1000 miles with a school map

1000 miles with a school map

A newspaper cutting with the story of how a group of airmen escaped from Java after the Japanese invasion.

1943-03-13

Two printed sheets

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SMilsonGW937875v60006-0001, SMilsonGW937875v60006-0002

[This is a single page article captured on two images]

MARCH 13, 1943 7 JOHN BULL

[underlined] * HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME – TOLD IN A NEW SERIES – ARE SOME OF THE WAR’S MOST THRILLING ESCAPE YARNS: THE AMAZING EXPLOITS OF “NEVER-SAY-DIE” HEROES WHO VALIANTLY REFUSED TO BE HELD BY THE FOE AND GOT BACK TO FIGHT AGAIN” [/underlined]

Wing-Commander Jeudwine (second from left) and three of his escape companions
[photograph]

1,000 Miles with a School Map

[inserted] xxxvvxxyxxxv [/inserted]

[boxed] THEY COULDN’T BE HELD: No. 1 * By MARK PRIESTLEY [boxed]

IT happened when the Japs were over-running Java. The official evacuation order had been issued at Bandoong [sic]. It was one of the darkest hours for the United Nations.

Over the radio flashed the last signal, “Squadron air-crews proceed to Tjilijap and await embarkation. Squadron air-crews proceed to . . .“

Then silence!

On the tin-can quay at Tjilijap, in the height of an air raid, Wing-Commander Johnny Jeudwine called the roll of the squadron.

The Last Bullet

Sixty-four men. Sixty-four who had fought to the last shell-ridden ‘plane, the last bomb, the last bullet. Sixty-four heroes who now stared helplessly at the sky and swore softly.

The Jap bombs screeched like gargantuan hailstones around the tiny harbour. Houses were flaming like tinder, breakwaters crumbled. Seaward the bombs made an almost incessant cascade of spray and livid fire.

Hour by hour the dog-tired airmen wondered how a rescue ship could ever run through it.

The ship never came.

Over the hills, through the sugar plantations, the teeming hoards of the enemy were moving closer.

“So what? We’re trapped!” said one of the airmen.

The others could have killed him.

“Don’t you worry!” said Johnny.

The last small boats they might have used had gone while they waited.

“We’ve a triple choice.” Johnny summed up. “We can be taken prisoners. Or maybe we can still find a boat. Or we can beat it inland and join the guerillas.”

“It’s more’n a thousand miles to Australia,” sighed the Jonah.

Toothcombing the burning village, one of the boys unearthed a sextant. Another discovered a still greater treasure.

It was only a ninepenny school atlas with one of the maps purporting to show the prevailing winds and currents between Java and Australia. But the currents looked favourable.

It decided the airmen.

“Looks as if all we have to do is sit tight in a boat.” They argued. “Wind and tide’ll do the rest for the asking!”

Knew the Risk

They knew it wasn’t true. They knew even if the found a boat, they faced a terrible and hazardous journey. They deliberately looked on the bright side.

They couldn’t be held.

Swiping a car, Johnny Jeudwine scoured the beaches for a craft – anything – that the evacuation might have overlooked.

It was like hunting a clean-swept cupboard for crumbs.

The charred bomb-ridden hulks of half-sunken steamers seemed to mock him.

Yet at last, ransacking their blackened decks, Johnny found a couple of [inserted] H [/inserted] ifeboats.

It seemed too good to be true.

Back at Tjilijap the boys had piled up all the provisions they could muster. And, in a corrugated warehouse, they’d made another find.

A motor launch!

“Looks like a wreck already!” laughed the Jonah.

Rotting and battered as it was, the boys didn’t know the “wreck” was merely a showpiece, romantic but unseaworthy, stored by a film company as local colour for South Sea movies.

Apart from an amateur yachtsman, Johnny was the only one versed in seamanship. Maybe, he thought, the launch could tow the two boats till the gas ran out.

‘Then we’ll cut her adrift and take to sails,” the yachtsman agreed.

So, at dusk, they set off on their odyssey. Behind them the blazing port made an ominous backdrop. And the very next night they met with disaster.

They’d kept close to the coastline all day. Putting into a deserted creek, they’d gone ashore to sleep. Suddenly a violent squall tore the flimsy launch from her anchor.

Crashing on the rocks, carrying a lifeboat with it, the two boats were battered to matchwood.

Purple Dawn

In the ironic purple dawn a mass meeting resolved that Johnny, the yachtsman, a kid who could use the sextant, and nine others should still try for Australia.

[inserted] xxxxxxxxxx [/inserted]

Twelve men – a 30-ft. lifeboat – and ahead of them 1,000 miles of hardship and danger! That was the new, narrower issue.

They had food and liquids – whisky, beer, rum – for thirty days. Becalmed all that afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring the sails, Johnny knew there’d be no safety margin.

