The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Read online

  The mere fact of being in touch with the outside world was something. We heaved ourselves to our feet and moved on once more.

  It was on the next day that we finally reached the highest ground. We were no more than half-a-mile off course. Our forward patrol made contact with the Japs, who cut loose with withering MG fire. Even that had the effect of raising our spirits – better to fight the bastarding Japs than the jungle. Against the jungle you could never win.

  But could you win against the Japs? We had our doubts. You could not see the sods, so well were they dug in, and so torrential the rain.

  We had climbed three-thousand feet of muddy mountain. Now we were fucking well expected to fight.

  Being above the great hillside, we found R/T reception was better. The link opened up properly and we learned that the rest of the battalion was close at hand. Within minutes, we had contacted them. What a bloody relief! All parties had suffered the same total aggs we had, and ‘C’ Company had taken a hell of a mauling from a platoon of Japs, encountered on a ridge. Good news was that rations were coming up to us.

  But the rain came down worse than ever. You couldn’t do a thing. You could hardly breathe. The air was water. Every man had prickly heat, which the rain stung and soothed by turns. I could feel my toes rotting off in my boots. It was so impossible that the attack was postponed for the day.

  Inskipp came along to break the news to us. ‘I’m sorry to tell you all that the ENSA show due to be held up here tonight has also had to be postponed.’ That got a laugh.

  Dusty Miller called out ‘While you’re watching ENSA you’re doing nothing worse.’

  We made the best of things, digging in, making drainage trenches, spreading our monsoon capes over the foxholes.

  Early next morning, we went in.

  Our objective was Peter, a pimple on Cuckoo Spur, which was an outcrop of Aradura and commanded the road. While the artillery from the valley was pounding Peter, we had soup and rum. Somehow we found the strength to fight.

  It was bloody murder. I had shed the set, and went in firing the sten from the hip, shouting like fuck, with Feather on one side, bayonet fixed, yelling too, and Ernie the other side, heaving grenades to make the bastards keep their heads down. But they just plastered us with fire, safe in their bunkers. We were charging uphill, perfect targets.

  Dave Feather went down almost immediately. Dutt and I just charged on, but it was madness, screams coming everywhere. We were within a few yards of the bunkers when Ernie staggered over. I could see the bunker-slits, see the tongues of fire, coming right at me. I fell by Ernie.

  He had been wounded in the leg, through the thigh, and was sobbing incoherently. I grabbed up his grenades and started to throw them hard as I could at the firing-slits in the bunker ahead. There was cross-fire from another bunker. Our charge withered away. It felt as if all the Japs in creation were firing at us. At me.

  They hit poor old Ernie again as he lay. I felt the bullets rip into him. He never made another sound. He had always been a quiet man.

  I was just possessed. Nothing meant anything. Ernie’s body gave me some shelter. I went on flinging grenades. By luck, I got one through a firing-slit. I was near enough to hear their shouts. There was an explosion, screams. Then their fucking Taishio opened up again. Perhaps one of the little sods had deliberately fallen on the grenade and saved his buddies’ lives.

  So much for our attack! Fuck Aradura, fuck its very name, and fuck every scab-devouring sod who suggested we should climb the cunting thing! I stayed where I was, scooping a shallow trench for myself behind Ernie’s body. What had happened to the rest, I hardly knew. After a bit, I heard Gor-Blimey’s whistle, then his voice calling, ‘Stay put and you’ll be okay! Keep your heads down!’

  He must have been fucking puggle to believe I was capable of lifting my head one bastarding inch! I was not the only one stuck in no-man’s land, and a second attack would be coming soon. I stayed where I was, as ordered, clinging to the gudge. The firing had died, except for regular bursts from either side intended to keep heads down. This is what reports call ‘a lull in the fighting’.

  ‘B’ Company, operating along a mula to one side of us, had been having mixed fortune. They found themselves facing new trenches, in which the Japs had set up one of our captured twenty-five pounders. ‘B’ Company charged and managed to overcome this position, gaining possession of the gun. A Jap counter-attack had been fended off, and one section dragged the gun away while the rest fought off another counter-attack. Heavy mortar-fire was brought to bear by the Japs, and many of our men were wiped out, including Captain Morgan, but the rest had been able to manoeuvre the gun and some shells round to our section of the line. Under Inskipp’s command, they manhandled the gun into place. It now began blasting away at those sodding Jap bunkers at almost point blank range.

