Quartered Safe Out Here (24 page)

We saw another newsreel in Calcutta, showing American troops dealing with bunkers in the Pacific. They had flame-throwers, both one-man portable jobs and the big-calibre variety fired from tanks. Both were highly effective, and we saw Japs staggering from bunkers enveloped in flame, literally burning alive. We speculated on what our reaction would have been to the issue of flame-throwers, and Sergeant Hutton's opinion was universally approved:

“They wadn't git me carryin' one o' them bloody things. Nut that Ah give a monkey's ’oo many Japs they boorn; they can send the lot oop in flames. But Ah wadn't ’ev five gallons of aviation fuel strapped tae my arse—w'at appens if a tracer ’it's it?”

I parted company with Nine Section on coming back from leave. It would have happened anyway, with the battalion reorganisation, for they were mostly old soldiers due for repatriation and demob, and I was not, but there was a more immediate reason. My application to go before a War Office Selection Board to see if I was fit for officer training had been granted by the colonel, and when the next board assembled, in a few weeks' time, I would be sent up to Meiktila to be flown out to face the examiners. Splendid news which put the wind right up me, for while if I passed I would go straight on to one of the Indian military academies, failure would mean returning to the battalion with my tail between my legs.

In the meantime I was not to be attached to a platoon, but to company H.Q., where I was to make myself generally useful.

So I packed up my traps in the section billet, to cries of “Bloody ’ell, w'at's the Army comin' to?”, “Wiv my permish you'll get a commish!”, “If ye think Ah'll ivver gi'e you a salute, ye're arse is oot the winder!” and trudged across to company H.Q., not feeling a wrench, exactly, but suddenly lonely. We'd been together, a
close-knit, interdependent unit, for six months of war, and now I would never march with them again, or stand stags with them, or look round for them in action. The bond that had formed wasn't quite one of friendship, although I'd liked them, Forster excepted—no one could like Foshie, for all the sterling qualities among his less agreeable traits. (The Duke had been right: he was a good soldier, sour, carnaptious, and derisive, but when you hesitated at the bunker entrance or the branch in the track, and glanced sideways, he would be there, sucking his teeth and looking wicked, on the balls of his feet, sniffing for Jap.)

The others I had learned to respect and admire and be thankful for, but it had been trust more than affection. Sometimes, in a field game, you find a player with whom you fit like hand in glove; you've never seen or spoken to him before, but you have an instant understanding and work together almost by instinct, and when you shake hands at the end you're surprised to find that you don't really know each other at all, except in one narrow field, and part company. Liking doesn't really come into it; you just remember, with occasional regret, how well you combined. That was how it was with Nine Section; if there was an emotional tie, it was one of gratitude.

I would have felt the parting more if it had been absolute, but they were just down the road, and I found myself dropping in at their basha to cadge a pialla of tea and listen to them beefing about their new section leader, a full corporal, and Irish at that; I felt an unworthy glow on discovering that they didn't like him.

“Regimental Paddy!” was Nick's verdict. “Mind you, there's summat tae be said for the booger—at least ’e's full growed an' auld enoof tae vote, nut like soom that ye git parked on ye—knaw w'at Ah mean, Jock?”

“Aye, yoong lance-jacks, an' the like o' them,” said Grandarse. “Scotch lance-jacks is the woorst, Ah always say. Clivver boogers, full o' bullshit.”

“Haggis-bashin' bastards,” agreed Wattie. “Burgoo-belters.”

“Scotchies, Ah've shit ’em,” said Forster. “Aye gittin' aboov theresels, wantin' commissions, don't-ye-know-old-boy. One thing, we've bin gittin' a decent brew-up since we got rid o' you, Jock.”

“Lying sod,” I said. “Who's taken over?”

“General Slim sends us doon a dixie ivvery day frae Meiktila,” said Nick. “Wid a note on't lid: ’Drink oop, lads, ye'll a' git killed'.” He emptied the contents of his pialla in disgust. “W'ee's bin pishin' in't brew-tin, for Christ's sek?”

“W'at they got ye on these days, Jock?” asked Morton. “Ablutions?”

“Ablutions orficer, that's wot ’e's gonna be,” said Parker. “Right, Jockie boy? Wiv my permish you can ’ave two pips an' a latrine bucket, an' spend the duration diggin' shitahses for the Pioneers. You won't know the difference from Nine Section—
semper in excreta
.”

