by John Masters
He pulled her to her feet and held her tight, caressing her dishevelled hair, and said, ‘Of course. I’ll give it to you. Then we’ll start packing.’
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, May 13, 1919
MADRID-LONDON IN TWELVE HOURS
A record flight from Madrid to London, a distance of 987 miles, was accomplished yesterday in less than twelve hours by Lieut.-Colonel W. D. Beatty, accompanied by Lieut. Jeffrys as observer.
Ah, Cate thought, I wonder whether Guy will take that as good news or bad. It was good in that it showed what modern aircraft could do, over long distances; but perhaps it would spur Colonel Beatty or others to perform other, similar feats, stealing some of Guy’s thunder. There was already a plan afoot, Guy had told him, to fly a machine non-stop from the American continent to Europe, over the North Atlantic, at about the same time that Guy hoped to traverse the South Atlantic. He turned to another page:
MR BONAR LAW AND THE PEACE TREATY
THE INDEMNITY CLA USES
In the House of Commons yesterday Mr Bottomley (Ind. Hackney, S.) asked whether it was correct to assume from the official summary of the Peace Treaty that the only cash payments to be made by Germany were as follows: That she is to make reparation for damage to persons and property under the seven heads enumerated in the summary, the total obligation in respect of which is to be notified to her not later than May 1, 1921; that she is to reimburse Belgium by means of bonds falling due in 1926 all sums borrowed by that country from the Allies; that within two years she is to pay the sum of £1,000,000,000 sterling, a further £2,000,000,000 in bonds at varying rates of interest with a sinking fund beginning in 1926, and a further £2,000,000,000 in Five per Cent bonds under terms …
Cate’s head spun. It didn’t make sense. Such sums of money did not actually exist, the figures were just that, exercises in pure mathematics … or fantasy.
‘More coffee, sir?’
‘Thank you, Garrod,’ he said, nodding as she bent over to pour the coffee.
He began to re-read the long letter from Isabel Kramer that had come in the morning’s post. They – she and her brother Stephen Merritt – were eagerly awaiting the arrival of John and Stella on the 13th – today, Cate thought: perhaps they’ll cable when they’ve arrived safe and sound. Stephen was pulling strings to get John into the Indian Service, among the Navajo, while at the same time ready to try to persuade him to stay in New York with Fairfax, Gottlieb. They’d have to await their arrival and find out how deep John’s determination really was. What Stephen could offer him in New York, in the booming postwar business world, was enough to make any man, especially a young one, think very hard; but – Stella was the key, Stella, and what John had decided was best for her. There, Isabel was on John’s side, whatever Stephen said. Otherwise, she was well … lonely … kept thinking of the wild flowers in the woods in the Weald, in May … of the Manor, the music-room, of him, playing his violin, sometimes at night, sometimes putting down his bow so that they could listen to a nightingale. Her love, as always …
Chapter 23
North-West Frontier, India: May, 1919
The officers’ mess was an old building made of large bricks of dried mud, flat-roofed, low, long, the walls nearly two feet thick to keep out the sun of the hot weather, now full upon them. It had been very different when the battalion arrived, late in November ’18. But now all day, every day, the sun beat down like a club, without mercy, the shade temperature hovering between 110 and 120 Fahrenheit. The thorn trees in the mess garden offered no protection, and the grass was parched, though the mess malis watered it from the irrigation ditches as soon as the sun went down. Then the earth smelled damp and the drooping zinnias raised their heads, and stood tall, unseen, in the tremulous, scented heat of the night. All round, the mountains, ribbed with rock, skimpily garbed with holly oak, shimmered in the sun; and, at midnight, were still too hot to touch with the bare knees, which showed between the bottoms of the soldiers’ khaki drill shorts and the tops of their rolled khaki puttees.
Inside the mess the officers of the 8th Battalion the Weald Light Infantry had finished dinner, and were standing or sitting round in the ante-room, talking and drinking, or playing snooker in the separate mud building nearby, which housed the billiard room and the ghuslkhana … which might be translated as ‘W.C.’, except that there was no running water, only a row of enamel chamber pots on a wooden shelf at the appropriate height, and two cubicles containing wooden ‘thrones’ and deeper pots. Outside the back door, the mess sweeper squatted, waiting to clean out the pots as necessary. Outside the mess building itself, two small brown boys leaned back against the outer wall, strings attached to their toes. As they swung their legs back and forth the strings pulled a series of short blue curtains hanging over the heads of the officers inside, so stirring the hot air … and gently showering them with almost invisible dust.