  Before it registered, shells appeared to be falling all round me. I retreated under Ernie Dutt’s body in terror. At that moment, I almost did my nut, like the time I found the teeth in the shit at Kohima, but a tremendous explosion jerked me back to what then passed for my senses. The same bunker into which I had thrown the grenade was going up in flames. The Japs must have had a store of petrol in it. My bowels were emptying into my trousers. A little crap more or less would make no difference.

  Our brave old lads were getting set for another charge. The MGs were concentrating on one set of bunkers, the twenty-five-pounder on another. The range was maybe forty yards. Surely to Christ, the fucking Japs couldn’t stand too much of that!

  But directly we were up and running, that impossible deadly stream of fire came at us again. We ran on. You had to run on. There was fuck all for it but to run on. Fire and fucking run on!

  I wasn’t aware of myself getting up and plunging forward. It just happened. I saw – it all registered afterwards – Jackie Tertis’s baby face contorted in a yell of fury and, beyond him, Geordie Wilkinson, mouth shut, charging on. Even as I caught sight of Geordie, he was gone, spinning round, falling. It meant nothing. I charged on with the others.

  A second bunker had been blasted open and was half-collapsed. Some genius got a Mills bomb into it, and suddenly it was erupting Japs. They came pouring out of the earth itself, black and smoking. I heard myself yelling – fuck knows what, ‘Kill!’ probably!

  They were big buggers, not the little bow-legged guys of legend.

  They were – shag me, the cheeky cunts were putting their fucking hands up, sticking their hands up, fucking surrendering, the bastards! Surrendering! We shot them down as they appeared. As I made it to the bunker with Enoch close beside me, a Jap officer popped his head up, sword in hand. Maybe he was going to surrender it. He was quite spick and span, with a trim little moustache.

  ‘Get the bastard!’ Enoch yelled. We dived together.

  The three of us went sprawling across the earth. The Jap half-rose, we grabbed him, and with our combined weights fell back into the ruined bunker. Partly smothered in mud, I saw he was fighting to draw his revolver. But Enoch had him by the throat and was choking the life out of him. I grabbed his wrist, wrenching his arm backwards until something cracked.

  Gor-Blimey came up, panting like a dog.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ he said. Blood was streaming down his face from a cut on his temple. He swayed on his feet. After a moment, he recovered. With eyes half-shut he said, ‘Secure this officer and see he does not escape. He must not be ill-treated. The other bunkers …’

  He slipped down against the bank. We saw there was blood all over his tunic.

  ‘Hang on to this bastard,’ Enoch said.

  As I sat on the Jap officer, Enoch ran down to Gor-Blimey and dragged him in to our position of relative safety. We could see then a ragged wound in Gor-Blimey’s chest. He opened his eyes, looked at us, and belched up blood. His hands fluttered and he lay still.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ I heard myself say. ‘They’ve killed dear old Gor-Blimey!’

  ‘Well, we’ll settle this fucker�
�s fucking hash for him!’ Enoch said. He jumped up and thrust his bayonet into the Jap officer, right up to the hilt, until it squelched.

  The firing was still going on, the twenty-five pounder blasting away whenever it had a line-of-fire, although Jap mortars further back were now responding. All told, we took care of twenty more bunkers, main ones and auxiliaries. Some time during the melée, the long awaited Lifebuoys came up, and we burned the bunkers out. It was a massacre. After a while, we began to take prisoners.

  By the end of the long bloody afternoon, Peter was ours. We had a string of thirty prisoners, tied in a line, hands behind backs, with their own signal wire. The rumours had been true. The Japs were in a far worse state than we were, filthy, starved, diseased. Many of them had a fever and looked at death’s door; but as long as they had been able to stand, they had been able to lean to and fire out of their bunkers. Brave bastards, brave to the last! – And fucking stupid too.

