Two Lanchester armoured cars crossed the bridge to meet it. Where the road widened, one of them jinked to its left, making space on its right for the other to pull alongside. Finding itself facing the two armoured cars, the lead tank halted. Perhaps the driver assumed that if these two vehicles had been sent to stop it, they must have the means to do so.
The rest of the column ground to a halt behind it, the second and third tanks veering left and right respectively, fanning out and mounting the verges to put themselves in a position to bring their turret guns to bear without any risk of hitting the tank in front of them. After the roar of engines at full power, the only sound now was their ticking over. A stillness descended on the scene, as if each side was waiting for the other to make the next move.
The lead tank’s turret traversed, first to one side, then to the other, as if the tank were a living thing and the turret its head, looking about.
Both Lanchesters opened up with the twin Vickers machine guns mounted in their cupolas, hosing the lead tank with a continuous burst for what seemed like an eternity. The tank soaked it all up, the bullets pattering harmlessly against its armour plating until each Lanchester had expended two entire belts of ·303 ammunition.
Then – and only then, as if to say, Now it’s my turn – the tank fired back. Disdaining to waste a cannon shell on the armoured cars, it opened up with the hull machine gun, and 20-millimetre explosive bullets punched through one Lanchester’s armour as if it were paper.
Then a lucky shot from the Boys rifle which the other Lanchester had mounted in place of a hull machine gun knocked the hub off one of the lead tank’s rear sprocket wheels. The track fell off, unravelling in the tank’s wake, the other end racing forward over the upper wheels before flopping out in front, and then the whole tank slumped to the left as the rims of the wheels bit into the tarmac. It slewed violently to the left, coming to a halt broadside-on to the two Lanchesters and effectively blocking the path of the tanks coming up behind. But the turret was still in action, turning towards the armoured car. The undamaged car hastily reversed across the bridge, still firing its twin Vickers guns as it went. The tank’s cannon belched fire with a roar, and an explosion ripped open the Lanchester’s turret.
Torrance saw men climbing out of the first Lanchester’s hatch, now bathed in the glow of the flames all around them. Incredibly, in spite of the punishment the vehicle had taken, it looked as though most of them had survived.
Finding his way blocked by the crippled tank in front of him, the driver of the second tank rammed it, trying to thrust it aside. Its own driver gunned the engine, and the crippled tank slewed a little with an eldritch squeal of metal against metal, though not nearly enough for the second tank to get past. Torrance heard its engines revving, but the first stayed firmly planted where it was. The second backed up a few yards, then motored forward, slamming into the first tank with a great clang. Still the crippled tank did not budge.
Torrance realised that any minute now the driver of the second tank was going to work out that instead of trying to shoulder the crippled one aside, he would be much better off leaving the road and ploughing through one of the flimsy stilt houses. He nudged Rossi and pointed to where the crew of the first Lanchester dashed back across the bridge. ‘If you ask me, Lefty, they’ve got the right idea!’
‘What about the Bren gun carriers?’
Torrance glanced towards the transport harbour. They could still reach the carriers, but theonly way to get them to safety would involve driving them back across the bridge a few dozen yards in front of the Japanese tanks, and exposing the carriers’ unarmoured backs to the tanks’ guns. He could think of easier ways of committing suicide. ‘Bugger the Bren gun carriers!’ Torrance, Rossi, Grant and Baird dashed from cover, raising their left arms to protect their faces from the searing heat as they squeezed past the burning Lanchester, close enough to hear the rain sizzle where it landed on the hot metal, the reek of cordite and burning petrol acrid in their nostrils. They sprinted across the bridge with tracer rounds making pretty patterns in the night sky over their heads.
As they passed the second wrecked Lanchester at the far end of the bridge, Captain Turner – the battalion’s transport officer – stepped out in their path, signalling them to halt. ‘And where d’you think you’re going?’
‘A very long way from here, sir!’ Torrance said with feeling.
Turner grinned. ‘Good idea. But it might buy us some time if we can use this Lanchester to block the far end of the bridge.’
