Quartered Safe Out Here (7 page)

“You can expect ’em to be pretty rough. They're evil little sods, and couldn't care less about the Geneva Convention, so there's a chance they'll beat you up—not just for information, but for spite. You know the drill: give ’em rank, name, and number, nothing more. Don't lie to them. Keep your head up and look ’em in the eye. If it's an officer or someone who speaks English, tell ’em they're losing face by ill-treating a prisoner; it's been known to work. But first and foremost—escape! Don't be daft about it; wait for an even chance, and go! And keep going! You know how to look after yourselves. Don't trust the Burmese unless you must; they're mostly friendly, but they're scared stiff of Jap, so watch it.” The last thing he'd said was: “Whether you escape or not, don't give up. Remember they're a shower of sub-human apes, and you're better men than they'll ever be.”

He was describing, absolutely accurately, an enemy
well outside civilisation, but nothing we hadn't know since the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore. Like everyone else, I suppose, I wondered how I would be if they got hold of me, which isn't a happy thought in an o.p. at four in the morning…and Nick stirred beside me and asked in a whisper what time it was.

I had only to glance at the luminous dial of my watch to send my thoughts off at another tangent: breakfast at home, with my parents presenting the watch on my eighteenth birthday: there was the old, stiffly-laundered tablecloth bearing in its centre the faint embossed legend “Chicago Athletic Club”—not pinched by an itinerant relative, I may say, but a flawed item bought by my thrifty grandmother from the Paisley mill—and the triangles of toast in the rack, the monthly jar of marmalade with the golliwog label, the damp strong smell of the tea-cosy when my mother lifted it from the pot, the curious wartime breakfast of scrambled powdered egg and “Ulster fry” (one of Spam's poor relations), my father glancing through his
Glasgow Herald
before checking his battered leather prescription book and hurrying off to his round of visits and morning surgery, the little electric fire making its occasional sparks…and in the darkness a few yards away a shadow was moving, and it wasn't a pi-dog this time; it was small and stunted but definitely human, standing in a slight crouch, a rifle held across the body, then moving slowly forward.

I had only to slide my hand a few cautious inches to touch Nick, and his head turned; I didn't have to point.
I can see his sharp face with the heavy moustache, and the movement of his lips, pursed as though to shush me—which wasn't necessary, really. We lay holding our breaths, heads close together, willing our bodies into the ground as we watched the figure advance, a slow step at a time, the dark blur of the head turning from side to side. If he held his course he would pass about five yards to our right; in that light he would have to be a bloody lynx to make out two figures on that broken ground—unless we moved. The temptation to get my hand on the stock of my rifle was strong, but I resisted it; by good chance the muzzle was pointed almost straight at him, and if he did spot us I would have to be damned slow not to get my shot in first…He was level with us now, treading delicately with barely a sound; he paused to look back and gestured, and other figures, equally small and ungainly, emerged from the gloom in single file—Jesus! there were eight of them, moving like misshapen little ghosts. It took them an eternity to pass our position, while I let my breath out with painful slowness and inhaled again; once I felt rather than heard Nick give a tiny gasp, and as the last figure faded into the dark behind us I turned my head to look at him. To my amazement he was grinning; he gave that little patting motion of the hand that says, settle down, take it easy, and when I stirred a finger towards the Verey pistol, lying between us, he shook his head. Still grinning, he put his lips to my ear and whispered:

“Goorkas! Ey, and they nivver even smelt us!”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, came the faint sound of voices far behind us; they were at the wire, making their presence known.

Another anti-climax—and another lesson, which I learned when it grew light, and silence was no longer necessary.

“How the hell did you know they were Gurkhas? They looked bloody like Japs to me!”