  Jackie Tertis and I were rounding them up into some sort of shit-order. Tertis was staggering about almost as much as the Japs, and looked almost as black and ragged.

  ‘How’re you doing, Jackie, mate?’

  He grinned at me, and was no longer baby-faced. With a would-be playful gesture, he swung the rifle to point at my guts. ‘I’m doing all fucking right. What did you expect? I can look after my fucking self. And I’ll tell you something for nothing – if one of these fucking slant-eyed pricks here makes a wrong move, I’ll shoot the cunt in two!’

  Our pathetic prisoners stood before us with drooping shoulders, plainly expecting to be blown to hell at any moment. None of them made a move.

  ‘Get stuffed, Tertis! This lot’s fucking had it.’

  ‘Just let them try it on, that’s all, and I’ll shoot the cunts in two.’

  ‘This bunch of heroes can hardly stand, never mind run.’

  ‘I’ll shoot the cunts in two!’

  He swung his rifle up as if to do what he said. The Japanese bent their heads and swayed slightly, as if facing a stiff breeze.

  We’d hoped for a good night’s rest, but mortars were pounding our positions. For a while, it looked as if we might even have to withdraw. But ‘B’ Company somehow managed a sortie by moonlight, thinned though its ranks were, and clobbered one mortar position. We slept, and in the morning had a go at one last group of three bunkers that had somehow escaped detection. The Japs put up little resistance and we bagged some more prisoners. They were meek and respectful, standing about with bowed heads. The shit had been knocked out of them. They cowered before Tertis.

  Our doctors attended everyone. Stretcher parties were busy loading casualties on to the backs of the mules for the hellish journey down to the road. Even there, their troubles would be only just starting; the hospitals of Comilla and Barrackpore were a dismaying journey off.

  Freed from the wireless set for a couple of hours, I should have got my head down, but for once weariness had gone too far for sleep. I wandered over to the mules, exchanging grins with the Pathans, and there was Geordie Wilkinson, painfully lashed over one of the largest, blackest brutes.

  ‘Geordie, old mate!’

  He looked ghastly. His face was dead white, its tan washed away. His entire uniform was dark with blood. The bandage round his stomach was soaked with blood. Another bandage round his upper leg was cleaner, although there too the blood was beginning to show.

  He opened his eyes. I stood by him, trying to smile at him. ‘Do you want a fag, mate? How about a Blighty Players?’

  He moved his head. His eyes closed again and he said, quite distinctly, ‘They got me in the guts, mucker … I reckon I’m a sort of goner, like.’

  I took his hand. ‘You’ll be okay, Geordie. They’ll patch you up. We’ll all see you down on the road. The Japs are packing it in, did you know that? They’ve had their fucking chips.’

  ‘I saw my own fucking guts hanging out, mucker.’

  A medical orderly came up, as weary, filthy, and unshaven as the rest of us, moving down the column of mules. He pushed me out of the way to examine Geordie’s securing straps.

  ‘Is he—?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re moving this batch of wounded off straightaway. This bloke’s had a jab of morphine, so he’s not suffering pain. Is he a mucker of yours?’

  I bit my bottom lip. ‘One of the best,’ I said, and for some reason the words started me crying.

  In my ammo pouch, against the sten magazines, I had stuffed the picture of Hanuman. I pulled it out, creased, stained, and folded, and tucked it into Geordie’s shirt, against his clammy chest.

  ‘It’s the old Monkey God, Geordie, remember? The Monkey God … Look after him for me!’

  ‘The Monkey God …’

  Geordie was the only bastard in the squad who hadn’t kidded me about Hanuman, Vishnu, and the rest. As I stared down at his pallid ugly face, my tears came again, and I turned my head away so that the Pathans would not notice.

  When I looked again, the line of mules was already moving away through the nearest trees. Geordie would be lucky if he made it back to base-hospital. Hanuman wasn’t going to be much help.

  With victory – with the minor victory of Aradura, our mood changed. We had survived, and Aradura was one jungle-mountain we would never have to climb again! For a while there was not even the need to keep our heads down.

