by Ian Blake
Exactly fifty minutes later the ML slowed to a halt. The other ML drew alongside it and both lowered their motor surf boats into the dark, oily water. Up ahead Tiller could just make out the shadowy coastline of Ramree.
9
In the half light of a murky dawn the two motor surf boats dipped and careered in the swell as they neared the shore. Occasionally their rolling motion lifted their exhaust pipes out of the water, which made them emit a curious, animal-like coughing sound. To those aboard the craft it sounded horrendously loud. But Tiller knew that even if there was anyone ashore the sound would be completely drowned by the breaking surf which now thundered directly ahead of them.
The roar of the surf steadily increased. Then the waves around the boats began to break and they were suddenly pitched into a lather of foam. It was like being flung on to one of those funfair rides which tossed you in all directions. The curled tops hung threateningly over the gyrating, bouncing craft and the hiss as they broke all but drowned out the warning shouts of the crewmen to their passengers to hold tight. But the boats rode the turmoil well and though plenty of spray swept over them no solid water came aboard.
The interpreters of the reconnaissance photographs had earmarked the beach as one suitable for landing, but they had not been able to calculate the expected height of the surf. However, their prediction that the beach shelved gradually and that there would be no excessive undertow or lateral current proved correct, for the crews were able to guide their boats right into the beach without having to worry about veering and presenting a side to the wind and waves.
The crews jumped into the shallow water and held the boats bow-on to the beach while the SBS patrol leapt ashore and made a dash for the sparse undergrowth that lined the beach, their weapons at the ready. Coates, carrying his black walking stick, his carbine slung over his shoulder and his empty pipe stuck upside down in his mouth, was the last to jump ashore.
The men spread out quickly to search the area. Fifty yards inland they found two bashas on stilts – fishermen’s huts, judging by the odour that lingered in them – but no sign of their occupants. By now the dawn had given way to a grey, humid, wet morning. In its murky light they carefully extended their search inland but found nothing but a series of partially completed defences behind which lay large, uncultivated paddy-fields.
By the time the patrol had returned to the beach the crewmen had unloaded the collapsible canoes, the wireless and other equipment from the surf boats, and had returned to the MLs, which had now retreated beyond the horizon to await the outcome of the operation.
The patrol set off in single file along the fringes of the beach towards Kyaukpyu. They stumbled through the thick, muddy mangrove, cursing the tangled stumps that snared their feet. The smell of rotting vegetation and dankness hung in the air.
They made several deviations to reconnoitre areas which might have been occupied by the Japanese. Even for Coates it was unknown territory, though the terrain was similar to more open parts of the Arakan coastal mainland. They trudged on for hours, soaked by the rain and their own sweat. Once they came upon a favourite form of Japanese defence: a deep ditch and row upon row of panjis, bamboo stakes, sharpened and hardened by fire. But there was no sign of any Japanese.
At one point they saw several vultures circling to gain height in a thermal above some open paddy-fields and on investigation found the skeletal remains of what Coates said was probably a water buffalo lying in an irrigation ditch. It had been picked clean and the bones were as white as if they had been scrubbed. Its eyeless sockets were still swarming with ants, intent on finding the last vestige of edible tissue. Nearby the party found the remains of a fire and an empty Japanese cigarette packet.
‘So they are here,’ said Tiller. ‘Somewhere.’
He looked up at the vultures which circled over their heads and felt an urge to empty his carbine at them.
Coates, as if guessing what he was thinking, looked up too and said: ‘Cunning bastards, they always hang around just out of range.’
They picked over the fire and concluded that the Japanese had indeed been there. The remnants of a few bones showed that it was probably they who had killed the water buffalo, though it could have been a leopard or tiger, Coates said, as they sometimes preyed on native cattle.
