Chapter 2 Dress Rehearsal; Boiling Point; Death & Sgt Rossiter; Undersea work....

DRESS REHEARSAL

THE second mate of the American Liberty ship John S. Walburg lit his early morning cigarette and leaned contentedly over the rail. This morning, he reflected, he had cause for contentment. His ship was safely berthed in one of Queensland's busiest war-time ports and, at the rate the cargo was coming out of her, she would be there for another week at least. Seven more days and nights of freedom from standing watches, freedom from the constant anxiety and fear of attack. Hostile planes and lurking subs were things that, for the time being, could be forgotten.

Ahead and astern of John S. Walburg ships of all types and sizes lay at the wharves, some discharging some taking in cargoes. Winches whined and rattled as cargo booms swung in and out; army trucks backed into position, received their loads and roared off through the open wharf gates, a constant, noisy, ever-flowing stream. And slowly, casually, as if the war was a thing too distant to be even considered, the dockside labourers went about their jobs.

Watching their unhurried movements the John S. Walburg's second mate realized how remote the real war was to the people of this town, how safe from enemy action they were. He dropped his cigarette end overboard and watched it dissolve into curling yellow threads. There was a cute little number in a cafe uptown with hair just that colour. He'd darn nearly got off with her yesterday. If he hadn't been due back on board . . . Heck, he'd get shore leave again tonight and follow it up.

He watched the tobacco strands as they drifted slowly aft until, in passing, they focused his attention on something on his ship's water-line. It was difficult to see what was for the discoloured harbour water lapped almost over it. Even when he moved so that he was standing directly above it, it only revealed itself as a metal object apparently attached to one of the ship's plates.

The second mate was not a professional seaman. Like many another young American he was a hurriedly trained, war-time makeshift and he still had a lot to learn about ships and the sea. He realized that, just as he realized that if he called his captain and reported the object he might easily be cursed for a land-lubbering, ignorant fool. The John S. Walburg's master was a professional seaman, an intolerant old sea-dog who was apt to be bitterly scathing about the ignorance of his junior officers. And, the second mate reasoned, that object might be part of the ship's fittings, something he hadn't noticed or been told about before.

But supposing it wasn't? Supposing . . .For a few nervous seconds visions of enemy-placed infernal machines, time bombs perhaps, flitted through his mind. What mighty fat pickings a party of enemy raiders would find in this port! Ships packed stem to stern, valuable ships, ships loaded with war equipment, with munitions! What a rude awakening for the peaceful citizens of the town - to be blasted out of bed by the explosions of ships loaded down to their marks with munitions. And
the seamen manning those ships. Hot damn!

Abruptly the second mate dismissed the whole ridiculous idea. He even managed a rueful grin at his own nervousness. Imagine the Japs forcing their way into this port, one of the most heavily guarded on the coast! What a hot welcome they'd get. Keen, trained eyes would pick them up on radar screens long before they got within range, swarms of planes rising like angry hornets from the 'dromes beyond the town would swoop on them, and the big coastal batteries along the water-front would blast them out of the water. Even if a midget sub penetrated the outer defences it would still have to run the
gauntlet of the lighter guns of the inner harbour. From his position at the rail the second mate could see the gunners casually scanning the sea. Not even a periscope could get down that narrow channel undetected.

No. Whatever the object below him was it had certainly not been placed there by the enemy. If it was part of a normal ship's fittings, he reasoned, the other ships in port would be fitted with them and the easiest way to find out would be to stroll along the wharf and see for himself.

He hadn't far to walk. Directly astern of his ship was a big Australian coastal vessel and on her water-line, not far from her rudder post, was a similar gadget. Only partly satisfied the second mate strolled back along the wharf. The function of those gadgets intrigued him and, without making a fool of himself in front of his captain, he felt he had to find out what purpose they served. Luck favoured him. On the wharf abreast of the John S. Walburg's stern he met the Australian chief officer inspecting his head-lines. By way of opening up the conversation he said:

"Makin' sure she don't run away, Aussie?"

The chief officer was suffering from indigestion and was not at all inclined to take part in flippant conversation. He merely prodded the gigantic mooring line with the toe of his shoe and grunted.

But the second mate was not easily discouraged. "Say, Aussie," he said, pointing to the object that so intrigued him, "what's that durned gadget for?"

Scarcely glancing at it the chief officer said suspiciously, "Righto, Yank, I'll bite. What is it for? "

"Aw heck! " There was a note of disgust in the Yank's voice. "I thought you guys knew all there was to know about ships."

