He heard a sloshing sound. A Japanese soldier was moving amongst the corpses scattered on the riverbank with a jerrycan, sloshing the contents over them. When some of it splashed on Kerr’s face, it took all of his self-restraint not to flinch. The acrid smell of petrol reached his nostrils.
Aw, Jeez! thought Kerr, sick with despair when he realised what was coming next. He tried to push the dead sepoy off him, but the corpse was too heavy.
Someone struck a match, and Kerr was engulfed in an inferno. He opened his mouth to scream in terror and agony, but before he could do that he needed to take a deep breath, and that breath filled his lungs with searing, burning petrol vapour.
Twenty
Torrance awoke abruptly and found himself sitting up with MacLeod’s head on one shoulder and Sheridan’s on the other. He could not help noticing she smelled of coconut.
Her head jerked up abruptly. She looked at him suspiciously, as if he had somehow been taking advantage of her while she slept.
‘You looked so peaceful, I didn’t like to wake you,’ he explained.
‘Oh, I did, did I? You’ve got a nerve!’ She wriggled away from him.
‘I’ve got a nerve?’ Torrance turned back to MacLeod, gave his other shoulder a jerk to snap the lad’s head up. MacLeod blinked, yawned and stretched.
The first traces of dawn were leaching through a dingy sky. Torrance, Sheridan, MacLeod, Rossi and Jennings were huddled beneath the groundsheet they had rigged from the trees to shelter them from the previous night’s torrential rain. They filled their water canteens from it before setting out again. As the sun rose steadily into the sky and the chill of the night gave way to the suffocating heat of the day, they hacked their way through strands of jungle or waded through swamps, pausing on the far side to de-leech one another.
No one spoke much, saving their strength for the gruelling march. Torrance was beyond exhaustion now. Everything had an air of unreality to it, whatever he looked at taking on a sharpness beyond the usual powers of his twenty-twenty vision, yet seen as though peered at down the wrong end of a telescope. His head felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool. His feet were numb: it was like hobbling along on blocks of lead. How far had Anderson said it was to Yong Peng? Thirteen miles? It felt as if they had already covered twice that since setting out from Parit Sulong, and they had not even reached the track leading to the river yet.
The sun beat down on them from behind. Torrance wiped sweat from his stinging eyes. ‘What time is it, sir?’
Jennings checked his watch. ‘One o’clock. Be in Yong Peng tonight.’
Torrance thought about navigation to keep his mind off his weary, aching limbs. If it was one o’clock and the sun was at their backs, they were heading north-east. That was about right: at least Jennings seemed to know where he was going.
He glanced at Rossi. ‘What happened to the Bren?’
‘Ditched it.’
‘Told you, you should’ve swapped it for a bundook.’
They were walking along a bund between two padi fields when Jennings paused, alternately consulting his map and gazing towards a distant peak. ‘Is that Mount Ophir, d’you suppose?’
Remembering the geological survey in his pack, Torrance looked up sharply. ‘Mount what, sir?’
‘Mount Ophir. Some say it’s the Ophir of the Bible, referred to as the source of King Solomon’s gold.’
‘I thought King Solomon’s mines were in Africa, sir?’ asked MacLeod.
Jennings laughed. ‘Only if you believe Rider Haggard’s novel.’
‘And the filum, sir. With Cedric Hardwicke and Harry Belafonte.’
Torrance said nothing, but could not help wondering if whoever had mined the mountain in King Solomon’s time might not have missed a seam or two. The author of the geological survey certainly seemed to think so. Though at that point in the proceedings, Torrance would have given all the gold in the Bank of England for a plate of egg and chips washed down with a cold bottle of beer, and a comfortable bed for a night.
‘If he disnae know what mountain yon is,’ muttered Rossi, ‘does that mean we’re lost?’
They left the padi fields behind, the track running along a low causeway with marshes on either side where thick strands of reeds grew over their heads.
