The Ravi Lancers (31 page)

The introductions ended, Warren said, ‘Let him who wishes to speak in durbar, speak ... You, dafadar-ji.’

‘Sahib, it is in my mind that we will be serving in this France for many months or years to come.’

‘Don’t say that, dafadar-ji,’ Warren snapped. ‘We will win the war before the end of the year.’

‘As the presence says ... even for a month, three months perchance, it is in my mind that some of us, one man in each troop perchance, should be able to speak a little French. In the front line, it is not needed, but as soon as we go to the rear, it is needed, for ...’

‘It is understood,” Warren said cutting in impatiently. ‘The adjutant will see what can be done. The difficulty will be to find those understanding Hindi, to teach us. Among the regiment I think that I alone do ... and it is not proposed, I hope, that I shall become a schoolmaster-
babu
.’

The regiment laughed, a little louder, a little more sycophantic-ally than was necessary, Krishna Ram thought.

Warren said, ‘Next... you ...’

An oldish sowar with a sharp dark face said, ‘Sahib, may the presence know that I have served eleven years. Never have I failed to do what was ordered. I am the senior sowar of the squadron.’

‘Which?’

‘B, sahib ... It is my right, by ancient custom, to be storeman of...’

‘Silence!’ Warren Bateman snapped. ‘Did I not say at the last durbar that no matters of discipline were to be brought up in durbar?’

‘But, sahib ... ?’

‘Hold your tongue!’ a jemadar roared, drowning the rissaldar-major’s quieter admonition to the same effect.

‘Hukm hai!’
Warren said. ‘I have said it before, and I say it again, for the last time: it is forbidden to discuss orders, promotions, or anything military in durbar.’

‘Jo hukm,’
the man said, his face closed.

Krishna saw a sowar, his arm raised. It was the same young man who had asked the difficult questions about Christianity and the war in the durbar before Christmas. Warren Bateman’s eye swept the crowd. He must have seen the young man, but he was ignoring him.

‘Durbar is ended. Stay. I have some announcements to make ... There is not enough desire to kill Germans among you. Your hearts are not filled with a consuming hatred. You must be as Duryodhan, implacable ... The Germans are not men but beasts. They slaughter women and children. They take their own parents and, seeing they are too old to fight, put them in ovens and broil them down so that they can use the fat to make munitions. Prisoners they torture in despite of the rules of war and the laws of chivalry among soldiers. Let it be clear--there can be no chivalry, neither English nor Rajput towards them. They are rats, to be exterminated. Fill your hearts with hatred ... Tomorrow a British sergeant, expert in this matter, will give a lecture and demonstration to all officers, VCOs and NCOs of the regiment. Major Krishna Ram will translate.’

He glanced at Krishna. Krishna said, ‘Yes, sir,’ wondering why he had not heard of this before.

Warren Bateman said, ‘Next, we are due to move up the line on March 25, four days from now. All short leave is therefore cancelled ... One last matter. During Holi it was permitted, as a special case, that men should wear caste marks. I remind all ranks that this will not be permitted again while the regiment serves directly under the King-Emperor. Many of your uniforms were spoiled or stained by the powder thrown during Holi. This is a shameful mark to put upon the King-Emperor’s uniform. Let it be known now, that there be no misunderstanding later--it is forbidden to throw powder during Holi or on any other occasion! Hukm hail’

‘Jo hukm!’
the regiment cried.

Warren turned to Krishna, ‘That’s all.’ He nodded and strode off as Krishna called, ‘Ravi Lancers, shun! ... Ravi Lancers, dismiss! ‘

Krishna walked slowly back to his billet, full of a nostalgic melancholy. This Holi and durbar marked the end of an era. Now, finally, they were not Ravi cavalry but Imperial infantry. It seemed a hundred years ago that there had been
panchayats
round a
hookah
, long discussions under a tree in the warm twilight, Himalayan snows afire along the horizon. Now they took rapped-out orders, one by one: this has been decided, that will be done!
Jo hukm!

The sergeant’s name was Mackintosh and he was from the Gordon Highlanders. He was black-avised and lantern-jawed, tiny eyes glittering in a sunburned slab of face. He stood six feet two inches and must have weighed sixteen stone, all as solid as so much elephant bone. The rifle with fixed bayonet was no more than a swagger stick in his huge calloused hands. A standing dummy had been set up for him on the gymkhana field, and two or three lying dummies, sacks stuffed with straw, lay ready nearby.

