Chindit Affair

by Brian Mooney

  After spending two whole days trapped on the river bed, hemmed in by rocks, we all at once came in sight of this marvellous cleft. It opened in the rock wall to our right almost miraculously, like an hieratic gesture – visualize the expansive movement of the celebrating priest upon extending his hands.

  At one moment there was simply the uninterrupted face of this towering cliff with one or two sinewy saplings clinging to it; at the next there appeared this momentous fracture. The two sides of it were leaning slantingly apart as if conveniently tilted. They exposed cleanly shaven surfaces.

  The floor of the fissure was finely sanded. Down the centre trickled an artless watercourse, from the bed of which gleamed back at us the deep flash of gold – or more likely, of iron pyrites.

  Without a word – silently – but nevertheless with a brief glance backward to indicate that we were expected to follow her, the trail disappeared up this cleft like a flighty goddess. Dutifully – for by this time we were all suffering from a sort of obsessive follow-my-leader compulsion – we followed, and were led out into the uplands, into the Kachin hills.

  Finally, one evening, after cutting our way through impenetrable bamboo thickets for the whole of a day, we breasted a rise and saw below us Indawgyi Lake.

  Already Jack Masters had abandoned his temporarily assumed relaxed personality. It was plain that our brief holiday was over. Dimly glimpsed indications of forthcoming attractions also began to make themselves apparent. The reverberative crumps and thumps of a distant artillery barrage gnawed at our perceptions.

  Indawgyi Lake glowed. I gazed upon this impeccably disposed landscape with its scattered islands, its tree-clad promontories, and its elegant pagodas filched from a milken screen, an enamelled porcelain plate, or an embroidered picture, with eyes distorted by distemper. Already, I suppose, disease was laying its hands on me. The lake seemed somehow leprous, disfigured for me by a sinister Mona Lisa grin.

  Far away over the mountains lay Mogaung. From that direction, faint on the windless air but sickeningly familiar, came the boom of gunfire. It beat against the eardrums and broke there, then withdrew like a wave – heavy artillery of over one hundred millimetres in calibre – a fugitive, almost casual sound, soberly reminding me of what waited.

  In some of us, no doubt, that sound still had the capacity to activate martial impulses. In me it inspired nothing but dread. But we picked up and shouldered our packs, and marched methodically towards it.

  Pushing our way across the low ground on the following day, we came upon a collection of lake-side huts dignified by the name of Mokso Sakan. It was a village, if you could call it such, which for several weeks was to serve us as a sort of temporary headquarters while the majority of the brigade went over the hills and put down the block of Blackpool.

  The flat ground nearest the lake was covered with clumps of swamp grass. It was nearly ten feet high, had leaves like saws, and stems as stout as walking sticks. Meanwhile, the low spurs from the foothills running out into the swamp were clad in thickets of lantana scrub. This shrub, which is occasionally cultivated in England in greenhouses on account of its pretty orange and sometimes pink flowers, was in its turn furnished with thorns as murderous as fish hooks. Both species of plant made progress supremely difficult.

  It was while I was laboriously hacking my way across one of these spurs that I was brought up short by a hideous smell. It was the first time in my life that I had ever come across the smell from putrescent human carrion, yet now that I was close to it, there could be no mistake.

  I halted the work of the advance guard by raising my hand. In the ensuing silence I looked at Thaman Bahadur questioningly. I always did this when I was in the slightest degree doubtful about my competence, for I had come to rely on him unhesitatingly. Briefly he confirmed my suspicions by nodding his head.

  The corpse proved more difficult to locate than expected. On account of the airless conditions, the area of dissemination over which the smell persisted turned out to be greater than we had allowed for.

  ‘Found anything yet?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  The little windless hollow in the dense undergrowth got hotter and hotter. The shimmering heat rose from the damp ground in quaking flakes. The impression which this phenomenon created of unstable undulations in the atmosphere was intensified by hosts of butterflies. Flexing their yellow wings, they perched not only on leaf and flower, but also on the ground at our feet. Their trembling antennae and probing tongues struck me as having a veiledly obscene aspect.

  ‘Have you noticed them?’ I remarked to Thaman Bahadur chattily. I indicated the wave upon wave of butterflies that seemed to be rising from the space immediately between us in fluttering flight. He did not reply, but paused and regarded them curiously.

  As he did, I followed his gaze. There could be no doubt that they were ascending and descending through a small aperture which opened upwards in the ubiquitous greenery like a sort of funnel. With a sudden insight I gingerly parted the undergrowth and revealed a spectacle that was both grotesque and strangely beautiful. It wasn’t a Jap, it was one of ours – an anonymous British corpse in an advanced state of decomposition, which was providing the butterflies with sustenance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Build-Up to Blackpool

  In spite of all I had learned, while pursuing my career as an Army Officer, about the unpredictability of human nature, and in spite of the gloomy forebodings which broke in on me when contemplating Indawgyi Lake, I still retained my military innocence.

  I retained this innocence in the sense that I did not believe the Brigade would be committed to an impossible operation. That is to say, I did not believe we would be compelled to commit suicide. This was my way of affirming that I still had faith in our commanders.

