Hiroshima Joe: A Novel

by Martin Booth

  Four other soldiers joined them and the CSM settled himself behind the Bren, checking it over and testing the action while he had the opportunity.

  Two Albion three-ton tucks arrived. Everyone turned round: here was the first of the artillery. Only it wasn’t. The lorries were transporting two Vickers machine-gun sections and some assorted equipment. They jumped out and the equipment was quickly off-loaded. D Company soldiers clambered into the trucks, after which everyone fell silent.

  The waiting was always the worst. Thoughts had time to germinate, fears to escalate and expand. Sandingham wanted to light a cigarette, not for the sake of smoking but to give himself something to do. But the order was already out that no smoking was permitted. They were no longer at stand-to.

  Time passed very slowly until, at last, the command to start was given and the engines began to turn over. The increasing din rose to a crescendo, reverberating off the walls and deep balconies of the bomb-scarred buildings around them; thick black diesel fumes clogged the air.

  If someone shouts ‘Tally-ho!’ he thought, I’ll break into peals of uncontrollable giggling.

  No one did; it was too serious for that. The odds that they would succeed were poor and everyone knew it. This was not a band of courageous warriors surging forward to victory but a group of determined fighters seeking to achieve something in the human scale of ordinary men’s common lives. Quite what they could possibly achieve was beyond them just then.

  They trundled through the streets and started to climb the lower section of Stubbs Road. When they reached the point at which it turned right, back upon itself, the Albions stopped and the troops disembarked. From here on they would follow behind the three Bren-gun carriers on foot.

  Jesus, thought Sandingham, why don’t we just send the Japs a signal or a runner? ‘British troops advancing up Wong Nai Chung Gap Road; open fire at will.’

  Their approach could have been anything but unexpected. With the Bren-gun carriers making their characteristic banshee scrawking and roaring they must have been audible three miles off.

  Gradually, at walking pace so as to give front cover for the troops behind, the carriers went up the road. Several hundred yards ahead he could see a number of vehicles in the centre of the tarmac. As they drew nearer, he saw that they were all immovable, burnt-out hulks.

  From behind him, over the noise of the engine and the tracks on the metalled road surface, Sandingham could hear one soldier comment to another, ‘Campbell’s A Company. Poor buggers…’

  He checked his Sten. It was loaded and he cocked it. His actions caused each of the soldiers behind him to put a bullet up the spout of his own rifle. The CSM had aleady cocked the Bren.

  As they neared the site where A Company had been ambushed still no one opened fire on them. The captain leading them and the Battalion intelligence officer, who were riding in the foremost Bren-gun carrier, had nearly reached the first of the ruined trucks.

  Across the road lay strewn the bodies of A Company. It was obvious they had met with heavy machine-gun and mortar fire. Some bodies were partially burned and several were cut to shreds by crossfire. The uncharred ones lay in dark stains on the tarmac. It was strange how like spilt oil dried blood could appear.

  Sandingham averted his eyes from the corpses around him. They did not smell: he noticed that consciously. The wind was clear and sweet; it seemed unjust that someone should have had to die on such an afternoon in winter.

  Suddenly they were in the holocaust.

  The leading Bren-gun carrier started to slew round and Sandingham’s driver tried to do the same. Machine-gun rounds were bouncing off the road, off the derelict trucks, off the side of the carrier. He ducked below the armoured sides, twisting his head round to shout to his men to do likewise. It was unnecessary: they were all down low except for a ginger-haired youth who, as Sandingham turned, was hit in the chest. His battle-dress split and his torso opened in a horizontal tear, his lungs puffing outwards like pink sponge, only to disintegrate in the air. Red spots tattooed his hands and face, the force of the bullets lifting and carrying him over the side of the vehicle. It happened so quickly.

  Behind them, an A Company truck tore open.

  ‘Mortars!’ someone screamed and, again, ‘Mortars!’

  Their own Bren carrier had by now turned and Sandingham, without knowing why, looked over his shoulder at the leading vehicle. It too was half-turned, side on to him, and he watched as it exploded. Against the flare he saw the two officers die: the good sort and the one who had winked to bolster his courage. They went together, instantaneously and, to his mind, for no logical reason.

