Valuable Commodities

The Australians cheered us... well, cheered the Yanks and the lady that rode with them.

"Thank you, Leo." She was settled again next to me and feeling that she belonged with us and even more secure in that feeling than before. "Sergeant Mulvane and Corporal Tracy are very nice to me. They like you, I can tell." Her voice could carry a great deal of tenderness when she spoke softly. "I do, too." She smiled at me and her eyes twinkled. Her cheeks were full of roses.

There is something very satisfying and soothing to a man's heart about having the adulation of a beautiful young girl. Add to that the thrill of her being his sweet and loving wife at the same time, and he can be forgiven if he imagines the world can not get much better.

"Teach me something new, Leo."

Her sweet entreaty was always so delicious in implication that the entire world outside our selves just withdrew into the shadows. I had been thinking about what 'new' things I could teach her, where my own fund of experience was so very shallow. What I determined that day in Darwin I now look back on as being remarkably wise for a young buck like I was then. I figured that if I focused on giving her pleasure, treating her always with respect and tenderness, and making her my companion... and thus not some kind of servant or slave or lesser person... she would respond in kind, and reciprocate, loving and trusting and wanting to be with me.

We had already progressed to the point where she would almost melt into my arms when I held her breasts, and loved for me to fondle her breasts and tease and tantalize her, and I found I could 'make her' come for me by caressing her breasts. I told her that she glowed with beauty when she climaxed for me. She had been frightened at first when she climaxed, loosing all control and awareness, but when I cuddled her and coaxed her she gained confidence all would be well, and then began to look for me to do it again.

Finally, one day she asked me to 'make her....' She wanted to glow for me, she said, because she loved me. Can you imagine? She was a treasure!

Then one evening as we made love, and she lay beneath me, eyes glistening with passion and the special kind of surrender that she showed me, I became aware of some more of the muscular actions that went into intercourse. Unfamiliar as I was with such things, I could not determine what was 'normal' or 'abnormal' – only what was comfortable and stimulating, etc., for us. What I noticed was the muscles in her vagina that contracted around me to draw me deeper into her and hold on to me. With observation it seemed that this was not a conscious effort of hers but evidently a reaction to the stimulus of me being inside her, which, it was easy enough to perceive in her reactions, was very enjoyable to her.

It certainly was for me!

One evening a day or two later I devised an experiment to learn more about what I thought I was observing. As I brought her nigh onto orgasm I slowed my rhythm and held myself a bit above her, and a distance where normally I would have slipped out of her all but the last inch or two. She was trembling and lifted her bottom to me, and I could feel her muscles working me, contracting around me to tighten their hold on me.

The sensation that such action caused for me was something well nigh indescribable, and tremendously exciting. Her vagina, stimulated by and sensitive to my presence, wanted me to stay there and make love to her and possess her, and certainly not to leave her. It was magical to hold myself above her briefly, feel her craving my thrusts and begging piteously in her whimpers and by the frantic muscular responses in her vagina for me to thrust deeply into her yet again. My own erection and readiness to fill her need was multiplied by each such pause, and, too, the intensity of the pleasure that then my thrusting into her again brought on for her was remarkable, whether gentle and slow or quick and ruthless – there was, I found, a time for both.

It was like a dam bursting! Her entire being was flooded with unspeakable joy, her breath would often catch, she would call out my name or moan passionately or scream, her head thrashing from side to side, and within a stroke or two at such moments I could bring her to a momentous climax that shook her very being to its foundation.

The first time I tried to use what I was learning to heighten her response resulted in an orgasm for her certainly of the first magnitude. She gushed her fluids around me and I poured into her all that I could muster, and she collapsed under me and soon thereafter I alongside her. That had been the third climax for her in the space of an hour or so, and she was utterly spent. She had given me her all, and taken all I could give her, and she was sobbing softly in my arms, exhausted and weepy, "thank you" was all she seemed to be able to manage.

