by Brian Mooney
And there it was! It was an amazing object to stumble upon amidst blacked-out jungles in enemy territory. It looked like one of the fiery crosses of the Klu Klux Klan.
It blazed forth so decisively from length to length of its meticulously laid out flight-path that its rows of directional flares and marker beacons must have been visible for miles. Yet not a single enemy interceptor interfered with us. Well done the RAF! They had lured the Japanese Air Force in wrong directions to chase after delusive targets.
With more of these pantomime gestures, the co-pilot made me understand we must continue wheeling overhead. I stationed myself, therefore, at a starboard rear window – it was the inner side of the arc which the plane was circling – and prepared to watch the unfoldment below.
At first, my crystal ball was dark and unintelligible. Within my cloudy spy-glass all was chaos. Only the illuminated landing-strip burned twinkingly like a trail-breaker’s blaze.
As we in the aircraft turned on a tighter and tighter rein, so the attenuated right-angled parallelogram below us which was the strip – more than 1,300 yards in length – appeared to be gyrating giddily under its own impetus as if it were not we who were turning, but it. It was an example of that curious transposition between here and there – between subject and object – which intervenes at periods of tautened sensibility and heightened tension.
Another huge plane cruised menacingly beneath us. It required a positive effort to realize that it was in fact a machine and not some hitherto unidentified species of icktys. Its projecting, encapsulated perspex nose-cone uncannily resembled both beak of bird and bony-plate-with-premaxillary-toothed edge of fish. I should not have been surprised if it had rolled over, exposing a sort, fat, milky underbelly, and gobbled up a piece of bait. It reflected the moonlight metallically and dully. More of like species cruised overhead.
All at once the young co-pilot reappeared. He seemed to have gone off his rocker.
‘This is it! We’re going down. We’re going in.’
The engines choked several times, cut back severely and coughed and spluttered. The plane dropped vertically hundreds of feet in so many seconds, then the propellers bit again and the wings bore her up. Bhim Bahadur turned a livid shade of green and was unashamedly sick. The engines coughed again persistently and this time cut out altogether.
There became visible for the first time, sticking out above the forest, the tops of individual trees. The pilot banked steeply, completely forgetting his promise. As the floor of the cabin swept up and centrifugal force took over, we were all pushed into it. I felt the blood rush to my feet.
I looked down. There was a splendid view of moonlit tree-tops, as we hung suspended. The plane straightened out with a sort of wriggle and the propellers swished. The sound of wind whistling through the emergency landing flaps was shudderingly audible in the silence.
Dead ahead of us opened the strip. We were one hundred feet up and in perfect alignment. Great trees, like splashes of surf on rocks, reached up greedily to grab at us as we shot the rapids. We soared between them on a whisper of wind whistling through ailerons.
The motors started up again with an ear-shattering clatter. The plane responded jerkily but continued downwards with increased speed. Now the trees were no longer below us – we were below them! An immense bough made an intimidating gesture, its massive forearm bared and its fist clenched. One blow in the perspex from that hand would splinter your spectacles! We slithered past it – the plane positively side-stepping – by the skin of our teeth.
Thirty feet up, dropping rapidly. Landing lights flicking past. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten – but she didn’t touch. A band of lights placed across our path raced towards us. They indicated the actual threshold of the strip.
Bump – shock-absorbers telescoping – grind, grind – touch. I could quite clearly hear the pilot applying the brakes. Now the tyres were distinctly rumbling as she settled her weight.
Suddenly the tail came down in a deflating movement and the mules staggered. Dal Bahadur shouldered into his pack and helped me into mine. The landing was complete. I had expected some sensational climax. But everything was so matter-of-fact that we might have been at Croydon Airport in the days of open cockpits and leather flying-helmets.
All the same, there was plenty going on. As we bumped our way off to our deplaning bay, I continued to stare out of the window.
Dakotas were moving about clumsily, manipulating their awkward appendages with elaborate artifice in order not to bump into each other – which, notwithstanding, some of them did. Their motors and propellers were buzzing as angrily as a disturbed hornet’s nest.
