by Brian Mooney
My men greeted them with a volley. There was nothing for it but to cover the remaining two hundred yards to the house as quickly as possible.
‘Raise a shout, Tulbir,’ I yelled at him. ‘Raise a shout, Tej Bahadur.’
I had heard about the blood-curdling quality of the Gurkha battle-cry, so I anticipated something really chilling.
I was rather disappointed, therefore, at the weak quality of their response. We were all so breathless with excitement that it sounded like a deflating organ-bellows. However, my tactics resulted in the desired effect.
The Japs abandoned the house and retreated slowly down the village street. I followed them fearlessly. When we were within striking distance, I said simply, ‘Grenades!’ Twenty-five grenades went bowling gracefully over. ‘Down!’ Everyone flattened themselves.
The explosions were terrific. They were the last thing I remember.
Everything was confusion. It always is. You go into action with a consecutive plan settled in your head but you soon lose all sense of cohesion. You wake up to find that you’ve won, although totally undeservedly, or that you’ve lost, equally through no fault of your own. So it was in the present instance. Smoke was everywhere. Through it, I recall seeing Tej Bahadur firing his Bren gun from the hip. The spurts of the bullets kicking up the dust were just like those machine-gun bursts I had experienced from the dive-bombing JU-87s on Martlesham Heath.
All of a sudden I was confronted with this towering Jap. He was very young, very tall, and very fair in complexion – he had a delicious apricot-and-cream skin – and he was dauntingly handsome. I went weak at the joints; how absolutely typical of me to have conjured up something so beautiful. He was wearing the same type of Burmese garment around his lower limbs as his companions wore, and was also bare-chested; but in addition he sported the cloth headband or hachimaki of the traditional feudal warrior around his forehead. He stood facing me about ten yards distant.
I sensed at once that he was an officer. We immediately locked ourselves in mortal combat. I don’t mean to say that we actually touched or anything like that. There was nothing filthy about it like physical contact. Rather, we squared up to each other with aggressive intent.
Grenades were exploding all round us and smoke was billowing about in clouds. The smell of cordite was acrid in the nostrils and bitter on the tongue. The rat-tat-tat-tat of Tej Bahadur’s Bren gun punctured the strife every so often with its reminder of battle. In addition, that extraordinary machine-gun from the Japanese armoury of bizarre weapons known to us as the woodpecker was tapping out its deadly message. Yet my adversary and I seemed totally isolated. We might have been two antagonists facing each other from the feudal period and the Gempei Wars.
I was astonished to observe how completely I had regressed. My middle-class background and pseudo-educated manners had vanished. In their place I felt uneasy to feel a cool, wary character taking over inside me – someone who confronted his adversary with detachment and an indifference to committing violent acts.
We watched each other for what seemed an eternity. We had withdrawn from contact with our fellows, each holding the other’s glance as duellists lean upon and engage each other’s swords.
Finally I could bear the tension no longer, and fired.
I raised my rifle to my shoulder, took careful aim at the middle of the man’s torso – it was quite hairless – and pressed the trigger. The action was entirely spontaneous. It did not spring from military training and was certainly divorced from any feelings of hate. It was more nearly associated with early rabbit shooting and the sporting instinct. I can remember the emotions with perfect clarity. They were precisely those with which I had tried to bag my first sparrow with the miniature 410 sporting gun given to me by my grandfather at the age of ten.
The results were also similar. Nothing happened. I reloaded at shoulder as you are taught to do when firing rapid and tried again. No effect.
All round me the fight was raging; people were crying: ‘Have at you!’, ‘On guard!’, and ‘Attack!’. Yet where I was, the most flawless abstraction persisted. Completely withdrawn from external preoccupation, I was devoting all my energies to steadying my hand and to keeping my head.
Eventually, without touching my man, I emptied the magazine. I lowered the rifle in order to recharge it and in so doing stole a glance at the target. It had taken up the most peculiar position which I was hard put to explain. What on earth was it doing?
