Welenski eyed Faith thoughtfully. ‘Does the
major know you’re going south?’
‘No. I didn’t tell him.’
Welenski grinned. ‘You’re going to see
Captain Rivers, aren’t you?’
Faith smiled. ‘Still read me like a book,
don’t you, Gus?’
‘How are you getting there?’
‘By train, I suppose.’
‘We’ve got planes going to Sydney and
Melbourne all the time, Faith. Let me make some enquiries.’
‘Oh, Gus, you really are incorrigible.
Thanks, but no thanks. I wouldn’t want you to get into any more
trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble. Most of those planes are
flying almost empty, anyway. When and where do you want to go
first?’
Faith smiled. ‘To a little place in country
New South Wales, called Cowra. I don’t think you could arrange a
flight there, Gus’
‘Cowra…’ Welenski took a long thoughtful pull
on the twin straws in his milk shake. ‘That’s almost two hundred
miles west of Sydney. They’ve got a POW camp and an Australian Army
Artillery training centre there.’
Faith was impressed. ‘Is there anything you
don’t know, Gus?’
‘Not much.’ Welenski said without modesty.
‘I’m a staff sergeant, remember. Anyway, who do you know down
there—civilians, I suppose?’
‘No. I want to see a POW.’
Welenski’s eyebrows rose. ‘You’re joking of
course.’
‘No, I’m not. Remember, I told you once about
my brother’s friend, Koko, the fellow who crossed Arnhem land with
me and the children.’
‘I thought he was in an internment camp?’
‘He was. But I had word recently that he was
moved to Cowra as a POW. It’s because of what happened at Phelp
River, I suppose. Anyway, Joe’s asked me to try and see him. He’s
found out something about who killed Koko’s mother and thinks he
should know about it.’
‘What makes you think they’ll let you see
him?’
‘I don’t think they will. But Koko’s my
friend too, so I’m going to try.’
Welenski stared into the table top for a long
time without saying anything. Eventually he looked up and said:
‘How you got by without me for all those years before the war, I’ll
never know.’ He reached for the bill and stood up to leave. ‘Come
on, kiddo, lets get back to the office, we’ve got things to
do.’
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
The B-17 was vibrating so violently that
Faith was sure the aircraft would disintegrate even before it took
off. But when the huge plane lifted off the runway into the early
morning sunshine, the shaking abruptly stopped, and suddenly,
except for the roar of engines, everything became serene.
Faith was the only female among a handful of
passengers en route to Sydney. All the others were uniformed
military personnel. They sat on steel benches running the length of
the plane on each side of the fuselage. Between the benches,
miscellaneous pieces of baggage and freight was tied down to the
floor of the aircraft. As soon as they leveled out, an Air Corps
sergeant picked his way down the plane from the cockpit area to
where Faith was sitting. He leaned over and spoke directly into her
ear, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard over the noise
of the engines.
‘When we get to Mascot airfield, everyone
aboard is being driven to US Army Logistics Headquarters in
downtown Sydney, Miss Brodie. Staff Sergeant Welenski told me to
see to it that you are dropped off at Central Station. It that
okay?’
Faith smiled and nodded her head. As usual
Gus had thought of everything, even a ride to the railway station
where she would catch the train to Cowra. She opened her handbag
and checked its contents for the sixth or seventh time that
morning. An envelope contained a number of air warrants for standby
use on US military transports. ‘These are all you need to get
around the country,’ Gus had said when he gave them to her the day
before. ‘Just hand one to the Air Corps traffic officer here in
Brisbane and he’ll arrange something for you. Then do the same in
Sydney and Melbourne. If anyone asks any questions or wants more
authorization, just refer them to me at headquarters. And don’t
worry, no one’s going to want to stick their neck out and call
HQ.’
Also in the envelope, was a sheet of paper
with the names of American staff sergeants Gus knew in both Sydney
and Melbourne who could be contacted if she needed any other
assistance. And there was also the name of a non-commissioned
officer at the Australian Army Infantry Training Centre at Cowra.
