Chindit Affair

by Brian Mooney

  The first wave of gliders, towed by their powered Dakota tugs, took off at 0612 hours. In spite of the fearful confusion consequent upon such last-minute changes of decision, including the re-briefing of all pilots and the whole complement of 77 Brigade Officers, they were only seventy-two minutes late.

  We of 111 Brigade in our camps near Imphal were ready for them. The watchers and scanners of the sky were out, waiting to wave them forward. It was a moment – mysterious and tantalisingly significant – which was pregnant with incalculable consequences.

  It was a calm night. The sky was serene and cloudless. The moon was twenty degrees above the horizon. It rose that evening at twenty past five and was approaching the full. Winds were light to moderate, maximum velocity seven miles per hour at ten thousand feet, varying from north-east to east. At ground level, however, any movement in the air was indistinguishable. Regardless of the fact that the two combatants were reaching for each other’s throats, nature seemed sublimely at peace.

  We came out of the big marquee where we were writing up plane manifests (I was down to the last three) and stood around, pretending to be casual and indifferent about it. No-one actually spoke. Everything capable of being articulated had already been said.

  Away in the distance, it is true, could be heard, from the direction of 30 Column’s and 40 Column’s bashas, the accelerating excitement – drums and singing – of the farewell entertainment which the Gurkhas were mounting for Joe Lentaigne and Jack Masters, both of whom were 4th Gurkha Officers. In our locality, however, all was quiet and still. It was so still that I involuntarily shuddered. Suddenly Doc Whyte cocked his head.

  There, from the west-south-west and passing slightly to the south of us, rose the deep-throated roar of the Dakotas. They were cruising at full throttle. The sound quickly intensified, then died. The planes were flying at ten thousand feet. Bang on course for Broadway, they passed impassively away to the east. In response to those engines my skin actually prickled.

  It was twenty past six. The telephones in the mess and in Masters’s command post started jangling. They summoned Lentaigne and Masters from their entertainment. Masters was ordered immediately back to his typewriter. His Operational Instruction No.1, dealing with the movement of 111 Brigade to Piccadilly, was now out of date. Owing to the change in plan the whole bloody thing had to be rewritten.

  111 Brigade was now to fly to Chowringhee. This included 30 and 40

  columns (3/4 Gurkhas), 49 and 94 (4/9 Gurkhas), 26 and 90 Columns

  (Cameronians), and 41 and 46 Columns (King’s Own). How such a vast force was going to cross the mile-wide Irrawaddy we had not yet dared to contemplate.

  Such, indeed, was the plan. As a matter of history, however, it did not work out quite like that. 111 Brigade’s fly-in, it is true, went perfectly. On 9 March, however, when Brigade Headquarters, with 30 and 40 Columns, and 49 and 94 Columns, were already in position at Chowringhee, Brigadier Tulloch, Wingate’s Chief of Staff, decided that the Japanese Air Force stationed at Katha could hardly have failed by now to become aware of what was going on so near them – only thirty miles away. He ordered the rest of the Brigade – that is 26 and 90 Columns, and 41 and 46 Columns (our two British Battalions, in fact) – to be diverted to Broadway.

  This was accordingly done. They completed their fly-in by 11 March. After that they marched 150 miles in fourteen days to rendezvous with us at a spot just north of Wuntho. That rendezvous was kept on 24 March.

  It proved a most effective change of plan. Not only did the Cameronians and the King’s Own avoid that dreadful crossing of the Irrawaddy with all the consequent frustrations, disappointments, and loss of morale which it entailed. They also avoided the bombing of Chowringhee. A few hours after the last of us had abandoned the strip and were on our way towards the river, the Japanese came over in considerable strength and bombed the hell out of the empty, crashed planes and derelict gliders we had left there. We all laughed heartily. At the time, it had been exceedingly funny.

  It would not have been so funny if we had been present. Owing to the fact of our two British Battalions having been diverted to Broadway, however, we were able to get away from Chowringhee by the early morning of 10 March. This we could not have down under the original plan. Brigadier Tulloch’s changed decision proved a most fortunate intervention.

