Chapter 1 Splash of Scarlet; Dog's Life; Sunday Morning in Japan; Off the Island...

SPLASH OF SCARLET

	WHEN I first looked at the painting I didn't recognize Plugger. It was a long time since I had seen him and those heroic days, after the lapse of a couple of years in the hurly-burly of civvy life, were fast assuming the qualities of a dream. Someone else must have trodden those silent jungle tracks, panted up the ridges and buried his burning face to drink the waters of the swift, silent, green rivers, laughed with the kanakas and thrilled with fear and danger and lain awake in the teeming tropic nights thinking of home.
Someone else, not me; and the face in the painting, the young-old face, lined and infinitely weary, the steady grey eyes, the drawn cheeks and the full, red lips were not of someone that I'd known, but rather part of the dream, a composite of something dimly remembered, a type. He was just one of the thousand unsung heroes whose greatest bravery lay in the fact that, being afraid, they never showed it, and being tired beyond all understanding, they kept plugging, and being browned off, they still could joke - until when the time came for the kind of bravery that makes headlines, they took it in their stride, all in the day's work, something that could have happened to any one of their mates as easily. . . . Plugger was like that. It could have been a painting of any one of a thousand chaps, the same big army boots -cut-down gaiters, frayed at the tops; faded, mud-spattered green strides; grenades hanging like ripe fruits all over the web belt; in the hands the inevitable 0wen, and all surmounted by a bashed-in fur felt. Any one of a thousand, except that this soldier wore about his neck a scarlet bandanna. And when I saw that . . . The noise and the heat and the people, all the faded, jagged mosaic of this strange new life shivered into nothingness, buildings dissolved and time did a back-flip. I thought of a sunny morning in a spot a thousand miles away, measured in distance, and in time, what seemed like a thousand years.... Everything was green on top of the ridge, green and open and cool. The jungle had clawed its way halfway up the slopes to the top, but stopped there; formerly, "long time bepor ", as the coons say, it had been a kanaka place and feathery coconut palms soared gracefully on either side of the narrow white path that wound along the top of the ridge till it joined the Government road miles to the south. A big house-garamut stood in a clearing; orchids and ferns grew prolifically in the deep, mossy sac-sac thatch of its steeply-pitched roof, and, ranged around the walls, the huge wooden drums waited in dust and silence for the day when, with throbbing tongues booming over sullen miles of jungle and swamp, they -would announce the defeat of the "puk-puk men", the yellow little soldiers who had for so long devastated gardens and villages. Four vivid splashes of scarlet stood out boldly against the green of bamboo, coconut and ferns: two brilliant parrots were perched in a tree, one combing with its beak the flaming breast of the other, both like living jewels in the sunny air, while a few yards away a scarlet hibiscus flaunted its vivid cups. A short distance up the track a small group of men talked quietly and gestured with highly polished swagger-sticks. Each had around his cap a bright scarlet band and red gorget patches on collar denoted their puissant rank. They were moving slowly along the track, tailed at a respectful distance by two subalterns, towards the spot where a soldier sat in the warm sunshine beside a hole in the ground, a hole big enough to accommodate a pack and a canvas stretcher on poles, and roofed over with strips of sac-sac thatch. He was engaged in the pastime of his kind, cleaning his "best friend", and as he worked, he whistled softly to himself. The big hands did the work confidently, almost without direction from the mind and when from my hole a few yards away I muttered, "Eh, Plugger, here's some red tape!" the cleaning went on while the pale eyes flickered over the little party on the track, eves that were surrounded by a network of fine lines that gave to the face years that it had not attained and an indefinable expression that was utter weariness, almost sadness. He was dressed only in a lap-lap twisted around his lean waist and boots pulled over his bare feet-but around his neck, startlingly colourful against the pale, atebrin yellowed skin, was knotted a bandanna neckerchief . . . the fourth splash of scarlet, caught up with a gleaming pig's tusk. The staff officers stopped. The keen eyes under the peaked cap of one looked searchingly at Plugger, up and down, took in the bare feet in the unlaced boots, the short lap-lap, so lately the top of a "tents mosquito", and came to rest on the flaming neckerchief. "Good morning, soldier." Plugger sprang to his feet, deferentially inclined his head and said, "Good morning, sir! The colonel raised his swagger-stick and flapped the hem of Plugger's lap-lap, then indicated the neckerchief with its gleaming pig's tusk. "Uh ... regulation dress in this ... uh ... neck of the woods, eh, soldier?" "Well, not exactly, but almost," Plugger grinned. Red tape never worried him. "Got a day off today, sir, and the coons are washing me duds. Does you good too, occasionally, to let the old sun get on to the body" "A day off?" "Yes, sir, just got back yesterday from a bit of a job." The colonel raised his eyebrows. "Soldiers don't have days off," he said, evenly. "We're on the job twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Didn't you know that? And any . . . uh . . . nigger can get around in a lap-lap-it's easy to let discipline go in a place like this, but it takes a good man to keep himself in trim; I can always tell a ... uh ... good soldier by his dress. I suppose that you wear . . . uh . . . pants when you're out on patrol?" Plugger gave a wry grin. "Yes, sir." "And socks? "Yes, sir! " "And, I suppose, that elegant . . . uh . . . piece of haberdashery round your neck?" ' 'Er ... yes, sir." "A bit conspicuous, isn't it?" Plugger's glance roved away and fell on the hibiscus. "0h, I dunno, sir. There's always a bit of colour. That," pointing to the hibiscus, "for instance. And those parrots, and the band on your ... uh ... hat. There's red all over the place. . . ." The colonel's eyes popped a bit and I thought I'd have a fit, but Plugger's attitude was still gravely deferential. "It gives you a bit of a lift, too." His eyes slipped past the colonel and his little retinue and ranged over the miles of jungly hills to the south, as if trying to probe their secrets. "You get tired of the eternal green ... green ... green. There was silence in the little group for a moment and all eyes followed the direction of Plugger's gaze. Their minds tried to follow his, but couldn't. Only he, whose feet had trodden the tracks and whose eyes had looked on some of its secrets, whose wits had met and defeated its pitfalls and whose heart thrilled to its strange and wild fascination, could picture for himself the dim green limbo of jungle and river, ravine and beetling woolly ridge; they knew it, and curious regret and resentment was in them. The colonel coughed. "I would still suggest that you adopt a more ... uh ... orthodox style of dress. Pork-pie hats, cut-down gaiters-no good.' You can always tell the . . . uh . . . well-trained and disciplined soldier by his dress, and it won't include . . . uh . . . red neckerchiefs. If the Army intended you to wear anything like that it would have issued them. Remember, always discipline yourself, and with discipline comes initiative and ... uh ... courage! He stood looking keenly at Plugger for a few seconds and then with a curt salute turned and walked up the path, followed discreetly by his entourage. As the little cavalcade passed, the two parrots fled in a shrieking arrow of colour, and soon the calm of the ridge was undisturbed. Plugger stood looking up to where the last peaked cap had disappeared around a bend and then he walked towards me with his eyebrows raised in a quizzical smile. "Initiative and . . . uh . . . courage! " he mocked, but without bitterness. "That's funny, Joe! I was just thinking of yesterday . . ." Plugger and I were lying alongside a track with three coons. It was one that ran between two Jap camps and was used pretty frequently. Brigade wanted a bit of information about the area and we were after a prisoner. It wasn't a good track, plenty of traffic but with lots of twists and bends so that if you got out in the open anything was likely to pop around the comer right into your lap without much warning. We didn't want to be seen either, as the Japs didn't know yet that we were in their stamping ground, so we lay in concealment for some time while numerous parties went by in both directions; what we wanted was one by himself, someone that we could pluck with a minimum of disturbance and trace. Plugger looked up and down the track, listening intently. "You know, we can arrange this party to suit ourselves, Joe," he said, and as he spoke he was undoing the red neckerchief from around his throat. "How?" I queried, not taking my eyes off the track; the coons were watching with mounting interest. "You just watch!" Cautiously, but quickly and surely he stood up and draped the red square on a bush where it would be instantly visible to anyone passing our position. Then he subsided again and whispered, "If it's a mob comes along, we whip that down with a stick, but if it's a single we leave it there, he sees it, comes in to investigate and bingo! ... Bob's your uncle! " It seemed to be as good a plan as any and we decided to give it a burl. We were lucky -after a couple of big parties, our single came along just before sundown, walking nonchalantly down the track to see a mate in another camp, I suppose. He never got there anyway, because as he drew opposite us, he saw the neckerchief and after looking up and down the track, stepped off it and moved cautiously over to where we crouched in the gathering dusk. Plugger clumped him on the head with an Owen magazine and almost before he'd hit the deck the coons swooped on him and were carting him deeper into the jungle where, at a safe distance, we stopped while they tied his hands and feet with kunda and slung him over a pole like a stuck pig. I didn't envy him his ride as he bumped along, splashed and fouled with mud, lashed with palms, with his bulging mouth stuffed with the neckerchief that had brought about his downfall . . . and you can be sure that the coons didn't pick out the easiest path! We didn't go far. We weren't in the race to get him home before dark so we camped in the bush. The boys dumped the Nip in a heap of slush and knocked up a leafie for us, and after we'd had a bit of tucker, Plugger called them over and told them that they would have to guard the Nip during the night. Lull, the Number One boy, nodded vigorously and shot a look at the prisoner that must have seared his yellow hide. "Orright, Masta- Plugger. 