I have since that time with her come to learn that a man with an eight and a half inch erection more than five inches in circumference could do that to a girl on a regular basis, but at the time I thought it quite an achievement.

Even in casual chit chat getting to know the locals, one quickly learns that swimming along Australia's northern coastline is something done with care and caution. During our enforced layover at Darwin I determined to arrange some kind of outside situation where we could go swimming together and then picnic and make love in reasonable comfort and she could scream her head off without feeling at all inhibited by another human being hearing her... another other than her husband. Considering the topography in the Darwin area and the social conditions in early 1942, that was a tall order.

Determination and cunning are, as some older Marines like to remind us, formidable opponents. And so, with effort, a candidate location was found. Northeast of Darwin on the coast, a small bay where the ocean currents seemed to eddy periodically, had left something like a lagoon sheltered from the open sea by a reef. Two days later I had opportunity to scout the place from the air during a check out hop in the Navy's J2F from the seaplane tender LANGLEY, then in port. It appeared prime, sandy beach, a fair amount of green foliage on the backshore, and I could see the faint trail of a rough roadway to the area. Estimated distance, twenty miles from the town. Discrete inquiries in civilian circles indicated that a developer had surveyed the site two years before as a potential site for a resort. Extended surveys confirmed that neither crocs nor sharks frequented the lagoon.

Bingo!

The Navy had two vehicles in Darwin then, both landed from the LANGLEY before she departed on 11 February, just days before. Somewhat cavalierly I commandeered one, she packed us a full basket, and we were off. I left a sealed envelope with Sergeant Mulvane so that someone knew where we were off to, should something happen.

Nothing did.

It took us two hours to get there over really rough roads. Finally, I thought I recognized the landscape from my survey flight, and sure enough, within a few minutes we were at the edge of the water on a low, rocky shelf, large trees and greenery to our right and the clear water and a sandy stretch of pristine beach immediately before us.

We explored, and found some things... among which was a togetherness and trust that was just magical. Like many European women in the tropics, she had given up on underwear that was so uncomfortable in the continual heat and sticky tropical humidity. Still, we had only been married now a few days, and nudity was still a challenge for her, and now outside in the strange Australian bush even more so. I tried hard to make her comfortable, and gradually she relaxed, trusting me to take care of her.

After some swimming time and the refreshing water, too warm to be all that cooling but definitely wet, we emerged back onto our blanket in the shade. Two things were immediately evident. She felt at ease now with me being all bare herself and was laughing and giggling when I tickled her, and then it was soon evident that she noticed that I was aroused. When I was nude and erect around her she was typically on the road to orgasm herself and wanting me, so the visual image made her aroused as well.

I was pleased to be able to bring her joy. I teased her and tantalized her, and our love making brought her three or four earth shattering experiences in the course of the day together. She gave herself to me with all the vigor of youth, and we both learned something new about each other.

Over the long years looking for a good woman to be my companion, I had fantasized that intimacy would be a grand experience. Reality, I found, was worth a million fantasies, and more. And her uninhibited moans and outcry at the orgasms I induced were testament to my blooming success as a lover and her blossoming as a loving wife.

It was a day full of delights beyond words.

The next day was 19 February, a working day for us, and that day changed everything, well, almost everything.

The Japanese attack on Port Darwin that day is well documented elsewhere, and I'll not go into any great detail here. Suffice it to say, it was a rude shock to everyone and a first magnitude disaster.

We needed to get some fresh .30 caliber ammunition for the plane's machine guns and the rumor was out that the Asiatic Fleet's supply officer was holding pay call aboard the destroyer PEARY before the ship got underway for Java. Accordingly, with our take off for Canberra scheduled for the next morning, this was the time to get paid as much as the Eagle would allow. Will and Tracy took the ship's whaleboat out on its first run that morning. The plan was that they would go from pay call on the PEARY over to the seaplane tender PRESTON, another of those working with the Navy PBYs, for the ammunition and return.