  We had no reason to distrust Joe Lentaigne – he was, after all, our very own. And little, if anything, was known about Stilwell under whose command we had now come in order to support his Chinese Army’s approach to Mogaung. His sobriquet of Vinegar Joe was rather inclined to endear him to us than otherwise.

  Consequently it was with no sense of forthcoming evil whatsoever that I answered Jack Masters’s call to report to his command post when I arrived early one afternoon (this time at the tail end of a column) at a small village. I reported to him rather in the mood of one who expects to be allotted to some unspectacular task on the perimeter. What was my surprise, therefore, to find myself destined instead to play a part upon which the future of the Brigade, for several weeks ahead, depended.

  A small digression into matters of tactics is necessary here in order briefly to explain the implications.

  I have already mentioned that at Aberdeen, Masters’s orders to put down a block south of Mogaung to disrupt Jap road-rail communications and prevent reinforcements from arriving in that city from the south were confirmed. That was the reason for our undertaking this march northwards in the first place.

  The rough area for this block had already been determined upon by the General Staff, namely near Hopin. But it was left to Masters to choose the precise location. Aerial reconnaissance photographs and detailed maps had already been dropped to him by light plane several days previously, soon after we left the Kachin hills. He had, therefore, had a certain amount of time to study. The place he decided on was near the village of Namkwin.

  One of the most elementary necessities of the future block-site would be that we should be able to get to it, swiftly and unobserved, across the mountains to the east of our present position on the shore of Indawgyi Lake. Also that we should be able to get back.

  There were several pretty well demarcated passes across these hills marked on the map. There were others which we received information about from villagers. At least one of them, however, was reliably reported to be in enemy control. Probably some of the others were as well. One tiny detachment of soldiers placed in a defile and enfilading the pathway could hold up an army more or less indefinitely with just a light mac
hine gun.

  For this reason Jack Masters deliberately ignored the more obvious places such as the Kyusanlai Pass and slipped the Brigade along the shores of Indawgyi Lake to Mokso Sakan. The maps and reconnaissance photos informed us – and local sources confirmed – that from here a tiny, unfrequented footpath led to the summit at Nawku, about 3,500 feet, and then down to the plain, where it came out at the required place.

  It was essential that this pass over the mountains from Mokso Sakan to the block-site be denied to the enemy. Someone (some unattached officer without too many commitments) and some small body of troops (troops who could be disengaged from their main body without leaving too large a gap) would have to be detached immediately and sent to seize the summit where the path from Mokso Sakan crossed the mountains.

  It was obvious that the choice could have fallen only on me. My two defence platoons were too plainly cut out for it. It was to give me my orders on this account that Masters sent for me. When I heard what my assignment was – it was so important – I went glossy with pleasure. It was that ideal sort of command to which every young subaltern aspires: detached, independent, self-sufficient, and so completely cut off from headquarters that it would be impossible to receive contravening orders.

  I did not stop even for a moment to consider the dangers and difficulties of the Brigade’s position nor how, or on what terms, the Brigade was going to carry out its mission. It certainly never occurred to me that Stilwell and Lentaigne were committing the Brigade to a type of operation totally unsuited to it. I simply reacted like any young soldier who hears he is being sent on an adventure training course.

  Masters told me to get my platoons together immediately and assemble them in marching order without taking a rest. He outlined the tactical situation to me just as I have presented it. We were completely out of rations, having been for the period of five days without a supply-drop, but I think one had been arranged for that or the following night. My sojourn in the hills was expected to last up to one month. It was essential for us to scrounge around and pick up something to eat. Masters had some reserve K-rations stashed away on mule-back especially for emergencies such as this, and these he turned over to me. Since he was most persistent that we depart on our mission immediately – for he wanted the pass at Nawku to be in our hands by noon the following day – it was not possible for us to wait and stock up from the supply drop. He gave us two mules to carry these rations, cadged from the King’s Own column, with two King’s Own riflemen called Jim and Jack as mule-drivers.

  As I was about to leave him after receiving my orders, he called out, ‘You are to hold the pass at Nawku against all odds.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I replied, not quite catching his meaning.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ he said irritably. ‘You are not to withdraw on any account until I give you the order.’

  ‘I see. What happens if the enemy attacks so strongly that I get driven

  out?’

  ‘That’s just the point. You are not to be driven out.’ ‘You mean to say that I have to allow myself to be slaughtered rather than to retreat or surrender?’

  ‘Exactly. Those are precisely your orders. I hope you understand them.’ ‘I do. So I am to go down with the ship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As I gathered together my little flock and told them of our mission, I found it difficult to hide my excitement. This is what I had joined the Chindits for. To have received an assignment like this was to have achieved independence.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ demanded young Lawrence as he caught sight of my detachment passing through the perimeter on its way forward. My two mules, with Jim and Jack in attendance, were bringing up the rear, and everything was in splendid shape.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ I answered promptly. ‘Into the unknown.’ I wanted to be mysterious and stimulate his curiosity. ‘Actually, I’m going to the top of the hill to hold the pass until the brigade goes over there.’

