Tools of War Read online

  TOOLS OF WAR

  Dulcie M. Stone

  1941. March 11th

  ‘Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.’

  Winston Churchill.

  2005. January 27th

  ‘The evil of the Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere…. One thing is clear: the Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people.’

  German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder

  Published by Dulcie M. Stone

  First published 2012

  © Dulcie M. Stone

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  ISBN:978 1 921999 91 8 (ePub)

  978 1 921999 92 5 (Kindle)

  Distributed by Palmer Higgs Pty Ltd

  www.palmerhiggsbooks.com.au

  Introduction

  1939

  August 31st:

  In Britain forces are on alert as the Polish crisis deepens. Britain is bound by treaty to defend the Poles if they are attacked.

  In Australia, Prime Minister Menzies has outlined in a broadcast speech a range of measures to prepare Australia for a state of emergency. Munitions factories have been placed on a war-time basis.

  In Melbourne, Australia, fifteen year old Anne Preston, traveling home after a school social, is listening to the wireless. As the bus passes Pentridge Prison, where last year she played the piano at a charity concert for women prisoners, she hears the announcement of the deepening over-seas crisis.

  September 3rd:

  At 9.30 p.m. Australia and New Zealand, with Britain, France and India declare war on Germany.

  Jim and May Preston, with their daughters June and Anne, listen to the news broadcast. Jim Preston, a returned soldier from World War One, thanks God he has no sons.

  1940

  January 27th:

  2000 people are employed at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation’s works at Fisherman’s Bend near Melbourne. Construction of aircraft continues daily from 7 a.m. to midnight. All jigs and tools are made in the factory. Production of the completed aircraft has been speeded up at the request of the Commonwealth.

  The Preston family, after enjoying their annual beach holiday at Portsea on the Mornington Peninsula, is preparing for the new working year. Though there are reports of troop movements, and the sons of family friends have joined the armed forces, the overseas war has greatly changed the way of life in mainland Australia.

  April 24th:

  The Australian Treasurer, Mr Spender, blames the activities of the Communists for industrial disputes. He says they are undermining Australia’s war effort by diminishing the supply of materials for home defence and the troops abroad.

  Jim Preston, though not actively political, is an avid reader. Alarmed by Mr Spender’s statement, he reads with satisfaction that the Commonwealth Investigation Branch has a file on the personal and political life of known Communist agents in Australia.

  May 28th:

  The Belgian Armed Forces surrender to the Germans. The speed of the shock defeat leads to rumours of the significant part played by Fifth Columnist activity in bringing about the surrender of Holland and Belgium. By May 31st British troops, surrounded by German troops, are fighting a desperate rear-guard action around Dunkirk, France.

  Studying British history, Anne Preston is intrigued by the story of Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England for nine days in 1553.

  In her European history studies, Anne admires the feats of French heroine, Joan of Arc. (1412-31)

  In her English studies, the assigned novel is Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’. The majority of the class complains that the novel is particularly boring. When the teacher requests comments on the book, the students do not admit their criticism. Except for Anne who, after being promised support, finds none; she alone suffers the teacher’s displeasure.

  June 4th:

  Allied forces are evacuated from Dunkirk. A huge fleet of destroyers, ferries, fishing vessels, and river cruisers have delivered the British Expeditionary Force, together with vast numbers of French and Belgian troops, from the prospect of total annihilation by the Germans.

  Jim and May Preston, as all Australians, follow the news of the evacuation at Dunkirk and its impact on Britain and the Allies with great anxiety. If Britain falls, the effect on Australia will be catastrophic. Anne, following news of Dunkirk on the wireless and on movie newsreels, for the first time feels the personal anxiety that is beginning to change Australian life.

  June 15th:

  Australian Communist and Fascist Parties are declared illegal under the National Security Act.

  Jim and May Preston, greatly alarmed by Britain’s continuing vulnerability and the potential consequences for Australia, fear for their daughters’ future. Both June and Anne are close to the end of their school years. The war, which most predicted would be over in a few months, is going very badly. It is bringing fear, heartache, hardship and suffering to Australians, just as the ‘war to end all war’ did in 1914-1918.

  June 22nd:

  At Compiegne, France, the French surrender to the Germans in the same coach in which the Germans surrendered to the French in 1918. As the armistice which puts half of France under German occupation is signed, Hitler looks on.

  The Preston family, as all Australia, hears the news of the fall of France with intensifying fear. Can England stand alone against the ruthless power of Hitler and the Nazis? How will invasion of England affect Australia? How will it affect their fighting men overseas?

  August20th:

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill pays tribute to the Royal Air Force pilots fighting the Battle of Britain: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

  Jim Preston reads in the Melbourne ‘Herald’ that Australian cricketer, Don Bradman, has joined the RAAF and is placed in reserve as a member of an air crew.

  1941

  June 22nd:

  Hitler breaks the non-aggression pact with Stalin. At dawn, the Russian Army is caught unprepared by the German onslaught.