In the early afternoon, still some distance from the town, they came upon the first signs they had seen that the island was still inhabited: a small group of bashas set on the usual stilts among neglected vegetable gardens. A large, dark-brown pig rooting in the mud and debris under one of the bashas showed that someone must be living there, but at first the SBS team could find no sign of life. However, in the last basha, the smallest and most decrepit, they found an old couple squatting on the floor who hardly bothered to look up until Coates addressed them in Arakanese. Then they became quite animated, gesticulating in one direction and then another, their weathered faces creased in smiles of welcome that revealed almost toothless gums.
‘They say Kyaukpyu is deserted and has been ever since the Japanese arrived,’ said Coates. ‘Most of its inhabitants fled to the mainland.’
‘No Japs?’ Tiller asked. He could hear the disappointment in his voice. So did Coates, who smiled briefly and said: ‘Not quite, Tiger. It sounds as if you’ll get a crack at our Nippon friends. They say a Jap patrol passed through here a week or so back. Around nine of them, from what I can gather.’
‘But they’re not here in strength?’
Coates shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. They are very simple people. They would not know what was going on outside their own community. They also say that about two cooking pots of rice from here there is another group of bashas where a few of the inhabitants have decided to stay. Probably because they are too old to move, like this couple. They might know something.’
‘Two cooking pots of rice?’ Tiller queried.
‘They don’t have clocks around here,’ Coates explained. ‘Instead they measure walking distances by how long it takes to boil a pot of rice. One pot takes about twenty minutes.’
‘Which direction?’
Coates turned to the old couple, who gestured vaguely inland. He thanked them gravely and they bowed and smiled. Then they argued with Coates, but he firmly shook his head and eventually they wandered off.
‘They wanted to give us food,’ the forester told Tiller. ‘It’s the custom in these parts. I told them our religion didn’t allow us to eat before sundown. I don’t think they believed me, but were mightily relieved as they obviously have hardly got enough food to feed themselves.’
‘We’ll have a look at this other place,’ said Tiller, ‘but it will mean bivouacking somewhere for the night.’
‘What about here?’ Sandy suggested.
‘Not in these bashas,’ Coates said firmly. ‘Too easy to pick up a skin disease or dysentery. The edge of the beach is best.’
Other members of the patrol, who had been scouring the immediate area for any sign of the Japanese, returned without finding anything. Two SBS men were left behind with the collapsible canoes to prepare a bivouac near the beach for the others and then Tiller found the path that led inland, and struck out along it.
At first the jungle was dark and gloomy but then suddenly the monsoon clouds parted and the sun, already past its apex, shone with a piercing heat through the jungle canopy. Steam rose from the vegetation as if it was being cooked and insects hummed and buzzed around them, and high up in the trees a band of monkeys gibbered loudly and bounced from one branch to another. The ground was slippery with mud but the undergrowth remained relatively sparse and the path was clearly marked.
They walked, keeping a distance of some yards between them and taking it in turns to lead. At one point, when Coates was in front, he stopped, squatted and warned the others to drop down, then pointed with his stick.
‘I just saw a namesake of yours,’ he said quietly to Tiller when he came up cautiously to join him. ‘It came from the left.’
Th
e two men moved forward cautiously until they came to the animal’s spoor. Coates bent down and looked at the outsized cats’ paws that could be plainly seen in the mud. ‘Full grown, I’d say. Curious.’
‘Why?’ Tiller felt uneasy and vulnerable, and gestured to the rest of the team to spread out from the path.
Coates straightened. ‘If we’d disturbed it, it would hardly have come in our direction, would it?’
‘You mean someone else did.’
‘Perhaps.’ Coates was not a man to commit himself. Tiller wondered what would have happened if the tiger had come right up on one of the team.
Anticipating Tiller’s question, Coates said: ‘They do sometimes attack. It happens. There are three types of tiger: those which feed on cattle, those which feed on game, and the man-eaters. The last are rare and only attack humans if they have bad teeth or if they’re too old, or too infirm or injured to catch their natural prey. Rogue tigers are rarer than rogue elephants, though. And rogue elephants aren’t common. I’ve known three in twenty-five years.’