A couple of miles further on they came to where the huge scar of an open-cast tin mine disfigured the face of the earth. A great pit half a mile wide – at the top, at least – and a hundred feet deep had been scooped out of the earth. After the lush green of the jungle, the dusty, sun-baked, ochre mud looked barren and alien. The ground sloping to the bottom of the vast pit had been cut into terraces now covered with a tangled lattice of bamboo scaffolding and catwalks. Hosed by hydraulic drills, the soil had been carved into bizarre, unnatural shapes. A set of narrow-gauge railway tracks ascended from the turbid pond at the bottom of the pit to where a large building with corrugated-iron sides – an ore-processing station, perhaps – stood on the rim, surrounded by smaller, atap-thatched sheds.
Tin mines like this littered the country: Torrance had stumbled across one on a bush-training exercise a few months ago, when the workings had bustled with Chinese coolies in conical bamboo hats panning for tin ore in the sluices and the run-off from the hydraulic drills, or shovelling the ore into mine cars to be winched to the processing plant. No doubt this mine had likewise bustled, until the approach of the Japanese had convinced the management it was time to shut down operations and get the hell out.
Jennings paused to consult his map again. ‘This shouldn’t be here,’ he muttered, with a disconcerting air of uncertainty.
‘How very inconsiderate of it,’ Torrance said drily.
‘Well, if there’s a tin mine here, there must be a road linking it to the road to Yong Peng. We’ll probably find it just beyond those buildings.’
As they made their way around the outside of the buildings, a couple of Morris three-tonne lorries parked on the other side came into view, on a patch of waste ground at the head of a gravel track leading into the jungle beyond.
‘What did I tell you?’ asked Jennings. ‘Those are army trucks. Some of our chaps must be nearby. Maybe they can even give us a lift to Yong Peng.’
‘And if they’re not nearby, we’re pinching one of their lorries,’ said Torrance. But even as he said it, he was edging to his right as he approached them, trying to see if there were any Japanese flags fixed to the radiator grilles.
A door slammed behind them. Torrance and his companions turned to see that a solitary Japanese soldier had emerged from an outhouse. He was so intent on fastening his belt, he did not see the four Allied soldiers and Sheridan until Jennings had drawn his Webley and levelled it.
The Japanese’s jaw dropped. Leaving off fastening his trousers, which slid down to gather around his ankles, he cried out in Japanese and tried to unsling his rifle. Jennings fired his revolver, squeezing off three shots before one of them hit the Japanese, who sprawled on his back and began screaming. Torrance turned back to the lorries in time to see more Japanese soldiers scrambling over the tailgates.
‘Damn it!’ said Jennings.
‘Come on!’ Grabbing Sheridan’s hand, Torrance ran across to the buildings, dragging her behind him. Rossi, MacLeod and Jennings followed.
The five of them were dashing up a lane between two rows of huts when half a dozen Japanese infantrymen charged around the corner of a building perhaps thirty yards away, bayonets fixed to their rifles. ‘Tenno heika banzai!’ screamed one.
Torrance brought up his Thompson, spraying the Japanese with a couple of short bursts. Two went down and the rest scattered, taking cover in the lanes between the huts. One of the men Torrance had shot lay on his back, unmoving, while the other tried to crawl for cover, leaving a snail-trail of blood in his wake. A bullet whipped through the side of a bamboo shack less than a foot from where Torrance stood.
Rossi jerked open the door to the ore-processing station. ‘In here, quick!’
&nb
sp; As more bullets sang past their heads, Torrance, MacLeod, Jennings and Sheridan followed Rossi through the door. Torrance slammed the door behind him and looked around for something heavy to push against it. The interior of the building was a tangle of machinery: ore-beater tubs, sluices, conveyor belts, steel pipes and gantries. There was nothing to bar the door with. Torrance followed the others as they threaded their way between the tubs. At the far end, the building was open to the air. Here was the upper terminus of the railway track leading down to the bottom of the tin-tailings. A train of three mine cars was at the top of the track, with only a steel hawser wound around the drum of the winch behind the buffers holding them in place.
Torrance emerged from the building only to withdraw when a chatter of a ‘woodpecker’ came his way. More Japanese had worked their way around the outside of the building and taken up positions behind a sluice about fifty yards away. Torrance fired a burst around the wall at them, then pulled back hastily as the ‘woodpecker’ hosed the building, the bullets drilling holes through the corrugated iron with a succession of deafening clangs.