The Japanese planes attacked about 0930. A bomb hit the destroyer and she exploded and sank in the harbor, with many, many casualties. PRESTON was also hit, though not so badly, and was steaming out the channel to escape. At the time we didn't know whether she would make it or not. The Jap fighters sank her three PBYs on the water, but the tender did escape.

In the near panic and confusion after the all clear, we waited on the pier for Sergeant Mulvane and Corporal Tracy to return, hoping that rescue boats might find them. There was a chance that they had already moved over to the PRESTON, but it was too early, I thought.

Nothing.

I left full identifying information with the senior naval officer concerning the two Marines, but we never saw or heard anything more of them.

That was the hard one.

We had planned to have dinner together that evening, the four of us, and their marked absence was hard for her. After dinner, subdued and fragile, I took her back to our room and Annaliese broke down and cried, just sobbed her heart out. I think she had come to feel at ease with them, trusting them to treat her nicely. She seemed to me particularly sensitive to that with men. I think some of her tears were for her parents, particularly her father. She spoke of him the following morning early when we awoke. She liked to snuggle up to me in the morning to stay warm, and then she talked of him. Her short sentences could draw only on vocabulary that she knew, and in speaking of him she had few words at her command. He loved her, had been careful about her safety, and, I supposed, his concern had caused her to be a bit fearful of men in general. That's hard to assess after the fact. The news was out by then as well that the Japanese had taken Tarakan... and that meant that her father, mother, childhood home and associated memories were now only in her own mind. Her tears were perhaps a composite of these many things; I couldn't be sure of any of that. I did know well enough that tenderness was what she needed from me, and comforting her filled my heart with love for her.

Later, we drove the pickup truck out to the field that morning with a load of medical supplies. Considering what we knew of priorities for the attacking planes, I figured I could assess pretty clearly what to expect at the airfield. There was really no need to hurry to see it. Wreckage was wreckage, and getting there sooner would not change anything. Not a single airplane of the dozen or so there on the field was undamaged, and most were completely destroyed. Number FOUR had been fueled and ready to go Canberra the following day. Now it was a fire-blackened scar on the asphalt apron, two charred engines laying askew and the entire airframe, save for a small portion of the tail assembly, nothing but a charred, misshapen, unrecognizable piece of utterly useless junk.

That was all that was left. Seeing that, I was able to then just close the book on my service with VMSB 103. It was over and there was nothing left of it at all.

She sat silently next to me in the cab, and finally I turned away for the RAAF aid station where we were to deliver the supplies. In the process of the day I began to recognize the changes in her. They were subtle, really, others may not ever have detected them, but she had matured quite markedly from the young seventeen year old girl I had visited in Tarakan the previous November. She was still just seventeen, but she had become an adult. She had weathered trauma and loss, left her childhood behind, found the joy of love and security with a man, even as trauma and loss continued. I was grieved at the depth of pain that was hers to endure; yet pleased at her growth and the strength she seemed to draw from her experience... and, I hoped, from my loving her.

Unloading the truck at the aid station with a couple dozen wounded there, she turned quickly to help and worked quite unbidden at a number of the many things needing doing, full of initiative and compassion, heedless of her own needs and anxious to help anywhere she could. When I had the truck loaded with some boxes and other items to move into town the RAAF sergeant in charge let her know I was ready to go, and thanked her for her assistance. She stood from tending a lady's burned foot and leg, and looked at me, then turned back to complete her efforts in the bandaging. That finished, she slipped her apron off and wiped her hands, and stepped into my arms for a hug.

War and tragedy are ever a terrible event, but sometimes it is the very spur we need to move beyond ourselves to engage in the greater good.

Under the circumstances, without crew and aircraft and my previous assignment perhaps suspended by events, I was wondering how the Navy might handle my further duty assignment. The U. S. Naval Observer at Darwin, a commander whose name eludes me now, was waiting for me when we returned from the RAAF field. There were two sailors there to unload the truck and take it from there, and I asked Annaliese to wait for me a moment while I spoke with him.