Imagine my rage and consternation when I interpreted its attitude – it was firing at me! That confounded Jap was taking aim. I slammed the clip down into the magazine and redoubled my efforts. Now, as I gazed along the sights and took aim, I could see quite clearly that the Jap also had his rifle to his shoulder and moreover – something that was quite sobering when you come to think of it – little spurts of steam were fuming from the hole at the end of his barrel. It required quite an effort of imagination to realize that they were bullets.
Luckily that Japanese officer’s aim was as ineffectual as mine was. Gradually our tensions relaxed. I finished my second magazine and lowered my rifle. He also seemed to have come to the end of his cartridges. We had time to look around us. I realized with a sort of shamefaced surprise that I would win.
Suddenly with a gesture of despair he threw away his gun and stood before me defenceless. He squared his chest. With a horrified feeling of revulsion I realized that he was waiting for me to go in with the bayonet. I looked at the end of the blasted thing speculatively and wondered whether
I had the guts to do it. Why the hell didn’t he run away? This was the perfect opportunity for taking that prisoner which Jack Masters wanted, but I couldn’t see my doing it without wounding him. I didn’t want to do that. We continued to stare at each other almost obsessively.
My Gurkhas began to return from various parts of the front. If he kept standing there much longer, one of them would shoot him. I did not want that. With a gesture of excessive irritability I waved him back. His scowl cleared and his face lightened slightly, but he still looked surprised. I gestured again. ‘Do go away. Bugger off. Vamoose or whatever they say. I mean it!’
He came smartly to attention. Then he bowed courteously and saluted me.
At that minute one of his men from behind him threw a grenade. It was one of those plastic things – and made out of Bakelite – and it landed right at my feet. By this time there was quite a concentration of my own men behind me. I turned round to see Dal Bahadur blazing away with my pistol. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and yelled ‘Down!’, at the same time pointing at it and miming the movements which indicated that everyone should fall flat.
It was smoking away like a saturnine seed, disseminating its baleful influence, and although I had heard that these things were no good, going off indeed with loud bangs but doing comparatively little damage, I still thought it better to follow suit, seeing that it was only several inches from me. Accordingly I fell flat too.
After it had exploded and I got to my feet, I was glad to see that the Jap had taken the opportunity to escape. So had all the others.
I glanced around to see if any of my men had been wounded. We had sustained not a single casualty. I was astonished to notice Macpherson. In the excitement of action I had forgotten all about him.
After a short interval to allow me to regain my composure, we burnt that small, pretty house to the ground. We distributed tons of rice and quantities of clothing and blankets to the villagers and allowed them to take as much loot as they wanted. My last memory was of seeing them struggling down the village street burdened back-breakingly with booty.
When we got back to Brigade Headquarters, I duly reported to Jack Masters that my mission was completed, and asked his permission to have a kip. For several hours I slept the sleep of complete exhaustion.
When I awoke, Masters sent for me and congratulated me.
‘I’ve had an opportunity to speak to Macpherson. He gives you a good report.
He says you were well out in front.’
So he had sent Macpherson to spy on me! What cheek!
CHAPTER TEN
The March North
That march up the Meza River and across the Kachin hills to Indawgyi Lake was the last we did that had any joy in it. The weather was flawless. There was no sign of rain.
Day followed burnished day with the radiant newness of childhood days of summer. Butterflies flitted about floppily, alighting indifferently on faeces or flower. In bramble brakes the wild roses abounded. In the deep woods, and beneath the overarching canopy of shade, lilac-tinted slipper-orchids nodded down at us from the moss-encrusted branches – but always just out of reach – like elfin countenances from a child’s picture book. Everything seemed geared to drive home the lesson, not only of man’s hatefulness – which by now had made itself fully apparent – but of his unloveliness in comparison with the world he inhabited.
In spite of the heat and the psychological burden imposed by marching to war through so idyllic a landscape, the troops were in good spirits. They had been sufficiently successful around Kyaungle to feel thoroughly at home here in Burma, yet were not spoiled enough by victory to have become sated. Even the defence platoons had been blooded and had acquitted themselves with comparative credit. In these circumstances Jack Masters suddenly came up with one of his most inspired ideas.