"You don't expect us to keep up with all the latest fancy gadgets you Yanks bring out, do you? Nearly every week you come to light with a new one."

"If she's one of our fancy gadgets," the Yank reasoned, "how come you've got one fitted to your ship?"

The chief officer still wasn't sure whether he was having his leg pulled. He studied the object carefully before asking, "You wouldn't be tryin' to have a go at me, would you, Yank?"

Once more visions of time bombs flitted through the Yank's mind. "Come and take a look for yourself," he said urgently. "Come on. Let's go."

The Australian chief officer did not study the gadget on his vessel's stern carefully. One glance told him that the thing was there. He had no idea what it was. It could be some sort of an explosive charge. Being a man of peace his knowledge of such things was negligible, but of one thing he was quite certain - some unauthorized person had been tampering with his ship.

"Get moving, Yank," he ordered. "Report 'em to your skipper. Good God, those things might be anything. They might even be time bombs." Already he was hurrying for his own gangway.

The Australian captain was preparing to go ashore for the day when his chief officer burst in. He also knew very little about explosives. It is doubtful whether he'd ever heard of limpet mines and quite frankly he thought his chief officer's suggestion of time bombs rather fantastic.

"They'd never get away with that sort of thing in a port like this," he declared emphatically. "Wouldn't stand a chance. Still, I'll contact Naval Control. If there's been something fishy going on it's their job to look into it. You'd better see if you can get hold of one of those destroyer chaps while I contact Control. Get a responsible officer to examine it. He should know if it is anything dangerous, and the sooner it's identified the better."

The first lieutenant of the destroyer was sceptical. He'd just finished a long stretch of exacting convoy work and he considered it a bit thick to be dragged out to examine suspicious objects in a base port.

"Probably something that's been dropped overboard from one of the other ships," he growled. "Eh? You're certain it's not. Righto, old man, no need to get hot under the collar. I wasn't casting reflections on your seamanship. Just making sure. Well, we'd better push off and have a look at the thing." He reached for his cap and grinned. "You merchant chaps never give us any peace, y'know. We play nursemaid to you at sea and then you want us to nurse you in port."

Obviously he wasn't taking the matter very seriously and just as obviously his half-bantering manner was annoying the merchant seaman.

But once level with the coaster's stem the naval man's manner changed abruptly. "Hell's bells!" he exclaimed after the briefest of examinations. "It's a - - - limpet mine! Where the hell did you pick that thing up? Where the hell's Naval Control? Didn't you say your skipper had contacted them? T hey ought to be getting everyone ashore. That damn thing's liable to blow up any minute. They work on time fuses. Get further down the wharf unless you want to be blown to glory when she goes up."

They moved hastily away just as the Port Authorities went into action. To the order of "Everyone ashore" wharf labourers came scrambling up from the holds to join with seamen and firemen in a wild rush for the wharf.

"They're piling off that Liberty ship, too," the naval man pointed out. "What's the big idea? "

"I told you we weren't the only one. She's due to go up any tick of the clock. In fact I wouldn't mind betting the whole blasted lot -of us are mined."

With the air of one whose patience as a nursemaid had been strained to the limit the naval man exclaimed, "My sainted aunt, don't you merchant seamen ever keep a sentry or watchman on duty?"

"Why should we when we've got a Navy to look after us," the chief officer snapped. The strain and suspense were playing the devil with his indigestion, making him irritable and sarcastic. "You'd better have a look at your own ship before you go aboard," he advised.

His gloomy prophecies were correct for a hasty examination showed that all ships, both merchant and naval, were wearing limpet mines. Never in the history of the port had there been such a "flap". Wharf gates were locked and no one was allowed to enter or leave. Bewildered sentries swore that no reauthorized person had got past them on that or any other night. If the harbour defences had been penetrated, they declared, then the attackers had come by sea.

Gunners watching the narrow harbour entrance swore that since the last American ship berthed no craft of any description had passed in. The night had been fine and clear and not even a dinghy could have got through that entrance undetected. Naval men with the knowledge of delousing infernal machines and with the iron nerves necessary for such work were summoned. Naval launches packed with hatted authority raced to and fro across the harbour. And through it all men waited for the explosions that would sink their ships and perhaps tear the very wharves from their foundations.

