RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT

 

When I learned of Werner’s death at ninety-four, I was taken by surprise.  I had never forgotten my interview with him for a magazine article:  his presence at the dining-table at right angles to me, but sitting quite upright and staring straight ahead, a proud cast of a man, as if reading an autocue running across the window opposite.  Indestructible, he seemed, as if moulded from rock.  Even his hard, inanimate face held a bluish metallic tone, his inner elbows a shocking deeper blue running to inflamed red, as if he’d burnt himself in the kitchen.

Some would contend that repressed anger is like a corrosive acid burning the soul, while others might argue that anger focused for a purpose recharges one’s batteries, sustains the glow of self-righteousness or is a manifestation of stubborn will.  Werner’s intense gaze at nothing concrete was chilling.  It reminded me of my father.

I was born of German parentage in Dusseldorf in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.  After spending four years in primary school and six in high school, I matriculated in 1936, one of the last Jewish students to do so before the Nazi crackdown on Jewish institutions.  It was my ambition to study engineering, but all Jewish students were now prevented from going to university.  Since anti-Jewish sentiments were deliberately inflamed by the Nazis, I decided to study in Zurich, where the engineering syllabus in the technical colleges was similar to that of Germany’s educational system:  six semesters over three years and familiar course content.  I possessed the qualifications, so there was no need to take exams, but I did require six months of work experience in the field. 

By October, 1936 my chances of success looked fairly easy but one class appeared difficult – technical drawing.  However, I took an extra class in the Christmas vacation, one bonus being that practical laboratory sessions gave access to lecturers for further assistance.  It was my intention to return to Germany during vacations, but after 1937 my passport expired.  A friendly passport control officer confided that I might not be able to return to Switzerland if I re-entered Germany.  He gave me to understand that I would be dispatched to a re-training camp for instruction in Nazism.

In 1938 my brother, who was six years older, found it increasingly difficult to work with my uncle under the Nazi regime and decided to emigrate to distant relations in the USA.  But the number of applicants was so high that the American Government established quotas.  Already a growing trickle of Jews and non-Jews was fleeing at night across the border to France, Belgium and Holland, countries that suffered in the early years of war.  Fortunately, my brother received a visa in 1938, about the time of Neville Chamberlain’s Peace Agreement.

I travelled through France along the German border in order to meet my uncle and parents across the Channel in London.  Troops were assembling on stations, ships were already crowded.  At Liverpool Street station my uncle said, ‘You look so pale.’  I was still suffering the effects of seasickness.  I hadn’t seen my parents for two years but stayed at their boarding house before making the return journey by train to Switzerland.  That was where my security lay as well as my studies.

In Germany pressure was continually mounting on the Jews.   Many were caught by the Nazis, shoved into trains and consigned to death camps in the east.

I happened to be staying with my parents in Richmond, near London when the British Government declared war on Hitler’s Germany on September 3, 1939.  But no action was taken until Germany invaded her neighbours, including parts of Scandinavia.  At that time I was feeling quite comfortable residing in England, then local tribunals began an investigation to classify foreigners.

My parents and I were classified Category C, so we were allowed to move around freely, except in coastal areas, but ordered to hand in all cameras and not use a car.  Foreigners classified as Category A were interned immediately – non-Jewish Germans and some Jewish ‘suspects’ (some of whom were later transferred to the Dunera).  Foreigners classified as Category B were subjected to restrictions of movement and regular reporting to police.  At the 1940 tribunals I was recalled but mercifully classified again as Category C.

In the early days of war the public were worried, almost panicky about foreigners.  For instance, I belonged to a tennis club which organised social nights and boasted a licensed bar.  But about the time of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, the atmosphere grew more heated, more suspicious.  Would the German advance to the coast lead to a possible invasion of Britain?  Any foreigner could be suspected of Nazi sympathies or espionage.  In 1940 I was asked to leave the tennis club, though some members were sympathetic.  However, I sensed the unease and witnessed the preparation of armaments and the use of searchlights before air raids actually began. If Hitler had pressed his advantage at Dunkirk then and sanctioned an invasion of Britain, the Germans would surely have triumphed.

During June and July further internment of foreigners took place and rumours about their fate ran rife.  The police warned me to pack my possessions.

On July 2^nd my father and I were detained at Kempton Park in primitive conditions, slept on a concrete floor with blankets, took cold showers.  Then my father was taken to the Isle of Man, while I was sent by train to Huyton, near Liverpool, not knowing what to expect.  It mostly rained at the camp, so everything got damp in the tent.  Nor was the food very wholesome in the meal tents.  Meanwhile my uncle was involved in war work at a manufacturing establishment, so he was not interned. 

In the camps there was no communication with the outside world, only rumours.  We interns didn’t know what had happened to our families back in Germany.

My father never spoke about his war.  Not to me, at least.  Now and again my mother would remind me: ‘Don’t upset your father by asking about the war.  He’s bottled it up for years.’  It was my mother who told me the little I knew.

Apparently, Dad didn’t refuse the draft; he actually looked forward to his national service in Vietnam.  When the official letter in the brown envelope arrived informing the family that his name had come up in the ballot, he responded eagerly to the call of duty, determined to make the most of this experience.  How many of the fifty-five thousand nashos could claim that?  Not to mention the draft-dodgers.  At first his enthusiasm was swept along by the gung-ho rhetoric of politicians and the military that demarcated the ideological battle-lines:  the democratic tradition of a free, open society defending itself against the proletarian dictatorship of Marxist-Leninism.  But Dad wasn’t prepared for what soon followed.  Cleaning up the battlefield on fatigues, heaven knows what horrors those green conscripts witnessed, deadly quiet as they mooched about that gruesome task.  Most of those innocents abroad simply withdrew into themselves.