With only the sextant and a school atlas, they’d be lucky to make it. And these waters were shark-infested, thick with equally vicious morays and barracuda – and other fish Johnny didn’t consider.

The breed was brought to mind next morning when the wind was beginning to move them and one of the type surfaced astern.

A submarine, machine-guns suddenly grinning from her conning-tower.

“We couldn’t tell whether she was friend or foe,” says Johnny. “There was nothing we could do. So I issued an extra ration of beer all round. It seemed the logical preparation for whatever was ahead of us.

“She came up to within fifty yards and we saw she was Japanese. Imagine how our hopes fell! Then, suddenly, she sheered off. They must have decided we weren’t worth bothering about!”

All that day they discussed why the Jap hadn’t taken them prisoners. And all that week . . .

The voyage settled down into sameness.

They went through storms when the rudder broke and had to be repaired with wire made from their bully beef tins.

They endured dead flat calms when Johnny cheered them up by inventing games – games like giving the longest list of film-stars’ names beginning with F – the fo’c’sle competing with the quarter-deck.

And Wales!

Once a giant whale – “large as a ship” – surfaced 200 yards away and came right alongside.

For what seemed a lifetime it floated a yard away, staring inscrutably.

It was worse than the U-boat.

Every man kept perfectly still. One flip of that mighty tail would smash their cockleshell craft to splinters.

When the whale eventually submerged, some of the boys were sick with reaction.

That wasn’t all.

Somehow the course they were taking seemed not to agree with the atlas picture of favourable currents.

Sometimes when they should have been scudding before a following breeze they had to tack so much that they made no forward progress.

Which was right – the navigator and his sextant or the ninepenny atlas? Johnny tried to check both with his watch – and never got the right answer!

The ship took sides. As the days went by Johnny cut the rations. But every Saturday, to keep up morale, he served an extra tot of rum for the King’s health and the immortal toast of Saturday night at sea:

“Wives and sweethearts!”

Still they argued . . . .

Then, one grim morning, after a sleepless night of mental calculations, Johnny announced that his watch – instead of checking the sextant – must have been losing.

Despite the atlas, the crew realised they had been drifting steadily northward.

This was their gravest moment.

Still they sailed on, trying to correct their course.

They had been forty days at sea when at last a swallowtail butterfly came fluttering over them. Two nights later the watch gave a yell:

“Palm trees ahead, sir!”

Not knowing it, they had passed clean over a coral reef, narrowly missing being flung into the ocean. Drunkenly the twelve staggered ashore. A few palm trees, a coral atoll, a beacon. Nothing more.

After 44 Days

But on the beacon was the name of the island, and it gave their position.

After all, they were not far from the Australian coast. And two days later a scouting Catalina sighted their waving shirts.

“I swam out to it.” says Johnny Jeudwine. “Knowing the sea to be full of sharks, I swam that distance in record time.”

They had been forty-four days on their journey. Never before – land, sea or air – had the R.A.F. staged a greater adventure.

[boxed] More Replies to the U-B

All the way out a heavy sea had been running. But the men aboard the s.s. – did not mind. They were used to heavy weather.

And, anyway, they had the new device aboard. They said it jokingly.

They thought of the new device as a sissy business. How would it work out if anything serious really happened?

Then the torpedo came out of the night and tore a hole in the side of the ship.

They launched the lifeboat all right. They got the rafts overboard – just before the deck heaved up at a fantastic angle.

It was impossible to see in the pitchy darkness. There were men swimming in the water, men calling. Suddenly they began to remember, The new device.

Red lights broke out. Bulbs fitted into the lapel of every seaman’s jacket connected to small batteries inside their pockets. They burnt roughly for ten hours.

These bulbs were responsible for saving the life of the seamen.

It is only one of many ideas which have emerged from the lifeboat research station.

Every week ideas are pouring in here from captains experts and ordinary serving seamen, ideas which all help in the war against U-boats.

Thomas Metcalfe, head of the research centre, knows better than anyone that saving the lives of men from sunken merchant ships is vital.

Frost-bite was a big ordeal. Metcalfe, after obtaining all possible medical information, visualised an entirely new type of shipwreck suit.

He went to work at once. His colleagues helped him develop the idea. Finally, a suit made of special rubberised materials resulted.

It combined hood, coat, trousers and overshoes. It had slits in the sides to permit limb massage. It weighed no more than 3 lb. 6 oz., and has since saved scores of lives.

Not so long ago the station was asked for a raft light which would drop 50 ft. or 60 ft. into the sea without damage, come erect when it hit the water, light automatically, and stay alight for long periods.

It was produced, and is in operation to-day.

It seems a far cry from sinking ships to this quiet office. But the two are closely connected to-day.

V.B. [boxed]