visitors to the outside area from the risk of malaria and to condemn those who had sold shirts to remain behind the Gaol walls.

Thus it was, as with so many Changi orders, that the many had to suffer for the folly of the few. Yet one must pause before passing judgment on those men who sold shirts, camp equipment and even the precious drugs to the Japanese. The starving man, unless blessed with an upbringing which instills an automatic moral sense, will forget everything for food. Changi prison had its full share of delinquents.

Check parade was at 7 p.m. The men lined up in shirts, in companies, in sixes. Presently the same clock struck immediately above their heads with a deafening resonance, after which the buglers, in a frantic effort to outdo it, sent up a piercing caterwauling-the official Japanese "fall in".

Sometimes punctually but more often not, the Korean guards arrived, small men, with big clothes, on bicycles. Thereupon the camp adjutant, a massive major in the Royal Scots, would bellow, "Fall in the guides." The guides, bristling with parade states, conducted the Koreans to the several parade areas. Arriving there, the warrant officer taking the parade would yell "Kiotski." The men then being nominally at attention, he would follow up with "Kashira migi" and secretly pray that those in the front rank at least would give an "Eyes right". Numbering, more saluting, then "Yasume" and the pantomime was over for another night.

After all areas had been checked, the crowd surged through the gates to spend the evening as it chose. For some there would be visiting to do at the hospital, for others a performance at the theatre. There might be a lecture at the Coconut Grove, or a gramophone recital by the Y.M.C.A., or a game of poker, bridge or chess, or choir practice or confirmation class to such a pitch of civilization had the prisoners raised this little world in Changi Gaol.

And so it went on, day after day, week after week, month after month - a terrible monotony made bearable only by the undying spirit that will not admit defeat.

As the Japanese position worsened so the prisoners' material situation deteriorated. The theatre had to be pulled down, lectures were all but forbidden, there could be no music, no singing. The meagre food shrank still further and only by exploiting the black-market sale of watches and jewellery could the necessary extra money be obtained with which to buy almost un-smokable tobacco.

One puff of some of this latter-day "Java Weed" or "Sikh's Beard" was sufficient to anaesthetize the brain, numb the palate, and produce a vertigo and singing in the ears. Yet it was highly prized, being judged superior to dried papaw leaves or desiccated hibiscus tips. The camp had its quota of "bumper shooters", gentry who roamed the corridors barefoot, skilfully nipping the discarded butts of cigarettes between their toes and conveying them to stinking pouches for later consumption. Re-rolled in paper torn from library books they were said to make a delicious blend.

August the 10th was like most other days in Changi. Reveille, rice, work and showers with no water in them. The atomic bomb had quickened some hearts but for the majority, so numbed with the disappointments of chronic over-optimism, it was just another day.

It was on evening mess parade that the rumours started to fly around. Russia was in the war! MacArthur had dropped another bomb! The Emperor was to speak to the Japanese nation! Expectant, but not too hopefully, the prisoners went to bed.

At eleven o'clock the bugles wailed "lights out". Silence. Then at midnight, the news!

Sneaking along the corridors came the radio listeners, so trustworthy in the past but now bursting with tidings no breast could contain. Japan had surrendered!

Into the cells, into the courtyard huts, into the low concrete rooms they came, waking their friends in a fever of excitement. "Listen, mate - she's over. The Nips have had it."

This was too big for belief. The sleepers rolled over. They had been tricked before. But the informers were insistent, angry in their excitement. "You -- fool, it's over I tell you. You're free, son. Get that into your thick ugly skull! " Gasps, stifled cries, tears. Emotion had its hour in Changi Gaol that night.

Out to the urinals they flocked, the only place where it was permitted to go. The Java Weed was passed round, no need to hoard it now, and the huts glowed with the ends of countless cigarettes.

Morning brought an agonizing suspense which grew from day to day as the Japanese guards made no move. Each evening, as the working parties returned to camp they strained their eyes at the flagstaff. The Japanese flag, the "flaming aureole" as the troops nearly called it, still flew. But not for long.

