The Story of Dr. Wassell (5 page)

But it was a deal he could not keep to. That night the Navy headquarters
in Tjilatjap telephoned him to get his less serious cases ready for
evacuation at once, and bring them down by train to the seacoast the
following day. “Bring everybody who can stand a rough passage,” snapped a
voice at the other end that sounded as if it had no more time to spare.

The doctor did not break the news to the men that night, because he
guessed they would not sleep a wink for thinking of it. He did, however, do a
few preliminary things: he went round from bed to bed, taking temperatures
and re-examining injuries, asking the men how they felt and what kind of ice
cream they would prefer the next day. With the bland duplicity of the
innocent, he thought that this must surely thwart all suspicion; but he used
it too much, until at last McGuffey exclaimed: “What’s on your mind, Doc?
Why’re you making such a fuss about the ice cream?”

The doctor replied that nothing was on his mind, and rather sharply bade
them all good-night. Then he went into Wilson’s room and told him the truth.
“We’re getting out in the morning and we’ll be on the sea this time tomorrow
night.”

“What’s the name of the ship?”

“Don’t know.”

“Where’re we going to?”

“Don’t know that either. But we’ll be on our way, and I can tell you now
that it’s happened, I’m mighty glad.”

“Same here…but it hasn’t happened yet. There’s the journey to face. I
mean the journey to the ship, and getting on board, and so on. Think all the
men can stand it?”

“Listen,” answered the doctor, “You’ve been just about the worst case of
the whole bunch—barring Bailey who died. Do
you
think
you
can stand it?”

Wilson looked astonished. “You really mean that? That I was the worst
case?”

“Sure. I had you measured for a wooden box.”

“Like hell you did! Well, after that I’ll stand anything if only to spite
you.”

“That’s the spirit,” said the doctor, holding the thermometer to the
light. He did not tell Wilson that the mercury was still far too high for
safety. But what a word—
safety
? Where was there safety,
anyhow?

Soon after dawn he told the men, and from then until ten o’clock, when the
hospital train moved out for its eight-hour journey to the coast, the doctor
worked as he had probably never worked before in his life. There was no
problem now in finding things to be done; the difficulty was to fit them into
the time allowed. First the consent of the Dutch hospital staff had to be
secured for each separate departure—by no means a formality, for Dr.
Voorhuys would have vetoed the trip for any man if he had thought it
dangerous to his life during the few days ahead. Further than that Dr.
Voorhuys forbade himself to look; and what degree of doubt he permitted
himself was another unknown quantity among the many unknown quantities
surrounding them all. He certainly did hesitate over Wilson, fiddling about
with his burned skin until Wilson said: “Since you’ve got such a lot of time
to spare, Doctor, did you ever hear the story about the…”

Dr. Voorhuys had no time to spare, and as that kind of story always
embarrassed him, he nodded perfunctorily and passed on.

When the men left in ambulances for the railway station the entire
hospital staff stood round and waved. Before that there had been a few
tearful farewells between the men and individual nurses, as if at such a
moment many feelings were revealed that till then had been unsuspected by
either party. Three Martini said good-bye to everyone, but lingered
afterwards at the door of the ambulance where Renny was. She carried some
flowers which she laid on his stretcher at the last moment, just before the
doors were closed. She did not weep, or say anything but the one word she had
learned especially for him—“good-bye.”

Dr. Voorhuys also said good-bye to everyone, wishing them luck and
bon
voyage
; whereupon the doctor from Arkansas replied that never, never
would any of them forget the kindness of the Dutch and Javanese. The fact
that he meant it so sincerely brought a tremor into his voice.

Thus the forty-one men from the
Marblehead
and the
Houston
began the journey on that February day, and within twenty-four hours nine of
them were back at the hospital.

It happened this way. When the hospital train reached Tjilatjap the men’s
nerves were tense and their physical condition worse after the journey. The
doctor had been marvelously busy during the hours of slow travel; he had
watched over his charges incessantly, rushing out at every stop to buy them
food and drink, and passing along the train every few minutes to see how each
man was getting on. But there was nothing he could do about the heat as the
railway dropped down towards the coastal plain; nor could he do much to calm
the men’s excitement when, at one station, the train was held up for over an
hour because of an air-raid alert. It was not that they feared the bombs, but
they were afraid the delay would mean that the ship would sail without them.
Now that they were actually on their way to the coast, they could not think
of anything else but getting on board the ship. It was for this that they had
nerved themselves for discomforts, so that they welcomed the jolting of the
cars that cost them pain, and stirred restlessly whenever the train eased
them to a standstill.

“Now don’t go grousing all over the place. Try to make ‘em think you’re
all right,” the doctor kept saying, as if with some premonition of trouble
ahead. He said it for perhaps the fiftieth time as the train reached the
terminus.

Some of the men could walk without assistance under favorable conditions;
but favorable conditions were not to be had at Tjilatjap, and the doctor soon
realized it. To begin with, both railway station and town were swarming with
refugees evacuated from the interior; Dutch, American, and British soldiers;
and local officials trying to improvise some sort of order amidst conditions
which were fast becoming chaotic. There was no panic, but much confusion, and
a certain wildness in the behavior of some who were asked too many questions
by too many people at once. Beyond the town itself lay the small harbor,
glassy under a heat haze; the whole outfit terribly inadequate for the job
now pending. So many ships were waiting to sail at nightfall that one might
have been reassured—until one saw the press of human movement seeping
slowly seawards through the streets of the town.

The doctor knew how tired and anxious his men were, how unaccustomed to
the heat, and how likely to be dispirited by the general atmosphere of the
scene. He knew that his first task must be to find out exactly where the ship
was that would take them away, and to make his arrival known to whoever it
was who had charge of the embarkation. Then, when all had been arranged in
advance so that there could be no further hitches, the men could be taken
aboard as quickly as possible and made comfortable with the sedatives they
would need. In the meantime, while he did all these preliminary things, the
men must rest somewhere and try to conserve their strength for the
ordeal.

There was a hotel opposite the station, and he assembled them there, on a
sort of terrace, where they could stay together and keep reasonably cool and
out of other people’s way. The hotel people were very obliging, but they too
were under a strain, not knowing what would soon happen to them. The doctor
talked them into providing extra chairs and cold drinks; they could not
supply food, because they had none, but he had brought some canned food from
the hospital and left it for the men to share.

All this took time, and meanwhile the town kept filling up as if all Java
were draining its population southward into this one narrow bottleneck. The
sun blazed down the sky towards the end of the afternoon, and wafts of hot
air fanned against weary, preoccupied faces.

On his way to the dock the doctor heard that a Jap reconnaissance plane
had already been over, taking photographs (Kodak Joe, they called it); which,
after the experience of Surabaya, could only mean that Tjilatjap was high on
the list of places soon, perhaps immediately, to be bombed. The thought
increased his pace as he hurried through the crowds; it even helped him to
ignore the heat and humidity.

On the waterfront he had a stroke of luck; he found the Navy headquarters
easily, and—even more important—found a man in charge who,
whether because he was utterly worn-out or temperamentally acquiescent or
from some other reason, gave none of the trouble the doctor had half
anticipated. “Sure…Forty-one?…You have the list?…Thanks. All right,
I’ll okay that…You can sail in a few hours…Get your men here right
away…”

The doctor was immensely relieved, and when, almost as an afterthought,
the question came: “I suppose they’re all able to help themselves?”—he
answered expansively: “Oh yes, naturally.” It was true of most of them, at
any rate, and for the few others there was a point he might have mentioned
but did not care to—that it was
his
job to help those who could
not help themselves.

He was in mounting spirits as he went back to the hotel. The men also,
when he told them to get ready at once, shared his mood and began to bustle
about, collecting their small possessions together. Several were able to walk
the short distance to the dock; others climbed into a truck which he
persuaded the hotel people to lend; there were ambulances to take the
stretcher cases. He said a few words to each of the men, chiefly relative to
their own injuries and the best way to adjust themselves during the difficult
time that lay ahead. “Once we’re on board I’ll find you places to sleep, and
then I’ll give you a shot of something…so don’t worry. Keep your chin up
and if you feel bad, tell
me
, but don’t tell anyone else.”

He hoped he could get the men on board without any further official
inspection or red-tape delay. His dislike of red tape rose now to a point
where he feared it more than a Jap air raid; and the reason (which he did not
analyze) was that often in life the short cuts of his own individual judgment
had turned out not so well, so that in blaming red tape he was choosing an
enemy more comforting to his pride.

The crowds on the dock were greater now, but at last he got his men near
to the ships, the largest and likeliest-looking of which was called the
Breskens
; then he helped them down from the trucks and ambulances. To
his dismay there was no shade anywhere, and even a moment in the broiling sun
must be distressing for the men lying on their backs on the stretchers. Then
suddenly, while he was making sure that no one was missing, he found that one
person
was
missing—McGuffey, of course. That sent him into a
sharp temper, the sharpest he had known since—well, since before he
joined the Navy. “I’m not going back for him,” he shouted. “If he finds us
here, okay…if not…That boy’s been nothing but trouble all the time, and
to choose a day like this for…I suppose he sloped off from the hotel when
you weren’t looking?”

“We were looking,” Edmunds said. “But
she
was
good
-
looking.”

The doctor did not smile. He could almost understand why Sun never smiled;
there was nothing to smile at in a world where wounded men had to be embarked
from crowded docks with the possibility of bombs falling at any moment. He
told the men sharply to wait where they were while he arranged for them to go
on board, and as he pushed his way through the crowd he tried to push also
the thought of McGuffey from his mind. Whatever happened to him, that boy
deserved it.

The
Breskens
was already packed with agitated humanity. All crowds
on all steamers are always agitated till a journey begins, but on the
Breskens
there was a note of extra confusion, a sort of fourth-
dimensional tension that matched the third and skyward direction to which so
many eyes were turned. The doctor could not even get aboard himself, because
a Dutch officer standing at the gangway politely but firmly (and in Dutch)
demanded some permit he didn’t possess, and when he produced the Navy
document waved it gently aside. The doctor could be persuasive, but only in
English, and all that the Dutch officer could reply in English was “You talk
to the captain, please.” Apparently the captain was to be found ashore, in a
vaguely indicated building several hundred yards beyond the edge of the
crowd. The more the doctor argued and waved his document, the more firmly and
politely the Dutch officer insisted that he should talk to the captain; so
presently, with a shrug, the doctor set off on this troublesome quest, and in
pushing through the crowd collided with a middle-aged high-ranking officer of
the American Navy who asked him where the devil he thought he was going. The
doctor, as is unusual in such encounters, informed him, whereupon the officer
exclaimed: “Good God, sir, I wish you luck! There’s a line of them trying to
see him!”

The doctor then explained he had forty-one wounded sailors in his charge
and wished to get them on board. “They’re from the
Marblehead
,
sir—they’ve been at a hospital inland, and I’ve brought them here for
evacuation.” He added: “Acting on Navy instructions.”

“
Instructions?
…Wait a minute—weren’t you the fellow I
telephoned last night?…I thought I recognized that accent. Tennessee, isn’t
it?”

“No, sir, Arkansas.”

“And so what? All right, get ‘em on board.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, but the Dutch officer doesn’t understand
this paper—he said I must see the captain about it—but perhaps if
you
could explain—”

“Sure, I’ll explain…Where
are
your men, anyway?”

It was too bad that the Navy officer had at that moment caught sight of
the group waiting near by, too bad that there was nothing for the doctor to
do but point confirmingly. “Good God, sir!” exclaimed the Navy officer again,
so loudly that the men heard him and turned their heads. Sensing that
something was wrong, they valiantly remembered the doctor’s advice to look as
well as they could, but there was something almost more pathetic in that
effort than if they had not made any. And the men on the stretchers, lying
under the sun, looked most pathetic of all.