SOMEDAY SOON (22 page)

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the office
door.

‘Mr Lipp.’ The voice belonged to Faith’s
workmate from the inspection station beside her. Lipp froze and
stood perfectly still. He let go of Faith’s wrist and put his hand
over her mouth. There was another knock on the door.

‘
Mr Lipp, Mr Lipp,’ the workmate
persisted. ‘The girls think there’s some bad casings coming
through. Can you come and look at them, please?’

Faith knew her workmate was aware Lipp had
been drinking and must have anticipated what was going on in his
office and she was grateful her friend was trying to help in the
only way she could.

‘I’ll be there in a moment,’ Lipp called out.
He loosened his grip on Faith just slightly when he spoke. She
seized her chance. Her knee came up hard into his groin and with
his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging, Lipp sank to the floor
groaning in pain. In a flash Faith was out the door and running out
of the factory. She kept running until she boarded a tram at a stop
nearly half a mile away.

*

It was the start of the evening rush hour and
the city centre was packed with civilians, Allied soldiers, trams
and motor vehicles. Weasel, wearing his Nackeroo ex-Light Horse
uniform, ambled down a lane beside the US Army post exchange on the
corner of Creek and Queen Street. The narrow roadway was a
cul-de-sac leading to the rear of the PX and was only used by
delivery trucks and a few military police vehicles which parked
behind the facility. After looking around the rear of the building,
Weasel slowly walked back up the lane.

‘There’s six Military Police jeeps parked in
the back,’ Weasel told half-a-dozen Nackeroos standing idly on the
street corner. The six soldiers wandered off down the street and in
minutes the word was passed on to over fifty of their comrades
standing about in small groups, chatting or innocently looking in
shop windows. Soon all the Nackeroos had gathered in the lane
beside the PX. Someone produced a bottle of petrol and several
rubber chunks cut off an tire. Weasel took them and scattered them
on the ground between the parked Jeeps, then doused them in petrol
and set them on fire. When dense black smoke began billowing up
from the burning rubber Weasel dashed to the back door of the PX
and pounded on it.

‘I’ve got two messages,’ Weasel screamed out
at the top of his voice when a kitchen-hand opened the door. ‘All
Yank MPs are bastards and all their jeeps are on fire.’

The kitchen-hand took one look at the thick
clouds of black smoke and bolted back inside the PX. When a swarm
of MPs raced out of the building a few moments later, they were
hopelessly outnumbered by Nackeroos who charged around the corner
from the lane and set upon them with flailing fists. With the dense
smoke making it all but impossible to see their assailants clearly,
most of the MPs didn’t attempt to draw their revolvers. The few
that did found their holsters empty, their big service Colt .45s
having been stolen by the Nackeroos for souvenirs or just thrown
away to reduce the risk of serious injury.

As they battle raged on, more MPs and GIs
poured out of the PX and scores of Australian and American
servicemen crammed into the lane and started trading punches. Soon
the fight had spilled out onto Queen Street and hundreds of
servicemen came running from all directions to join the melee.
Fifteen minutes later, traffic in the city centre had been brought
to a standstill as over a thousand Allied soldiers fought a pitched
battle. It was still raging over an hour later when Weasel and Joe
and most of the original combatants had long since left the
scene.

*

Joe and Weasel dropped in at the Sharkey home
just after nine o’clock. They found the household in a somber mood.
While Mike entertained Weasel in the lounge room, Helen and Dick
took Joe through to the kitchen. Helen told Joe that Faith had
arrived home later than usual because of traffic disruptions caused
by a huge street fight involving Allied servicemen. When she’d
arrived she was terribly upset about an incident at the factory at
Rocklea. She’d rushed off to bed without even touching her dinner.
When Helen told Joe about Lipp, he could hardly contain his anger
and wanted to see Faith, but Helen said she had looked in on her
just minutes earlier and she seemed to be sleeping.

‘We should lay a formal complaint with the
authorities, Joe.’ Dick said bitterly. ‘Although with the factory
manager being a friend of this bloke Lipp, it will be almost
impossible to prove anything. But we’ve got to get Faith out of
that place. I’m off work tomorrow, so I’ll go and see the Manpower
first thing in the morning, if you like.’