 

I reluctantly volunteered to join one of the transports.  Three transports departed for Canada, but one was torpedoed on the first day at sea.  About one thousand lives were lost, including crew and guards.  Survivors were taken back to Liverpool on overcrowded lifeboats. 

On July 10, 1940, the Dunera lay in Liverpool Harbour, its destination unknown.  The  Dunera boys speculated that they might be sent to Canada, near the USA border. 

Officially, we were allowed only forty kilos of luggage, but we were told to drop everything on board and searched.  If we didn’t comply, troops seized our possessions, especially our valuables and personal documents.  We were never to see them again. The officers looked on and tolerated the rough handling meted out.

We were pushed downstairs into the hold below sea level, lower deck no.3.  The artificial light was dingy.  There were no toilet facilities except chamber pots that soon overflowed.  Once again we were searched by NCOs, before finally getting something to eat.  Many of us were expected to sleep on long mess tables for ten or twelve men.  Some of us were issued with hammocks - although there weren’t nearly enough - mats or tables or benches to sleep on with some blankets.  Even so, it was difficult to get to sleep.

Then during the night, the ship’s engines rumbled disturbingly.  On the second morning I heard a noise like thunder, as if something violent had struck the ship.  The seas were rough and some men were seasick, others panicked, but getting upstairs was forbidden by guards with bayonets mounted, as the lights flicked on and off.  Clearly, something must have happened, but the Dunera boys were not told.  However, some of us did notice the ship zig-zagging.   We were in a convoy of thirty-odd vessels, but soon parted ways with them.  Now we were accompanied by one solitary destroyer.

From the top of the decks, we could see for ourselves other ships dispersing into the distance.  After a few hours our destroyer also disappeared.  Later we learned of the U-boat attack outside Liverpool.   When the Dunera turned direction, observers realized that we were going south, not west to Canada or the USA.

The guards called for volunteers to report to the kitchen to carry food down below, but the Irish Sea was extremely rough.  I was sick for at least a day, but managed to gain access to the upper deck next day.  When extra hammocks were issued, sleeping became more comfortable.  I was still sick, though, and there was no cleaning up.

 

In a voice of monotonous evenness, Werner continued his humourless narrative, relentlessly, in those hard, clipped sounds, as if he knew the script off by heart, without changing s single word, preserved forever in aspic.  I’ve made alterations, which he would have fiercely resisted, for although his English expression was competent, occasionally his choice of word or idiom was not up to the mark.  After a two-hour sitting, by which time I’d had enough, not because his story didn’t fascinate me, but his voice went droning on irrespective of my mental fatigue.  Only once did his voice waver:  when he mentioned his son, who wasn’t in the least interested in keeping the Dunera scandal alive in living memory.  And although the grandson had once been enthralled by Werner’s dangerous Hollywood adventure, that romantic world must seem light-years away to him now.

 

Then the situation improved.  We were provided with more regular meals from big containers of food.  Breakfast was substantial:  porridge, bread and marmalade, tea.  Hot lunch was served at mid-day.  There was a light meal in the early evening and a light supper.  There was a great deal of corned beef, so we were not starved but did wish for better food.

The Dunera stopped at several African ports between Liverpool and the Cape, such as Takarari, where the free French fleet was based.  Inside our ship the tropical conditions were unbearably hot, but we were only allowed on deck for a mere half-hour each day.  Sometimes the sea was too boisterous for exercise.  Always under guard, we could be pushed with a rifle butt for the slightest misdemeanour.  Without shoes, we’d find ourselves walking on broken glass, for the troops drank negligently.

We docked for two days and nights at Cape Town, but we still had no access to our luggage, not even our underclothes.  Our cases were opened forcefully by the Captain and clothes laid out on tables to be identified.  Many luggage labels were torn off, for the crew didn’t care.  Luckily, I was still a member of the clothing party and we blokes enjoyed the freedom to go on deck and visit parts of Cape Town and Table Mountain. 

Once round the Cape, I was granted a ship’s bed with white linen.  The medical officer, an understanding man, suspected that I had appendicitis.  I lay in hospital for four days, then returned to quarters.  It was back to routine.  The clothing party exhibited an assortment of clothes on various decks.

About a week out of Liverpool, we Dunera boys learnt that we were going to Australia.  After seven weeks at sea, we crossed the equator and arrived at Fremantle in Western Australia, where we caught sight of troops on the mainland.  On the following day we left for Melbourne.

The sea was rough in the Australian Bight, but we were seasoned sailors now.  We enjoyed healthier food, such as an apple every day.  In Fremantle we all submitted to a medical examination.  Our hands were examined for skin disease.  I was disgusted with my clothes and appearance – I’d lost weight.  A report was made by the Australian army to the British army.  Consequently, we were issued with shaving gear that had been confiscated.  All of us had arrived unshaven but managed to clean up a little.

Early one morning we landed in Sydney and disembarked under the eyes of British troops as well as the Australian police and army, who were amazed at this strange lot of arrivals, many with ragged and torn clothes and some without shoes.  They suspected something was wrong - they had officially been told to receive German POWs and paratroopers!

