‘Get on up that hill,’ the Sergeant barked. ‘Might be a bit of nice digging to welcome you back, work you little invalids in before you go running off towards the border doing your good deed for the West.’ He was pointing, jerking his hand, his eyes red with tiredness, his voice hoarse. He looked old.
They headed on up the hill, straining their heads forward, carrying their rifles in both hands across their body, then, as the going got steeper, in one hand as they dug in their boots and their rifle butts, cursing, sweat pouring down their backs.
‘Great to be bloody back,’ Bert groaned in front of Jack, his boots thick with mud where so many feet had thawed the snow. The sun had gone by the time they reached the top. They went straight to the field kitchen, eating where they stood, looking round at the supplies piled up; the ammo, the Stens, the mortars.
There were look-outs on all sides and there was staccato firing in the distance, to the right and left and dead ahead.
‘We move out in the morning. Chase the little buggers. Get your ’eads down where you can,’ the Sergeant said, pushing past, cleaning his mess tin with a crust of bread.
Jack did the same, then swilled it with water, put it back in his pack, heaved that up on to his back again and headed towards the fox-hole where Bert was standing, beckoning to him.
At least there was no digging. That had all been done on the last advance and their hole was crowded but there was room against the sides. He didn’t sleep in his sleeping bag. He had thrown that away. It was cold, bloody cold, but he slept. But not before he had thought of Rosie and the words he would write when the sun came up.
The Sergeant called them at first light and Jack ate breakfast, heaved at his pack, hearing the thuds and clinks all around. He could hear firing and now there were Mustangs high overhead.
‘Keeping the pressure on,’ an older regular said, nodding at Jack as he wrote his letter, standing up, pressing on Bert’s pack, telling him to stand still for Christ’s sake, while he told Rosie that he loved her, that he was coming home when his National Service was over. Begging her to forgive him, sure that she would because he knew she loved him too.
‘Come on, get over here,’ the Sergeant called and Jack stuffed the letter into an envelope, then pushed through the men to the Padre who had held a service as the field kitchen was packed up. He took letters from the men, waving to them as he set off in one direction and they in another, down the hill, taking up the pursuit, heading towards the firing.
It was then, as he dug his heels into the slope, looking out towards the peaks and snow-shrouded shrubs, that he felt a hand grip his shoulder and heard Nigel’s voice say, ‘Well, you old reprobate, here we are again. Bet you wish you were back cutting the grass with those scissors.’
Jack swung round, stepped out of line, gripped Nigel’s arms, wanting to hug him but their eyes said it all and it was enough. Jack saluted then, heard the Sergeant shouting, ‘Come along, if you don’t mind, Sir.’
Nigel grimaced, and moved on down the hill as Jack fell back into line.
‘Catch up with you later, Private,’ he called back.
Jack laughed. ‘Yes, Sir.’
And it was not until that evening, when they set up camp, bivouacked between boulders, crouching into the existing hoochies, taking two-hour watches, straining their eyes, cursing the men behind who stumbled on old tins left by the previous occupants, that they had time to talk, pressed up against the perimeter look-out.
‘Too much pressure, dear boy. Simply had to take a commission.’ Nigel was grinning but he didn’t turn, he didn’t take his eyes from the land around.
‘Yes, Lieutenant Sanders. The pips look exquisite. How long have you been out here?’
‘Just two weeks.’
Jack knew it could not have been longer. There was no fear in Nigel’s eyes and there was still youth in his face.
‘We’ll soon clear those gooks,’ Nigel said.
‘Maybe, but they can march on rice, oatmeal, dried peas. They’ve been fighting with Mao for years. They plan and execute. They’re professionals, mobile, take advantage of the terrain. They may be poorly armed but they take weapons from the dead. And they keep on coming.’ Jack remembered the bugles, the screams. He remembered Tom and the burning man. ‘Just keep your head down, especially now you’re leading my platoon.’
They were whispering, listening. There were tracers in the distance. There were flares but he felt better now that Nigel was here, especially with Tom gone.
Nigel looked at him now. ‘You’re different, Jack.’
