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On this Page 2
Liist hours of tlie
lieroie Mrs. ÎViiiiiË
FOR 26 days the small lifeboat drifted in the Indian Ocean after the thatch ??
steamer Rooseboom had been torpedoed, oh March 1, 1942. In and round
the lifeboat when the voyage began were 135 people. The only white survivor,
was WALTER GIBSON, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
By WALTER GIBSON
ONE of the saddest incidents of
^ the early part of the lifeboat
T Voyage was when a soldier, one
of our best athletes,"went over-
board for a swim. .
He allowed himself to get Just s
. fraction too far out of range of the
drifting boat. He found he was not
catching up with it when he tried tc
return.
He was swimming with an overarm
trudgeon stroke, and I saw him change
- to breakstroke. Slowly he fell farther
away from us as his stroke weakened
' We lay too spent to think of any
measure which might aid him.
.v Then across his face I saw the ex*
pression of determination change to
an unforgettable one of utter despair
He realised he was going to drown.
I watched his bobbing head until it
must have been 300 yards away. It
- , waa half an hour before a big wave
hld him from view, and when we
looked again he was not there.
tinsel tish help
As the first week drew to its close,
Brig. A. C. M. Paris sank into a torpor.
? ' speaking to no one, growing weaker
with every hour.
. But there was a self-appointed guar-
dian to the brigadier, a young officer.
Capt. Mike Blackwood.
The memory of his attitude com-
pensates for some examples of grim
selfishness which this story must tell.
Blackwood joined us on the after-
noon of the second day. He had been
? , swimming from the time the ship sank.
He was red-haired, and his face and
shoulders, with that freckled pigmen-
tation which cannot take the sun, were
a raw mass.
The lower pert af his hedy was
bleached by the water to a strange blue
eslar. Bat his high spirits were
astounding.
He and I were old friends-he had
been Brigade Intelligence Officer when
I was Intelligence Sergeant. Soon
after coming aboard, he said:-"I am
afraid it's up to you and me, Gibson,
to look after the brigadier."
With almost unbelievable fortitude,
for the pain of his sunburn must have
been bad, Blackwood performed 'little
duties for the rapidly weakening Paris
-^-even to the extent of saving part of
his tiny water ration for him.
Burial service
It was a shock when one day the.
brigadier suddenly raised his head and ,
turning to Blackwood, said quite
lucidly quite quietly, very pleasantly:
"I say, let's go along; to the club for
a drink."
Blackwood answered him, as conver-
sationally as if they had been strolling
down St. James's:-"Let's make it later,
sir."
Within an hour the brigadier was
thrashing violently about the boat, his
mind completely gone. By morning he
; ' was in a come.
Mike Blackwood announced his death
to the troops. Men stood silent as we
slipped him over the side, and Black-
wood, repeated auch passages from the
burial service as he could remember.
The brigadier was the only one ot
all whose lives ended there for whom
he could summon up the strength to
have such a service.
. Poor Blackwood survived his friend
by only a day. He slipped unconscious
to the bottom of the boat, and was
drowned in the lapping . in. of bilge
water. ;
Stabbed captain
Barller In the night Blackwood did
a very typical thing. 1
He turned to me and said: "I should
not have told you, Gibson, but in the
circumstances it ls in order, I feel, to
mention lt now-it can't make any dif-
ference to either of us. The brigadier
had recommended you for the DCM
.. for the Jungle Job."
Mike ned been In charge of records,
and I can imagine the conflict In his
mind as he lay beside me in the boat
should he do that unforgivable thing,
from a regular soldier's point of view,
reveal a confidence? Or should be
speak a heartening sentence to a man
with perhaps only a few hours to live?
Wlthla two beers af the brigadier's
fasMral the Daten captain of the
?eeeeeaoaa was slabbed by one af his
awn engineer «gteers.
The old man was dosing, his hand
on the tiller, when he heard a shout, a
sudden splutter of Dutch Invective. .
Before anyone could get to him. the
engineer had jumped at the skipper
and buried a knife in his ribs.
"Grab him," shouted Ackworth, and
someone flung himself .on the engineer
as he tried to snatch the few remain-
ing rations.
Afr«. Nunn Help
Afr«. Nunn
That was a strange feature of every
suicide. As people decided to jump
overboard, they seemed to resent the
fact that others were being left with
a chance of safety.
"Finished . ,...**
They would try to seize the rations
and fling them overboard. They would
try to make their last action in the
boat the pulling the bung which would
let In the water.
Their madness always seemed to take
the form that they must not go alone,
but must take everyone with them.
The engineer who had stabbed the
captain when he failed to get the
rations, jumped overboard.
He, too, was still strong enough to
swim away, and I have since reflected
that all the Dutchmen, except the mur-
dered captain, went swimming off-the
-mate, his wife, the engineer.
Mrs. Nunn bathed the captain's
we and with salt water. He lay there
saying, In English: "Finished, finished,
finished ... lt ls the finish." He died
that night, hla head In Mrs. Nenn's
Hp.
I was now guard of the water bottles.
There were two left, and one only half
full.
I dosed with them under my body.
In the night I was awakened by a
shout, and then the voice of Mrs. Nunn,
"He's trying to steal the water."
Water
There was a hand feeling under me.
I grabbed. It was the chief engineer,
sole surviving Dutchman. Crying some-
thing angrily In Dutch, he flung him-
self Into the water. .
Now strangely the Javanese who
hitherto had seemed afraid of the sol-
diers assumed a new manner.
It was as if they knew that, as the
only seamen left aboard, they were now
superior to the landsmen.
Their manner became different. The
»erang came to the stern and took over
the tiller.
None of the white men did anything
to resist this assumption of authority.
Our manner changed, too. We be-
came subservient to the Javanese.
They took it in turns to manage the
rudder, and we found ourselves con-
sulting them.
. "Are we far from land, serang?" we
would ask. And always his reply was
the same, "Who knows?"
On the seventh evening, the Sun-
day, we finished the last bottle of
water.
Tattered Bible
Lieut.-Col. O. A. Palmer, of thc
Royal Engineers, was in command now,
but it was an empty title. He sat
there, hunched up and weak, his face
bird-like, the cheek-hones standing out.
Then we saw Mrs. Nunn talking
with him, and Palmer roused himself
to speak in a voice a little above a
whisper, to the boat's company.
"I don't think there is much hope
for us," he said. "I'm afraid we must
reconcile ourselves to it that if some-
thing doesn't turn up pretty soon it
will be too late.
"Mn. Nunn has suggested ftjhat we
commit ourselves to Ood. She would
like to conduct a service."
Somehow, heaven knows how, we
had a Bible, water-logged and tittered.
Whom it had belonged to. Jock! soldier
from some Highland village,' young
public school lieutenant, or the con-,
vent-reared Chineae girl, I will never
know. .t
Mrs. Nunn stood up, her face -
Blackened bv the sun, her voice-like -
the voices of all of us by now-cracked
and whispering through thirst and
weakness. She opened the Bible and
began to read aloud.
We all automatically turned to her.
This strange, mixed bag of tortured,
desperate human beings. ;,
We sang with her "Abide With Me"
and "Rock of Ages." We said the
Lord's. Prayer.
There were, perhaps, SO or 60 of
us left when that service was held.
Thereafter men went quickly.
"Murdered"
When Monday morning came Palmer .
and Ackworth were no longer there In
the stern sheets.
Mrs. Nunn, hardly able to move her
tips, whispered to me, "Palmer was -w.-v.
murdered. I saw them."
Up in the bows, malignant and ' "
threatening, sat the Ave deserters.
That their murder plan was how in '
full swing no one could doubt.
Mrs. Nunn died during the day. She
spoke towards the end in endearing
terms of her husband. "I am glad," she
said, "he went with the ship, and did
not have to suffer with us here."
She slipped quietly into uncon-
sciousness, the Chinese girl, naked now, ,
beside her. bathing her lips with salt v
water.
I knew the dread things that had
been happening te ethers who had
died, and whose bodies had remained
In the boat; and I said to Darla Lins,
"Get her body aver the side quickly."
We slipped her over before the evil
band in the bows knew that she was
dead.
It was just about this stage that
the murder gang came out into the
open. While others watched, helpless
and apathetic, they lumped from
behind on the young CQMS of the 18th
Division, who had so impressed me in
the early days, and drew a jagged bully
beef tin across his throat.
The youngster tore himself free and
staggered towards us for protection.,
Then he lay down to die, painfully
and lingeringly.
I gave the order, "Put him over-
board."
Warned gang
To me then came Warrant Officer
MacKensie. of the Indian Army Ord-
nance Corps.
"Don't you realise what ls happen-
ing?" he said. "Don't you know that
we are all going to be killed? Those
men intend to commandeer the boat.'*
I did not feel brave at that moment.
But I pulled myself together and ad-
dressed the whole company In as strong
a voice as I could muster. I told them
what he suspected.
"You crowd," I said, pointing to the
Ave, "are dumping beople overboard
for your own ends. Do you think you
can get away with that?"
Their ringleader leaned forward ag-
gressively. He was a small man, not
bad looking.
(Cont, in Page 3, Column 1)

