A Soldier Erect Part 17

One of Cuxham's muckers said sullenly, 'It'll be cushy from now on, what with f.u.c.king air-drops and everything. You can't call it war any more.'

It did not take me long to get my few belongings together. I slung my pack over one shoulder and made for the entrance. There was a lance-corporal in the tent whom they called Lackeri, a clerk - I knew he had been caught in the Ngakyedauk admin box because I'd heard him gripping about it. He stopped me at the entrance. An old man of thirty, wearing Army specs, his ident.i.ty discs swinging against his hollow chest, a sweat-rag tied round his neck.

'Good luck, old boy! All the best! You'll come through it okay. Pay no heed to this lot of admis - they've had it. Things are better than what they was in our time! Take it easy!'

I stared at him. We just looked at each other. People were always leaving places in those days and moving on.

'I didn't mean to sock your mate - I was sweating on the top line.'

'Don't you take no notice of these bods. They've been out in the sun too long. They're due for repat.

Take care of yourself, old lad!' He clapped me on the shoulder, nodding his head once.

I hurried over to the bogs. Shutting myself in one of the cubicles, I burst into tears. There seemed to be no way to stop. I just sat there and cried; I couldn't take being spoken to kindly like that.

After a bit, I pulled myself together and lit a f.a.g. I was safe there. The other sounds of the s.h.i.thouse - slamming doors, farts, pee escaping - came from far away, as I tried to survey my life. Burma. It was just that it was so final... it would be exciting. But not to get another screw in! My hand was okay again.

Maybe I could go and see the MO, that sceptical bloke, and pretend that one of the bones ... no, f.u.c.k that for a lark! But no s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g.... When would I ever have a lovely long messy s...o...b..ring s.e.xy love affair with a girl? A white girl; England. Or a Chinese girl, one of those beauties I'd seen in Chowringhee the other day, smashing faces, marvellous legs. G.o.d, Christ, what a twot I was not to have had a Chinese girl yesterday - today was too late. No dough. The Chinese girls were more expensive than the bibis.

You could see why. Can you just imagine their sweet little t.i.ts and glorious little c.u.n.ts....

Well, one could always dream, and w.a.n.k at the same time. By sprawling right back on the seat and ignoring the stink of the s.h.i.t-pit below me, I managed in no time to lob some spurts of s.p.u.n.k over my stomach, with some relief. It was not wholly a milestone as w.a.n.ks go because the smoke from my f.a.g got into my eye.

As I was getting up and industriously faking the sound of a.r.s.e-wiping with the newspaper provided, I heard someone come into the s.h.i.tter for a pee, I heard their s.n.a.t.c.h of song.

Could I but see thee stand before me....

It was sixteen hundred hours. The gharri had come to collect me, with at least one of my friends. Thank G.o.d, I'd be off to Burma with someone I knew!

Book Three

G.o.d's Own Country

G.o.d'S own country was the ironical Fourteenth Army name for Burma. Perhaps it was so named because of the difficulty of getting there. The distance from Calcutta to Kohima in a.s.sam - maintaining the celestial topography, a.s.sam was G.o.d's Frontier Post - had to be measured in more than miles. The rear detail of the First Battalion travelled northwards by train, on a railway taken over and run by US Railway Troops* From the train, we transferred to a terry, and the ferry took us slowly across the wide Bramaputra. On that river's eastern sh.o.r.es, we stood in a.s.sam and the effects of the j.a.panese blight were already apparent. The chaos and splendour of India, the cheerful and hazardous trafficking of its people, all shrank away into the unnatural quiet of an invasion area. Such inhabitants as there were moved the way people do in war-zones - keeping close to the fence. We were far from home.

We climbed on to another train - this time of a narrower gauge than the first, as if the sinister j.a.panese spell had caused even the railway to contract with fear. This train started with more than Indian promptness and brought us to Dimapur.

Every change of transport meant delays. It also meant the unloading of stores - McGuffie might have lost a military bogie full of our stores, but there were plenty of other stores to be humped. This chain of supply, over different gauges, rivers, and mountains, was the only route to the central front in Burma, bar the air!

The country grew more tremendous as we advanced, as if it too was heading for some kind of crisis.

Each change of transport entailed spending a night in a transit camp; each morning, we woke to chill air and, although the sun quickly became as blazingly hot as ever, we knew we were heading towards higher mountains. I don't know how it was with the others, but for me those were days of excitement. I could have travelled on for ever.

