Once the lorry was in position, a Chevrolet 30-cwt ambulance was pulled forward into the space it had vacated. The driver was a badly wounded subaltern, wearing his peaked cap on the back of a heavily bandaged head, the bloodstained dressings even covering one eye. He wore no shirt, revealing even more bandages swathing his neck and torso. When the ambulance pulled forward, Torrance saw Sheridan in the back, tending to Kerr and perhaps a dozen other wounded men, all tightly packed in. He threaded his way through the vehicles to talk to her. As he reached the tailgate, the sickly-sweet stench of gangrene assailed his nostrils.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Lootenant Austin is going to parley with the Japanese on the bridge. Captain Spofforth thinks there’s a chance the Japanese may be willing to let the ambulances through with our most seriously injured cases on board. Apparently the Japanese respected the Red Cross at Gemas.’
‘Oh, yeah? They didn’t respect it at the Slim River. You’re not going with them, are you?’
‘Captain Spofforth figures it might help if the Japanese see a woman on board as well. And it’s a good way to get me out of the way before… well, you know.’
Torrance could only see it ending in disaster. ‘Don’t,’ he said softly. ‘Please.’
‘I’ve no choice. These men will die if we don’t get them to a hospital soon.’
‘Are you taking Titch?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s in bad shape, but he won’t die if he’s left behind.’
Everyone who gets left behind is going to die, thought Torrance, but he did not tell her that. He marched back to where Rossi and MacLeod leaned against the side of the Bren carrier.
‘We’re buggered, aren’t we?’ asked MacLeod. He said it with a smile, trying to put a brave face on it by making light of the situation, but there was no escaping the truth of his words.
‘If we are, I’m gonna take a few more of the bastards down with me before I go.’ Torrance surveyed the traffic in the road. It would be a good ten minutes before the major had got both ambulances out of the traffic jam so they could be driven to the bridge, which meant it would be ten minutes before anyone was calling for a truce. A lot could happen in ten minutes.
‘Come on.’ Torrance climbed over the side of the Bren carrier, dropping down into the seat on the passenger side, then slid over behind the wheel. Rossi put the Bren in the back and dropped down next to him, inserting a fresh belt of ·303 ammo into the breech of the Vickers machine gun mounted on a gimble, the barrel protruding through a gun-port in the front armour.
MacLeod made to climb in the back of the carrier. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ demanded Torrance.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Like hell. You stay here. We don’t need you.’
MacLeod backed away from the carrier’s side, looking hurt.
Torrance started the engine. Normally it took a few minutes to warm up the Bren’s V8, but this one was still warm from its earlier manoeuvrings and the engine caught at once.
Hearing it, an Indian sepoy came across. ‘What are you doing with my Bren carrier, sahib?’
‘I’m just borrowing it.’ Torrance put the carrier into reverse, backing up the side street until he could pull forward, turning into the street running parallel to the main one leading to the bridge. The carrier rocked on its bogies as it rattled across the tarmac. The sensation was not unlike riding a rocking horse, or so Captain Turner had told him: none of Torrance’s foster carers had ever been able to afford one. It was not something he had a chip on his shoulder about: once he had joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, he had been given access to some of the best toys money could buy.
‘A wee bit harsh on the laddie, were you no’?’ Rossi shouted above the roar of the carrier’s engine.
‘I’m just trying to protect him,’ said Torrance.
‘Mebbe he disnae want to be protected.’
When they came to the first corner, Torrance had to wrestle with the wheel to take the bend, applying the brake steer: the left track halting, swinging her around a little, then jerk forward, then left a bit more, then jerk forward again, taking the corner in a series of short, choppy jolts. It was not elegant, but it got the job done. A few dozen yards further on he had to turn to the right, repeating the mirror of the same manoeuvre.
And then the house where the Japanese had made a stronghold was directly ahead, three hundred yards away at the far end of the street.
‘Ready?’ he asked Rossi.
‘Ready.’
