Read Pennies For Hitler Online
Authors: Jackie French
‘She’s trying to keep us too busy to make stink bombs,’ said Mud, as they took the baskets down from the laundry wall to put the beans into.
Georg thought of the bombers in the blood-red sky of London. ‘I don’t think stink bombs would make much difference to the Japanese,’ he said.
‘I’ve got a better idea anyway.’ She gave him a sideways glance. ‘Did you know Uncle Ron has a pamphlet called
Guerillas in Australia
?’
Georg shook his head.
‘I looked up guerillas and they aren’t the animals, they are people who hide in the bush and fight invaders. And he’s got a new book called
Shoot to Kill
by a man called Ion Idriess.’
‘He didn’t show me.’ Georg tried to keep the hurt from his face. Mr Peaslake shared all his books with Georg.
‘He didn’t show me either. I saw him take it down to the shed when the postman delivered it. Then I snuck in there after dinner. I don’t think Auntie Thel knows he has it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s about fighting the Japs if they come here. Real fighting. Not just stink bombs.’
‘What sort of fighting?’
‘There’s how to make a thing called a Molotov cocktail to blow up tanks and armoured cars. It’s like a bomb. You put petrol and kerosene and tar from the edges of the road in a bottle —’
‘There aren’t any tarred roads around here. And no one has any spare petrol either.’ Plus, he thought, it sounded like something
that would be more likely to blow up the person trying to use it than kill an enemy soldier.
‘I got another idea from it though. A better one.’
‘What?’
Mud grinned. ‘You’ll find out tomorrow.’
Bellagong
21 April 1942
Dear Aunt Miriam,
I hope you are well.
Guess what? We have formed the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps. We will start tomorrow. Mud is going to be the Captain but she says I can be her Lieutenant and Big Billy will be the Sergeant because he is the biggest even if he is younger than me and Mud.
I have not had any letters from you for two months, but I know not to worry as there is not much room for letters on ships now and that you are safe where you are in the country. But if you sent me any news in the last two months could you send it to me again in case it was on a ship that sank?
We have lots of pumpkins. They are drying out on the shed roof. It doesn’t seem funny to eat cattle food now: it is very good. Mrs Peaslake makes a pumpkin fruitcake too, but I cannot send you one because it does not keep well like other fruitcakes.
Mr and Mrs Peaslake send their very best regards and Mud says to send you her love. I do not know if this is right because you and Mud have not met, but Mud says it is because you are my aunt and she is my friend, so I send it anyway.
Your loving nephew,
George
The Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps stared at Mud from their desks. Though it was Saturday morning, all the kids had turned up — even Big Billy, scratching a mosquito bite on his leg. Most had also brought the broom or mop Mud had insisted on; and a bread saw or pen knife too.
‘Right, I now declare this meeting come to order,’ said Mud.
Little Sally put her hand up.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It doesn’t
mean
anything. It’s just what you say. Now, I’ve got a list here.’ She held it up. ‘I’m going to pin it on the door. Every Monday we have to bring in something metal that could be melted down to make an aeroplane.’
‘What’s metal?’ asked Big Billy.
‘Things like saucepans,’ said Mud.
‘We ain’t got any except the one to cook potatoes.’
‘Corrugated iron then. Old bolts. Tin cans.’
‘We got those,’ said Big Billy.
‘Tuesday we collect old tyres. Ask at the other houses and see if there are any. Wednesday newspapers, Thursday bottles, Friday is jumble day, anything at home that can be spared that someone else might find a use for. On Saturday at eight o’clock Mr Henderson, the ambulance driver, is going to give first-aid classes at the church hall and everyone’s got to be there.’
Big Billy brightened at the thought of another morning with no farm work.
‘But most importantly,’ Mud stared at the watching children, ‘we’ve got to work out how to stop the enemy if they come to Bellagong.’ She held up a 1932
Boy’s Own Annual
. It must belong to one of her brothers, Georg decided. He remembered the one that showed how to make an underwater spear gun in the library back in London.
‘We’re going to make our own bayonets,’ said Mud crisply. ‘Now, everyone got your brooms or mops?’