  77 Brigade’s fly-in, in spite of a somewhat calamitous first night, went smoothly. On that first night casualties were high. Fourteen gliders broke loose from their towing-ropes in full flight. Six crash-landed in Burma in places as far apart as the jungles of the Chindwin on the one hand and the fields of the Irrawaddy on the other – that is, across an expanse of territory extending for more than 150 miles. They created in the Japanese Intelligence Service the most bewildering state of confusion and were infinitely more effective in concealing our intentions than any deliberate attempt at deception. The remaining gliders crashed in Manipur and Assam.

  There had been no Japanese ambush on the ground waiting for the invaders, as had been half-expected. Many gliders, however, crashed badly on landing. The clearing was scarred with deep, hard ruts due to timber extraction during the wet weather and this caused serious crack-ups. Towing aircraft had also come in too quickly and closely one behind another so that damaged gliders could not be cleared from the field before the following gliders crashed into them.

  It was this factor which prompted the sending of an adverse signal to Lalaghat during the night and caused the cancellation of seven gliders in

  flight.

  Out of a total of five hundred and forty men landed at Broadway on that first night, twenty-four were killed and thirty badly wounded. On the following night nine hundred men were landed. The movement of 77 Brigade’s entire quota – a total of some 4,000 men and 1,000 mules, with all their arms and equipment – was completed by 10 March.

  Now it was 111 Brigade’s turn. I was frantic with excitement. On the night before our departure, Dal Bahadur and I hardly slept a wink.

  With trembling diffidence, I had approached his bed. With a touch of inadequacy verging on the insane, I asked him, ‘Is this where you sleep?’

  He threw back his blanket and blinked. The moonlight seeping between the trees recorded his movements with time-defying clarity. A slightly puzzled expression crossed his face. Then he recovered and grinned mischievously.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s where the sahib told me to put myself. If it please his excellency, pray let him set down his noble presence!’

  He was obviously tickled at my sudden appearance beside him, just as I was by his sedulously enunciated classical Urdu phrases. We regarded each other with a sort of grudging enthusiasm. Yet neither knew what to say.

  In my eyes he glowed as fresh as a daisy and as bright as a pin. It was as if I had never previously observed him. The first thing I noticed was that he was more youthful than I imagined. The second – that he was incomparably good-looking.

  ‘Why, I never knew,’ I began admiringly. ‘That is – you never told me. You speak beautiful Urdu!’

  He was about five feet four inches in height. For a Gurkha his build was remarkably slender. What made his appearance particularly arresting, however, were his eyes. They were velvety-black in colour, almond-shaped, and so large that they seemed to dominate, almost wholly to occupy, his face. Sometimes, it is true, they could cloud over swiftly with a dimming cataract of inward sorrow, but at other times – and this was when he could be at his most fascinating – they glowed with mischievous duplicity.

  He also possessed the most beautiful, ivory-white, milky-opaque, marble-smooth-and-transparent-as-alabaster skin. It reminded you of sleeping fires couched within cloudy opals.

  He blushed at my complimentary remark about his Urdu. And no wonder. A few more attempts at conversation along these lines revealed what I ought to have gathered in the first place, namely that it was the only phrase in that language which he knew. Apart from his local dialect, which I was not very good at, h
e was master of a sort of Gurkha-oriented bastard

  Hindi heavily adulterated with Bengali, and this eventually became the lingua franca in which we communicated.

  For a hill-man, his features were singularly un-Mongolian. They were cast in a Hellenistic mould. But those canons of beauty for portraying godlike facial characteristics in every Hermes or Apollo were conspicuously bought into prominence by the Mongolian aspect of his face: the tightly stretching, typically high cheekbones. They were like shiny satin cushions or polished billiard balls – like mounds of snow heaped over miniature chortens– like cumulous clouds interiorly illuminated by lightning – like little offertory cakes moulded out of dedicated rice – or like those peaks of the Himalayas in their perfection, like Kanchenjunga, like Nanda Devi, like Nanga Parbat!

