The Ravi Lancers (59 page)

‘And spend the next ten years in a prison camp in Germany?’ Sohan said. ‘I would lose a crore of rupees! Of course, I might be able to bribe myself out as soon as I could get my father to send money from Basohli.’ He shook his head and his jowls wobbled. ‘But I could not count on it. The commandant of the camp might be impervious to bribes. Some such people exist. No, lord, I will come with you.’

‘Good ... Are the men eating?’

‘What they have, lord, and some bread the Germans left behind. Also German schnapps, a tot for each man.’

Krishna went down into the Aid Post. Captain Ramaswami was sitting on the operating table, drinking something out of a mess tin. ‘My goodness,’ he said, looking at Krishna’s finery. ‘We are going to re-enact the Mahabharta in Artois! ... This is the schnapps. It’s good stuff. Have some.’

Krishna waved it away, smiling. ‘No compromise! ... The Brahmin will be staying with you here, and about twenty fit men from the squadrons, who don’t want to come with us. Soon after first light put up a white flag and surrender to whoever the Germans send in.’

‘I should come with you,’ the doctor said. ‘Though I don’t think you have a hope of getting through.’

‘Why not?’ Krishna said. ‘Vishnu has already given us a dense fog, to go with our white clothes. We shall continue to obey him, not the European gods--the machines, the guns. We have proved again and again that weight of metal does not achieve results ... We are not going to stop for wounded, doctor. You stay here. You will be able to practise your profession in the prison camp. Perhaps they will even let you out to help the women. There must be a great shortage of doctors in Germany, too.’

Ramaswami said, ‘Is that an order?’

Krishna said, ‘It is my wish, as Prince of Ravi.’

The doctor said sarcastically, ‘Your wish is my command. Very well, I will do as you want ... What about Colonel Bateman?’

‘Is he fit to move?’

‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s in slight shock, but he can move, provided it isn’t too far, and too long. But...’

‘Then I will take him with us.’

‘I was going to say you would be wise to leave him here with me. Then he cannot give evidence against you until the end of the war. No one’s going to take any action then.’

‘That’s the reason I must take him with me,’ Krishna said. ‘We can’t be free unless we do what we must do, openly.’

‘You’re mad, Yuvraj,’ the doctor said gruffly. ‘But perhaps India needs some madness to survive. Good luck.’

‘Thank you.’ He shook the doctor’s outstretched hand and returned to his dugout.

He knelt beside the bunk where Warren Bateman lay, his eyes open. The colonel was muttering, ‘Joan ... I could understand ... hurt as much as I thought... But you, Di...’

The rissaldar-major, sitting on the next bunk, said, ‘He talks to himself much, sahib.’

Krishna shook Warren gently and said, ‘Sir ... sir...’

The eyes opened wider and Warren sat up, gasping, ‘Di!’ and then, after a pause, ‘What is it? Are the Germans attacking?’

‘We shall be moving soon. I’m going to have the rissaldar-major untied to go at your side, and there will be four sowars to help carry you if you become tired. Rissaldar-major-sahib, look after the colonel-sahib at all costs.’

‘I shall, sahib.’

‘Keep close behind me. We’ll be with A Squadron. I had intended to keep the squadrons well spread out, and separated, but with this fog I’m ordering them to keep concentrated. Dress in these clothes. May Parmeshwar guard you, sahib.’

The RM, freed, began to change. When he was ready, the handkerchief tied around his wrist, he drew his sabre from its scabbard, and said, ‘We are ready.’

Six-fifteen. Krishna passed down the trench in the swirling fog, his sword on one shoulder. As he passed, the men, all in white here, fell to one knee and, reaching out, touched his foot or the hem of his tunic. Their faces, pearled with moisture, were eager and uplifted as though they had taken drugs, though they had not.

Six-twenty. Silently Krishna climbed out of the trench, compass in hand. The bearing of the retreat was 270 magnetic, due west. The fog seemed to carry its own light within it, for he stood in an eery white glow, sensing the white-clothed men coming up out of the trenches and spreading out in tight lines to right and left.