“They did to me, an' a'—at foorst. They're a' shortarsed boogers, sitha, but there's one way ye can always tell Johnnie Goorka fra' Johnnie Jap—Ah mean, w'en it's dark-like, an' ye can't mek oot their fesses, joost their shapes. Ah didn't spot it till they was near on past us. Always look at their ankles, Jock! The Goorkas, see, wear short puttees, like oors, so their troosers is baggy reet the way doon till their ankles. Noo, Jap wears lang puttees, nigh on up till ’is knee, so ’is legs look thin, ez if ’e ’ad stockin's on!” Nick chuckled, well pleased. “An' they walked reet by us! Heh-hee! The boogers!”

“Shouldn't we have let on?” I realised the answer to the damfool question even before I'd finished asking it.

“Git hired,
^*
Jock! Ye've bin on night patrol—if soom booger challenges from underfoot, ye're liable to do ’im! Ah want to die me own fookin' way, not wid a
kukri up me gunga!” This seemed to prompt another thought. “Ayup, tho'. Look, we'll ’ev to tell Tut Hutton that we saw ’em, but we'll not let on till anybuddy bar ’im. Mind, noo, Jock—doan't tell nobuddy else.”

“If you say so—but why not?”

“Ah, they're grand lal lads, the Goorkas—but, man, they're proud! An' they tek their sojerin' seriously, an' a'.” He wagged a finger. “Ah tell ye, if they foond oot they'd coom near treadin' on us in't dark, an' ’edn't spotted us, they'd ga fookin' crackers! They wad, tho'! The
naik
^*
leadin' that patrol wadn't ’ev to git busted—’e'd bust ’is bloody sel', man, oot o' shame! An' Ah'm nut kiddin'.” He shook his head in admiration. “So we'll say nowt aboot it—bar to Hutton. Awreet, Jock? Good lad.” He had another chuckle to himself. “Walked reet by us, an' a'! Nut bad, eh?”

I sympathised with the Gurkhas, having no doubt that in similar circumstances I could have walked through the whole Japanese Imperial Guards Division without knowing it. “All we had to do was lie still,” I suggested.

“Aw, aye? Is that reet, Jock? Girraway! Ah'm glad ye told us.” Cumbrian sarcasm is never applied lightly. “Lissen—the Goorkas is the best night scoots in the bloody wurrld! By God, there isn't many can say the Goorkas nivver spotted their o.p.! Noo, an' Ah'm tellin' ye!”

“Right pair of Mohicans we must be.”

“Aye, laff, ye girt
^*
Scotch git! Looksta, if they'd bin Japs, an' we'd fired oor Verey, they'd ha' bin nailed, ivvery bloody one, on the wire wid their arses oot the winder! Wadn't they?” He was quite belligerent about it. “Awreet, then! We did oor job, an' the Goorkas missed us! An' that's nut bad! That's a' Ah'm saying!”

Well, he was infinitely better qualified to judge these things than I, and his words prompted a disturbing thought: if I'd been alone in the o.p. I'd certainly have fired the Verey, the Gurkhas would have been caught in the glare, and might well have been wiped out by a nervous Bren gunner making the same mistake as I had done. Nick had identified them by the shape of their legs—and that is something you won't find in any infantry training manual. But then, he was what the Constable of France would have called a very valiant, expert gentleman. The irony was that it almost cost him his life a few nights later.

“‘Ey, Jock, are ye any good at ’rithmetic?”

“Not much, sarn't, I'm afraid.”

“Well, mek's nae matter. Ah'll keep thee reet. Noo them—’oo many fellers is there in't British Army?”

“Gosh, I dunno. Five million?”

“An' ’oo many o' them's in Boorma?”

“Half a million, maybe?”

“An' ’oo many o' them's in this battalion?”

“About a thousand.”

“An' ’oo many o' them's in Nine Section?”

“Ten, sarn't.”

“So if ye're in't Army, w'at's the odds against bein' in Nine Section? Tek time, noo.”

“I haven't the least idea.”

“Iggerant booger. Ah'll tell thee. It's ’alf a million to one.”

“If you say so. I'm fascinated.”

“Ye will be. Ye're the section scout, aren't ye?”

