Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

almost two thousand other men in C Force boarded the Awatea and set out that they were told their destination was Hong Kong. They were stunned by the news. Max didn’t think he’d even thought about Hong Kong in his entire life. If he had, the place had seemed make-believe. An exotic gem from storybooks, certainly not someplace he’d eventually defend.

“Seems weird to be going to Hong Kong instead of Europe, doesn’t it?” Arnie asked one day, standing at the Awatea’s rail.

“I guess I don’t mind,” David replied, the wind riffling through his dark hair. “At least the Pacific will be warmer than the Atlantic. And Hannah will be glad to hear I’m far away from any fighting.”

Max sighed. “We might as well be on the North Pole. Garrison duty is all we ever seem to do.”

“Oh cheer up, Max.” Arnie grinned. “It’s a great adventure, you know? I mean, I know we want to get Hitler, but I gotta say, I’d never be able to travel to Hong Kong if not for the war. I’m kind of looking forward it.”

Max’s gaze passed over the horizon, at the straight black line of water meeting the greyness of the sky. From the corner of his eye he spotted Richie a little way down the deck, and he looked away. Things between them were like the sea right now: calm, despite a lot of murky currents moving beneath. There were too many unanswered questions, too much unfinished business. Ever since Gander, they’d mostly kept their distance from each other, though when they were put on a rotation together, Richie was cordial. When one of his buddies complained that there wouldn’t be a war if it wasn’t for Jews, Richie told him to shut up.

“It’s not their fault. Hitler’s a madman,” he’d said, then he’d turned to Max with an apologetic nod.

The gesture had caught Max off guard, and it gave him hope that there might be a chink in the wall between them. At least a possibility to sort things out.

The Awatea’s first port of call was Honolulu for restocking food and fuel. The harbour was a marvellous site, with the magnificent American fleet of battleships all lined up, floating peacefully at the docks. It seemed ironic to Max that practically the whole world was at war except them. If the U.S. would only join the fight, Max thought, Hitler wouldn’t know what hit him.

After a second stop, this time in Manila, C Force arrived on November 16 in Kowloon, Hong Kong’s steamy port. They walked down the gangplank in their khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirts to the welcoming strains of a British Army band. Their assignment was to bolster the small, fourteen-thousand-man British garrison against any possible invasion by the Japanese, but they soon discovered that their day-to-day duties consisted mostly of killing time.

“I don’t even have to shave my own face!” Arnie had laughed, strolling out of the barracks and into the sunshine after their first night, happily slapping his cheeks. Every member of C Force had been assigned a Chinese servant, who was paid twenty-five cents a day to shave the soldiers’ faces, do their laundry, and generally treat the Canadians like kings.

“Yeah, but you did meet up with that tarantula last night,” David teased. “Oh, the way you shrieked! I could have sworn it was your sister.”

“I didn’t see you rushing in there to grab that thing,” Arnie replied.

The Sham Shui Po barracks had been built a decade before as a British Army facility, and its clean, white exterior, surrounded by well-tended parks and gardens actually did feel somewhat like a castle. For the most part, they’d been impressed.

“You’d think they’d have toilets in the barracks though,” David grumbled. “Those buckets are disgusting.”

After months of grunt work in Gander, the big, beautiful city of Hong Kong was a welcome break. Toilets aside, to Max and the others, who still remembered the shortages and sacrifices of the Depression, it seemed like a place out of the movies. The air was balmy and warm—nothing like the cold weather everyone at home was experiencing—and when they weren’t wandering through the city, they got to let out tension in other ways. Max and some of the others took the time to play a little baseball, a few of them having packed a mitt just in case.

At night they were hardly able to see the stars for all the lights of the city. For less than a dollar each, Max, Arnie, David, and the others could eat a feast of rice with tender, savoury toppings of chicken, duck, or fish. Anything to do with shellfish, no matter how delicious it looked, was reluctantly avoided. They might be living in a whole different world over here, but they still had to stick to kosher meals.

The first few nights, they took in all the sights. They danced with beautiful Chinese women at the Dreamland Dance Hall, drank at various taverns, or went roller-skating at the Roller Dome, which was Max’s favourite. It wasn’t so much the skating that he enjoyed, but watching Arnie battle to stay upright. Max couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard as he and David did on those nights. Arnie laughed as well. He was a good sport.

Sheltered within the wild city of Hong Kong, the war seemed very far away. But after a week, the dazzle of the city began to wear off, and Max noticed cracks in the veneer. While popular American music rolled out of the many taverns, Hong Kong’s streets overflowed with people in desperate need. Thousands of Chinese refugees flooded in by the day, and Max was haunted by the pleading sounds of orphans crying, “No Mammy, no Daddy, no money! Please, mister!” He did what he could, dropping a few coins into the children’s outstretched hands, but it was never enough.

His feelings of helplessness only got worse when he thought about why they were here. Not only were they not in Europe, fighting Nazis, C Force