With the commotion at its highest a slim, quiet-spoken man wearing the uniform of a British infantry major walked into Headquarters ashore and asked to see the Officer-in-Charge. The C.O. was seeing no one that day, a very junior officer informed him. The major as quietly but firmly insistent; his matter as urgent and he wasn't going to be put with junior officers. No, he would not state his business. A not-so-junior officer appeared and took charge. There was an air of authority about him as of one used to dealing with troublesome callers.

"Look, Major," he soothed, "you can't possibly see anyone here today. I wish you'd drop in some other time, or put it in writing if it's so urgent. Honestly, old chap, without divulging State secrets we've got all the trouble we can possibly cope with this morning.

"I know." The major smiled. Almost it was chuckle of quiet amusement as if he had some priceless joke to impart - to the right person. "It's about the mining of those ships in the harbour, isn't it?" he asked.

"Eh?" the not-so-junior officer gasped. "How the hell did you get hold of that news?"

you see," again the quiet grin, "I'm e chap responsible for them. My fellows and I put them there. Six of us, there were. Those limpets are only dummies, you know. Can't possibly do any harm."

For several seconds the not-so-junior officer was speechless. Can't possibly do any harm! There was nothing of the tough, burly commando about this slim, smiling major. He was not even robust, yet here he was, calmly stating that he and his five followers had penetrated the harbour defences, attached mines to all the shipping and got away undetected. Can't possibly do any harm! Oh, no. They had merely scared the daylights out of every man on the water-front, completely disrupted the entire port and proved that half a dozen determined men could sink thousands of tons of shipping in one of the most heavily guarded ports on the coast. And here was this man smilingly reassuring him that his cursed infernal machines couldn't possibly do any harm!

"Would you mind telling me how you got through the wharf gates?" The staff officer was at last regaining his speech. "You used one of the army trucks, I take it?"

"Oh no. We were never on the wharves. I'm afraid i I can't give you all the details, but we came in by sea. From quite a way up the coast."

"You came in by sea!" There was amazement and disbelief in the tone. "That's impossible, Major. You'd have been seen and fired on at once."

"I assure you we weren't. At least we weren't fired on."

"You'd better come with me," the staff officer snapped, his tone, his whole attitude showing stern disapproval of a joke which he considered in very bad taste. "You can do some explaining while we get off a couple of urgent signals. There's going to be hell to, pay over this . . . this outrage."

A lesser man might well have quailed at the obvious threat in that last remark, but the perpetrator of the outrage was unperturbed and still smiling. Small wonder that the threat of disciplinary action left him unmoved. Heaven alone knows what it would have taken to shake the nerves of this man or any one of his followers. To them, this raid, dangerous as it had been, was only an incident, a dress rehearsal for the real thing that lay ahead.

A few months later they repeated their outrage in the Japanese-held Singapore Harbour while the Japanese Empire was at the height of its power. Still unflurried, still able to smile and joke they attached limpet mines -not dummies this time-to the ships in that busy enemy port. Calmly taking their time they by-passed lesser ships and picked only the~ biggest and best for their targets. Thirty-eight thousand tons of Japanese shipping went to the bottom that night as Major Ivan Lyon and his five followers paddled away in their frail canoes. For sheer audacity and cool nerve the feat has never been surpassed in the history.

"STANDBY" (R. S. PORTEOUS, MERCHANT NAVY)

BOILING POINT

T0 the half-dozen prisoners of war who were lucky enough to see the great dipping I suppose the recollection will be a chuckling one to the end of their days.

On Blakang Mati, isle of fair aspect and foul deeds, stands a Japanese kitchen. Just below it across a grassy bank is a large concrete bath, some twelve feet by nine feet and about three feet deep. The heating of this bath for the daily community bathing was one of our permanent details and was generally in the not-so-capable hands of a two-star Nip private.

On this day of days the latter was new to the job and, true to form, extremely anxious to please his superiors and equally anxious to annoy the prisoners. Our task was to stoke the two furnaces until 2 p.m. which at ordinary times made the water a suitable temperature for the bathers an hour later. We advised the Nip to this effect. He replied "Kora! takusan." (Rubbish! It's all right as it is.)

At io a.m. the furnaces were going full blast and an hour later we suggested easing off a bit. To this he replied "Kora! takusan." Rebuffed, we sulked till lunch-time, during which one man had to keep stoking all the time, but at 1.30 p.m. our better nature reasserted itself and we suggested that he break it down a little. You'd hardly believe it, but the reply was the same-"Kora! takusan."