On this journey, the foreign names stood out like names of an incantation: in particular, Dimapur, Kohima, and Imphal! Imphal, the most distant, was capital of the tiny state of Manipur - a capital yet a village - Kohima was just a village in the Naga Hills of a.s.sam, some fifty miles beyond Dimapur. In the ranks, we made little distinction between Manipur and a.s.sam and Burma - all tropical trouble-centres.

As we rolled into Dimapur, everyone stood at the windows of the train staring out in amazement.

'Hey, I reckon the f.u.c.king j.a.ps have taken over here already!' Tertis said.

The pitiful little town was packed with soldiery and refugees and thousands of coolies. This was the bottle-neck between India and Burma and, for every man going forward, eastwards, there were ten trying to get back, westward. As the valley opened out, the panorama resembled an historical frieze more than reality. Dust roads stretched in all directions. Along them roared camouflaged lorries, one behind the other almost b.u.mper to b.u.mper, travelling at reckless speeds. There were long static lines of coolies, too, often engulfed in dust. In the valley and on the hillside, impromptu camps were being flung up. Digging was going on everywhere. The whole impression this great staging area gave was of chaos. An invasion had taken place, as Jackie Tertis implied.

In the centre of town stood a signpost with three fingers, each pointing in a different direction and reading, 'NEW YORK n,ooo miles, TOKYO 5,300 miles, LONDON 8,300 miles'. As the pecking order of cities indicated, Americans were in town. As usual, the American troops looked more relaxed, more democratic, bigger, and decidedly better fed than our troops; they differed as much from us in those respects as we did from the Indian sepoys.

The mixture of races was staggering. It was as if all these thousands of strange men had suddenly arrived to build a new Tower of Babel in this unknown spot. We saw Chinese troops, who were reserved, and Gurkhas, who waved cheerily ('Yon's the best f.u.c.king fighting man in the world, after your Glaswegian,'

McGuffie said), and a contingent of West Africans - not to mention a baffling miscellany of Indian and a.s.samese troops. Everyone was on the move.

For all the over-crowding, our little party moved into a neat and almost empty staging camp. It had been set up for 2 Div. We were almost the first of the division to arrive at the scene of action. The rest were straggling, train-load by train-load, across India, towards this narrow and dangerous valley which pointed towards Kohima and the advancing j.a.panese.

Our party grabbed some food and then went to see a film show: Tom Conway in 'The Falcon in Danger'. The film was projected on to canvas, so that the audience could sit on the ground on both sides of the screen. Who cared on which side of his head Conway parted his hair?

Chatting with other squaddies, we gained a basic picture of what was happening in the so-called real world about us. j.a.panese units were moving forward again, threatening Kohima and encroaching on the Dimapur-Kohima and Kohima-Imphal roads. n.o.body knew precisely where they were. The Dimapur-Kohima road was overlooked by mountains, every mountain covered by jungle right up to its crest; some of the chaps had seen j.a.ps moving about on the crests. 33 Corps was supposed to be guarding this vital length of road - 'and they're a b.l.o.o.d.y shower,' someone lugubriously remarked.

The Mendips'll sort them f.u.c.king j.a.ps out!' Carter the Farter said. He laughed.

We walked down the valley road, smoking and chatting, to a canteen in a tent where they were serving chicken b.u.t.tis and beer. Over the Naga Hills, a half-moon sailed. London 8,300 miles. In the tent, a group of c.o.c.kneys were arguing drunkenly about the exact route a Number 15 bus took.

I stood outside drinking my pint and smoking. I didn't want to talk to anyone. All the expectations of yesterday had been swept away. It was enough to stand in this magnificent valley.

My mates had told me their news: how they had been transferred to Barrackpore as soon as I had left for the Field Ambulance Unit, how Gore-Blakeley had been going spare about the missing equipment, and how everything had suddenly become irrelevant because the j.a.ps were on the move and every able-bodied man in India was being pushed up to meet them. Whatever schemes McGuffie or Gore-Blakeley or anyone else had nourished - all were blown away. The lists had arrived, the orders went through, we did as we were told.

There was a remote outburst of firing, echoing down among the hills.

'Probably j.a.p mortars - they're b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with their mortar-fire,' Ernie said.

'Some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's getting it,' Aylmer said. He and I walked back to our basha, leaving the others. It was the first firing - the first real firing - we had heard. Here and there, groups of men were singing in the darkness. Convoys were moving in both directions.. Sepoys were on guard all along the road, at the stage of night with friends to keep them company smoking beadis, the pungent scents of which followed us down the road.

'At least we should be going in with Yankee Lee-Grant tanks,' Aylmer said reflectively. The old Valentines they used in the Arakan were no use - should have been pegdoed long ago - obsolete.

