The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  Half an hour later, full of chupattis and dal, he started towards the rear. A heavy retching from somewhere close by made him halt. Hanuman said, ‘There he is, lord... In the ditch. A gora.’ Krishna stooped and saw, under the blackthorn blossoms, a pair of ammunition boots, the nails bright and shiny. They were turning this way and that as the English soldier, lying on his back, tried to vomit. His open tunic was thick with greeny slime and his face was the same colour. He pulled feebly at his throat as he retched and retched, and the boots jerked and drummed under the white flowers, and a blackbird flew trilling down the hedge.

  Krishna Ram felt a heaving sickness in his own stomach. This was the poisonous gas. Either the man had lost his gas mask, or it had not worked. He stopped, made to hold the man in his arms, then recoiled from the filth drenching his chest and belly--then again stooped, and took him, and gently lifted him. ‘Give him water,’ he said to Hanuman.

  Hanuman held his waterbottle to the man’s lips but he could not drink. Krishna thought he did not even know the bottle was there. His head lolled and still that dreadful, straining retching shook his body and contorted his face, still the sweat ran down the cold skin, and the head jerked and the boots drummed in the dust. Suddenly a mass of green and red slime poured up over Krishna’s arms. For a moment the flood continued, spongey and clotted grey-yellow matter, streaked with blood. Then as the soldier coughed, the vomit became dark pure blood. The body in Krishna’s arms went limp, the head fell back on to his shoulder.

  Krishna Ram stood up, slowly. Here was another soldier, in soiled khaki swaying down the lane, from one side to the other ... Another ... a wagon load full, a horse pulling it, five men sprawled in the back, vomit and dissolved lungs drenching the floor boards, a dead man lying head down over the back, no driver, the horse plodding steadily on. More ... platoons, companies. He thought he was seeing the disdain of Vishnu, all the diseases of earth, worse than the cholera he had seen once by the river at Basohli, the year of the great Fair. This was not war, but pestilence, in the mind of man. This was Europe, the work of Europe’s gods, the pride of its civilization!

  Warren Bateman was at his side, muttering, ‘My God, the men mustn’t see this. Flaherty! ‘

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get our empty GS wagons here at the trot, load these men--the ones who can’t walk--on to them and evacuate them to the CCS ... past our rear line, anyway. Then the wagons are to return to rear HQ.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The trail of gassed men kept passing. ‘Manchesters,’ Warren muttered; ‘Gunners. HLI. Sappers. Rifle Brigade. KOSB. Seaforths ... They must have wiped out a division ... Here, corporal, were you wearing your masks when the gas came?’

  The stocky corporal coughed and moaned: ‘Yes, sir. They helped some of us. But ... on a hot day ... like this ... can’t keep them wet enough...’ He tramped on.

  Krishna Ram felt the ground swaying. His eyes blurred and his forehead was as cold and wet as the man’s who had coughed out his lungs in his arms. Those lungs, that blood and mucus, were drying on his tunic now. He must wash ... cleanse ... purify. No, he must keep them for ever, as a warning, a message from Vishnu.

  Warren Bateman said, ‘We’ll just have to do our best ... Do you know if the gas affects animals?’

  Flaherty’s brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t remember reading anything about that in the intelligence reports, sir ... Were you thinking of the GS wagon horses?’

  ‘No,’ Warren said, ‘I was thinking of Shikari ... Well, he’ll have to take his chances like the rest of us.’

  Krishna said, ‘Will he make pashap on his own mask or will someone have to do it for him?’

  Warren Bateman looked at him strangely as he staggered off to the rear. In Krishna’s reeling mind he thought he heard the gods laughing, a scornful laugh. He felt himself swaying, and then, when he thought he must fall, Hanuman’s strong arm was under his elbow. ‘Sit down, lord ... by the ditch here.’

  The sun was low, near six o’clock, when Warren Bateman came on the field telephone to Rear HQ. ‘Krishna?’ the voice was taut. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Is any of this enemy shelling falling in the rear areas?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘We’re getting a lot. De Marquez has been killed. Very few other casualties so far, though. I think they’re going to attack if the wind changes.’

  Krishna Ram stared puzzled at the line of the hedgerow on the skyline to the east. ‘Why if the wind changes?’ he asked.

