The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Read online

  ‘“And gentlemen in England now abed

  Shall hold themselves accursed they were not here,

  And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks

  That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day!”

  ‘The going before us will not be easy – we never expected it would be easy – but the victory, I promise you, will be something nobody will ever forget. We shall never forget it, and it will never be forgotten in the annals of our beloved country.’

  As Swinton stood down, we cheered, and looked covertly round at one another. How many men there had tears gleaming in their eyes, as I had in mine – and have now, writing of it, all these years after! Those words from Shakespeare seemed to open up something inside us. If I ever come across them now, I can still weep, entirely without knowing why, for they bring back the emotions we felt in those shabby Assamese glades.

  ‘Bloody good speech,’ I said to old Bamber, as we dispersed.

  ‘Old Willie’s got the gift of the gab all right!’

  ‘Fuck off, it was a bloody good speech.’

  ‘I didn’t say as it wasn’t!’

  ‘Well, don’t let your enthusiasm run off with you. “As long as you’re listening to speeches, you’re doing nothing worse”, I suppose!’

  He looked at me. ‘You’re young, Stubby, you’re a good lad. But life isn’t all speeches. It isn’t what you says as counts, it’s what you do.’

  To accompany his talk, Swinton had brought a blackboard, on which his ADC sketched a map of the battle situation. The disputed section of the Dimapur Road formed the outline of the top half of a duck afloat. Kohima was tucked into the duck’s head and beak. Above the head lay Naga Village, now in Jap hands. Down below its chest and off the drawing lay Imphal and the road to Burma. Zubza lay somewhere at the highpoint of the duck’s tail. Stretching in an arc from tail to Naga Village was the Merema Ridge, overlooking the road for much of its length. That was our route!

  Its lower crests were above our camp, its slopes clothed in jungle, its crest hidden by false crests. Everyone looked at it and drew his own conclusions. And at midnight, as ordered, we began moving in single file up the jungle trails, heading for those false crests.

  We began to learn the lesson many an army has learnt. Mountainsides eat armies. The true scale of any country can only be appreciated by walking over it. From a distance, the prospect of Merema looked straightforward. Climbing its hillsides seemed to call simply for patience and a little endurance. Yet, once we were under its tree cover, we found how every hillside was broken into dips and depressions and pimples and gulleys. Every miniature plateau offered its miniature ravines and cliffs. And, of course, Merema Ridge was just one comparatively minor feature of the area.

  In daylight, thick vegetation cut visibility badly – you could walk into the Japs before you saw them. You might get a glimpse through the thickets of the crest, cloud drifting over it, and think, Thank fuck, we’re there at last! You’d reach it, and it would prove to be just another false crest, and more thicket and another crest looming above you. Those bastard and everlasting hills! We didn’t know what we were at – it wasn’t exactly jungle warfare and it wasn’t mountain warfare either. If this was Assam, roll on fucking Burma!

  It was a matter of keeping going. We moved ahead for fifty minutes, had a ten minute rest, went on again. It rained hard for two hours. We wore our monsoon capes. You couldn’t see where you were going and the trail grew very slippery. We could hear firing and the eternal Jap mortars, but nothing too near.

  By first light, we were still stuck on the limitless hillside. Looking back through the trees, you could get glimpses of the rest of the world. It was all jungle. You could not believe that there were two brigades near you. A whole invasion force could have lost itself on Merema Ridge alone.

  We dug ourselves in soon after dawn. I helped Tertis dig Gor-Blimey’s foxhole while Gor-Blimey did his rounds. We ate a breakfast of eggs and soya-link and char. Pickets were set out, everyone else got their heads down. We were having trouble with the bloody wireless set, and it was hell to get a message back to HQ, though we picked up 5 Brigade loud and clear.

  We had patrols out during the day. There was one brush with the Japs, and two of them were killed. Aircraft were flying most of the day, Dakotas and RAF planes, dropping supplies to the garrison at Kohima. And sporadic firing. Only at tiffin-time was there a sort of truce. Thank God the Japs ate lunch at the same time we did.

