The Ravi Lancers (22 page)

‘It must be a very big attack,’ someone said. ‘The lorries have been going up all day.’

‘And all last night,’ another added.

‘We’re going to break through on the Longmont Canal,’ Dayal Ram said with authority. ‘The French are going to attack farther south and once the German reserves have moved down there, the BEF will break through here. Then the cavalry will go through--and we’ve lost our horses.’

‘How do you know all this,’ Puran Lall scoffed, ‘are you a personal friend of Sir John French?’

‘I heard it in London,’ Dayal Ram said. He was just back from a week’s leave, and had dark circles under his eyes. ‘Lady Harriet Symonds told me, and she heard it from her uncle, who’s in the cabinet.’ He turned his handsome head to Krishna Ram, a little down the table and said with a lazy smile, ‘Lady Harriet is ... an exciting young lady, highness. I can’t thank you enough for giving me her name. I found her in the telephone book, easily.’

Warren lifted his head, ‘We do not discuss ladies in mess, Dayal.’ His adjutant turned to him with the same lazy smile, a smile subtly different from what it had been before he went on leave, as though he had learned something to Warren’s detriment.

‘But, sir ...’ he began.

‘No buts. We do not mention a woman’s name in mess. Nor discuss politics. Nor religion. Nor shop.’

He bent again to his hare. He never used to think the old custom was very sensible. After all, what was left that should interest a man if you took out those four--in effect, his life and his work? But he had not been in command of a regiment in war then; and with his command resting on the whim of ‘Rainbow’ Rogers, for he was very junior to be promoted to lieutenant-colonel. If he displeased the general in any way, they could bring in someone of the right seniority to replace him. He sometimes wondered whether he would really mind. It was a hard business, and often unpleasant, to force such fundamentally nice people as these, with their different background and way of thought, to understand what was necessary to win wars and hold empires.

Now Dayal’s talk of London and Harriet Symonds made him think of his own home, Shrewford Pennel under the Plain, and his wife and children. He missed them. Why couldn’t they all, here at the table, talk about the people they loved, their homes so far away--for Shrewford Pennel was as far now as Basohli under the Himalayas, inaccessible both. Why not sit round showing each other photographs, talking of children, the first step, the first word?

He shook his head. That way led only to misery, regret, unhappiness, yearning for the impossible ... softness of mind and body.

‘Oh, sahib, sir,’ Sohan Singh the quartermaster said. ‘Not wanting talking shop but any information on immediate future of regiment will be most welcome. Rations slow arriving and often going wrong place! Fodder often so bad salutri not allowing give to wagon horses, but where can I find other?’

Warren said, ‘I told you all I know at orders this afternoon, Sohan. We’re moving up tonight to Semur, where the brigade will wait in reserve to exploit success. How long we will have to wait, and what direction we will eventually advance in, will depend on the success of the leading waves.’

‘They must be starting the barrage now,’ Himat Singh said. ‘Listen to the guns.’

The estaminet’s walls trembled and the air in the room shuddered to a new sound that was also deeper than sound. Warren pulled back the blanket an inch to look out. Still the infantry tramped by, rifles slung reversed to protect the muzzles from the light sleet. Mud splashed the window as an officer cantered past on his charger. Warren dropped the blanket back into place. Inside no one spoke, all listening to the artillery. Then Ishar Lall leaned across the table to Mahadeo Singh, the ex-rissaldar, and said, ‘I hope you enjoyed the meal, Mahadeo.’

‘
Jee-ha
, sahib. Yes,’ Mahadeo said, who could never get out of the habit of calling officers ‘sahib’ though he had been one himself for nearly three years now.

Ishar Lall said, ‘I thought you would. But we must not tell the Brahmin. It was dog.’

Mahadeo pushed his chair back and stared at his plate with a look of horror, for he was devout in his observances. ‘Dog, sahib?’ he faltered. ‘You said it was hare.’

‘That’s what we intended,’ Ishar Lall said shaking his head, ‘my brother and I, but alas ... we never saw a hare or a rabbit all day. We had promised the mess dafadar and the
khansamah
to bring back food. We had nothing. What could we do? We saw this plump dog, and . . .’

Mahadeo put his hands over his mouth and rushed for the door. A moment later they heard him retching and vomiting at the door to the street.

‘Is it really dog?’ Bholanath said nervously.

‘Some people think dog is a great delicacy,’ Ishar Lall said. ‘In China now, I have read ...’

