Enemy Camp Read Online Free

guns; maybe they were down on the floor. We waved and they waved back. I was hoping they would chuck us some chewing gum or lollies, but they didn’t.
    Mr Morris was driving a train into Wellington when the first Yanks arrived. He saw these warships steaming in from the sea, with huge stars-and-stripes flags flying. When his train reached the station, all the passengers rushed down to see them. They didn’t worry about school or jobs or anything. The wharves were packed with people cheering and waving.
    Since then, the Americans have been in big training camps near Paekakariki. Mum and Mrs Morris reckon it’s sad to think of them going off to fight. ‘Just boys, some of them,’ Mum says.
    The girls at school reckon Yank uniforms look muchnicer than New Zealand ones. And they say Americans have better manners: they open doors for women and call them ‘ma’am’; they’re even better dancers! Huh, who wants to dance anyway?
    The last lorry went past, and Barry said, ‘They’re black!’
    They were, too. All of them: faces so black that their teeth gleamed when they grinned at us. No white soldiers in their lorry; I wonder why.
    We’re sure to win with the Yanks on our side. Anzac’s sister Moana knows one. He said that when the gates at Wellington wharf were too narrow for their enormous lorries that carry tanks around, they just drove straight through the gates, smashing them off.
    Not much happened at school, except that snobby Susan Proctor is going to give a morning talk on Wednesday — on Japan! Dunno how people will feel about that.
    The girls knitted some peggy-squares with Miss Mutter; the squares get sewn together to make blankets for wounded troops. We blokes and Mr White tidied up the air-raid shelters and weeded the school garden. The spuds and peas and stuff from it go to families whose men are away fighting or working in factories.
    Journal-writing this afternoon. Got all this morning’s stuff down. Wonder what the others are writing in theirs?
    Went to the Morrises’ after school. Clarry is bored doing correspondence lessons at home, and wishes he could be at school. He’s crazy!
    I think his legs were hurting, too. Barry says he’s heard him trying not to cry out in bed at nights. It was a warm afternoon, but Clarry wore a jersey. Polio can affect your blood circulation.
    He talked more about being in hospital. ‘We had these baths like swimming pools that they lowered us into, to do exercises. And some kids reckoned there was one room where they hung you up by your arms, to keep your body straight!’
    ‘P-Pity they d-didn’t hang you b-by the neck,’ went Barry. He was joking … I think.
    When it seemed the Japanese might invade, the Morrises were frightened about Clarry. He wouldn’t be able to escape anywhere; there probably wouldn’t be nurses, since the Japs would take over the hospital for their own wounded. ‘I can’t bear to think of those filthy yellow brutes in our wards,’ Mrs Connell told Mum.
    A Jap submarine sneaked into Sydney Harbour back in June, and fired shells at the city. It’s in the paper for the first time. A lot of news is kept secret just now.
    TUESDAY, 10 NOVEMBER I had to hurry home from school, because Dad has a dayoff and he’s been getting vegetables for old Mrs Laurie over in Wakefield Street. Her grandson is a coast-watcher in the part of New Guinea the Japs haven’t captured. He watches out for Jap ships or aeroplanes, and sends information back to Headquarters by Morse code. It’s dangerous. Some kids say that if the Japs capture a coast-watcher, they execute him straightaway, and leave his body to scare others.
    Dad tied a sack of spuds onto my bike handlebars, and another small sack of cauliflowers and cabbages across my back. ‘You look like a travelling garden, Ewen!’ Mum laughed.
    Dad grinned. ‘We’ll have to check the section for buried treasure sometime, eh, son?’ A few people in Featherston had buried jewellery and stuff like that