Our plane moved with such force over the rough ground that its wings flapped up and down quite visibly. Finally it arrived at its parking place, feathered its propellers, and stopped.
The silence which ensued was quite off-putting. I unlocked the plane doors and we jumped out. In our excitement, we forgot the mules. A little wheezy squeak from within the aircraft attracted my attention. I looked back. It was Agam Singh. At the prospect of being left behind, he had lost his voice.
A guide appeared and demanded to know who we were and directed us to Brigade Headquarters. He said he would bring some planks to disembark the mules; but he failed to return.
In the meantime, we had unhitched them. We backed them out of our stalls and waited patiently for his reappearance. Full of oats, they were in no mood to remain passive. They tore themselves free and leapt to the ground. Heads and tails erect, they cantered away. The last I saw of them was racing across the landing strip with a flash of heels in a split-arse gallop.
Aeroplanes were landing and taking off, one every ninety seconds, the beams of their landing lights cutting swathes through the darkness. At any moment I expected to see one of them collide with my mules, sparking off that much-to-be-dreaded pile-up which could put stop to the whole op. Would they ever come back?
‘Oh, yes sahib,’ insisted Tej Bahadur. ‘They’ll come back just for the companionship.’
Secure in Tej Bahadur’s assurance, I led my little detachment off. I found the other components of Brigade Headquarters Column and reported my arrival. Then I made a tour of inspection to satisfy myself that my small command was operating effectively.
Everything was in apple-pie order. The two havildars, Thaman Bahadur in charge of animal transport and Tuibit Gurung in charge of 3/4 Riflemen, had arrived before me. There wanted only Ganga Bahadur in charge of 4/9 Riflemen. He arrived while I was making my rounds. They got everything going with as much precision as if we were on the parade-ground.
The mules were dispersed and tethered to their picket-spikes – I had to confess shamefacedly to Thaman Bahadur about mine – and the saddles were neatly disposed at the side, while each animal had his nose deep in a feed bag.
The riflemen had scraped out their slit trenches and some were lying beside them already asleep. Two sentries together were on watch in their respective sectors: they were in possession of the password and well practised about when to challenge. They knew whom to arouse as their relief, at what time and where to find him.
Everyone was conversant with the drill in case a general alarm sounded; section fields of fire were laid down properly; the Bren guns were in position; each man was loaded with spare ammunition, six days K-rations (eighteen packs), half a dozen grenades, change of socks, and sleeping blanket and groundsheet.
I congratulated the havildars, told them that stand-to the following morning would be at six, and retired to my bivouac. Dal Bahadur had placed my pack handily and laid out my groundsheet. My blanket was neatly folded at its foot. It looked cleanly – virtuously – inviting. His own bed he had placed a couple of arm-lengths away. I lay down and stretched luxuriously. It seemed the right moment for an exchange of intimacies.
The trees rose up all round us in solemn witness, their boles innocent of branches and beautifully polished. Away on the strip the operation was still going forward under full steam with all the
anguish and anxiety which it entailed, but here, in our little enclave, we seemed momentarily withdrawn from it. The sparse leaves on the teak trees under which we encamped received the full impact of the moonlight, then scattered it, like fairy gold, at our feet.
I lay on my back and gazed though them. One or two stars twinkled – stars that I should come to know intimately, during the months ahead, at every aspect of their rising and setting.
A mosquito droned near me, then disappeared into my ear with a high-pitched shriek. That, too, would become familiar.
I turned over on my side and glanced longingly at Dal Bahadur. He had turned in my direction but I could not distinguish in the darkness whether he was glancing at me. It seemed too blissful a possibility to contemplate. I stretched out my arm towards him coaxingly, my fingers fully extended; but he was beyond my reach.
He did not reciprocate. Probably he had fallen asleep. I, on the other hand, wanted someone to share my enthusiasm with. My heart was dilated with joy and a supreme peace flooded my body. I had achieved my objective. Now the reality was proving more perfect that I could have imagined.
