Chindit Affair

by Brian Mooney

  The moon rose. It hung low in the east-south-east, bisected by an ominous zeppelin-shaped cloud like flying saucer. A gigantic oyster-coloured halo surrounded it, illuminating the southern hemisphere right up to the zenith. It promised sultry conditions and high humidity for the next day.

  A flicker of summer lightning played far to the west of us, over the range of mountains beyond which flows the Chindwin and where stand the frontiers of India. It was strange to think that over there a huge storm was raging, just as ferocious in its intensity as the Japanese offensive then being launched against Imphal; whereas here, which ought to have been the centre, things seemed rather quiet. As yet, however, we were not aware of that action.

  This was the night of 11 to 12 March. All I was aware of was that the air hummed intoxicatingly like a drunken bee in the bell of a flower. The planes turned up overhead punctually at eight.

  Lentaigne was down at the spit discussing with Frankie Turner the probabilities of the mules swimming the river. Chesty Jennings was on the spit talking down the Dakota tugs before they released the gliders. Briggo was on the spit talking to Air Base, and his Signals Sergeant was talking to Rear Headquarters on another radio. The air hummed with radio signals.

  Jack Masters was on the spit handing out messages for Briggo to dispatch, and Rhodes Jones was on the spit coding-up the radio messages which Masters was handing out. Doc Whyte was on the spit, attending to the evacuation of some sick Gurkhas who were going to be sent out later that night by snatch-glider. Dal Bahadur and I were on the spit, watching.

  The fires were lit. They blazed up instantly. Surrounded by groups of soldiers looking like Walpurgis Night celebrants, they might have been honouring some archaic god – indeed the god of our own far-flung battle-line.

  Pile on more palm and pine, Ghan Bahadur! The conflagration must not die down! More timber – more tinder!

  The conjuration succeeded. We were granted a manifestation of eagles. A glider wooshed out of the sky like a great bird, and swished low overhead with a rush of wind through wings. We all ducked as if it were coming specifically at us.

  A second glider followed a few seconds later. They coasted down-river together unconcernedly, with all the condescension of superior creatures, and ended up two thousand yards downstream, and well beyond the terminus of our signal fires demarcating the landing area. This was the first of those difficulties which I mentioned earlier. The second was, of course, that the mules refused to swim.

  The failure of the gliders to touch down in the target area was due to a layer of warm air created by the bonfires. The fires attracted a contrary current of inward flowing air from the opposite direction which, contrary to all aerodynamic predications, kept the gliders airborne.

  It was an example of how chance can confound the most expert planning. It was an absolute disaster. It meant that all the heavy equipment which the gliders carried would have to be dragged manually or by mules up-river to the point chosen for the crossing.

  Everybody was dumbfounded. Presently, however, I heard Jack Masters. He was speaking in hushed tones, but matter-of-factly and in a way which injected confidence.

  ‘You’ll have to harness up the mules – mumble, mumble – and that’s all there is to it – mumble, mumble – muster all the men and let’s start dragging the equipment to the crossing point – mumble, mumble – of course it can be done – mumble, mumble – anyway, it’ll have to be!’

  ‘Come on!’ I said to Dal Bahadur, taking his arm and twisting it playfully behind him. ‘You’ve done enough for tonight. You’re off duty. Go back and tell Thaman Bahadur and Ganga Bahadur and Tulbir Gurung to bed the men down. We’ll have a hard day tomorrow. I am going to help the cipher-sahib decode signals. You can find me at the signals bivouac.’

  All ranks laboured back-breakingly through the rest of that night. By dawn the work was nearly completed.

  During those long, tedious hours of travail, I had consoled myself with the thought that the defence platoons were enjoying a reposeful and refreshing sleep. Wrong again!

  They were too excited, and too frightened of missing something good, to take any rest. They had refused to obey me. Without my knowledge they had trooped down to the river and laboured with 30 Column and 40 Column in dragging the equipment from the overshot gliders and back up to the crossing point. It hadn’t been work to you, had it, you naughty deceitful little boys? You don’t mislead me – you are only masquerading! You aren’t soldiers at all! You are only here for the fun of it! It is just a game!