  With dusk, we moved forward again. Forward and upward. The eternal climbing, slipping back, the possibility of losing your footing and falling on to the man behind, or the man in front falling on to you. It was like madness, your leg muscles threatening to seize up, your heart threatening to burst. Although cool came with the dark, the air was suffocating in the jungle, and we were attacked by sodding great mosquitoes that whined and hummed round your face. To begin with, you’d try to smack them out of the way, but it soon became not worth while – easier to let them feed. By morning, our faces were a mass of blotches.

  But before morning we had our own bit of excitement. It was a hell of a night everywhere. Kohima was getting a plastering again. The noise came down the valley and you couldn’t be sure of its direction: the great hillsides distorted everything. There was also shooting down on the road, and behind us, and above us, and to one flank. It seemed as if everyone was blazing away bar us.

  We got word over the radio that a company of Japs was attacking our former position down at Zubza. There were tanks at Zubza now, which had fired their seventy-five millimetre guns into the Japs at almost pointblank range. The surviving Japs were now climbing towards us, and a reception committee was quickly arranged.

  It was a relief travelling downhill for a change. We moved to the rear, No. 2 Platoon, through our own troops. Our rearguard was already dug in on one of the false crests. There was a spur here, and Charlie Cox and Dusty set up our Bren on it, with good vision into the jungle just below.

  We waited for two hours before anyone turned up.

  The Japs came up the trail, moving fast. Their scouts were bayonetted without a word, and the rest allowed to gather on the ridge before our lads opened fire. From the spur, we could pick the rest off as they tried to rush up and join battle, and we could cover the trail for some way back. Although the poor little bastards yelled and blazed away, they didn’t have a hope. We killed thirty-one of them, with no more than a flesh wound among our own men.

  To celebrate, we had a quick brew-up and then made our way back to our proper positions. Before we got there, messages came through from the Worcesters on our left flank that their advance patrols had encountered a cluster of Jap bunkers right on the crest of the Ridge, which was now at last not far above us. Our platoon got our heads down while arrangements were being made for an attack the next day. I slept like a corpse, forehead down on pack.

  By all accounts, the next day’s attack was deadly. By this time, some 2nd Manchesters were up with us – they were machine-gunners, and useful lads to have along, but on this occasion they could not bring their fire to bear properly to keep the Japs’ heads down while the troops went in, since the Japs were dug in slightly above our positions. We had some help from the brigade mortars, or such as had been assembled at this height.

  The lads went in after the mortars had been pumping away for twenty minutes, with the Worcesters supporting on the left flank.

  One of our casualties was ‘Dolly’ Lazenby. Sergeant Lazenby of ‘C’ Company was a tough old nut who had survived all that the Krauts could throw at Dunkirk; he led his platoon in with a bag of grenades round his neck. He was shot in the leg almost at once, but managed to fling himself right under the slits of one of the Jap bunkers. He lobbed a grenade through the slit. A crafty Jap grabbed it and flung it back again at once, so that it burst among our men.

  Lazenby pulled the pin out of another grenade, counted to four, and then lobbed it in. Even then, all the Japs were not killed – two had to be ba
yonetted before the bunker was ours. By this time, Lazenby was dead, killed by cross-fire.

  The mortars had no effect at all on the Jap bunkers. After two charges, our attack was called off and we had to give up the one bunker we had gained. The Mendips had lost three men and the Worcesters, who had come up against the main complex of bunkers, six – with nothing gained. We had not even got on to the heights of the Ridge yet.

  We were held up where we were all that day, in rain and shine. Now that the Japs knew our positions, they kept pounding away with their mortars; we had to keep our heads down. Part of the trouble was that we were bunched just below the escarpment, making it difficult for reinforcements to come up from below. During the afternoon, we spread out round the hillside – not without minor skirmishes, for the Japs had a nasty habit of digging foxholes in the jungle. When you stumbled over them, the bunkers above immediately gave covering fire. Those bunkers, dug well in, with roofs covered by tree-trunks and earth, were almost impregnable and almost did for us.

