SOMEDAY SOON (12 page)

After he had been abandoned, he had
managed to lower himself down into the boat. Somehow he had
fashioned a rough splint from a short length of wood he used for
measuring the level of water in the vessel’s storage tanks. Bit by
bit, using his teeth and his right arm he had been able to bind the
splint with strips of cloths ripped from a bunk pillow. Later, he
had noticed a small amount of water on the cabin floor, so little
that he had wetted a finger and put it in his mouth to see if it
was salt water or fresh. From its bitter taste he had realized that
the sea was beginning to seep through
Faraway’s
bullet-scarred planking and that the
flow would gradually increase, eventually sinking the vessel if he
was unable to keep her bailed out.

Joe struggled to keep bailing. He knew
he was fighting a losing battle.
Faraway
was listing badly now with almost two
feet deep of water sloshing around in the cabin. He had only been
able to dump a bucket every ten minutes or so, after spilling much
of it while struggling up the companionway with his broken arm.
What little strength he had was almost spent. The day before he had
eaten the last of his food—a raw potato and a crust of rock-hard
bread taken aboard at the Elcho Island Mission and he had less than
a pint of fresh water remaining.

Joe paused for a moment to look out
through a porthole. Outside the sea was dead calm and the sky a
cloudless hazy blue as it had been every day since the storm.
Inside the cabin it was so hot he could hardly breath. He was just
about to resume bailing when he thought he heard the drone of an
engine. At first he thought his mind was playing games. But the
drone grew louder, building up to an ear-splitting roar. Then for a
moment the cabin darkened as a huge shadow passed over
Faraway.
Oblivious to pain, Joe waded
through the water and scrambled up the companionway and stuck his
head out into the sunshine.

When he saw a flying boat just a few hundred
yards away, he had mixed feelings of fear and elation. But as the
aircraft slowly turned around he saw the markings of the United
States Army Air Force on its side and was overcome with relief. And
when the Catalina revved its engines and taxied towards him, tears
of joy streamed down his face.

As the flying boat’s crew transferred
Joe to the Catalina in an inflatable, he was slipping in and out of
consciousness. He tried to tell them he had left a party of
Aborigines at the mouth of the Rose River. He heard one of the
American airmen say the RAAF would be notified when they reached
their base in Townsville, then he heard another voice say
Faraway
must have drifted a long way
with the currents because they were now closer to Cape York
Peninsular than the Arnhem Land coast.

Joe was barely conscious when the Catalina
took off. But after the flying boat’s powerful engines lifted her
from the possessive grip of the sea, he heard someone say, ‘I guess
we got this guy just in time. Look down there, his sailboat’s going
under.’

There was a window in the fuselage
beside Joe but he made no effort to turn his head. His years
aboard
Faraway
had given him
the freedom and simple pleasures of life only a sailor could
understand, and so close a bond with the old ketch that she night
as well have been a living thing. Now all that was ending, Joe
couldn’t bring himself to watch her die.

*

General MacArthur journeyed to Canberra a few
days after arriving in Melbourne. As his car neared the capital,
the Supreme Commander and his chief of staff discussed the
priorities to be aired at the War Advisory Council meeting to be
held later in the day.

‘
One thing we’d better get straight is
what the Australians are going to do about their two-army set up,’
Lieutenant-General Sutherland said. ‘If they’re not going to change
their legislation to allow their militia conscripts to fight
outside Australia, and we are to go ahead and try and secure the
whole country, instead of the little patch behind their Brisbane
Line, there’s no point in channeling any American equipment to the
Chockos. All of it should go to the returning Australian Imperial
Force units which will fight beside us anywhere in the
Pacific.’

MacArthur looked up from the notations he was
making in preparation for the War Council meeting. ‘Chockos! What
the hell are Chockos?’

‘
It’s what the Imperial Force soldiers
call their militia. It’s short for chocolate soldiers.’

MacArthur smiled, almost to himself.

