by Brian Mooney
Here is a rarity; this one spins! Listen! All around you, dry leaves the size of dinner plates and as brittle as biscuit are falling nervelessly. Can’t you hear them – eternal shedding of waste tissue, perpetual autumn in high summer, interminable fall of dead leaf from skeletal trees? They drift down all round you as determinedly as if dominated by a motivating intelligence.
A tiny breath of air starts circulating stubbornly. All the crisping leaves on the near-naked trees throw up their little flippers and turn over vulnerably. For a moment the jungle comes alive with their movement.
Now, as if in culmination to such climatic effort, they collapse. You can hear them pattering down all round you like the rattle of buckshot. Do you think our Father in heaven is aware of the fall of every leaf as he is aware of the fall of every sparrow?
Now at last we came to that mountain stream. We had all been sternly forbidden, during our year of training, to drink any water that was remotely suspect. That was all very well, of course, in Lalitpur and the Central Provinces, where a refreshing water-truck was never far distant. Here, however, in the Gangaw Hills, I think we realized that the time had come to modify such precepts.
We were all dying of thirst; our water bottles and chagals were empty; and here was this delicious freshet coursing happily over the rocks.
‘Well, what shall we do then? Shall we drink it?’
Everyone looked at Doc Whyte. A little bit of conversation ensued – to make things look as if we were deliberating rationally and hadn’t simply come to a decision unilaterally out of an inability to endure thirst – but it was plain what we intended. We were merely talking ourselves round the situation before talking ourselves into it.
Doc Whyte summarized the orthodox position most efficiently. This was to the effect that the water would almost certainly be contaminated in spite of its sparkling aspect and the fact that we were quite high in altitude. He pointed out that it was a big stream and thus must have already travelled a considerable distance from its rising and that the only way to ensure absolute purity was to drink from a spring at its source. It only needed, he said, one herdsman, hunter, or high-level cultivator to squat down beside it and have a crap and the natural systems of dew and drainage would do the rest.
Having said this, and fulfilled his obligations satisfactorily, he got down on his knees with evident satisfaction and had a long drink. We all followed suit enthusiastically.
Within twenty-four hours we had the ‘shits’.
Yet Doc Whyte undoubtedly did the right thing. You can’t keep your body immaculate while wallowing in a mud bath, and it was pretty evident that sooner or later we should have to abandon all those clinical customs which are admirable for inculcating habits of cleanliness and discipline in recruits, but which in action are tedious. This was one of them.
Drinking contaminated water was a circumstance we had to go through and get inoculated against in order to put ourselves in a similar position to the locals. It would mean that we would all have dysentery more or less permanently, for it is very difficult to eradicate, but it ought not to incapacitate us. However, it did incapacitate Joe Lentaigne.
At first it was a bit of a joke, but gradually we were forced to admit that it was a serious problem. Yet such is the nature of the military establishment and its etiquette that, although all officers of the Brigade Headquarters were painfully conscious that Lentaigne was sick, they forbore communicating a single word about it to anybody, even among themselves. However he was forced to ride a horse.
Eventually he became so ill that he stopped wearing his false teeth. Such a circumstance always indicates that a man has plummeted to his lowest. In my experience, old and sick people seldom surrender like this except when they are near death. Lentaigne however, was only forty-six. Yet it soon became plain to me that unless he could be got out, he was going to die.
At that time the nature of what was affecting him was quite incomprehensible to me. It could not, however, remain a mystery much longer. After our first enthusiasms had worn off and the hardships of the campaign really began to bite, such illnesses became a comparatively accepted phenomenon. Lentaigne was simply the first and the most illustrious of our number to take that loose slippery slide down the long hill slope, the nadir of which was a surrender to inanition. Later in the campaign, in exactly the same manner but under more adverse conditions, I would witness hundreds of other soldiers similarly approaching death – namely, by inches – unless reprieved by being taken out of the front line and away from the demanding responsibilities of putting their own lives and those of their comrades at hazard.
