Chindit Affair

by Brian Mooney

  ‘Well, you’re wrong this time. It’s not Wingate, it’s Milton – Paradise

  Lost.’

  This brief exchange completely restored my self-confidence, so much so that, as soon as I got back to the assembly area, I found the defence platoons immediately. There they were, boldly confronting me and decorously playing strip-poker – Bhim Bahadur was down to his underpants – and all wearing the blandest expressions. It was an activity that would not have disgraced the Spartans when combing their long hair before the battle of Thermopylae.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ I stormed at them.

  ‘We’ve just been down to the NAAFI, huzoor,’ shouted Havildar Tulbir Gurung. He stank strongly of something suspiciously like methylated spirits.

  ‘But what on earth did you use for money?’

  ‘Oh, it was quite easy,’ piped up Tej Bahadur ingenuously. ‘The soldier-sahibs were getting rid of theirs!’

  At that moment, as if by pre-arranged signal, who should stalk past but Sergeant Barker. He was a tough, Cameronian platoon sergeant with whom I had struck up an improbable acquaintanceship. Upon sight of him, I was granted a gleam of enlightenment. He also smelt strongly.

  ‘Look here, Staff!’ I upbraided him. ‘Wha’ d’ya mean by lushing my men up with all the drink! Don’t ya know we’re emplaning any minute!’ He gave me a furtive, guilty look, but rounded it off with a wicked conspiratorial wink.

  Now at last the sun descended behind Bishenpur village. On the concrete apron, the first Dakotas were warming up. Lights flashed in cockpits and cabins and from the underbellies of fuselages. Across from me, a radio receiver cracked intermittently with pistol-shot static. Near at hand, an RAF technician poured a torrent of Morse through the key of his transmitter – all indications that a communications network of some sort was in operation, despite the fact of radio silence.

  As the last faint glimmer of light faded from the darkening sky, the advance wave of planes took off in a flurry, like a covey of partridges.

  ‘There they go!’ chanted Sergeant Franklin, our Cipher Sergeant, a trifle shrilly.

  As they hurtled down the runway to disappear in the gathering dusk, they reminded me of game-cocks squaring up to fight, and bristling with erectile feathers. The radio static barked abruptly with a superimposed, monitored voice. The moon rose like an over-ripe fruit and set all the dogs barking in Min Hong busti. The frogs in Manipur Lake croaked. A ripple of flute-notes flooded in hauntingly.

  For some people, no doubt, these indications stamped upon the evening simply the quality of its ordinariness; but not for me.

  ‘Shoulder your packs!’ came the order, passed down from man to man. Already we were talking in whispers.

  ‘Put on your packs, defence platoons,’ I repeated. ‘Be ready to move any minute!’

  ‘Ready, sahib!’ ‘Ready, sahib!’

  ‘Ready!’

  Three more planes roared down the runway and took off, their lights morseing madly as they merged into the light of the moon.

  ‘Come on,’ someone said in a hoarse and scarcely recognisable whisper. ‘Let’s get going!’

  We moved forward fumblingly, cautiously treading on each other’s heels. Just before I was led off to the plane with my detachment, Doc Whyte blundered into me.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ he said chummily. ‘You off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He seemed under the influence of some sort of elation.

  ‘What’s up? What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he responded, in a voice purring with satisfaction. ‘Jack’s heard from her – youknow – his girl. She’s had her baby. He’s had a telegram.’

  ‘Are you joking?’ I said disgustedly. ‘I know nothing of the sort.’ I thought the remark was in poor taste, and somewhat coarse. ‘Don’t you know then?’ Doc Whyte demanded incredulously. ‘I don’t know a thing. I’ve never heard of Jack Masters’s girl. I didn’t even know he had one.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, backing away and apologising. ‘I thought you knew. Please forget all about it! Forget I spoke!’

  Which, of course, I did; it was the one and only occasion I ever conceived of Masters as having a private life.