"No, bring her in, too." We were acquainted and had had dinner together a few days before. So, in we went. We chatted pleasantly for a moment and then he said he had had a phone call from Canberra, from the naval attaché. Was I there in the city? Did I still have certain "valuable commodities" in my possession? He looked at me as if I would know what that meant, and shrugged as if to say that he certainly did not. If so, he was to arrange for me to move onward to the Embassy as quickly as possible.

He was waiting for my response and I was not sure how to answer. There was no need to be secretive, nor to doubt his loyalty and identity, but a wise person in the service learns to discern when to talk and when to just let a situation evolve. There seemed no particular reason to be wary, yet, I just answered his questions and left it at that. "Valuable commodities" does not in general usage include people, but the term had been exactly what Commander Vermeulen back in Tarakan had used in his message, and the use of the same phrase now made me alert. Earlier, I had interpreted the meaning to be Miss Annaliese Larsen, even if the syntax seemed extraordinary and inexact. The "commodities," if my interpretation was correct, had in the meantime acquired yet another, and more permanent cover name. She was now Mrs. Leo Sheppard.

My first inclination was to explain this all to him, but then I decided to just answer in the affirmative. Yes, I had the "commodities."

Wow, did I ever!

"Fine." He seemed relieved. "I have made two reservations on the QANTAS flying boat due in here tomorrow morning, headed east for the Queensland coast and thence to Sydney. It's expected in at 0600, be on the water just long enough to take on fuel and be gone. Can you and Mrs. Sheppard be on the float by then?"

No problem; no problem at all!

Our assignment resolved, we were about to leave, and I grabbed the opportunity to ask him about the anticipated landing of the enemy. Everyone in town seemed to be thinking the Japanese would make a landing in the area and soldiers would be in town by the next afternoon. He thought that indications did not support such fears. There had been no sign of the enemy now for more than a day. He himself, officially and personally, felt that such a danger did not exist... at least not for the present.

He had encouraged the QANTAS agent to move his flying boat onward as quickly as possible, nonetheless. The unspoken admonishment was to not be late to the seaplane float in the morning.

Once in the privacy of our own room the door shut out the world and the troubles of the day seemed to depart from her mind. She felt at ease with me, comfortable, safe... and our conversation moved lightly over many topics. She was a good conversationalist and expressed her thoughts easily, even as she struggled with English vocabulary. When I began to hold her close, or do anything to suggest physical intimacy, she fell silent and submissive as had become her way, and followed me like a little kitten. When I held her and lifted her breasts in my hands she moaned and begged me to love her again. Marvelous!

Nevertheless, despite our growing ease with each other, the specter of the approaching Japanese was too close at hand, dominating all about us. After a restless night we were at the seaplane float well in advance and glad to be away for Sydney on time.

Once in inner office of the naval attaché at the Embassy in Canberra the wraps came off the mystery at last.

I asked Annaliese to wait for me as one of the staff ushered me into his office. The naval attaché was a navy captain, and he had been handed the assignment to continue with the project once the Ambassador had understood that the "commodities" were in the custody of a U. S. naval officer. There was a message from the Commander in Chief, U. S. Asiatic Fleet in Java to that end. The captain inquired as to whether I had the "commodities."

"Yes, sir, I do," I responded. He had given no sign that he understood the nature of the commodities and what they comprised.

"Where is she right now?" It was an unmistakably direct question, that told me too that he did know.

"She is sitting in your outer office, waiting for me."

It was immediately evident to me that he was greatly relieved. The pressure was somehow off, and he sat back and asked me in a casual tone what all had gone on in the Indies and how I came to be involved.

After a few sentences he interjected a question. "Nobody told you what this is all about?"

"Well, I thought it was about getting her to safety." Was there more to it than that? "No one suggested it was anything special, even though the instructions to get to Canberra and report to the embassy struck me as out of the ordinary." I waited for him to respond. "Am I missing something, captain?"

He considered my question for a moment silently, looking at the papers on his desk.