He ordered the whole Brigade – two columns of King’s Own, two columns of Cameronians and one column of 3/4 Gurkhas, plus Brigade Headquarters – into a remote and inaccessible fastness. He called for a supply drop and a double ration of rum. Then, with a defensive perimeter pushed far out to secure a wide zone safe from attack, he issued instructions for a Saturnalia. Strictly for one night only we were to light huge bonfires, talk and shout openly, and get as drunk as the extra rum-ration allowed. Never were the parachute loads from a supply drop handled more carefully. Never did the soldiers of my defence platoons go to more trouble in collecting them.
‘Rum, sahib,’ Tej Bahadur and Shiv Jung would announce libidinously, beaming all over their faces, as they manipulated the massive packages, square like crates of soap, and deposited them respectfully at my feet like a favourite cat depositing a murdered mouse.
I watched while the precious cargo of priceless liquid was stacked. Then, under my directions, it was issued. Not one case was broken open, not one bottle cracked. The fatigue-parties from the columns carried off their allocation reverently. As a special mark of favour, Masters gave me an extra half-bottle for myself.
When the sun had sunk below the horizon and blissful darkness descended, the bonfires which we had prepared for the occasion sprang into blazing life. They lit up the underside of the great tree-canopy with uncanny light. Presently a faint murmur arose. It was as if the columns were only just getting used to speaking above a whisper. Then, a little later, individual tones became distinguishable. Finally, halloos and shouts. The hillsides and mountains gave us back their echoes. The stars in their course looked down. The monkeys and parakeets and all the wild animals assembled, amazed at such irreverent behaviour. But we weren’t laughing at you, beautiful creatures! We were laughing at ourselves.
At last the hullabaloo and the fires died down. Exhausted by the day’s march and the unfamiliar extra tot of rum, our soldiers fell asleep, if not actually in each other’s arms, then nearly.
I glanced at Dal Bahadur with a questioning look. Ought we to? He gazed back at me, his eyes limpid.
‘I’ve got an extra tot of rum stowed away in my pack,’ I whispered to him. ‘Slip back to our bivouac, and I’ll join you in a minute. I’m just going off to have a piss.’
For all the eavesdroppers there were, I could have shouted my intentions at the top of my voice. Everyone was asleep. As he got up to go and act on my suggestion, the big fire around which we were sitting flared up briefly, then collapsed into simmering ash. It revealed my soldiers around me locked into various suggestive poses exactly as they had drifted off to sleep.
Bal Bahadur and I surveyed them in astonishment. It was as if our companions had been fortuitously transformed into blocks of wood. The opportunity was too good to miss. He turned about and went, but not without casting a sizzling look back at me. Quite giddy from so much rum and drenched to the skin with libidinous suggestion, I wandered away. I wanted to savour my concupiscent sensations alone.
So it was here, in the heart of this ancient wood and illuminated by the flares streaming forth from a natural stage-lighting, that it was destined to come to pass – and indeed this was our best opportunity to get it over with in dignified silence and under cover of a decent seclusion.
The time was temptingly ripe and the place was prepared. It was as if they had both been specifically put aside to enable me to assuage my passion for Dal Bahadur with propriety.
The place, in particular, possessed a sort of poisonous appropriateness, the hour a sort of opportune privacy, which neither of them could conceivably be expected to retain simultaneously in like measure for very much longer. Nor was it likely that such propitious circumstance and suitable conditions would ever recur.
In the velvety shadows, then, under the trees, and sheltered by the violent darkness from any possibility of contagion (such as Briggo’s defiling presence), was where I hoped to perform the act.
I was in the grip of an overwhelming desire to fuck Dal Bahadur.
It sounds bald and unlovely, I know, and I have to admit that it was a cheeky thing to expect. It passes belief, I suppose, to imagine that a respectable Gurkha rifleman would have consented to such an approach at one o’clock in the morning – or, for that matter, at any other time.