'Long too-dark, two-pella boy 'e sleep, one-pella boy 'e looking this-pella pig-Japan!" There is no darkness quite like the utter blackness of a moonless night in the deep jungle, darkness so thick as to be almost tangible as if fold upon fold of black musty velvet were laid across the eyes, and so oppressive as almost to take the breath. Only the unwinking phosphorous eyes of decay stare coldly from every point and the firefly stitches the gloom with a thread of light as he flashes his staccato message of love amongst the trees. I don't know what time it was when I was awakened into that darkness. Someone was shaking my shoulder, a harsh voice whispered urgently in my ear: "Masta! Masta Joe!" and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell of the kanaka who was bending over me. I sat up with a jerk. "Luli! Now what name?" "Masta Joe! Matanai now Japan all 'e losim this-pella place! " Holy Nellie! Matanai was one of the other coons and Luli had said that he thought that he had been working for the Japs before he came to us. I jumped up, and Plugger, now awake, joined me. "What's goin' on~ "Luli reckons that Matanai and the Jap have scrammed! " "Struth! " he muttered, "The black- - It was pretty obvious what had happened. Matanai had waited till his turn to guard the Nip came around and then had freed him and gone with him, why, heaven only knows; one can't read a coon's mind or purpose. The Nip might have offered him the world or frightened the stuffing out of him. However it happened, they were gone, and we were lucky that they did not do us over before they went . . . most likely too anxious to get going. "Luli," said Plugger, "you got savvy 'long place b1ong Matanai? Where 'e stop?" Luli pondered a moment, and murmured, "Yes, Masta Plugger, me got savvy." "We'll pay him a visit tomorrow," said Plugger, turning to me. "We can't do much tonight. Hurl a bit of wood on the fire, Luli. Hey! rousim some-pella dewai!" As the tiny flame leapt into the well of darkness around us, he knelt and picked something off the ground, something that glowed warmly in his hand. It was the red neckerchief. Previous experience had taught us that the Japanese prisoner who escaped from custody got short shrift from his mates, so we reckoned our slit-eyed friend would be in no hurry to return to the bosom of the family. Still we didn't want this one to spread the news of our advent in the area prematurely, and if Matanai really were pro-Jap, it was on the cards that he'd make for his place and take the Nip with him, particularly as he had been working with us and might have been frightened that word of it had got back to the Japs. All the morning of the next day and well into the afternoon we followed the disused kanaka-pad through the jungle. Overgrown, faint, it wound up and down the hills and precariously along razorback ridges, plunged through rivers and skirted evil swamps, a story that Luli read unerringly and translated for us in a series of contented grunts, amazed ejaculations and vague waving of the hands-all to the accompaniment of a ferocious grin that boded ill for the renegade Matanai. About mid-afternoon, he branched suddenly off the main track and crouched behind a thick creeper that was starred with huge purple blossoms. He took some boong weed from his lap-lap and rolled a smoke in a piece of newspaper, inhaled deeply and waved his hand in the direction we had been following. "Place b'long Matanai 'im 'e close, too muss! " We squatted beside him and Plugger suggested, "You go lookim, eh? " Luli let the smoke trickle out of his wide nostrils, butted his long cigarette and stuck it, like a pin, in his dense mop of hair. "Me lookim," he muttered, and faded noiselessly into the jungle. We smoked in silence for a while; Plugger was deep in thought. "Joe," he said suddenly, "what are we going to do with Matanai if we do get him back? We can't use him again on patrol and we can't let him go-he savvies too much about us that the Nips would like to know. And we can't just keep him in camp. . . ." "I reckon we can let Luli deal with him," I replied. Luli was a luluai, a sort of local chieftain and was sore as a boil about Matanai, regarding his treachery as a reflection on all the kanakas around the place. "He'll know what to do, and in any case, it's his pigeon to whack out justice." "Yeah." Plugger was strangely subdued. "And yet, maybe Matanai really thinks he's on the right track . . . what a mess' " He wore the expression that the artist was later somehow to sense and put on to canvas, the look of a boy who has seen too much, suffered too much and lost too much, understood too little and is bone-weary to the point of not caring a damn. We smoked on in silence for a few minutes and Luli reappeared, quietly as he had gone. Plugger perked up and inquired, "What name, Lull? You lookim this-pella Matanai, now Japan? " "'E stop." Luli nodded, grinning fiendishly. "'Long place, Matanai, now Japan, now two-pella mary. All 'e sit down 'long house!" Plugger whistled. "Marys, eh? Doin' themselves proud! Joe, I'm not spending another night in the scrub for any combination of boongs and slit-eyes. Let's get goin'!" "What are you going to do?" I inquired. "'We can't just rush the place in broad daylight . . . they'd hit the scrub like a Bondi tram, and we can't shoot the place up with the marys inside; besides, we want that Nip alive." Plugger grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Let's have a gander at the joint. Eh, Luli, master like lookim this-pella place!" It was a simple enough set-up that we looked out upon from the concealment of a thick patch of wild ginger-a tiny clearing in the dense jungle; the track led in on one side and out on the other, there was a patch of kau-kau and some rows of straggly com. As we watched, one of the marys approached from the kau-kau patch with a basket on her hip half-filled with the sweet potato and disappeared into the bedraggled sac-sac hut that leaned drunkenly in the centre of the clearing. "Well," muttered Plugger, "looks as if the mountain will have to be made to come to Mahomet somehow." He thought for a moment and a slow grin spread over his face. He tugged at the red neckerchief that had been rinsed at a creek and restored to its rightful place. "We'll charm them out with this. . . ." I guess that I must have looked a bit incredulous, for he continued with a soft laugh, "Yeah, I suppose it must look like the pitcher that went to the well, but this time it's going to work in