The boys were transported on four trains of wooden carriages.  From the first moment the guards started conversing in a friendly manner, doling out cigarettes and chocolates and bonhomie.  Some of them had served in Palestine, where they had experienced contact with Jews.  The contrast between British and Australian guards was the difference between night and day.  In addition, the boys received much-appreciated food parcels from ladies auxiliaries.  On the journey we spotted the remnants of bush fires, blackened areas of burnt tree stumps and leaping kangaroos.  What amusement these dear animals gave us!  I can’t remember the boys chuckling so much.

 

When that horrific photograph of that young girl hit the front pages, Dad was devastated.  Mum said it happened in 1972.  A nine year-old girl - she even remembered her name - Kim Phuc, running naked toward the camera, her back covered in burning oil.  Napalm melted the flesh from the bone.  Amazingly, she survived, but knowledge of the cruel suffering of innocent citizens caused a tide of revulsion against the war.  Later when Dad returned home, even our neighbours accused him of being a killer, an animal, a heartless bastard.  When he eventually laid eyes on that photo, I doubt whether he ever scraped that sickening image from his mind.  About that time he would be tossing and turning in bed, Mum said, waking up in a sweat with a start, whimpering, even occasionally shouting, ‘Get your bloody head down!  The fucking gooks are out there!  And there!  And there!’

Then there was a story breaking about the deleterious efforts of herbicides and defoliants.  Denied by the Australian Government, of course.  But again the photographic evidence of babies born with clubfeet, cleft palates, enlarged heads, missing limbs . . . so the list of deformities continued ad nauseam.

Dad’s severe headaches and muscular twitching gave way to unpredictable mood swings.  Never could he relax, unwind, just let go.  You could tell from that wild look in his eyes that he was a haunted man, living in the lurid jungle shadows of his mind.  He refused to see a psychiatrist.  Even refused to seek counselling from the Vietnam Veterans’ Action Association, he was that ashamed.  Of course, the RSL didn’t want to know him.  Nor did the army acknowledge the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Even the medical profession smugly, cruelly dismissed claims for PTSD, since clearly proven to be a genuine and absolutely understandable condition suffered in extremely stressful situations.  However, the Australian army was at pains to differentiate itself from the American military.  Its top brass maintained that Australians killed only armed soldiers in the jungle and did their utmost to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the Yanks often got away with indiscriminate brutality.  Until My Lai, that is, with those shocking revelations in November, 1969 of disgusting atrocities.

 

We travelled through the night, some boys sleeping on the floor with Dunera blankets; some slept in luggage racks.  We passed through Young, Cootamundra, then Hay at seven o’clock in the morning, where we were received by Australian troops, some middle-aged, some who had served in the Middle East. 

There would be no more rough treatment, we realized.  After all, the Dunera boys were held on behalf of the British Government with no intent of jurisdiction, but with the responsibility of care.  One thousand men would be accommodated, twenty-eight to a hut.  Another thousand slept on the floor with blankets.  They were fed in relays from two kitchens.  I warmly remember that first day - tasty sandwiches, fresh apples and oranges.  Officers helped, for they were short of hands.  Many of the boys quaffed food, especially the fresh fruit. 

The spokesman of the two or three hundred orthodox Jews on the Dunera was Andrew Eppenstein.  The group included a number of rabbis who broached the Captain about their fate, but it was the troops who were effectively in command.  No news was filtering through, but some lads might have received news by way of Cape Town.

The rest of the journey was uneventful.  At last it was wonderful to be able to relax when meeting Australian guards on trains.  Many of the boys spoke good English but couldn’t understand the Australian accent.

The generous treatment accorded us on our arrival, such as hot tea and cakes and chocolate, would never be forgotten.  Such generous fare formed our first impressions of Australia, most favourable impressions indeed, and these continued through internment, with the result that no escapes were attempted, no tunnels dug.  In any case, we could see the edge of the desert so there was nowhere to slope off to even if we’d wanted to.  In the distance we could discern the houses of Hay, a few inhabitants and children, and that was enough for the present.  Occasionally, we made excursions to the river.

The clothing party continued for six weeks to examine all luggage stored in the huts to identify clothing and documents to hand back.  But about thirty per cent of luggage had disappeared, and some thrown overboard, particularly in those early days of the voyage.  Later we were entitled to claim compensation from the British Government.

At Hay there were thirty-six huts in each of two compounds, each with a captain and parliament; and a camp spokesman who had access to the commanding officer, who was amenable to whatever meetings were required.  The treatment by officers and guards was very cordial.  There was a daily inspection of huts:  beds properly made and clothing folded; and kitchens inspected.  There were also daily roll calls – two or three times a day at first – so the sense of army routine was quickly established.

The two camps had some communication with each other, but no direct contact, though there were two working parties in the same vicinity.  Eventually, workshops were established to repair shoes.  Some boys were trained tailors who could repair clothing and uniforms.  Others had trades and vocations, such as hairdressers. We acquired tools to manufacture tables and chairs to furnish huts.  I myself gained carpentry skills from tradesmen friends.  It all helped to pass the time.  Also we appointed night guards on two-hour shifts to attend to anyone who might have got sick and check that everything was in order.  I obtained some writing equipment and started to write diaries.  I’d already taken notes on the Dunera, but I had to be cautious. I deemed it expedient to make no reference to the British guards’ rough treatment.  These notes I used to write up a proper diary, which I later typed to complement my life in the army.