At two o'clock the fires were roaring infernos. "Takusan," we gritted as we madly went on stoking, "we'll give him 'takusan'." It was 2-45 p.m. when he sat us down for a well-earned rest and we had leisure to observe the results of our labours. Clouds of steam hung over the huge bath and the room was like an oven. We guessed the water to be somewhere close on boiling point.

Ten minutes later two Nip sergeants appeared, clad only in G strings and gaily swinging their towels in happy anticipation of an early tub before the rush. They hung up their towels, threw off the G strings and, in the usual impetuous way, placed a hand on the side and vaulted in. They vaulted out again in the same action. With screams of rage and pain they summoned the culprit to their awful presence where they bashed him, kicked him and abused him until he could scarcely stand up.

"Takusan," we whispered gleefully to each other, but there was better to come. Suddenly the sergeants stood back and ordered the victim to undress. We nearly died with suppressed laughter as we realized what was about to happen. Sure enough, he had no sooner removed his clothes, than he was seized and thrown bodily into the bath. When he tried to get out he was cuffed and pushed back. I suppose he was only in the water for about ten seconds, but to him it must have been eternity. To say he was red on emerging would be to understate the case. He was practically cooked.

The sergeants donned their G strings and swaggered off. They had saved their faces, if not their posteriors.

"STOKER"

DEATH AND SERGEANT ROSSITER

IT was not a long walk from the guardhouse to the place of execution, but to Sergeant Rossiter it seemed miles. He had been awaiting the order, and dreading it as it neared. As he marched with the section of armed infantry, he felt the perspiration breaking out on his forehead. He was not afraid of death, only of the instrument which effected it.

Funny, he had been afraid of death a long time ago. That was before going into action at Bardia. He remembered having wondered how he would react when he saw his first dead man. He saw six at once and did not turn a hair. Yesterday they had been laughing men he knew, but today they were lying in front of him like so many young trees ruthlessly hacked down.

He had not thought of that incident at Post 13 for years. Now it showed in his mind with every detail well delineated. He could see again the padre bending over each body in turn, cutting the meat tickets from the necks with a pair of scissors-he could have ripped them off for all the difference it made, but it was a nice gesture to use the scissors. Halfway through the job the padre tripped over a pair of legs and came down face to face with one of the corpses without batting an eyelid.

Three of the dead, Hubert, Captain Denton and D'arcy, Rossiter knew intimately as fellow-enlistees. They had been killed the day before during a fruitless sortie in which B Company lost half of No. 5 Platoon in casualties.

The platoon got inside the perimeter before they were turned back. Some of those Rossiter talked with afterwards said that the Italians opened up on them with a heavy machine gun.

That was when Hubert and D'arcy got theirs.

The captain killed himself, more or less, by running towards the gun. The grenade he meant to let go at the gun was still in his hands when they found him. He had not had time to get the pin out.

The Ities plundered the three bodies, even taking the boots. One of D'arcy's socks hung half off, revealing a foot which was almost black with dirt. D'arcy, the bloke who was so scrupulous about cleanliness that he washed himself all over when there was only a bottle of water a day, had died with unwashed feet.

Rossiter recognized one of the other three, a youngster named Barrett. He had to look closely to realize Barrett was dead. Barrett's features, a glossy sheen from the natural oils oozing out of the skin because of the heat, wore a smile.

"Wonder what he's thinking about?" said a voice by Rossiter's side.

Turning, he saw it was one of the stretcher bearers.

Shrugging his shoulders, Rossiter said, "It wouldn't have been his girl. He was only a kid. Where did you find him? "

"In that sangar out front. He must have forgotten and let his head get above the rim of the rocks. They got him right behind the ear. You wouldn't think he was dead, would you? "

Yes, men became indifferent towards death, thought Rossiter. In the next few years he probably saw dozens killed and regarded it as commonplace. Death was like that, always at one's elbow.

Rossiter recalled being in a café in Alexandria when a bomb landed outside, perhaps fifty yards away, where it should not have harmed anybody in the café. Yet a Britisher on leave from the Seventh Armoured Division sitting nearby suddenly slumped back, a startled look on his face and a long strip of glass from the shattered window still quivering in his throat. The blood from his jugular vein mingled with the beer spilt from the glass he had knocked off the table.