  The overall effect was totally arresting. It was even more strikingly emphasized by a high individualistic manner – a mixture of genuine diffidence combined with a wild and irrepressible impetuosity.

  Saturated in the beams of the magic moonlight, under the scrutiny of the clandestine examination I was submitting him to, he appeared incomparably far too good for me. Such an incontrovertible masterpiece of the Demiurge’s art as he was ought to become the subject only for classic disciplines of contemplation as, for instance, the cow-herd personality of Shri Krishna. To become my lover would surely degrade him.

  I had been standing before him, rapt in meditation. With that instinct of courtesy native to him, he had dutifully risen. Having put to rights his blanket, he was now waiting upon my initiative with an innocent expectation untroubled by any qualms of conscience.

  There was nothing for me to do but accede to his request and sit down. I therefore did so, indicating that he should follow suit. He lowered himself gracefully to the ground like a dancer. It was equivalent to an elaborate salute.

  So there we were, at one o’clock in the morning, on the day before being committed to battle, facing each other from across his bed like a couple of contestants. The space between us might have been the width of continents. For all the contact with each other we had, we might have been separated by centuries.

  I had no experience at my disposal for helping me to bridge such an insurmountable gap. I could hardly beg him, in so many words, to come closer. The silence that ensued might have gone on progressively prolonging itself for millennia.

  Suddenly, as if performing an act of legerdemain, he produced a pair of hands. Rather shyly he extended them towards me. They were peasant’s hands and aesthetically quite unbeautiful. They might have looked all right for performing with the pruning hook or manipulating the mattock, but for the tender business of expressing emotions they were quite unsuitable. Yet it was as such that he had undoubtedly intended them. Their palms were fashioned like paws cushioned with pads.

  I did not know what he expected me to do with them, but on impulse I took one. It lay within mine, half alert like a cowed bird, yet also with the frightening passivity of a vegetable marrow.

  All at once the hand came awake. It fluttered within my grasp with the compulsive panic of a frightened sparrow. I assumed it was trying to escape and let go of it. It flew out of my arms with the abject surrender of total subjection.

  The night wore on relentlessly and my position and posture became increasingly cramped. As it grew colder, I ached with rheumatism and creaked with damp. But I maintained myself hour after hour while Dal Bahadur sank blissfully into sleep.

  When the last of the night expired and dawn came, I laid him reverently down and covered him over with his blanket. He did not awake. Then I returned to my own bed. It was soaked with dew. But I hoped I had given him a mite of comfort.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Burma

  Dear God, I pray we make it. I can hardly believe we are on the wing.

  I hadn’t felt secure from cancellation or postponement until the last minute. It was only when we were aboard the aircraft that I relaxed. The operation had seemed too complicated, too bizarre to be taken seriously. How could such an undertaking have received approval from professional planners when it was more appropriate to the Arabian Nights?

  Yet it happened. Not only did it prove possible to transport 8,000 men and several thousand mules to a spot some 200 miles inside Burma by a sort of magic carpet technique, without the Japanese becoming aware of it – it also proved a poetic experience, as emotionally stirring as it was beautiful. Its danger served superlatively as a sauce – the frissons of hazard were important.

  I never thought I should take part in history. All the same, Wingate’s Order of the Day, published on 11 March when his troops had completed their movement, did emphasize this aspect: ‘This is a moment to live in history. It is an enterprise in which every man who takes part may feel proud one day to say, “I was there!”’ Naturally, we all affected to think it was all balls. I now think differently.

  Our Brigade Headquarters Column was due to fly to Chowringhee on 8 March. It consisted of the Brigadier, his staff with operational command-post under Jack Masters, the two defence platoons under me, all detachments of specialists under their appropriate officers, all the transport. The Brigade advance party composed of a detachment from 4/9 Gurkhas in fourteen gliders – two containing bulldozers – had flown in on the previous night.

  I set out from camp with the defence platoons in two gigantic American-style trucks for Tulihal aerodrome at one o’clock. Masters’s final instructions had been never to lose sight of them. I was determined to observe his orders to the letter, but it was easier said than done.