‘And another thing,’ Sutherland continued,
‘we’ve got to get a commitment from the Australian government that
it will do something about ending the obstruction from the
wharfie’s.’ Sutherland smiled and added, ‘That’s another Australian
colloquialism for longshoremen, sir. Right now, we’ve got American
soldiers and airmen waiting for guns and fighter-planes that have
been sitting in the holds of ships in Melbourne and Sydney for
nearly two weeks because of a Waterside Worker’s Union ban on
overtime. And every minute the Japs are getting closer and
closer.’

‘
It took Pearl Harbor to wake up the
American people,’ MacArthur said. ‘You’d think Darwin and Broome
would have woken up the Australians.’

‘You’d think so, sir,’ Sutherland said, ‘but
here, the full story of what’s going on is withheld from the
public, which brings me to another point. The government censor
doesn’t allow any mention of US troop movements. That’s all right
for security reasons but it seems everyone figured all the American
troops coming here would be white. Back in January, when some of
our black GI’s arrived in Melbourne, Australian Customs officers
refused them permission to land because of their White Australia
Policy. Of course, the Australians backed down but they’ve asked
Washington to make sure that we keep Negro soldiers out of sight of
white civilians. So we’ll have to train them somewhere out in the
sticks.’

MacArthur shook his head. ‘I’m beginning to
wonder just on how many fronts we’re going to have to fight the war
here in Australia.’

*

Frank Forde met MacArthur’s car at the steps
of Parliament House and personally took him to John Curtin’s office
where the two men greeted each other warmly. Any reservations the
American general had about working with the Australian Prime
Minister were dispelled during the course of a long day spent in
private talks and at the Advisory War Council meeting. During the
course of the meeting, MacArthur stated his intentions were to
preserve the territorial integrity of Australia, maintain a
foothold in the Philippines, keep the lines of communication and
supply between the United States and Australia open, establish
military bases and a build up of forces and equipment in order to
mount a major offensive against the enemy.

That evening when MacArthur dined with senior
government members in the Parliamentary dining room, it was plain
to see that Curtin and MacArthur had established a friendly and
genuine rapport.

As the evening drew to a close, Curtin rose
to his feet and said, ‘May I assure you, General, of the ongoing
cooperation and support of my government and the people of
Australia. Our armed forces will be at your disposal to serve the
common goal of the total defeat of the enemy and our civilian human
resources are presently being mobilized under a war-effort
initiative known as the Manpower Directorate. The Directorate is
charged with the responsibility of meeting the material needs of a
nation at war and it is empowered to conscript civilians to work in
any industry or profession it sees fit. You may be sure that
whatever this nation can produce to assist the fighting men under
your command, it will be supplied as quickly and efficiently as
humanly possible.’ Curtin turned to MacArthur and smiled. ‘Sir, I
am confident that together, Australians and Americans will overcome
any obstacles that lie in the path of our complete victory.’

MacArthur rose to his feet and shook Curtin’s
hand.

‘We shall win,’ the general said gravely. ‘We
shall win or we shall die. And to this end I pledge you the full
resources of my country and the blood of my countrymen. You take
care of the home front, Prime Minister, and I’ll take care of the
war.’

Dan found himself with time on his hands.
When he reported to the USAAF temporary headquarters on Collins
Street in Melbourne, he was given leave until such time as a new
posting could be confirmed. Like all newly arrived American forces
in Australia, the Air Corps commanders were desperately trying to
organize their personnel and resources at the most strategic
locations and facilities around the country. While he awaited his
orders, Dan was given accommodation at the fashionable Chevron
Hotel which had been made available exclusively for American
officers.

All the Air Corps personnel at the Chevron
were fresh out from the United States. They were enjoying the
adventure and eagerly looking forward to seeing action against the
enemy. Dan, like most veterans, declined to be drawn into
conversations about the realities of combat. He preferred not to
dampen the young flyers’ enthusiasm, knowing the brash bravado of
many of them would be tempered soon enough by more accomplished
Japanese pilots. Dan just hoped they would all live through their
first engagements with the enemy.