“I am, and I think I begin to see where your elaborate calculation is leading, sarn't—”

“Shurroop an' charge yer magazine. Noo, 17th Div's ahead o' Fourteenth Army, an' this battalion's leadin' 17th Div, an' Nine Section's oot in froont, foorther
sooth than any oother boogers in Sooth-east Asia Command—are ye follerin' this, Jock?”

“With interest. Sarn't Hutton, do you know what a sadist is?”

“By, Jock, yer a loocky yoong feller! The odds against bein' the leadin' man in the whole fookin' war effort against Japan is
five million to one—”

“And I'm the one. Thank you very bloody much.”

“So git thasel oot on point, keep yer eyes oppen, an' think on—me an' Choorchill's watchin' ye!”

What I have described so far was the “static defence” of Meiktila, and so far as that was concerned Nine Section had it cushy—doing stag, mounting the occasional o.p., keeping our weapons clean, and waiting to be sent out Jap-hunting in force with the Sherman tanks of Probyn's Horse. Jap attacked the wire elsewhere, I believe, but never in our sector, and while we were
inside the perimeter life was tranquil. Snapshots of memory:

Playing in one game of football
on the bare space behind our rifle pits, and being impressed by the brilliance of a young centre-half from Workington who came close to an England cap a few years later, and the speedy reflexes of an officer from another platoon; he was a Cameron Highlander, and I had occasion to note his speed later on. Also the bone-shattering violence of the man marking me, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, no less, who was completely bald (what Parker called “a lovely head o' skin”) and who gave me the only wound I received in the war, a neat little scar on my left knee.

Watching someone do Number Two Field Punishment
. Number One, which consisted of being tied to a gun-wheel, had gone out by that time, but Number Two looked decidedly unpleasant: having to run in circles, wearing full equipment, which included the big pack, pouches, rifle, etc., in the boiling sun under the supervision of a blue-chinned member of the Provost staff. I don't know what the accused had done, but he came off in a state of near-collapse. It did him no permanent damage, for only last year, as a sprightly pensioner, he was singing his head off at our reunion in Carlisle Cathedral. (If that kind of punishment seems barbaric, it should be noted that in the Chindits there was at least one case of
flogging
, with parachute cord. I think it was for sleeping on stag. The officer who ordered it was a charming man and a splendid soldier, with whom I had a friendly correspondence after the
war. On the whole, though, much as I admired him, I think that if he'd tried it with me I'd have shot him.)

Being mocked for using a knife and fork
. We had three meals a day, ideally: breakfast, tiffin, and supper, punctuated by brew-ups of tea whenever we got the chance. As I remember, breakfast was bacon, beans,
burgoo
,
^*
and bread; tiffin was liable to be bully beef and biscuits and tinned fruit; supper would be either bully stew (a waste of good bully beef, in my opinion), or Maconochie's superb stewed steak, which came in dark green cans as part of the compo ration, a large tin container holding a day's food for the section, including potatoes and vegetables. These, with eggs boiled to bullet hardness, tinned fish (which we never ate, but used for barter), rice pudding, and occasional duff, were the basic foods, and very good they were. In Meiktila, and for most of the campaign, all food was dropped from the air, and later in the campaign, when the monsoon made flying impossible, we were on half rations for a month. This was no great hardship, since by then we were down south and could get mangoes, bananas, and occasional livestock from the villagers, usually by barter.

When we were away from the company cookhouse we made our own meals over the section fire, and it was on such an occasion that I remember being jeered at because, unlike the others, who scooped their stew from their mess-tins with their spoons, I
insisted on using my knife and fork. (“’Ey, Nick, git a napkin for fookin’ Lord Fauntleroy!”) This, I maintain, wasn't affectation; I just wasn't at ease eating meat and potatoes with a spoon; it didn't feel right, and no doubt stamped me as hopelessly bourgeois and Christopher Robin. I noticed that the Duke, the section's aristo, shovelled his Maconochie's down with a spoon in the best Grandarse style.

Occasionally we had K-ration, that American abomination designed, I believe, by Wingate. It contained, among other things, a tiny tin of hideous eggy gunge, a nutty candy bar, three Camel cigarettes, and three sheets of toilet paper, which drew Rabelaisian comments from the section, who wondered if them Yank boogers ed nivver ’eerd o' grass.