  I did not have much time, however, for trespassing into his personal sphere. The Enplanement Master had got hold of me and was leading me away with my detachment. I could sense Dal Bahadur beside me, panting with controlled excitement like a very loyal but rather frightened puppy. I put out my hand to comfort him. It was intended persuasively, but as an essentially impersonal gesture. Instead he seized on it and returned my pressure convulsively. The whites of his eyes rolled up at me out or the blackness, like china eggs.

  We fanned out onto the runway. It was packed with revving machines in ordered lines. They were all Dakotas, all alike, and their sinister similarity rendered them insectival. They were like warrior wasps or swarming ants. The noise was deafening, the tightly scheduled take-offs terrifying, the lights spectacular. Another triad of planes roared past in a flurry of dust and alternating ‘bleep-bleep’ signals blinking like mythological jewels bleeding from monsters’ heads. The one underneath their bellies reminded you of a winking orifice.

  In the midst of this flaming confusion it was irritating to notice that our guide still loyally persisted in directing the beam of his modest flashlight meekly to the ground. Could it have been the relic of some outdated ARP technique?

  Overhead, sporadically distinguishable between the roaring take-offs and the revving machines, could be heard the drone of our fighter cover.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I turned anxiously to my Gurkhas, for it was enough to put the fear of God up anybody.

  ‘Yes, sahib. We’re fine!’

  ‘Not feeling too excited?

  ‘No, sahib. It’s like Dussehra (a Gurkha festival). Who would have thought the Sircar (the Government) had so many planes!’

  Weaving in this manner between the sardine-packed transports and the whirling propellers, we arrived at our aircraft and scrambled into it. It was done without any ceremony and even less dignity.

  The mules were already in position. They were right forward of the cabin with their noses up against the flight-deck bulkhead. A small space had been reserved there to accommodate a mule-holder. I was comforted to see them stabled so conveniently.

  I was not so comforted by the sight of Agam Singh doing duty as the mule-holder detailed to kill them if they showed an inclination to panic. He was carrying a loaded sten-gun with its safety-catch released. As I went up to inspect the arrangements, he pointed it straight at me.

  ‘Here, comrade, give me that gun! I’ll give it back to you when you get down on the ground. You’re not going to need it, anyway. Look!’ I pointed to the mules. ‘They’re as docile as kittens. Now listen to me! Instead of playing about with lethal weapons, get out the nosebags. Have you got them ready? Good. As soon as the pilot starts up his engine and they begin to get restless, give them their feed. Watch me. I’ll give you the signal. Do you understand?’ ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘Sorry about the gun. I can’t have you waving it all over the place, though. Suppose you shot the pilot – that would be a pity!’ ‘Yes, sahib.’

  Everyone giggled at my sally, but it is always a chancy business confiscating a rifleman’s weapon. It is like taking a bone away from a bloodhound – they don’t like it.

  ‘Now return to your places. You can take off your packs. It will be at least one and a half hours’ flight. I suggest you all have a nap.’

  The outside doors slammed and we were isolated within the insulated compartment. The pilot opened the communicating door between the flight-deck and the main cabin and peered under the mules’ necks.

  ‘Take-off in five minutes! I’ve had the go-ahead from control. Are you all right? There’ll be no problems. Perfect flying conditions.’ He apprehended my anxious glance towards the mules. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take it ever so steady. No steep banking turns.’

  ‘Thanks.’<
br />
  The communicating door banged. Presently the port, then the starboard engine, coughed and spluttered into life. Agam Singh, feeding bags in hand, looked at me interrogatively.

  ‘No … er … not yet.’

  The engines increased their tempo and the plane vibrated violently. The mules didn’t even twitch. Perhaps they were deaf. Suddenly the brakes were released, the chocks came away from the wheels, and she moved forward. She bumped inelegantly towards the take-off point. Then she turned round and faced down the runway. As the pilot throttled back on the engines and reduced the revs, I could hear him talking laconically to the control tower over his radio in some incomprehensible jargon which might even have been a code.

  I managed to find a free window and fastened on to it, but could see nothing but fields. We were at the end of the runway and right out in open country. It looked as blank and drained of subject as a Taoist painting. The soft mist rising from the lake provided a warm background of woven silk.