  ‘Now it’s blowing from us to them, or nearly so,’ Warren’s voice was impatient. ‘They release this poisonous gas from cylinders in their front line, so they can only do it when the wind is towards us ... Put out a gas sentry, to keep note of the wind. As soon as it changes--it’s veering slowly now--tell the RM to call a stand-to in the rear echelon. When you’ve done that go to the machine guns. Make sure they have fixed lines arranged and night aiming lights out so that they can fire across our front.’

  Krishna gave the handset back to the signaller and sent for the rissaldar-major. While he waited he climbed out of the trench, stretched, and looked around. It was a scene of entrancing beauty, slowly being desecrated by the action of the two sides’ artillery, as though two boys with sharp pencils had been let loose on an old oil painting. The even fields were becoming dotted with shell holes. Loads of soil gouged out of the earth and flung all about, were pockmarking the green grass. The late spring foliage was being blasted off the trees. Even the sky, a huge arch of primrose slashed with crimson, was dotted with puffs of dark smoke as German antiaircraft guns followed an invisible British aeroplane down the horizon. The scent of the blackthorn was sweet in his nostrils, and the blackbirds still trilled in the hedges.

  Then Rissaldar-Major Baldev Singh came, and five minutes later Krishna set off for the machine gun position. When he had done what he had to do there, he curled up and went to sleep, fully dressed, behind one of the guns.

  Rissaldar Ram Lall awakened him at five a.m. A chilly dawn mist hung low over the land, and his skin was wet and cold with dew. The rissaldar said quietly, ‘Huzoor, the wind is in the northeast.’

  He started up and felt the slight breeze blowing in his face from the direction of the German lines. He said, ‘Stand-to!’ and felt for his binoculars. Shells suddenly began to shriek and explode all around. The shelling increased, mostly from 5.9s. The trench was deep and narrow, the machine guns were mounted on a wide fire-step, each protected by a separate traverse. All four guns were in position, ready to fire on their fixed lines, but only one sowar was up as sentry. The rest, as ordered by Warren Bateman, were in dugouts cut into the forward wall of the trench, protected from the shelling but ready to come out when the sentry called them.

  Krishna Ram leaned against the parapet with the rissaldar, staring into the east. The morning mist writhed like snakes, like dragons flattened out by some colossal pressure to be wider than they were long, and barely four feet high, with no legs visible. Yet there were eyes to the dragons--eyes everywhere as flashes of bursting shells sparkled in the vapour, then for a moment glowed evil red, then died down, to flash into wakefulness again somewhere else.

  The field telephone buzzed and the rissaldar took it. He listened, spoke a few words and put it down. He called up to Krishna Ram, ‘It was the colonel-sahib. He said you are to go to D Squadron. He thinks the Germans are attacking there. He can’t get through on the telephone to them.’

  Krishna Ram peered into the noisy fog, loud with the crash of unseen shells and his heart sank. If only there were live dragons out here, serpents of flesh and blood, instead of this impersonal, mechanical death ... D Squadron was in the centre of the line, between Beaumont and the Well, and set back in echelon. He clambered out of the trench, a sowar pulled aside the heavy chevaux-de-frise in the barbed wire to allow him to get through it, and he set off at a jog trot through the bombardment, his orderly and trumpeter on either side.

  As he reached D’s position several bullets smacked
close by and he shouted, ‘Don’t fire, idiots! ‘ Then Indian faces loomed out of the mist behind the aimed rifles and a jemadar was shouting, ‘Stop! It’s the Yuvraj! ‘

  He jumped down into the trench and at once felt a stinging sensation in his eyes. For a second he thought someone had thrown pepper at him, then he saw the men around him beginning to cough, and understood. Shouting, ‘Gas! ‘ he found his mask, undid his fly buttons, and tried to urinate on it, while holding his breath. Up and down the trench the sowars did the same. The gas cloud was a pale yellow and the fitful wind was breaking it into narrow streamers creeping down upon them mingled in the mist; but the mist was rising as the sun rose, and some of the gas was rising with it, to pass over the top of the trench. But some gas was coming in, and some men were unable to dampen their masks in time. Krishna saw that one man in every five was falling back from the firestep, doubled up, coughing or retching through his mask.

