"AFTER a time . . . I can't remember how long . . . the chief engineer came back with a party of about 15 Japanese. The chief engineer told them, "This is the party and we want to be taken prisoner,'' but the Japanese officer brushed him aside and had a conference with his men. Then the British soldiers were told to get up and they were taken around a small point out of sight. We were left sitting on the sand. There was no sound or anything.
Then the Japanese who had gone with the men came back wiping their bayonets . . . we just looked at each other. We didn't have any emotion about it.
I think by this time we'd had shock added to everything else. The Japanese came and stood in front of us and indicated that we should go into the sea. And we walked into the sea with our backs to them. We knew what was going to happen to us, but all I can remember thinking was, 'I am sorry Mother will never know what has happened to me but it will be nice to see Dad again.'
We didn't talk among ourselves. It was quite silent. We were drained of emotion. There were no tears. Perhaps I was thinking, 'How can anything as terrible as this be happening in such a beautiful place?'
I'm not sure I heard the shooting . . . yes, I think I did hear a rat-tat-tat and I suppose it was a machine-gun. I got hit. The force of the bullet, together with the waves, knocked me off my feet. I just lay there, swallowing a tremendous amount of salt water until I was violently ill. And, after a while it sort of penetrated that I wasn't dying right there and then. I thought I'd better stay low until I couldn't stay low any longer. The waves brought me right into the shallow water.
Finally, when I did sit up and look around, there was nothing. The Japanese had gone and none of the girls were to be seen.. nothing. It's a bit hard to say but I think it might have been just after midday. I started to shiver and all I wanted to do was get up into that jungle and lie down. So I got up and walked across the beach and lay down just off a track that led to the nearest village. Whether I passed out or not, I don't know . . . but I know that I woke up on one occasion and it was pitch dark.
On the second occasion it was daylight, and I was hot and sticky and felt awful. All I could think about was that I must get up and go down to the spring at the beach and get a drink. But I couldn't be bothered. So I lay down again, and for a while there wasn't a sound. And suddenly, to my horrified gaze, I saw a line of helmets and bayonets going down towards the beach. I don't know how long I lay there flat, but eventually they came back again and I swear I looked into every pair of eyes. If I'd gone out for a drink when it was my first inclination, that would have been the end.
Well, I finally got up enough courage to go down and have a drink. Suddenly a voice from behind said, 'Where have you been, nurse?'' His name was Kingsley and he was the only man still alive from the British soldiers bayoneted on the beach. He had the top part of an arm blown off (when the ship was attacked) and a wound through his abdomen from the bayonet. And they faced each other, this dreadfully injured Englishman and the tall Australian nurse with a bullet hole through the left side of her body. He had managed to get to a fisherman's hut after the slaughter. I said, 'What do we do from here?' He didn't know what to do. So we had a drink and then we had our first argument.
I said, 'I'm going back to the jungle,' because I had faith in the jungle after that episode. He said, 'No, I'm going back to the fisherman's hut.' But he gave in and went into the jungle while I went down to the beach and picked up a few water bottles at the spring. I brought them back to him and made him comfortable. He wasn't in too good a state.
I got some bark from the trees and wrapped them around his wounds . . . My own wound? Oh, yes! Well, it wasn't too bad at all! I could tell from the holes in my uniform that the bullet had come out. I wondered how it had managed to miss my intestines, my liver and my stomach . . although people have said since that it probably missed my intestines and stomach because they were shrunk through lack of food. And people have said that if I weren't so tall, of course, the bullet would have passed right through my heart. I didn't give my wound any attention at all and as the days passed, I felt myself getting stronger. Oh, I watched it in case of infection but I think the fact that I spent so many hours in the salt water had cleaned it out.
Look, if I'd been near a hospital they'd probably have taken me in, opened it up and made it a lot worse with their probing around! But, left to nature, it healed beautifully."
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