  Without thinking, he opened fire with his Sten gun. The butt chattered against his shoulder but he didn’t feel the bruising punches. He sprayed the trees uphill from the road, waving the barrel from side to side in a figure-eight pattern: then the magazine ran out.

  Yet he did not crouch down again, nor did he insert a new magazine and recommence firing. He just stared at where they had been. The first carrier was burning furiously. Spilled petrol on the road had ignited, melting the tar which also caught fire. A soldier, his clothes alight, ran about demoniacally in front of the flames, his shrieks of pain an uncanny howling above the background rush of burning fuel and the stammer of gunfire. The burst of an automatic brought him down: it was not clear from which direction the bullets had come.

  The second Bren-gun carrier was following his. He watched as it ran over the bodies of A Company men, its tracks flattening and rutting the dead, kicking up bits of their uniforms and their flesh behind it.

  He did not feel sick, or sorry. He did not even feel tired. His mind was disengaged. Now he was not so much a man as an object that worked a gun which killed other objects that worked guns.

  As soon as they were out of immediate mortar range they stopped and turned the Bren-gun carriers uphill once more, so that the weapons mounted on them were facing in roughly the right direction. Then they scrambled out into the ditches and scrub cover along the roadside. It took the Japanese less than a minute to find and correct their range.

  He realised slowly that he might now be the senior officer.

  ‘Open fire in your own time!’ he yelled.

  His voice attracted a fusillade of bullets and Sandingham flattened himself on the bottom of the shallow ditch. The Japanese were firing upon them from the safety of pill-boxes that had previously been held by Hong Kong volunteer force members. In addition, they had a heavy concentration of men dug in on Jardine’s Lookout, and could snipe at them from both the south and the north-east. The only way to silence them was with mortars, hand grenades or field artillery fire.

  A few yards to his left a soldier in his late teens was hunched down. His hands gripped his rifle and a blot of something wet stained his trouser legs. His face was bleached of blood, looking ethereally pale under the shadow of his helmet. His webbing equipment was awry and his bayonet and water bottle were missing.

  Even in the midst of such terror Sandingham had a strong urge to hold him close and comfort him. He was so young, so out of place in this scheming, vicious world of men.

  Sandingham started to work his body round, by lifting his hand and shoving against the rim of the ditch. The soil next to his thumb jumped and steamed.

  ‘Whatever we do, they’ve got us.’

  It was Willy Stewart’s voice and it was not far away.

  ‘Sergeant Stewart? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Above you, sir.’

  He was lying behind a substantial boulder just beyond the ditch. His presence had a calming effect – not only on Sandingham but, it seemed, on the Japanese, for there was a lull in their firing. They were playing a cat-and-mouse game, thought Sandingham. It was pointless shooting at nothing. Much better to wait until something moved, then concentrate fire upon that spot.

  Another voice said, ‘Where the fuck’s the artillery?’

  ‘Sergeant, do you think we can get a messenger back down the hill? It’
s vital we have some big guns on the pill-boxes at least.’

  ‘Not much of a chance before dark. Even then it’ll be tricky. Besides, they must know what’s what up here.’

  There was a sudden blast of firing. It shook and swayed the branches over Sandingham’s head as if a tornado were coursing through them. From the scrubby bushes opposite came a gurgling whimper, followed by the sound of something heavy tumbling through undergrowth.

  ‘Think you can do it, lad?’

  The CSM was talking to the boy in the ditch behind Sandingham.

  ‘If you keep on your belly and work back with your toes, you’ll make it down to the bend. Once you’re out of sight you can stand and run. Tell them the strength is … Tell them what happened, son.’

  The boy made no reply but started backwards down the ditch. Craning his neck, Sandingham could see him edging under an overhanging bush.

  He had gone some way when, without warning, he was fired upon. It was plain that, at that point, the bottom of the ditch could be seen from above. The young lad, having come to the attention of the enemy, ought to have lain still and feigned death, biding his time. Instead, he jumped up impetuously and ran pell-mell down the side of the road. His progress was clumsy. His kit hung badly about him, knocking against his sides and unbalancing his flight. The machine-gun bullets followed him, striking off the kerbstones, and caught up with him. His body folded, skidded, then lay still.