In camp, organized sport was enthusiastically welcomed.  Franz Stampfl, who over a decade later coached Roger Bannister toward breaking the four-minute barrier for the mile, directed physical exercise, handball and fistball.  Consequently, I regained fitness and recovered my average weight within a few weeks.  Australian kitchen crews worked alongside my own people, as several Jews had been employed in the food industry.  They were able to prepare better meals from ample food supplies in the Riverina.  A canteen was organized, which included clothing from the Sydney branch of Myers.  One could order sleeping bags and straw palliasses.  Each bed had a fine mattress and five blankets, so proved comfortable but cold at night.  The camp organized private cafes selling cups of coffee and homemade cakes.  Money was sent by families.  Payment of one shilling per day was made for jobs done in camp, such as night guards or cleaners of latrines.  Such a small sum enabled inmates to buy from the canteen such items as cigarettes, toothpaste, razor blades, condensed milk, soft drinks and chocolate but no beer.  Access to mail, including airmail and cablegrams to England and the USA, took three weeks, so any news might be quickly outdated.

The British Home Office organized a representative, Major Julian Layton, to investigate the inmates’ situation and offer assisted passage from the middle of 1941.  The first vessel returned to Britain in convoy via New Zealand and Panama.  One vessel with forty men on board was torpedoed.  But approximately 1100 returned to Britain by 1942 or ‘43.  Major Layton made several visits to Australia and interviewed many of the Dunera boys, making himself open to any requests, which he referred back to the Home Office or relatives in England. 

By the end of 1942 all the Dunera boys had been transferred to Tatura with a short interval in Orange.  Three hundred men in May and July, 1941 were selected from patients suspected of heart tremor.  They were detained in the grounds of the camp in Orange and kept under guard on their daily walks.  The Australian guards, however, were friendly.  The locals gave us curious looks – we weren’t soldiers but were issued with army greatcoats dyed red!  The remainder of the Hay inmates was transferred.

Tatura boasted thirteen camps:  one for refugees from the Dunera; one for refugees off the Queen Mary from Singapore; one for single; and one for married men.  The camp at Tatura was similar to that at Hay, but not as cold in winter.  We stayed there until the end of 1941 to early 1942 after the USA had entered the war on December 7, 1941.

The day of my father’s return to Australia was utterly soul-destroying.  He was forever embittered, for when he arrived home in the dead of night there was no fanfare, no warm welcome by pollies or military officers.  What’s more, Australians on Civvy Street, by and large, seemed indifferent to these lucky blighters who had risked their lives in appalling conditions.  Frequently, Dad was spat at, jeered, sent to Coventry, persona non grata.  By the very people who had voted to rush the poor devils to a veritable hell!

 

So what was Australia going to do with all these mostly younger men in their twenties and thirties?  Those who went back to Britain were generally older and may have rejoined army units or tank units.  I heard that one tank driver was saved when the tank blew up; everyone else was killed, yet this survivor drove a tank in the Berlin Victory Parade of 1945.  He wrote a book on Dachau.  He never returned to Australia and died at the age of ninety.

What will happen to us?  Which way is the war going?  Well might we wonder, but early in 1942 I was attached to some orchardists in Shepparton and Kyabram.  Seasonal fruit-picking was hard work, especially in the heat of February and March, but generally pleasant enough.  I was paid at the official award rate, four guineas for 40 or 44 hours per week.  Housed in a primitive shed in the orchard away from the owner’s family, I fell in with four friends in Kyabram.  The teenage daughters who brought us milk daily I met again in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s.  All are pretty fit now.  I used to go to dinner at the local pub in Kyabram.  The landlady took pity on us.  We were given a four-course meal for two shillings – at that time, the norm was three courses.  Dressed up in a shirt, tie and jacket and looking like real foreigners to the locals, we would take a twenty-minute walk into town every day.  By this means I made friends with some of the local inhabitants and stayed in touch with others.

When the British Government offered voluntary service in the Australian army, about four hundred Dunera boys enrolled in the Australian Labor Corps (later known as the 8^th Employment Company) and transported to Caulfield racecourse.  In time, that number increased, although some gained early release or had protected jobs in industry.  Similar companies existed to find employment for refugees.

We adhered to strict army routine with the exception of drill and were issued with full kit but no rifles.  After two or three days in Caulfield, we were accommodated in the grandstand, then later in tents.  I worked in army stores, munitions and food stores and transported them to railways.  Some boys were stationed at Tocumwal ready to transfer from Victoria gauge to NSW gauge.   The company was stationed in an open area of Parkville, Melbourne for the first twelve months, before tents were erected for American troops due to arrive from May, 1941- 42.  Many were sent to the Dutch East Indies, which we helped unload onto trucks and railways and took to various stores.

I experienced one trip to Eskona in Switzerland.  A fellow in a golf club by co-incidence hailed from Dutch East Indies.  The camp was built for Americans, but my group was housed in tents.  Since I was working for the American army, I could be transported on their trucks and enjoy their canteen service.

The army unit then transferred us to Broadmeadows on the outskirts of Melbourne.  Most of us slept out in tented rooms close to the camp area and walked back to camp.  Occasionally, there was an army dinner, but often we’d descend on the town for food and lectures at Melbourne Technical College or university.  I had previously continued courses by correspondence and night classes.  Weekends were mostly free except for work parties on Saturday or Sunday, after which duties we were free to do whatever.