‘I’ve been here longer than you and I’ve grown up a bit. That’s all.’
He punched Nigel’s arm when their relief came and crawled into his hole, thinking of Rosie, thinking of Suko, thanking her for all that she had shown him.
They set off the next morning as dawn broke. There had been no bugles, but then there wouldn’t be. They were the ones chasing this time, weren’t they? They marched all day, between hills, alongside paddy fields, the snow and mud clinging to their boots, their thighs sore from the slapping of their wet trousers. Patrols were sent out. The way had been cleared by the troops up ahead. They marched, they slept, they listened.
On the fourth day they were up with the forward troops and the firing was closer and all around. As evening came they straggled through dark hills. There were trees, there were shrubs and large boulders, and Jack looked to each side, straining his eyes.
The Sergeant came along, speaking to them all, but quietly. ‘Seems like a good place for a bloody ambush. Keep your wits about you.’
Jack looked ahead to Nigel, who turned. ‘Did you tell them, Sergeant?’
‘Of course I bloody told them,’ the Sergeant said under his breath and then, more loudly, but not too loudly, ‘Yes, Sir.’
No one spoke, they were all listening, walking, praying. So far so good. Jack was breathing through his mouth. The air was cold. There was enough light to see his breath. It was crazy. No one would hear his breath over the noise his bloody feet were making. And over the noise the Centurion tanks that had joined them this afternoon were making as they came up the pass behind them.
He turned. He could see their antennae waving. He looked ahead at Nigel, his head turning from side to side. His shoulders were rigid. Jack’s were too. Everyone’s were.
Then the firing started, small arms thwacking into the ground around them, mortar thudding, screaming.
‘Return fire, get some cover. Keep your heads down,’ the Sergeant was shouting, waving his arm towards the paddy fields. They were wet, cold. Jack ran, then sprawled down, full length. The tanks were firing, but one was hit by mortar and exploded. The track was slippery and another tank keeled over into the paddy field.
The Chinese were swarming down the hill now, firing burp guns, throwing grenades, and the bugles were blowing. The endless bloody bugles. Jack looked across at Nigel.
‘Get your head down, Sir,’ he called and Nigel spun round, then ran crouching towards him, throwing himself down beside Jack. Firing as he did so. The rifle butt rammed hard against Jack’s shoulder as he fired, again and again, but he couldn’t even feel the pain.
The barrel was hot. He reached for more ammunition. Nigel moved along the line of men, talking, helping to reload the Sten. The Chinese were falling but more were coming in their place.
‘Don’t they know they’re supposed to be retreating?’ Jack ground out.
Bert lay on his side reloading. ‘Bloody little buggers,’ he said again and again, but now they were fading. Fewer came to replace them, and Nigel called, ‘We’re to make our way across the base of the hill on our left. Orders from HQ. Meet up there with a US Infantry Brigade, or what’s left of them. Take casualties with us.’ He was speaking in short bursts, as though he’d been running, but Jack was panting too. It was fear.
The first squad moved east while Nigel stayed with the rearguard. Jack ran with the first squad, then set up a rearguard under the Sergeant while Nigel a
nd his men broke out, and ran past them. Now Jack, Bert and six others held the Chinese again who faded and left.
‘That’s what the book says should happen,’ grunted Bert.
‘Make the most of that piece of perfection then, sonny,’ shouted the Sergeant as he passed.
They marched through the night towards the US Infantry Brigade and ate breakfast with men who drawled and looked like Ed, and Jack, though he loved Rosie, could not speak or eat with them.
The UN forces pushed north relentlessly day after cold day and Jack’s platoon slept, ate, and marched, forcing the Communists back, seeing the airstrikes on the hills in front, the burning napalm, and he turned from that, feeling sick.
At night he watched the mortar scoring across the cold sky and wouldn’t smoke the American cigarettes which Bert had been given.
It became commonplace to storm an enemy-held hill, firing, gripping the shrubs, pulling themselves up, hurling grenades, fighting hand to hand, plunging their rifle butts into heads, hearing screams all round, Chinese and British. Each time they took the hill, they herded prisoners into lorries then sat, their legs weak, vomiting, their stomachs churning from the smell of death. But at least Rosie would soon have his letter and, at least, soon, this war would be over.
