A soldier came in with five little bowls of thin gruel such as they had supped on, and set them down on a shelf.
‘There’s your Dover sole and your kidneys and bacon,’ said Juan.
‘Give it to Rocco,’ cried Flanders in a rage. ‘There’s nothing but a horse could go to war on that.’ But in case anyone should take him at his word he seized a bowl, and having sucked down the gruel in three gulps, assiduously scoured it with his tongue.
The officer who had wakened them returned and waited uneasily till they had finished their meal. Then he requested them to follow him, and led them out of the now deserted nursery. The lively coldness of the blustering wind was better than the stagnant chill of the greenhouse, and even Harris began to look more cheerful.
Between the nursery and the village they passed a battery of small field-guns, numerously attended, in gun-pits that were placed with advantage behind a little greenish crest. They looked fairly efficient, and their gunners, though there seemed an unnecessary number of them, had a quiet and well-disciplined appearance. The village itself was crowded with soldiers. They thronged the muddy lanes, grey swarms of men clutching their rifles, vacant of face or chewing a last handful of food with the brutal indifference of cattle in the butcher’s yard. At the far end of the village were the tanks. They still wore much of their lavish camouflage of willow-branches, but now they were on the road in line ahead, and their drivers stood beside them.
Behind the farthest house stood the two generals with nearly thirty of an attendant staff. An attempt had been made to excavate a dug-out for them, but the hole had filled with water and been abandoned. General Sun still wore a look of mild amusement and academic interest, as though he were about to watch a curious experiment with which he was not intimately concerned; but General Wu’s expression was stern and nervously important. Rocco saluted him with such a violent movement that had he misjudged the ambit of his hand he must have stunned himself; and General Wu, responding somewhat coldly, requested them to board their tanks.
At this sudden and immediate prospect of action, Juan became very much alarmed, and Flanders and Harris both expostulated loudly. They insisted that they must first see the ground over which they were to advance. They wanted to know what distance they must keep, their targets and objective, their orders in case of breakdown, the disposition of the infantry, the arrangements for support and covering fire, and so forth. Flanders in particular was indignant at the idea of an amateur and extempore battle, and was beginning a dissertation on the whole art of war when General Wu interrupted him.
The drivers of the tanks,’ he said, ‘have reconnoitred the ground. They have their orders and they know their objective. Your duty is simple. It is to demonstrate the moral value of the tanks.’
For a moment or two they were all silent. Like a respectable cashier whose embezzlement has brought him unhappily to the dock, they felt their position keenly, having heard it so coldly and tersely defined. Then Flanders exclaimed: ‘Not a foot do I move till I’ve seen the ground,’ and very coolly taking a pair of field-glasses from the hands of an officer who stood nearby, he left the shelter of the house and beneath a tree that grew in the angle of a bamboo fence began to study the landscape. Juan and Harris joined him, and in turn looked through the glasses.
The view was comparatively peaceful. To their left, about a mile and a half away, was the little village of Nanyang, which was the extremity of the Japanese line. The naked fields fell in a scarcely perceptible slope to the north, and between Nanyang and Hungpo the country was diversified only by several ditches, some grave-mounds, and a narrow creek that guarded Nanyang and approached in a gradual curve the right of the Chinese position. On the far side of the creek and roughly parallel to it, the Japanese had built a series of redoubts, each one consisting of some perfunctory barbed wire, a rampart of sandbags, and a shallow trench. Behind the redoubts were several large working parties, leisurely digging what appeared to be communicating trenches. There were no guns in sight, though a battery might be concealed by the village, and it was clear that the Japanese were neither expecting an attack nor aware of the concentration of Chinese troops. Far away to the right the sky was dark brown, where the strong wind tore the persistent pall of smoke from the ruins of Chapei; and they listened to the dull sound of the guns that still shelled, without noticeable success, the heroic entrenchments of the 19th Route Army.
‘If the tanks were any good it would be a walk-over,’ said Harris.