‘Roll on, as the soldiery say, roll on,’ Harry Garth said dreamily. ‘A boat! England! Blighty! Beauty!’
‘Less than four weeks to go,’ another officer said. ‘Has it been decided who we’re handing over to?’
The adjutant, Lieutenant Claude Mitchell, said, ‘2nd Battalion, South Wales Borders. From Germany.’
‘Why not our 2nd Battalion? They’re coming out about the same time, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, but they’re going to Hassanpore. Lots of jolly Aid to the Civil there. With luck they’ll be able to give the blighters another Jallianwala Bagh.’
An officer reading a newspaper in an easy chair by the big, wide, empty fireplace lowered his paper and said, ‘That’s a very unfortunate remark to make, Mitchell.’ The speaker was a dark-skinned Indian, tall, thin, wearing the lapel badges of the Indian Medical Service on his white mess jacket, and the three stars of a captain on his shoulders.
‘Sorry, Govind,’ the adjutant said, ‘I didn’t know you were there.’
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ the Indian said. ‘A great many Indians fought loyally for Britain through the war. Many died in France and Flanders. The campaigns in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Palestine would have been impossible without them. We had a right to expect some reward for this loyalty. What did we get? Three hundred and seventy-nine of us massacred at the Jallianwala Bagh … and every British officer and civilian in the country going out of his way to praise the butcher, General Dyer, as the saviour of India.’
A voice from the corner of the big room said, ‘Not the fair word to use about a senior officer, Govind.’ It was Major Schofield, the 2nd-in-command. ‘Get on with the argument.’
‘Sorry, sir … As I was saying, we expected more … That slaughter of innocent civilians in Amritsar is the worst thing that’s happened since the British came to India … for you, not for us. Waiter … lemonade please.’ He raised his paper and continued reading.
After an awkward silence, a young subaltern said, ‘I want to get home. No job’s waiting for me… I’ll have to get out and find one. And what training do I have? Joined up when I was eighteen … no degree, no skill … except commanding a platoon out here.’
‘The men are very restive,’ another, older man said. ‘I hope to God we don’t have any trouble here before we’re relieved. Their hearts are not in it … they want to go home, now!’
‘One column,’ Mitchell said, ‘next week. And that’s our last. It took Army Headquarters long enough to sort everything out after the armistice, but they finally did it … Care for a game of billiards, Stratton? A pice a point?’
The newspaper in the corner was lowered again, ‘You appear to have forgotten, Mitchell, that no gambling is permitted in the mess, except bridge, at the rates specified in Regimental Standing Orders.’
‘Sorry, sir, I forgot.’
Fred said, ‘All right.’ He had learned to play quite well when he was living in Mess, before his marriage. There wasn’t much else to do, after dinner. And immediately afterwards the battalion came up here, a non-family station, so he had, of course, dined in
every night. That month’s leave in Bombay with Daphne had been a nice change – and she’d got pregnant – but otherwise this Frontier routine was all right and had become familiar: the voices of men, and only men, the camaraderie … no one to order him to sit up straight, or correct his accent, or tell him he’d never get on if he didn’t learn to play bridge, or … or, face it, nag. Oh well, column next week, then … what?
The battalion was acting as rearguard this third day of the column. A ‘column’ was normally merely an excursion into tribal territory to show the flag, and to exercise the troops – on this occasion one Indian, one Gurkha, and one British battalion, with mountain guns. Sappers and Miners, Signals, and the usual services. The force had marched twelve miles the first day, mostly on a dusty road into the foothills west of Ghazi Khan; the second day eleven more miles on narrow tracks in ever-rising mountains thinly covered with scrub. The heat had been tremendous, the water scarce. All the men had suffered, the British troops the most, with six cases of heatstroke on the first day, all evacuated by motor ambulances, which had accompanied the column that far. From there on any sick had to be carried with the column in khajawas, the awkward stretchers hung one to each flank of a camel.