  Seventeen year-old Anne Preston is preparing to sit for her final school exams. Major subjects are European History, British History, English and Mathematics. As school pianist, she accompanies the school orchestra and plays on special school occasions. In her leisure time she plays tennis and is reading John Steinbeck’s disturbing book, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’.

  December 7th:

  Pearl Harbour is bombed. The United States of America is at war.

  Nineteen year old June Preston, having been employed as a secretary since leaving school, plans to leave home to train as an Australian Army nurse. May Preston enrolls as a volunteer nursing aide. Anne is anxiously awaiting news of her Leaving Certificate results. Jim Preston thanks God that Britain will no longer fight alone.

  December 8th:

  The Australian Prime Minister, John Curtain, announces that Australia is at war with Japan. “Men and women of Australia, the call is to you for your courage, your physical and mental ability, your inflexible determination that we as a free people will survive. My appeal to you is in the name of Australia, for Australia is the stake in this contest.”

  Anne is recommended for a Government-sponsored intelligence test to assess the best use of her talents to work for the ‘war effort’.

  December 27th:

  Construction of air raid shelters begins in Australia.

&
nbsp; Jim Preston plans to dig a small slit trench in the back yard of their outer suburban home in Melbourne. The trench remains an unfulfilled plan when Jim enlists for work in a distant construction camp.

  1942

  February 19th:

  The Australian mainland is under attack. 188 Japanese planes bomb Darwin in massive air raids. Fears are growing that Japan is preparing to invade Australia.

  Anne no longer plays tennis. As many other young Australians, she has no leisure time left for sport. She is training for employment as a laboratory assistant in a metrology laboratory outside Melbourne. Metrology is the science of measuring. Laboratory assistants assess the accuracy of gauges used in the manufacturing of machine tools.

  April 25th:

  American General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the South-West Pacific, lays a wreath at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. Camp Pell, near the Melbourne Zoo, is the base for 15000 American servicemen.

  Anne and May Preston travel by tram to join the city crowds watching the traditional Anzac Day March. Because of the growing fear that the Japanese are preparing to invade the Australian main-land, Melbournians eagerly welcome the reassuring presence of MacArthur and his men.

  May 8th:

  The Allied victory at the Battle of the Coral Sea off Northern Australia saves Port Moresby. It is a major setback for the Japanese in their bid for military expansion.

  On Sunday May 10th Anne, who has been St Margaret’s Anglican Church organist since her early teens, is warned by the Vicar to be careful. A serial killer may be on the loose in Melbourne; the May 3rd murder of 40 year old Ivy McLeod, whose body was found in Albert Park just outside central Melbourne, has been followed by a second murder; this time in Spring Street in the City.

  May 19th:

  A woman’s body is found in a slit trench at the American Base, Camp Pell. News of the third murder causes panic. The serial killer becomes known as ‘The Brownout Strangler’.

  The Vicar at St Margaret’s temporarily cancels night-time choir practice. Anne’s friends at the laboratory, as many others, no longer go to night-time movies and dances unless accompanied by men; but brothers, fathers and boy friends are away at the war. Many girls are enjoying the company of the American soldiers flooding the city.

  May 22nd:

  Boyishly charming American soldier, Edward Leonski, has been arrested as the Melbourne ‘Brownout’ murderer.

  Although 24 year-old Leonski has been arrested, fear still haunts the city and suburban streets of Melbourne. Added to the collective fear of Japanese invasion is the intensely personal fear that, because of the war-related influx of foreigners, there are more ‘Leonskis’ out there.

  Jim and May Preston feel helpless to protect their daughters. After only two decades of uneasy peace, lives are again dominated by world war.

  Anne Preston, though acutely apprehensive, illogically welcomes the unexpected excitement the war is bringing to her life.

  June 7th:

  The Japanese Navy was forced to withdraw after four days of savage fighting on the sea and in the air around Midway Island in the Pacific.

  Anne, now a trained laboratory technician, has been dating Julian Reeves for a month. A physicist working in an adjacent munitions laboratory, Julian is a member of the illegal Australian Communist Party.

  Chapter One

  1942

  June 4th: Edward Leonski, who pleaded ‘not guilty by means of insanity’ to the ‘Brownout’ murders, is declared to be sane by American and Australian psychiatrists. He is sentenced to death by hanging. (The sentence, confirmed by General MacArthur, is carried out in Pentridge Gaol on November 9th 1942.)

  June 11th:

  N.S.W. coast. The ninth Japanese submarine is destroyed in Australian waters in 10 days.

  Julian was late. Or was she early? Peeling back the cuff of her glove, Anne Preston read the hands of her watch. Five-twenty-eight. She was early. Of course. Julian was never late, and seldom early.

