King Rat

“All right, you bastards,” Larkin had said finally, his voice harsh. “I’ll give you one last chance. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll transfer you both out of my regiment. And as far as I’m concerned you won’t exist!”

“But Colonel,” Gurble gasped. “You wouldn’t do that!”

“I’ll give you thirty seconds,” Larkin said venomously, meaning it. And the men knew that he meant it. And they knew that Larkin’s word was law in his regiment, for Larkin was like their father. To get shipped out would mean that they would not exist to their cobbers, and without their cobbers, they’d die.

Larkin waited a minute. Then he said, “All right. Tomorrow—”

“I’ll tell you, Colonel,” Gurble blurted. “This bloody sod accused me of stealing my cobbers’ food. The bloody sod said I was stealing—”

“An’ you were, you rotten bastard!”

Only Larkin’s snarled “Stand to attention” kept them from tearing each other’s throats out.

Corporal Townsend told his side of the story first. “It’s my month on the cookhouse detail. Today we’ve a hundred and eighty-eight to cook for—”

“Who’s missing?” Larkin asked.

“Billy Donahy, sir. He went to hospital this a’ernoon.”

“All right.”

“Well, sir. A hundred and eighty-eight men at a hundred and twenty-five grams of rice a day works out at twenty-three and a half kilos. I always go up to the storehouse myself with a cobber and see the rice weighed and then I carry it back to make sure we got our bloody share. Well, today I was watching the weighing when the gut rot hit me. So I asked Gurble here to carry it back to the cookhouse. He’s my best cobber so I thought I could trust him—”

“I didn’t touch a bloody grain, you bastard. I swear to God—”

“We were short when I got back!” Townsend shouted. “Near half a pound short and that’s two men’s rations!”

“I know, but I didn’t—”

“The weights weren’t wrong. I checked ’em under your bloody nose!”

Larkin went with the men and checked the weights and found them true. There was no doubt that the correct amount of rice had started down the hill, for the rations were weighed publicly every morning by Lieutenant Colonel Jones. There was only one answer.

“As far as I’m concerned, Gurble,” Larkin said, “you’re out of my regiment. You’re dead.”

Gurble stumbled away into the darkness, whimpering, and then Larkin said to Townsend, “You keep your mouth shut about this.”

“My bloody oath, Colonel,” Townsend said. “The Diggers’d tear him to pieces if they heard. An’ rightly! Only reason I didn’t tell them was that he was my best cobber.” His eyes suddenly filled with tears. “My bloody oath, Colonel, we joined up together. We’ve been with you through Dunkirk an’ the stinking Middle East, and all through Malaya. I’ve knowed him most of my life and I’d’ve bet my life—”

Now, thinking about it all again in the twilight of sleep, Larkin shuddered. How can a man do such a thing? he asked himself helplessly. How? Gurble, of all men, whom he had known for many years, who even used to work in his office in Sydney!

He closed his eyes and put Gurble out of his mind. He had done his duty and it was his duty to protect the many. He let his mind drift to his wife Betty cooking steak with a fried egg on top, to his home overlooking the bay, to his little daughter, to the time he was going to have afterwards. But when? When?

She looked around at the women, all sitting quiet, subdued in the large meeting room, and sighed, regretting that she had agreed to head the committee of the wives of officers and men of the Fifth Australian Regiment, men all lost at Singapore. Not lost, she told herself quickly, only caught by the enemy. Some may be dead, but my Grant, my dear Grant is alive and a prisoner of war.

The women met once a month, the first Monday in the month. To swap news, such as there was. They had had little contact with the menfolk either by mail, or thru the Red Cross. But some of the wives had received a postcard. And a single postcard to one of the wives was a message of hope to all the others. Of course, for three years now they had all been writing. Some, every day. But most times their letters had been returned. Even so, when the few that did not come back were out there, somewhere, it gave a little hope that perhaps they had been received by the husband or son or brother to whom they had been sent long since.