The sergeant quickly began his demonstration. Long point. Short point. Jab. Butt stroke, kick, and kill. The ribbons fluttered out behind the red and white checkered Glengarry. Krishna Ram thought, we’ve seen all this before, and our NCOs teach it just as well.

The sergeant turned, and said, ‘That’s how you’ve been taught the bayonet, I dare say, sorr.’ His Scots accent was strong.

‘Yes, sergeant,’ Warren Bateman said.

The sergeant swelled up like a turkey cock, ‘Sorr, that’s not the bayonet ... that’s a tea party for old ladies. The bayonet is to
kill!
‘ The last word came out as a shriek.

Krishna translated quickly for the VCOs and NCOs, while the sergeant signalled to a British private soldier who had come with him. The private opened a large box on the back of the sergeant’s car and dragged out a dummy made to look not like a sack but like a man, a man in German uniform. The private threw the dummy down, as one throwing meat before a hungry tiger, and the sergeant leaped at it screaming, ‘Die, you Hun bastard!’ He jabbed his bayonet clear through the dummy, which spouted blood, to gasps of horror from the assembled men. ‘Die, die, you baby-eating swine!’ the sergeant shrieked, lifting the dummy on the point of his bayonet, throwing it down, jumping on it with both feet, stabbing the bayonet through the face. ‘Die! die! ‘

He whipped round, the bayonet red to the rifle muzzle, and snarled, ‘
This
is bayonet fighting ...’

‘Yeh bayonet ka larai hai,’
Krishna said, but the sergeant’s storm of words overwhelmed him and he fell silent. It was no use trying to translate; everyone was hypnotized by the sergeant, and in any case no translation was needed.

The sergeant whipped off his Glengarry, showing a shaven bullet head. ‘Shave your heads,’ he snarled, ‘so the Hun can’t grab a hair. Keeps the lice out, too ... You’re not sticking your bayonet into a dummy but into a swine, a rat ...’ (he leaped at the German and stabbed it again) ‘rat!’ (he kicked it in the balls and thrust his bayonet into its stomach), ‘the man who raped your wife ... stuck his dirty syphilitic prick right into her cunt before your eyes’ (he was sobbing, tears coming down his cheeks as he systematically ripped the German to ribbons) ... ‘she’s shrieking “Save me, save me!”‘ (stab stab)... ‘but you can’t... because you’re a dirty sissy, a pansy ...’ (a savage butt stroke, the rifle whistling round reversed, took the battered dummy’s head clear off). ‘This bastard took your job ... bashed your baby’s head in before your eyes ... strangled your mother ... yes, your mother, she died right here, this fucker’s hands round her throat and she trying to scream help, help and you ...’ He wheeled round, the bayonet thrusting towards the audience--’And you can’t do a thing because you’re fucking sissies ... pansies ... nancy boys ... bed-wetting mothers’ darlings. You’re not men!’ He whirled up and down the ranks, ranting, glaring. Krishna saw that the sowars were convinced they had a madman in front of them. But for the presence of Warren Bateman standing steady there, who presumably understood what the sergeant was saying and doing, they would have run away.

The sergeant hurled the rifle at a dafadar, and yelled, ‘There, sergeant, you do it... Go on! ‘

The dafadar looked helplessly at Krishna who said,
‘Bayonet practice karo, issi mwafik
.’

The dafadar, a mild-mannered quiet man, an excellent rider and disciplinarian who never had to raise his voice to get what he wanted done, tentatively stabbed at the upright dummy. ‘Not that one, the German,’ the sergeant yelled, ‘Go on ... you sissy, you useless fancy man ... Kill, kill! ‘ He ran beside the dafadar, shrieking in his ear. Krishna Ram thought, the epithets would be more effective on an Englishman, who would understand what was being said. The dafadar knew that the sergeant was abusing him, but not the exact terms. Krishna could hardly understand, himself, because of the sergeant’s frenetic rage and strong Glasgow accent.

After a couple of minutes the sergeant grabbed his rifle back and again fell on the dummy, growling and snarling like a blood-maddened tiger. Straw and sacking and bits of rubber flew, the

German disintegrated, blood spattered the spectators. Suddenly Krishna Ram had an almost uncontrollable desire to burst out laughing. This was grotesque. It was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He tried to catch Warren Bateman’s eye, but the CO was watching intently, wholly absorbed.