Along with seven Lanchester crewmen in charred, bloodstained overalls and a handful of stray sepoys, Torrance, Rossi, Grant, Baird and Captain Turner put their backs to the rear of the armoured car, pushing it back across the bridge. It weighed seven tonnes and even with sixteen men pushing at the back and the sides, it took every ounce of their combined strength to move it. Bullets clanged against the front as the Japanese tanks continued to spray lead down the road.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to blow the bridge, sir?’ grunted Torrance.
‘It would – if only I could find a sapper with an exploder he can hook up to the wires. I don’t suppose you know anything about explosives, do you?’
‘About as much as the Hammers know about football, sir,’ said Torrance, still bitterly disappointed by West Ham United’s failure to return to the First Division.
Finally the wrecked armoured car was in place at the west end of the bridge; and not before time, for the second tank had almost succeeded in thrusting the crippled one aside. ‘Right, that ought to hold them for a while!’ Turner led the men back across the bridge. ‘Let’s make for Rear HQ.’
They had scarcely covered a few hundred yards before they heard the grinding, clattering and squeaking of tank tracks behind them. Evidently it had taken the tanks less time to move the wrecked Lanchester than it had taken Torrance and the others to put it there in the first place. Streams of tracer came spitting out of the gloom.
The men hastily veered off the road: Turner, the armoured-car crews and the sepoys to the right, Campbell and his section to the left. It was pitch black beneath the trees, though there was just enough light to make out of the rubber leaves silhouetted against the indigo sky. They ran about fifty yards into the orderly rows of trees, then stopped and crouched in the darkness, watching the tanks trundle past on the road behind them.
‘Innit bleedin’ marvellous?’ muttered Torrance. ‘That’s the second time the bloody Japs have filleted us with their tanks!’
‘Filleting’ was the doctrine of jungle warfare that Colonel Stewart had developed soon after the battalion’s arrival in Malaya. Since all major movements of troops depended on the roads, all you had to do was seize control of the road and drive the enemy troops into the jungle on either side, leaving them out of touch with their command structures and unable to coordinate their movements on any scale. All they could do then was fall back to the next position to regroup. It was just like a fishmonger deboning a fish by stripping out its spine. It was now clear the Japanese had independently come up with the same doctrine and were using it against the British, with devastating effect.
Marching parallel to the road, the eight of them blundered across the plantation in what Torrance hoped was more or less a southerly direction, their speed necessarily reduced by the need to avoid running into any trees in the dark, though the orderly rows the trees were planted in made things a little easier.
As their eyes adjusted, and the sky grew lighter, they picked up the pace. Within an hour, the rain had eased off and the sun rose over the thickly timbered mountains to the east. Though it remained gloomy beneath the canopy of the towering trees, the atmosphere had already become sultry. Instead of being soaked with rain, the khaki drills of Torrance and his comrades were soon soaked with sweat. Rays of sunshine lanced down through gaps in the canopy to pick out the mist hanging beneath the trees in shafts of steeply angled light that cast glowing pools on the ground.
‘Bloody he
ll!’ Baird exclaimed suddenly. ‘We left our Bombay bloomers behind!’
Torrance laughed. ‘Shorts! The battalion gets filleted, and you’re worried about shorts?’
Baird indicated the pair he had on. ‘If we wash these tonight, what are we supposed to wear while they’re drying?’
‘If you’re that worried about it, Dicky, why don’t you pop back to Trolak and ask the Japs if they’ll give you your shorts back? We’ll wait for you.’ Torrance shook his head despairingly. ‘First let’s get back to our mob. Then we can worry about laundry arrangements.’
Sunlight flooded down through a gap in the trees up ahead. He guessed it was the Trunk Road, though the lalang grass growing on the verges concealed the tarmac.
Out in front, Campbell dropped to one knee behind a tree and motioned everyone following him to get down. Some threw themselves flat, others used trees for cover, and Torrance – a belt-and-braces man in matters of self-preservation – lay flat behind one. Raising his head cautiously, he saw army lorries coming down the road from their right.