reverse!" He outlined his plan-he and Luli were to go around and sit alongside the track on the other side of the clearing. Karam, the other boong, and I were to stay where we were. When I judged that they would be in position, I was to hang the neckerchief on a bush in full view of the hut and await developments. With the track the only logical bet for a hurried getaway from the clearing, it looked as if the Jap would use it and with the neckerchief where it was, his probable direction was pretty obvious; whichever way he went, he was a gone coon. Plugger and Luli departed and after they had been gone a few minutes, I rose stealthily and draped the red square on a bush by the track and settled down alongside Karam. That dusky worthy grinned, and raising his eyebrows in query, patted affectionately the old Japanese rifle that he carried. I shook my head. "No got! Maski musket!" His grin faded and he sat still, grimly watching the hut. Presently one of the marys emerged, carrying a blackened Jap dixie. She stopped dead when she saw the red rag, peered at it intently a moment and then disappeared abruptly inside the hut. There was no sound over the clearing and no movement and the westering sun stretched the trees' shadows to greater and greater lengths across the green kau-kau. Then she reappeared with the renegade Matanai and pointed to the red neckerchief on the bush. I could have knocked his eyes off with a stick if I'd had one handy and if I'd been quick enough, for he disappeared like whisky at a wake. I smiled to think what must be going on in his head and what nervous plotting and planning would be going on beneath the sac-sac thatch. Ten minutes passed and two figures moved into my line of vision on the other side of the hut, moving slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bush and bit of shadow, in the direction of Plugger and Luli. It was the Jap and Matanai. I watched them go, preferring not to alarm them from my side, as it would be better for Plugger's plans if they approached the ambush at a slow pace; however, when they gained the shelter of the first line of trees, they broke into a panicky gallop, so Karam and I sprang into view and gave chase, straight through the hut where the two terrified marys crouched in the gloom with their piccaninnies, and out again into the bright sunshine just in time to see the Nip go sprawling on to the ground with Plugger on top of him. Plugger's arm was raised once, and the Nip ceased to struggle. Further up the track, Luli stood over the prostrate Matanai and brandished a handy piece of dewai. By the time I pulled up alongside him, Plugger had secured the Nip's arms with strips of kunda and was rubbing a long mark on his hand with acriflavine from a little bottle he always carried. "The b- - - - bit me," he grinned ruefully. He walked over to where Lull was standing and motioned the big coon away. Matanai scrambled to his feet and stood, unwaveringly returning the white man's stare. "You poor -- fool," Plugger muttered, and turned to Lull. "Orright, Lull, workim kunda 'long this-pella bush-kanaka", and spitefully emphasized the insult. Matanai winced, but said nothing, and Plugger turned away. "Listen, china," I said, "if we're going to get in before dark, we'd better be rattling our shanks." "Yes, Joe . . . look after this crowd for a few moments, will you?" and he ran down the track toward the hut. He must have shot the marys a good line, because about five minutes later they fell in alongside Matanai and the Jap, now recovered, with all their household goods in huge packs on their backs, three skinny dogs, and each with a piccaninny perched high on her neck. Immediately I took their packs and loaded them on to the Nip and his mate, and the looks I got from the latter would have vaporized water. Plugger fell in at the rear of the party just as we were moving off in the direction of camp. "Couldn't leave those poor bints out in the scrub without a bloke around the place," he grinned. "Luli can look after them, eh, Luli?" The boy flashed his white teeth over his shoulder in a heart-warming smile and poked the Jap in the back with the butt of his rifle. "Number one!" he grunted happily. "Couldn't leave this behind, either," said Plugger, half joking, half seriously. "Sort of a . . . talisman." I looked around and grinned. Round his neck the scarlet neckerchief glowed, and the pig's tusk gleamed in the late afternoon light. Plugger strolled over to his dugout and sat down on his stretcher. Reaching underneath, he drew out a battered felt hat. The crown was pushed in to a perfect pork-pie, a knotted leather bootlace replaced the puggaree and, via two holes in the brim, met under the chin where it was drawn through a hollowed out nut . . . not exactly issue. He laughed again. "Just as well he didn't get on to this, Joe . . . he'd have had an attack of the willies!"' He set the confection jauntily on the back of his head. "Still, I suppose he's right, the way he looks at it . . . she'd be a gay old army if everyone followed his own particular style. And yet, they don't understand" That was just it. They don't understand, they never will; circumstances will not let them. Plugger didn't wear his red neckerchief because it was pretty. It was a sort of desperate gesture against the submersion of his personality beneath the mess of mediocrity and submission to conditions that ultimately becomes life in the Army, no matter how you battle against it. It was almost as if he turned a glass down to the whole world in general and to the little world around him in particular . . . the boredom, the fear and the loneliness, and the death lurking on every track and behind every hill; as though he said to all and sundry, "Well, here I am-come and get me!" So few of us can wear a red neckerchief and get away with it . . . he could. T. G. HUNGERFORD. AIF