Joe didn’t answer right away as he pondered
the situation. Eventually he said: ‘There’s no time for that, Uncle
Dick. The Nackeroos are leaving for the Top End tomorrow night. I
think I’d better pay our Mr Lipp a visit in the morning, so be sure
Faith stays at home tomorrow. I’ll come here right after I’ve seen
him.’

*

Joe was standing at the factory gate an hour
before the day shift began. When the night watchman went off duty
Joe asked him if he knew Trevor Lipp. The watchman said he did, and
that Mr Lipp and his wife lived within walking distance of the
factory. Joe gave the watchman a ten-shilling note and asked him to
hang about to point out Lipp when he arrived. It wasn’t a long
wait. Lipp approached the factory gate on foot just a few minutes
later. Joe was surprised. He was expecting some kind of a monster.
What he saw was a very ordinary, harmless-looking, middle-aged
man.

‘Mr Lipp?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name’s Joe Brodie. Faith Brodie’s
brother.’

The ordinary middle-aged man looked suddenly
afraid. He moved quickly to sidestep the tall, strapping uniformed
soldier and get inside the gate. Joe stuck his foot out and Lipp
fell heavily to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and tried to
run but Joe grabbed him and holding him by the ear, led him like an
errant schoolboy onto a vacant block of land beside the factory and
around behind a pile of old building materials.

When Joe let go of his ear, Lipp was
red-faced and defiant. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he
protested. ‘I’ll see the Army disciplines you for this.’

‘And all the other blokes in my unit who
can’t wait to get their hands on you after what you did to my
sister, I suppose.’

Lipp nervously tried to straighten his collar
and tie. ‘I didn’t do anything to your sister. She must have been
lying. She...’

Joe’s fist came up hard under Lipp’s chin and
he flew backwards onto a heap of old timbers. When he groggily got
to his feet, Joe hit him again with a forceful blow to the mouth.
Lipp went down again, then lay whimpering on the ground, too afraid
to get up. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth.

‘If you call my sister a liar one more time,
Lipp, I’ll make sure you’ll never be any use to any woman again.
And when I’ve done that, I’ll go to your house and have a chat with
your wife and see how she feels about what you get up to at work.’
Joe pulled Lipp to his feet and held him by his shirt collar. ‘I
want you to sign a work release form for Faith Brodie. Then
providing you stop pestering the girls at the factory, you won’t
see me again. If you don’t, you’ll be seeing an awful lot of me and
the brothers, husbands and fathers of those other girls in that
factory. Now, what’s it to be?’

‘Only the manager can sign the Manpower
releases,’ Lipp murmured quietly.

‘And he just happens to be a friend of yours,
doesn’t he? And from what I hear he’s been turning a blind eye to
you for a long time. Maybe I should go and see him, too.’

Lipp got on his feet. ‘I’ll go and see what I
can do.’

Joe pushed Lipp back toward the factory gate.
‘ Good, I’ll come with you. Because I’m not leaving here without
that release.’

*

Faith hugged Joe tightly and kissed his
cheek. ‘Thanks so much, Joe. I don’t know what I’d have done
without you.’

‘What are big brother’s for?’ Joe grinned and
stepped down from the Sharkeys’ veranda. ‘You just make sure the
Yanks pay you what you’re worth.’

‘Come back as soon as you can, Joe,’ Dick
called out.

‘I will.’ Joe blew his aunt Helen a kiss and
closed the garden gate behind him.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

The word spread like wildfire around the
internment camp at Hay. Rumors among the inmates of what was really
happening within Australia and the fortunes of the combatants just
beyond her shores were always rife and often optimistic. But none
had ever been as optimistic as the persistent rumor that within
days everyone, except the six prisoners of war thought to be
Japanese pilots, were to be released and sent home. For the first
time since his incarceration, Koko saw a glimmer of hope. If the
rumor was true, and if the authorities didn’t treat him as a
prisoner of war, he might soon be going home to the Top End.