Half an hour later, just as the sun had begun to slip behind the tops of the trees to their right, the path led into a clearing which had a number of small bashas built under the larger trees. Scraggy chickens skittered in fright from the centre of the clearing, where they had been feeding, and the long shadows swallowed them up.
Coates called out something. His voice echoed among the trees without at first bringing any response. Then he shouted something more harshly and an old man appeared from one of the bashas and climbed slowly down the bamboo steps to the ground. He bowed to Coates, who shook him by the hand.
The villager was as old as the earlier couple. He had a sparse, straggling goatee which he kept combing through nervously with his fingers and his lungi hung awkwardly about his thin body like a curtain.
‘He’s the headman,’ Coates explained. ‘But there’s no one here except him and his wife. He says the Japanese have not visited the place but the local policeman came once. He’s sure there are no Japanese in Kyaukpyu, which he confirms has been deserted by the population.’
‘I don’t trust him,’ Tiller said. There was something about the man that made him wary of him.
Coates looked at Tiller sharply. ‘You’ve got a good sixth sense, haven’t you, Tiger?’
Tiller grinned. ‘It’s kept me alive so far.’
‘I might make an adequate hunter out of you in peacetime,’ said Coates grudgingly.
He spoke rapidly to the man, who began to point towards the town. Coates thanked him elaborately and the man returned to his basha. ‘He says to take that path there. It’s the quickest and easiest to the town.’
‘What do you think?’ It was the first time Tiller had asked the older man’s advice automatically.
Coates shrugged. ‘Many headmen are in the pay of the Japanese. It’s better to approach the town from the beach.’
‘I agree,’ said Tiller. ‘We’ll take the path until we’re out of sight. Then we’ll cut back to the coast.’
It was almost dark by the time they found their way back to their rendezvous. The two SBS men who had remained had prepared simple bivouacs by using branches cut from nearby trees to make simple lean-to huts which they had roofed with plantain leaves. Inside each hut a groundsheet had been suspended on short poles to make a bed and above these were hung the mosquito nets.
The patrol took care to change into dry clothes and to examine their feet before covering themselves in citronella oil as an extra precaution against the biting insects. They took it in turns to stand guard, but nothing disturbed them except the subdued roar of the rollers breaking on the beach and clamour of the frogs in the undergrowth.
At the first glimmer of dawn the patrol started out again. The monsoon rain was falling heavily and cast a grey pall over the landscape. After an hour they came across a wide chaung which still had only a trickle of water in it. Instead of crossing it Coates recommended following it inland, as this would bring them behind whatever had driven the tiger towards them the day before.
They walked steadily for another hour before Tiller stopped them to survey the opposite side of the chaung. It seemed a good place to cross but as they began to move towards the bank a burst of machine-gun fire sent them diving for cover.
‘Where is it?’ Tiller shouted to Dopey, who was acting as point man. Dopey, crouching behind a tree, indicated a small hill on the far side of the chaung with the barrel of his carbine. Tiller cautiously scanned the hillside but it was quite some distance from them and had plenty of cover for a machine-gun. He couldn’t see anything moving. He wondered why the gunner had opened fire at such extreme range when he had little or no chance of hitting any of the patrol.
Coates, who had crawled up beside him, said: ‘It’s a Type 92, what the Yanks call a "woodpecker".’
‘Trust the Yanks to come up with some fancy name for it. How can you tell?’
‘Low rate of fire,’ said Coates briefly, his eyes continuing to scan the hilltop. ‘Makes it sound like a woodpecker pecking away.’
‘It was fast enough for me,’ said Tiller, only too aware of the weapon’s distinctive knock, knock, knock, which made it quite different from any other machine-gun he had heard before. ‘Why the fuck fire at us at that range?’
‘It’s a favourite trick of the Japs. Open fire from a feature they know you will try and outflank and where there is an obvious and easy method of doing it. That’s where the real ambush will be.’