Colonel Pulliam stood at the rear of the winding column, staring up through binoculars at a rocky ridge about half a mile to the north of the path. Close to him a corporal carried a huge red flag, denoting the official rear point of the column. To one side signallers wig-wagged messages in morse with blue and white flags.
Pulliam lowered his binoculars – ‘They’re moving … took ’em long enough. Damned Jats! I’ll give the platoon commander a rocket when he comes in. He can’t have had anyone watching for signals.’
He raised his glasses again. The rearguard artillery officer turned to Stratton, ‘Heard the latest? The Afghans have crossed the border … Unless they go back, ek dum, we have the 3rd Afghan War on our hands.’
‘Won’t make any difference to us,’ Fred said. ‘We’re going home. And our tribesmen hate them, as far as I can make out, even though they’re all as good as cousins, or closer.’
Mitchell, nearby, said, ‘Don’t you believe it. We’re infidels. The Emir’s started something, because he thinks we’re weak, and our tribes will join in.’
A loud fierce rattling cracking rent the air over their heads and Fred dived to the ground. He had served on the Western Front three full years, and he recognised concentrated rifle fire when he heard it. One or two more in the headquarters group were also flat by now, others staring vacantly up and around as though asking, what’s that funny noise? Then one of the signallers fell, clasping his stomach, the flag dropping from his hand. At the same time Colonel Pulliam, his glasses still to his eyes, exclaimed, ‘By God, a man of the picquet’s down … and another!’
Stratton shouted, ‘They’ve ambushed the picquet, sir … And they’re firing at us!’
The gunner officer shouted to his own signaller, who began to wave his flags frantically. The gunner, a captain, knelt beside Pulliam, now also kneeling. ‘We have one battery with trails down, sir … We ought to have fire within a few seconds.’
The little khaki figures on the hillsides were running faster now … another man had fallen. Still no sign of who was shooting, either at the picquet, or at the headquarters group round the red flag. Shells began to whine overhead to burst thunderously on the hillside behind the running soldiers. Colonial Pulliam was pale and disconcerted. Stratton, watching him, thought – he doesn’t know what to do. He was a stockbroker in peace time, a Territorial part-time soldier; he’d never served in France; and what of battle had he learned in India? Nothing. He shouted, ‘Sir … they’ve had at least four wounded out there. I’ll counter-attack and get them in as soon as I can fix artillery support.’
‘Carry on, yes, yes, carry on,’ Pulliam said.
The gunner captain turned to Fred, ‘Which way are you going to go? … It’s Stratton, isn’t it?’
Fred nodded, surveying the terrain in front of him with his binoculars. The enemy was to the right … might be some to the left and some straight beyond the picquet, but mostly on the right … The nullah down the middle offered a little cover, in fact the Jat platoon was in it now, taken position, and returning the enemy’s fire. A low ridge of rock ran from a hundred yards to his left up to the crest line where the picquet’s position had been. It would do. Nothing better … so, get to the rock line, go up, two platoons up, two back … get the guns to protect his right flank … retake the crest, then clear out the wounded. Once that was done … it would be three o’clock.
He ran to the CO and gave his plan, adding, ‘I’ll need another company to get me out, sir … and all the artillery and machine-gun fire we can muster … There must be a hundred and fifty of them up there.’
Pulliam said, ‘Good, good … Arrange your start time with the gunners … Mitchell, tell Sergeant Grundy to fix machine-gun support with Stratton. And send for Major Tomlinson and D Company.’
Fred sent his runner to bring back his company, waiting 300 yards forward of the red flag as battalion reserve for just such an eventuality as this. Then, crouched behind the rocks with the gunner captain and Sergeant Grundy, he explained his plan, and fixed support from the mountain guns and the machine-guns. He looked at his watch – ‘Starting line, here … Zero hour, twelve noon.’
The gunner said, ‘Send down a signal as soon as you’re on the crest, Stratton. We’ll be firing on it until then, but as soon as you have it, I’ll lift a hundred yards, to stop any counterattack.’
‘Right … I’ll wig-wag back Ρ Κ … or green over white.’
‘Right. Good luck. We ought to have another battery’s trails down in ten minutes. They were well forward and on the move when this blew up.’