SUNDAY MORNING IN JAPAN

"HERE'S the seven o'clock siren, do wake up, you'll be late for work again," said Mary but then she remembered that it was Sunday and there was no need to wake up so she settled down to be comfortable and lazy.

Junior woke up some hour and a half earlier than was usual on a weekday and bustled about with various mechanical toys that wind up with a harsh and grating sound, and then tried out his new mouth organ with energy and volume.

Mary called out, "For Pete's sake stop that noise and let us get a little rest one day in the week." Harry woke up and said, "Where's the tea, the cook must be late again."

But it was the cook's day off so there was no early morning tea. Mary said, "In Australia you used to get up and bring me tea and toast on Sunday mornings; what about trying it here? "

Harry said, "What are the housegirls, for? Can't they make tea? They should be here by this time anyway."

Mary said, "No wonder you are getting too fat. I suppose I'll have to make it myself; a woman's work is never done."

Harry said, "All right, all right. I'll make it in a minute."

Neither made the slightest effort towards getting up to make the tea but then the housegirls arrived and there were sounds of activity in the kitchen.

Finally the tea came up and all was well again. Harry said, "Good heavens, look at the time! I promised the Padre I'd play the organ this morning. Why didn't you remind me before this?"

He leapt out to the bathroom to find that Junior was wallowing in the bath. The door was locked so he had to dash down to the toilet downstairs and have a somewhat sketchy wash in the hand basin.

Then he rushed upstairs again to find that the housegirl had put out all his uniform as was usual on work mornings.

Harry said, "Won't she ever learn that I put on civvies on Sunday mornings? No, black shoes not these, do hubba hubba, blackoo shoesoo. There's the church bell. Why the Padre has to get me to play the church organ I don't know. There must be hundreds of women here who could do it, yet I have to be the mug. A man never seems to get a let up at all. I'll have to leave my breakfast until I come back. It's a pity you are never up in time to come too. See you later", and he tore out of the back door.

So Mary turned over and settled down in the blankets to have a lovely snooze when the phone rang and she went downstairs to answer it herself; it was most likely Jimmy to say that the launch trips were definitely on. But it was merely an enthusiastic newcomer who had only got off the ship yesterday and just couldn't wait till Monday to ask if there were any Japanese classes going now. Her neighbour had told her to ring here, she did so want to learn the language at once and so on and so on and Mary did a freeze standing in her nightie at the phone. She finally escaped and went upstairs again to find that the housegirls had made her bed and were busy sweeping the room, so all thoughts of more rest had to be abandoned.

But when she went into the bathroom she found that the family washing had ' been put into the bath. After a bit of nattering to the housegirls it was arranged that they would get on to it pretty smartly. In the meantime Mary would have a bite of breakfast before Harry came home and she was just starting to pour the milk on the cornflakes when junior came in heavily swathed in bandages and said he had fallen off his bike but it was quite all right, he had been to the R.A.P. and had it dressed. Just then the phone went again and it was the R.A.P. sister to say try to keep him quiet for the day as he had a rather nasty bump and it may make him a bit groggy. But junior was anything but quiet at the thought of being confined to the house for the day and after some rather heated argument he was permitted to walk gently about the area, but was on no account to do anything strenuous. Mary returned to her meal to find the cornflakes were now a sort of soggy mush and the coffee was tepid with a sort of thick skin at the top and the toast had gone limp.

Then there was the sound of cheerful voices at the door and Harry came in full of good fellowship and duty nobly done, with a couple of friends in tow. He said, "What about some coffee? Nothing like this crisp cold weather to raise an appetite, eh, boys?" Mary said, "I'll just run up and get myself properly dressed and then I'll make you something hot", but Harry said, "No, no, we'll do it, won't we, boys?" and they all went into the kitchen together and there was the sound of pots being rattled out of cupboards. Mary felt a bit apprehensive but went upstairs to have her bath and get dressed.

Well, the bath wasn't very exciting as the housegirls: had not spared the hot water but by this time it was only warm. She finally got dressed and came down again to find the housegirls had taken out all the lounge-room windows. They were having a happy time hosing them in the front garden and a chill wind -,vas blowing straight into the lounge and dining-room and Mary's private correspondence had blown all over the room like so many autumn leaves.

But though Japanese windows are so easy to take out and wash, they are not nearly so easy to put back and it took the united efforts of all the neighbours' housegirls and cooks and much chatter and advice from all concerned before they were got back into position. Mary at last got into the kitchen to see what on earth the men were doing there.

Well, it seemed that Bill had a really wonderful recipe for waffles and they would have been fine but for the fact that the top element of the waffle iron had fused. Though they were crisp and delicious underneath they were pale and gooey on top, and even with the honey that Mary had thought was safely hidden, they were really not like mother used to make. The scrambled eggs that Harry had made were quite good but it seemed that Harry was under the impression that the eggs in the "fridge" were just the weekend supply when really they were for the whole week ahead and had included two she had borrowed from Mrs Whosit. Mary was Just beginning to get a bit testy when she looked out of the kitchen window and saw Junior dripping with water making his way towards the back door.

Well, it seemed that he was just walking gently on the pipe-line over the river, when his feet slipped on the icy surface of the pipe and though he tried to hurry to safety, that only accelerated his speed into the water and he had to swim to shore. By the time Mary hauled him upstairs, saw that he was bathed and changed and a dose of cough mixture given to him and so on, the time was getting on. It being cook's day off, she really must see about the midday meal, so she came down again and found that by this time Captain Kerfoops had brought his wife over to meet Mary; she had only come on the ship yesterday. Mary said all the usual things, how do you like Japan, was it a good trip, etc., etc. As Mrs Kerfoops was looking slim and freshly blondexed and beautifully tailored and

Mary was getting the good old Japanese spread and was wearing the universal Indian blanket slacks, well, she felt at a decided disadvantage for a while, until Harry brought in a foaming jug of hot milk and proceeded to dispense hot rum and milk toddies to all present. At that time the steam came on with great rattling and clanking of pipes and soon the house was as warm and glowing within as the company was.

All was merry and bright until junior came in and said he was starving to death. What time was dinner? Over at Freddie's place they were having it now. Mary said, "Do excuse me, it's the cook's day off, do come again some time." At last she was able to get into the kitchen, and Harry said, "Don't worry about dinner; we'll just have eggs and bacon." Mary said, "You know perfectly well you ate all the eggs and we haven't had bacon issued for a month. Why do you let your hospitality run riot in this way? I'll just make some tomato soup; that will be hot and nourishing and the girls have cooked some of that quick-freeze cabbage. There are no potatoes; they come on Mondays-when we get any."