There was an occasion when Rossiter was still novice enough to feel upset about death. That was when his cobber, Campion, had been killed. If Campion had been his own brother, he could not have been more attached than he was to that great ape who was always getting him out of scrapes; Campion who laughed with joy as he pummeled off the M.P's while Rossiter, knocked out at the start of the brawl, lay cold between his cobber's feet.

Rossiter was not present when Campion got his. Perhaps that made the difference. If he had seen it happen he might not have wept. But Campion and he had crossed to Greece in separate ships.

It was Campion's ship which was bombed; it carried the unit's vehicles and ammunition. It came as a shock when Rossiter heard about it.

At the staging camp just outside Athens on disembarkation, their major addressed them: "This campaign isn't going to be any picnic. Some of your mates already have been killed coming over. Campion was among them."

Afterwards Rossiter got the major aside and asked him how it had happened.

"A fragment of bomb took away the back of his head," said the major. "Campion was manning one of the guns on the bridge port side, firing at them when they came in, and evidently enjoying himself. He got one of the blighters, if it's any consolation."

The major prattled on, but Rossiter was walking away. For the first time the war had taken on a personal meaning for Rossiter.

He lost other cobbers in battle, but he was sort of callous about the loss. Today it was them, tomorrow himself. Who knew? What would it matter if it were his turn next, so long as he paid his fare, to wherever he was destined to go, by taking a few German or Japanese lives beforehand? Sure, he missed those fellows who went down - Hutton, who took two hours and seventeen minutes to die at Galatas after the German parachutist stabbed him in the stomach, and Kennedy who left B Company to go up with A Company to Wau and did not come back.

Sometimes Rossiter would not have minded copping it himself. But he was lucky. "Lucky Sergeant Rossiter", they called him. "Don't Care Rossiter" might have been more apt. Did he not volunteer for the tough assignments?

Well, he had volunteered for this. And this was where it had landed him, on a scaffold.

He saw the noose swaying backwards and forwards slowly in the light breeze, invitingly.

He saw the faces of the Japs watching, inscrutably. He heard the priest beside him praying, dolefully.

Snapping himself out of his trance, he adjusted the noose about the Jap general's neck.

He pulled the lever, lost his grip and had to pull it again to put the war criminal out of his agony.

Then he was violently sick. He was ashamed of himself. Yet it was understandable. It was the first time he had executed a man.

KEITH H. HOOPER, SECOND A.I.F.

THEY ASKED FOR IT!

IT happened on Lower "C" deck.

Duntroon was waddling belligerently into a rising storm south of Milne Bay, late in 1943. The Solomons lay somewhere east, New Guinea somewhere north, or north-west, and Australia-well, Australia could have been anywhere in that grey, unfamiliar wilderness of lashing rain, wind-borne s ray and seething green seas.

Lower "C" (the mess deck) was dipping and swaying with the wallowing motion of the troopship. So too were the cook, "Babbling Brook", and his off-sider, nonchalantly having a breather just outside the steel bulkhead hatchway.

Midday mess was tailing off and inside could be seen some of the long trestle tables and those men who were stoically enduring the nauseating, bilge-like smell of Lower "C" for the sake of a little food.

Then came hesitantly down the listing companionway a mere youngster, obviously not long out of the "rookie" stage. And obviously with an uncertain stomach, for the fresh, boyish complexion was a shade or two paler than usual and his mess gear dangled from a white-knuckled hand.

"Babbling Brook" eyed him reproachfully and exhaled a vast cloud of cigarette smoke. "Yer late, sonny."

"Yeah," the off-sider-a cadaverous individual-agreed maliciously, "a man oughta have the flamin' Duty Sergeant on to blokes like yous! 17

Came the humble apology, "I've just come off submarine piquet."

And the implication of this experience, especially in a Coral Sea storm, was not lost on the pair of hardened "greasies".

"There's not much left!" The cook jerked a dirty thumb towards the mess room and blew a long column of brown smoke in the youngster's direction. "Them 'snags' was good, wasn't they, Bert?" he said.

- - - good!"

"An' the spuds in their jackets, floatin' in all that beaut gravy?"

.....good, too!"

The boy seemed to wilt somewhat. The southern colour in his cheeks almost disappeared. And a fine sweat began to glint on his forehead. His free hand was clenched tightly about the bulkhead door-handle for support.

They waited expectantly for the hurried exit. All the signs were there. They had played this game before and got quite a kick out of it.

But in the large brown eyes was a sign they could not read. A sign that combined the urge of hunger, the memory of home and home cooking, the personal effect of army discipline.