  At two o’clock in the morning the Dakotas returned to snatch off the gliders. It was the most extraordinary sight. A stationary glider at rest on the ground was snatched into the air by a Dakota flying immediately above it by means of a sort of clothes-line contraption erected over the glider and a boom-and-hook lowered from the tug. The glider reached a velocity of eighty miles per hour from zero in one and a half seconds.

  I perfectly appreciated that the defence platoons would never have forgiven me if my orders had caused them to miss such a marvel, for it certainly verged on the miraculous.

  And verging on the miraculous, too, was the voyage of the first two assault boats. Finally assembled and driven by huge outboard motors, they chugged from the comparative calm of the moon-drenched beaches into the middle of the stream. Each boat was towing two others. They were crammed with soldiers, bristling with weapons, and armed to the teeth. We watched while they were caught, and momentarily arrested, by a temporary whirlpool. The high cliff of the opposite bank began to announce itself as a prominent feature. In the uncertain light of morning it did not look scaleable, even with ladders.

  Three fighter-bombers swooped over and attempted to sever the telephone line running along it. It was imperative to get this link cut early in the proceedings before the enemy could receive precise information about what we were doing.

  When the bombs failed to achieve an effect, the leader lowered his undercarriage. Flying at zero feet, he severed it with his wheels.

  Soon a red Very light floated into the turquoise sky with the slow trajectory of a Roman candle. It signified that the assault boats had landed. They had deposited the soldiers, who had taken up position. There had been no opposition.

  It was all done according to the best traditions of Camberley and Quetta syndicates. It would have been awarded high marks by any Staff College examiner. It also got high marks for aesthetics, for it was singularly beautiful.

  The only thing wrong with it was that, if you are a good commander, you know automatically where the enemy is – that is, if your reflexes and intuitions are working correctly. If you don’t know where the enemy is, then your reflexes and intuitions are not working correctly and you remain stuck within some conventional Staff College conception, which is where Joe Lentaigne found himself.

  The fact that very few people make good commanders or use that intuition – being apparently unaware that such a faculty exists – does not invalidate my criticism.

  Lentaigne could have gone straight ahead with his river crossing without the fiddle-faddle of the Very lights. And, instead of consenting to the fighter-pilots endangering their Mustangs and their lives by cutting the telephone wire on the further bank in that dramatic manner (for all that it was a spectacular sight), he could have allowed our advance party in the assault boats to do it with a step-ladder and a pair of rose-clippers!

  I made my own crossing in the company of Jack Masters and Doc Whyte at about mid-day. By that time it was evident that our crossing was a failure. Apart from the fact that initially several of our outboard motors failed to start, owing to some mechanical defect or other, what really put paid to the thing was that our mules would not start either. We could get the men across by one means or another. The mules we completely failed to persuade. They would not follow the boats and we could not get them across in sufficient numbers to justify calling the operation a success. Many of them did get as far as mid-stream but at that point they lost courage and tur
ned back.

  The immediate prospect was bleak. A column without its transport was inoperable. It meant it would be without its three inch mortars, its heavy machine guns, its reserves of ammunition, its explosives, its demolition set, its medical supplies and its radio transmitters, all of which depended on mules.

  By one o’clock of that day (12 March) the entire crossing should have been complete. In actual fact, although most of 30 Column were over with the men and equipment, less than one fifth of the mules had made it. 40 Column had not even started to cross and was still holed up on the other side.

  A decision had to be arrived at and was accordingly made: 30 Column’s crossing was to be completed by 1500 hrs, and that of Brigade Headquarters Column with as many mules as could be managed. After that, no further movement across the river was to be initiated. 40 Column would be abandoned on the eastern bank. They would return the way they had come and join Morrisforce, now a good two days march east of Chowringhee, or four days march east of our present position – in other words, eighty miles away.