Our first commanding officer was Captain Broughton of half-Maori descent, a wonderful man to us.  He could identify with refugees and supported the notion that a man’s religion was a personal matter.  He quickly grasped the nature of our background and the circumstances of our internment in Britain, our Dunera experience and our internment in Australia.  Not only was he educated and understanding, he got to know everyone in the 8^th Australian Company and helped whomever he could to get release from the army.  Above all, he gave us new faith in ourselves.

I was given discharge from the army in February, 1946 in order to attend university on a full-time basis.

By war’s end many of us Dunera boys tried to get rid of our German habits, such as refusing to speak German; however, some persisted in speaking their native tongue – to their detriment!  Many rid themselves of their refugee appearance, but others didn’t.  My own intention was to become Anglicized or Australianised, without negating those affirming qualities of my German origin.

 

Alas, Dad’s only demonstrative emotion was anger.  Born in part from frustration, a sense of helplessness from no longer having a meaningful role in society.  Pretty quickly he’d become an outcast.  Took to drinking at home instead of the pub.  His rages became more predictable, more ugly, more threatening.  The Vietcong were no longer the enemy.  Now it was my mother lined up in the cross-hairs!

I advised Mum she had to leave Vince, my poor wreck of a father, for her own safety and well-being.  Which she did.  Found herself a little bedsitter and managed to start work again.  But, of course, fate plays its own tricks.  Around 1987 the public disregard for Vietnam vets underwent a major sea-change.  Sydney staged a Welcome Home Parade for the vets and this time the public cheered them.  Five years later in Canberra, a national memorial to the Vietnam veterans was unveiled.

But that was all too late for Vince.  He’d been dead six years.  Took his own life with an overdose of barbiturates.  The grog didn't help.

Eleven years after starting a university course in Zurich, I was finally awarded my engineering degree in Melbourne.  I had no difficulty obtaining employment in that field.  A job with Heine Bros, a big trading firm in Melbourne, was arranged by another Dunera pal.  This was a company that fostered business relations with Germany, so I was obliged to reconsider my opinion of German people.  In fact, I had several happy experiences with those I encountered.  It is evident that the present generation no longer exhibits that superiority complex that characterized the Nazi years, thank goodness! 

Then there were those old friends from Germany who sought to learn about my wartime experiences, but alas others who didn’t even enquire about my Dunera days.  ‘We were under such a dreadful bombardment,’ they’d gabble on.  ‘You couldn’t imagine.  Seven whole weeks.  Most of the inhabitants have fled.  Or died in the streets, if not buried under the rubble.  Dusseldorf is now a dead city.  Even those lovely trees that lined our streets are mere skeletons, as you can see.  In March the Americans occupied the Oberkessel.  Those of us who remained were ordered to shovel away the rubble so their jeeps could drive around.  They say over six thousand Jews were murdered in the east . . .

 

For them, I had nothing to say.

 

                                                                                                                        Michael Small

September 3-October 8, 2012; January 12-17, 2015

 

 

SHOWING THE FLAG

                                                        

Choking awake, he found himself coughing, like swimming up from deep underground, breathless but parched dry.  And dared open his blinkers, ungummed them, nice n slow, tentative like.  Breathe shallow, breathe easy.  What’s that smell?  Gas . . . and something other.  Cordite?  What the bloody hell was cordite?

Wailing piercing his head, a roller-coaster of sharp, shrill screams.  Sirens more like, braying.  Move, he couldn’t, not flex even, feelingless.  Until he pressed thumbs hard against each fingertip in turn, just like when the arthritis got too much.

Oglers stinging something awful, unfocussing.  Close up, motes of dust still raining.  Brick dust?  Were his eyes partially blinded or brain dimmed, dumbed?  Or the lounge swathed in darkness, fuses blown?  Mind blown?  What for god sakes lay around the lounge?  Some sort of scatter - Christ, what a scatter! - dark oblongs like bricks or slabs of paving.  Then tensed, sensed his two and a half metre solid walnut bookcase sloped across his back, digging in. 

Books as bricks?  Huh, struck his whole life on a scaffold of bricks.  Wasn’t his dwelling a haven of words and long drawn-out lacunas, lacunae?  Books the ballast.  If ever he’d do away with himself, he’d pondered frequently, he’d treat himself to a cave stacked with piles of bound paper, piles and pyres of them, douse them in petre and oil and slow-burn amid their ashes, spines broken.  Symbol of his journey.  A bookish person they’d say, Who’d say?  Fearful of facing the ferments and terrors of Terra Firma.

Yet face them he did.  Literally.  A Letter to the Editor.  His first ever!  The Morning Post, oft referred to in these times of unreal politik as the Mourning Post.

Sir, Since the Sydney siege, it is scarcely credible how many people believe that Islamic terrorism is the work of a few disaffected individuals with mental issues.  Surely these blinkered Lefties cannot deny that extremist elements within the Islamic diaspora have declared war on our cherished western values.  I appeal to both left-wing progressives, who dare not offend the notion of multiculturalism, and those who believe, such as the P.M., Mal Priestley, that by permitting Australian aircraft to assist the American air force in an attack on the ISIS ‘death cult’, this horrendous cultural conflict will be over in ‘certainly months rather than weeks’.  Oh, really?  Or just another shirtfront by the fakir of facade.