Gus had said that Sergeant Major Brownlee had promised to assist in
getting Faith permission to see Koko at the POW camp. All the
obstacles in the way of seeing Koko and Dan had seemed to fade away
once Gus Welenski started making the arrangements. Faith put the
envelope back in her handbag and snapped it shut and hoped
everything would go half as smoothly in practice.
The train for Cowra left Central Station at
1.00 pm. The journey should have taken about seven hours but for
some reason it stretched to over ten. It was almost midnight when
the town taxi pulled up outside the Royal Exchange Hotel and the
driver pounded on the door to raise the landlord.
The next morning a commotion on the street
outside the pub woke Faith from a deep sleep. She glanced at her
watch on the bedside table and was surprised to see she had slept
in well after seven o’clock. She quickly pushed back the covers and
hurried to the window to see what all the noise was about. In front
of the pub a crowd of school children were hindering the progress
of three buses making their way down the main street. The
youngsters were hurling rubbish at the buses and loud insults at
the occupants of the vehicles. Adult onlookers on each side of the
street did nothing to try and stop them. Neither did the Australian
Militia soldiers who were riding in trucks escorting the buses.
‘It was a convoy of Army buses from Sydney
with more Jap prisoners,’ explained the waitress in the pub’s
dining room when she served Faith’s breakfast. ‘The locals usually
give them a warm welcome when they pass through town on the way to
the camp.’ The waitress turned to go back to the kitchen, then
stopped and pulled a piece of paper from a pocket in her apron.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot. The landlord said someone phoned for you
first thing this morning. He asked me to give you this.’
‘But no one knows I’m at this hotel.’
‘This is the only hotel city folk ever stay
at in Cowra, miss.’ The waitress grinned and rolled her eyes. ‘I
take it you haven’t seen the others?’
Faith took the note and read it. The message
was from Sergeant Major Brownlee asking her to telephone him at the
Infantry Training Centre at her earliest convenience. She got up
straight away and went to the telephone in the foyer.
‘Artillery Training, Cowra.’
‘Sergeant Major Brownlee please. My name is
Faith Brodie.’
Faith was quickly transferred and a loud,
authoritative voice came on the line.
‘Where are you, Miss Brodie?’
‘At the Royal Exchange Hotel.’
‘Very good. Please remain where you are. I’ll
be there very shortly.’
Faith quickly finished her breakfast then
went back to her room to freshen up before meeting Brownlee. When
she came back downstairs a few minutes later, a man wearing Army
battledress was already at the desk in the foyer asking for her.
Faith walked over to him and identified herself.
Sergeant Major Brownlee wasn’t at all what
she expected. He was a short, thickset man of about fifty with
graying hair. His amiable fatherly manner completely belied the
brusque voice she had heard on the telephone.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Brodie,’
Brownlee said. ‘I’ve made arrangements with the POW camp commander
for you to see Koko Hamada. I have a car outside. Shall we go?’
Brownlee helped Faith climb into a jeep
parked in front of the hotel then got behind the wheel beside her
and drove off down the main street.
‘How far is it to the camp, Sergeant Major?’
Faith asked as they pulled way.
‘Just a couple of miles, miss.’
In daylight the little community seemed even
smaller than it had when the train pulled in the night before. In
minutes they had passed the last house on the edge of the town and
the bitumen road gave way to a bumpy dirt track. When the jeep
began to bounce around, Faith grabbed the seat in both hands and
held on tightly.
She turned to Brownlee. ‘I really am
very grateful for all this, Sergeant Major. I never expected the
Army to cooperate at all. To be honest, I thought I wouldn’t be
allowed to see Koko
.’
‘You wouldn’t be under normal circumstances.
But when the Americans in Sydney asked me to arrange a visit, I
said I’d do what I could.’
Faith looked confused. ‘The Americans in
Sydney asked you?’
‘Yes. On behalf of your Sergeant
Welenski in Brisbane.’ Brownlee glanced briefly at Faith ‘You work
for the Americans, Miss Brodie, so you would know how the staff
sergeant network operates. After Welenski talked to Sydney, I
received a call from a supply sergeant I know at US Logistics
Headquarters. He was aware that I know Colonel Montague Brown, the
POW camp commander here at Cowra. I served with him in the first
war, then again in Bengal as a Lancer with the Indian Army.