To their amazement the youthful soldier stepped through the open hatchway into the mess room. If anything the sickening odour of food and sweat, bilge-water and close confines was stronger than before.

A minute passed. Then two, three. A few men, clad in jungle greens, with clinking mess tins, straggled out and climbed the swaying companionway.

Then he reappeared, stepping gingerly, uneasily, his face near-white.

"Too much for yer, Dig?" laughed the cook callously.

"Not got the guts, kid" the off-sider jeered.

On the bottom step of the companionway the boy paused and turned. The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. A rivulet of sweat trickled slowly down a temple lit by the hot yellow of the single deck-head light. His aplomb was admirable as he gravely, sadly, answered his tormentors.

"No, it's not that. I don't suppose you could do much with the sausages, anyhow, but, I say, there is a limit, you know, you could have mashed the potatoes."

D. A. SMITH, SECOND A.I.F.

CHRISTMAS IN CHANGI

THE word "morale" was given plenty of work during the war, but it was a feature of the imprisonment; it seemed that the longer the term of the sentence the higher it became. And it soared to its peak at Christmas.

To the free man living with his family surrounded by the pleasant amenities of modem life Christmas must always be a season associated with hand shakes, good wishes and the pleasure of giving and receiving. Good cheer is assisted by good food, good drink and a holiday from work.

Contrast a prisoner's lot. He is faced with making Christmas, as he made so many other things, from nothing. True his church stands waiting with its altar loaded with temple flowers and the occasional crosses and candlesticks that were saved from the wreck of Singapore; with the padre, surplice-clad, smiling a welcome at the gate.

But for the rest there is nothing. No word has been received from families for perhaps over a year. The prisoner can only hope they are alive. He cannot put on fresh clothes for he has none. He cannot give a present to his friend since there is nothing to buy. He cannot receive.

In the kitchen the cooks are making heroic efforts to provide Christmas dinner. The meal is amazing but the food is the same. Rice always tastes much like rice, leaves much like leaves, sun-dried fish like sun-dried fish. The titles on the menu-Changi plum pudding with sweet sauce, mixed grill of vegetables with gravy, fish rissoles, tea with sugar-these do not deceive the diners. Yet they are happy and eat with gusto. The meal, the day, the camp, all have been blessed with that indefinable thing, the spirit of Christmas, a product of the human consciousness more potent, more real when ,divorced from its fripperies and trappings.

Christmas in prison starts with speculation. "I wonder if the Nips will come good with anything at Christmas?"

"Sure to," says someone.

"Don't be stupid," says another, "Christmas ain't got anything to do with Shinto."

In 1942 the Christmas joke was to greet your friend with "Heard the latest about Christmas? The Nips are going to give us a bottle of beer per man and if we keep quiet it will be increased to two bottles next year." The laughter was quite uproarious. Two years later the pessimists were remembering this Joke and it did not sound quite so funny. As a prisoner it is always your last Christmas behind the wire.

After speculation comes preparation. If a bumper meal is to be served a campaign of saving must begin. Thus the sugar ration is cut down and the balance placed in the Christmas reserve. Similar action is taken with rice, oil and vegetables. Some messes call for a cash contribution in the hope of being able to buy from the canteen some garlic or gula melaka. In 1944 a fresh pig was delivered to the camp of 10,000. A pound weight was sold at a sum equal to three months' wages or £20 if you had been able to cash a cheque in the black market.

The institution of Christmas cards was one of the most delightful aspects of a Changi Christmas. They ranged from simple greetings scrawled on an odd piece of paper to elaborate works of art, superior in inspiration and execution to the majority of Christmas cards on sale in peace time. The motifs of palms, prisons, Santa Claus and reindeers were the most usual. One showed a naked prisoner nailing his only article of clothing, a worn stocking, to the wall of his cell in Changi Gaol. The caption - "Just in case. You never know" - expressed in a line the undying optimism that characterizes the British race when faced with outrageous adversities.

The first Christmas was the most gay with Red Cross supplies and a reasonable standard of health. Parties were given, calls made and the inevitable wishes for future prosperity exchanged. The Christmas of 1943 was altogether different. The battered remnants of the Thailand force limped into camp eaten by ulcers, crushed by the loss of thousands of their number, stunned by disaster. The camp rallied. Here was a set of people to whom something could be given. for they had nothing. Shirts, trousers and eggs were given; in some units even the precious dinner was presented to the skeletons peering round-eyed from their camp across the road.