They've been handed over to the Chinese now, so I hear.'

I laughed. They'll do for the f.u.c.king Chinese!'

The Chinese are fine fighting men. The old Yanks won't have a sc.r.a.p without electric-razor sockets in their landing craft, but your c.h.i.n.k is brought up to fight on a handful of rice a day. A c.h.i.n.k'll go'for days on just a handful of rice. They're like the j.a.ps, given the chance I wouldn't mind if they were going in with us.'

It was the second time he had used that expression 'going in'. He seemed to savour it.

'Christ, it's a f.u.c.king lovely night!' I said.

We heard firing again, followed by the plummy sound of mortars.

Next day was a waiting day for rear detail. Most of them were pressed into digging slit-trenches; McGuffie and I went off with Captain Gore-Blakeley, Jock driving his Jeep, I lugging my wireless set and pa.s.sing an occasional message to or from White Knight, which was someone at Corps HQ.

Gore-Blakeley had with him a Major Bedford, a Division Officer, in charge of supply dispersal or something. They seemed to enjoy themselves, driving about everywhere, walking miles. Jock was often able to sit tight in the Jeep while I tagged after them on foot, sweating beneath the set-harness, half-listening to their conversation.

They were both very cool and detached about the prospects for the battle, as though discussing the chances for a season's football fixtures. Bedford was the senior prefect.

'The sooner 8 Brigade moves in the better,' he said. 'We've got a very mixed bag defending Kohima, although they hold good defensive positions. The j.a.ps are much thicker on the ground than we realized at first. Mutaguchi and Sato are first-cla.s.s commanders and, if they overrun Kohima, Dimapur would be impossible to defend. I needn't stress how disastrous it would be for India and the UK if they took Dimapur.'

'Supposing they by-pa.s.s Kohima, as they have Imphal?'

'We shall have to do the best we can.'

'Naturally.' Perhaps Gor-Blimey felt at a disadvantage. He said quickly, '2 Div is moving into its concentration areas as fast as possible. As you know, units have to a.s.semble from as far afield as Chittagong and Ahmednagar.'

'It's that d.a.m.ned line of communication back to India! Fortunately, the j.a.ps' lines are even more extended.'

'The monsoons will make everything impossible. I hate to think of the water that pours off these hillsides in the wet season.'

Bedford had a way of wiping his moustache with an open hand as if it kept filling with sweat and needed to be frequently squeezed dry. He wiped it now with some perseverance. 'We're learning to fight over any terrain, under any conditions.'

'Agreed entirely. But it would clearly be better if we could drive Sato back into the central Burmese plains before the wet season. The British soldier is more accustomed to fighting in open country.'

Lowering his voice in the hope that I, trudging along in the rear, would not hear, Bedford said, 'Most of the units in this area are unaccustomed to any mode of fighting - with notable exceptions, they've never fired a rifle in anger in their lives.'

'8 Brigade are as highly trained as any unit in this theatre of war.'

'Thank G.o.d for that but - without wishing to cast a damper in any way - your chaps have been trained in combined ops. They may find the mountain jungles ahead a different kettle of fish entirely.'

'You should be pleasantly surprised within the next few days.'

'Of course I expect to be. It's a matter of first urgency to get the brigade up the road to its concentration area at Zubza, and out of this b.l.o.o.d.y shambles.'

Bedford indicated the muddle of rifle pits and barbed wire through which we were walking. Hundreds of spare bods stood about or sat on piles of kit. Coolies wandered aimlessly everywhere. You could go a long way - we did go a long way - before seeing anyone with a rifle. Only in the reinforcement camps was there order and a military scheme of things. We toured the defences in an alternating state of anger and expectation, eventually arriving at an airstrip, where Bedford and Gore-Blakeley disappeared into an officers' mess and Jock and I scrounged a fried egg, a couple of bully sandwiches, a can of plums, and char from an aircraftsman's cookhouse. This feast we ate on the edge of the airstrip, watching the planes - mainly RAF Vengeances -land or take off in the dust and daylight.

'If we could think of a way of getting on to one of they wee planes, we could be back in Calcutta and p.i.s.sed before f.u.c.king sunset,' Jock said wistfully. 'I'll maybe go and chat up some of them pilots. Bet you there's a Glasgey lad there somewhere! Come on!'

'I'll stay by the Jeep. Have a bash, Jock!'

'Okay, you unsociable b.u.g.g.e.r - just don't flog the vehicle to anybody.'