Last night I learned on the six o’clock news that Muslim boys as young as five are being taught to cut off the heads of westerners by slicing slowly through their necks.  And today I read that a clean-living seventeen year old Muslim boy, a former student of a distinguished Sydney grammar school who had won a scholarship to university, has gone off to fight in Syria; an adolescent girl was raped by Islamic State soldiers, then sold at market; and pregnant women were slain for refusing to marry jihadists.  We must remain vigilant.  Terrorist chatter is increasing on social networks.  We are not immune.  It is imperative that we review both our terrorist laws and immigration laws.

Name and address supplied

Disgusted, sickened by that horrific photo of a captured Pakistani pilot he dredged up that angst-ridden time as a god-awful teen, when he himself finally plucked the nerves to immolate . . . emasculate?  Striking a safety match - Swan Vesta? - to light the gas oven with its range of flames in pretty hyacinth blue, leaving the oven door ajar and tuning out the incessant hissing by wallowing in groovy black shellac 45s . . . the Grifters?  No, Drifters, deep throats, all cascading violins and bell sounds, Belsen . . . Nelson . . . Ricky, the Neverly Brothers . . . two long lonely hours lapsed before sticking his scone in the oven, laying it on the bottom blue-mottled metal shelf, his body slumped on that cruddy brown lino . . . but still no easing, releasing pain.  Utterly useless it was, cowardly stuff.  Tedious too.  What else but brew up a cuppa?  How homely was that?

First, though, staggered outside to snatch some fresh air.  Not before spewing up over the bluebells by the back step.  Where the buck stops.  If he’d had the wit to put the kettle on the ring first, he’d have blown roof-high to smithereens or been so badly bloody crippled the physical wounds would have cut as bad as a lobotomy.

When his wandering senses trundled round again, baubles of water seemed dripping down seams and cracks in the ceiling.  Unsealing, splashing on the side of his noddle.  What relief, thank god!  Though throat was dry.  Dry as . . . That’s it!  Keep thinking.  What was the familiar . . . similiar, simile?  Dry as the cocky’s selection after a drought.

Sirens were still . . . whirring?  Moaning?  Belling?  Snatches of vocal utterances far away, real or imagined.  Outside walls licking up the flames?  Whistles pitching in shrieks, then trilling shrill.  


His other war, he recollected in blinding flashes, had been sheer bliss:  running barefoot in shorts, what, five or six years old?  Playing cops and robbers in the camp, squinting up at the air raids, tracers of anti-aircraft fire.  So much larking about, except for gathering firewood or keeping an eye on the washing line, till roll call at evening.  Which was taken by conscripts acting as guards, South Korean or Taiwanese, the Japanese soldiers concentrated on the front line.  That's right, the teachers had all been locked up.  He'd been taught in the mornings only - what, he couldn't remember - the seniors like his big brother Eric did the afternoon shift.  Eric was given a book on the Norse sagas by the librarian, but preferred Zane Grey, Tarzan and the jungle stories of Kippers Kipling.

Pre-war Honkers was but a hazy, lazy blur.  His father was a sales manager for the British air industry.  They could afford two servants . . . amahs? in their apartment.  He and his younger brother, Tom, were greedy readers of American comics, fifteen cents each, which they'd swop:  Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman . . . At the end of their street, a two-dollar shop.

The war he'd only been vaguely aware of, the Japanese invasion of China.  Hong Kong had proved a haven for Chinese escapees from the mainland, but they were treated badly by the locals, so Dad said.  Whereas he was more taken with making bird traps of bricks and twigs to catch sparrows, bulbuls and finches for his mother to cook up.

One day, September, 1941?  A Canadian army unit turned up.  Two thousand men marched up Nathan Road, in readiness for transport to the U.K.  The army camp lay three miles yonder toward the hills.  They marched three abreast, never-ending it seemed, their thick black boots grating, the slogging past lasting a good half-hour.

Dad was in the reserve army then, the Hong Kong defence force, often coming and going without saying much.  Then suddenly disappeared.  December 8 rings a bell, but he can't be sure of the year.  Went off to catch the bus to school.  He heard the ack-ack fire, spied planes winging across the sky.  Only manoeuvres, he shrugged.

But then:  'No school today,' said the conductor in Cantonese.  'The Japanese are coming.'

He was deliciously excited.  But when he ventured home, Mum was sobbing bitterly.  'Where's your father disappeared to now?  Don't tell me he's joined up.  And where were you?'

He skulked off again in spite of the heavy droning of planes and bursts of gunfire.  And, bull's eye!, picked up a big lump of shrapnel that was still hot!

Later that arvo, when Mum had calmed down a bit, she heard on the radio that all British passport-holders should go down to the port with whatever they could carry.  What a bloomin' struggle for him and his two brothers , all those suitcases.  Someone said a bomb had killed ten internees.  Another gasped out Hong Kong's surrender.


Remember, try to remember.  Last fire drill: ‘Testing, testing!’ burst the intercom with a crackle.  ‘This is only a practice.  Repeat:  This is only a practice.  Do not do anything!’

Remember walking homeward back to the Towers one time?  Yes, head clearing the fug a bit.  Must’ve been end of morning constitutional, round eight o’ clock.  Mass of residents clucking about the forecourt, some in dressing-gowns, some with sticks, riffs of gabbling and chuckling.  What an adventure that was, what a hoot, surging down corridors into lifts in carpet slippers!  And he’d missed all the fun.  The wardens of each floor, wearing their silver helmets like Her Majesty’s horse guards with jutting jaw, thumping on apartment doors if a pillow hadn’t been dumped outside to signify evacuation or checking if door locked.  A surge – yes, even lame oldies can surge if need – down the concrete steps to the exit and round onto the forecourt.