‘Of course it’s not dog,’ Himat Singh said firmly. He glanced at Warren with a smile. ‘I suggest our young friend might be debagged, sir, don’t you?’

‘After dinner you can do what you like with him,’ Warren said, smiling.

‘I can defend myself, sir,’ Ishar cried. ‘I have my private army.’

There was a tremendous clatter at the door, the mess dafadar burst in backwards giggling like a girl, his hands over his mouth. In rode the other Twin, Puran Lall, astride a small donkey. He was carrying an aluminium basin like a shield and wielding a long loaf of French bread like a sword. The donkey kicked and farted and brayed deafeningly. Puran Lall cried, ‘Who attacks my brother attacks me ... and Gokalji here!’ He kicked the donkey’s flanks.

Warren got up and said, ‘Just leave enough of them for the Germans to finish off tomorrow.’ He edged past the donkey’s flank and went grinning to his office. At last, when they were just about to go into battle, the Ravi people were beginning to act and think like British officers--a boisterous family rather than feudal servants or a prince’s cronies.

At eight the march began. The Gurkhas passed through, the Ravi Lancers uncoiled from the fields and yards where they had formed up, and moved out on to the road. Warren watched each squadron emerge and saw that the practices he had enforced, the shielded lights he had placed, the gallopers sent to the squadron ahead, the daylight reconnaissance, had paid dividends. The Ravi Lancers moved out now like Indian Army regulars, experienced regulars at that. He hurried up the flank of the column until he reached the head. Dayal Ram and Mahadeo made way for him and he settled down to the march, fastened the wrist bands of his burberry against the sleet, put on his gloves, adjusted the woollen ear muffs under his cap, and bent his head to keep the sleet out of his eyes. Shikari trotted at his side. St. Hubert-sur-Yevre, their home for over two months, fell back into the whistling dark.

It had felt good in the mess there when the subalterns began to show the boisterous energy that he remembered from his own regiment; but it had also emphasized his loneliness as the only Englishman. He had not had much to say to Hanbury while he was alive, but at least he’d been there. Now he was alone, and there was no one he could talk things over with. Sometimes he felt like taking Flaherty into his confidence. At least he had been raised a Christian, and with English rather than Indian ideals. This was being unfair to Krishna, who was thoroughly loyal. Perhaps it was not so much the exchanging of words that he missed as a common feeling, a sense that the others knew, that they shared your thoughts and emotions, without words being necessary. With an Indian, you could not be sure what he felt until he told you ... and often not even then.

A voice called, ‘Major Bateman?’

A horseman appeared. It was an officer from Brigade Headquarters. ‘Change of orders, sir,’ he said, riding alongside. ‘The brigade’s destination tonight is Triel, not Semur. That’s about six miles east of Semur but no farther. We turn right off this road at a cross-roads a mile and a half ahead.’

‘Are you posting route sentries there?’ Warren asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I hope the Q people have been told, so that our rations don’t finish up in Semur. Damn it, why can’t we carry out a simple march without having the orders changed in the middle ... probably half a dozen times?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ the officer said, ‘it’s not our fault. Orders from Division.’ He rode on down the column, while Warren turned to his officer-galloper, Mahadeo Singh, and told him to pass on the change of destination to the squadrons. Now he was awake and alert again, and noted the steady thud of the guns from the north-east. The heaviest of it seemed to come from the right, so the turn they were about to make would take them more directly towards the battle.

He watched the whole regiment make the turn at the cross-roads, not wanting to risk having another squadron go astray, as B had done in September, and ran back up to his place. The road began to be littered with the debris of recent shelling. He remembered that he had passed here a month ago when he had been taken on a tour of the front line. Now they were marching through a village where an infantry division HQ had been. He remembered it as a small friendly place, the windows like smiling eyes in the red brick walls. Now, dimly sensed in the darkness, it seemed to have subsided closer to the earth, to be lying there exhausted, beaten down. The houses spread in rubble half way across the street and the church was only a bigger lump, its ruin seen more clearly by the momentary flash of a nearby gun glaring through the empty windows.

They marched by a battery of heavy artillery in action, and Warren thought, that means we are now in range of the enemy’s heavies, too. There was nothing he could do, no orders he could give, to lessen the danger. The regiment was in column of route, with other troops ahead and behind. If the move was to be completed, the risk would have to be taken.