I cannot leave our rations without mentioning that splendid item on which, in its various forms, British servicemen have thriven for centuries: the small, square rough half-biscuit half-oatcake known as hard tack. I, at least, never got tired of them; topped with little cubes of bully and accompanied by floods of tea, they make one of the great meals, and were in every way superior to the bread issue which, like all Indian loaves, was shiny, musty, and slightly stale.

The discovery that I had a genius for brewing tea
. I am not modest about this: I am probably the greatest tea-brewer in the history of mankind. It is an art, and I have the unanimous word of Nine Section (even Forster, eventually) that I brought it to the pitch of perfection. They were connoisseurs, too, or at least I
like to think that I imposed connoisseurship on them, once I had weaned them away from “Gurkha tea”, which consisted largely of condensed milk, to which the Gurkhas were addicted. Show me the Indian soldier who isn't.

Brewing up is not merely a matter of infusing tea; making the fire comes into it, and when you have lit and maintained fires in the monsoon, you have nothing more to learn. That came later; at Meiktila it was a simple business of assembling bamboo slivers, igniting them (no small thing, with Indian “Lion” matches which invariably broke and sprayed the striker with flaming phosphorus), and bringing about a gallon of water to the boil in the section brew-tin. This was a jealously-guarded article, about a foot cubed, made by cutting a compo ration tin in two and piercing the rim for a handle of signal wire. The casting in of the tea leaves from the section box was the crucial thing, followed by the ceremonial dropping in of two broken matchsticks to attract stray leaves; remove the tin from the heat, invite the guests to scoop out the brew with their piallas, and tea was served, each man adding sugar and condensed milk to taste. The ritual was complete when Grandarse had sipped, appraised, and exclaimed, “Eh, Christ, thoo brews a canny cup, Jock!” If he hadn't said it, or had even varied the phrase, it would have been like someone passing the port to the right.

“W'en we git back,” said Steele, “ye'll ev to oppen a shop, doon Botchergate, near th'auction mart. Brewin' chah; ye'll mek a bloody fortune.”

“Jock's Brewshop,” said Grandarse. “Ey, wid a sign—a Black Cat, wid its arsehole wreathed in smiles.”

“Hire a bloody big Sikh
durwan
,
^*
an' a', wid a
lathi
.
†
Keep the coostomers in order.”

“Tanner a cup—naw, mek ivverybuddy bring ’is own pialla. Ye knaw, giv it atmosphere. Or ev a stack o' piallas an' mess-tins at the door.”

“Wot ’e wants,' said Parker, ’is to make it real authentic. First off, it ain't a shop—it's a backyard, knee-deep in shit. An' naow-body gets any chah till ’e's dug a slit-trench, see? ’Ere, an' it all ’as to ’appen in the pissin' rain! Issue picks, shovels, an' piallas at the door, then get soaked—you'll mebbe need a shower, Jock—then aht they goes, digs their pit, an' you give ’em a brew-up. Two chips a time, ’ow abaht that?”

“It sounds attractive,” I said. “Think anyone would come?”

“Bleedin' millions—Yank tourists, an' that. ’Re-live the joys of active service wiv ahr gallant lads. ’Ave an authentic Fourteenth Army cuppa from Jock, brewartist supreme!' I tell you, they'd come flockin'! You could import them big ants, an' put ’em in the sugar—ahr bleedin' tin's got thahsands of the bastards!”

“You wouldn't want to hire a Jap sniper, too?”

“Nah, that be overdoin' it…I dunno, though, you might give ’im blanks an' let the customers kill the little sod.”

They elaborated, with unmentionable details; I took it as a great tribute.

“Aye, but, think on,” said Forster. “Ye'll ev t'mek it pay. Rob the boogers blin', eh, Jock?” And he rubbed finger and thumb together, Shylock-like, and quoted: “
Tora
cheeny
, tora
dood
”.