‘Eighty people missing!’ he heard the chief warden informing the manager, with a straight face, checking his lists of apartment numbers and names ticked off, obviously dismayed that so many hadn’t bothered to desert their comfy warm beds or even bid him to 'get lost'.

‘That’s alright, Fergus,’ Maeve reassured with the hint of a smile and a pat on the forearm, deeply relieved that the cause was only some duffer’s burnt toast.  Why don’t the buggers use their fans? she wondered.  ‘Here at Chiltern Towers there’s more chance of drowning than burning if there’s a real fire.’

All the same, Fergus thought, eighty people missing, presumed toast, is hardly a commendation for the operation’s success.

Next Maxwell knew, retching and retching, the mess leaking out of his mouth splodging the carpet - Russian salad.  Even shed a few tears at the helplessness of being stripped almost naked, vulnerable as a sensitive nipper four years old groping in the dark.

From the pit of his stomach, he heard spasms of grumbling.  Strained his much weaker, foggier right eye upward to the ceiling.  Flooded, pale yellow, now greyish.  Fractured with seams of water dropping, dripping.  A giant’s jigsaw fretted.

A blinding moment of reckoning!  There was at least one floor above him that could come crashing down on top of his splayed body.  Not to mention eight apartments with extensive gardens up on the flat roof . . . or structural damage from below. But his back he couldn't feel for dead weight.  Was broken already?

Pent up, insides churning.  Try to flex those flaming hands.  Where the fuck were they?  Left arm throbbing, pinioned beneath.  Couldn’t roll off without creasing pain.  Limply lying down beside.  Try to clench fingers, but no, not much sensation there.  Exercise your mind, for god sake!  Tell what happened.  More than just an explosion of gas?  Old brainpan didn’t want to register, but after a long pause, he urged.  Suppose something far worse than an accident, something executed with intent, something political.

Which brought back to mind last month’s residents meeting, some parade  In fact, it had played on his mind, with his mind most nights since.  He had spoken out against the village president -  the resi presi he called him in flippant moments - but could’ve bitten his tongue.  And hated himself for doing so.  In particular, because he had rarely spoken out in his life, except when flaming angry.  In the nineteen-forties you could be flogged by your parents, in the fifties by your teachers, at uni by the brainy bunch; and, in harness, metaphorically by your editor:  ‘Keep your head in, Maxwell!’  Now that he was no longer constrained by the chains of subservience and liberated by retirement, he had resolved to tell it how it was.

‘Your committee,’ the silver-tongued, silver-haired Warwick Holman was saying in doggedly determined mood, ‘has decided in its wisdom to erect the Australian flag in a corner of the front garden.’

There were murmurings from the chairs towards the back of the lounge, some smirks, some eyes flickering heavenwards, some knowing nods. 

Maxwell’s hand shot up.

‘I haven’t finished yet, Maxwell,’ said Warwick tersely, more corpulent than corporate.

‘ All the same, I think . . .’

‘Be so good as to let me finish, if you don’t mind.’

He had never seen the man so steely.  ‘Mr President, I appreciate that your sentiments are worthy.  But we haven’t been permitted a vote on the matter.’

‘Look, we have dickered about for years without making a decision.  You have elected me president and I wish to press ahead.  We had a show of hands at last month’s meeting and the indication was that those in favour were in the majority.’

Maxwell grudgingly admired Warwick’s determination for a cause fervently believed in.  Right, this was the moment.  Stand up and be counted!  ‘I fear I must be frank.  If you raise the Australian flag, you are attracting the attention of any jihadist who feels he must obey the strictures of his imam without question.’  There, it was out!

When the gasps had died, there was quite a stir.  ‘Shame on you!’ the treasurer cried out, waving his treasury report.  ‘You muckraking panic-merchant!’

‘That is a disgraceful thing to say!’ blurted Meg Adams.  ‘Have you no sense of shame?’

‘You are out of order, sir!’ shouted wizened Dr Duffield with dodgy knees, who knocked over his seat as he struggled to his feet.

 

‘You go against the grain,’ said Mary-Jane Walters more calmly, having made a grab for the microphone.  ‘We are fortunate to live in a tolerant multi-cultural society and any wild talk of jihadists will stir the pot.’ 

‘I am quite sure,’ Maxwell retaliated, ‘that in the city of Chiltern we are in no immediate danger from any dissident group, but regrettably we’re not immune from the machinations of the caliphate.’

‘Nor should any of us say anything that can be misconstrued,’ added Warwick, with a fierce look of disdain. 

So why did he bother to attend the ceremony?  At the show of hands Maxwell had opted No to Chiltern Towers flying the Australian flag.  It might signal an exclusive club, a bunch of out-of-touch anglophiles, a promo for the smug plutocracy of yesteryear.  You would never witness on the streets of Chiltern a woman wearing a niqab, not even a hijab . . . of course, the city was a possible target for a lone wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Or might one day - heaven forbid! - harbour a cell of jihadists, that taboo word which left-wing progressives found impossible to utter for fear of appearing critical of Islamic culture, even Islam itself?  Bloody hell, could this be the second home-grown atrocity committed by ISIS terrorists in two weeks?  

Here I am living in a blue riband seat, he thought, ultra-conservative, very right wing.  The residence is plum in the centre of Chiltern, opposite the town hall, whose Australian flag atop the clock tower flies freely, so proudly, whereas ours hangs limp.  Had some bod, some rough with grievance, broken in?  To cause such grief?  Unlikely.  Security is number one factor, why all we resis sold up in the burbs, downsized and washed up here.