  At nightfall, we had another try at the main Jap position. Sappers had come up with pole charges, which gave us a handy new weapon if we could get close enough to use it. These were mines on the end of a long bamboo, designed for poking into bunkers, which were proving successful at Kohima.

  Before we went in, we had the benefit of RA support from guns at Jotsoma, a couple of miles over on the other side of the road. Once they were registered, their shells clumped home above us in heartening fashion. You lay there listening, imagining the Jap bunkers crumpling. Radio contact was good across the valley, although the RA could observe what they were doing better than we could. After a softening up period, another attack was launched. Our attack!

  This time, No. 2 Platoon was having first bash, under Gor-Blimey. We were all there on our bellies, Geordie, Wally, ‘Honey Pears’ Ford, Chalkie White, Feather – the lot. Waiting for the word. We all looked really tough and dirty bastards.

  The MMGs were supporting better now, since they had been dug into shallow pits in the rock. Using tracer one-in-five, they directed their fire right into the Jap bunkers, making the little bastards inside keep their scabby skulls down.

  The signal came, the machine-gun fire stopped, Charley Meadows yelled at us, and we got on our hind legs and lunged forward, shouting as we went. Geordie was next to me, not showing a sign of his earlier jitters.

  All that shelling, mortaring and machine-gunning hadn’t put a single bunker out of action, though it had spread the jungle about the place. A few trees had come down – one on our right flank was burning into the night like a torch, and I saw Harding leap over its roots. All the bunkers began spitting out deadly fire.

  At least there were shell-holes in which we could fling ourselves for cover. From them, we were able to worm our way forward and get right under the bunkers. This wasn’t easy – the bunkers were built with their weapon-slits close to the ground. Inside the bunkers, any number of Japs could produce a deadly volley of grenades, machine-gun, and small arms fire with little danger to themselves. This was what they were now doing.

  But we knew the lie of the land and we had the hang of things. This was going to be our fucking ridge! We were beginning as we meant to go on. We used every inch of cover, worming our way forward, firing as we went. The pole-charges, too, did their stuff. We covered the sappers as they bunged their grenades home. An explosion, fire and smoke pouring out, screams, and we’d be in there!

  One by one, we disinfected the Jap bunkers, bayonetted or shot all the surviving Japs inside, and then moved on to the next. The only real hitch was when a bunker we had cleared opened fire on us again. These were well established defences, and the Japs had had a chance to establish communicating trenches between the bunkers. Once we got the idea, we killed several Japs in trenches. With every bunker that fell, the next was correspondingly easier.

  The noise all the time was colossal, though you didn’t realize that properly till afterwards. The Worcesters were having a tough time too, somewhere to our left flank. You hardly knew what was going on, yet all sorts of sixth senses saw to it that you worked as one of the team and avoided the flying shit. None of the Japs surrendered, scarcely a one of them fled. They stayed at their posts, where they could do most damage, until the last. It was weird to jump into the bunkers after we had blasted them open and find the enemy tumbled over the floor, his flesh and guts spattered over the walls.

  Orders came that we were to hold the positions we had gained. We pitched the dead Japs over the khud, took over their defences, and dug new ones to the rear. We made our own latrines. After first light, our reliefs trooped in and we moved back for food and kip, shagged to the bloody wide, dead of emotion.

  After four hours’ sleep, I was roused and went to relieve Wally in the signal trench.

  ‘You’ve been bleeding, mate,’ he said. ‘You want to stand further from the razor next time.’

  I was so covered with crap from head to foot that I didn’t know what was happening. And I was still half-asleep. Almost automatically, I took Wally’s place at the wireless set, where Gor-Blimey was taking reports and orders. He looked almost as scruffy as I felt.

  ‘Haven’t you had any sleep yet, sir?’ I asked between messages.

  ‘I’m going off in a minute, Stubbs. Is your ear hurting you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  ‘Get it dressed afterwards.’