‘No way out that way,’ he told the others, clipping his last magazine to his Thompson.
‘Really? I’d no’ have guessed,’ sneered Rossi.
A pistol cracked, the shot echoing around the interior of the plant. Jennings staggered back against one of the ore-beater tubs, a crimson patch spreading across the breast of his shirt, a look of astonishment on his face. Looking around to see where the shot had come from, Torrance saw a Japanese officer with a magazine pistol crouching on one of the overhead gantries. Bracing his Thompson against his shoulder, he let fly a burst as the Japanese squeezed off another shot. The Japanese fell from the gantry with a scream, smacking sickeningly across the rim of an ore-tub before somersaulting to slam down against the concrete. His pistol skittered across the floor, coming to rest somewhere under one of the ore-beater tubs. Torrance was tempted to retrieve it, but a rifle cracked nearby, the shot ricocheting off a steel pipe inches from his head and reminding him this was no time to collect souvenirs.
Taking cover behind a chute feeder with MacLeod, he shrugged off his pack, took out the survey and dropped it into the chute feeder’s hopper. It would be easy enough to retrieve at a later date, provided no one started up the plant’s machinery in the interim – that was just a chance he would have to take. ‘Can’t risk letting it fall into the Japs’ hands,’ he explained to MacLeod as he shrugged his pack back on. ‘Come on!’
The two of them ducked between a couple of ore-beater tubs and almost literally bumped into Rossi and Sheridan on the other side. Beyond, Torrance saw the mine cars at the top of the narrow-gauge railway.
‘Get in those mine cars!’ he told the others.
As they complied, Torrance heard the scuffling of crêpe-soled boots as more Japanese infantrymen came through the door beyond the ore tubs. He could see their boots beneath a fat pipe which otherwise hid them from view, though he could hear them jabbering amongst themselves. Taking his last grenade from his pocket, he pulled out the pin, counted two seconds, and rolled it under the pipe with a gentle lob before ducking behind an ore tub. The grenade exploded with a deafening crack in the confined space, and blood sprayed the corrugated wall around the door.
Torrance vaulted into the last mine car with MacLeod and levelled his Thompson over the back, shooting at the hawser running from the coupling to the winch. It was harder than he had expected: he had to loose off half a magazine before the hawser parted. The cars started to roll down the tracks, slowly at first, but rapidly gathering momentum. He lay down in the bottom of the truck, pulling MacLeod down after him. ‘Keep your bleedin’ head down, Jimmy!’
Several seconds elapsed between the cars emerging from the processing plant, and the Japanese machine-gunner beyond the sluices opening fire. The bullets pattered harmlessly against the steel sides. The chatter of the machine gun gradually grew fainter, and after a few more seconds the bullets stopped hitting the mine car altogether.
The trucks were hurtling down the rails now. ‘What happens when we reach the bottom?’ asked MacLeod.
‘How the hell should I know?’ asked Torrance. ‘We crash and die, prob’ly.’
They did not have to wait long to find out. A few seconds later the lead truck smashed through the buffers, sending splintered wooden beams spinning through the air, then ploughed on into the shallow pool at the bottom of the mine, raising two curtains of water on either side before slowing to a halt. Sheridan and the three Argylls vaulted over the sides of the cars, landing in knee-deep water.
A couple of dozen Japanese infantrymen advanced down the slope towards them, firing as they came. They were a good five hundred yards away and most of their shots went wide, but the closer they came, the more bullets they were able to send whining perilously close to Torrance and his companions, kicking up little spurts of water where they plunged into the pool.
On the other side of the water, a cliff covered in scaffolding blocked their way. ‘Now what?’ demanded Rossi.
‘Up the scaffolding,’ Torrance told him.
‘Are you mad? They’ll pick us off before we get halfway to the top!’
‘Not if I stay down here and hold them off.’
‘Have you lost your mind?’
‘Prob’ly. Go on, scarper, quick!’