In fact, what they had me on at Company H.Q. was filling in wherever a spare lance-corporal was needed, and I was kept fairly active in an irritatingly piecemeal way. Unknown to anybody, the war was into its last
month, although there was no sign of this along the Rangoon road. Jap's final effort to break across to the east was at its height; they were coming out of the Pegu Yomas like gang-busters, and there was action all the way from Pegu to Penwegon and beyond. Patrols and ambushes were being stepped up, his attacks were being driven back or fought to a standstill, and apart from the main thrusts the country was crawling, literally, with stragglers, many of them half-dead with disease and starvation. They were wandering in the jungle, drifting down the rivers, lying in the chaungs, too spent to do anything but wait to die or be captured; even the “comfort girls” who marched with the Jap armies were being rounded up. But the remnants of 28th Army who were still on their feet were not giving up; their casualties were mounting into thousands, but they were making Fourteenth Army fight right down to the wire.

So while Nine Section were operating with their new corporal, I found myself going out in strange company, and missing them damnably. I was only out two or three times with different sections, and we accounted for the odd enemy, killed or captured, including the one I mentioned in the foreword who came screaming at us with a home-made spear, one against a dozen and he should have been dead weeks ago by the look of him.

“An' after this, it'll be Malaya,” I heard a sergeant say. “God knaws ’oo many divisions Jap's still got doon theer—joongle a' the way tae Singapore, be Christ!
They say we'll be gittin' mules again. Wrap oop an' roll on!”

Malaya, mules, and more Japanese—well, it wouldn't be my
indaba
,
^*
unless I failed wosbie. Although even if I passed, what were the odds that I wouldn't be back as a second-lieutenant, commanding a platoon in Borneo or Sumatra, nine months hence? On VE Day it had seemed that our war, too, must soon be over, but now if anything it was hotting up, and people were talking of another campaign. With mules. And if anyone had told us that thousands of miles away in the Pacific an aircraft called Enola Gay was preparing to load up, it wouldn't have meant a thing.

Meanwhile, the war still had novelties in store, and as I recall them they seem quite apart from anything that had gone before; it's almost as though they took place in a different world, and I was a different person. That can only be because they happened away from the enclosed regular military life to which I had grown so accustomed; they were, in the proper sense of the word, eccentric, a curious detached interlude of my time in Burma.

It began with a summons to the company basha where I was ordered to hand in my pay-book, that AB 64 Part I which is the documentary proof of your military existence, and which you part with only in unusual circumstances. My new company commander, an abrupt but good-natured veteran, explained.

“There's a selection board meeting in two weeks' time, at Chittagong, so you'll be going up to Meiktila in a week or so. Nervous?” He grinned sympathetically. “I've heard they pass about one in three nowadays, but don't let that worry you—most of ’em probably never saw an angry Jap and haven't any qualifications except School Cert and three years' service in the stores.” Which wasn't true, but was a fair reflection of a 17th Div infantry major's view of the rest of the military scene. “Got your AB 64? It'll have to go to your old company commander so that he can give you your character in writing. Leave it with the clerk.”

That was enough to set the adrenalin pumping. I hadn't seen Long John for weeks, since he was with one of the other companies. It hadn't occurred to me that he would have to pass judgment on my general fitness, recording it forever in my pay-book, where it would be scrutinised by those cold, fish-like examiners. What would he say? Well, he was the one who'd promoted me—and on my first outing my section had looted half an air-drop, and on the second I'd fallen down a well. Was he aware of these things? I could hear the selection board president: “In a word, corporal, you showed your talent for leadership by failing to restrain your men from pillaging, and in the attack on Pyawbwe you hid under-water. H'm…” Common sense told me that Long John would confine himself to general observations…but what would they be? Sins of omission and commission rose up to confront me…dear God, the best he could say was “Average”, or at a
pinch “Satisfactory”, and what could be more damning than that?

“By the way,” said the major, “d'you know anything about this anti-tank gun, the Piat?”

I said I did; I'd been trained in its use in England, although I'd never fired it.

“At least you'll know one end from t'other,” he said, “which is more than anyone else does. We've had one in store for a bit, but no one's mentioned it until now. Corporal, give us that file marked Piat. Yes…there's been a request for one from––.” He mentioned an unpronounceable village which I'd never heard of. “About twenty miles up the road, small unit near the river. They also want an instructor. Let's see, you've still got a week in hand…well, why not? Take it up, show ’em how it works, and either bring it back yourself or leave it with them and fetch a receipt. But make it clear that you've to be back here inside a week—here, I'll give you a chit for their O.C.” He squinted at the file and gave a barking laugh. “A captain whose name, to judge from his bloody awful writing, is Grief. Well, he should know…”

Pleased at the prospect of change, and escaping from the orbit of a company sergeant-major who had proved himself a dab hand at finding work for idle lance-corporals to do, I went off to renew acquaintance with the projector, infantry, anti-tank, commonly called the Piat. It was the British counterpart of the American bazooka, and might have been designed by Heath Robinson after a drunken dinner of lobster au gratin. It's not easy to describe, and I may have forgotten some
of its finer points, such as its exact measurements, but I'll do my best.