Stratton nodded and stood up. Here was his company. The platoon commanders were running forward, the men crouched low, spread out. He looked at them carefully … hot, tired, sweaty … and nervous. Christ, they ought to have been at Loos … Fricourt … Contalmaison … Passchendaele. This was a joke. Still, you could get killed by these ragged-arse barnshoots just as dead as by a Hun: one bullet was all it took.
The platoon commanders and the CSM were round him, all kneeling, big flat-topped solar topees like inverted dung baskets on their heads, walking sticks in thejr hands. He looked at them one by one and at last said, ‘Calm down … Number 11 Picquet ran into trouble as it was being pulled in. It’s from the Jats. Some wounded, probably some killed. We are going to retake the picquet’s position on that ridge … that one … so that the wounded can be brought out.’
‘We’ll only get some more wounded,’ a 2nd Lieutenant muttered.
Fred said sharply, ‘Shut up, Greville! We don’t abandon wounded to the tribesmen, and that’s all there is to it. Nor the dead, if we can help it. How would you like to go to heaven with your prick and balls cut off and sewn into your mouth? … We’ll attack up that ridge line, two platoons forward, then my headquarters, then two platoons, abreast, in reserve … 5 left front, 7 right front, 6 left rear, 8 right rear. Platoon formations – sections in arrowhead, men in arrowhead. Move steadily, not too fast, that’s a 500-foot climb … no stopping for casualties … supporting fire … the mountain guns are …’ He went on for five minutes. And, at the end – ‘Any questions?’ No one spoke. Fred said, ‘The time is … eleven forty-two … now! See that every man thoroughly understands the plan. Good luck.’
The camp was dark, all the hurricane lanterns that had been carried on camel back, or strung round transport mules’ necks, extinguished since an hour after nightfall. The tents were up, in long rows, each full of sleeping men except where the occupants were on sentry duty round the low stone wall that marked the boundary, a bigger stone set up as headstone every five paces all the way round the three-quarter mile of perimeter. The night had started hot, a wind blowing dust across the little valley and into the men’s eyes as they worked at their myriad tasks – putting up the tents, collec
ting the rocks, building the wall, digging down some cover for the wounded in the Field Ambulance area. The brigade had suffered twenty wounded, besides seven left dead on the ridges three miles to the east, where the afternoon’s battle had been fought. Fred and B Company had reached the crest with little trouble, and no more casualties than one killed and four wounded. Other troops below had come in and taken out the wounded from the Jat Picquet; that picquet itself had finally rejoined the column; and there B Company was, still up, and the tribesmen gathering, for they knew that the soldiers had to go down. The screw guns had performed marvels of accuracy, dropping a hail of shells within fifteen yards of the crest when the tribesmen started an attack; and Fred had done well, pulling out at full speed while the enemy were still confused by that setback. Even so, he twice had to halt the withdrawal, fight back fifty yards, and wait five minutes, till another newly wounded man was carried out. The dead, he left. With this number of Pathans against him, and coming on much more openly than they were supposed to, it wasn’t worth it. The dead would have to face St Peter without their balls. St Peter would understand, being a sort of tribesman himself.
The medical orderlies had scrubbed the blood-soaked khajawas; the tents smelled of ether from the operations; one wounded man had died. While they were setting up camp the tribesmen had sniped continuously, but not very heavily. Everyone was dead beat – too tired to eat much. They prayed for beer but there wasn’t any … not much water, either. No more washing of filthy clothes, or even khajawas, now …
The CSM shook Fred awake at two in the morning. ‘You wanted to go round the sentries, sir.’
Fred struggled up from mile-deep dreams, his mouth dry and harsh, sweating. There was a little chill in the air at this hour, 6000 feet above sea level; but, like every other soldier, he had been sleeping fully dressed. He buckled on his belt and equipment and started out, following the CSM. The sentries were dimly seen shapes against the faint stars, their bayonets sticking up if they were patrolling; but rested against the wall, only the tip showing, if they were on guard, leaning behind a headstone … Here was a machine-gun, the sentry sitting behind it, the rest of the crew sprawled asleep on the ground all round, the corporal leaning against the wall, asleep.