He began to move. He could reach out and touch the nearest men on either hand, but the fog deadened all sound. The massed ghosts, naked bayonets or sabres in hand, drifted silently, like the fog, over the muddy, churned earth. The ground was littered with corpses from the attacks on Fosse-Garde, dead brown faces upturned in the fog, in some places so thick that he had difficulty not treading on them, rifles abandoned and broken, wire coiled across shell holes, here bodies jumbled where a heavy shell had burst in a crater full of men, humped rubble of bricks, arms sticking out of sandbagged revetments, the trail of a German gun long broken and abandoned. They came to wire, which Krishna thought had been in front of the old British second line; but it had been cut in many places by shell fire and perhaps by German assault parties, and not repaired, for now it was facing the wrong way. The sowars drifted through with little more difficulty than the fog itself. The trench was occupied only by a sleepy sentry, who had no time to sound the alarm gong before a sowar slid his bayonet into his neck. Then they were up and out the far side. Guttural shouts arose behind, quickly swallowed. A machine gun close at hand began to fire, but Krishna thought it was firing the wrong way. Some stirring of the fog, as though by a giant hand, warned him that light was coming. They passed another line of trenches, this one unoccupied, or perhaps the men in it were all asleep in the dugouts and had posted no sentries. Now they must be near the end of the old British trench system. How far had the Germans penetrated? They certainly had not had time to dig more trenches beyond whatever they had captured.

The ground began to shake to heavy artillery fire to the right, the north. The fire seemed to be coming from British guns. Perhaps they were launching a counter-offensive. It would be the normal time of day to do so.

A helmeted, grotesquely masked figure appeared, another beside him. A machine gun loomed nearby. Krishna and the rissaldar-major charged silently, six others with them. The Germans’ yells of terror were stifled in the masks, and choked off as they died, heads rolling and blood spouting over the ground. Krishna kept steadily on. Why were the Germans wearing gas masks? There was no gas in the air.

He understood: a slight west wind had sprung up, which would enable the British to use gas. In this fog the gas would not be detected until too late. All this was to the Indians’ advantage, for no one could see well through those masks.

A battery of mortars appeared in the strengthening light, dug into shallow pits. Masked infantrymen lay asleep all round, fully dressed. The Rajputs swept forward as whistles blew and the Germans leaped for their weapons. A mortar man died over the barrel of his mortar, rifle shots exploded and here and there Krishna saw a Rajput fall. A German towered up, rifle in hand. Krishna stepped aside, swung his sword, and the man’s arm fell off at the elbow. Hanuman jumped in with his bayonet in his left hand; an officer aiming a Mauser fired one burst into the ground as he died. The Rajputs glided on into the fog. Five minutes later Krishna dimly made out a column of men looming up ahead and to the right. By now the light was strong but the fog persisted. The column was German infantry moving east over broken ground. The British artillery fire was getting heavier and closer. Krishna signalled his men to sink to the ground. The Germans were going towards the rear. It might be a normal relief movement, or it might be that the British were indeed attacking somewhere to the north and the Germans were adjusting their tenuous line. The column passed, perhaps five hundred men. Rifle fire from behind, a little later, made Krishna think that the column might have run into one of the other Ravi squadrons ... but they were in a hurry and would only have fired at any Lancers who got in their way.

He signalled his men to advance once more. The breeze blew more strongly into his face and the fog began to thin. The sun was trying to rise. Behind him Warren Bateman was being supported by two sowars as he stumbled forward.

They came upon German infantry, lining the edge of a shattered wood, facing the other way. The Lancers fell on them, momentarily as irresistible as Arjun’s legions of the sky. Sabres and bayonets slashed and thrust. The fighting became hand to hand. Krishna saw Lieutenant Puran Lall’s sabre sweep almost completely through a German officer’s body at the waist. Then a German soldier thrust his bayonet into the young officer’s heart. Puran Lall fell, turning, a smile on his face, the first Krishna had seen there since his brother was killed.

‘On! ‘ Krishna cried. ‘On! ‘

For a moment the fighting was intense around him. One of his bodyguards fell to a rifle shot, and the trumpeter to an officer’s Mauser. Hanuman’s bayonet dripped in his hand, staining his white garment. Krishna slashed down one last man and then he was through, out of the wood on an open field, unmarked by shell fire, the wet grass firm underfoot. ‘Close up,’ he called. ‘Keep formation.’ The tendrils of fog closed in behind, and the machine gun fire sent after them ceased.

