18 Mar 1942, Smuggled in and out of Stanley

Then on the 18th afternoon Mr. Epstein informed me that he had heard on the quiet that there were two planning an escape that night which meant that we had to move and move first, so we decided to get away that night and be ready at around 9p.m. having got some of the gear over the hill and hidden the previous night.

As I had made up my mind to go, I thought that I would let Mr. Pritchard know of my plans which I did. He was inclined not to be in favour of it as the wind was against us and it was too big a risk and I agreed with him. Then I saw Mr. Fuller and knowing him to be able to keep quiet, I mentioned it to him. He was very much against it and said the same as the Commissioner, viz., that it was too risky and that during the past week the Japs had been shooting up and ramming anything they saw afloat; all this was not all at all.

Well, as promised, I was at Epstein’s place round after 9p.m., and proceeded to get the remainder of the gear down to the beach. When the whole of the party arrived on the beach and got all the gear down we laid down as it was a bit too bright to be messing around cutting the barbed wire.

After an hour’s wait and the moon had gone in a bit, Mr. Van Ess crawled on all fours and proceeded to cut the wire. This having been done we carried and dragged the boat into the water. She had not been in for very long before it was found that she was leaking and certainly letting in more water than we had expected. We thought that as she had not been in the water for a long time that she might tighten up sooner or later.

After having loaded up our little “Vanda” as she was named, we pushed off and took up our positions. Miss Cholmeley and Epstein were appointed balers, O’Neil having a wound in his back was passenger and sat forward, Van Ess oarsman (with the only oar we had) myself aft paddling and steering with same. As the “Vanda” was so small it was impossible to change positions as care had to be taken that she did not turn over. Unfortunately she did not tighten up so the balers were bailing out the whole 15 hours (as sick as they were at times).

After getting out of the bay which I thought at the time was the most dangerous part of the trip, as whilst in it we were within range of fire from all angles we tried hard to make for the direction of Mirs Bay. After an hour’s hard rowing and paddling, we found that we were not moving at all so we just had to go with the wind and the tide.

As there was an island nearby we tried for it, but found that there were too many big rocks and that it was impossible for us to tie up for the night, seeing this we pushed off from these rocks and proceeded to round the point in the hope of finding a beach which we could land on and fix the “Vanda”. No sooner had we got round the point that the wind got us again and blew us out to sea. It was in this area that we did meet a heavy sea and got tossed round all over the place, and she did everything but turn over, once or twice she took water over her sides, but we still kept afloat, the balers were still doing their stuff even though they did not care what was happening. It was very, very dark and only faint lights could be seen over the Repulse Bay area.