At the Ningming airfield’s POW camp, Mike Murphy, Danny Mellin, Shirley Fortescue, and the other assorted two hundred prisoners taken either from the Spratly Island claims or oil rigs were waking up from a wet, cold night spent under badly leaking, rat-holed tarpaulins.
“In line!” came a guard’s instruction.
The straggly line of worn, tired faces, bodies shuffling toward the feed trucks, looked more like a column of refugees, some who had caught cold in days and nights since they’d been captured, coughing and sneezing, unwittingly spreading their germs among their malnourished companions.
For Mellin, the problem in trying to oppose the Chinese order that they all become “construction workers”—by which the Chinese really meant construction slaves — to first build their own huts to house them, was in trying to organize his fellow prisoners. With his military background, Mellin had immediately seen that even with the simple problem of getting their rice and tea ration, what was needed was armylike organization instead of having them all moving about at random like lost sheep.
The ration this morning was the same as before: a wooden bowl of white, sticky, boiled rice and a mug of tepid water with only the faintest aroma of tea.
“Jesus,” Murphy said, pulling a threadbare blanket about him as he received his ration. “Looks like they just passed the racking tea bag over this tub of—” The cup flew from his hand, knocked away by the server’s ladle, an AK-47 butt striking him hard on the head and shoulder, sending him sprawling on the wet, muddy ground, his rice bowl upturned. The guards about the rice truck burst out laughing as they watched the Australian scrabbling in the mud to get the rice back into the bowl. He asked for another cup of “tea.” He was refused.
“Bad man!” one of the guards said. Murphy had to be content with picking out the mud from the rice and using his plastic POW cup to catch some of the runoff water from the tarpaulins to drink and to clean the rice as best he could.
“He’ll never learn,” Shirley Fortescue told Danny Mellin as they congregated with the other prisoners under their tarpaulin.
“No,” Danny agreed, his tone, unlike Fortescue’s, one of compassion, which she thought was misplaced.
“Well,” she said, “he asks for it, doesn’t he? I mean, I don’t like what these bloody Chinese are doing either but — well, what I’m trying to say—”
“Yeah!” said Murphy, who had been walking toward them in the crowd. “What are you trying to say, Shirl, about these bloody Chinese?” Despite his anger of a moment before, Murphy was now grinning like a victorious teenager, perhaps, Shirley thought, because the Australian had caught her using a swear word.
“What I’m saying, Mr. Murphy,” she answered stiffly, “is that one has to get on with people.”
“People,” Murphy said sneeringly. “These aren’t bloody people, sweetheart. They’re our enemy.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yeah, I know,” the Australian responded, loudly enough, Danny thought, to bring the guards down on him again if he wasn’t careful. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Murphy continued, his voice growing louder. “You mean we should suck up to ‘em, don’t ya? Kiss their ass. Well, not me, sis.”
“Hold it down,” someone said. “Upshut’s coming our way.”
Either Upshut hadn’t heard Murphy or was too busy to want to do anything about it.
“In line,” he shouted. “Quick! Quick!” He laboriously informed them through the camp interpreter, Comrade Lu, that they must build the mud huts in one day. “No huts, no big covers.” He meant no more tarpaulins to sleep under. “You understand?”
“Yes,” Mellin said, speaking as leader for his squad of ten.
After Upshut had gone, Murphy said, albeit quietly this time, “A hut in a day. No fucking way, mate.”
“Why not?” Danny said. “Twenty of us. We’ve got the concrete bricks. They’ve been kept dry under their tarpaulins. We can start now.”
“Oh, can we?” Murphy answered, looking from Mellin to Shirley Fortescue. “Listen, bud, you’ve been listening to this sheila too much. I thought the whole idea wasn’t to help the chinks, but to break out if we could. Fourteen miles to the border, mate.”
“I never said anything about escaping,” Danny said. “Besides, it’d be a lot longer than fourteen miles. That’s in a direct line.”
Murphy, his blanket still wrapped around him, glared at the American. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Yank, eh? Day I helped you up, I thought I was picking up someone with guts.”
“Be quiet,” someone else said.
“Yes,” another hissed. “You’ll get us all in a jam.”
“In a jam!” Murphy said loudly, his eyes bright with anger. “You fucking dodos, don’t you understand? Didn’t you listen to Uncle Lu? You’re already in a fucking jam. They want you to build your own friggin’ prison to lock you up in, and you’re just gonna do it.” The Australian’s head was jerking left and right as if suddenly overtaken by a nervous tic.
“What would you do?” Shirley Fortescue asked him. “Refuse and get shot?”
“No, but—” He stopped as if he’d forgotten the question, his head again in a nervous tic, less violent than it was a minute before, but still there. “I–I wouldn’t help ‘em,” he said. “You know, go-slow tactics.”
“For Chrissake,” someone said. “Lower your voice.” Murphy tried, but was only partially successful, his voice rising and dropping without any warning or apparent control. “Accidents,” he blurted out. “Y’know — make me mortar too wet— y’know.”
People edged away from him. They all knew what they’d get for any kind of sabotage. The Australian wasn’t thinking clearly.
“Listen up.” It was Danny. “Before we start, I want to make a request. A guy in one of the other groups is pretty ill. Kept him on one of their ships. Hardly fed him at all. I’m asking everybody to save a spoon or two of rice per meal over the next few days. Give it to me. Okay with everybody?”
There was a murmur of assent, however reluctant they were to share their already meager rations.
“How bad is he?” Shirley asked Danny.
“What? Sorry, what was that?”
“How ill is he?” she asked.
“Well, without the extra rice, he probably won’t make it.”
Shirley moved off toward their brick pile, asking no more questions. Danny Mellin was glad. He’d just told them all a blatant lie, but he figured that by the time anyone found out, he’d have gotten the rice he wanted.