The Missing Father (Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mysteries Book 9) by M J Lee

Author:M J Lee [Lee, M J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter twenty-six

August 28, 1941

Tanglin Barracks, Singapore

It was hot, with a strength-sapping humidity that only Singapore could deliver.

That morning they had a perfunctory roll call lasting twenty minutes, followed by callisthenics with Serjeant Caldwell, the PE instructor. Of course, Ronnie had managed to get out of it, claiming he had bunions and had to see the MO.

Afterwards, they had slumped back to the barracks to lie on their bunks. Above Arthur’s head, the fan hung down from the ceiling and whirred slowly, stirring the warm, damp air but not providing any relief.

‘Lord, how I wish it would rain.’

‘You and me both, Arthur,’ answered Ronnie, now back from the MO and no longer wearing his boots but a pair of plimsolls.

‘A long drizzle like we used to get in Salford, when the rain creeps in and stays all day like an unwanted guest.’

‘Here the heat sucks you dry like a straw emptying a glass. I mean, I just stick my head out of the barracks and walk across the parade ground and by the time I get to the canteen on the other side, I’m already soaking wet, dripping from head to toe.’

‘Even the officers seem to have got it all worked out. After breakfast, they vanish back to their rooms or their houses for a long nap.’

‘Except the stupid ones. They play on the golf course in front of the officers’ mess every afternoon, chasing a small round white ball into a hole. They never seem to catch it, though.’

‘A-ten-shion!’ someone shouted. Immediately twenty bodies snapped rigid like tin soldiers.

‘Stand easy, lads, stand easy.’ It was Regimental Serjeant Major Whatmough who spoke, followed into the barracks by Serjeant Murray.

The RSM was an old Tad who’d been decorated for leading a charge against a machine gun on the Somme. The regiment had lost 400 men, killed or wounded, out of a total of 700 who had left the trenches that morning. Whole units, whole families, whole streets of Manchester were wiped out. Not RSM Whatmough, though. Legend had it the man was so hard the bullets bounced off him. And looking at him, Arthur believed it.

As the lads ran to stand in front of their beds, Whatmough strode purposefully to the centre of the room. In a voice used over many parade grounds in countless different outposts of the Empire, he announced to all the lost souls of Block 15, ‘Men of the Manchesters, occasionally my position gives me the odious job of delivering sad news…’

He spoke like some biblical prophet, his voice deep, profound and leaving no opportunity for argument, no opening for questions, no possibility of error.

‘Unfortunately in war, and in this war against the evil that has invaded our German brethren, there will be casualties and victims.’

It was then he produced a brown envelope from behind his clipboard.

They all knew what they were. Every soul was praying he wasn’t going to receive one. A mass whispered prayer of ‘Let it not be me. Let it not be me.’

Arthur hoped for it not to be Maggie or Mary.

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