A day came when the local administration reached breaking point. The camp commander was sent for. Reluctantly, and with oriental evasiveness he was told that "hostilities were at an end".

At last, one brilliant morning, at a given signal there were new colours against the sky. To the bugles playing a familiar call the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes and the Dutch flag floated into the wind. The imprisonment was over. Courage, endurance, fortitude-these had brought them through. And faith, faith in the victory which was theirs too. They had beaten Changi Gaol at its own game and now were going home.

Looking through the windows of their plane the prisoners in the first airborne convoy homeward saw the walls for the last time. Amazed, they shouted to each other, as with a single voice:

"Gee, mate, how small she looks!"

David GRIFFIN (Second A.I.F.)

STUART OF MATAPAN

The day before the victory at Matapan Stuart was lying up in Alexandria waiting to be docked. A near miss off Benghazi had blown half her rudder off. Then a string of flags was hauled up Warspite's foremast. It was a general signal from Admiral Cunningham, and it read: "Raise steam for full speed with all dispatch."

Men of Stuart had been praying for such a signal ever since Calabria and it would have taken more than the matter of half a rudder to keep them back; so Stuart sailed out through the boom that day with the rest of the fleet, to glory and a place in the annals of Australian naval history.

With the destroyer clearing the boom mouth into the open sea her crew prepared her for the stem trial they knew was coming. Everything according to the drill books had of course been done. But here was where training and initiative and that intelligent cooperation existing between officers and men, - qualities which have given the British Navy through the years that edge over its enemies entered the picture.

Instead of standing around waiting for the bombers to arrive, or surface craft to come in range, after having done all that was required of them by the training manual, the gun crews kept working. The gun-layer gave his telescope a final wipe and focused it on the next destroyer in line. It was a hundred to one that he wouldn't use it, as all guns would be "on" by director, but just in case an unlucky shell caught the director the guns would not miss a broadside, because he would be ready go straight into local control.

Although firing mechanism of all guns had been tested at the commencement of the Watch, captains of guns gave it another run through, just in case. And on the electric interceptor, because he had been trained to look for little things, one spotted a lump of grease which could easily have caused a miss-fire. It was wiped off.

The trainer had trained his heavy mounting through the full limits to ensure no obstacle to training existed and everything seemed O.K. But, restless, he examined every portion of his connecting rods and found that the jolt of the mounting coming to a stop had dropped a thick wad of cotton waste into the cogs of his gear wheels.

Little things . . ,

All over the ship, from controlling bridge down to the bowels of the smoking engine-room men were doing every conceivable thing which might help to turn the scale of ultimate victory. They appreciated fully, through training, force of example, and above all, through the influence of that man on whom devolves, in the final count, the whole responsibility for the fighting efficiency of the ship, the captain, that they must if they were to return safe to old Alex.

So the ships of the British Battle Fleet, battleships, cruisers and speedy destroyers, in all their organized perfection steamed to sea.

It was at four o'clock of a Calm, cloudless afternoon that the masts and high fighting top of a warship were sighted far ahead above the rim of blue. The weather was perfect for gunnery, unlimited visibility, clear blue sky, and roll negligible. Even the destroyers stayed on an even keel as they increased speed to close this ship ahead.

The moment she was sighted a three-flag signal hauled up the flotilla leader's mast-so quickly it seemed pretty certain it had been bent on to the halyards already. The signal yeoman on Stuarts bridge had his glasses up and in a second spoke over his shoulder to the captain:

"Speed twenty-eight knots, sir. Executive!"

The captain bent to the wheelhouse voice pipe.

Down in the engine-room they were waiting; the indicators steadied on "full ahead". Before the clang of the bells had died, the engineers spun the huge throttle wheels till they jammed wide open against the stops. The engine-room hum was changed in a second to a mighty, drumming roar.

The ship leaped ahead through the sea, a white cloud of foam opening at her bows.

Then a flickering light stuttered from the ship on the horizon. As they drew nearer, the bridge officers distinguished the superstructure of a British cruiser. It was Orion, and her signal said: "Have Italian Battle Fleet astern in chase."