I watched and waited, therefore, with frantic curiosity to see how Jack Masters would respond to this crisis. I wondered whether he would resolve the delicate problem by initiating a palace revolution.
On 21 March we crossed the Wuntho-Indaw railway. It ran, in that place, through the dense jungle. I don’t think there was the slightest chance of meeting a live Jap. All the same, it was frightfully weird stepping out of the dark woods onto a track of rails and sleepers. By now the furtiveness and secrecy of our progress had penetrated deep into our souls and contact with any of civilisation’s mechanisms seemed positively peculiar – even a bit creepy.
Masters and Lentaigne were busy sending scouts reconnoitring here and pushing probing patrols out there, and everything hummed with the promise of battle. As a prelude, Geoffrey Birt went off and demolished a railway bridge.
The Cameronians and King’s Own arrived and, while their column commanders were reporting to Lentaigne, I managed to wangle a chin-wag with some of my mates. Sergeant Barker described an engagement near Banmauk in which we had killed a score of Japs for three or four of our own, and in the evening Geoffrey Birt returned and reported that one whole span of the bridge, about one hundred feet long, had been demolished.
The initial, preparatory phase of the undertaking was over.
CHAPTER NINE
A Change of Plan
I was on duty with the ciphers late one afternoon. We were crouched together, huddled away from Brigade Headquarters command-post down a tiny back-alley, far away from the splendour of the principal administrative offices and the Presidential Palace. We were Rhodes James, Sergeant Franklin, a cipher corporal whose name I cannot remember, and I.
Briggo’s radio receivers and transmitters were set up for convenience not very far away. Their antennae, aligned upon a correctly calculated compass-bearing to trap signals from Rear Headquarters two hundred miles distant, were strung between two trees. The little generator-motor for recharging the batteries was discreetly chugging and Dal Bahadur had just considerately brought me a brimming mess-tin filled with delicious hot sweet tea.
Every so often the signal orderlies – riflemen from the defence platoons who had to perform this fatigue in rotation just as I had to work at a session de-coding or encoding ciphers – trotted obediently back and forth between radio sets and us, or between us and Brigade Headquarters command-post, bearing the flimsies – bits of the appropriate message-pad, Army Form K-2L0/4536-DJ (for yes, bureaucracy reached as far as the interior of Burma and even the ranks of the Chindits were not exempt) upon which the signals were written. It was a scene of perfect domestic peace.
Quite a lot of messages were coming in – acknowledgements of our sendings, sitreps, weather reports, intelligence details of Jap dispositions. They were all graded according to a certain priority and those with the highest priority were naturally decoded first. Sergeant Franklin was sorting through them and putting them in their appropriate order. Now he uttered an encoded grunt – and began feverishly thumbing through his code-book.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s unusual. We don’t often get this priority.’ He licked the stump of his pencil.
‘Well go on!’ I said, exasperated by his reticence. ‘Embroider on it! You don’t ordinarily miss such an opportunity!’
He pursed his lips. ‘I’ve never seen it used except for A1 information.
’
‘Let me see it, please, Sergeant!’ ordered Rhodes James.
Franklin handed over the slip for Rhodes James to scrutinize. ‘He’s right,’ he said, giving me a funny look.
Sergeant Franklin got to work with his code-books. Suddenly, out of the blue, he displayed the most remarkable example of intuition.
‘General Wingate’s dead,’ he announced in a sepulchral voice. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I don’t need to de-code it. I know. Wingate’s dead! We’ll never get out of here. Never. Who’s going to look after us? We’re done for!’
It must have been one of the most remarkable tributes Wingate ever had. Rhodes James snatched the flimsy from Franklin’s nerveless fingers and began to work on it, writing down the words as they came. I shall never forget watching as the critical message unfolded: ‘General Wingate killed in air-crash – Lentaigne fly out immediately – assume command force.’
Lentaigne was reprieved after all. With the message announcing Wingate’s death came another, announcing a change of plan.