  The two other Bren-gun carriers had been rendered useless. One was alight while the other had lost the tracks from one side. There was no way out except on foot.

  Sandingham knew he had to wait until nightfall. To move without the cover of at least twilight was to ask for immediate death.

  As he lay motionless, he considered in a detached, almost impersonal manner the vagaries and mazes of warfare. A band of friends-in-arms a hundred strong could, within minutes, become two men shivering and pissing themselves in a ditch. And yet, an hour later, those two men could become comrades with new friends again and ride high on the successes of butchery. He began, without knowing why, to pretend he was a correspondent – for The Times, say, or the BBC – writing his despatch for a distant news editor.

  ‘The Battle for The Gap; Joseph Sandingham reporting from war-torn Hong Kong,’ he said out loud, forgetting himself for a minute. A bullet snickered by his shoulder and drilled a tiny, neat tunnel in the earth beside him, reminding him of his predicament.

  As darkness fell, flames up in the Gap illuminated the carnage, giving it an infernal hue. The enemy, with the failing light, eased their fire and relied only on sniping at whatever they construed to be movement in order to keep their enemies’ heads down. Later in the night, the Royal Scots received reinforcements from the depleted numbers held in reserve down in the town and, allying these to their survivors and a rag-tag bunch from an assortment of other units, re-grouped for a night attack back up the hillside. They pushed ahead and, just after midnight, recaptured Wong Nai Chung Gap. They did not hold it for long.

  * * *

  Furniture was wedged tightly into the corner shopfront and sandbags were in place three-high along the base of this barricade. The dull daylight pierced through the cracks and crannies. Sandingham had the Sten gun and two Canadians had the Bren. Across the floor from them, Bob Bellerby had another Sten. Through those cracks in their flimsy defence they could see along several hundred yards of Yee Wo Street. It was deserted. In several places, the tram lines had been wrecked during endless daylight bomb raids, the tracks twisting upward and curling back as if torn loose by some giant-sized sardine-tin key. A tram, gutted by fire, lay on its side halfway down the stretch under their surveillance. It was a major source of their attention, for its contorted steel frame and chassis bed provided more than adequate cover.

  Their arc of fire was somewhat restricted by the building opposite, across Percival Street. Additionally, the curve of Yee Wo Street presented them with a blind spot in the longer, left-hand side of the bend. Similarly, they could not see round the bend beyond Jardine’s Bazaar, but that didn’t matter. No one could take much advantage of that, as the distance was too great.

  Looking down Percival Street to their right they could just see the lower junction of Leighton Road below Leighton Hill, upon which there was a field artillery piece and several mortars. Each of the sideroads between themselves and the harbour wall had been conscientiously mined and barricaded with anything that was heavy and immovable. A few Indian troops were positioned to cover them as well, mostly armed with Webleys and .303 rifles.

  Another Canadian came in from the door at the rear of the shop, stooping under the partially collapsed lintel. He was carrying a length of plywood upon which rested five mugs of tea.

  ‘Awl rightee!’ he said with relish. ‘Here’s th’ god-dam’ tea! It’s Chinese but I guess tha’ makes it none th’ worse – after all, they invented th’ god-dam’ stuff.’

  Bob and Sandingham exchanged glances as they helped themselves to a mug each. It was hot and scorched their tongues, but it was also strong, and there was milk in it that wasn’t the powdered variety.

  ‘Where did you get the milk?’ asked Bob.

  ‘No sweat!’ The Canadian patted his water bottle. ‘Got it out by Pok Fu Lam as we were pullin’ back ’long th’ south shore. They got dairy herds out there.’ He pronounced it ‘day-ree’. ‘I got three pints of it. Milked by my own han’s.’

  ‘All we need now’s some licker,’ said the soldier lying behind the Bren and surveying the street down its sights.