‘If they were made of brown paper we’d do it,’ said Flanders. ‘By God’s first Saturday night, we’ll roll up that flank of theirs like a length of drugget and throw it back on the shelf. We’ll take them napping and hammer them before they wake. What d’you say, Motley?’
‘It looks as though it were going to be a more agreeable battle than I expected.’
‘The very luxury and quintessentialized refinement of war,’ said Flanders. ‘The image of fox-hunting without its guilt and only twenty-five per cent of its danger. We’re ready,’ he told Wu. ‘The imminent deadly breech is no more than a garden gate, and danger’s the yapping of the vicar’s pug. Tell your men to cut walking-sticks and be of good heart.’
‘Before you start,’ said Wu, ‘and in case I shall not have another chance to do so, I should like to discharge my debt to you. The tanks, though their value is small, are worth something, and you have not been paid for them. Five hundred pounds would be a fair price, I think, and as Colonel Rocco had provided himself with some English notes, I can pay you now.’
At the sight of Bank of England notes – five of them, each bearing the magnificent inscription of £100 – Flanders fell silent. He took them reverently, held them up to the gaze of the wintry sun, kissed them, and put them in his pocket-book that was still bulging with Rocco’s worthless money. He sighed profoundly, patted the rich protuberance of his pocket, and half forgot his present surroundings in thoughts of Gloucestershire.
Harris and Rocco, in the meantime, had been arguing with Sun Sat-lo and the colonel commanding the battery of field-guns about the use of artillery. They said, very sensibly, that their hope of success lay in surprise, and that a preliminary bombardment would merely warn the enemy of what was coming. But the colonel maintained that a battle without artillery was no battle at all, and he insisted that as he had gone to so much trouble in bringing up his guns in the darkness, and had found so excellent a site for them, he was entitled to fire them; while Sun Sat-lo was of the opinion that his soldiers would enjoy the noise of a bombardment, and might not be willing to advance without it. They were far more frightened of devils than of the Japanese, he said, and devils were notoriously susceptible to noise. A simple exposition of the tactical advantage of surprise was of no weight against such arguments as these, and Harris retired defeated. Juan had just discovered that his tank was the one which had been used as a target on the previous day, when with the roar and multiple crash of nearby thunder the battery opened fire.
The guns were well served, and they could hardly hear themselves speak; but there was a great deal of shouting and gesticulation when it was found that Flanders was too fat to get into the turret of his tank. He stuck in the round opening like an egg on a liqueur glass, and grew purple in the face as he tried to thrust his way in. Then a portion of the roof collapsed, and he went down with a jerk, surrounded by bent and buckled tin.
Juan got into his tank, and bolted down the lid of the turret. The driver was already in his place, and the engine was running. There was a smell of oil, and the wind blew coldly through the holes that Wu Tu-fu’s experimental bullets had made. Juan, for a moment, experienced a feeling of panic at being narrowly confined. A thick belt of porous rubber surrounded him, to protect his ribs when the tank was travelling over rough ground, and the turret-lid was lined with rubber lest he should be thrown up against it and stunned. He was imprisoned in a travelling oven – the small interior was already growing warm despite the draught through the bullet-holes – and
nervously he wished himself out of it, and safely out of present danger in the comfort of another day. Then he looked through the slot in the turret at Flanders’s tank in front, and saw that it had acquired a curiously rakish appearance. Its badly buckled turret leant sideways at a drunken angle, and its lid was loose. It looked like a late-night reveller, a seaside tripper. Its unsoldierly dishevelment was reassuring, and Juan’s momentary panic dwindled to a feeling of intense impatience. He wanted the guns to stop firing and the tanks to start moving. Movement would release him from the feeling of confinement. He swung his machine-gun, and restlessly fingered the long belt of ammunition.
At last, after what seemed interminable waiting, he saw that Flanders’s tank was slowly going forward. He heard the harsh grinding of gears, he felt a lurch and a bump, and realized the attack had begun.
Wheeling right, the tanks left the road and advanced in line ahead. They crashed through a bamboo fence and wheeled right again. Number Four – Rocco in command – turned left and stopped. The others rolled on, stopping at intervals of a hundred yards and turning to their front. When Flanders came into position on the right they advanced again, slowly and in line.