  As the patrols were bringing in their shit-stained prisoners, the RAF finished making an air-drop of ammo, water, fags, and rations on Aradura. ‘A’ Company was getting its share under the watchful eyes of RSM Payne and Inskipp. Inskipp had a shoulder wound and his left arm was out of action, but he refused to be evacuated.

  I sat in one of the bunkers, talking to Wally as he operated our wireless set under Boyer’s supervision. Casualty reports coming in suggested that the Mendips had suffered less badly than we feared.

  ‘We didn’t live in vain, Wally,’ I said.

  He clapped me on the back, right across my prickly heat. ‘That’s God’s truth, me smelly old mate! I bet you was praying to your fucking old monkey god this time yesterday, weren’t you?!’

  ‘Who were you praying to, Churchill?’

  ‘Come orf it, Stubby, I been keeping myself morally pure lately – that’s what did it!’

  ‘You haven’t got much fucking choice in this neck of the woods, have you? You know old Geordie got a packet didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Poor old Geordie! I reckon he’s had his fucking chips. Right in the fucking guts …’ Wally screwed his face up as if thinking. ‘Nice old lad, Geordie – his trouble was, he didn’t believe in anything.’

  Without arguing with Wally – always a useless occupation – I was unconvinced by this implied reason for Geordie’s packet. After all, I had survived so far, and what did I believe in?

  ‘Oh, fuck!’ I said. ‘What a fucking fornicating shower it all is!’

  Aylmer came over, bringing us two packets of cigarettes and a half-piyala of rum-and-water each. While Wally got on with Boyer’s messages, Aylmer and I sat on one side, smoking and sipping our drink.

  ‘This rum should help my dysentery!’

  ‘Yes, it’ll clear it up like one o’clock! In the old days, surgeons used to give their patients rum before they sawed their legs off. Without it, nobody would have survived the ordeal.’

  We watched the Japs being marshalled into bundles by Harding and Charley Cox. When Harding and Charley got their cigarette issue, they lit up and then, rather sheepishly, offered one to the nearest Japs.

  ‘That’s the way to kill the little bleeders off!’ Wally remarked, looking round from the set. ‘Give ’em a de Reske!’

  Bamber, who was near Charley, called out angrily, ‘Hey, Charley, don’t give those bastards a drag! They’d kill you if they had the chance – they were shooting our fucking mates yesterday!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll shoot ’em if they try anything, but they’re human same as we are,’ Charley said cheerfully.

  ‘Not in my fucking book, th
ey aren’t,’ Bamber said, and he turned away.

  We had secured Peter, a lonely pimple on a big ridge. But the sitreps coming over the air were startlingly bad. Nobody else had any joy on ill-fated Aradura. The Royal Welch had been forced back, owing to impossible fighting country as much as anything, and the rest of the battalion had had to move back for lack of support. We were alone on Aradura, and the situation looked grave. We were ordered to dig in.

  ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies were now all within one perimeter, and familiar faces were missing. My old pal Chota Morris had been killed by grenades while leading No. 1 Platoon forward. Handsome Hansom and Ginger Gascadden were dead. It turned into a bad day, despite the charge that had come from our success; everyone was very quiet.

  Only late in the afternoon was there cause for cheer. The high ground of Peter allowed us a view of the road. It wound below us, down the glittering hillside. Our artillery was pounding Garage Spur, on the other side of the valley. We could see paddy fields, with Nagas working in them as if nothing was happening. And one of our mobile columns was moving down the road from Kohima! It could not be too long before reinforcements moved up the khud to join us, if only we could hang on where we were.

  Reaction set in then. The lull in the fighting gave time for thought. That was the afternoon I really got the jitters. By next morning, stuck on that fucking hill in the middle of miles of wilderness, we might all be dead. And I thought of old Geordie, suffering total aggs.

  Nothing ever happened out in Assam as you expected it to. We had plenty of defensive patrols out during the night. They came back with nothing to report. There was no firing. No Japs were contacted. The rain fell. It was still falling at first light, when Sergeant Gowland came in with a patrol and reported that the Japs seemed to have disappeared from the ridge. That was the last day of May.