Lennox was running towards the road. ‘It’s awreet, corp! Those are British lorries! Mebbe they can give us a lift to Brigade HQ!’ Racing to reach the roadside before the vehicles swept past without seeing them, he waved his arms over his head.
He was right: they were Marmon Herrington three-tonners, and Torrance could just make out a turbaned figure sitting behind the wheel inside the leading one’s cab.
The first, second and third lorries all swept past without seeing the Argylls. Stumbling out on to the road, Lennox staggered into the path of the fourth, and for one awful moment Torrance was sure he would be knocked down. The driver jammed his foot against the brake, and the lorry squealed to a halt barely two feet short of where Lennox stood.
He grinned. ‘Any chance of a lift for me an’ ma pals?’
And that was when Torrance noticed the two small Japanese flags tied to the radiator grille.
‘Lennie! No!’
The Japanese NCO sitting in the passenger seat wound down the window, leaned out, and with cold deliberation levelled a magazine pistol at Lennox’s face. Torrance heard three shots in rapid succession and saw a cloud of crimson mist spray through the air. Lennox crumpled out of sight below the level of the lalang grass.
‘Bastards!’ Grant stood up with his Bren clutched in his massive paws and opened fire. Bullets punched through the side of the cab and starred the window, which was splashed with blood from the inside a moment later. Probably the captive sepoy driver’s blood as well as the Japanese NCO’s, but expecting such nuanced distinctions from Grant when he was in a berserk rage was perhaps asking a little too much. He swept the stream of lead back along the lorry, riddling the wooden side and the canvas above it. Japanese soldiers leaped over the tailgate to level their rifles but that did not bother Grant: he just turned the stream of lead on them, too. It worked splendidly, until the Bren’s hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
‘Dicky! Give us another mag!’ shouted Grant.
Possibly Baird did not hear him. He was already on his feet and running as fast as his legs would carry him away from the lorries on the road, deeper into the rubber plantation.
Lorries five and six had also halted behind the fourth. More Japanese soldiers leaped out of the back of those.
Torrance shared Grant’s dismay at Lennox’s death, but he had more pressing matters on his mind than revenge. Self-preservation not least. ‘Jimmy?’ he murmured.
‘Aye?’ said MacLeod.
‘Scarper!’ Torrance came up from the ground like Jesse Owens leaving the starting blocks.
Five
Bullets soughed over the seven Argylls’ heads as they fled across the plantation. After a few hundred yards, the rubber came to an abrupt end at a barrier of thorny palms. Torrance paused long enough to empty the last shots from his magazine into the mob of Japanese advancing through the trees, making them scatter, before turning and following the others into the jungle beyond.
The foliage was so thick in places, they had to take it in turns to lead, Campbell hacking at the foliage with his parang, the Malay equivalent of a machete. They fought their way through thickets of bamboo, thorns and atap palms. It took them an hour just to hack a couple of furlongs.
Torrance noticed MacLeod clutching his upper left arm. Looking closer, he saw blood on his sleeve. ‘What the bloody hell happened to you?’
‘I think I was shot.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I didna want to be any trouble.’
‘You bloody twerp! Stand still, let’s have a look. Lefty, keep us covered.’
While Rossi surveyed the trees on either side of the track for movement, his rifle at the ready, Torrance drew a flick knife from his pocket. In addition to their standard-issue equipment, most of the Argylls carried an additional sidearm: a knife, a cosh, a pair of knuckledusters – and the flick knife was Torrance’s ace-in-the-hole of choice. He pressed the stud on the haft, and the blade jumped into view. He used it to slit MacLeod’s sleeve up past the wound.
‘Is it bad?’ asked MacLeod.
The bullet had creased him. The wound had bled profusely, but as long as it didn’t get infected there was no reason why it should not heal in time; provided the daft kid didn’t bleed to death first. ‘Just a scratch. Pass us your field dressing, let’s get it patched up.’
Torrance took the phial of iodine from the dressing pack and poured the contents into the wound. MacLeod gasped and winced.
‘Oh, don’t be such a baby.’ Torrance bound the gauze pad over it. ‘There, that’ll do for now. Show it to the MO when we get back to the battalion – he’ll give you a clean dressing.’ He tousled MacLeod’s hair, much to the lad’s evident annoyance. ‘And a lollipop, if you’re a good boy and don’t cry.’
