South by Java Head. Alistair MacLean

groping through the fog of a nightmare.

      Moving slowly, uncertainly through the darkened streets, the small group of soldiers, perhaps two dozen in all, made their way down towards the waterfront like very old, very tired men. They looked like old men, they walked with the faltering steps and the bowed head and shoulders of old men, but they weren’t old men, the eldest of them was not more than thirty: but they were tired, terribly tired, tired to that point of uncaring exhaustion when nothing matters any more and it is easier to keep stumbling along than it is to stop. Tired and sick, wounded and ravaged by disease, their every action was now unthinking, automatic, their conscious minds had all but ceased to function. But complete mental and physical exhaustion carries with it its own blessing, its own drug and anodyne, and the dull, lack-lustre eyes staring emptily down at the ground beneath their trudging feet showed this beyond all doubt: whatever sufferings of the body they still endured, they had at least stopped remembering.

      For the moment, at least, they no longer remembered the waking nightmare of the past two months, the privations, the hunger, the thirst, the wounds, the sickness and the fear as the Japanese had driven them down the endless length of the Malayan peninsula, over the now destroyed Johore causeway into the illusory safety of the island of Singapore. They no longer remembered their vanished comrades, the screams as some unsuspecting sentry was butchered in the hostile dark of the jungle, the diabolical yells of the Japanese as they overran hastily prepared defensive positions in that black hour before dawn. They no longer remembered these desperate, suicidal counter-attacks that achieved nothing but a few square yards of land bitterly, uselessly re-won for only a moment of time, afforded them nothing but the sight of the horribly maimed and tortured bodies of their captured friends and the civilians who had been just that little bit too slow in co-operating with the enemy. They no longer remembered their anger and bewilderment and despair as the last of the Brewster fighters and, latterly, the Hurricanes, had been driven from the skies, leaving them completely at the mercy of the Japanese air force. Even their utter disbelief at the news, five days ago, of the landing of the Japanese troops on the island itself, their bitterness as the carefully nurtured legend, the myth of the impregnability of Singapore, collapsed before their eyes—these, too, had vanished from their memories. They no longer remembered. They were too dazed and sick and wounded and weak to remember. But one day, soon, if they lived, they would remember, and then none of them would ever be the same again. But meantime they just trudged wearily on, eyes down, heads down, not looking where they were going, not caring where they would arrive.

      But one man looked and one man cared. He walked along slowly at the head of the double column of men, flicking a torch on and off as he picked a clear way through the debris that littered the street and checked their direction of progress from time to time. He was a small, slightly-built man, the only one in the company who wore a kilt, and a balmoral on his head. Where the kilt had come from only Corporal Fraser knew: he certainly hadn’t been wearing it during the retreat south through Malaya.

      Corporal Fraser was as tired as any of the others. His eyes, too, were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and his face grey and wasted with what might have been malaria or dysentery or both. He walked with his left shoulder far higher than the other, hunched up near his ear, as if he suffered from some physical deformity, but it was no deformity, just a rough gauze pad and bandage that a medical orderly had hurriedly stuffed under his shirt earlier in the day in a token attempt to staunch the bleeding from an ugly shrapnel wound. In his right hand he carried a Bren gun, and its weight of twenty-three pounds was almost more than his weakened body could carry: it had the effect of pulling down his right arm and dragging his left shoulder upwards, even nearer his ear.

      The one-sided hunch, the balmoral askew on his head, the kilt flapping loosely about his wasted legs, made the little man appear grotesque and ridiculous. But there was nothing grotesque and ridiculous about Corporal Fraser. A Cairngorms shepherd to whom privations and gruelling exertions were of the very stuff of existence, he had yet to tap the last reserves of his will-power and endurance. Corporal Fraser was still very much a going concern as a soldier—the very best type of soldier. Duty and responsibility weighed heavily with him, his own pain and weakness didn’t exist, his thoughts were only for the men who stumbled along behind, following him blindly. Two hours ago, the officer commanding their confused and disorganised company on the northern city limits had ordered Fraser to lead all the walking wounded, and those whom they could carry, out of the firing-line and back to some place of relative safety and quiet. Only a token gesture, the officer had known, and Fraser had known it also, for the last defences were caving in and Singapore was finished. Before the next day was through, every single man on Singapore island would be dead, wounded or prisoner. But orders were orders and Corporal Fraser trudged resolutely on, heading down for the Kallang creek.

      Every now and then, when he came to a clear stretch of street, he stepped to one side and let his men file slowly past him. It was doubtful whether any of them as much as saw him, either the very ill men on the stretchers, or the less ill but still sick and wounded men who carried them. And every time Corporal Fraser would have to wait for the last of the party, a tall thin youngster whose head swayed loosely from side to side as he muttered to himself continuously in a rambling and incoherent voice. The young soldier suffered from neither malaria nor dysentery, nor had he been wounded in any way, but he was the sickest of them all. Every time Fraser would seize his arm and hustle him on to catch up with the main party, the boy quickened his pace without protesting, just looked at Corporal Fraser out of incurious eyes that were empty of all recognition: and every time Fraser would look at him hesitantly, shake his head then hurry forwards again until he reached the head of the column.

      In a winding, smoke-filled alley, a little boy cried in the darkness. He was only a very little boy, perhaps two and a half years old. He had blue eyes, blond hair and a fair skin all streaked with dirt and tears. He was clad only in a thin shirt and khaki-coloured haltered shorts: his feet were bare, and he was shivering all the time.

      He cried and cried, a lost, anguished wailing in the night, but there was no one there to hear or heed. And no one could have heard him who was more than a few yards away, for he cried very softly, short muffled sobs punctuated by long, quivering indrawn breaths. From time to time he rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of small and grubby fists, as little children will when they are tired or weeping: and with the backs of his hands he tried to rub the pain away, from the black smoke constantly laced a smarting path across the tear filled eyes.

      The little boy cried because he was very, very tired, and it was hours past his normal bedtime. He cried because he was hungry and thirsty and shaking with the cold—even a tropical night can be cold. He cried because he was confused and afraid, because he did not know where his home was or where his mother was—he had been with his old amah, his Malayan nurse, at a nearby bazaar a fortnight previously and had been too young and unknowing to appreciate the significance of the bombed and burnt-out rubble that awaited their return—and he and his mother had been due to sail out on the Wakefield, the last big ship from Singapore, on the same night of that 29th January … But he cried, most of all, because he was alone.

      His old nurse, Anna, was half-sitting, half-lying on a pile of rubble beside him, like one lost in sleep. She had been wandering with him for hours through the darkened streets, carrying him in her arms for the last hour or two, when she had suddenly placed him on the ground, clasped both hands above her heart and sunk to the ground, saying that she must rest. For half an hour now she had been there, motionless, her head resting far over on one shoulder, her eyes wide and unblinking. Once or twice, earlier, the little boy had stooped to touch her, but only once or twice: now he kept away, afraid, afraid to look and afraid to touch, vaguely knowing, without knowing why, that the old nurse’s rest would be for a long, long time.

      He was afraid to go and afraid to stay, and then he stole another glance, through latticed fingers, at the old woman and he was suddenly more afraid to stay than go. He moved off down the alley, not looking where he was going, stumbling and falling over loose bricks and stones, picking himself up and running on again, all the time sobbing and shivering in the cool night. Near the end of the alley a tall, emaciated figure wearing a tattered straw hat eased himself off the shafts of his rickshaw and reached out to stop the child. The man meant no harm. A sick man himself—most of the consumption-ridden rickshaw coolies of Singapore usually