Fireflies were flitting between the tree, pulsing incandescently with their airy impulses. A band of warrior ants discovered a crumb of K-ration I had eaten – it was chopped-pork-and-egg-yolks – and were carrying it off, regardless of the threatening motions of hand and foot.
This was an ecology where nothing would be wasted. Dear, dead body, here you too may return peaceably to your earth! It will receive friend and enemy, native and alien, indiscriminately. It will be a fitting receptacle wherein to deposit this mortal cabinet of nature’s marvels.
Musing thus, I turned restlessly on my back; I threw out a hand. It came warmly in contact with a bunch of fingers. Our fingers crooked compulsively, then intertwined and clutched.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Across the Irrawaddy
We left Chowringhee at eight o’clock on the morning of 10 March. Tej Bahadur’s prediction proved accurate; my runaway mules had returned to me. Brigade Headquarters, together with 30 Column and 40 Column (3/4 Gurkhas), and 94 Column and 49 Column (4/9), all landed safely. Apart from some crashed gliders on the first night, and a few wrecked Dakotas, there had not been a single casualty.
94 Column and 49 Column (called Morrisforce after their Commander, Jumbo Morris) now left us to go east. The rest of us headed towards the Irrawaddy.
In our position immediately to the east of the river we were in the dry zone. At this season of year it was devoid of springs. We did not expect to get a drink. Ambling with patient endurance knee-deep through the layer of fallen leaves which carpeted the area, our mules looked a bit jaded. Their last watering had been on the afternoon of 8 March. As for us humans, our water-bottles and chagals containing extra water were full, but we had been given orders not to drink. The assumption was that something might happen, and we might get trapped here and have to hole-up for an indeterminate period.
It was a strangely cautious attitude to take. In a situation where the more natural reaction would have been to throw caution to the wind, I should have expected a more dashing approach. Indeed we all felt triumphant. Here we were in Burma – after months of training and preparation we had finally made it! This should have resulted in a sense of certitude; and in most of us it did.
The solitary exception was Joe Lentaigne. Marching through the sparse jungle on that first day, with the dry leaves crunching under foot and cicadas trilling, he should have been in his element. But he didn’t look right. His was a mildly pathetic, slightly dispirited figure. You felt sorry for him because he seemed lonely. Gone was the caustic wit, the sardonic comment and the commanding personality. He had become an old man.
At about ten o’clock, as we marched in extended formation through very open jungle, the Japanese planes came over. They passed by at about five thousand feet without giving us a look. They went direct to the strip we had vacated and bombed some of the abandoned gliders. These still contained a few cans of petrol intended as bulldozer fuel, and this the Jap tracer bullets ignited.
Huge columns of black smoke arose and no doubt, from the air, the attack appeared highly successful. It certainly looked realistic to us on the ground.
This incident ought to have proved extremely useful. To a commander in Joe’s position, bent on crossing the Irrawaddy, it should have been a distinct advantage to have the Japanese discover and destroy our landing place. No general in his senses would land a force east of the Irrawaddy when his intention was to operate to the west of it. The Japanese, on this assumption, were bound to expect that our force would be proceeding in the opposite direction, with Morrisforce to the east. This should leave us free to cross the Irrawaddy at our leisure, without molestation; and indeed it did.
Lentaigne, however, did not take this view – or if he did, it failed to modify his prudence. He proceeded in his approach to the river with the old-maidish caution of one who expected something in the nature of the opposition encountered at the Normandy beach-head. As a matter of fact, nothing happened.
Naturally, if simple facts are translated into military jargon and detailed in the style of a sitrep, they inevitably appear rather impressive. You seize this, take possession of that, and consolidate t’other. You send scouts to reconnoitre here, and you push out probing patrols to put pressure on there. In the last analysis, however, all you need do is to march straight to the bloody river and cross it.