26 Days In Lifeboat

'(Continuad from Page 2)

He had. I remember, a Liverpool
accent. He was of a type of which
one finds thousands in the- Army
cross-grained, tough, malcontent.

"We'll bloody well put you over
as well if you don't shut up," he

said.

I think I muttered ' something
about us being in the majority.

But I was scared.

Next time MacKenzie came to
me 1 said: ' "It's them or us. There's
only fl ve of them. How many men
can we rely on if we try to rush
them and-put them overboard?'*

MacKenzie moved about among
the others, .and . when darkness
came down he told me that he had
a majority, 12 to 14 men, ready to
deal with the murder gang.

¡ Fight To Death

II was the showdown, I thought
to myself. "Well, here it,is."

We moved down the boat/ con-
verging on' the five men up near
the bows. They sensed, of course,

What was on.

! Ali the time, I remember, the
Javanese sat placidly in "their
places. They must have known:
»what was afoot, but they, re-
mained blank-faced and phlegmatic."
{ The atmosphere was electrical.
.One title tough shouted» "Here

[they come," and from behind him
'pulled out a bottle and held it by

the neck.

Drummer Hardy, of the Argyll*,.
I one of the lads with me^.sprang.

forward. The bottle crashed down
on his head. Two of the murder
gang grabbed him and pushed

'him overboard.

Then we were at their throats.
We struggled and stumbled and
rolled wrestling at thc bottom ot'

the boat.

We did not seem ? to put them
overboard one by one so much as
to rush them over in a body.

. Three, as they came' to the sur-
face, got their* hands to the gun-
wale and tried to drag themselves

back. ?

It was a confusion of pleadings
and curses and _ choking. ; hall
smothered obscenities. ,

. Relentlessly we battered at their
fingers with the rowlocks.

We were, down to the elemental
now. It was, we told ourselves a
dozen times that night, either them

or us. ,.

MONDAY : Five ar«
left alive and then- *. . . .
Land !"

$