He nodded and marched off, with that parody of a march he reserved for his public performances. I noted that for once he was making a tactical error. The parade-ground stomp was out in Dimapur, where it raised too much dust; the fashion was for a sort of brisk stroll, a gun-fighter's walk.

The guns were hammering away in the hills when my two officers reappeared.

'Sounds as if we're bashing the j.a.ps again, sir,' I said to Gor-Blimey.

'Do you fancy a bash at them yourself, Private Stubbs?' Bedford asked. Testing morale, no doubt.

I nodded my head and smiled in idiot Tommy Atkins fashion. 'Me, sir? Signaller Stubbs, sir. Not 'arf, sir!'

He smiled back, attempting once more to wipe the moustache off his face. 'Well, the sooner you get your chance the better. If the j.a.ps get this far, India could be theirs. It's a pretty rugged prospect. You should be moving up to engage before very long.'

'We'll give'em what for, sir!'

'I'm sure you will.'

Three Hurribombers went snarling past overhead, speeding up the valley towards Kohima.

To Bedford, Gor-Blimey said, 'Someone's going to "give 'em what for", by the looks of things.'

'Just as well. We've got precious little strike-power on the ground in Kohima at present - the a.s.sam Regiment, almost untried, plus the a.s.sam Rifles, who are just local police, a few odds and sods of the Burma Regiment, and our friends and allies of the Nepalese Army! Hardly the most solid defence against a crack j.a.panese division like the 31st.' .

'A hybrid mixture.' The officers lit cigarettes. Gor-Blimey leaned against the Jeep and looked up at the hills with the nonchalant eye of a grouse-shooter.

'd.a.m.ned hybrid mixture!' Bedford said. That's part of the charm of the Fourteenth Army. A signals captain at Ranking's last committee meeting was likening us to the armies of Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the Great War. I shut him up! I thought the parallel was one that hardly needed stressing.'

'Hardly! The British have always used native contingents - because of our small population, I suppose. I hear the j.a.panese are using Koreans.' He turned abruptly to me. 'We should be moving. Stubbs, where is McGuffie?'

'He's just nipped off to the latrines, sir. Here he comes now!'

We watched McGuffie swinging his arms as he marched across the dusty plain towards us, looking every inch an unsung hero.

'Just went to collect some f.a.gs, sir!' he said, saluting smartly.

We were called at five next morning, before dawn had broken. The world was silent and fantasmal, embalmed in a chill air. It felt like the middle of the night. We had a cold wash, dressed, packed our things, and lugged them over to the mess, where surly cooks were dishing out the first bergoo of the day. Other soldiers were there at the mess tables, a despatch rider in leather coat all covered in dust, three Aussies who did not speak, various wild-looking characters. Jam stood on the trestle tables in great cans. As always, I was ravenous.

'Where we going, Corp?'

'Join the rest of "A" Company, of course.'

We moved over to a dispersal point and were checked out, and Corporal Dutt marched us to a supply dump, where an RASC Corporal set us to loading rations into a five-tonner. It was just getting light.

Beginning to feel more like a fighting troop, I asked the corporal-in-charge why we were set to loading rations.

'You lot got to get up that road, thik-hai? These rations is due for Kohima, malum? You're lucky to be travelling up with 'em, in comfort. If I had my way, you lot would march up the b.l.o.o.d.y road, and then we'd have more room in the transport for rations, but the road's choked up enough already without you terrible hairy 8 Brigade wallahs stragglin' over it.'

'Pity they didn't build a wider road then,' I suggested.

He stood stock still and glared at me. 'What ignorance!' His contempt almost overwhelmed him. 'You're a base-wallah, mate, aren't you? Just come in from Firpo's with the ice cream still wet round your b.l.o.o.d.y mouth! You want to take a f.u.c.king good shufti at that road as you goes over it this morning, and remember when you do that every inch of the way was built on human sacrifice, just as in days of old!'

There was reason to recall what he said, and he was with us to remind us. When the lorry was loaded, we piled in, and it moved to form up on a feed road with the next convoy to go through. Day was fully on us now. We could see the scar of the road, yellow and brown, against the mountainside - and then realized that that was only another feed: the proper road lay high above it, in the low clouds.

What a drive that was, once we got started! We had Indian drivers who, despite the odds placed against their doing so, kept us on the road. It must have been a challenge to any man. The marvellous road curled continuously round the mountainsides with the dexterity of a contour-line on a map. It rarely ran straight for more than a few yards.

The RASG corporal gave us a commentary, pointing excitedly as the early morning sunshine swung first in the back then in the front of our gharri.