  Suddenly the pilot opened up with full throttle and the plane bucketed.

  ‘Now!’ I said to Agam Singh, making soothing movements with my hands. He couldn’t hear me but he understood. He began administering the feed as I had told him.

  My strategy worked. The mules withdrew their attention from their surroundings and transferred it to the bottom of their nosebags where there were crushed oats.

  Now the plane began to inch tentatively forward. We were off! We looked at each other speculatively. Even the normally unimpressionable Gurks relaxed their stolid expressions.

  Gathering speed, we ripped down the runway. Landing-beacons whipped by – flick – flick – flick! We roared past the administrative buildings: darkened barracks; assembled aircraft; flashing blips! Out into open country again: pervading moonlight; pearly mist!

  Suddenly the nose came up and the mules staggered. They pawed the floor of the compartment, then recovered, but did not interrupt their munching. My stomach jumped into my mouth and Dal Bahadur gulped. I could tell we were almost airborne by the decreased rumble of the wheels. Then it happened. The swimmy feeling which comes of being entirely unsupported by earth is unmistakable.

  The engines surged, the propellers bit. The craft swooped smoothly on a swell of buoyancy like a ship. One wing-tip dipped slightly. She soared into the sky under the impulse of her powerful propulsion.

  Everybody aboard the plane let out a heartfelt sigh of relief. No matter how blasé one might have been, it was impossible to remain indifferent. The only creatures who had shown no sign of emotion during the long build-up were the mules. Now they made an exception. They signalized their appreciation of our being airborne by raising their tails and blowing off two or three whispery farts each, then defecating. It was their only sign of nervousness during the entire flight.

  Take a plane-load of young soldiers. Fly them away on a suicide mission, their destination unfamiliar to them. Melt two of them together emotionally. Whip into a froth of expectancy. Add a pinch of pure panic. Such was the memorable mixture. Then serve with full moon at an altitude of ten thousand feet.

  Thus much was on the menu. The banquet itself, however, surpassed in excellence every expectation.

  The lilac-tinted sky flamed fiercely with an amazing combination of mauves and pinks. The moon had risen and, eclipsing all the stars, shone down on mountain and river. Venus was diamond bright on the western horizon. Our flimsy crate, chugging her way eastwards on her three hundred and thirty-third mission, seemed an impertinent interloper within this sacred purlieu.

  Occasionally, the crazy kite surged, skating sideways down the slope of an air-swell and cresting aside some spray of turbulence. At other times she would rise unpremeditatedly several feet, before dropping vertically like a stone for an unpredictable distance. Such lapses, however, were infrequent.

  Even the mules were on their best behaviour. Not once did they neglect lifting their tails. The homely stink of stables with which they saturated the place completely neutralized that penetrating smell of hot lubricant and mineral petroleum which permeates the cabins of military aircraft and effectively distinguishes them from the civilian.

  Every so often, the co-pilot – an insignificant young man not in keeping with the occasion’s dignity – popped his head through the communicating door and explained, above the engines roar, various facts which he thought I ought to become acquainted with, and he continued to keep me informed of our progress.

  ‘We’re still over Imphal,’ he reported upon his first appearance. ‘That’s Tulihal aerodrome down there.’

  As I turned to get up every time he beckoned me and thrust my head between the mules’ rumps in order to hear him, I did not have much chance of seeing what he indicated, for by the time I had got to the windows in the forward part of the compartment the view was blocked by the plane’s wing. I have never liked looking downwards anyway, for it gives me attacks of vertigo. I contented myself, therefore, with assuming an intelligent expression and murmuring ‘Oh, really!’ in an apparently interested voice – although the tone was irrelevant, since he had to read the remark from my lips.

  However we had been flying for at least ten minutes and according to my calculations we should already have been halfway to our destination.

  My face must have expressed my dissatisfaction. The young man made circling movements with his hands to illustrate his point.

  ‘We climb – we gain altitude – get over mountains.’ He indicated a great height.

  ‘Uh huh!’ I acknowledged, sullenly. ‘Soon start east.’