Then came 1944, the best Christmas of all. At Changi Gaol the Japanese made the minimum of concessions. Even the working parties on the aerodrome were forced to go to work; thus some were up at 5 a.m., and others were not back in camp until 9 p.m. Yet the camp

was determined to make it a special Christmas. They were prepared to make the effort. The working parties departed singing-an offence in the eyes of the Japanese prison administration since it showed that the prisoners were not ashamed of their defeat. They returned singing.

The meals were prodigious, even the diarrhoea which followed was suffered gladly. There was not the gaiety of hysteria, the old optimism had gone, but a new and better optimism replaced it. It was the third Christmas. They had faced hardship together and were alive. They could and would stick it out.

Yes, on that Christmas Dav the prisoners were unbeatable.

"OPTIMIST"

UNDERSEA WORK IN THE NAVY

0F all the now-it-can-be-told stories of our Navy at war few touched on what went on beneath the sea; not anti-submarine warfare, but the fight with sunken wrecks, enemy mines and unexploded torpedoes which the Navy's own divers waged ceaselessly from beginning to end. It was a dangerous game, played with full knowledge of the frightful consequences of the least false move.

During a torpedo bomber raid on Malta one plane swept in low over the harbour mouth and launched its deadly load. But the torpedo struck at too sharp an angle and plunged straight through the water into the muddy bottom. That "fish" was alive, its nose propellers having had time to revolve and screw the detonator hard up against the 500-odd lb. of explosive with which its war-head was loaded. The least shock, perhaps the concussion from an exploding bomb, would set off that little lot with the effect of a mine going up. It had to be removed, and the Navy called for volunteers.

A petty officer from cruiser Perth took the job. He clambered stiffly over the side of the diving boat and dropped expertly from the ladder into a harbour stirred to murkiness by the raid just over. Being a Navy man, he'd seen what the concussion of depth charges, their enormous force transmitted through and augmented by the water, had done to a submarine's steel hull. A bomb bursting in the harbour-the likelihood of a further wave of planes being almost a certainty-would exert a similar pressure on him! But perhaps he didn't stop to think of that.

He found the torpedo easily enough, its nose embedded in thick glutinous mud, and set to work to attach the lowered grappling hook. Working against time, every moment tense with the possibility of being blown to pieces, the diver secured his hook and ordered, "Hoist carefully." As they took the weight up top, the long shape eased slowly from its sheath of slime. He backed away as the blades of its propellers swung towards him: the least touch might mean oblivion. Then, as the torpedo swayed up through the water, the dread words came over his phone:

"Air-raid, red"' And that meant attack by enemy planes was imminent.

They hauled him in over the side as the first bombs fell and, standing not upon the order of their going, they headed shorewards, the diver sprawled in the bottom of the boat still helmeted and shod.

Another petty officer diver (many of them were petty officers) aboard H.M. Armed Merchant Cruiser Kanimbla in the Persian Gulf, was awarded the George Medal for his work in salvaging the submerged hull of a scuttled German merchantman.

This man had to go alone into the bowels of the ship to close all openings and valves which the Hun had left open. That in itself may seem to demand little of an experienced diver, but here existed certain circumstances which called for the highest degree of cold courage to overcome them.

The diver, because of the innumerable obstacles to his life-line in the engine-room, had to secure it to a stanchion and thus work entirely alone. He had no means of signalling if he were caught. Stumbling over greasy engines and boilers into every comer where there i was likely to be a valve-this being necessitated by the Germans deliberately falsifying their ship's plans-the diver groped his way.

Then, most dangerous of all, the tide would run out. Streaming through bulkheads and passages at seven knots in this narrow neck of the Gulf, it threatened to roll him to his death. To prevent being washed away, he held on to stanchions or cylinder pistons with both arms; then, when the tide slackened again, he resumed his work.

Due almost entirely to the efforts of this one man, that valuable ship was floated and reclaimed.

A diver who has worked as dangerously perhaps as any man in the war is a petty officer who finished it aboard H.M.A.S. Hobart, and who fought through all a savage enemy could hurl against the small force of British and Australian warships during the campaigns of Greece and Crete.

But this man's work wasn't finished after the guns had chased the bombers off-in fact, only started. Once at Alexandria a huge black shape, swinging slowly beneath its parachute, dropped from the sky and plopped into the harbour. It was a parachute mine; there were seven different ways it could be exploded, and all the time its delayed action fuse mechanism was ticking nearer zero time.