The sergeant suddenly stood upright, slammed the rifle on to his left shoulder and slapped the butt in a correct salute. His chest bulged and he was looking at a point a couple of inches above Warren Bateman’s head, as per regulations. ‘Bayonet demonstration ended, sorr!’

‘Well done, sergeant ... that was magnificent. Will you let the RM give you a drink?’

‘I’m due at the Gurkhas in ten minutes, sorr. Permission to dismiss, please.’

‘Very well, sergeant. Dismiss. Thank you again.’

The sergeant turned smartly to the right, slapped the rifle butt again, and said to his private, ‘Pick up that dummy and see the next one’s ready, Johnson.’ A minute later their car puttered away down the road.

Warren Bateman turned to the assembled men. ‘You have seen how bayonet fighting should be done. In future that is how it will be done in this regiment. It is a demonstration of what I said yesterday at durbar. You must hate. Every man in the regiment will have one hour a day of bayonet drill from now until we move up the line, Dayal.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Dismiss, please.’ He beckoned to Krishna Ram to follow him to his office. ‘That sergeant’s a genius,’ Warren said thoughtfully.

Krishna said nothing; he thought that Sergeant Mackintosh was a madman. The CO said, ‘He instilled the offensive spirit even though no one but a few officers understood a word he was saying.’

It was more than that, Krishna thought: there was a lack of communication on deeper levels. Indians could hate all right, and become mad in battle ... but to order? Pretending that the enemy had raped your wife when he had not? It turned reality into make-believe.

They were inside the CO’s office, and Warren carefully closed the ramshackle door leading to the adjutant’s office next door. He sat down, indicating a chair for Krishna. He said, ‘What I am going to tell you is still secret. I have the general’s order to tell you though, so that preparations would not be held up if anything were to happen to me ... What I told the men about a routine relief up the line was not true. General French is going to make a major attack. The whole of First Army will be involved, with our Hindustan Division in army reserve. Second Army are making heavy diversionary attacks, starting tonight, to draw the enemy reserves farther south. As soon as the movements of German reserves are confirmed, the First Army attack will begin. They will break through on the second day. The day after that we pass through them to the high ground beyond the Longmont Canal. Here.’ He stood up and pointed out the names on the map of the Western Front pinned on the wall behind him.

Krishna said, ‘Yes, sir ... How is it proposed to get the leading troops through the enemy wire this time? There can’t be a long bombardment, or the Germans would guess what was going to happen.’

‘No, there will be no long bombardment,’ Warren said. ‘The assaulting troops will cut the wire with Bangalore torpedoes, and break into the forward German trench line under cover of smoke shells.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna said, ‘but... you saw the German defences at Lestelle Wood and Hill 73, sir. There were belts of wire extending back as far as we could see. And more men in reserve than in the front line. That was in December. The Germans have had three months to improve the defences that we couldn’t get through then. You remember how much improved they were even in February when we were patrolling in that sector.’

‘First Army will break through,’ Warren said. After a pause he said, ‘They must.’ He spoke as though willing himself to believe something that in his heart he didn’t.

Krishna, emboldened, said, ‘I don’t see how the attack can succeed. I was talking to a sapper captain last month, when I went down to Abbeville about the stores. He said that the railway systems on both sides of the Western Front can move defensive reserves along the front quicker than the attacking troops can overcome the defences. I think he ... ’

‘Our RFC machines can spot the slightest movement as soon as it begins,’ Warren Bateman said sharply. ‘By dropping bombs and firing their guns--they have machine guns now, you know--they can stop or delay all movement.’

‘But, sir ..’ Krishna remembered the bespectacled captain with the long nose and the cynical twisted half smile: ‘My dear major, they can put twenty thousand troops on trains behind, say, Sedan, after dark today, when our aircraft can see nothing--and before dawn have them detraining ten miles behind the front lines opposite you.’

‘What?’ Warren said.

Krishna summoned his courage and determination. He said, ‘I don’t think the attack has a hope of success unless something new and different is done. I am afraid that First Army will fail, and then we will be sent to the same place where they failed, with the situation not better but worse than it was for them. We shall lose many men and officers, for nothing.’

‘What do you think we should do?’ Warren said, his voice cold.

‘I think we should protest, sir. Or suggest a different plan of our own.’