An hour before dawn the brigade reached Triel. There the general formed the four battalions up in close column of companies in the empty plain, the right resting on a road and the 41st Field Battery on the flank. Once they were all in position, and at rest, Major Tommy Greville, the battery commander, strolled over to join Warren. Warren felt a warm delight to see him. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘have a fill of tobacco.’

‘Thanks, but I use these,’ the gunner said. He opened his silver cigarette case and lit one. As the light strengthened they chatted desultorily. Then Greville said, ‘Well, I’ll be getting back. We’ve got a hot breakfast in the cooking.’

‘Have breakfast with me,’ Warren said, ‘I don’t know what we’ve got, but...’

‘Thanks, old man, but Bob and de Marquez are expecting me.’ With a wave of his hand he strolled off. Warren watched him, wishing he had invited himself to join the gunners. Now he must eat his breakfast alone.

It began to snow. The rumble of the guns was muted by the thick air, though they were closer than before; and now, over the deep roar of the heavies and mediums the staccato bark of the field pieces was plain to hear.

Having eaten, Warren walked round the regiment. They were in good order, waiting patiently, huddled in little groups, rifles piled in neat rows, sentries at the ends of each squadron.

He reached the end of C Squadron’s line, glanced north, and paused. A column of about a hundred grey-clad men was coming down the road, some marching in perfect rhythm, some stumbling and sliding in the snow, some bandaged, some supporting others. Here and there he saw spiked helmets, but mostly they showed cropped bare heads, seeming to have lost their helmets in the act of losing their liberty. Half a dozen British tommies with fixed bayonets escorted the prisoners. A moment later the corporal in charge gave an order and the column came to a straggling halt in the road opposite C Squadron.

The corporal said, ‘Ten minutes ‘alt, Jerry.’ He lit a cigarette and strolled down the line with rifle slung, the bayonet sticking high in the air, snow a white mantle on his shoulders. Warren noticed with astonishment that several of the Germans near him wore the word GIBRALTAR embroidered in large letters high on the right sleeve of their tunics. He pointed with his pipe and said, ‘Gibraltar? Why?’ Scraping up what he could recall of the German he had learned in school, he said, ‘
Warum tragen Sie Gibraltar auf dem Frock?’

The nearest German leaped up, clicked his heels, and said, ‘We are the 14th Hanover, sir. The regiment served in the Great Siege of Gibraltar under Lord Eliott, when the King of England was also Elector of Hanover, and was awarded “Gibraltar” as a special battle honour, to be worn on the sleeve.’

‘You speak English well,’ Warren said.

‘I should, sir. I spent fifteen years in Brighton playing in the orchestra at the Metropole.’

Warren nodded. A dozen sowars of C Squadron had come to the edge of the road to listen to the talk. Some pushed through the hedge now and, smiling, pulled out packets of
bidis
and pushed them towards the Germans in gestures of friendship.

‘Never seen a cigarette like this before,’ the German musician-soldier said, examining the
bidi
curiously.

Warren was about to explain that they were the miniature cigars of rolled green-leaf tobacco of India, very strong, foul smelling, and cheap; but he felt uneasily that he should not be so familiar. This was war, these men were the enemy, even though they had become prisoners. Suppose they overpowered the escort; it would take his men some time to realize that was happening, unpile the rifles ...

He heard a sowar saying to a prisoner with a bloodstained bandage round his head,
‘Apka zakhm sakht hai, sahib?’
He was asking the German whether his wound was serious, but he was addressing the man, apparently a private, by the respectfully polite term ‘sahib’. Warren felt perplexed and doubtful. The man was white, a European, therefore he was a sort of sahib ... but these were the enemy, men whom the sowars were supposed to kill, shoot, destroy.

He looked around, saw a jemadar nearby, and said to him curtly,

‘Get the men back in the ranks, jemadar-sahib.’

‘Understood, sahib!’ The jemadar saluted and bustled down on the men in the road, shouting, ‘Get back to your lines! Hurry up, now!’

Warren returned to his post, and settled down to wait, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting. The snow fell, the NCOs put the men through exercises to keep them warm. The guns shouted and roared to right and left, and a few enemy shells fell in the fields around the waiting brigade, but did no damage. Warren thought they were lucky that the scurrying impenetrable snow clouds prevented observation by enemy aircraft. A brigade of infantry drawn up in close column of companies, covering less than a quarter of a square mile of land, would make a very juicy artillery target.