The Navy diving boat eased carefully over the spot, engine stopped, for even the pulsing beat of its propeller transmitted through the water could explode those hundreds of pounds of H.E. This type of mine was one of the enemy's most fiendish, and the diver, dropping through the green water towards it, had had to leave even his electric telephone cable behind.

Whatever his feelings may have been, he accepted the risk, serious though it undoubtedly was. He had no means of knowing whether the mine had some special trap that would cause it to detonate should an attempt be made to lift it. He was like a man who starts along a jungle path which may well be ambushed. But he was an expert at his work; and he had his courage.

He found the mine lying in two feet of ooze and, up to his knees in mud, worked carefully towards it. The mine had to be hoisted up or, if too deeply embedded and in an unfavourable position for hooking on, exploded under water.

He found it would have to be the latter so, while in imminent danger of going up with the mine, he scooped a shallow trench beneath its belly. Then he placed in the trench the tube of gelignite he'd signalled for.

They hoisted him then, and drew off four hundred yards, paying out the battery wire as they went. All shipping had been shifted from the vicinity, and, with the pressing of the firing plunger, the mine exploded with a roar and tore itself apart in a spreading cascade of water.

A few days later there occurred an incident which emphasized the extreme hazard of diving on these engines of destruction. The bombers came over, the mines floated down and the special spotters noticed their point of immersion.

The diver was to go down that morning at 8 o'clock, but the authorities had introduced half an hour daylight saving; and at half past seven, new time, there erupted from the waters of the harbour two towering mounds of white water which, rising high to the heavens, broke and fell back in a cloud of spray. Had the diver been beneath the surface, the frightful concussion of those explosions would have pulped him.

His next job was in the Suez Canal. It had been comparatively easy to spot a submerged mine by reason of its trailing parachute till the enemy, with characteristic and diabolic thoroughness, caused the connecting coupling to be made of a substance soluble in water. Thus, on entering the water, the 'chute broke loose and floated off, while its load sank quickly to the bottom, waiting. Even if the parachute were later found, none could say how far it had drifted. When the mine left the aircraft a thin wire attached to both pulled out its safety pin, rendering it "live".

The spotters reported a mine in the Canal, and the diver descended. This one was stuck upright, and the grappling hooks, made of non-magnetic brass, were shackled on to its lifting eyes. Up top they hoisted away, and when the diver got back inboard, and they dismantled the mine, the experts had pleasant news for him. The only thing that prevented its exploding a short time after dropping (when the diver was working on it) was the fact that the tripping wire had parted prematurely and the safety pin was still in!

There were not only the hazards of warfare to contend with. Always present, always in the forefront of the diver's consciousness, was the natural danger from the pressure of tons of water around him, and the strange tricks that not a lifetime of experience could completely nullify.

Once when testing a new suit, an Australian diver was working on the bottom of the hull of a British submarine. Working away with a hack-saw, he failed to notice a small hole that started in his suit under the left arm. Gradually, with the pressure of air from within, the slit widened, the air spurted forth in increasing volume, and in a minute the diver found the greater mass of air in his lower body swiftly and surely lifting his legs above his head.

Soon, quite helpless, he was hanging upside down in thirty feet of green water. Then the sea began to trickle slowly through the exposed hole, slowly past his chin and eyes, inexorably filling the top of his helmet. Can you imagine the horror of his position? The water had short-circuited his telephone line, leaving him without communication to the upper air, and in his strange upside-down attitude he found it impossible to find his signal line. Helpless, he felt the cold of the water creeping up around his head, on to his forehead. In a minute it would fill his nose and mouth.

Then the attendant up top, having lost communication, decided to haul him up. The diver, half-conscious, managed to grasp his shot-line as the strain came on his rope and, by great exertion, hoisted his head above the level of his feet. The water fell over his shoulders to the bottom of his suit.

The result of those ghastly moments under water was complete lack of speech and paralysing of his neck muscles for a week through shock. And to shock a man of a diver's calibre the circumstances must have been dire indeed.

These are but a few of the men who voluntarily added the perils of underwater work to the scales already weighted against them. Most of them who came back are still diving, peace-time work on wrecks and ships' hulls in commission; but they have behind them the respect of the men who appreciated most their invaluable services - their own ship-mates.

J. E. MACDONNELL, R.A.N.