  ‘Bully for you. Wish I could see a bit of action.’

  We harboured that night along the way, about ten miles from Brigade. We had made splendid progress. It was on the banks of a little chaung that we settled, about one hundred yards from the path and in a tiny grove under some diminutive thorn trees. We had come upon the place by accident, after dark, but it suited our purposes admirably.

  Jim and Jack bedded down their mules. They cut fodder for them from the plentiful supplies of bamboo that were available. There was abundant water, too, in a little stream. We proceeded to organise our little camp and make ourselves comfortable. At a point near an angle in the path, where it divided, I posted a picket of two sentries – two in order to keep each other awake and for company. Their orders were to observe who, if anybody, passed, but to take no offensive action and on no account to give their position away. In the event, however, not even a wild cat stirred during the whole of the night.

  I did not think it necessary to take absurd and obsessive precautions about the remainder of our perimeter. I am pretty sensitive to danger and I always let this instinct guide me. In the present instance it told me that all was clear. The dense nature of the jungle would in any case have been adequate protection – particularly on this murky evening without a glimpse of moon or the glimmer of a star.

  The rest of us snuggled up together in close contiguity, to gain the reassurance of companionship against the darkness and dangers of the night. It was rather spooky being for the first time without the encompassment and sense of security imparted by large, supportive bodies of troops. This was something, however, that we should have to get used to. All the same, feelings of loneliness and isolation were present. It was practically impossible to banish them.

  When the sun had gone down that evening and it had got dark, I could not help observing how a gloomy cloud hung over the top of the mountain like that pall of smoke upon the Holy Mount. It was nearly the end of April and therefore not far from the monsoon, with its attendant electric disturbances and thunderstorms. My heart trembled at such possibilities, exposed as we would be to the full fury of the elements. It had been difficult enough to ensure our survival during the hot weather, when our regular supply drops weren’t in doubt. How, I asked myself, should we survive in the rain when the monsoon storms would make it doubly difficult for the dropping aircraft to locate us? It was better not to dwell on it! We supped our tea.

  The last of our fires twinkled for a few minutes and then went out, each rifleman firmly extinguishing them with the heel of his boot or a rifle-butt. Black darkness descended, broken only by the glowing cigarettes of my soldiers signalling to each other in whirls and spirals.

  It had grown quite quiet. Gradually the last mutters of conversation subsided and were extinguished like the glow of the cigarettes and the ashes of the fires. Within me, too, all my fires seemed to have subsided. I was beginning to have serious doubts about my capacity to complete this operation. I assume that such feelings must have assailed all of us during the course of the campaign, at one time or another, but in those days I was neither sufficiently experienced nor self-confident enough to realize this. I felt guilty and tried to summon up a few shreds of better morale from the depths of my being. They refused to come. Almost panic-stricken in case I was in danger of moral collapse, I turned for help to Dal Bahadur. He was close beside me but blissfully asleep.I didn’t know what to do, and I certainly didn’t want to wake him. I thrashed restlessly about.

  It got colder and colder. An icy chill started to creep up my legs from my feet. ‘When it reaches your heart,’ I told myself, ‘you’re going to snuff

  it. You’ll be dead.’

  Suddenly, without being in the least bit aware of how it got there, I felt the deliciously warming touch of a beguiling hand caress my crepitating skin. I was quaking with ague. ‘Sahib! Sahib!’ a tiny voice implored, breathless with agitation. ‘Are you all right?’ But by now my teeth were chattering so fiercely I could not reply. It was Dal Bahadur. I did not even possess the st
rength to pull him towards me but he seemed to know what to

  do.

  It was what I wanted. Gradually my motor reflexes began to generate some current. I recovered. That beguiling hand had persuaded the strength to flow back into the extremities with surges of energy which quite surprised me. We were lying breast to breast. Our shirts were open and our trousers unbuttoned. I honestly believe he had intended nothing more than to warm me with the fusion of his body, but it had quite a different effect. Now that he had succeeded, he did not withdraw. All at once he kissed me several times on my mouth, and he yielded to my silent importunity without a demur.

  On the following day, at exactly noon, we broke clear from the hillside jungle into the open space which crowned the top of the pass. It was just as Jack Masters had predicted. The last few miles before we reached the summit were very taxing. I had taken the morning’s march at a tremendous gallop and we were all completely out of breath. Even the mules were panting heavily.

  I saw before me a roughly tilled open space of taung-ya cultivation from which had been harvested a crop of rudimentary tomatoes. It consisted of about two acres. One or two sere and depleted vines still clung to it like the derelict specimens of husbandry you sometimes stumble on in abandoned gardens, but there was nothing derelict about this lot, small as they were, hard as marbles, and tiny like unripened persimmon fruits – this was a cultivator’s main crop, and he would have been lucky indeed to have secured anything larger in such unfavourable conditions.

  The path ran straight across the field and dipped out of sight down the other side. It was the path to the Blackpool block-site and the opposite plain – the path which the Brigade would have to take on its way to battle. It presented a scene of unprecedented peacefulness and, at this moment, inspired great confidence.