Besides, how could you break in?  Well, you for one lost your swipe card, didn’t you?  At least once.  So whose got their thieving fingers on them?  What’s more, don’t the tradies get given swipe cards when they’re on the job?  Not all, but some, specially early starters of a morning.  And forget to hand them back?  No, the office would chase them up.  Hound them till they brought them back.  They’re very expensive:  eighty dollars, an expensive mistake.  Or charged them.  Hopefully, incentive enough.

Occasionally, some scruff would lurk in the recesses of the outside walls, out of sight if residents seated inside the lounge looked up.  Watching, waiting, he would nip in behind a doddery or distracted couple, sneak through reception and lounge, wander over to the café bar, have a gander, then turn his back away from them all, pour himself a cup of coffee with trembling fingers and snaffle a couple of biscuits, then hover in the reception area as if waiting for an inmate about to emerge from the lift.  Sometimes the oldies didn’t care a brass razoo.  After all, you couldn’t be sure who was a newie, unless dressed like some dero.  Other times residents cast suspicious glances, nudged one another and called over the staffer at the front desk.  The cadger would mumble something inaudible.  If pressed, would mutter, ‘Meeting a mate’ or ‘Waiting for apartment 215.  They’re just comin.’  But such transgressions should never happen.

Again, remember when the new blinds were installed in the lounge?  The sliding double-glazed doors went unlocked for a week to make it easier for the workmen laying the new skirting board, kept open for much of the day. The day staff in the office must’ve left it to the caretaker, didn’t inform the night staff at the five o’clock changeover.  Five days passed by before any staffer thought to check that doors now closed were in fact locked.  They weren't!  Yet no one broke in – as far as far we know.  Christ, what a stink if company honchos had known!

Remember that recent notice from the police?  Security alert for all Over 55 Residences.  Lock all bikes and motorised vehicles even in underground car parks.  Beware that incidences of tailgating are growing, so be suspicious of cars driving through the boom-gate on your tail.  Which to his embarrassment he well knew.  While awaiting a friend at the boom-gate, he used his own swipe card to allow what he thought was her buttercup yellow car to proceed down to the basement, only to realize too late that the face of the driver behind the tinted windscreen wasn’t in the least familiar, nor the rego.  But then could any trespasser prowl around beyond the gated car park?  Yes, from the fenced-off visitors’ car park, they could open the fire door and pass along a brightly lit passageway, lined by a few garbage bins.  Concrete steps did lead upwards from there to a locked door, but intruders could simply leave explosives hidden in one of the bins, then exit directly through an outside door into the street without being spotted.  Christ, his own apartment was situated on the third floor adjacent to the lift, just above that fire door in the car park!

So much for security.  Security sucks!

Racking his tired old brain, thoughts proving too hard to come by.  Water now dripping in a steady trickle onto the back of his head far more irritating than refreshing.  Back all clammy and cold as death.  Yawns growing gapes.  Mind going wanderbout like wailing of nearby sirens.  Was he imagining the moans of his pitiful, bed-ridden neighbouring resis?  His body twitched when in his mind’s eye he glimpsed the black jihad battle flag bearing an Arabic inscription in white.  Like countless Australians who read the week’s newspapers, he knew its meaning:

    There is no god but God and Muhammed is the messenger of God.

When he was returned to his senses, he recalled that last social gathering.  In the front garden looking most attractive and refined, with beds of mauvish and pink begonias in full bloom and jacarandas flowering in delicate showers of purple.  Chairs rushed outside by the fish pond.  Photos shot of the nine long-lived vets who’d survived World War II, brandishing their medals on stiffly proud lapels.

In black suit and white shirt, the resi presi, stalks of grey hair buffing up at the collar, was in a bit of a flap, irked as he struggled to speak against the static of erratic mike and whelming hot northerly gusts.

‘For several years now some of us have expressed the wish to honour the fallen with a show of support for our armed forces.  Each time this worthy cause was defeated in a motion.  This very morning Chiltern Towers is proud to declare we have nine brave people who fought on our behalf in World War II.  This year your committee was determined to push the ‘Yes’ vote, especially as today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of that universal catastrophe, World War I.

I now call upon Reg Burgess to raise the flag at Chiltern Towers for the first time.’

Bidding these gallant heroes to rise and follow him, albeit with slow, measured dignity, the party all but disappeared behind the sturdy frames and arching boughs of a stand of oak trees.

Burgess, the former wartime pilot, balding and bespectacled, wearing a navy blue blazer and squadron tie, swayed from side to side aided by his stick to the flagpole.  A state of apprehension hung in the air.  What if the hoist wouldn’t work?  Slowly, though, the furled flag rose in a clearing between the trees, much to the relief and joy of the president and to the muted clapping from the onlookers trailing behind.

And it was with an image of the starry-eyed Southern Cross that Maxwell drifted off again, bereft of the quarter owed to the British Union flag.

Voices barkng louder, more distinct, whistles more frantic, more shrill.  ‘Hello.  Is anyone there?  Can anyone hear me?’

The crunching sound of heavy boots trampling buckled furniture, bricks and scrap iron being slung aside.

Scarcely daring to believe, Maxwell opened his gritty eyes painfully slowly on the shape of a figure looming in dark ballistic armour.

Michael Small

December 21, 2014-January 4, 2015