With consummate skill, manoeuvring his ship so that he was always just in range, coaxing them along with this promising bait, Orion's captain was drawing the whole enemy fleet into the hungry jaws of Cunningham's hounds.

Knowing that the Dagoes would run once they knew what they had to contend with, the admiral dispatched a cruiser squadron, with the 2nd and 14th Destroyer Flotillas, to sweep ahead and position themselves on the far side of the enemy fleet.

His strategy was of course justified, the enemy running for their lives before our battleships could come in range. The British Fleet followed at full speed.

It was not until 10.20p.m. that night that contact was again made. The fleet was steaming through a sea as flat as a river. Above the masthead the stars hung countless in a luminous haze. The moon had not yet risen and the faint starlight served only to accentuate the darkness which fell wide and dense on all sides. A night officially described as "clear and dark". Then at 10.20 p.m. radar contacts were made with objects in the darkness ahead and on either side. Enemy in sight!

Stuart was directly astern of the line of battleships as they swept up. Looming out of the night six big ships rushed to meet them. From their course it seemed that the battleships hadn't been sighted. On Warspite, the leading British 15-incher, the huge barrels of her twin turrets trained smoothly round. With perfect timing a destroyer turned her searchlight on the leading ship of the enemy line.

She stood out stark and clear, every detail revealed in the brilliant beam - an 8-inch cruiser. Then Warspite's terrible guns thundered in one single broadside. The Italian ship dissolved into a mane of searing flame. She heeled, stricken under the onslaught, transformed in a few awful seconds from a proud fighting ship to a twisted tangle of iron falling through the starlit upper waters of the Mediterranean down into the freezing darkness of the unfathomed bottom.

The whole British battle line was in action now, their guns spokes of flame whose fierce, revenging monotone of thunder struck terror into the hearts of those white-painted ships.

In almost as many minutes five enemy ships lay blazing on the sea, and Stuart, with the destroyer Havock, was ordered to quench their betraying glare. She went in to finish off a burning cruiser, the light from the fires playing in flickering shadows on her superstructure, when she sighted on the outer circle of light another enemy cruiser.

The torpedo officer rapidly trained his sight left until it bore on the enemy's foremast. She made a beautiful target, silhouetted against the curtain of night. In rapid succession he loosed six torpedoes. The long steel shapes, propellers already whirling, leapt roaring out of their tubes, hit the water in a cloud of spray and started their underwater run to the target.

She was turning desperately, but the range was too close. The lines of smooth water reached out, touched. From her sides spewed suddenly a solid sheet of flame; a wall of water climbed up, higher than her masts.

Then came the roar.

That ship, a 10,000-ton cruiser, five times her size, little Stuart claimed for her own.

All this time, due to the Italians using flashless cordite, in the signal yeoman's words, "they could just hear the stuff lobbing". Some of it was close, the pillars of white as the shells landed ghostly-looking in the darkness.

On Stuart's for'ard gun the crew was composed almost entirely of brand-new ordinary seamen just come from Australia. This was their baptism of fire! But soon they were to prove that their depot gunnery training was thorough enough to stand the test of the most stringent action conditions.

Stuart, still with Havock close astern, had hauled out of line of the burning cruiser to complete her job, when, appearing suddenly an her starboard bow, steering a course which would take her down the starboard side at a range of five hundred yards, an Italian destroyer leaped to meet her.

Stuart's guns, alert and ready, caught her bridge with the first salvo. It seemed to crumple and cave in.

Again and again the guns roared, raking the Italian with a sweeping, staring blast from stem to stem.

The enemy boat staggered on, past Stuart's stem, then on to Havock.

A torpedo tube on the Britisher flamed redly. There was a moment's pause, then the Dago was lifted clean out of the water. A foaming patch of debris-littered water marked her grave, then Stuart and Havock went on, into the night.

At eleven o'clock the admiral ordered all units to retire to the north-east, in order to line up those of the fleet which had disengaged the main body during their individual actions. Then he made his famous signal:

"I have no friends except ships steering 045 degrees."

One hears that all ships discovered first class station-keeping abilities!

