Quartered Safe Out Here (10 page)

This was it, then, the moment you read about in books and see in films—and by God it was happening to me. Ahead the wood still seemed to be sending back the echo of the cannonade, but now the foliage was steady again, and the dust had settled. There was a long moment's stillness, broken only by the growl of the Sherman, holding its ground twenty yards ahead, not more than thirty from the edge of the wood. A branch, hanging by a thread after the bullet-hail, suddenly fell, sending up a little swirl of dust. I glanced right: Grandarse had one foot on the bank, leaning forward; beyond him were two of the new men, the lance-jack and the reputed deserter. Parker, on my left, had his rifle at the port, and beyond him Steele was adjusting his Bren sling, the big l.m.g. resting on his hip; Stanley was removing his hat and replacing it firmly. I found I was hissing through my teeth, and recognised it as “Bonnie Dundee”, but I hadn't time to digest this peculiar reaction when Little was walking forward between Parker and Steele, crossing the bank, and Hutton was shouting again:

“Ad-vance! Keep yer distance, noo! Advance!”

Up the bank and over, the shuffle of boots in the morning quiet, the slight creak and rustle of equipment, the dark green figures on either side moving in a slow, steady advance; the stationary tank, its tracks clogged with earth and coarse grass, ten yards to my right front, the slight figure of Little, rifle at the trail, his head obscured by the tilted bush-hat, to my left and out in front—and there was a faint crack, like a cap-pistol, from the wood, and Little gave a sharp cough, spun half-round, and went down like an empty sack.

Hitting the deck, face down on the scrubby earth, automatically whipping rifle to shoulder in the lying position, puffs of dust leaping from the ground to my left, Parker rolling over, yelling, the left breast of his bush-shirt blood-stained; a scream from the right, a blinding cloud of dust and gravel striking me in the face, the rattle of machine-gun fire from the wood and the irregular cracks of rifle-fire. Someone was bawling “Covering fire!”, and I was shooting obediently into the wood at ground level, aware that on my right Grandarse was doing the same, and that Parker was crawling rapidly back to the bank—one glance I took, and he was dripping blood as he scrambled to the bank and over. Caught in the bloody open, flat-footed—Jesus! beyond Grandarse the lance-jack was trying to pull himself clear, with his leg trailing, and the deserter was absolutely sitting up! (I still don't know why.) I pumped off another couple of shots, realised the futility of it, looked left, and Steele had
the Bren at his shoulder, left hand on the stock, right hand reaching forward for the magazine. There was a sharp clang, a silver streak appeared on the side of the magazine, and Steele reared back, his face contorted, scrambling up on to his knees. Blood was streaming down his arm—the bullet had gone through hand and shoulder. He yelled something and—this I shall never forget—actually shook his uninjured fist at the wood before turning to run for the shelter of the bund.

And there was the Bren gun, the section's most precious possession, lying unattended.

I've asked myself a thousand times: did I hesitate? God only knows, and perhaps some day He'll tell me, for I genuinely am not sure. Probably I wanted to, and this is what has made me wonder; that, and the knowledge that with four men hit all around me in as many seconds, and the shots kicking up the dirt in what seemed to be your proverbial hail of lead, that Bren was about as untempting an article as I've ever seen. And then I was starting to crawl towards it, and Hutton, flat on the ground behind me, was yelling and signalling to Stanley, the Bren's number two, and Stanley, who had been face down just beyond it all the time, was grabbing its handle and hauling it away.

“Jock!” It was Hutton. “Coover ’im!”

For what it was worth I started to fire into the wood, and Stanley and Bren rolled over the bank and out of sight. Behind me Hutton spoke, more quietly now.

“Awreet, haud tha fire! Heid doon!”

I put my head flat on the butt, reaching behind me
for another clip from my bandolier, moving cautiously in the belief that any obvious movement was liable to attract those goddamned Jap snipers. To my right Grandarse was lying as close to Mother Earth as his great belly would let him; he looked towards me and blew out his cheeks. There was no one on my left, just two patches of blood where Steele and Parker had been hit. Christ, I thought, are Grandarse and I the only ones left? Intermittent cracks were sounding in the wood, but they didn't seem to be coming this way; the Sherman's l.m.g. was rattling away, and in behind it an Indian soldier (don't ask me where he had come from) was leaning against the metal, clutching his thigh; his trouser leg was sodden with blood.