Our present operations had been designed to assist Stilwell’s penetration from the north by destroying Jap road and rail communications in the neighbourhood of Indaw. Now, however, with the Japanese offensive against Imphal in full swing, it was intended that we transfer from assisting Stilwell on the northern front, to assisting Fourteenth Army’s Corps on the Manipur front. We were ordered to abandon our harassment of north-south communications and to concentrate on harassing east-west communications.
The area chosen for our new location was in and around Pinlebu. This was a small town, about forty-five miles north-west of our present position, occupying an important place in the Japanese lines of communication to the Manipur front at Imphal and Kohima. It was ideally suited to our purpose, being packed with supplies which would burn beautifully, yet manned by second-grade line-of-communications troops such as pay-clerks and quarter-masters who could be easily terrorized by surprise attacks.
We recalled our columns, cancelled their planned ambushes and demolitions and marched to a flat bit of paddy where we flew out Lentaigne.
Whew! What a relief! Now we could expect a bit of action.
Intensely curious about the succession, I approached Jack Masters to find out what was the position. Without prevarication, he told me. Lieutenant Colonel ‘Jumbo’ Morris, our most senior man with the best right to the position, was to command 111 Brigade with the rank of Brigadier. As he was now one hundred and forty miles to the east of the Irrawaddy commanding three independent columns operating in the Sinlumkaba Hill Tracts, he was obviously not going to do much commanding of 111 Brigade to the west of the river. But, just in case he should commandeer a light plane and come hurrying back to take over our forces, he was expressly ordered to stay put. In fact, he was offered the rank of Commander but was positively forbidden to exercise command – in other words, his promotion was an empty gesture.
That part of 111 Brigade operating to the west of Irrawaddy was to be commanded by Masters. No doubt Lentaigne – for he had originated the orders – thought he was being extremely clever. To me, on the contrary, they appeared to be nothing but a typical piece of old-fashioned military window-dressing – something which we young officers who were not members of the traditional hierarchy were trying desperately to get away from.
Why the hell Lentaigne didn’t just give the bloody thing over into Masters’s keeping together with the Cardinal’s Hat? It was because Lentaigne feared to trespass too openly on the sacred ground of seniority.
As Masters was in no position to complain, I did it for him. I expressed my disgust. But he was far too well trained to allow a comment to escape him.
So we began that series of ambushes and attacks which developed round the large group of villages, fifteen miles to the north of Pinlebu, called Kyaungle. I wish I could remember more about them.
First, one column goes off into the unknown and has a bash, and another comes back; then a second column goes off into the night and there are machine-gun bursts accompanied by sporadic small-arms fire, while the first column is licking its wounds, flying out its injured form a light-plane strip, or taking a supply drop. This was the general pattern of operations, hence this much I can take for granted. What is difficult to distinguish is which column did which, in what direction, and when. And was it now, or later, that Geoffrey Birt first developed that hideous brazen colour which is the initial symptom of amoebic hepatitis?
I recall that I was very aggressive in my outlook towards the Japanese during this period. Like the soccer enthusiast, however, I did all my fighting by proxy. It was a vicarious aggression, nurtured in, and launched from, the security of the spectators’ terraces. At this stage, I never actually went out into the field.
30 Column was sent to engage the enemy before the others. Theirs was the first, deliberately sought, face-to-face confrontation of our campaign. Naturally I was wild with excitement. I expected a resounding victory and, as the estimated time of their attack drew nearer, I found myself in imagination eagerly projecting myself into their shoes at the place of engagement.
We were holed up as usual in dense jungle, but strung out along a well-demarcated although apparently unused track which cut across a steep, sharp slope. It was so steep that we had little option but to use the track for picketing the mules and other household arrangements, and there, as it got dark, we bedded down.
Dal Bahadur and I chose a place as far removed from Brigade Headquarters command post as possible. I might have been eager to engage the Jap, but I certainly didn’t want another confrontation with Briggo.