Astern as they steamed off the British Fleet left devastation. It was a macabre scene. In five different places the darkness of the night was slashed with the leaping red of burning ships, now and then a tongue of flame shooting up as a magazine exploded or petrol tank ignited. The Italian Fleet, caught at last, was burning.

The red glows had dwindled to pinpoints when from back there came again the dull mutter of heavy gunfire. The enemy were engaging each other.

At three in the morning the cruisers and destroyers sent on ahead rejoined the main fleet. Steaming on, a damaged enemy cruiser was sighted. She offered no resistance so the destroyer Jervis went alongside. She was deserted. Jervis hauled off, swung broadside on, and finished her.

When daylight broke over the sea they found survivors everywhere. These were picked up until German bombers coming over picked the stationary ships and their rescuing boats for targets, so the survivors were left. On the way back to base the admiral called up an Italian shore station, suggesting a hospital ship be sent out, and gave the position of the action. A Sunderland bomber later guided her to the spot.

That day, tired, smoke-blackened, the paint of their guns blistered and peeling, all the ships of the British Fleet secured to their berths in Alexandria Harbour.

While round the world flashed the news of the Battle of Matapan.

J. E. MACDONNELL (R.A.N.)

INCAPACITATION

The little corvette, never really ladylike in a seaway, was battling stubbornly through the ground swell. Like an aggressive old harridan at a bargain sale she struggled up the long, uneasy slopes of the combers, balancing precariously on the crest for a second, then slithering down to wallow helplessly in the trough below. The smoke-stained ensign at the gaff fluttered in a wide jerky arc across the evening sky and dipped suddenly as the bows burrowed deep in the green waters, forcing the screws clear, till the whole ship shuddered in a spasm of futile vibration.

The young midshipman under training closed his eyes tightly, swaying dizzily with the motion, his whole being racked with a soul-destroying nausea, for he was as yet a foreigner in this strange world where the horizon spun and reeled while you watched it, where warm, oily smells seeped into your nostrils, permeating your system and filling your insides with a dreadful, growing unrest.

The ship rolled drunkenly to a beam sea, shipping it green as she altered course, drenching him with an icy cascade, but he clung doggedly to a stanchion, indifferent to every discomfort except the humiliation of the surging sickness within him. He was thinking bitterly how his friends ashore would jeer if they could see him, white-faced and miserable, all dressed up in his smart new uniform; a naval officer, at sea at last, and as sick as a landlubber on a Channel crossing!

At first he'd fought against it, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his monkey jacket, striding magnificently across the tiny quarter deck, trying to convince the crew and himself that he was an old hand, slightly bored with the monotony of the offshore patrol. But now all pretence of dignity and pride had gone whirling away with the wind, all the vague ambitions of his life had suddenly crystallized into a fierce, overwhelming desire to feel the comfort of solid ground beneath his feet again, and to smell the dear, familiar scents of the land. Wearily he opened his eyes, watching with a wan fatalism as the horizon swelled relentlessly, a cold mountain towering to the masthead. then fell away again, out of sight, beneath the fore deck. God! how he hated the sea!

At this moment the lookout in his eyrie on the foremast lowered his oversize binoculars, and sang out, "Aircraft. Red one-one-oh, sir!"

The officer below glanced briefly at the black speck emerging from the cloud base, then crossed the bridge in long strides. A second later the whole ship resounded to the harsh clamour of the alarm. Before its echoes had died away the captain came clattering up the steel ladder from his cabin below the bridge and, simultaneously, men in grimy singlets and greasy boiler suits came scrambling up from the mess decks, hastily adjusting respirators and tin hats as they ran to action stations. The aircraft disappeared again into the lowering grey sky, but the hum of its motors persisted like the drone of a mosquito on a summer's evening.

The midshipman, completely preoccupied with his own sufferings, watched the activities of his shipmates without interest. He knew it was just an exercise alarm, a dummy run, with a friendly aircraft stooping around making feint attacks, to give the gun crews a work-out and to keep everybody on top line.