As the three of them hurried to catch up with Campbell, Kerr and Grant, Torrance fell into step with Rossi. ‘Soupy asked me to tell you that we’ve got to stick together and keep one another’s backs covered.’
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Meaning we shouldn’t grass on our pals at court martials.’
‘Oh.’
‘He says if we do, who knows what may happen? Meaning if you make your accusation formal, you’ll probably get a bullet in the back in a situation not unlike the one we’re in now.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘What? No! I’m warning you. Soupy was threatening you. It only seemed fair to me to pass it on, let you know you’ve a way out. I mean, if it was me… personally, I’d rather not get involved. I don’t much like either of you.’
‘Ta very much!’
Campbell was in the lead, laboriously hacking his way through the undergrowth when Torrance, Rossi and MacLeod caught up with the others. It was past noon now and the sun squeezed sweat from every pore.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Torrance. ‘We’re going nowhere fast. No, that’s not true. We’re going nowhere, incredibly slowly. This jungle’s impenetrable.’
‘You know what Busty says,’ said Campbell. ‘There’s no such thing as impenetrable jungle. Only open, average and close jungle.’
Nicknamed ironically on account of his narrow chest, ‘Busty’ was their name for their former CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian MacAlister Stewart, the Thirteenth Laird of Achnacone. He had taken command of the battalion six months after their arrival in Malaya and had at once instituted a rigorous programme of bush training, teaching his men to survive and fight in the jungle. Most of the battalions posted to Malaya did not expect their men to exert themselves in the heat of the tropical sun, but allowed them to drowse in their barracks from ten o’clock to noon. Colonel Stewart would permit his Argylls no such idleness, and had them out in the ulu for weeks at a time on bush-training exercises. The men of the other battalions thought he was a crank; so too, for that matter, did many of his own men. When the Argylls had marched a hundred and sixteen miles through jungle and swamp on a route mar
ch that summer, the Singapore press had made much of it, dubbing them ‘the Jungle Beasts’.
‘Yeah, well, this jungle is a little too close for comfort,’ said Torrance.
‘What d’you want to do?’ asked Campbell. ‘Turn back the way we came, and run into the Japs?’
‘Listen, mate, the Japs aren’t sitting at the beginning of this trail waiting for us to give up and turn back. Either they’re following us – and at this rate they’d’ve caught us hours ago – or they’ve decided we’re not worth bothering about and have buggered off.’
‘Another half a mile. In another half a mile, I reckon we’ll break through into more open jungle.’
Torrance reckoned they had covered more than another full mile before Campbell sat down on a fallen log.
‘We’ll rest here for ten minutes.’ He pulled out a map. ‘Smoke if you want to.’
Each man checked the ground for kraits and scorpions before sitting down and shrugging off his pack. Flies buzzed in the undergrowth.
‘Is it me, or is there a funny reek around here?’ asked Kerr.
‘It’s just the jungle,’ said Campbell. ‘The jungle always smells.’
‘Aye, I know,’ said Kerr, ‘but this smells diff’rent.’
Torrance took a sniff. Kerr was right, there was a smell: a rank stench of corruption, subtly different from the usual rank stench of corruption one smelled in the jungle. It reminded him of a butcher’s shop on a hot summer’s day. He remembered thinking that in Waziristan one day…
Feeling a thrill of horror, he leaped to his feet.
‘What’s up wi’ you?’ asked Campbell.
Ignoring him, Torrance turned his head this way and that, using his ears now. The buzzing of flies came from the sago bushes a short distance away. Moving towards the sound, he startled a couple of crows from the undergrowth, which flew up into the canopy, cawing irritably. The smell was definitely stronger here. Using the barrel of his rifle, he pushed aside a couple of fronds of sago to reveal a corpse lying in the undergrowth, its neck twisted at an impossible angle, eyeless sockets staring sightlessly up at the canopy, the sallow-brown complexion now tinged a greyish green.
The Name of Valour Page 5