  ‘You like flyee?’ The difficulty of communicating had finally forced him into a sort of verbal shorthand resembling pidgin English. ‘Me like flyee velly much!’

  Suddenly, from my position in the centre of the aircraft, poised at the mules’ rumps, I caught a glimpse of Venus. She was cruising magisterially across a window’s aperture. Then, of a truth, I realized we were circling, hence the obviously climbing.

  I returned to my place near the tail. Apart from the splashes of moonlight across the sprawling soldiers, it was dark in the cabin. We were flying without lights. I found Dal Bahadur and settled down beside him. I waited until the moonbeam had wheeled past me, then rested my arm on his thigh. My hand I let hang loosely between his legs. Presently he stirred restlessly and I caught the gleam of white teeth within wet lips. The warmth of his body burnt through the stuff in his trousers, kindling likewise my flesh. He lifted up his face to me in the half-light and whispered – I put my ear close to his mouth – ‘No, sahib. Not this.’

  I snatched away my hand, mortified by his indifference.

  Presently he gave me a hefty, un-lover-like dig in the ribs. I bent forward to peer out of the window. He leant back and reclined momentarily on my breast. My hand was within inches of achieving its objective but I did not dare move it that inch. We gazed spellbound below us, my cheek responding ardently to his cheek.

  Blue flames were spurting from the exhaust of the starboard motor and discharging themselves through violet to mauve, then finally red. I could see the starboard propeller on the leading wing-edge revolving like a transparent disc. On a surge of turbulence, the craft suddenly tilted. The moon swam out from underneath the wing-tip and hung there like a globule of melting butter. Beneath us in the darkness, the hills and jungles were indistinguishable except as an impression of velvetiness. Away in the distance a huge gash throbbed redly. It was like a banked fire through hot ash. The pilot altered course to bring us over it. It was a gigantic jungle conflagration burning unchecked. It was spanning tens of square miles and devouring hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. Even from this altitude you could see the individual trees going up like torches while their resinous sap exploded and the smell of flaming turpentine invaded the aircraft and even overcame the smell of the mule-dung. Dal Bahadur and I watched it mutely. The plane forged mercilessly ahead.

  The insignificant young man appeared and beckoned, and I obeyed his behest. This time I proved co
mpletely incapable of comprehending him. Obediently I bobbed and grinned and nodded, and he seemed perfectly satisfied. I returned to place my cheek against Dal Bahadur’s.

  Quite by chance I glanced casually out of the window. What I saw struck me like an electric shock. We both spotted it at once. There, right below us, clove the mighty Chindwin between mountain and forest.

  The flight offered us no sight more majestic. Even the sleepy Gurks seemed instinctively to appreciate it, for they strove somnambulistically against their sluggishness and sat up. Soon they, too, were pressing their face to the window-panes and the young co-pilot, as if he were personally responsible, was bobbing and bowing like a hired conjuror. Not even the mile-wide Irrawaddy was able to compare with it. By the time we sighted her we should have arrived at our destination and would have begun shouldering into our packs.

  ‘There it is!’ the co-pilot shouted. ‘There it is!’

  For some time my consciousness had been informing me of a loss of height. Only a couple of minutes previously we had crossed the Irrawaddy. It looked so big that I was convinced it was only just beneath us, and that I could see waves on it.

  ‘Is that the river we’ve got to cross?’ Dal Bahadur had queried.

  ‘That’s it. Yes.’

  I knew we must be approaching our objective. Finally the co-pilot shouted a third time. He made it sound breath-catching, evocative, almost exultant. It conjured up in me the same sort of response as those other traditional formulae used to: ‘Land ho!’, ‘There she blows!’ or ‘Breakers ahead!’

  I reacted to it in the traditional fashion. I leapt to my feet. But there was nothing to see. The co-pilot was referring, of course to Chowringhee. Yet when we all rushed to the starboard windows to capture this early glimpse of our landing strip, it had disappeared. Our entire ship’s complement rushed to the port side. A buried memory from small-boat-sailing about capsizing a craft by doing just this resurrected itself, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the plane’s stability.