The Passion and the Glory by Christopher Nicole

Author:Christopher Nicole [Nicole, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2015-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Solomons, Australia and New Guinea — 1942

The sky began to lighten after Walt had been swimming about an hour. By then all the noise of battle and sudden death had ceased, and the only sound was the splashes of his own arms and legs as he slowly forced himself onwards, trying to ignore the burning of his muscles, the crippling weight of the sailor on his shoulder. But it slowly dawned on him that the man was dead, and he let him slip away behind him.

That gave him a renewed surge of strength, and with the light he saw trees, only a short distance away.

He was very cold by now, although the sea was basically warm, and fortunately, very calm. But the sight of the trees spurred him on again. He swam with a last burst of vigour, and gasped in pain when his knee struck something hard with a force which knocked all the breath from his lungs. For a moment, indeed, even his heart stopped beating, as he supposed he had at last encountered a shark, but as he sank beneath the surface he touched other coral heads and hastily regained the surface again.

A few minutes later his feet found sand, and he was about to stagger up the beach when he remembered that Savo might very well still be held by a Japanese garrison, and hastily lowered himself into the water again, approaching the shore with only his head showing.

Sure enough, there was movement in the trees, and he sank lower yet, then rocked back on his heels as he saw two men in bedraggled white uniforms emerge from the shadows.

‘Lieutenant!’ they shouted, and ran down the sand.

Walt stood up, was embraced. ‘I told you I saw splashes out there,’ one said to the other.

Their names were O’Shaughnessy and Aitken. Walt shook their hands. ‘How the hell did you get here?’ he asked.

‘In a dinghy. They didn’t spot us.’

‘How many of you?’

‘Eight. Captain Waite is over there. And Ensign Jonssen. And Chief Malone, and three other guys. Boy, are we glad you’re here, Lieutenant.’ Aitken flushed, and Walt knew what he meant.

‘So let’s get over there,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any grub?’

‘No, sir. But there’s water. We found a stream.’

Walt began to hurry. He came in sight of the other six survivors, but ignored them as he saw the tumbling water which flowed out of the forest to lose itself in the sand. He lay on his belly and drank and drank and drank.

‘Well, glory be,’ Jonssen remarked. ‘Where’s your boat?’

‘I swam,’ Walt told him, pausing for breath.

‘Heck, that was something like four miles.’

‘So I had my Mae West.’

Waite stood above him. ‘I’ve lost my ship,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’ Walt got to his knees, then stood up.

‘You lost my ship, mister.’

‘I think it was the Japanese took your ship, sir,’ Walt said evenly.

Waite sighed. ‘So now we starve to death on this God damned beach.’

‘I don’t think we’ll starve,’ Walt told him.

‘Yeah? You got food?’

Walt pointed.

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