CHAPTER 1

Singapore, February 1942

“I don’t want to go! Please. Please don’t make us go, Norah.”

Ena Murray’s cries are swallowed up by the screams of women and children, by explosions erupting around them and the screeching of Japanese war planes overhead.

“Run! Run!” parents implore their sons and daughters, but it’s too late. Another missile hits its target and the Allied ship harbored in the Singapore wharf flies apart.

As the shrapnel rains down, Norah’s husband, John, and Ena’s husband, Ken Murray, crouch beside their wives, shielding them from the flying debris. But no good will come of staying put. Ken helps the sisters to their feet, while John, gasping for breath, tries to stand.

“Ena, we have to get on, we have to go now!” Norah is still imploring her sister to board the HMS Vyner Brooke. There is mayhem all around, a terrible urgency to get as far away as possible from this chaos, to find sanctuary. Norah takes a brief moment to wrap her arms around her husband. John should still be in hospital; he is so weak, and can barely catch his breath, but he would use the last ounce of his strength to protect these women.

“Ena, please listen to your sister,” says Ken. “You have to leave, my darling. I’m going back to your parents, I promise I will take care of them.”

“They’re our parents,” Norah says. “It’s us who should be looking after them.”

“You have a daughter somewhere out there, Norah,” says Ken. “You and John have to find Sally. And you must look after Ena for me too.” Ken knows he is the only one who can stay in Singapore to take care of his parents-in-law. John is desperately sick and so is the women’s father, James—too sick to attempt to leave. Margaret, their mother, has refused to abandon him.

Another bomb erupts close by and everyone ducks. Behind them Singapore is on fire; ahead the sea is littered with the burning wrecks of ships, boats, big and small.

“Go! Go while you still can. If the ship doesn’t leave now, it won’t get out of the harbor, and you need to be on board.” Ken yells to be heard. He kisses Norah, squeezes John’s arm, and pulls Ena into a tight embrace, kissing his wife one last time before he pushes her toward the ship.

“I love you,” Ena calls out, her voice breaking.

“Get out of this hell hole. Find Sally. Find Barbara and the boys. I won’t be far behind you,” Ken shouts to their retreating figures.

Norah, John, and Ena are amid the crowd of passengers now, forced to move along the wharf toward the ship.

“Sally, we have to find Sally,” John mumbles, his legs giving way beneath him. Norah and Ena each take an arm and hurry him along.

Norah has no more words. The cries of her daughter fill her head as she stumbles toward her destiny. “I don’t want to go. Please let me stay with you, please, Mummy.” Just a few days earlier she had put eight-year-old Sally on a different ship and sent her away.

“I know you don’t, darling,” she had cajoled. “If there was any way we could stay together we would. I need you to be a strong little girl for me and go with Aunty Barbara and your cousins. Daddy and I will be with you before you know it. Just as soon as he’s better.”

“But you promised you wouldn’t send me away, you promised.” Sally had been beside herself, the tears flowing freely, her cheeks blotchy.

“I know I did, but sometimes mummies and daddies have to break their promises to keep their little girls safe. I promise…”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say you promise when I know you can’t.”

“Come on, Sally, can you hold Jimmy’s hand?” Barbara said. She was Norah and Ena’s older sister. She spoke softly to her niece. There was some comfort here for Norah; Sally would be safe with her family.

“She didn’t look back once,” Norah whispers to herself as she trudges along. “She just boarded the ship and was gone.”

* * *

Entering the cordoned-off area of the wharf, passengers with the approved paperwork gather. Among them are terrified adults and wailing children, each of them struggling under the weight of their most essential possessions.

A group of Australian Army nurses wave their paperwork at the officials and are hurried through the fenced-off area. They stand to one side as civilians file past before another group of women in the same uniform burst through the gates. The reunited nurses embrace, greeting each other like long-lost friends. Among the newcomers, a petite woman pushes her way through.

“Vivian, Betty, over here,” she calls.

“Hey, Betty, it’s Nesta!”

The three women huddle in a hug. Sisters Nesta James, Betty Jeffrey, and Vivian Bullwinkel became firm friends in Malaya, where they were posted to nurse Allied soldiers before it was overrun by the Japanese Army. Like everyone else here, they had been forced to flee to Singapore.