The whine of the plane was getting nearer now, increasing its volume to a steady crescendo, and despite himself the boy began watching the Lewis gunner on the port quarter, as he swung his weapon round on its mounting, anxiously following the sound. He was a lean, tough-looking gunner, with anchors and snakes tattooed in vivid reds and blues across the brown expanse of his chest. His forefinger was curling round the trigger, tautening, eager.

There was a sudden whirring of evil wings overhead, a huge shadow flicked across the overcast, and a storm of bullets danced like hailstones over the decks, whining viciously as they ricocheted off the unyielding plates.

The port Lewis started an angry chatter, stuttered, and fell silent as the young gunner toppled slowly from his strap seat, a fearful bubbling up from his chest, obliterating the tattoo marks with an ugly, crimson smear.

The two Oerlikons, with the almost mellow thump-thump which is peculiar to them sent livid tracers streaking out from the wings of the bridge, groping eagerly in the darkening sky for their prey.

The sun had waned now and the last faint rays of it glowed from below the horizon, tingeing the lowest clouds with a faded pastel only a washy smudge of light separated from sky.

Against this background the midshipman see the large black monoplane circling to attack again. He'd seen that same black silhouette hundreds of times on the identification charts in the lecture-rooms back at the training depot, but then it had seemed abstract and unreal, part of the irksome classroom routine. Now it was here, tangible and horribly frightening, a killer intent on his destruction.

Though his limbs were quivering with excitement, he felt an odd calmness as he edged his way along the deck towards the vacant gun. Seasickness and self-pity were swept aside in a surge of primitive masculine emotion, a savage atavistic desire to get to that gun and start hitting back. His world had suddenly narrowed down to the circular spider-web of is gun-sight and that malevolent black monster down over the water.

Life became a series of sharp but disjointed impressions; the darting tongue of flame from it's barrel, the beautiful staccato barking of his gun, the feel of the smooth metal grooves beneath his fumbling fingers as he changed the ammunition drums. The little ship was twisting and turning in a frenzy of evasive action, and at each change of course the water came tumbling along the scuppers, swirling around his ankles, backwards and forwards, with the motion of the ship.

Back came the plane, alive with venom, hurtling low over the bridge, the leading edges of its wings spurting jets of fire, ripping jagged holes in the corvette's superstructure, leaving a trail of destruction to mark its passage. A fire party went lurching and staggering forward along the heaving decks towards a column of smoke billowing ominously from the chart-house, and soon the ship was cluttered with sinuous lengths of hose.

The snotty remembered reading somewhere that air fighters seldom bore any malice towards their opponents, regarding them rather as an integral part of their machines, thinking of them as inanimate objects instead of men. He didn't feel like that though. This was essentially a personal affair between himself and some little grinning yellow baboon up there with murder in his heart.

Time after time the plane flashed across his sights and passed out of range again, maddeningly unscathed, but at last there came a glorious moment when the whole aircraft seemed to be glued to the very centre of his sight, and he knew, even before he saw the pilot's cowling dissolve beneath the fury of his fire, that the battle was over.

For a second the youngster kept squeezing the trigger, blazing aimlessly into space. The screaming shadow passed over for the last time and then, from the seas to starboard, came a terrible, rending impact. For a timeless period the tall unit of the shattered plane protruded defiantly above the ocean, as though straining to keep its Rising Sun insignia free, but the waters reached up inexorably and it too slid beneath the hungry waves.

A curious silence settled over the tiny corvette, and her crew, their senses still stunned by the din of battle, moved stiffly about their duties, like drugged men, their nerves relaxing almost painfully from the tension of the past few minutes.

The captain, peering out from the shattered housing of the bridge, gave a quiet order and the ship swung round in a wide half-circle to resume her course. Then he turned to his youthful first lieutenant standing beside him:

"Well, Number One, I must say that young snotty came in rather handy just then. Is he hurt at all? "

Number One grinned broadly. "Not hurt, sir, but I fancy he's . well, incapacitated." And he pointed to the stern-sheets, where a small, dejected figure, its shoulders heaving violently, hung limply over the rail, gazing with a dreadful intensity at the swirling waters below.

KIRWAN WARD (R.A.N.)