“Grandarse!” Hutton again. “When Ah say
jao
,
^*
git oot of it! Jock—five roonds rapid, fire!”

I blasted away, and through the din heard Hutton's “
Jao!
” and the sound of a great body taking flight. “Reet, Jock—
jao!
” Grandarse was still short of the bank when I went over it like a bird.

The first thing I saw was Steele, a yard away. He was white as paint, his eyes shut, but his jaw was working up and down. An orderly had torn away his shirt, and his shoulder and chest were a mass of blood; the orderly was padding the shoulder wound while another wrapped a gauze dressing round his hand. Beyond him Parker was propped up against the bank, stripped to the waist, holding a field dressing to
his shoulder; Gale was bending over him, then turning away to shout. A jeep came bouncing up to the bank, and Gale helped Parker to climb in; the orderlies were lifting Steele on to a stretcher, preparing to load him in also. I didn't see them, but the lance-corporal and the alleged deserter had both been hit. Farther along the bank rifles and Brens were firing, the Sherman guns were crashing again. I realised that I was sitting idle, breathing hard, and that one knee was painful where I had grazed it in hitting the deck. I would guess that perhaps three minutes had passed since we started to advance. I jerked open my bolt, ejecting a spent case, and saw that my magazine was empty. While I was charging it, a tall lance-corporal whose face, in my memory, is that of the late Lyndon Johnson, came running in a crouch to confer with Hutton. They peered over the bank, and Hutton signalled to me.

“When Kang ga's ower the top, you give ’im cooverin' fire as ’ard as ye can! Stanley, you give automatic fire! Reet, Jack—on ye go, son!”

Kang took a run at the bank and went over, dodging from side to side as he ran towards the still, green figure of Corporal Little, face-down on the earth. Kang dived down beside him, and even as I was firing I could see that he was speaking; I reloaded, and began firing again as he came ziz-zagging back towards us. Halfway he stumbled, Hutton swore, and then Kang came tumbling over the bank in a shower of dust, gasping and clutching his forearm; blood was running between his fingers. He shook his head.

“
Bus
,” was all he said, and Hutton groaned deep in his throat.

Two more jeeps were pulling up, scattering the earth, and the wounded were being helped into them. The one carrying Parker and Steele was reversing with a rasp of tyres, and Parker, his dressing in place, actually grinned and waved with his sound arm. All along the bank men were lying, waiting; I think I remember Long John on one knee, talking to Gale, and pointing off to the left. The firing along our front had died away to an occasional shot or Bren burst; the tank firing had stopped, and the wood itself was silent. They had stopped us almost before we had started, and now they would be reloading in their pits and bunkers, waiting for us to try again.

I remembered the wounded Indian, and took a cautious look over the bank. He was standing up now, talking to the bearded Indian, who was presumably the tank commander, and was looking out of his hatch—something which, in his position, I'd not have done for a pension. I had the impression, from their gestures, that the wounded man wanted to get into the tank, and was being denied. Grandarse rolled up beside me.

“Tich ’as ’ed it! Fook me!” His face was purple, running sweat. “That shows ye w'at air strikes an' tanks is woorth! Fookin' ’ell!”

“Will we go in again?”

“We'll fookin' ’ev to! Not by the front fookin' door, tho'! ’Ey, w'at the ’ell's ga'n on? That booger's ’ed it, an' a'!”

He was peering over the bank at the Sherman. The hatch was down again, and the wounded sepoy was dragging himself in behind the tank, feebly, a foot at a time. He rolled over on his back, his whole trouser leg was black with blood to the thigh, and then he was dead—you could tell from the way the body seemed to subside, as though something had been let out of it.

“Awoy!” said Grandarse, and scrambled to his feet. Hutton was waving to us, and we doubled towards him, crouching to keep under cover of the bank. The rest of the section, what was left of it, was there: Stanley with the Bren, Nixon, Wedge, the Duke, and other men whom I didn't know—this presumably was Nine Section reconstituted; in less than a minute we'd lost over a third of our original number.