The infantry debouched from the village in four untidy close-packed columns and followed the tanks. The battery ceased fire, the pace of the tanks quickened, and the following troops, shoulder to shoulder and treading on each other’s heels, broke into a shuffling trot. Sun Sat-lo had established machine-gun posts on either flank. Both were well-placed among convenient grave mounds, and that on the right, because of the diagonal course of the Japanese line, was almost in a position to enfilade it. They opened a hot but not very accurate fire on the enemy’s redoubts.
It occurred to Juan that he also had better start shooting. He set his sights at fourteen hundred yards, aimed at the nearest redoubt, and let off a short burst. Almost at the same moment two bullets pierced the turret-wall above his head and tore ugly holes in its tin lining. The Chinese bombardment had done very little damage to the Japanese position, but by advising the enemy of coming danger it had brought them all into their trenches, and their machine-guns, despite constant fire from the Chinese flanks, were being served with haste and zeal. With too much haste, perhaps, for their shooting was wild. But there were several casualties in the closely packed columns of infantry, whose officers promptly ordered them into an extended formation. The pace of the tanks quickened again.
Juan, who was now tremendously excited and very angry with the Japanese machine-gunner who had given him such a fright, was firing with the utmost enthusiasm. Because of the lurching movement of the tank, however, he found it very difficult to take an accurate aim, and in spite of his enthusiasm he could not believe that he was causing many casualties among the enemy. He put in a new belt of ammunition, and wriggled out of his coat. The air in the tank was stifling. He was sweating profusely and nearly deafened by the iron stammer of his gun and the roar of the engine. The tank heaved and slithered, and Juan fired wildly into the air. He steathed himself, and took aim again. The redoubts were coming rapidly nearer, and he reduced his sights. Bullets struck the tank and missed him by inches. Through a corner of the slot in the turret he could see the village of Nanyang. Suddenly a small tight cloud appeared above it, then another, and two more. There were field-guns behind those innocent houses and winter-weary trees, and the battle was not to be so easily won as Flanders had thought. – Then stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. – With beautiful disregard for the rights or wrongs of the cause for which he was fighting, and with never a thought of the circumstances that had brought him into battle, Juan, in his hot and stinking tank, was filled with a fierce and concentrated determination to reach and ride over and destroy the sandbag fort at which he was aiming. He could see his rival gunners now, and held his breath as he fired.
Less than a hundred yards ahead was the creek that had looked so small from Hungpo. It was, indeed, not large; but bigger than it had appeared. Its sides, of black mud, were perhaps five feet deep, and fell at a steep slope to a bottom about seven feet broad. But that was the kind of obstacle that a tank could take in its stride. There would be a dip and a heave, a forward lurch, and they would be on the other side. Juan fired a last burst at his chosen target, and braced himself for the shock.
For the fraction of a second the tank balanced on the slippery edge of the creek, its forepart in the air. Then it fell forward, slid down the muddy bank, and entered the shallow water with a great splash. It lifted its nose and essayed to climb the farther side. Its revolving tracks churned the soft mud and thrashed the water like a paddle-steamer. It rose a little, and then as though disheartened slid backwards. The water came in, rising to a depth of several inches on the floor, and with a last indignant cough the engine stopped.
In a fury of frustration, Juan threw open the turret and clambered out. As he rose for an instant above the level of the bank he heard the angry whiss of bullets, and ducked and came down into the water in a great hurry.
The other tanks had all failed to cross the creek. Two of them, having toppled over, lay on their sides, and Juan hurried to help Flanders, who was struggling desperately half-in and half-out of his crumpled turret, and likely to tumble headlong into the water. His face was bedewed with sweat like summer grass in the morning, and the veins stood out on his forehead. He laid his hands on Juan’s shoulders, and with a prodigious effort hauled himself free. Juan’s legs bent and he staggered as Flanders’s weight came on him. Then they stood together, knee-deep in the creek; and Flanders said: ‘The moral value of my tanks is written down. Well, I never thought much of moral values anyway.’