“It’s so good to see you again,” says Nesta, overjoyed to see her friends. “I didn’t know if you’d left with the others yesterday.”

“Betty was meant to leave yesterday but managed to go AWOL when they were leaving for the ship. We both hoped we wouldn’t be sent home; there’s just so much to do here,” Vivian said.

“Matron’s gone to plead our case one last time. We’re not on the ship yet, so maybe High Command will see the benefit of letting us stay here in Singapore with those who are too ill to leave,” Nesta tells them.

“They’re boarding the launches now, she’d better hurry,” Betty says, looking at the line of men, women, and children climbing into the wildly bobbing boats that will deliver them to the HMS Vyner Brooke. Bombs continue to hit their targets, churning the sea into waves and crashing them against the wharf.

Nesta is staring at the launches where the passengers are embarking.

“It looks like someone could do with a hand; I’ll be right back.”

* * *

“Do you need some help?” Nesta asks Norah and Ena, who are trying to work out how to help John down the steep steps and onto one of the boats. It is now half full of distraught passengers, some weeping, others paralyzed with fear. Norah feels a hand on her shoulder.

Norah turns to see the smiling face of a pint-sized woman in a nurse’s white uniform. She looks so tiny that Norah wonders how she could possibly help them, given that she, her husband, and her sister are taller than the average man or woman.

“I’m Sister Nesta James, a nurse with the Australian Army. I’m stronger than I look, and I’ve been trained to help patients much bigger than me, so don’t worry.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” Norah tells her. “But thank you.”

“Why don’t one of you get into the launch while two of us help the gentleman down and you can take over from there?” Nesta is politely insistent. “Have you been in hospital?” she asks John, taking his arm as Norah lets go.

“Yes,” he says, allowing her to guide him toward the boat. “Typhus.”

As soon as Norah is safely in the launch, Ena and Nesta help John into her waiting arms.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Ena asks the young nurse.

“I’m with my friends; we’ll get the next launch.”

Ena looks around and sees a large group of women dressed in the same uniform.

* * *

As the launch pulls away with Norah, John, and Ena on board, they hear singing from the wharf. The nurses, arms around each other’s shoulders, stand proudly, singing with all their might, loud enough to drown out a nearby petrol tank detonating into a ball of flames.

“Now is the hour

when we must say goodbye

soon you’ll be sailing

far across the sea.

While you’re away

Oh please remember me

when you return,

you’ll find me waiting here.”

Another bomb goes off on the wharf.

Matron Olive Paschke catches Nesta’s eye. “Matron Drummond made one final plea to the authorities to let us stay here and care for our men, but the lieutenant told her that our request is denied.”

“It was worth one more try, wasn’t it? It just doesn’t seem right to be abandoning them when they will most likely need us. How did Matron take it?”

“The only way she could, by simply raising her eyebrows at him,” replied Matron Pasche. “If she’d said what she was thinking she’d have been in trouble.”

“Which means she doesn’t accept it but will begrudgingly go along with it. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from her.” Nesta shook her head.

“Come on, let’s get the others. I think we’re the last to leave.”

* * *

Once on board the HMS Vyner Brooke, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel entertains them with her knowledge of the ship.

“She is named after the third Rajah of Sarawak and now has HMS in front of her name because the Royal Navy requisitioned her. She’s only meant to carry twelve passengers but has a crew of forty-seven.”

“How do you know all this?” Betty asks.

“I had dinner with the Rajah, didn’t I? Yeah, I know, me, little old Sister Vivian Bullwinkel from Broken Hill, had dinner with a rajah. Not alone, mind you; there were others there.”

“Oh, Bully, only you would add the last bit, the rest of us would leave it at ‘I had dinner with the Rajah,’” Betty says, laughing at her friend.

* * *

When the last nurse is on board, the captain gives the order to slip anchor and proceed with caution. He knows British minefields lie ahead and will be as big a threat as the enemy dominating the skies above. As the sun sets the passengers watch as Singapore burns, the bombing, shelling, and gunfire relentless. Above the noise of the death of a city, Norah, John, and Ena turn away from the cacophony to the sweet singing of the Australian nurses on deck. And, just for a moment, that’s all they can hear.

Copyright © 2023 by Heather Morris