But when Mary opened the last tin of soup she found it was unsweetened orange juice in exactly the same kind of tin and not even Harry's mother could have made a hot and nourishing soup of orange juice. By the time she finally produced a meal of tinned Frankfurters and quick-freeze cabbage and tinned fruit salad and tinned cream with tired thin Captains and tinned cheese to follow, Mary felt that one day a week off was altogether too much for the cook to expect. Then junior said that over at Freddie's place they had two chickens and a lovely steamed pudding and ice cream. Mary said, "Perhaps Freddie's father doesn't fill the house with his friends every Sunday morning. I'm going upstairs for a sleep." As she passed the phone she quietly removed the receiver and said, "Well, I don't care if the C-in-C himself rings up this afternoon, I'M OUT!"

K. B. CROMBIE

"YOU'LL NEVER GET OFF THE ISLAND!"

IT was a warm evening in Changi. It was seldom anything else, but I remember this one being particularly so. Furthermore, it was not evening.

The Japanese had put back the clock by nearly two hours, a strange thing for a nation which always claims to be looking forward, so that although the last meal of the day had vanished the sun was still red above the palms.

With a friend I was taking an after-dinner stroll, filling in time while time emptied our stomachs. We had only been prisoners for a few weeks and the novelty was wearing into boredom and depression. There was not much conversation; when you are thinking a lot you seldom speak much.

"Hot," I said.

"Damned hot," said my friend.

We walked along the road running round the outside of the barrack square. On our right were the three-storied blocks of concrete which gave some shelter to about a thousand men. To our left the ground sloped away over fields of lalang grass to a solitary well. We knew the well was there because we had lined up that morning with several hundred others to be anointed with a cup or so of tepid water and be told, "Gee, but she's a fine bath, mate." Now, as we looked towards the well, we could see a cluster of naked men milling round in the scramble for their evening bath. The air around us was filled with the brown smoke of dust, a quivering cloud stirred up by thousands of aimless feet. After a while night would come and we would sit outside our hut and talk about food and home. And so the next day and the next and the day after that.

"How will we stick this out? " I asked my friend. A realist, he said: "Easy. Just go on existing, until we die."

We sauntered on for several minutes, circling the bomb crater in the road, past the R.A.P. stewing under its huge canvas fly, then round the latrine pits from whence soon dysentery was to erupt and strike us down, to the square. The crowd in the square was so thick that you could not see the asphalt but only hear the innumerable chinkings of army boots as they scraped across it.

"Coming into the square?"

"Why? "

"Something to do," I said. "May as well do something."

"Don't you like it here?"

I was too tired, too hot, to argue. We turned to go, to go where you mostly went in Changi, nowhere.

Then we heard it. We stopped. We heard it again. Faintly, faintly, through the dust, through the scraping of feet, faintly, though unmistakably-the falling cadences of a piano.

"Music! " said my friend and it suddenly struck me that I had not heard his voice sound that way since we were behind the wire. "Come on, son, let's be in it! "

He started running into the square, twisting and dodging between the khaki. As I followed, the sound grew louder, a beefy, untutored thumping of chords.

"There they are!" he shouted. "And by God, there are some blokes dressed up. It's a show! "

The crowd here was in a dense semicircle but we squeezed through until stopped by a wall of bodies. On a small platform was a piano with pianist, two men in white shirts and long blue hospital trousers and a third wearing nothing much except a grotesque wig and a pair of bosoms that would have done justice to Britannia in her younger days. It was the Changi concert party.

The pianist concluded amid a burst of applause, whereupon one of the blue trousers announced that he would sing "Annie Laurie". The audience was hushed. The pianist, having drawn breath, lunged at the piano, which quaked under several mighty blows of the introduction, then: "Ee-ts for bo-honny Arnee Lurrie" sang blue trousers to be interrupted immediately by his offsider with the first line of "Eileen Alannah".

Whistles, catcalls, "Give him a fair go, Jack!" until the audience realized that all was well. "Singin' both songs together," I overheard an odd little man saying to my friend. "Singin' 'em both together. Clever." The crowd nudged one another and settled down to enjoy it. When the song was over, crude, corny, old-fashioned, say what you will those of you who read who had not the good fortune and the bad fortune to be prisoners of war, the applause rang out and mine amongst it, joining with the smiles and laughter everywhere. It was some of the first spontaneous laughter that Changi had heard. And that same laughter went ringing down the years, laughing out hardships, suffering and pain, singing, dancing with the concert party, keeping us alive.

Looking back on it now it seems incredible that from this modest beginning could have grown a network of theatres, musical comedies and concerts of a standard that would do credit to any single Australian city today. Yet so it turned out.

We soon learnt that we had been listening to some of the regular A.I.F. Concert Party who, having rejoined their units during the campaign, had now re-formed to provide entertainment for the prisoners. But this was not the only group of entertainers that Changi was to hear. Realizing soon that the demand for entertainment was almost universal, units set about forming their own groups, the best talent of which was combined in the Brigade concert parties. So each evening Changi turned into one huge amateur hour with small performances going on in any suitable place that could be found. It was a lucky move since in the later years many of our leading stars were men with little or no stage experience in the pre-Changi era who had been discovered in this way.