It was a mile wide, but so what? Did anybody imagine that the tiny bands of armed Burmans who were reported to be holding Inywa, two miles upstream, and Ma-ugon, two miles downstream, were going to fire off the flintlock fowling pieces they were armed with, in the face of the mighty force confronting them, which had arrived as if by magic from the skies (for they must have heard the Dakotas flying overhead and drawn their own conclusions) – a force with its bombers in close support and its fighter cover, its gliders, its supply drops, and its dozens of powered life-rafts buzzing back and forth? Of course not!
They would have thrown down their arms at once and gone racing off to the nearest Japanese post with the news that the whole British Army was crossing the river, accompanied by squadrons of tanks, armadas of planes, and fleets of river gunboats.
But in spite of anxieties on the part of our commander, some of which filtered through to us, the predominant atmosphere was sanguine. I myself was convinced that our crossing was bound to confound the gloomy prognostications of the pundits.
In the event, the Irrawaddy crossing proved a severe set-back. It was a disappointingly muted beginning in place of bold and aggressive tactics, particularly at the outset of the campaign when we were in real need of success.I put the fault squarely on Lentaigne. Of course I am aware that there were difficulties. I am simply saying that he should have surmounted them.
What we were all waiting for was the opportunity to indulge in some razzmatazz. We were waiting for inspired leadership. We failed to get it. Lentaigne’s decisions turned out to be models of their kind: they were eminently sensible, but they were so insipid that they inspired no-one. The flamboyant gesture was lacking.
We arrived at the river in the late afternoon of 11 March. None of us had drunk any water for thirty hours.
A crackle of musketry from the north indicated that the patrol sent to secure the village of Inywa was in action, but on the bank immediately opposite us all was quiet.
I, personally, was only released from my duties to go and have a drink at half-past six. The defence platoons had been holed up in a warren of sand-dunes and pampas-grass since four o’clock. We were one mile from the river, in open country; the teak jungle had ended one mile further back.
When I gave the word, my Gurkhas went racing down the track to the water like a bunch of children. Dal Bahadur and I followed more sedately, strolling towards the shore like friends walking on a beach. I only just prevented myself holding his hand.
When we arrived within sight of the river, dusk was falling. Th
e air was balmy with those scents of evening which are intensified by expanses of water, and a pearly light illuminated the sand-dunes and was reflected back from them to the sky.
As we descended the path between the clumps of esparto grass and the sounds of gravel, we entered a layer of cooler air which was perceptibly different. Then we sensed the presence of the great river.
‘Come on!’ I said to Dal Bahadur. We started running.
‘There it is,’ he said, arresting his steps and putting his hands to his lips.
It was like the sea.The opposite bank was indistinguishable, for twilight had given place to darkness, and the moon had not yet risen. The river appeared as just a triangle of steely grey between dark dunes opening onto a wide expanse of sandy beach.
Dal Bahadur ran towards it, leaving me behind. Suddenly he disappeared from sight.When I caught up with him, he had reached the water’s edge and fallen on his face to drink. I, too, saw the water, transparent as crystal, rippling enticingly at my feet.
We lapped it up like animals, and drank and rested. The water of that beautiful, pellucid river slipped down my gullet as suavely as syrup. It was so innocuous that I felt I could have waded out into the depths of it and let it flow smoothly over my head.
It had got quite dark. Irradiating the eastern horizon, however, and just tinting the ragged edge of the earth-mass which represented the distant jungle, the moon’s nimbus was faintly discernible.
Groups of Gurkhas were labouring like mad. They were collecting firewood for bonfires to guide in the gliders which were due to touch down that night – in fact, in an hour’s time! They would bring inflatable rubber boats and rafts, outboard motors, fuel oil, mae-west life preservers, ropes, block-and-tackles, and other assorted equipment necessary for making the crossing on the following day.
Warm airs tantalized my heightened sensibility, like hot hands stroking sensitive skin with tormenting caresses. They carried wafts of scent from anonymous villages – at one moment patchouli, at another pig. The intoxicating fragrance of frangipane flowers hung in the air, maddening the sense with irresponsible suggestions.