  Captain Sher Singh ran down the trench shouting, ‘Gas! Gas!... Rissaldar-sahib where are you?’ His voice sounded strangled behind the mask, but his words could be understood. He peered at Krishna Ram, recognized him, and cried, ‘Prince, what are we to do? The masks give no protection! ‘

  ‘Yes, they do!’ Krishna Ram shouted, and added in Hindi, ‘Stand up, man! Control yourself. For our name! ‘

  ‘But ... Oh, by the bones of Kali, we are dead men! Here they come! ‘

  Rifle fire spat and crackled along the trench. Krishna looked out, and gasped in horror, a horror as intense as when the British tommy had coughed up his lungs over his arm. The things coming out of the mist were not men but animals, monkey gods of legend, flat-faced demons on two legs ... With trembling hand he sighted along the barrel of his revolver and fired. A monster twenty yards away spun round, his hands to his chest, and fell. They were mortal then! The sowar on his left had fallen or run, and Krishna grabbed his rifle and began rapid fire. More demons towered out of the yellow-streaked fog. One by one and two by two they fell. Only one masked demon reached the trench, to be bayoneted by Hanuman as he leaped down on top of Krishna Ram.

  ‘We are alone, here, lord,’ Hanuman said then.

  Krishna looked to right and left and saw no one close by, except the dead, some writhing wounded, and a few men vomiting on the parados.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘Captain Sher Singh said there was no hope, and gave the order each man for himself.’

  Krishna swore and said, ‘We’d better go, then.’

  But should he? What was the point? This horror would pursue him now until it choked him. Better to stay here and die now before it got worse. He began to collect ammunition clips from dead and wounded sowars, cramming them into his own pockets; then he again jumped up on to the firestep. By the ripping crackle of bullets ahead he knew the Ravi machine guns were firing. That meant the Germans were also attacking Beaumont.

  But British shells were bursting close, too, and he thought he heard a faint cheering from the rear. Some Germans who had got into the trench farther to the right began to work towards him. He and Hanuman took position behind a traverse and shot each masked man as he came round the corner, until four dead bodies blocked the way. Then a potato-masher bomb came whirling over the parapet, and Krishna caught it and threw it back in one motion. The explosion behind the traverse was followed by a confusion of screams and groans. After a long wait, while Hanuman continued to guard the traverse, Krishna climbed up on to the firestep to see what was happening. He saw Germans close by scrambling out of the trench and hurrying away, to join others already retreating across No Man’s Land under a storm of fire; and a line of cheering khaki figures appearing out of the mist from the opposite direction. Coming directly at him he recognized the distinctive shapes of Warren Bateman and Himat Singh, with drawn revolvers, and at their side, Captain Sher Singh. The line of masked sowars stretched away on both sides, all with fixed bayonets gleaming. Krishna Ram stood up waving his rifle, yelling, ‘Don’t fire! ‘

  Warren recognized him and jumped across the trench to him. Sher Singh leaped down into the trench and stayed there crouched in the bottom. Warren said, ‘Get up, Sher Singh. Up here. Stand beside us. There. Don’t move an inch or I’ll shoot you.’ To Krishna he said, ‘What happened?’

  Krishna told him, as accurately as he could, which was not very. The action, like every other one he had seen so far, had started with a plan as clear as a geometrical drawing, and ended in a meaningless struggle among sweating terrified individuals.

  Warren said, ‘I thought it was something like that. When D Squadron came back, in a rabble, I told B to retake the trench and came along with them ... God, I wish this bugger Sher Singh here had got a bullet through his head. This is what your softness at that panchayat has led to.’ He glared at Sher Singh, a yard away and barely able to stand he was trembling so much. ‘Mahadeo Singh is reorganizing D in the rear area, and then they’ll take over B’s old trenches ... Here, let’s have a look at this.’ He stooped, and took the mask off a German corpse at his feet. ‘H’m ... a sort of mask, like ours. They don’t seem to have had to piss on them. Probably some chemical inside.’

  He put the mask on and peered at Krishna through gauze veiled eyepieces. Krishna restrained an impulse to cry out, ‘Don’t!’ for the mask converted Warren Bateman, too, into a demon, an inhuman monster from legend, an evil monkey feeding on the offal of the civilization it has destroyed.

