ANZAC Day
“When the Rakuyo Maru went down with seven hundred Australians and six hundred British aboard, it was the Australians who tried to preserve the biggest prisoner tribe. On the third day in the water, some Englishmen who were almost finished sighted a mass of black shapes.
As we drew nearer we saw there were about two to three hundred men gathered on a large pontoon of rafts. They had erected a couple of lofty distress signals, coloured shorts and other bits of clothing fixed to spars of wood. As we paddled up we saw there was a large outer ring of rafts linked to each other with pieces of rope. Inside the circle were other rafts, unattached but safely harboured. They seemed organised compared with the disintegrated rabble we had become during those last two days. They may have been drifting aimlessly as we had; but at least they all drifted together. A lot of them still wore those familiar slouch hats – we had caught up with the Aussie contingent.
One of them looped us in with a dangling end of rope. ‘Cheers mate,’ came the friendly voice. ‘This is no place to be on your lonesome’.”