1942 (Part 3 Arrival)
I shut my eyes and hold my breath in dread of being run through with the cold steel of my assailant’s bayonet. The tension is unbearable.
My back and buttocks are pressed hard against the damp bark of the tree to which I am pinned, arms held back behind me.
The only sounds are Blaire whimpering beside me and the dull rumble of convoy trucks trundling by on the road.
Naked and helpless … I am about to die, there is nothing I can do. I just want it to be over quickly.
I wait anxiously, shaking uncontrollably, sweat pouring from every pore, but nothing happens.
Cautiously I open one eye, then the other.
He is still standing in front of me; poised to thrust, the tip of the long bloody bayonet affixed to the barrel of his rifle just inches from my flattened, but twitching, belly.
For the first time I see his face clearly. It’s pimply and his dark eyes seem too close together; there is a long scar across his cheek just below his left eye, and he looks mean. But, he is holding perfectly still, as though frozen in place.
Behind him, hand firmly on his shoulder is an officer, presumably high ranking … judging from the three stars sewn on the lapel of his jacket. He gives an order, and slowly, reluctantly, with a dark malicious scowl on his face, the scar-faced soldier lowers his weapon and stands aside.
The soldier threatening to bayonet poor Blaire follows suit.
“Oh, my God”, she gasps, hyperventilating.
Satisfied, the officer turns on his heel and returns to his staff car, which has been pulled off the side of the road, its door hanging open. And much to my surprise the little clerk with the thick glass-bottle glasses appears out of nowhere to close the door behind the officer.
My arms are released and I am shoved toward the road, Blaire alongside me. I stop, rub my wrists, bend down and scoop up the tattered remains of my dress, and hold it rather pointlessly in front of my crotch as I stumble forward.
Before getting back into the vehicle, the clerk nods to me.
Emboldened, I start throwing questions at him, “What did you do to save us? Is that a general? What did you tell him? Are you taking us with you?”
Very quickly and quite nervously glancing over his shoulder, the clerk responds, “He is the camp commandant; no, we are not taking you with us; I told him I knew you and convinced him you would be an ideal candidate for the officer’s brothel and that it would be a waste to kill you now.”
With an apologetic shrug, he gets in the car, which pulls out and falls in behind the last truck in the convoy.
The road is now clear and the soldiers are getting the women back on their feet and out onto the road again, shouting and shoving, and brandishing their weapons.
Blaire and I fall in and join the procession. We are silent, each still coming to grips with the realization that we are still alive. After a while I give up on trying to cover myself, and amble along totally naked, still clutching the tattered rag that was once my dress in my left hand.
Eventually Blaire breaks the silence and says to me, almost gleefully, “Thank God, I thought we were goners back there. I think we may be safe now. They don’t dare lay a hand on us out of fear of that officer.”
I think she is way too cheerful for her own good, but say nothing and smile at her grimly.
Over the next hour or two we endure more of the same … heat and exhaustion, unrelenting brutal pressure from our handlers to keep moving … the body count from summary roadside executions multiplying rapidly. I am hungry, tired and just want to get to wherever we are going.
Then it begins to rain, a heavy soaking downpour envelops us. At first it feels good, but it doesn’t let up. It pelts me in the face, my wet hair sticks to my shoulders and back, reddish-brown sticky mud oozes up between my toes, and I slip and slide as I struggle to navigate a road surface that the rain has transformed into a slippery slimy quagmire.
As we round a bend in the road, the column is brought to a halt. Right in front of us, a number of soldiers have formed a cordon around perhaps a dozen or so women that they have separated from the rest of the column and forced to strip. The women huddle together, fear in their eyes, naked, their discarded clothing trampled in the mud.
Then the massacre begins. The soldiers close in from all sides, pushing their frightened victims closer and closer together at bayonet point, and then lunging at them, stabbing them mercilessly and repeatedly as they fall over one another in a ghastly blood-soaked heap. They twist and writhe on the ground, clutching at their bayonet wounds. The air is filled with their screams and cries.
“Murderers!” I hiss under my breath, reaching out without thinking to squeeze Blaire’s hand.
The rampage over, “Scarface” steps back, turns to face me, triumphantly raises his bloody bayonet in the air, waves it about over his head, and grins wickedly. His men mimic his antics; they seem half-crazed, jumping about jubilantly, their soiled uniforms spattered with the gore of their hapless victims.
“Why did they do that?” exclaims Blaire, her mouth wide open, “what is wrong with these people?”
“I don’t know … for one thing they are drunk …. I saw them passing it around as soon as the rain started….but I also think it is meant as a sign to me … and perhaps you too … Scarface’s little way of saying he is not done with us yet.”
A look of consternation crosses Blaire’s face. She starts to say something and then stops.
As if to prove my point, Scarface throws down his rifle and staggers over to us. Leaning forward and blasting me in the face with a foul gust of Saki-filled breath, he grabs me by both nipples and twists. I yelp in pain and reel backwards, stumble and fall down in the mud on my butt. He pushes me over onto my back with his muddy boot and stands over me unsteadily.
I brace myself for what he might do next. But officers begin barking orders. Scarface gives me a swift little kick in the ribs and the most menacing look imaginable, and stalks off.
He and the other soldiers quickly fan out shouting at everyone to get moving. I take Blaire’s extended hand and get to my feet, twisting about to wipe the caked mud from my backside.
The column begins moving. We are driven forward, skirting around the heap of moaning, dying victims. A couple of them hold out a hand imploringly. I look away yet again, and wonder how much more of this I can take.
For another hour or two we slog on. Torrential rain continues to pour down, drenching everything and everybody. I have never been so miserable in my life, not to mention scared and vulnerable, but I keep going.
At long last we reach our destination. It is late in the day and just as we arrive the rain begins to let up and the sky clears.
Our column, which is now only about two-thirds as long as it was when we set off, enters a large clearing in the jungle. It looks as though it may have once been a plantation of some kind.
We are led past a barbed wire enclosure filled with hundreds of POWs, mostly Dutch and British soldiers, but some civilians too. They are scattered about, in small groups, smoking, talking and regarding us women with curiosity as our column shuffles slowly by just outside the “wire”.
We pass under a tower with a search light and a machine gun mounted high above on a platform, and continue on through an open gate. A high barbed-wire perimeter fence surrounds the women’s compound, which contains rows of open-walled sleeping shelters still under construction. Building materials are stacked here and there.
More ominous, and off to one side, is an area into which workmen have already installed a gallows, a number of tall posts to which manacles and chains have been bolted, an assortment of bamboo cages, several wooden crosses with ropes dangling from their crossbeams, and lines of evenly spaced bamboo stakes driven into the ground. The purpose of this area is unmistakable.
We are herded into an open area in the center of the compound and forced to line up in ranks. I wonder how many died on the long march as I turn my head to look up and down the ranks, noting that many whom I knew were with us seem absent.
We stand at attention. I feel conspicuous by my nakedness. I remember the remnants of my dress which I still tightly clutch in my left hand, and instinctively hold the damp material in front of my sex.
A soldier walks among us, stopping before each of us in turn, reaching for the metal disc we wear at our necks.
He takes mine in his hand and reads the number out loud. Behind him, the clerk with the glass-bottle glasses notes it down in a ledger, nods at me almost imperceptibly, and then moves on to record Blaire’s number.
TO BE CONTINUED
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