Torrance put the Bren carrier back in gear and pushed the pedal to the metal, roaring down the street at the carrier’s top speed of forty miles an hour. Seeing the vehicle bearing down on them, the Japanese machine-gunners opened up at once. Torrance could hear the bullets clanging off the thick armour plating in front. When the carrier was forty yards from the house, he braked hard, bringing it to a standstill a few yards further on; any closer, and Rossi would not have been able to depress the Vickers low enough to get the loopholes at the foot of the front wall. The two ‘woodpeckers’ both blazed away at point-blank range, the bullets rattling off the armour. Rossi pressed the Vickers’ firing button, pouring a stream of lead first through one loophole, then through the other, until both were silenced. A rifle shot sounded from above, the bullet punching through the engine vent with a clang. Torrance levelled his Thompson, firing a burst up at the first-floor window he thought the shot had come from. Then he lobbed a grenade through the nearest loophole, and he and Rossi scrunched down in their seats as a fist of hot air showered them with scraps of debris.
They did not wait for the dust to clear, leaping out of the carrier. Torrance had only to touch the front door for it to fall off its hinges, hitting the floorboards behind with a crash. He stepped through, once again moving aside so as not to be silhouetted in the doorway, before spraying the entire room with a continuous burst from the Thompson until the magazine was empty. The Japanese had torn up the floorboards and dug a slit trench at the foot of the wall so they could fire through the loopholes. The trench had become their grave.
Torrance removed the spent magazine and tossed it aside, clipping a new one in place before moving to the foot of the stairs. A silhouette appeared at the top. Torrance fired another burst, and the man toppled forward, juddering down the steps until he came to rest at Torrance’s feet, unmoving. Torrance put a couple more rounds through his head before edging up the stairs. He sprayed the upper room, but there was only a corpse at the window.
He crossed to the opposite window which looked out across an open expanse of waste ground thick with grass, and beyond that the Simpang Kiri River, perhaps fifty yards wide, placid where it flowed sluggishly between banks overgrown with reeds. It formed a perfect mirror, reflecting the hump-backed concrete road bridge arching over it, just wide enough for two vehicles to pass, silhouetted by a flame-coloured sunset. In the middle of the bridge was a roadblock formed of three barricades, one after another, improvised out of forty-gallon oil drums, timber beams and sandbags.
There were no boats on either bank. On the other side of the river, Torrance saw Japanese troops in slit trenches dug in the waste ground by the water’s edge. And somewhere beyond, the British Army and safety at Yong Peng, twelve miles or so to the east. It might as well have been twelve thousand.
Hearing footfalls on the steps behind him, Torrance whirled, swinging the Thompson’s muzzle around, but it was only Bluey Quinn. ‘Whoa!’ he said, quickly raising his hands.
Torrance lowered the gun.
‘Nice piece of work, by the way,’ Quinn said as Rossi followed him up the stairs, setting the Bren up at the other window. ‘Crazy, but effective.’
‘Where’s Venables?’
‘Bought it. I’m section leader now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rossi.
Quinn shrugged. ‘Yeah, well… it’s war, isn’t it?’ The look of sorrow in his eyes belied his harsh words.
Hearing a lorry m
oving in low gear, Torrance glanced out of the window again and saw the two ambulances creeping up the humpbacked bridge, following in the wake of a figure carrying a makeshift white flag. The ambulances stopped when they reached the roadblock. A Japanese officer emerged from one of the machine-gun nests at the far end of the bridge, picking his way through the barricades to talk with the man with the flag.
‘What’s going on?’ Quinn asked Torrance.
‘They’re trying to persuade the Japs to let our ambulances through with our most badly injured on board,’ said Torrance.
‘No harm in asking, I suppose.’
The Japanese officer and the man with the flag made their way down the side of the first ambulance, looking in the back. Torrance caught sight of a torch, imagined Sheridan dazzled by the beam as the Japanese officer played it over the men inside, perhaps making sure they really were wounded.
‘Strewth, I think he’s actually gonna go for it!’ said Quinn.
