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Chapter 1
Darwin, 19 February 1942
Meg Dorset hit thefloor with a thud. A terrible roaring filled her ears and her army-issue cot lay on its side across her lower legs. Heat beat at her face. Not the usual summer heat of Darwin; this heat was dry and fierce and—loud. Like the droning of a thousand giant mosquitoes circling her.
Disorientated, she pushed herself to her knees and kicked free from the bed sheet and tangle of mosquito netting. The door to the tiny rear room in the nurses’ accommodation—the room she shared with Vera Grantham—hung askew on its hinges.
Explosions filled the air, banging one after another, and the floor trembled beneath her palms. Or was she trembling? A woman’s scream rose from the floor below and Meg clambered to her feet. She grabbed her tin helmet and slung her first aid kit over her shoulder. Matron had emphasised that they must keep their kit and helmet within reach at all times.
‘Although war has not directly touched our shores, it is not far away. Be prepared at all times, Sisters.’
It looked like Matron had been right about the kit and wrong about the war. Aircraft rumbled high overhead. More explosions shook the hotel and dust rained down. Was the roof coming down?
Shoving her feet into her boots, Meg didn’t stop to tie the laces. She had to get out of the building.
Heated air scorched her skin as she staggered through the doorway into the smoky hallway. At the far end of the hall where a wall had once been, the port was visible, and Meg gasped.
Flames engulfed a naval ship.
Black smoke columned and thickened like a pyre around the smokestack, consuming the ship. Grey smoke filled the gaping hole in the hotel, hiding the death throes of the ship. Coughing, Meg scrunched her watering eyes and covered her mouth and nose with one arm. The other hand flailed for the handrail.
Her hand found the wood, smooth and warm. Blindly feeling for each step, Meg lunged forward and down the stairs. Down and down she staggered, trying not to breathe until she fell through the doors onto the covered veranda. She bent over, hands on her knees and sucked in a deep breath of smoky air. Her body was wracked by coughing and she fell onto a nearby chair. When the fit passed, she sat up, her chest heavy and heaving with the effort of breathing and looked around. Christ save us, it’s Dante’s Inferno.
Soldiers, some bare-chested, formed a bucket line that branched like a snake’s forked tongue where two of them attempted to douse flames rising from the façade of a nearby building.
She bent down and tied her bootlaces, knowing there must be wounded men all over the place. People who needed her help. Where should she go? Thank God the last non-essential civilians had flown out yesterday. As a nursing sister, Meg was one of fewer than a hundred women allowed to remain in Darwin.
She pushed her hair back with shaking hands and turned in a slow half-circle. Thick black smoke poured from a stricken ship. Suddenly a blinding explosion spewed in a gold and black mushroom next to the smokestack.
Dodging debris and soldiers manning the untidy bucket line, she ran towards the carnage, even as common sense screamed at her to run the other way.
Meg reached the bank overlooking a stretch of beach at the waterfront and swallowed, sucking in air and trying to quell the panic rising from her gut and threatening to burst from her throat in a piercing, useless scream.
A skinny private with pimples motioned her over and took her arm and helped her over the steep side.
‘Thanks. Any casualties here?’
‘Over there, Sister.’ He directed her to his right and she hurried across the sand towards a small group of soldiers.
Minor cuts and a possible broken arm by the way one young soldier cradled his elbow against his chest. She headed to him first and kneeled beside him. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked as she examined his arm.
‘Oh my God, look.’ Her roommate, Vera whom she’d last seen when her shift changed over this morning, appeared at her side and pointed. ‘They’ve hit the hospital ship.’
Meg’s fingers dug into the rolled bandage she had just taken out of her kit. ‘It’s clearly marked as a hospital ship. What sort of enemy bombs wounded men and doctors and nurses?’ Her gut clenched and she stood watching, anger and disbelief churning through her.
A soldier with a bandage around his head glanced at her, his expression harsh and dark. ‘That means nothing to the little yellow bastards. I heard they rounded up some nurses and shot them in the islands.’
They shot nurses?
Despite the heat, her skin turned clammy. When she signed up no one had ever mentioned she’d face an enemy that shot nurses. Civilians had no idea such horrific acts happened in war. Surely, Dad would have refused to let her go if he’d had any idea she’d be on the front line? He’d been unhappy about her joining up, but he hadn’t stopped her.
The front line. Where they shoot nurses.
Bile rose in her throat, burning. Frantically, she swallowed it down. She had a job to do, and do it she would. Turning back to the private she bandaged his arm then improvised a sling with another bandage.
As she was tying a knot beside his neck, a ragged cheer rose around her. ‘The Peary is firing on the bastards. Go, Peary!’
A single gun on the small American ship continued to fire at the dive-bombers even as other ships around were taking hits. As they watched, the Peary took a hit, but she kept bravely firing until the end.
