Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Past Forgetting

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So, Ed Driscoll at Instapundit is dedicated to posting Covid retrospectives along the nature of “On this Day Five Years Ago…” Some comments appended to his various posts over the last few weeks express exasperation with his apparent complete inability (or disinclination) when it comes to pithy summarization, and others express exasperation with remembering the Covidiocy day by day and blow by blow. For myself, I have a mouse with a scroll-wheel and can use it. As for the second category of comments – yes, we should not forget what Covid did to us.

Yes, we ought to remember every day, every jot and tittle of such state-sponsored torments piled upon us in the name of the Unparalleled Epidemic Danger From the Covid Plague (eleventy!!!), and the identities and employers of those individuals who either inflicted those torments on the public or cheered them on through media, both Established and Social. We ought to remember every detail of civic lockdowns demanded by governors and local officials getting in touch with their inner authoritarian or feeling obliged to respond to that manufactured panic – especially those who flouted the rules that they inflicted on everyone else. (Looking at you especially, Governor “Hair-gel” Newsome, frolicking with friends at the French Laundry.)

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Those Who Dare Not Be Named

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I have been provided with several rations’ worth of bitter amusement over the last few years , when reading various news stories, especially those concerning incidents of murder, rape, mayhem and property crime – most of which can be laid at the door of a certain violently dysfunctional urban demographic – and then comparing the sympathetic manner in which that specific demographic is presented in pop entertainment.

Yes, just as the sun rises in the east, one can absolutely count on black urban youth being cast as hapless, misunderstood yet endearing rascals, automatically the prime suspect in a murder actually committed by the prep-school son of a white Wall Street magnate, or a deranged Christian minister, or some middle-class white schlub with a dirty secret – as is usually wrapped up in the final ten minutes of an hour-long episode.

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Conclusion: The Secret Voyage of the Kofuku Maru

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(Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

Once they passed through the Lombok Strait, the Krait (formerly the Kofuku Maru) threaded a cautious way among islands that were irregular polka-dots of green along the Sumatra coast, Engineer McDowell and his assistant nursing his engine as if it were a cranky child prone to tantrums. One of the officers was in the wheelhouse at all times. The mixed crew of soldiers and sailors kept a careful look-out, day and night – but they had come deliberately by a route that avoided the normal shipping lanes in and around Singapore. They made a happy discovery, upon encountering other craft—mostly native fishing boats and small commerce; such craft turned around and went the other way, at top speed, upon seeing the purposefully stained and tattered Japanese flag which they flew now. By the 18th, they were a bare 22 miles from Singapore, lurking with intent among the islands star-scattered to the south of the city, searching for a deserted and unobserved spot within striking distance of Keppel Harbor. Anchoring off Panjang Island at 4 in the morning, they decided that spot would do, for disembarking the six members of the canoe teams, and deadly cargo: Lyon, Davidson, and Page, with the three naval ratings: Walter Falls, Arthur “Joe” Jones and A.W. Huston. In two weeks exactly, the Krait would return to the rendezvous at Panjang to retrieve the six … if all went according to plan.

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Part 2 – The Secret Journey of the Kofuku Maru

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(This is going to be a three-part story: I had other projects today and could only finish this second part.)

The newly-rechristened Krait, with the old unreliable engine now replaced, had a full crew at last for Operation Jaywick. A chief engineer, Leading Stoker Paddy McDowell, a WWI Navy veteran, and an assistant engineer, another experienced sailor, Leading Seaman “Cobber” Cain. They also had recruited a radio operator, Leading Telegraphist “Horrie” Young, and a cook: Corporal Andy Crilley, a soldier who was about to be discharged on medical grounds but wanted to stay in the war. Meanwhile Donald Davidson had also selected five men from a pool of naval volunteers that he had personally trained for months in mission-essential skills: the art of silently maneuvering the Folboat canoes in all kinds of water, rappelling, navigation, stalking an enemy, the use of weapons, both bullet and bladed, as well as care of and use of explosives. The five chosen were not just skilled in those deadly arts, but also mature, steady and temperamentally suited for a grueling mission in which teamwork would be essential.

By early August, 1943, the Krait was ready to depart Cairns for Exmouth, on Australia’s western coast, carrying a mixed and eccentric crew of soldiers and sailors … but to where after that, exactly? Only Lyon, Davidson, Page and Carse knew their eventual destination: Lyon because he was overall in charge, and Carse because he was now commander of the deceptively ordinary Krait. The Krait’s four holds were packed jam-full of supplies: basic food and water, including rations sealed into tins which could be cached for the raiding party somewhere on land. Lt. Page had been a third-year medical student before the war, and as such, would be their doctor in a medical emergency. (The medical supplies also included rum, whiskey and gin – for celebrating if the mission was successful, and cyanide tablets in the dire event of failure and capture by the Japanese.)

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History Friday – The Secret Voyage of the Kofuku Maru

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When I came around to writing a novel set in the World War II timeframe a couple of years ago, one of the main characters spent the war years, first in Malaya and then Australia. This meant a deep dive into the war along the southern Pacific front, and life in Australia during that period. We Americans had Pearl Harbor, defeat of our military in the Philippines, the Bataan Death March, Wake and Midway, Guadalcanal and Tarawa; Australia had the loss of their troops in Singapore and Malaya, the occupation of Sumatra, Japanese air raids on Darwin, and the war next door in New Guinea.

The fall of Singapore struck a particularly heavy blow to the Allies in 1942: so close to Australia, with many personal and economic connections. Refugees from British and Dutch interests in southwest Asia fled in the direction of Australia and India in anything that could float and escape the deadly notice of the Japanese. One of those fortunate vessels was the Kofuku Maru, a 70-ft Japanese-built wooden craft, with a mainsail and an engine. It was constructed in the late 1930s to support the fishing fleet based out of Singapore, bringing water and food out to the fishing fleet, and collecting the catch for sale in the marketplace. Confiscated by British authorities after war broke out, by early spring of 1942 the Kofuku Maru was under the command of a volunteer Australian merchant mariner in his sixties named Bill Reynolds. Reynolds was tasked with evacuating civilians from the Malay peninsula, first to Sumatra, and then to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

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