The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Page 33

  ‘Supposing they by-pass 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 assemble from as far afield as Chittagong and Ahmednagar.’

  ‘It’s that damned line of communication back to India! Fortunately, the Japs’ 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 God 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 bloody 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 pissed before fucking 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 bugger – 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 Japs 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 Japs 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 Assam Regiment, almost untried, plus the Assam 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 Japanese 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.

  ‘Damned 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 Japanese 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 fags, 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 bloody 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 bloody mouth! You want to take a fucking 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 RASC corporal gave us a commentary, pointing excitedly as the early morning sunshine swung first in
the back then in the front of our gharri.

  ‘Watch this bit now! A gharri went over the khud here a couple of days ago and started a minor avalanche. They’re still patching up the damage.’

  Gangs of native workmen, muffled in old sweaters or tunics, worked with baskets by the road where he indicated and there were others just over the edge of the bank, clinging to what looked like a sheer drop.

  ‘They’re the blokes as built this magnificent engineering enterprise – gangs of Indians and Assamese and Nagas and the bleeding lot, what you wouldn’t look twice at normally – built it all on their tod, with a bit of help from our sappers and suchlike. Don’t it make you weep to see it? Now you know why the British Empire’s great!’

  ‘You mean we exploit all the good road-builders!’ Carter the Farter said.

  ‘I’ll throw you over the khud, mate, if you talk like that! Look out there! Just take a shufti! What ennerprise! I come up here most days and never get sick of the sight!’

  Sitting on the piles of bully-cans, we stared out with him. It certainly was a marvellous road. Down in the valley, several hundred feet below, we saw an occasional burnt-out lorry, where an unlucky driver had not been quick enough with brake or wheel. The scenery was wild and magnificent. All of us, from time to time, glanced furtively up at the crests of hills, looking for Japs.

  Some way beyond the Nichugard Pass, we had a long halt for more than an hour. An advance Jap patrol several miles ahead, had blown a bridge during the night. We waited without complaint until traffic could move again, standing on the road with the sun scorching our arms and foreheads. Lorries could be seen far ahead, moving round their shoulders of the road, long before it was our turn to jump aboard and go ahead.

  The sense that the die was cast was strong on us. Calcutta had sunk far below the plimsoll line. We could only guess at what lay ahead. Even McGuffie was silent this morning, beyond an occasional curse at the driver to take the curves easy. His attempt to sneak an air-lift back to Calcutta the day before had come to nothing – the pilots had all been Canadian – and he was content to listen to the oratory of the RASC corporal.

  We arrived at Milestone 35, where Battalion HQ was still being established. A crude roadside sign pointed up a side track to our concentration area.

  ‘All change!’ yelled the RASC corporal. ‘This is Zubza. No cinemas or cushy air-conditioned restaurants here!’

  Without wasting time, we threw our kit down on to the dusty verge. The corporal stared at me as I climbed over the tail-board.

  ‘Well, Firpo, p’raps you learnt sommink this morning!’

  ‘It’s quite a road, I give you that.’

  ‘Quite a road! Sod me! I’ll say it is! It’s the Eighth Wonder of the World, after Stonehenge and Edison’s Lighthouse!’ He banged his open palm against the side of the truck as a signal to the driver. ‘Jhaldi jao! Kohima!’

  He gave us a thumbs-up sign as the lorry disappeared in the swashbuckling dust.

  The heat of day was intense as we reported in and moved uphill to our new positions.

  ‘Here comes the old monkey god himself!’ There was Wally, with the rest of our mates, whom we had not seen since Kanchapur. He came up and smote me affectionately on my biceps. ‘How’s Vishnu and the rest of your fucking pin-ups then, Stubby?’

  ‘In my big pack, you old sod, along with Micheal Meatyard. How’re you doing, cobber?’

  Wally, Dusty Miller, Di Jones, Enoch, and the others looked wilder than they had done in Kanchapur, tougher, and browner. We stood about for a while, joking and laughing, until RSM Payne came and moved us on.

  ‘It’s great here, cocker,’ Wally said, walking along with me. ‘Not like fucking Kanchapur or Vadikhasundi. We’ve only been here a couple of days – had a scare just as we were digging in. The picket exchanged a few rounds with a party of wandering Japs. The hills are lousy with ’em.’

  ‘Bet you shit yourself, Page!’ Carter laughed. ‘Churchill won’t help you here, you fucking old Tory!’

  ‘I don’t see Joe Stalin tagging along with you neither,’ Wally said, good-humouredly.

  ‘How’s Geordie Wilkinson?’ I asked.

  Wally lifted his bush hat and mopped his forehead. ‘He needs his mum!’

  The novelty of being half-way up a mountain was infectious. We were jumpy and excited. When Charley Meadows came along to show Carter the Farter and me where to dig our slit trench, he clearly shared the general excitement. Only Geordie, when he showed up, seemed less enthusiastic.

  ‘You won’t find any knocking-shops up here, like, mate, I’m afraid. No football, either.’

  ‘Seen any Japs, yet, Geordie?’

