Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [78]
Some sailors drifted for days. Others were lucky enough to reach shore right away. Survivors who struggled ashore at the first opportunity were almost always rewarded with a quick capture. This was the fate of Frank Gillan, the lucky Perth lieutenant who appears to have been the last man off his ship.
Gillan rode a series of floating vehicles to survival, each one more seaworthy than the one before: a wooden plank, a Carley float, and finally a lifeboat, where he joined about seventy of his shipmates. An able sailor, Gillan got the mast and sails up, fashioned a tiller out of driftwood, and turned toward Sumatra before adverse headwinds forced him to shape a course back toward Java. Going slowly blind from the bunker oil clotting in his eyes, Gillan turned over the tiller to a sailor named McDonough. When the wind died at nightfall, they had to row. They were soon desperate with exhaustion. One sailor who started vomiting up oil was relieved of rowing but sat there for a time still pulling an invisible oar until someone eased him to the bottom boards, slick with the blood of the injured, to sleep. With a combination of “bullying and blarney and child psychology,” McDonough kept them bending to the oars. Two bodies were slid overboard as a chaplain named “Bish” Mathieson intoned the last rites. Finally, in the early hours of Monday, March 2, scarcely twenty-four hours since the Perth went down, they reached Java’s shore. They spread out the lifeboat’s sail on the beach like a tarp and arranged five wounded men on it. Then they slept.
At dawn Gillan awoke and the decision was made to split up their party, leaving the wounded on the beach while the healthy hiked north and south looking for help. Gillan paired up with Bill Hogman, a stoker, who, unasked, took his hand and served as his eyes, leading him after the others all that day and far into the night, guiding his steps, explaining what the country looked like. At the village of Labuhan, miles south of their original landfall, they met a Houston officer—this might have been Lt. Joseph Dalton or Lt. (jg) Leon Rogers, who both reached Labuhan and met Perth survivors. The American told them to wait while he went to another village where other Yanks were said to be. The Dutch, he said, would provide them with transportation. About an hour later a native policeman showed up and handed them a handwritten note from the same U.S. officer saying there were no vehicles after all and advising the Australians to head for the hills and attempt a rendezvous with Dutch ground forces.
Crossing the coastal paddies toward higher ground, the two Australians encountered Chinese shopkeepers who gave them food. The offerings of the natives were harsher: spitting and unintelligible threats. At a hillside village that night, they slept in a small hospital, where they met a Dutch officer. “Can you get us arms and medical supplies?” Gillan wanted to know. An encouraging promise was made, but it did not survive the night. In the morning the Dutchman was gone.
“We can fight in the hills,” Gillan said, still unable to see. He and his mates walked all day up-country through plantations and jungle, hoping to find Dutch soldiers. What they found instead were sarong-clad hillmen armed with gleaming parangs and knives. Though Gillan was enjoying the return of his eyesight—he could see if he pulled his lids open with his fingers—he could do little to resist. When the natives became preoccupied with arguing among themselves, he and Hogman scrabbled together some good rocks to throw. Gillan carried a heavy stick too, which he waved threateningly at an armed hillman who approached him. Though they were outnumbered and overmatched, the standoff held. It lasted, at least, until a truck motor shredded the jungle’s peace. A small Japanese flag flew from its hood. The natives scattered.
As the vehicle sped into view, the Australians saw the vehicle’s occupants and resigned