  High on the steps overlooking the Saturday evening crowd, she waited under the clocks of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station. A conservatively dressed eighteen year old, Anne’s cropped auburn curls, pert freckled nose, oval face, hazel eyes, and creamy rose-tinted complexion seemed at first glance neither more nor less attractive than the score of girls around her.

  The striking difference about Anne was the incongruity of her dress. Unlike the bright colours worn by the other girls, Anne’s plain navy blue coat, hat, shoes, hand-bag and gloves, as near to an exact match as the war-affected stores could provide, were prim and spinsterish. Only close inspection revealed that these, together with the absence of make-up except for the very lightest dab of pink lipstick, successfully detracted from features which could have been highlighted and groomed to betray striking beauty.

  It was intriguing. Seemingly anxious not to attract attention, Anne Preston was achieving the opposite; her choice of clothing was attracting attention. The prudish presentation, at odds with the artless beauty, was combining to communicate fascination. To the curious observer, the enigmatic young woman posed questions which required answers.

  After checking her watch against the railway clocks, she looked out over the busy intersection to Young and Jackson’s Hotel.

  “Your friend let you down, Miss?” A uniformed American with a Clark Gable accent was standing in front of her.

  Not answering, she averted her eyes. Nice girls did not talk to strangers, especially American soldiers.

  “They told me I’d find company under the clocks.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfect Clark Gable teeth.

  Don’t talk. Don’t lead him on. He’d surely come from Camp Pell. She stepped down to a lower vantage point.

  “No offence, ma’am.” The handsome soldier followed. “I’m looking for company at the movies.”

  She blushed, she’d have to answer. “My boy friend is meeting me.”

  “Sorry.” The American soldier smiled his perfect white-toothed apology, and moved off.

  She was shaking. He’d seemed nice. How could you tell? She was angry. Julian shouldn’t do this to her. It wasn’t fair. Increasingly furious, she again searched the pedestrians crossing with the green light from the opposite corner. No sign of him. He was late.

  Around her the confusing bustle of uniformed men and chattering girls was overwhelming. Heart pounding, praying to be left alone, she retreated back up the steps and located a safe space behind a pillar.

  The street lights, muted for the war’s brown-out, fought the half-light of dusk. Diagonally across the teeming intersection the windows of St. Paul’s Cathedral momentarily reflected the sunset in a mellow bronze glow before it died, and the cathedral became a pale ghost in the darkness of its incongruous location.

  Confidence gradually returning, Anne stepped from her hiding place.

  Immediately, Julian strode to her side. “Where have you been?”

  “A soldier tried to get fresh with me.” Desperately wishing she could learn to control the embarrassing remnant of her early teens, she again felt her face redden. “I was frightened.”

  “We’ll have to run. We’re late.” Taking her arm, he raced her into the railway station, showed their tickets at the gate, flew down the ramp and, as the whistle blew, ushered her into a crowded first class carriage.

  The train pulled out.

  “We’re second class!” She protested.

  “All classes are the same.” Julian squeezed into a narrow gap on the seat beside her.

  “It’s not allowed. They’ll catch us.”

  “Get it into your head, Anne. In Communism all classes are the same.”

  She looked around. Had anyone heard? Of course they had!

  “Don’t worry so much,” he chided. “We do it all the time.”

  She glanced at the other passengers. Reading their evening newspapers, they seemed not to have heard Julian. Or if they had, they didn’t care.

  It was still fright
ening.

  “It’s all right,” Julian reassured. “We do it all...”

  “Sh…,” she begged. Sometimes Julian scared her.

  “Relax.” He held her gloved hands in his.

  She looked up at him. Was it really all right?

  “It’s okay, Anne. Really. I’m with you.” His dark eyes burned into her. His certainty was as impregnable as steel.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Feel better?”

  She nodded.

  He released her hands. Folding them in her lap, she felt the comfort of his warm body pressed against hers. Julian was no Clark Gable, like the handsome young American soldier, but he was tall and slim and even-featured and always well groomed. Although he was a member of the illegal Communist Party, he had a very important job in munitions. Her mother didn’t trust him, mainly because he was seven years older than she was. When he was home, her father never said anything about Julian. As he’d always said, he trusted her common sense. Which was sad, because when it came to Julian her common sense went missing.

  The train clattered through unfamiliar and disconcertingly strange suburbs. She peered out at the filthy broken windows of run-down factories, tiny houses with ugly back yards no bigger than her bedroom, narrow roads no broader than laneways, and the hooded lights of the brown-out. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  He was very serious. But then Julian was almost always serious.

  She replaced her hands in his, now limp and disinterested. Sometimes, guiltily, she wished she’d never met him. Sometimes the strain of adjusting to his intensity and to his unpredictable demands was exhausting. Only sometimes. Because it was his intensity, his preoccupation with the war, and his passionate commitment to his beliefs which made him so very different from all the other men she’d ever known.

  “We’re here.” He led her from the train out into the dark street behind the anonymous suburban railway station. “It’s not too far.”