  Geordie’s Adam’s apple started to bob. He made obscure gestures to me, trying to get me to one side so that Carter, a well-known mocker, did not hear what he had to say. I moved over to oblige him.

  ‘We only got here like a couple of days ago – at least it seems longer, but that’s all it is, just a couple of days. And the Japs opened fire on us as soon as we got here.’

  ‘I heard the picket had loosed off a few rounds at someone.’

  ‘Look, mate …’ He grabbed my arm. ‘The fucking bullets, I mean. I swear they were aiming at me – well, not aimed at me, like, but I was on that fucking picket, and Christ … Honest, mate, I nearly got wiped out, like, as soon as I got here. I mean, perhaps I’m unlucky or something. A sort of Jonas, you know what I mean? The bloke that got swallowed up by the what’s-it, the whale …’

  ‘For Christ sake, Geordie, fuck off, man! We’re all going to get fired at, aren’t we? That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?!’

  He went sulky. ‘It’s all right for you, mate, you don’t care. You’re as bad as Wally, you never fucking care, but some bloke in the factory told me I was a Jonas once.’

  ‘You mean a Jesus. A Weeping Jesus!’

  ‘How about lending a hand with this bastarding trench, Stubbs?’ Carter the Farter called. ‘It’s like hacking your way through fucking millstones.’

  ‘Get on with it, Carter! Stop moaning! I thought you were a Communist and believed in working for the general good!’ I turned to Geordie. ‘Pull yourself together, Geordie, for Christ’s sake! You’re okay. The Japs missed you, didn’t they?’

  ‘You can say that … It’s cushy for you – I suppose that Monkey God thing brings you luck, like, or summat … You were down in Chowringhee with Carter and fucking McGuffie when they were firing at me. You know that McGuffie’s a real bastard, don’t you? I bet you were having a poke down there in Cal, weren’t you?’

  ‘You were there yourself. Didn’t you have a poke? I bet old Wally did!’

  ‘Oh, yes, old Wally did …’

  ‘Right – well, you’d be feeling a fucking lot better now if you’d had a poke right alongside him.’

  ‘There’s no survival value in fucking …’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, fuck off, Geordie, will you, do you mind!’

  ‘That’s all you care, like! Fine mucker you turned out to be!’ He moved off and I went to help Carter. Some of our natural excitement had begun to wear off by the time Carter the Farter and I had dug ourselves a slit-trench. The ground was tough and stoney and needed a lot of work. We pitched our two-man bivouac over it and breathed deep, while sweat poured off us.

  ‘This is a right way to start our holidays in Assam,’ I said.

  Carter patted the tent affectionately. ‘What the hell, it’s home!’ We began to sing together:

  It’s only a shanty in old shanty town …

  We were still singing when Sergeant Chota Morris, my old buddy in No. I Platoon, came up the trail. He too looked wilder and browner than in Kanchapur.

  ‘How does it feel to know that there are twenty thousand murdering little sods of Japs out there, creeping towards you, Horry?’

  ‘Christ, they don’t know I’m here yet, do they?’

  ‘’Course they do, boy – the news is back in Tokyo by now!’

  ‘When do we actually h
ave a go at them?’

  ‘No good asking me. Nobody seems to know exactly where the Japs are, or how many divisions they’ve got in the area. They’re attacking Imphal in strength – that’s sixty-five road miles south of Kohima, but they may have a couple more divisions between here and Imphal.’

  ‘And how far’s Kohima from here? Only about ten miles, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s not the point. We’ve got to hang on till the whole Div gets here, and then we can’t just move up the road, not just like that.’

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘Because it would be too easy for this bloody army!’ Carter interposed.

  Chota said, ‘Anything moving along that road is liable to be picked off from the hills. It’s a perfect target! You can’t hold the road without holding the hills, can you? So my bet is that we’ll soon get cracking into these ridges behind us – and we won’t get cracking until all the gash bods in the area are sent back to base.’

  We stood contemplating the savage planes of jungle all round us.

  ‘Makes a change from Kanchapur!’

  ‘We’ll knock the shit out of the Japs. It’s going to come out in bucketsful. They’ve had their own way out here too long. Once we stop them here, we can bowl them back into Burma and out the other side.’

  He made it sound like a village cricket match played with turds for balls.

  ‘Why should we bloody bother about what happens to Burma?’ Carter the Farter asked. ‘I’d never heard of the bloody dump till I come out to India.’

  ‘It’s not Burma so much, we’ve got to hold on to India, haven’t we?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking daft, man, because it’s ours, isn’t it?’

  ‘Carter’s a Communist,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to take any notice of what he says! He thinks the king and queen should move out of Buckingham Palace and live in a council flat.’

  Chota Morris laughed. ‘I suppose you think we’re oppressing the Indians, do you? They’d be a fucking sight worse off without us looking after them.’

  Carter always rose to such bait. ‘Balls! Arseholes! The British ruling classes are oppressing the Indians just as they oppress the British working man. If we stood back and let the Japs have India, we’d all be freer.’