  The CO took off the mask and sniffed the air. ‘It’s blown away. We can take our masks off, for the time being ... When the Germans first used gas a month ago they must have already worked out how to protect their own men against it. So it’s safe to assume that their masks are better than ours. Himat, have these collected off every dead and wounded German in the area. Send them to our machine gunners . . . Where’s the telephone here, Krishna? Call A and get a situation report.’

  Krishna slid down, hurried fifty yards along the trench and found the telephone intact in the old squadron headquarters’ position. Soon Puran Lall came on the line.

  ‘The CO wants a report.’

  The young officer’s voice was hard and impersonal--’They attacked about half an hour ago. The machine guns stopped them on my front.’

  ‘Did they use gas?’

  ‘Yes. But most of it blew over above us. I have three killed and eight wounded, all by shelling.’

  ‘Any German dead within reach of your trenches?’

  ‘About forty.’

  ‘Send men out to get their gas masks. Keep twenty and send the rest back to RHQ for distribution.’

  ‘I won’t wear one,’ Puran Lall said. ‘Have you seen what a man looks like in it?’

  ‘Yes. I understand.’

  He hung up. Now the CO would want him to get a similar report from C Squadron at the Well. He told the signaller to get through.

  Suddenly the German artillery opened heavy fire again, several field and medium batteries firing what was obviously concentrations, just as they had before the attack. The new gunner subaltern, 2nd Lieutenant Bruington, came up at a run, his signallers unwinding his telephone wire behind him. He tumbled into the trench, saw Krishna and said, ‘Looks as if the Hun is going to come again, sir ... Gun positions? 41st Field Battery, DF 43, fire! ‘

  The wind was still veering, and now blew across the line of trenches from south-east to north-west. The Germans would not be able to use gas under these conditions, Krishna thought, unless they carried the cylinders to the south end of the British trenches, even behind them, and released the gas from there.

  ‘My God, look at the CO.’ The voice beside him was reverent and proud. It was Captain Himat Singh speaking, the ribbon and silver rosette of the DSO and bar bright on his stained tunic. Shells burst like dry geysers in the friable earth all along the line. The mist had risen and was no more than a haze across the low sun and somewhere, unbelievably, birds were singing. Out in the open, arms linked, Warren Bateman and Sher Singh were strolling along the front of the
trench system.

  2nd Lieutenant Bruington muttered, ‘Good heavens, he’ll get himself killed for certain, sir! ‘

  ‘He has a purpose,’ Himat Singh said briefly. Krishna Ram thought, you can’t say a word against Warren in front of Himat Singh now.

  The strolling figures came closer, Warren’s crown and star linked with Sher Singh’s three stars. The fox terrier Shikari walked at Warren Bateman’s heels, but he was nervous, cowering at the explosions and twice trying to run away into the trenches, to be recalled by Warren’s sharp order, ‘Heel! ‘ Every few paces they all stopped and Warren looked down into the trench, smiled, and said a few words to the men in it. Machine gun bullets began to clack overhead from a German gun firing at long range from the left.

  They came close and Krishna saw that it was only the CO’s arm which was holding Sher Singh up. The captain’s face was greasy pale under the brown pigmentation, as though all blood had drained out of it, and not even Warren Bateman’s strong arm could hide the knocking of his knees.

  They stopped above the telephone and Warren said, ‘Hullo, what’s your name?’

  ‘Bruington, sir.’

  ‘Glad to see you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir ... We’ve been allotted three medium and three field batteries for DF on your front, sir.’

  ‘Good. And well done, Krishna, we’d have had a hard time retaking this trench without you. Eh jawan, ab sab thik hai?’ He chattered on in Hindi with a sowar peering over the parapet behind his rifle. Then, as he moved on, rifles began to fire all along the line. ‘Here they come again,’ Krishna shouted. ‘Get down, sir!’

  Warren looked round, and pushing Sher Singh in front of him, slid down into the trench. His face was pale and strained, his eyes glaring. Himat Singh, on the firestep a little to the right, said, ‘Sir...’ Then he gasped, jerked, and fell backwards into the bottom of the trench three feet below. Warren Bateman bent over him quickly: ‘Are you hit, old man?’