Torrance grunted non-committally. The Japanese officer and the man with the flag made their way to the tailgate of the second ambulance. After examining the interior, they had a prolonged conversation which seemed to involve the Japanese officer shaking his head a lot.
And then the Japanese machine guns opened up: not on the two ambulances, but on the houses on the north bank of the river. Torrance, Rossi and Quinn threw themselves flat on the floor as bullets cracked through the window to smack into the far wall.
Torrance heard mortar shells whistling through the air. One fell on the waste ground between the house and riverbank, throwing up a great cloud of dust which obscured his view of the river. Another burst in the streets nearby.
‘I reckon the truce is over, then!’ shouted Quinn.
When the bullets stopped hitting their house, Rossi edged up cautiously to peer over the windowsill. He sighted along the Bren, and swore. ‘The bastards! The bloody bastards!’
‘What’s up?’ asked Torrance.
‘I canna fire at the machine-gun nests on the bridge! I might hit the ambulances!’
Torrance raised his head to see for himself. While tracer rounds arced across the river and mortar bombs exploded on both banks, the ambulances remained where they were on the bridge, somehow untouched in the midst of this maelstrom of fire and lead. That the Australians were taking care not to hit the ambulances was hardly surprising; what was odd was that the Japanese were being equally punctilious about directing their fire elsewhere.
‘Why the hell don’t they get out of there?’ wondered Quinn.
Torrance supposed he was referring to the ambulances. ‘I ’spect that Jap officer’s told them that if they try to move, he’ll signal his machine-gunners to open up on them.’
‘You mean, he’s holding them hostage?’ asked Quinn. ‘What does he want in return?’
‘Nothing he ain’t already got: those two ambulances are right where he wants them. He can’t take them within his own lines without dismantling the roadblock, but why should he want to? As long as they’re sitting there on the bridge, we can’t rush it for fear of—’
And at that moment a mortar shell hit the house and the roof collapsed in on them.
If it had been a European brick house with a tiled roof, all three of them would have been killed outright. As it was, a roaring filled Torrance’s ears, dust and smoke billowed across the room, there was a loud crash, and then the drumming of a cascade of wooden shingles raining down. Something smacked against his temple, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the floor with Rossi crouching over him, patting his cheek.
‘Are you still wi’ us, Slugger?’ Behind Rossi, the room was open to the sky in one corner where a section of the ceiling and part of two walls had been demolished. Debris littered the floor.
‘Course I’m still ruddy with you. Where else would I be?’
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ asked Quinn.
‘Two.’ Torrance could feel a pounding in his skull. When he raised a hand to feel for a bump, his fingers came away with blood on them.
‘Aye, you’ve a wee bit of a gash there,’ said Rossi. ‘Let me put a field dressing on it.’ When he broke the ampoule of iodine into the wound, the searing pain almost made Torrance pass out. Rossi quickly clamped the gauze pad in place, and bound the bandage over his head.
As darkness fell over Parit Sulong, the noise of battle diminished to sporadic shooting. Explosions from the west end of town came some time after midnight, but it did not last long, and silence descended once again. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, Torrance must have nodded off at some point during the night. The next thing he knew, Quinn was shaking him awake and the pale light of dawn was flooding through the hole in the wall.
‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine. The sun’s burning a hole in your blanket.’ Quinn’s stubbled face was black with grime and cordite and dried blood. Rossi did not look any better. Torrance supposed his own face probably needed a wash and a shave, though he could not imagine how he was going to get either, when there was not even enough water to drink. His parched mouth tasted of sawdust. The thirst was probably only making his headache worse. He raised a grimy hand with scabby knuckles to his aching head and ran his fingertips along the dressing.
Quinn had a canteen and an enamelled mug. He poured a couple of mouthfuls into the mug and handed it to Torrance.
‘Ta.’ The water had an earthy taste, and instead of refreshing Torrance, it only made him realise how thirsty he was. Glancing out through the hole in the wall, he saw the ambulances were no longer on the bridge. ‘Where have the ambulances gone?’ he asked Quinn.