  One of the orderlies brought up pialas of hot char while the R/T messages went on. I just slumped there, doing what I was told. From the situation reports, it sounded as if every bloody hillside in Assam was loaded with Japs. The garrison at Kohima had had another bad night; the DIS box had fallen to the Japs, who were now firing into the West Kents’ perimeter. But we had wiped out almost a whole company of Japs, and it looked as if the Ridge might be clear for most of the rest of the way to Naga Village.

  The regimental aid station to which I went to have my ear dressed was some way below our position. I got there after tiffin. It seemed a blessed refuge of peace. The badly wounded had been sent back from here to Zubza, and thence somehow they would have to make their way to distant Dimapur. Serious cases would then have a further journey: back to the railhead at Gauhati, across the Bramaputra, and the long exhausting journey to the hospitals in Barrackpore and Comilla, if they lived that long. India! – Unimaginably far in time and space!

  My ear had been nicked by a flying wood splinter. Feeling an absolute malingerer, I had it patched, and then made my way to a rest tent, where a party was being made up for returning to our forward positions.

  ‘Hey, Horry, some Burmese bibi bite your ear, then?’ There sat old Di Jones, among half-a-dozen other bods, smiling at me, nodding his head, making little clicking noises under his breath.

  ‘If there was any kyfer on this mountain, you’d smell it out first, Di, wouldn’t you?’

  Although he wore boots and puttees, his right trouser-leg had been cut away below the knee and a bandage applied round his calf.

  ‘Just a flesh wound from a bit of grenade,’ he said. ‘Not enough to get me back to India.’

  ‘You don’t want to miss the excitement, do you, Di?’

  He lowered his voice and said apologetically, ‘This sort of business, this fighting, it’s really for youngsters. I’m a bit too old. I wouldn’t mind going home.’

  I offered him one of my de Reskes and sat down beside him. We lit up and sat looking at the tired green foliage outside the tent. There was much I wanted to say to him.

  ‘It’ll be a better world after the war, Di, once we get the Germans and Japs out of the way.’

  ‘Hope you’re right.’

  ‘Of course it will be!’

  He said nothing.

  ‘You’re a miserable old sod, Di!’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve seen more of the world than what you have, Horry.’

  ‘I thought you’d never left the Valley till you joined the Mendips!’

  ‘You don’t have
to leave the Valley to find out life’s pretty tough, boy, believe you me!’

  ‘It’ll all be changed after the war. You ask Enoch Ford. It’ll be a place with better opportunities and everything.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. Myself, I don’t believe that, any more than I believe in Communism. See the way the gov’ment have taken control of everything, rations and coal and clothing and the lot, all since war broke out. Well, you watch if they don’t keep things the same way after the war, same as they kept on passports after the last war!’

  I laughed. ‘There wouldn’t be much point in fighting if things weren’t going to be better afterwards, would there?’

  One of the other bods there, also with a patched leg, had been listening to us and smoking silently. His name was Coles. He was one of the hard cases in Dolly Lazenby’s platoon. He said, ‘You want to read your history, mate! Wars never improve nothing for the likes of us, do they, Di-boy?’

  ‘No, I don’t think they do. Not so’s you’d notice. My old man served three years in the last war and got a bayonet through the guts on Gallipoli. He came back home to ten years’ unemployment. That killed him off in the end as sure as the bayonet wound …’

  We all sat looking out at the tired green foliage outside, smoking our cigarettes in silence, until they came to collect us.

  The whole battalion was moving into the previously held Jap positions, and extending them to the east. The panorama was staggering from the top of the ridge, where I found myself doing look-out duty towards sunset. We could see where the Manipur Road ran, from Zubza on. To the eastern end of the valley, Kohima Ridge was plainly visible, curving like the walls of a great dam. Its sides were a deep turbulent blue. Rain was falling there, moving to envelop us. The sun caught it, and a great rainbow came into being, rising from the hillsides of Jotsoma and Two Tree Hill, bright against black raincloud. Behind it, serene in sun, appeared Pulebadze, a fearful and indestructible wedge of. mountain. The sight could have been no more striking if heavy organ music had rolled out of the hills.