At the end of March the Chinese were pushed across the 38th parallel and Jack’s unit dug in on a hill which was scattered with the debris of previous battles. They stepped over abandoned Chinese and American equipment, they picked up pay books and identity tags and the Captain sent these back to Seoul which was once more in the hands of the United Nations.
Digging in was difficult in the sandy, frost-hard ground but none the less they tried.
Nigel and Jack talked on watch and Nigel said that the UN and Truman would be looking for a political settlement after throwing back the enemy, but MacArthur wanted to carry the war to Manchuria.
‘He’ll have to go,’ Jack said. ‘Or there’ll be another war, with atom bombs this time.’ He stared across the quiet sky, thinking of Nagasaki, and Suko’s parents.
In April they watched the hills bloom with a profusion of colour which he had never dreamed could exist in this land where there seemed only harshness and poverty.
They watched from the hill as the transport became bogged down in the spring mud, they cleared out the fox-holes and cursed it. Their uniforms were wet from the rains, their skin sore from the chapping, but the war was as good as over, they would be going home soon. So they laughed and smoked, leaning on the stone-built barricades, hearing the rain on their tin hats, on their capes, and thought of England. Of its greenness, its rain, its fog, its rationing, and longed to be there.
They heard that the Gloucesters held the most exposed position on the direct approach to Seoul across the Imjin River but surely the Chinese wouldn’t come again. They were beaten. There would be peace, MacArthur had been sacked on 11 April.
But they did come again, at the end of April as green was sprinkling the rice fields and new life was beginning all around. They came with their bugles blowing and the Gloucesters saved the left flank of the UN Corps and held up the advance of the Chinese so that the line could be reformed and held. Out of a force of 622, forty-six officers and men returned.
But Jack didn’t have time to grieve, because the Chinese were storming his hill, too, and the air was rent with bugles and cymbals and screams, but Jack wasn’t screaming, he was lining up the Sten, hearing it clink against the stones of the barrier, and now he was firing it, as the first wave of Chinese rushed up the hill.
How did they move so fast, for God’s sake? He heard the gun, felt it judder, concentrated on that, not the bugles, nor the cymbals. He just fired, while Bert fed in the ammunition and threw water on the barrel to cool it as the night wore on, and there was no sense of surprise any more. He was getting used to all this.
He saw four Shooting Stars scream into the valley and bombard the enemy with rockets and cannon fire and napalm and this time he didn’t feel sick. He was angry because he should be going home to Rosie. Not firing through showers of mud thrown up by mortar, not lifting a water bottle to his parched lips, not looking at the men he killed, feeling nothing because more would come in their place to kill him and he would never see Rosie again.
They fought all that day, keeping them at bay, waiting for reinforcements but none came. There were too many Chinese storming the whole line. There were supplies though.
‘Thank God,’ Nigel said as he slapped Jack’s shoulder, telling him he would send a relief to take over the Sten soon.
Jack could see the parachutes with ammunition cases dropping amongst the Chinese instead.
‘Oh Christ,’ Nigel groaned.
They fought into the evening. They fought as the sun dropped, brilliant red, behind the hills and now, in the dark, they fired by the light of flares, picking out the Chinese, who were still crawling across the valley and up the base of the hill, getting closer to them now.
Nigel came running out to him, crouching, looking at the rain-sodden maps. ‘Can you both hold out for a while longer? They’re coming up three sides. No relief teams to spare.’
Jack nodded. ‘Keep your bloody head down, Nigel.’ He turned. He hadn’t called him Sir. They looked at one another and smiled. There was no time for anything but friendship now.
Bullets were thwacking into the mud in front of them as Nigel ran back, dodging, shouting to the Sergeant, ‘Get that man down.’ But he was too late. Jack saw the radio operator fall, blood spurting from his chest, his radio set blown apart on his back.
There was so much mud flying into the air from mortar explosions, and there was the noise. So much noise and so many Chinese.