‘Soon as it was dark, the drivers released the handbrakes and coasted back down the slope to our lines. By the time the Japs realised what had happened, it was too late for them to do anything about it.’
‘Is Dr Sheridan okay?’
‘Yeah, she’s fine.’
‘You might’ve woken me and let me know.’
‘You and Lefty looked so peaceful, lying there sawing gourds, I didn’t want to disturb you.’
Torrance heard the sound of aero-engines. Oh, Christ, he thought, not another strafing run. Looking up through the hole in the wall and glimpsing the two aeroplanes overhead, he realised this was not a run-of-the-mill strafing run. For one thing, the aeroplanes were two-seater biplanes. The Japanese aircraft he had seen over the past six weeks had come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but so far they had yet to throw anything as antiquated as a biplane at him.
Rossi joined him at the hole in the wall. ‘Those are Tiger Moths! It’s the RAF!’
Somewhere in the town outside, some Australians had reached the same conclusion and cheered.
Torrance and Rossi had to move to one of the windows on the west side of the house to follow the biplanes as they droned low over the rooftops. When they were above the tree canopy on the far side of town, one of the men started throwing boxes out of the cockpit. Parachutes blossomed above the falling crates, slowing their descent. An airdrop! The Norfolks might not be able to fight their way through to Anderson’s beleaguered column, but the RAF could still resupply it from the air. Desperately needed morphine for the wounded, ammunition for those still able to fight, and food for all. The fly boys had come through for them at last!
‘Why are they dropping those boxes over the Japanese positions?’ asked MacLeod, who had caught up with them at some point during the night.
‘What?’ asked Torrance.
‘There was bad fighting at the other end of town during the night: some Jap tanks attacked. One of the Aussie gunners managed to brew up a couple with a twenty-five-pounder and sent the others packing, but afterwards the Japs infiltrated yon woods. Which means those supplies are being parachuted to the Japs.’
‘Sod it!’ said Torrance. ‘Hold on, how do our lads even know we’re here, to send a parachute drop to us?’
‘The Aussie signallers rigged up a wireless from spares. They managed to get a signal through to their Divisional HQ.’
/> ‘Are they gonna try to get anything else through to us? Like a relief column?’
‘Apparently not. They canna spare the men.’
‘So we’re on our own?’
‘Looks that way.’
A havildar of the 5/18th Royal Garhwal Rifles came up the stairs. ‘Colonel Anderson is going to make one more attempt to take the bridge at oh-six-hundred hours,’ he told Torrance, Rossi, MacLeod and Quinn. ‘He wants us to provide as much covering fire as possible.’
Three sepoys followed the havildar into the room, one carrying a Vickers heavy machine gun, another two boxes of ·303 ammunition, and the third the tripod and a one-gallon can for collecting the water which would otherwise have been lost as steam from the cooling jacket. Dressed in khaki drills even more battle-stained than Quinn’s, the three sepoys looked appallingly young and each of them sported some injury on an arm or a leg, though nothing serious enough to get them out of combat. Nevertheless they worked quickly and efficiently as the havildar directed them with crisp orders in Garhwali, positioning the tripod behind the hole in the wall, fixing the machine gun on top of it, running the condenser tube from the cooling jacket to the one-gallon can, setting the sights, and putting the first rounds of a belt of ammunition into the breech.
The havildar leaned against one wall, his dark eyes fixed intently on his watch. He said something in Garhwali, and one sepoy sat behind the Vickers, another lying down beside him ready to feed the ammunition belt into the breech. ‘One minute,’ he added to Torrance, Rossi, MacLeod and Quinn; then, half a minute later, ‘Thirty seconds!’
Rossi checked the magazine in his Bren was fully charged.
Another Vickers machine gun chattered further downstream. The havildar shouted an order to the sepoys, and the one sitting at the handles pressed the firing button, filling the room with the gun’s thudding as he sprayed the machine-gun nests at the far end of the bridge. Torrance, Rossi and MacLeod took their lead from him, opening fire on the men positioned in slit trenches on the far bank.
The Name of Valour Page 22