Little Billy and Sally held up theirs. Big Billy put his hand up. ‘Don’t have no mop left on my mop,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s the stick we want. Now, here’s string and scissors. You’ve got to tie the handle of the knife to the stick in two places, like this. Now while you’re doing that …’
Mud reached down behind Mrs Rose’s desk and pulled out a limp figure. It was a scarecrow, hay stuffed into old clothes and boots with a face drawn on an old stuffed pillowcase and an ancient hat on top.
Mud lugged the scarecrow into Mrs Rose’s seat. ‘Right, we’re going to practise bayoneting just like they do in basic training. On the count of three you lift your bayonet, and then you charge.’
Georg stared, unbelieving. Mud had never seen anyone hurt by war. But he had. People bleeding, dying. Dead.
‘One.’ Mud lifted up a broom handle with what looked like a long carving knife strapped to it.
‘Two —’
‘What on earth is going on here? Mud! Put that down this instant! What has got into you?’
Mud put down her bayonet and glared defiance at Mrs Rose. ‘It’s the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps.’
‘I don’t care what it is. You’re not going to play with knives here. Or anywhere.’
‘We’re not
playing
,’ began Mud angrily.
Mrs Rose’s voice gentled. ‘No, no you’re not, Mud. But no knives. It’s too dangerous — for the little ones,’ she added hurriedly. ‘There is plenty you can leave to adults,’ she said softly. ‘Things aren’t that bad yet, love.’
She had never called Mud ‘love’ before. The other children put their ‘bayonets’ down uncertainly.
‘George, can you take the knives off? Carefully,’ added Mrs Rose. ‘Mud, I know you’re …’ She tried to find the words. ‘This is a wonderful idea.’ She glanced at the metal/paper/glass roster. ‘But there are other things you can do.’
‘Like what?’
‘We’ll work it out,’ said Mrs Rose gently. ‘Now, I think that’s enough for today. Leave the, er, bayonets. I’ll see they get back to your homes safely. And Mud,’ she added, as the others began to file out.
‘What?’
‘Good show,’ she said. ‘It was a bit much, that’s all. But it’s a good show.’
Mud nodded briefly.
‘Have you heard from your brothers?’ Mrs Rose’s voice was a bit too casual.
‘Not for a couple of weeks.’
‘Mail is unreliable these days. Nothing for three months sometimes, then five letters at once.’ She bit her lip. ‘I got a letter from my husband yesterday. He says he’s safe and well in the prison camp.’
Everyone in Bellagong knew the news already. But Georg was glad to see the look of hope on Mrs Rose’s face.
He made himself not count how long it had been since he had seen Mutti. Even one letter in all that time would have been like a miracle.
‘Your brothers will be right,’ said Mrs Rose, patting Mud’s arm. ‘Your dad too. Now you go off and play.’
‘Play,’ said Mud bitterly, as they headed up the footpath.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Georg. He didn’t say, ‘It was a dumb idea. You can’t let kids like Sally and Little Billy play round with bayonets.’ Instead he asked carefully, ‘Do you mind?’
Mud shrugged. ‘She’s right. The littlies are too small to fight the Japs.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I would though. If they try to send us to Alice Springs when the Japs come, I won’t go. I’ll hide in the hills if I have to. I won’t let an enemy take an inch of Australian soil.’
She waited for Georg to agree: to say that he’d fight too.
George would fight, he thought. But he was
Georg
, who had run from Germany, had sailed away from England when things got bad. If he had pleaded would Mutti have let him stay, or would Aunt Miriam have worked out how to keep him with her? Was Mutti trying to fight the Nazis now? If he had stayed could he have helped her?
He didn’t know.
And now? Now he felt hatred like a warm tide running through his body; felt it link him to Mud, to the whole town and country. He belonged now, because of hate.
‘Yes,’ said Georg. ‘I’d fight the Japs too. And we’d win.’
The Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps met every afternoon after school, under Mrs Rose’s watchful eye in case Mud experimented with bayonets again. They trooped from house to house, collecting for the war effort.