When the Americans asked me to help out, I could hardly say
no.’
‘Why not?’
‘These days, old soldiers like Colonel Brown
and I are given non-active duty jobs, like giving basic infantry
training to green militia recruits or supervising prisoner-of-war
camps. The problem is, not being front line soldiers they don’t
give us anything near the equipment we need. Even the guards at the
camp don’t have enough rifles to go around. Like a lot of
under-equipped Army units we’ve had a lot of assistance from the
Yanks. They’ve supplied a lot of the equipment we do have—even this
jeep I’m driving. So when they asked, we were only too pleased to
help out.’
‘
Did the Americans tell you anything
about Koko’s circumstances?’
‘Yes. Sounds like he’s had a bit of a rough
trot. From what I’ve heard he should still be in an internment
camp, not at this bloody place.’
‘Just how bad is it here, Sergeant
Major?’
‘It’s not bad at all if your going to be a
prisoner of war, I suppose. Everyone gets standard Australian Army
rations, good clothing and warm blankets—even a weekly ration of
cigarettes. It’s heaven compared to what our blokes have to put up
with in the Jap camps. The Italian prisoners love it here. They
even get a promotion in the Italian Army for being taken prisoner.
And they cooperate so well they are allowed off the camp to work on
local farms.
‘And the Japanese. What are they like?’
‘The Japs are a moody and troublesome mob.
The guards can’t turn their back on them for a second. And their
officers are an arrogant, insolent lot. They refuse to work and are
always trying to undermine camp discipline. Their shame at being
held captive eats away at them all the time. They feel that by
being taken prisoner and not being killed in action, they have
betrayed the code of the samurai.’ Brownlee shook his head slowly.
‘And the bastards take the good treatment they receive as a sign of
weakness on our part.’
‘My God, it must be awful for Koko, being
caught in the middle. He was born in Australia you know.’
‘Yes, I know, poor devil.’ Brownlee grimaced.
‘After being thrown into a POW camp, who could blame him for hating
us. Perhaps I should warn you that when you see him you may find
he’s become bitter and resentful. When I was talking to Colonel
Brown about you coming here he said Hamada had become friendly with
one of the hard core Japanese troublemakers—a nasty piece of work
called Yakimoto.’
They carried on down the narrow roadway in
silence until the Jeep came to a halt outside the main gate of the
camp. A sentry saluted smartly and the vehicle passed through the
perimeter fence and on to an administration hut. Inside, a soldier
showed them into an interview room. A small wooden table and two
chairs were the only furnishings.
‘The only condition the Colonel placed on
your visit, was that for safety and security reasons you cannot be
left alone with the prisoner,’ Brownlee said as they entered the
room. He gestured to one of the chairs. ‘You do understand, of
course?’
Faith nodded her head and sat down at the
table. Brownlee remained standing beside the wall just inside the
door. After a few minutes a guard led Koko into the room. He was
wearing the standard Japanese POW gear, an Australian Army uniform,
dyed a deep burgundy color. Faith rose to her feet quickly.
At first Koko was stunned when he realized
the woman standing at the table was Faith. Then his face broke into
a wide grin and stepped forward quickly and raised his arms to
embrace her. The sudden movement startled the guard and fearing for
Faith’s safety he pounced on Koko and forcefully applied a double
nelson arm lock. Koko shrieked out in pain.
‘Leave him be.’ Brownlee roared at the guard.
‘Now get out, I’ll look after the prisoner.’
The soldier released his hold and hurried
from the room. Faith reached out and took Koko’s hands in hers and
squeezed them tightly. Koko’s lips quivered as he tried again to
smile.
‘Koko,’ Faith said gently as she blinked back
a tear. ‘Please sit down. I have a great deal to tell you.’
*
Faith returned to Sydney the day after seeing
Koko but had to wait there two days for a flight from Mascot to
Melbourne. Because travel on military aircraft was subject to
available space on unscheduled aircraft movements, Faith was unable
to tell Dan exactly when she would arrive in Melbourne. So she had
decided in Brisbane that she would not let him know she was coming
at all and make her visit a complete surprise.