  Bob left the shop, propping his Sten against an empty rice barrel. His boots made no noise as he left, for they had covered the floor with old sacking, curtains and bolts of cloth from a bombed tailor’s workshop. It made lying down much easier and it deadened not only their footsteps but also their voices. None of them was speaking loudly, but any precaution was worthwhile. It was almost snug in the shop.

  Unless one knew the way it was hard to find the route through the bombed buildings of Wan Chai. Bob knew them, though. He had been the person to reconnoitre the shop gun nest the night before and the one to guide them to it. During the night they had thrown up their wall of furniture under his authority.

  Sandingham silently followed Bob to give him cover. He forced his eyes to shift to and fro across the blank windows and doors, not so much guarding against but anticipating movement. Every corner was a possible rifle muzzle, every pile of debris a potential enemy.

  They worked back to Tonnochy Street, crossed over Hennessy Road bent double, after first attracting the attention of the machine-gun nest that was covering it, and sprinted into Morrison Hill. There, parked under an overhanging balcony, was the Ford V8 that Bob had taken from the car section of the vehicle pound. The roof of the Ford was deeply dented in the centre, the windscreen was shattered and the lights were missing. Sandingham noticed that a tyre had gone flat, too. Folding down one of the tip-up seats in the back, Bob produced the cognac. The bottle was still a quarter full. He stuffed it inside his tunic and gave the thumbs-up to Sandingham. They were absent from their post for about ten minutes.

  When they reached the shop, the others were tense and alert.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Mack here thought he saw some’un move down there,’ said the taller of the three Canadians. He was looking through a slit in the defence, between a heavy butcher’s chopping table and a tin hip bath that had been flattened by falling masonry.

  ‘Are we sussed out?’ Bob asked.

  Sandingham quickly surveyed the scene then answered him, saying, ‘I don’t think so. Our camouflage in front’ll be good enough.’

  They had set up rubble and debris in front of the furniture and metal junk in order to disguise, as best they could, the fact that there were three automatic weapons hiding there.

  The tea drunk, they emptied the leaves into a corner of the shop behind a broken till. The drawer had spilled out some small change on to the floor but no one had bothered to pi
ck it up.

  For twenty minutes each man watched as much as he could see within his arc of vision. Nothing moved at all except for a tabby cat that strolled nonchalantly across their field of fire. It did not turn its head but walked straight ahead, to disappear through a window on the ground floor of the derelict herbal pharmacy they were using as an imaginary distance marker for the Bren. Once passed, the sights were set: anything the near-side of the smashed front windows was in range and about to die.

  ‘Th’ cat ain’t lookin’ roun’,’ Mack said confidently from behind the Bren. He read this as a sign that no one was in the animal’s vicinity.

  ‘Cats’re ornery buggers,’ said one of the others. ‘Got that feline, feminine knack of ignorin’ what they dislike. They don’t give a cuss fer wha’s aroun’ ’em. They jus’ waulk…’

  ‘There!’

  It was Sandingham. His face was pressed to his viewing crack.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Right-hand end of the tram, two o’clock. A balcony with a pole sticking out. Movement behind it – appears to be a man.’

  His placing and commenting on the sight was so military, so correct, he grinned at himself. He, who was opposed to the whole bloody business, was talking as if he were a regular regular.

  That had been a joke he and Bob had shared often.

  ‘Are you a regular?’

  ‘A regular what?’

  ‘A regular lover. I’m a regular lover.’

  ‘I’m a regular regular lover.’

  The regular soldier. The one signed up for x many years, his soul sold to the regiment, the King’s shilling taken and regretted and spent on beer, or fags, or a tart in Aden on the way out. How many soldiers, raw out of Southampton or Tilbury, lost their virginities to tarts in Aden?… At Malta they were still too shy, at Alexandria or Port Said they were still too scared, but Aden – by then they were fed up with what the lower deck called ‘pulling their puddings’ and they wanted the real thing, to prove that they were ready to screw and swear and die like men. And most of them under twenty-one had never been in love except to the girl in Bournemouth they’d met on their summer holidays in the early war years, or the girl from the next street, or the next village, or down the Locarno.