Mackie and Jack by Jan William Smith

Author:Jan William Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

No-one but the condemned can know the last road that will be travelled in a life. The condemned man at least sees the gallows ahead. For others there are no signposts that read ‘Life’s Last Journey’. Only those who might later trace the last steps of condemned men are able to say, ‘This is the way they went’.

So it was that Todd and his crew had no intimation that the journey they were about to undertake might be their last. But in spite of what had apparently befallen Murphy and Woolley, it was neither they nor Todd’s party (himself, Pocknee and Kraehe) who were the first to encounter the Japanese. Despite his enterprise, it was the independent Brian Stacy who was the first of the crew to look into Japanese eyes squinting behind the sights of a Japanese rifle.

Stacy was never going to get far in the bush without shoes or head covering. He had seen Ralfe’s party depart and, like the others, he was convinced that Murphy and Woolley had been shot at their watch and that Todd, Pocknee and Kraehe were most likely now to be the focus of the Japs’ attention. This was confirmed when after lying low for a while, he went back to the camp to find that the Japs appeared to have been there. There was no sign of the others. Had they been captured, or had they left ahead of the Japs? The inflatable dinghy had been bayoneted and there was a bullet hole in the water tank they had salvaged from the Cat.

But Stacy found the Signal Distress Marine, probably discarded by the Japs because they had not known what it was. If one of the radio operators had signalled an accurate position of A24.34 in the frantic minutes before the crash landing, there might be a chance of using the distress signal to attract a searching Cat. He would light the signal and swim out in the water, if that chance arose. He found a Gem razor blade in his shirt pocket and that night he cut some palms and tried to cover himself against the mosquitoes. The next day he tried to follow a river. He remembered that Intelligence had told them to go north if they were brought down on the south coast of New Britain.

The next thing Stacy saw was a splayed Jap foot mark in the mud and then he stumbled on a camp and saw a native tending a fire. He had been told there were mission boys in the area who might be friendly to Australians. He hoped Todd and his party, if they had escaped, would also come that way, because Todd knew pidgin.

‘You know where mission boy? Me go bush,’ Stacy said. The native seemed to be friendly, although frightened, and he took Stacy to a hut where there was a bamboo bed. He was tired and quickly went to sleep.

He had not been asleep long before he was jolted awake by a Jap soldier standing over him with a rifle and fixed bayonet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.