But the joy of the Australian-born and the
long-term Japanese residents in Australia was dashed when an
official announcement advised that only a small, select group of
internees were to be released and that they were to be sent to
Japan. They included high-ranking businessmen, bankers and a few
academics and minor government officials who had been working in or
visiting Australia at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. One
of the guards at the camp told Koko that the release was probably
made on an exchange basis for a like number of Australian nationals
detained in Japan.

Koko noticed that the internees returning to
Japan expressed their appreciation to the Emperor’s young fighting
men by giving the six young prisoners of war anything of value they
possessed before leaving the camp. Yak Moto's group was given gold
watches, expensive clothing and personal items including vouchers
used for small internal purchases at the camp. The young flyers
gladly accepted everything, but firmly declined offers by the
returning internees to deliver personal messages to their families
at home, saying they preferred their loved ones to believe they had
died bravely by the code of the samurai rather than having suffered
the shame and humiliation of being taken prisoner by the enemy.
Although Koko was considered a POW by the camp authorities, he was
glad he was offered no gifts by the departing Japanese and that no
overtures of any kind were made to him.

A few days after the release of the
privileged internees, a new rumor began to circulate around the
camp. In the near future, so the scuttlebutt went, the prisoners of
war at Hay were to be transferred to a high-security prison camp at
a place called Cora about two hundred miles to the north-east.

*

The American engineer battalion to which Dan
had been seconded, worked around the clock at Milne Bay protected
by a large force of Australian Militia encamped around the
perimeters of the three airstrips. The troops and the engineers’
heavy equipment had been transported to the remote jungle location
by sea through the treacherous reef-strewn waters of the Louisa
Archipelago. Having experienced little harassment by the enemy
since their arrival, senior Allied officers were hopeful the
critical defensive operation would be completed before the Japanese
launched a large-scale attack.

No such absence of enemy hostilities
was enjoyed by the raw young soldiers of the
39
^th
Battalion of the
Australian Militia to the north-west on the Kokoda Track. Outgunned
and vastly outnumbered, the diggers were desperately trying to hold
the line against elite, battle-hardened Japanese units, but were
being driven back inch by inch towards Port Moresby. Dan heard
reports of the grim struggle from Allied pilots who, after flying
sorties against the enemy from Port Moresby, had landed at Milne
Bay because the 7 Mile Dome in Port Moresby was under attack when
they returned home. Almost everything Dan heard was bad.

‘The invasion force at Buna has been
estimated at five or six thousand soldiers,’ one pilot said. ‘And
besides pressing native carriers into service, the Japs brought
about two thousand pack horses ashore to transport supplies down
the Kokoda Track. They’ve already advanced to the foothills of the
Owen Stanley Range. They’re led by an officer thought to be a
Major-General Horii. It’s like something from the dark ages.
Horii’s leading his forces down the Kokoda Track sitting astride a
big white charger and, according to the Aussie coast watchers, his
troops are killing all the European missionaries in their path. The
only good news is the situation is so serious that the
7
^th
Division of the AIF is
being sent over here.’

A few days later another pilot said the
Japanese had taken the village of Kokoda and its strategic
airstrip, about half way between Gonad and Port Moresby. He said
the Australian Militia had been forced back down the Kokoda Track
to a place called Deniker, with Papuan natives carrying their
wounded on stretchers. At Deniker, they had held on until they were
reinforced by more Militia accompanied by native carriers who had
struggled over the worst parts of the Kokoda Track with food and
ammunition dropped by USAIR Dakotas, into clearings made in the
jungle along the way. But, after fierce fighting, the pilot said
the Australians had been forced back yet again to a village called
Ostrava, near the summit of the Owen Stanley Range where they were
dug-in awaiting the arrival of the AIF.

*

In mid-August a troopship arrived in
Milne Bay with AIF reinforcements. Dan watched the veteran diggers
come ashore. They were easily distinguishable from the Militia
soldiers. The men of the 7
^th
Division wore the same tunics and helmets they had worn
overseas, camouflaged for the scorching sands of the middle-east,
not the dank, humid jungles of New Guinea. Their uniforms and the
webbing in their helmets were bleached white by long service under
the Syrian sun.