Meanwhile the regular concert party, sensing competition, was strengthening its ranks. In these early weeks it was an itinerant body giving a performance each night on stages erected in different parts of the camp. This was doubly necessary, because it had no playhouse and had to cater for an audience so vast that no single place could have accommodated it.

When the concert party came to your area you finished your meal in double quick time and hurried through your washing up in order to be early and get a good seat on the ground near the stage. Against a background of plaited coconut palms the familiar white shirted and blue trousered figures danced, sang, played and acted sketches.

It was on one of these stages that the most celebrated of all Changi sayings was born. It was uttered by a person who, even now as I think of him, makes me want to burst into laughter as thousands have done in Changi; a lugubrious gentleman in frock coat, thin, bent and always appearing to be in the closing stages of consumption, one of the great characters of the camp, Happy Harry. Alas, I cannot honour him with his name because I know him by no other. This woebegone personage would stand on the stage in his undertaker's habit watching with doleful eyes the performance of his fellow actors. Then, when you had abandoned all hope of his ever uttering a word, introducing himself by a paroxysm of coughing he would say, in a shattering falsetto, "You'll never get off the island!

In a phrase he summed up our situation and made delicious fun of it. Thereafter, whenever things were at their blackest and spirits had sunk to their lowest ebb, someone would pipe up: "Cheer up, mate, you'll never get off the island." Perhaps, like the things that seem so funny in church and so unfunny outside, the saying is not amusing. Be that as it may. In Changi it was funny, it became our motto, it was one of the things that kept us going. It was Happy Harry's big contribution to his
fellow men.

At last, after great negotiation and tremendous labour, permission was granted by the Japanese for the concert party to build its theatre in a former gymnasium. After the work was done and a gala opening arranged the Japanese changed their minds. So the whole thing had to be done again in a disused workshop. The war artist was commissioned to paint the front curtain, an orchestra with a permanent conductor was engaged, seats were built, ushers hurried to and fro, a mammoth show was planned and the A.I.F. Theatre opened with a bang.

While this important development had been taking place there had been similar strides made in other theatre groups.

By far the most notable of these were in the British area, especially that of the 1 8th English Division.

The three leading theatres in the British area were the Palladium, in which musical extravaganzas were staged, the 18th Division Theatre and The Temple Players, the last two for straight plays.

With my friend I crossed the no-man's land on the flag ferry to attend a performance of The Dover Road at the 18th Division Theatre. We had heard it praised on all sides but were not prepared for such excellence.

The theatre roof was low, there was a capacity house and the heat was appalling. But when the curtain went up there was a gasp of wonderment. From the sordid world that was ours we were transported in an instant to the sumptuous interior of a wealthy man's drawing-room. In came the host in his dinner jacket and in came his butler. My friend involuntarily did up a button of his shirt. Yet these delights were soon forgotten with the entry of the ladies.

Most of us tend to imagine any form of female impersonation as something akin to the dame of the Britannia bosoms already mentioned. We picture hairy legs and bulbous feet, coarse skin, ill-fitting wigs, much rouge, big masculine noses and the inevitable brassiere. To gain any sort of an idea of the actresses of Changi all these notions must be abandoned. Our actresses were women from first to last, some dowagers, some mature married women, some attractive young girls.

Up to this time the Australians had not studied the possibility of actresses. With one notable exception they were still hairy-legged burlesques. It was erroneously, but justifiably, thought that Australian troops could not swallow a serious love scene between a man and a female impersonator. But the producer of The Dover Road thought otherwise. He was right and the play made history. The
Australians flocked to it in hundreds. The entrance of the leading lady in her fur travelling habit caused a sensation every night. She was a dainty and very pretty Anglo-Saxon blonde. In five minutes the sensation had given way to rapt attention to the play.

My friend was captivated by her and craned forward on his uncomfortable seat. At the end of the first act he said he needed air. He lit a cigarette and then walked round towards the rear of the theatre to take advantage of another of the purposes of the interval. While he was so engaged who should stroll up but the actress, dressed in a ravishing gown for the second act. My friend is a modest man. He was in a dilemma. However, before any serious damage was done his pretty blonde angel put a stinking pipe in her mouth and remarked tersely: "Got a bloody match? "

The Dover Road was followed by other equal successes: I Killed the Count, Badger's Green and at the Temple, Androcles and the Lion and Arms and the Man.

The A.I.F. Theatre concentrated on revues and fast musical shows, this being their particular bent. The story of the costumes, wigs, grease paint and scenery has already been told. It is a saga of makeshift and ingenuity, a constant battle against the seemingly impossible with the footlights always winning in the end.

The Australians' finest performance was the Christmas pantomime of 1943, Dick Whittington and his Cat. The book, libretti and music for this full-scale musical comedy were all written in the camp and it was never surpassed. Such songs as "Watching and Praying" and "A Teacup Romance" were sung and whistled for years until freedom came. Good tunes both of them and tunes no Changi man will ever quite forget.

At most of these variety shows a good deal of time was given over to making fun of camp foibles. Somehow restrictions did not seem quite so irksome when we laughed over them in the theatre. The jokes, without exception, were completely devoid of vulgarity, depending for their humour not on sly innuendo but on the very essence of fun.

With my friend I went to one such performance. About halfway through the evening two gentlemen suddenly emerged in front of the tabs dressed as only the Indian Army officers of Changi could dress. A roar went up straightaway because in these two the audience at once recognized a very lifelike representation of a colonel and a major of the Indian Army known to the whole camp by their eccentricities. My friend and I felt a trifle uncomfortable as we happened to be sitting beside these very officers who, as usual, were at the concert together.