Ten minutes later a shot from in front cracked close over his head. He saw a man in khaki uniform kneeling behind a low wall, making ready to fire again. The man had slant eyes and was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. It was a Gurkha, a look of amazement clearly visible on his round face. ‘Friend,
dost, dost!
‘ Krishna called, his hands raised. Slowly the Gurkha stood up.

Brigadier-General Rainbow Rogers, seated at a rough table in a battered railway station building at Contamines, said, ‘Sit down, Krishna, sit down. Feel better now?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna said. ‘Twenty hours’ sleep is enough for anyone.’

The general shuffled an army signal form in front of him. ‘It appears that you brought out 240 all ranks. Do you know how many you started from Fosse-Garde with?’

‘Two hundred and eighty.’

‘Great heavens, you had heavy casualties in the battle, then. But afterwards you only lost about forty, fighting your way out through a German division. A remarkable feat of arms, and one that reflects the greatest credit on you ... and your officers and men, of course. And wearing fancy dress! An extraordinary idea, I must say, but it seems to have caught the Germans off guard ... though I am not sure that you wouldn’t be liable to be shot as spies if the Germans had caught you. Being out of uniform, you see. You won’t do that again, will you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. I think I can promise you a DSO within a few days. Get yourself some uniform as soon as you can.’

‘Yes, sir ... We left about forty more wounded, who couldn’t walk, in the Aid Post,’ Krishna said, ‘with Captain Ramaswami and our Brahmin.’

‘Poor fellows. Well, the war is over for them, eh? The front disintegrated just after I last spoke to Colonel Bateman. The Germans broke through on the right and all communications were cut. No one knew where anyone was. Our dispatch riders found themselves in the middle of German columns, and we captured a German colonel who thought he was five miles on his side of the front. Terrible state of affairs! No form, just a mess, changing every moment. I didn’t know where any of my brigade was ... except you.’

‘We would never have got out if the situation hadn’t been so fluid,’ Krishna said.

‘Quite. Well, it’s stabilized now, thank God. The forward troops are digging the new trench lines now. We’ve lost some ground here, gained some there...’ He put his monocle carefully in his eye and looked at Krishna. ‘How was Colonel Bateman at Fosse-Garde? A little--overwrought, eh? That wound must have been very painful, and of course he had been working himself unmercifully for weeks before the battle.’

‘He was tired, sir, but in full possession of his faculties.’

‘H’m. Wouldn’t you say that his wound had temporarily rendered him unfit for command?’ The general’s eye gleamed meaningfully behind the glass.

Krishna hesitated. It was such an easy way out, and the general obviously wanted him to take it. But there must be no more lying. ‘No, sir,’ he said firmly.

The general said petulantly, ‘Oh, very well. You know that he has made extremely serious charges against you?’

‘I know he was going to, sir.’

‘Mutiny. Disobeying the lawful order of your superior officer. Cowardice in the face of the enemy. Disgraceful conduct.’ He tapped the table top. ‘Here’s his deposition, signed and witnessed, and supported by another one from Rissaldar-Major Baldev Singh. This means a court martial, Krishna. A very serious scandal involving your grandfather’s state, and the Indian Army as a whole.’

‘I know, sir, but I think it will lead to good in the end.’

The general said, ‘Be reasonable, Krishna. No one wants a scandal. General Glover told me to do all that I could to hush this whole thing up. You did very well getting your regiment out of Fosse-Garde in obedience to my orders.’

‘Your orders, sir?’ said Krishna, startled.

‘Yes. When the Germans broke through on the right I sent an order for you to retreat to this area, Contamines, as fast as possible.’

‘We never got it.’

‘But you were carrying out my intention when you, h’m, took command, don’t you see?’

Krishna said, ‘I imagine the court martial will have to decide on that, sir.’

The general snapped, ‘Oh, very well. But it can’t be held until Colonel Bateman is fit again. He’s being evacuated to England tonight. I’m sending the rissaldar-major on leave, too, as I think it would be better if he were out of your regiment until the court martial. Meantime, consider yourself under open arrest.’ He let the monocle drop on its cord.

‘Yes, sir ... Sir, I think it will be best for all concerned if our regiment is returned to India and mustered out of Imperial service.’

The general said, ‘Do you want me to forward that request officially? ... Because, between you and me, there is a strong chance that the Indian infantry divisions will be pulled out of France as soon as shipping is available, and sent to Mesopotamia.’