You had to treat them like that. Think for them. Tell them just what to do. Then to do it.
"From somewhere somebody found a brand-new Ford — all gassed and oiled, ready to go. It had been delivered for our Army and never used. I appropriated it. The three worst cases — a man with a compound fracture of the leg, one with a shattered elbow in a splint, and a seaman who had shrapnel in the bladder — I put in the back seat. Bill Goggins got in beside me. I swung the Ford into line to follow the last car of the caravan. We started.
"Most of it was driving in the dark with dimmed lights. We dared not attract Jap planes. The road was terrible, rutted and blown into shell holes in places. The red taillight of the car ahead bobbed and swung like a drunken man's lantern. Anyway, that road over the mountains down to Tjilatjap is like a roller coaster. It got on Bill Goggins' nerves. He said he could stand the Japs' fire better than he could stand my driving. He kept begging me to let him take the wheel. But he wasn't fit to hold it. Besides, I was doing all right. It was his nerves.
"After a few hours' going, the boy with the shattered elbow pleaded to be let out. The jolting he was getting, and being crowded so in the back seat, put him in agony. A British Tommy, riding a motorcycle, offered to take him in his sidecar, which they figured would be less painful. But in the dark, the Tommy crashed and had to wait for morning to make repairs and come after the rest of the caravan. Our boy elected to stay with him. We never saw either of them again. I guess the Japs caught them.
"Finally, after driving all night and part of the next day, the caravan got to Tjilatjap. . . ."
In the harbor a small Dutch coastal vessel was making ready to put out. At best, she could carry one hundred and fifty. Nearly eight hundred persons were aboard her. Every ship that could put to sea had gone; many to destruction. Of the five which sailed the day before, three were sunk by the Japs while still in sight of land.
Dr. Wassell, followed by men carrying his nine patients on their