  I personally have always thought this decision was a mistake. Lentaigne should have been prepared to accept the risks involved (which were of being discovered, pin-pointed and followed), and should have made a further attempt to get 40 Column across on the following day. But, the decision having been made, it was implemented. 40 Column slipped away.

  Mercifully we of Brigade Headquarters and 30 Column had managed to get enough mules across the river to carry our essential equipment and radio sets. We were able to ask for a supply drop and replenish. But it would never have been accomplished without Mike MacGillicuddy.

  All during that forenoon I had been watching with mounting admiration the antics of this fascinating young officer of 30 Column. His behaviour, as morning wore on into noon and it got hotter and hotter became more outrageous and more extravagant.

  He was an excellent horseman and, riding now a pony, now a mule, he drove his mounts at the water and swam them across the river, at this point flowing at more than six miles per hour and covered with heaps of water-hyacinth which the mules mistook for islands and frequently, and with disastrous results, tried to mount.

  His example soon encouraged others. Presently he was heading a group of Gurkhas, all good horsemen and excellent swimmers. Riding a very trustworthy female mule of Brigade Headquarters complement who later became a general favourite, he plunged into the stream. His Gurkhas plunged in after him. They seemed to trust MacGillicuddy’s leadership. There is no doubt that their instinct was correct.

  The Gurkhas leapt onto their mounts and, riding them recklessly bareback, pressed relentlessly towards deeper water. Suddenly there would be a strangled gulp (all the animals had been devocalised), and they would be swept off their feet. MacGillicuddy and his men would slip soundlessly form their backs into the water and, clinging to a mane or a tail and fearlessly indifferent to the flailing hooves and flashing teeth, would swim in the water alongside them. The current then bore them downstream.

  Assault boats laden with equipment chugged past like dirty British coasters. Others, more impudent, would skate past MacGillicuddy, their helmsmen running rings round him, while some of them offered him a carrot.

  MacGillicuddy did not take offence. Gradually everyone shed more and more clothing. It wasn’t long before MacGillicuddy’s boys rode their mounts entirely naked. In their excitement, they completely abandoned their traditional modesty. They tossed away their langotis (loincloths) and strutted in front of all ranks in unabashed splendour.

  I could never have imagined such an exception to the generally prevailing Gurkha prudery as being possible. It was quite a tribute to MacGillicuddy’s remarkable influence. Mother naked as they were born, their cock-and-balls crumbled sideways by the withers of the horses and looking like a fragment of Praxitelean sculpture from the pediment of the Parthenon, they rode their mules at the river. Their shouts and cries of enthusiasm rang echoingly across the water.

  ‘Why are you showing off like this?’ I ungenerously upbraided MacGillicuddy, when we briefly encountered each other in an interval of the action. I had never previously met him and didn’t know him from Adam. It was genuine diabolical envy, therefore, which prompted such a spontaneous outburst of professional jealousy.

  He looked rather surprised.

  ‘Well, someone’s got to do it. You’re not a fool. You can see for yourself what it’s like.’ He nodded cursorily towards the river.

  I gazed at it with new eyes. I had been regarding the scene from the point of view of an amateur – as something amusing and piquant for my personal gratification. Now I looked at it militarily.

  MacGillicuddy was right. Mules and men who had unsuccessfully essayed the crossing and been driven back by the current were crawling out of the water all down the eastern bank. They were the passengers of those boats which had broken down in mid-stream. They made the shore look like a sea-beach after the catastrophe of some gigantic shipwreck.

  Deserted life-rafts and abandoned radio transmitters proliferated for five miles down-river, beside which some hapless study of a forlorn signaller sat, mourning the drifting boats and coils of rope, the bobbing mae-wests and spinning Gurkha hats. I looked out over the sparkling waves and downstream at the scene which had seemed so animated, and was overcome with a sense of hopelessness.