  Dal Bahadur was seething away like an electric kettle – I could feel him discharging his impulses as from an atomic power-generating station – and all the others were manifesting an equally over-activated state of stimulation.

  Excitement flickered about from one to another like liquid lightning, sometimes even alighting on me. I began to doubt my ability to handle such mercurial elements; their volatility was constantly dissolving itself into the atmosphere in clouds of steam.

  On arrival, I settled them down in the assembly area just outside the aerodrome’s wire-fenced perimeter. It was like a POW cage and would serve my purpose admirably. I felt reasonably secure they would never be able to break out of it.

  All our soldiers had been given a bounty of twenty-five silver Burmese rupees. It was meant to buy food or pay for help in the event of their getting separated from the main body. Naturally it was instead being used as stakes for gambling.

  ‘Get out your money,’ I encouraged them, artfully. ‘Get out the marked decks!’

  I was pretty sure that once they had started to gamble with this government subsidy, they would lose all inclination to wander further afield.

  Secure in this treacherous assumption, I retired to a discreet distance where I could covertly observe them, lay down, rested my head on my pack, and went to sleep. After spending half the night propping up Dal Bahadur, it is a wonder I ever woke.

  But I did so, with a start, at about four o’clock and sat up. The area in front of me was deserted. They had vamoosed – completely vanished! In just one hour’s time the whole of the Brigade Headquarters complement were due to be on operational stand-by. I would have been excused if I had panicked.

  I was totally unfamiliar with my surroundings and hardly knew in which direction to look. I hurried to the barrier at the emplaning point. A military policeman was on duty and eyed me sternly. I wasn’t wearing any pips. All identification and badges of rank had been suppressed. Under his scrutiny, I did not feel any more like a hero poised on the eve of an historic battle; I felt like the malefactor he undoubtedly considered me. My courage completely evaporated. I dared not ask him if he had seen my defence platoons: they were not something you could mislay that easily. Shamefacedly I slunk off.

  I ferreted frantically among the Brigade Headquarters remnants instead. There were fragments of detachments without any NCOs, and squads of NCOs without even a fragmented detachment. Everything seethed with a
chaos that one hoped was controlled. The lorries were still arriving, moment by moment, from our outlying camps, bringing the Gurkhas who were to follow us and fly in later in the night. They de-trucked and fell-in to muted, rasping orders. A whiffle of tension rippled round their ranks, which quivered with something akin to hysteria. It gave rise to strange urges, like the desire to laugh immoderately, eat a suet pudding, or otherwise yield uncharacteristically to maniacal compulsions.

  Some soldiers, no doubt began to long for those they loved. I caught sight of Joe Lentaigne in the distance, his steel spectacles glinting in the sun and his false teeth gritting.

  ‘If only,’ I thought inconsequentially ‘I could come upon mine!’

  Young Lawrence hailed me.

  ‘Is anything wrong? You look worried or something! Cheer up! It won’t be long!’

  No, it bloody won’t, I thought, unless I can bloody find them! But all I said was: ‘Lovely night for the fly-in. Nothing wrong!’ I longed to confide in him that, like Bo-Peep, I had lost my sheep, but my self-respect forbade me.

  ‘See you in Burma,’ he shouted back amicably.

  Jack Masters stalked past. His brow was furrowed with concentration and his face was livid. He looked absolutely at the end of this tether and near to collapse.

  What I did not say was: ‘Good evening, sir! Please have you seen the defence platoons? Just a little matter of fifty men!’ Rather, lest he collar me for some unpalatable duty, I averted my head. He put his hand up. I stopped dead. He was muttering something – something about some unfathomable problem of logistics, no doubt – some problem in depth.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ he barked. ‘Let’s have it!’

  ‘I – I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I didn’t catch what you said.’

  ‘A courage never to submit or yield,’ he yelled. ‘And what is more – not to be overcome. Where’s it come from? Where’s it from?’ ‘Training Memorandum No.8,’ I replied promptly. He gave me a sardonic look.