After the rough and ready tropical outpost of
Darwin and raw desert town of Alice Springs, Dan was surprised to
find a city like Melbourne in Australia. He found it much like
Boston in Massachusetts, a city he had visited once during his Air
Force training. As with Boston, he was impressed by the sheer size
of Melbourne, its air of permanence and its unmistakable English
tradition, features unknown in the small multi-racial frontier
towns of his native New Mexico.

But what surprised Dan most during the days
he spent looking around the bustling city was the huge
concentration of Americans. Every available inner-city park had
became a sea of tents, housing thousands of servicemen who had
disembarked from troopships and were awaiting transport to military
bases being set up around Australia. Dan was told one of the
largest camps, Camp Pell, was named after Major Floyd ‘Slugger’
Pell, Dan’s P-40 squadron commander, shot down and killed over
Darwin the same day he was forced down off Bathurst Island. Another
camp, Camp Murphy, set up on the Melbourne Cricket Ground, was also
named after an American officer killed in action while serving in
Australia.

During his time in the city, Dan saw the
entire American melting-pot on the streets of Melbourne. There were
Hispanics from the south-west and California, fair-haired Germanics
and Nordics from Minnesota and Wisconsin, white Anglo-Saxons and
black Afros from the deep south and Cajans from the shores of the
Gulf of Mexico. And there was every shade of light and
olive-skinned European, whose forebears had migrated to the United
States to find a new life and to build a new nation—a nation which
now called on her youngest sons to defend her, half a world away,
in a far-off land many of them had never heard of.

Some were wide-eyed farm boys, some
street-wise kids from big city slums, others were mine, mill and
factory workers, average boy-next-door Americans, forced by
circumstance to abandon their daily lives and the comfort of their
homes for canvas tents and straw-filled mattresses on the cold,
hard ground of Melbourne in early winter. In the weeks and months
that lay ahead, most would find themselves posted to tropical
Queensland and the Northern Territory. But it was unlikely any
would find a warmer welcome than that given them by the people of
Melbourne.

Crowds of well-wishers often lined the
streets, sometimes in the middle of the night, dressed in pajamas,
to cheer on and wave to marching GI’s disembarking from troopships
at the docks. The lounge rooms and kitchens of Melburnians were
thrown open to the young Americans’ friendly invasion, as were many
of the city’s clubs and entertainment venues. Special clubs run by
volunteers were set up to cater for the needs of servicemen,
providing showers, hair-cuts, laundry and cleaning facilities, and
the Salvation Army, church groups and hospitality organizations
established drop-in centres providing hot dogs, hamburgers and
friendly conversation.

Dan often wondered if the war in the Pacific
even gained a mention by the Navajo in New Mexico or whether the
far-off conflict had any effect at all on the daily lives of the
pickup truck cowboys and storekeepers on Main Street in Gallup.
Thoughts and images of Faith Brodie, the pretty blue-eyed,
fair-haired girl he had met so briefly in Darwin also frequently
crept into his mind. He was thinking of her again one afternoon,
lying on his bed at the Chevron Hotel, when there was a knock on
the door. He answered it to find an Air Force sergeant standing
outside in the corridor.

Captain Rivers, sir?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘I’ve come from HQ, Captain.’ The sergeant
handed a Dan a brown envelope. ‘Your orders, sir.’

*

Faith was worried for Joe’s safety right from
the moment she had been woken by the first ear-splitting
thunderclap of the violent storm that had rolled in from the sea
the night Joe left for Groote Eylandt.

Under normal circumstances she would
have been unconcerned, secure in the knowledge of her brother’s
good seamanship. But knowing
Faraway’s
seaworthiness was doubtful after the
Zero attack, she found it impossible to ignore a growing sense of
foreboding which grew with each passing hour. At daybreak each
morning, Faith and Koko would go down to the beach and stand at the
water’s edge scanning the horizon hoping for a glimpse of sails.
But there was never a sign of Joe. As the days passed, and as food
supplies ran down, the responsibility for the lives of the children
stranded in one of the most remote and inhospitable regions of the
country and Joe’s continued absence weighed heavily on Faith’s
mind.