‘You mean they expect us to take shelter in the chaung and outflank them by going up it?’
‘You’ve got it in one, Tiger.’
‘And the ambush will be overlooking the chaung.’
‘Bull’s-eye again.’
‘So let’s find where the bastards have laid it,’ said Tiller and indicated that the patrol should follow him away from the chaung and into the mangrove on the right of the path.
It was hard going, and slow too, but within half an hour they had moved in a wide semicircle and managed to manoeuvre themselves behind the area where the Japanese, in all probability, lay in wait for them beside the chaung.
Sandy was sent ahead to scout while the patrol rested. He returned, after what seemed an interminable time, with a grin on his face. He held up the fingers and thumb of one hand and the four fingers of the other. Tiller nodded and waved him forward, and then beckoned for the others to follow. He had no doubt that his men, though outnumbered, could deal with nine Japanese, especially if the patrol was able to surprise them.
‘Drop back, Dick,’ he whispered to Coates. He didn’t want the old boy to take deliberate risks and get himself killed; for one thing, he was too useful to the team now. For a moment Coates hesitated, but then shrugged and hung back to allow the others to pass him.
Sandy led the patrol through dense undergrowth and then up a slight incline. Near the top of it he threw himself down and crawled towards the skyline. The others followed suit, spreading out laterally as they did so. Tiller stayed with Sandy and eased himself alongside the Australian, whose head was flattened against the coarse grass of the incline.
Sandy nodded upwards and Tiller slowly, with infinite care, moved himself into a position from where he could look over the incline and down into a hollow which overlooked the chaung.
The Japanese were a lot closer than Tiller had imagined. Worse, they had with them what he recognized as a Taisho medium machine-gun mounted on a tripod. It was sited to fire down the chaung but could, he knew, be quickly swivelled in any direction.
Doubtless the Japanese officer in charge thought he would do all the damage with the Taisho, but supporting the machine-gun team were half a dozen infantrymen. These were armed with the standard 6.5mm Arisaka rifle, but instead of lying in the normal prone position, they were, Tiller was surprised to see, all squatting on the ground among the elephant grass, their rifles raised to their shoulders, their elbows resting on their knees. One of them also had what looked like a small mortar. Their
attention was entirely focused on the chaung.
Carefully, Tiller glanced around the hollow, which was fringed with what Coates called paddy-field teak trees – those of no value for Burma’s timber industry. The spread of their branches had kept the vegetation from growing under them. The ground there, Tiller saw immediately, was much too bare to hide any additional troops and there were certainly none hiding behind the solid bright brown trunks.
For a moment he savoured the situation and then slid back. He put his mouth to Sandy’s ear: ‘We’ll go in behind our grenades.’
‘Do we want a prisoner?’ Sandy whispered back.
Tiller shook his head. ‘Only if they surrender.’
The others were looking at Tiller. Tiller couldn’t see Coates, but assumed he had got the message and was keeping out of the way. He detached his two 36 grenades from his belt and showed them to the others to make sure they knew what he was doing. Then he took out the pins and held them in either hand and rose slowly to his feet. Sandy did the same. Tiller lobbed both grenades at the Japanese below him, and Sandy followed suit.
As the four grenades were still curving through the air a shot rang out and then a second. Simultaneously, Tiller heard the crack of a bullet and something plucked at his shoulder, and out of the corner of his eye, as he brought his carbine to bear on the Japanese below him, he saw something fall from one of the teak trees.
Then the grenades exploded and all hell broke loose.
Two of the Japanese who had been hit by the flying shrapnel from the grenades began screaming – a high–pitched, animal sound the like of which Tiller had never heard before – and then he and the other members of the team were charging down the incline, emptying their magazines into the waiting ambushers.
One of the team of two machine-gunners was uninjured and he frantically spun his heavy weapon round on its tripod to meet the oncoming charge. He got off a short burst but then the twisted ammunition belt jammed the firing mechanism.