But it didn’t take long to collect all the scrap from every house in Bellagong, and even from the farmhouses a bike or pony ride away.
Mud coaxed Mr Henderson, the ambulance driver, into giving first-aid classes one afternoon a week; how to support a broken arm or press a wound to stop it bleeding or use a cricket bat to make a splint, supposing there was a cricket bat around. She pinned up the air-raid precautions from the newspaper on the school door: Keep your head down. Upturned faces draw enemy fire. To avoid concussion, never lean against the walls.
At last the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps was reduced to knitting squares at lunchtime to sew into blankets for refugees and wounded soldiers. Some of the squares were more hole than wool, and not quite square either. Georg hoped that those who got them realised that even small kids like Sally had worked on them: that they were made with love as well as holes.
He wished there was a way to send a blanket to Mutti too.
26 April 1942
Dear Mutti,
I am going to put this letter in a bottle and throw it into the sea. I know you will not get it but when we meet after the war I want to tell you that I wrote to you.
I hope you are well and there are no bombs where you are. Aunt Miriam is safe. I got a letter from her at last yesterday. She said that there were no bombs in her part of the country. Her flat is still not bombed either.
I hope our house is not bombed but if the government has taken it maybe it is not ever going to be our house again.
I hope you have enough to eat. There is so much food here it hurts to think you may not have enough, but it said in the newspapers that many people in Europe are hungry. Mrs Peaslake sends lots of cakes to her son and to the Red Cross and to Mud’s brothers and dad. I wish we could send cakes to you too.
I am working hard at school. I speak English all the time but sometimes when I am alone on the cliffs and the wind is blowing hard I say some of Papa’s poems in Deutsch. I do not forget them or him or you either.
With oceans of love always,
Georg
Autumn turned the orchard gold and red, despite the stubborn greenness of the gumtrees. Mrs Peaslake made rag rugs from the old-clothes basket and cut down a pair of Mr Peaslake’s old trousers to make into shorts for Georg for school. No need to waste cloth, she said, with him growing so fast.
The school room was in the middle of chanting the six times tables, Georg and Mud helping hear the youngest, when Big Billy yelled from outside.
‘Missus! Mrs Rose! Come quickly, Missus!’
Mrs Rose ran out. The children poured out behind her. Had Big Billy been bitten by a snake? A big red-bellied black was supposed to live under the school room but only Mud had seen it. Or had he got a splinter in his foot?
Big Billy pointed at the sky.
Georg could hear it now — the stutter of a plane.
Bomber!
He peered over at the part of the sky where Big Billy pointed. There it was: only a speck, but undoubtedly a plane.
No plane had ever flown over Bellagong in all the time he’d been here. Don’t panic, he told himself. It might be one of ours. No reason to think a Jap plane could be all the way down here, so far from north Australia.
The sound grew louder. His skin prickled, like it knew to be scared before his mind could take it in.
He gazed around. No underground station, like there had been in London, to hide in here, not even a cellar.
The plane drew closer.
‘Cor,’ said Little Billy. ‘It’s a Jap plane!’
‘It can’t be,’ said Mud. ‘The Japanese are miles away. Up north.’
Big Billy pointed. Now they could all see it: the round Japanese insignia under the wings. The plane was smaller than a German bomber, almost a big kite. You could imagine the wind buffeting it across the sky.
Enemy, thought Georg. The enemy had found him again, halfway across the world. Suddenly he wished that hatred could burn; that his thoughts alone could send that plane in flames to the ground.
The plane drew closer, and closer still. It was as though a rope was pulling it towards the school.
‘It’s coming here!’ yelled Mud.
‘Inside, now!’ cried Mrs Rose. ‘Under your desks!’
‘No!’ Georg shouted.
The children stopped. Mrs Rose stopped too. He fumbled for words that would convince them. ‘Bombers aim for buildings. We’ll be safer in the paddocks.’
He tried to remember the instructions pasted on the door. But Mud had taken over.
‘Everyone get behind something — behind the fence. Lie down. Faces down.’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Rose was panting, as though she had already raced across the paddocks. ‘Everyone behind the fence.’