As daylight faded and night drew on, we indulged our imaginations by visualising the Gurkhas of 30 Column creeping towards the enemy with blacked faces, their kukris in their teeth. In this manner, and according to the best traditions of Errol Flynn, we fell asleep.
I was awakened by the distant stutter of machine guns. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. I could see Dal Bahadur’s eyes gleaming beside me out of the darkness. I was glad he was awake. We sat up.
A hell of a hullabaloo was coming from the direction of the main road about two miles distant and it was difficult not to hug oneself with delight in contemplating what 30 Column were doing. It was possible to distinguish in addition to the stammer of their machine-guns, a crackle of controlled small arms fire, volley after volley, and the detonation of grenades.
Then all was quiet. Dal Bahadur and I were much too excited to go to sleep. The moon, which was just past its first quarter, sat behind trees.
Suddenly, from the direction of the road, there was the most frightful, deep-throated boom, which was followed by others. What could they be?
‘30 column is certainly giving it to them,’ I said to Dal Bahadur, doubtfully.
‘Yes, it is,’ he replied, equally doubtfully.
Finally I could stand the uncertainty no longer. I had to get up and find out.
‘I’m going off to Brigade Headquarters,’ I told Dal Bahadur. ‘Be back in a couple of minutes.’
At the other end of the track, in Brigade Headquarters command post, they were all awake too. A glint of torch-light was gleaming through a blanket where Rhodes James was encoding the last of the cipher-messages. At the radio transmitter the operators were impatiently waiting for the signal before they closed down.
Jack Masters and John Hedley were in a sort of conference, and I went straight up to them. ‘30 column are certainly giving it to them. Those sound like heavy mortars!’
‘They are,’ replied John Hedley grimly. ‘Only 30 column don’t have any. It’s the Jap. He’s counterattacking.’
I returned to Dal Bahadur, feeling utterly dejected and hardly able to speak. The cannonade went on all night. I pulled my blanket over my ears to try and keep out the sound, but it penetrated. I wondered how it felt.
When 30 Column returned, I had the opportunity to find out. They had suffered several casualties and I asked Ray Hulme, a Company Commander of 3/4 Gur
khas and a farmer of Earls Colne, hence a neighbour of Coggeshall.
‘What was it like?’
‘Fuckin’ awful.’
After that it was the turn of the King’s Own. They put down an ambush on the same road on a similar silent night – the only difference being that the moon was a little later in setting – a little fuller. But it gazed down on the scene of carnage just as indifferently.
The opening bars of the action crashed into full orchestration exactly at the same time – ten o’clock. This fact must have had something to do with the way the Jap assembled his convoys. Probably the convoys of troop reinforcements travelling to the Assam front stopped at the staging barracks of Pinlebu all day, in order to avoid our air attacks. The lorries would move out from Pinlebu at nine – long strings of them, some twenty at a time, each containing twenty men.
As the leading lorry, its headlights almost blacked out and its sidelights dimmed, reached that bend in the road where our ambush was waiting for them, it looked in the moonlight like one of those unwieldy covered-wagons lumbering down the Oregon Trail to Nevada – or wherever – which we were all familiar with from our childhood trips to the cinema.
It was such a powerful image that it was almost impossible to stop yourself identifying with them – poor benighted bastards, indistinguishable facially from our Gurkhas and with just the same endearing qualities of simplicity and loyalty as we loved in our own men.
The King’s Own very cleverly let it go. And the next one – and the next one. The trucks lurched past the crouching ambush-party unsuspectingly. They would be engaged by another hidden trap further down the road, specially selected for the purpose.
When the convoy was neatly divided in half, the King’s Own let fly. They opened up with their bazookas. They hit the initial targets flat in the radiator-mouth at thirty yards’ range. The projectiles travelled through the steel engine-casings until they reached the petrol tanks, which exploded. The vehicles burst open, scattering dead bodies in every direction. The detonation was heard at Brigade.