Panting and gasping, the horde of infantry came with a rush into the safety of the muddy ditch. They tumbled down the slippery bank, they leapt into the water, and crowded round the disabled tanks. They filled the creek, shouldering each other and scrambling for room to move. Their grey uniforms were splashed to the shoulders with black mud, and a babbling excited noise competed with the nervous stammer of machine-guns. On the field behind them lay a score of bodies, some of them motionless, and others still horribly alive.
‘Do you think there’s any chance of getting these fellows to go over the top?’ said Juan.
‘Come and see what Harris and Rocco are doing. The tanks are driftwood, but we could salvage the guns if we knew enough Chinese to give an order.’
They began to force their way along the creek, thrusting themselves laboriously through the mass of soldiers, and came presently to where several officers were reorganizing their men and encouraging them to continue the attack. One of the officers was slim and girlish in appearance. He was wildly gesticulating, and with passion in his voice exhorted the unwilling coolies to follow him. He clambered half-way up the bank, and turned, his head and shoulders above the top of it, so that Juan saw his eager profile, and recognized Kuo Kuo.
Another officer scrambled up the mud, and among the men there was a tumultuous movement as about thirty of them pressed forward. Kuo went over the top, and the little company of volunteers, struggling up the slimy bank, followed in a gallant confusion.
Juan, caught in a press of soldiers, made a violent effort and got free. There was a small space about him, of black uneasy water, and in front of him the slope of mud, scored and scalloped as though by cattle at a drinking-hole. He dug his hands in the bank and heaved himself up. Bullets went hissing over his head.
The attack had crumpled almost as soon as it began. Eight or nine of the soldiers lay dead or wounded, and the rest were tumbling back into the creek. Kuo stood, half-turned towards her retreating countrymen, with her arms stretched out in an attitude of appeal or despair. She carried, absurdly enough, the sword-stick that Min had once given to Juan; and the light played on its thin blade like a thread of quicksilver.
Crouching low, Juan ran towards her and caught her round the waist. She cried to him to let her go, and struggled fiercely; but he dragged her back to the edge of the creek, and they slid togeth
er down the black mud.
Kuo still fought to release herself, but Juan held her firmly. Tm not going after you again,’ he panted. Tm not a hero, and you’re not really a soldier. So you’d better stay where you are.’
Chapter 23
Kuo grew a little, calmer; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her excitement changed its colour. For a second or two she was sullen, fighting against Juan’s restraining hands. Then she stopped struggling, and her face became eager again, as when Juan had seen her climbing out of the creek. Her eyes shone with the light of an exalted mind, her lips parted in glee. The noise and danger and confusion of the doubtful battle were forgotten in her consciousness of a greater triumph. ‘Juan,’ she exclaimed, ‘we have got the plan!’
Juan shivered and wiped his muddy hands on his trousers. He was still in his shirt-sleeves, he was wet to the waist, and the wind was cold. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘How did you get it?’
‘I took twenty soldiers and went yesterday to Hikohoki’s house. I found it easily, because you had told me very clearly how to get there. Then we fought with the guards, and went in. Hikohoki tried to run away, but we caught him and I found the plan. I have given it to General Sun Sat-lo, who is sympathetic and knows all about it.’
‘And what became of Hikohoki?’
‘We brought him back. He is our prisoner, and he will certainly be shot. But that does not matter…’
‘It matters a great deal,’ exclaimed Juan angrily, and was nearly pushed off his feet by a sudden wave or flux in the throng of idle soldiers. He realized the impossibility of persuading Kuo, in such a situation, that Hikohoki was less guilty than she so stubbornly believed; but he was none the less perturbed to think he was largely responsible for Hikohoki’s present danger, and hotly impatient of the various circumstances that made him powerless to help him – circumstances so incontestable and various as a battle-field from which there appeared no exit, and a female mind so wholly convinced as to leave no entrance. Irritably he shoved a couple of soldiers out of his way, and saw that their surging movement was due to Rocco, who, forcing a path down the creek, was driving the more timid ones before him.
Juan in China Page 27