From memory, then, it consisted of about four feet of six-inch steel pipe, one end of which was partly cut out to leave a semi-cylindrical cradle about a foot long, in which you laid the bomb. At the other end of the pipe was a thick butt pad which fitted into your shoulder when you lay on the ground in a firing position, the body of the pipe being supported on a single expanding leg. The bomb, a sinister black object fifteen or so inches overall, had a circular tail fin containing a propellant cartridge, a bulging black body packed with high explosive, and a long spiked nose with a tiny cap which, when removed, revealed a gleaming detonator.

Within the body of the pipe was a gigantic spring which had to be cocked after each shot: you lay on your back and dragged the Piat on top of you, braced your feet against the projecting edges of the butt pad, and heaved like hell at something or other which I've forgotten. After immense creaking the spring clicked into place, and you crawled out from under, gamely ignoring your hernia, laid an uncapped bomb gently in the front cradle, resumed the lying firing position, aligned the barleycorn sight with the gleaming nose of the bomb, pressed the massive metal trigger beneath the pipe, thus releasing the coiled spring which drove a long steel plunger up the tail fin of the bomb, detonating the propellant cartridge, you and the Piat went ploughing backwards with the recoil, and the bomb
went soaring away—about a hundred yards, I think, but it may have been farther. The whole contraption weighed about a ton, and the bombs came in cases of three; if you were Goliath you might have carried the Piat and two cases.

Like many British inventions, it looked improbable, unwieldy, and unsafe—and it worked. The principle was that when the bomb hit a tank, the long spiked nose penetrated the armour, and all the concentrated explosive in the bulging body rushed through into the tank's interior, brewing up everyone within. Where a Piat had hit, the only visible exterior damage was a small, neat hole, or so they tell me. I never fired it at a tank.

I drew it from the stores with four cases of bombs—all they had—refreshed my memory by stripping and reassembling it, and hopped a truck next morning. I also took my rifle and fifty rounds, as per regulations, plus my kukri and a couple of grenades; if there was trouble I wanted some real weaponry handy.

The monsoon had eased by now, and it was a pleasant hour's drive to the village where there was a battered jeep waiting, with a Burmese driver. We loaded the Piat aboard and bounced away along a sunlit track past paddy-fields which were calm silver lakes fringed by scrub and jungle, and another hour brought us to a little collection of huts half-hidden by undergrowth on the edge of nowhere, which was the operational base of the officer I always think of as “Captain Grief”—and I call him that now because he may still be
about, and I don't want him suing me or trying to kill me or, even worse, seeking me out for a jovial reunion.

Civilian readers may think my description of him, especially his conversation, exaggerated. It is not, and any old soldier will bear me out, for he was a prize specimen of a type in which the British Army has always been rich—I've no doubt he was at Hastings, and will be there, eccentric as ever, when Gabriel sounds the last rally: a genuine, guaranteed, paid-up head-case. Which is not to say that he was clinically mad, just that he behaved as though he was. You have heard of them: when touched with genius they become Chinese Gordon or Lord Cochrane or, in the last war, Wingate, that gifted guerrilla who revived the military beard, carried an alarm clock to remind everyone what time it was, scrubbed himself with a toothbrush, quoted Holy Writ, and was an authority on Donald Duck—or so I have been reliably informed. Splendid men, especially to keep away from.

Captain Grief may have been less gifted, but he had all the Deolali hallmarks. He was driven apparently by some high-octane spirit, full of restless energy and strange cries like: “Bags o' panic!” and “Bash on regardless!” and even “Aha, Ermintrude, at last we meet—over the bridge you go!”, uttered with a glittering eye as he paced up and down, clapping his hands. He was tall, rangy, lantern-jawed, and eager as an unleashed hound. His dress consisted of an old tweed fishing cap, a dilapidated bush shirt, corduroy trousers, and brothel-creeper boots, and my heart sank at the sight of him, for I could
read the signs: this was one who would probably want the Piat mounted on a jeep, with me manning it in the passenger seat and himself at the wheel, roaring with laughter at top speed and changing gear with his foot.