MacLeod, Rossi and Sheridan started to ascend one of the ladders. Torrance turned to face the Japanese descending the slope towards him. He squeezed off a long burst from his Thompson, dropping a couple, and then he was out of bullets. He tore out the spent magazine, tossed it aside, and reached for a fresh one, only to remember his utility pouches were empty. ‘Shit!’
The Japanese were less than a hundred yards away now and some of their shots were getting perilously close. For want of anything better to do, Torrance was about to follow MacLeod, Rossi and Sheridan up the ladder when his eyes fell on a hydraulic drill standing nearby. Grinning, he ran across to it. It did not have much in the way of controls: a wheel to open the valve, and that was about it. Nice and simple. He turned the nozzle towards the approaching Japanese, and started to turn the wheel furiously. ‘You could do with a bath, Tojo!’ he shouted. ‘I can smell you from here!’
At last water issued from the nozzle, a pathetic little dribble that dried up almost at once. Torrance strained at the wheel, but it was obvious he could not open it any further: that was all he was going to get. ‘Sod it!’
He glanced over his shoulder to where MacLeod, Rossi and Sheridan climbed up to the first gantry. A dozen more Japanese soldiers had appeared above them. As Rossi reached the gantry, they grabbed him and dragged him up beside them, quickly depriving him of any weapons. MacLeod and Sheridan got the same treatment.
The first lot of Japanese were now wading across the pool, past the wrecked mine cars, their rifles levelled at Torrance. There was nothing for it but to throw down his Thompson and raise his hands over his head, wondering what the Japanese was for ‘kamerad!’
A sea of snarling faces surrounded him, all shouting over one another, incomprehensibly. Someone pushed him down. Someone else kicked him. A third person took his hand and helped him up again, helping himself to Torrance’s watch as he did so. Hands darted into his pockets, relieving him of his wallet, his lighter, his cigarette case.
‘Japanese soldier number one!’ said someone. ‘English soldier number ten!’
The Japanese escorted their prisoners back up the slope to the ore-processing plant with blows from their rifle butts. One of them connected with Torrance’s head, making his teeth rattle in his skull. He felt his legs turn to water, and then next thing he knew he had lost his balance and fallen to his hands and knees. A Japanese kicked him in the ribs.
‘Knock it off!’ He rose to his feet hurriedly. ‘We’re coming, ain’t we? You know there are rules about how you’re supposed to treat prisoners of war?’
One of the Japanese hit him between the shoulder blades with his rifle butt, making
him stagger.
‘I guess they don’t,’ said Rossi. ‘Ow!’ he added as a Japanese hit him on the ear.
As they neared the top of the slope, Torrance saw a Japanese officer with a toothbrush moustache waiting for them. He glared at the prisoners with cold eyes. ‘English soldiers!’ He slapped Torrance with a backhand across the face. ‘If I allowed myself to be captured by the enemy as you have, I would commit seppuku rather than live with the shame.’
‘Seppu-what?’ said Torrance.
‘He means harry-kirry,’ said MacLeod.
‘Silence!’ said the officer. ‘You are now prisoners of Imperial Japanese Army. In Imperial Japanese Army, all prisoners bow to officers to show proper humility.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ spat Torrance. ‘I bow to nobody but my King. So you can kiss my bum.’
The officer barked an order in Japanese, and Torrance felt something slam into his back. In agony, he fell forward on his knees, and someone grabbed his arms, pinioning them behind him and wrenching them upwards so that his face was pushed close to the ground. On either side of him, MacLeod, Rossi and Sheridan were likewise forced to their knees.
The officer drew his sword from its scabbard.
Torrance’s stomach knotted with cold at the sight of the blade. This is it, he thought, this is where I die. Well, he can kiss my arse if he thinks I’ll grovel for mercy. ‘You know where you can stick that, don’t you?’
The officer gripped the sword in both hands, raised it above his head, and brought it down sharply. It was all over before Torrance had realised what was happening. MacLeod’s head rolled on the ground, a startled expression frozen on its face, and blood spurted from his severed neck. Sheridan shrieked in dismay. The two soldiers holding MacLeod’s body let go and straightened, allowing the headless corpse to crumple.
The Name of Valour Page 24