  ‘Why don’t you come in too?’ MacGillicuddy said, not unkindly.

  ‘I can’t swim at all well,’ I replied, while tears of mortification welled into my eyes at my inadequacy.

  ‘All, well,’ he said, slipping away like an eel, ‘another time!’

  I felt cross and fractious from loss of sleep, and as for MacGillicuddy – I decided that I hated him.

  When it was over and we sat, huddled and despondent, on the western bank, the cold tropical evening descended on us and cooled the sweat trickling down our backs and chests. I felt giddy from weariness, self-disgust, disease and a sense of deprivation. Dal Bahadur crouched at my side. His head loosely lolled against my shoulder. He was sleeping on his

  feet.

  When Jack Masters gave the sign to advance, we started. In the fast fading twilight, we moved from the river. We harboured in a dense reentrant running down from the Gangaw Hills. It was over them and to the westward that lay our theatres of operations and our concentration point – our rendezvous on 24 March with the Cameronians and King’s own.

  Jack Masters was the only one who remained awake that night. He was at work composing the signal which called for our first supply drop two days later. Everyone else dropped insensibly to sleep.

  But, if things looked unduly depressing to my jaundiced eye, prejudiced by fatigue and blunted by over-facile enthusiasms, it is well to remember that the preceding day was the occasion of Wingate’s jubilant Order of the Day dated 11 March.

  Moreover on 12 March – the particular day on which we had crossed the Irrawaddy – Wingate availed himself of his right to communicate with Churchill and sent him a sitrep. It informed the Prime Minister that twelve thousand Chindits were within fifty miles of Indaw.

  The precise details, when broken down into their components, were something like this: 77 Brigade had landed at Broadway and established a stronghold and airship sufficiently well organized to accommodate a squadron of Spitfires. These were successful in beating off a heavy Japanese air attack by thirty planes the following day (13 March).

  Brigadier Calvert of 77 Brigade was marching with a force of five columns to establish a subsidiary stronghold near the railway station of Mawlu. It would permanently hold up all railway traffic from Katha and Indaw through to Myitkyina. The stronghold later came to be called White City on account of the thousands of supply parachutes caught in the trees which made it visible from the air for miles.

  111 Brigade was crossing the Irrawaddy and moving to cut Wuntho-Indaw communications – something which they achieved by blowing up a large railway bridge on 24 March.

  Morrisforce were moving east to cu
t Bhamo-Mandalay communications. And 16 Brigade, Wingate informed Churchill, was entering the Meza Valley where they would establish a stronghold and fully operational airstrip near a place on the map called Taungle (later to be known as Aberdeen), before continuing on their way to attack Indaw.

  Wingate concluded: ‘Enemy completely surprised. Situation most promising if exploited.’

  It was true. Moreover, these dispositions made it possible for us to make up our deficiencies and to receive reinforcements with total facility. Those most valuable of all our necessities which (unlike three-inch mortars, reserve ammunition, or radio sets) could not be dropped to us by parachute – namely, mules – could be flown by powered transport planes straight to Stronghold Aberdeen and marched to us. Seven hundred Dakota sorties were flown in and out of Aberdeen in eight weeks.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Gangaw Hills

  Youth is so sanguine – all its cares are put to rights by a good rest!

  On the following morning, the Brigade awoke like a giant refreshed. Joe Lentaigne, I regret to say, did not show the same resilience. During our march across the Gangaw Hills his health had deteriorated quite considerably.

  The ostensible cause of this illness could be diagnosed with exactitude. He drank some contaminated water and ‘got the shits’. The deterioration of his morale, however, was of a more complicated and psychological nature. The process whereby a human being loses his vitality, and hence his hold on life, is not explicit. It seems to spring from depths beyond superficial observation and beyond control by the intellect.

  Lentaigne’s slide had started immediately after we landed in Burma. I had earlier had suspicions about him – he seemed just a little bit too larger-than-life to be entirely authentic – but the reason for his failure at this particular juncture remains unclear.