At midnight the order came through to pull out, down the hill, deploy six hundred yards to the rear.
They moved, each acting as rearguard, each doing as they were ordered without question, each saving the lives of their friends, and the parade ground flashed into Jack’s mind as he skidded down the hill, taking up position as others slid past, then moving again.
They took up positions along the further side of a stream, wading through the water, holding their weapons above their heads, spreading out, flanking the valley, waiting because they knew the Chinese would keep on coming and that their own reinforcements would not.
The enemy came with the dawn. The machine gunners found their targets, and now the British counter-attacked, roaring towards the Chinese as they forded the stream, bogged down in the mud. The rain was in Jack’s face, he could taste it, but his mouth was still dry as he ran towards the enemy, firing.
There were no bugles now and the British pushed back towards the valley again, yard by yard, until the day passed and the evening came again but the Chinese rallied and stormed, wave upon wave, as the last of the sun lit the spring flowers, and Bert was killed and Nigel dropped, wounded, his arm useless, and the Sergeant didn’t shout any longer, for he was dead.
Jack dragged Nigel towards the base of the hill, ignoring his screams. There were too many all around to listen to just one.
‘Break out, all of you that can,’ the Captain shouted.
Jack heaped Nigel on to his back, but he was too heavy. He slapped Nigel’s face. There was a bullet graze on his forehead and a flesh wound on his arm. He stirred.
‘Stand up or die, Nigel,’ he shouted, holding his face, looking around, then back at Nigel. ‘Stand up, damn you.’
Nigel stirred, groaned. ‘Stand up,’ Jack repeated. Nigel stumbled to his feet, and Jack slung his arm over his shoulder, taking his weight, moving through the mud, slipping on the stones, but they were moving. At last they were moving.
He dragged Nigel, hearing his breathing, feeling it on his neck. His mouth was still dry from fear and exhaustion. His eyes were sore as he peered into the moonlight. God, Nigel was heavy.
He stopped, and lay down with Nigel beside him at the edge of a paddy field. He could smell the mud, the generations of excrement, and so he thought of the hop-fi
elds, the gentle hills, and when he had rested he moved again. But this time small brown young-looking men loomed up in front of him in the moonlight and the green lush fields of Herefordshire were gone as they shouted and pushed and made Jack walk with his hands on his head in front of Nigel.
When he turned to look at his friend he was prodded with a rifle butt and he was afraid because he had heard of the cruelty of the North Koreans and this is what these men were.
Nigel moaned with every step and Jack breathed in time with his moaning. They could barely see the ground but there was enough light from the cloudless night to avoid the boulders, to stay with the track, and now there were others with them and Chinese soldiers too and Jack breathed more easily.
They were allowed to drop their hands but their fear remained. He stopped and looked back at Nigel, whose feet were dragging, who dripped blood with every step, and the Chinese guard nodded. Jack took his friend’s weight and the man behind stepped forward and eased his arm round Nigel’s body.
‘Let me give you a hand, soldier.’ It was a drawl, but Nigel needed help and so Jack nodded but didn’t look.
They walked all night and came to a village as dawn broke. They were lined up in the courtyard and there were other Chinese soldiers there. They were given sweetened rice to eat and Jack pushed it into Nigel’s mouth, waiting while he gagged, then giving him more.
‘Prop him up between us,’ the American said, nodding to a cart which was taking other wounded. ‘We’ve heard that they’re never seen again. They shouldn’t know that he’s wounded.’
So they pulled Nigel up, tying the sleeve of his shirt round his arm, needing water to wash the wound, but not daring to ask.
They were searched. Mirrors, scissors, knives were taken by the Chinese who didn’t speak and who didn’t notice Nigel’s arm with the American’s jacket slung over it. All the time the North Koreans loitered at the edge of the courtyard, watching.
A Chinese officer came into the courtyard in the cool of the morning sun. He stood before them.
‘You are prisoners of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces in Korea. You have been duped by the American imperialists. You are tools of the reactionary warmongers, fighting against the righteous cause of the Korean people.’ He paused, looked around.
At the Break of Day Page 27