Then Gale was leading the way to the left, along the bank which must have curved in towards the wood, for presently we were on the edge of the trees, taking up firing positions. I have to say that I am not sure how we got there; it is another of those hiatuses in memory when nothing much happened to compare with the minute of frenzied violence which had followed our advance over the bank, or with what was to follow when we got into the wood. That day's battle, for me, was in two distinct parts, both of them vivid in my mind, but the connecting period is hazy. No doubt my mind was too full of what had happened to notice; I don't know how long a time elapsed in making that leftward movement, or how far we came from our original position on the bank, or what units of the
company were on either side, or behind. Fighting was going on elsewhere—a young corporal was winning the M.M. clearing bunkers single-handed at about this time—and the interval may have been five minutes or thirty. Battle concentrates your attention on your own immediate front, and all I was aware of, now, was the fringe of trees in which we lay, and the shadowy interior beyond. The snipers who had cut down Parker and Steele and Little and the others must be in the wood ahead and to the right.

Stanley, lying next to me, touched me on the shoulder. Beyond him Gale was on his feet, motioning the section forward and stepping ahead into the wood; someone muttered something about bunkers. Stanley and I looked at each other; what he saw, God knows, but what I saw was his sweating face with the lips drawn back from the teeth. He adjusted the Bren sling; I waited until he was ready and we rose together and moved warily through the fringe of trees. There was undergrowth to our front, so I moved to the right with Stanley at my left elbow.

It was dim after the glare of the open country, but through the trees immediately to our right front I could make out a clearing. What I couldn't see was any sign of a bunker, but they must be in there somewhere, so I took a nervous glance to see that Stanley was still there, and moved on slowly through the trees, safety catch off, finger just touching the trigger. There was no one to my right, and the section was now out of eyeshot to my left; for a moment Stanley and I might
have been alone in the wood, but I knew bloody well we weren't; the one comfort was that its other inhabitants hadn't seen us yet. I nerved myself to go on walking, as softly as could be, scanning the clump of bushes ahead, the tree trunks on either side, and the clearing beyond. There wasn't a sound, or a sign of a Jap, and if firing was taking place farther off, I wasn't aware of it. A few more steps brought me to the bushes, and I knelt down, listening.

The simple truth about war is that if you are on the attack, you can't do a damned thing until you find your enemy, and the only way to do that is to push on, at whatever speed seems prudent, until you see or hear him, or he makes his presence known by letting fly at you—as witness our first advance over the bank. Now it was the same thing over again, the difference being that the left flanking movement had brought us inside his position, and it was a question of who saw whom first and shot the straighter.

Life closes in; I had no idea of what was happening elsewhere, no thought or use of the senses to spare for anything but what I saw as I knelt behind the bushes—across the clearing, maybe ten yards away, was the bunker. It was a big one, three-man at least, a mound of hard red earth about four feet high, and probably the same depth underneath. There was a wide firing-slit at ground level, but what lay behind the slit was darkness. No movement, and nothing in the trees beyond the bunker.

I looked at Stanley, a yard behind me, his Bren at
the ready, and then I was going like a bat out of hell for a palm on the other side of the clearing. There was a crack from the firing-slit, but it was threepence (or three yen) wasted, and as I fetched up at the tree, its trunk between me and the bunker, Stanley ran forward, firing from the hip at the firing-slit. Dust flew from the bunker as the Bren burst hit it—and then the bloody gun jammed, Stanley yelled and tugged at the magazine, I thought I saw movement inside the firing slit, and as Stanley jumped aside I found myself running forward, firing into the slit—three shots, I think, and I believe there was a return shot, and then I was diving down beside the bunker wall, about a yard to the side of the firing-slit, fumbling for a grenade.

I was facing back the way we'd come, and there were dark bush-hatted figures running through the trees, and the wood was suddenly alive with small-arms fire, rifle and automatic. I yanked out the grenade pin, let the plunger go, forced myself to count one-thousand-two-thousand and stretched sideways, back flat on the bunker, to whip the bomb through the firing-slit. One thousand-two-thousand-three—an ear-ringing crump, and I was snatching for a second grenade when Gale came running past, gesturing, and I followed him round the bunker side. There was the bunker entrance, a low narrow doorway, and Gale had a green 77 phosphorus grenade in his hand.