Which means, in Urdu, “a little sugar, a little milk”, and set him off singing “Deolali Sahib”, one of the forgotten soldier songs of India, to the tune of “There is a happy land”.

I give only the printable lines, noting that “bibi” is a girl, “bahut achha” means very good, and the last line translates literally as “under rest water”, which was the nearest soldier's Urdu could come to “sink to the bottom of the sea”. It is an odd reflection on our present standards that if “Deolali Sahib” were sung on television today its obscenities would pass unremarked, since they are all in regular use in the media—but there would certainly be a prosecution under the Race Relations Act.

Like most of our songs, it was sung either on the march or when travelling by truck. Camp-fire
vocalising was almost unknown, and Forster's was the only case I remember, not so much for itself but because it was followed by Parker's rendering of a ditty picked up in the China wars, to the tune of “Bye-bye, blackbird”.

It was a section favourite, and perhaps I remember so
vividly hearing it for the first time, sung softly in the firelight with Parker moving his pialla to the music, because that was almost the last time I brewed up for the whole of Nine Section as it was at the start of the campaign. Next day our part in the “static defence” of Meiktila ended, and we went out in strength to look for Jap.

The method was simplicity itself. A company, or perhaps two (more than 200 riflemen) would climb on the battered Sherman tanks and rumble out of the perimeter; if authority had marked down a Japanese
concentration, the tanks would often take us all the way; if it was a probe, we dismounted and marched, sweeping the countryside until the enemy was encountered. Riding the Shermans spared the feet, but it had its disadvantages: after an hour or so the metal became so hot that you had constantly to change position to avoid being roasted, and the water chaggles took considerable punishment; by then we were coated so thick with dust that our faces looked as though we were wearing Number Nine make-up, and it was almost a relief to slide down and walk.

There are two great descriptions of marching: Kipling's poem, “Boots” (a remarkable work of art since he can have endured the pain of foot-slogging in the sun only at second-hand) and P. C. Wren's passage in
The Wages of Virtue
. I marched far farther in training in England, and in India, than ever I did in Burma; twenty-two miles in a day is my record, and that was in North Africa after the war. It is painful, too, not so much on the feet as on the back and shoulders, where the equipment chafes—the official wisdom is that you should wear the small pack high up towards the neck, but I noticed that Nine Section let them hang slack. Your feet are either fine or useless; my soles, by the end of the campaign, were white, spongy, and entirely devoid of feeling, but that was the monsoon; not until fifteen years later did they return to normal. At first they just became raw, and by Pyawbwe they were hurting like sin, but not to incapacitate: it is a tribute to my small part of Fourteenth Army, at least, that I never knew a man fall out with his
feet; some of them were in horrible condition, but they bathed them and patched them and anointed them with strange things from the M.O., and kept going.

I have read, whether it is true or not, that in the Falklands War there were twenty per cent casualties from feet. I find it hard to credit, but if it is true, it was no fault of the soldiers, but of the boots.

Our Burma marches were modest—certainly by the standard of the Retreat or the Imphal Campaign—but even they could be rough if you were fighting along the way, or getting wearier by the day from night actions or stand-to's. My lasting impression is of thirst, and the yearning to reach for the water-bottle bumping on my stern, warm-to-hot though the contents were and highly flavoured of chlorine and rust. You didn't touch your water-bottle until you had to, so I ploughed moodily on, parched and sore, hating Preston Sturges, the film director, because in a copy of a magazine (
Yank
, probably) there was an article about him, describing how in his Hollywood office there was a soft-drink tank, awash with clinking ice-cubes and frosted bottles; it was enough to start you baying at the sun. And it was at such a time that Grandarse, who must have been more educated than he looked, would start to recite:

with coarse modifications to the verse which Kipling
never thought of, but which I'm sure he would have approved. I don't recall even the North Sahara being hotter or drier than the Dry Belt of Burma; it may be significant that Grandarse, having finished his recitation and stretched himself on the rocky earth with his hat over his lobster-coloured face, should exclaim: