Free Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth Page A

As the Romans had the lares, so the Chinese … There was a squeal. A mudguard met the railing. The lorry stopped.
    ‘For Chrissake, driver!’
    He walked smartly back to the arched bonnet of the truck.
    ‘Sorry, sir. Can’t see none too good.’
    ‘Move aside. Let me do it.’
    The driver slid into the passenger seat and Sandingham took the steering wheel. He deftly squared the lorry off and drove around the bend. Once through the difficulty of the corner, he drove on.
    The trees thinned out and, in the starlight, both men could see the mountain climb sharply above them and drop away on their left to a reservoir far below. Beyond lay the sea and the end of Lamma Island.
    Both men knew, though their difference in rank and the ever-important rules of morale prevented them from mentioning it outright, that Hong Kong had had it. It was only a matter of time now until annihilation or capitulation. The Imperial Japanese Army had not found it difficult to fight their way through the New Territories behind the Kowloon Hills. Resistance had been dogged and determined but the local garrison and volunteers had been vastly outnumbered. Now the Japanese occupied the entire colony except for Hong Kong Island: the last-ditch stand.
    ‘I wonder if they’ve made that island yet, sir,’ said the driver, thinking out loud and looking down the hillside.
    Sandingham made no answer but, as if in reply, a light shone briefly on the island shore, then died out. A few moments later a muffled bump reverberated up from the valley beneath them.
    Sandingham stopped the lorry and got out.
    ‘Right,’ he said, ‘bring the torch and keep it angled very low. Very low, you understand?’
    The private was young, not more than twenty. Sandingham was twenty-four and a fully-fledged man. He could see the soldier’s face dimly in the light of the torch. A bloody boy. Newly arrived and still wet-arsed. Had it been summer, he’d have had sunburnt knees.
    A large boulder loomed up in the darkness, blacker than the surrounding sandy soil. It had not rained recently and the ground was dusty. Scrubby grass grew where feet and heavy-duty tyres had not crushed or rubbed it out.
    Once behind the boulder, Sandingham reached down for the field telephone relay box. It was military green in colour and the private could see that it had been lightly camouflaged with tufts of grass and twigs. These fell off as Sandingham lifted it on to the flattish top of the rock.
    ‘Get the roll.’
    The private went off with the torch and Sandingham stood up. He pressed his hands into the small of his back, stretching his muscles. The cloud cover was patchy and, through it, starlight coruscated upon the South China Sea. He turned to check that the torch wasn’t showing.
    ‘Here you are, sir.’
    ‘Good. Hold the reel by the lugs on each side and run the line out down to that tree there.’ The stars were out now and the tree came into ghostly view a hundred yards away. Now that their eyes had grown accustomed to the night the headlamps on the thirty-hundredweight truck were a help, too. ‘When you get there, put the reel down and come back at the double. Make sure the wire is off the road – we don’t want some clumsy-footed infantryman tripping on it. Not even one of theirs.’
    He trimmed the twin-core telegraph wire bare at the ends and connected it to the terminals in the box. He couldn’t see very well, but he knew how to do it blindfold. He had wired up a set of three boxes once in the pitch black of a broom cupboard, for a bet, in Aldershot. Two and a half years before: it seemed more than a lifetime away. They had drunk the five quid he won in the wager in an old pub in Farnham, driving over there in Noel’s Lagonda. That was the night he’d first met Bob. He was wearing a cream panama hat with a boating blazer and a Cambridge tie.
    ‘I’ve done it, sir.’
    ‘Fine. I’m done here. Now we work our way along this road for about half a mile. You follow in the