Their counterparts on the stage omitted nothing from their caricature. Action, gesture, speech-all were there, and when they burst into a duet about "Mahouts and Punkah Wallahs" I fully expected our neighbours to storm out of the theatre.

But no! They laughed uproariously. At the interval they discussed the turn.

"What'cha think of it?" asked the major, with a twist of his moustache.

"Good," said my friend, but being gentle added, "but a little far fetched."

"What!" exclaimed the colonel. "Far fetched! Dammit, man, you should go to India! "

"My dear chap," cut in the major in a very ecstasy of appreciation, "I know a couple of fellahs in India exactly like that!"

With the concentration of the British troops in the Australian area the theatre in Changi advanced still further. It meant that henceforward a play could be cast from the talent available in the whole camp. A new theatre was built in what the prisoners had formerly used as a restaurant and night club. In it, except on Sundays, when an American dance band played, good plays were staged nightly. The big successes here were Outward Bound, Hay Fever, a personal triumph for the brilliant Australian in Marie Tempest's original role and Suspect, a gripping psychological play.

In preparation for a season of Macbeth my friend and I were asked by an enthusiastic British producer to grow beards and take our place amongst the performers. Now, growing beards in Changi was an offence. To do so, as also to grow long hair, permission had to be obtained from camp command. After great difficulty, a file was prepared which solemnly did the round of official channels, eventually returning covered with endorsements, the last of which read: "Permission for temporary growth granted".

Macbeth was to have been a superb production with a special programme of lighting, imaginative sets and a cast of mostly professional actors. But on the very eve of the opening one of those heartbreaking blows, which were so much a part of a prisoner's life, fell. The Japanese ordered all prisoners to leave Changi forthwith for imprisonment in the dread Changi Gaol. The performance had to be abandoned and my friend and I shaved off our beards and took our place in the dreary procession to our new home.

For a long time the Gaol was without a theatre so the actors reverted to the original scheme and once more became strolling players performing on odd stages scattered about the area. But the theatrical life of the camp had taken such a hold that strenuous efforts were made to obtain permission for the construction of a new theatre. Eventually permission was given and plans for the great Gaol Theatre were put into execution. The audience sat in the open air but the stage and all the appurtenances of stagecraft were as elaborate as the camp architects and engineers could make them. So tall was the building, that the summit of it projected above the high concrete walls surrounding the Gaol. The stage itself was large, the lighting elaborate, the dressing-rooms ample and, best of all, the scenery was all "flown" from the dizzy heights of the flies. This latter improvement '-.-Id the advantage of placing no limit on the number of scenes for each performance.

My friend and I booked seats for the opening night of Autumn Crocus. On arrival we were shown to our seats in the open auditorium. The orchestra of forty with its permanent conductor was playing an overture. There was a buzz of excitement at the prospect of a new play and the further interest that it was to be performed in the exalted presence of His Excellency Lieutenant-General Saito and his jackbooted and sworded staff. A command was given and all ranks rose. Then the general and his party tiled into their seats. "Why doesn't the band play God Save the King?" asked my friend.

The play was first rate and next morning the reviewers' notices in the camp papers were full of praise. The Japanese attended most performances in large numbers voting it, without doubt, the best show in town.

As there was now only one theatre all tastes had to be catered for, so drama and vaudeville alternated in dazzling profusion.

Emboldened by the success of the theatre my friend and I wrote a musical comedy The Earl in the Bush and commissioned the two leading camp composers to supply the score.

This was done and rehearsals were commenced. And then another blow!

The current attraction, a revue, had been attended by a party of Japanese officers. The highlight of the programme was a symbolical dance by a Javanese dancer and a white man. If the dance were intended to have any international implications they were not apparent to the troops. The Japanese thought otherwise. It was clear to their minds, so warped by jealousy, that the dance could only mean the liberation of the brown people by white imperialism. Orders were given at once that the show must be stopped and, as though to add the final touch to our destruction, that the theatre must be pulled down.

The dismay and disappointment following this decree seemed to drive a hole through the middle of the camp morale. Requests, cajolings, appeals-all were of no avail. The theatre in Changi was dead, murdered like so many of its patrons. Our gay evenings were over: the last bit of fun had gone. For a time the big stage block stood vacant, an empty shrine. Then came the working party and, block by block, this great centre of the Changi arts was dismantled -into a dusty ruin.

Yet, even as the Japanese destroyed our theatre, the walls of their own much vaunted empire were crumbling into a greater dust. We were spectators now of a different scene. Our eyes were on the theatre of the world, our ears caught the music of success in war.

On a sunny day in September we assembled in the theatre courtyard to hear the final performance. It was a broadcast over the camp public address system of certain proceedings on U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay. On this occasion Lieutenant-General Saito and his staff were not present. They were more busily engaged on fatigues within the dark and forbidding confines of Outram Road Gaol.

And as we listened almost to the abject scratchings of the Japanese pens on the document of surrender we could hear faintly, joyously, the songs of the concert party that had cheered us to the victory.

"Well?" said my friend.

"Over," I said weakly. "It's over!"

My friend smiled and patted me on the shoulder. "Cheer up," he said. "You'll never get off the island!"

DAVID GRIFFIN, SECOND A.I.F.