However – not to prolong the agony – he didn’t!
When I returned to our bivouac, I found that Dal Bahadur was asleep.
***
On our way northwards, we holed up for twenty-four hours in the vicinity of 16 Brigade’s stronghold of Aberdeen. It was St George’s Day. Jack Masters picked a wild rose. He also took the opportunity to fly off to White City. He wanted to have a look at the defensive and administrative arrangements.
The orders awaiting us at Aberdeen fully confirmed our previous instructions. All the Chindit Brigades were to move north. Their new role was to act entirely as support to Stilwell. 16 Brigade, however, on account of the hardships they had suffered during their march into Burma and depleted by their unsuccessful attempts to capture Indaw, were to be flown out. Strangely enough, however, 16 Brigade succeeded in seizing Indaw on 27 April. Finding the airstrip there to be only a fine weather field and not the important military installation they had expected, they did not exploit their success, and withdrew. They were flown out from Aberdeen at the beginning of May.
They were replaced by 14 Brigade, with orders to wait until we had laid down our block at Blackpool and then abandon Aberdeen and follow us. They were to support us in Blackpool by roaming the countryside outside our perimeter and locating and attacking the Jap artillery who would be shelling us. In accordance with this plan, they duly abandoned Aberdeen about 5 May, which was roughly the date we got into position. In spite of it, they did not succeed in covering the less than one hundred miles to Blackpool before we were expelled from it on 24 May.
77 Brigade, in the light of these new depositions, was also ordered to move north. They were to capture Mogaung. Our own block at Blackpool, twenty miles south of that city, was designed to help them. They marched to their objective on a course parallel to our own, but about forty miles to the east of us.
A West African Brigade, which had flown into Aberdeen at the same time as 14 Brigade and then marched to White City, was to garrison that latter stronghold after 77 Brigade had evacuated it. They were to continue in occupation of it until we had laid down Blackpool, whereupon they also were to march north to support us. They abandoned White City on 3 May – one day before the Japs launched an annihilating attack against it. They did not, however, succeed in reaching Blackpool any quicker than 14 Brigade. But
they did arrive in sufficient time to provide sterling service as porters and stretcher-bearers. Undoubtedly it is to the Nigerian Regiment’s efficient performance at that time that many of our soldiers owed their lives.
Broadway – 77 Brigade’s original fly-in strip – was to be abandoned. The garrison troops were to rejoin 77 Brigade and march with them to Mogaung.
So that was the general picture. All the Chindit Brigades were moving out of the lines-of-communication area. They were moving into a sector – heavily supplemented by artillery and with plenty of ammunition – just behind the enemy’s crack 18th and 33rd Divisions’ fronts facing Stilwell at Mogaung. It would be into an area under the immediate personal control of some of the best Japanese Generals. They were likely to react very violently to the threat of a Chindit attack on them.
111 Brigade were to start first. The other Brigades were to follow. 77 Brigade, of course, whizzed up north to Mogaung comparatively quickly. They actually passed Blackpool at the height of our crisis, but they were on the opposite side of the valley. They could not give us as much help as they desired. They did, however, send two battalions across to reinforce us. In the event, their objective, Mogaung, only fell after a protracted battle.
We left the vicinity of Aberdeen on 25 April and followed the Meza River. We struck out early in the morning along the west bank. The scenery was magnificent, the weather – at that time of day – delicious, and as we were in no danger from the enemy, being temporarily under the shield of the stronghold of Aberdeen, we advanced widely strung out. One or two of us even whistled.
But quite soon the park-like scenery round Aberdeen, some aspects of which fairly successfully duplicated the feeling of an English meadow, changed to something more craggy. The shallow declivity through which ran the smooth river turned into a gorge. The placid waters became a torrent. The undulating landscape gave place to mountains. And the track, instead of following now one bank, now another, proceeded – between high, precipitous cliffs – along the actual bed of the stream itself.
