by Amitav Ghosh
This was how they learnt that their pre-emptive strike had itself been pre-empted by an operation of unprecedented scale, involving synchronised attacks on targets thousands of miles apart—an air attack on Pearl Harbor and amphibious landings along the Malay peninsula. Singora, the town that was to have been their objective, was one of the first to have been occupied.
‘Gentlemen.’ Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland gave his officers a polite smile. ‘If my knowledge of the army is any guide, I would suggest that you make yourselves comfortable here. It may be a while before we hear anything from HQ . . .’
There was something very comforting about the note of irony in his voice: listening to him, Arjun found it hard to imagine that anything could go seriously wrong.
There was a large airfield at Alor Star, and at first light a squadron of Blenheims took to the air. The 1/1 Jats cheered as the planes buzzed over the station. A couple of hours later, the Blenheims came circling back with empty fuel tanks. Within minutes of their return a flight of Japanese planes came humming over the horizon. They attacked the airport in close formation, at the precise moment when the refuelling Blenheims were at their most vulnerable. In a matter of minutes the planes were in flames. The timing of the raid was uncannily precise. There could be no doubt that the enemy had been tipped off by a spy or a local informer.
Later in the day Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland drove over to the airfield with a few of his officers. A medical centre had been hit and there was a powerful smell of chemicals. On the apron, the tar had liquefied around the Blenheims. In the distance there was a row of attap huts. These served as barracks for the Malay auxiliaries who guarded the airfield. The men were nowhere to be seen and Arjun was sent to look for them. He found their barracks in perfect order. The beds were all made and each had a kitbag hanging beside it. Rifles stood leaning against the wall, in neat rows, exactly as regulations demanded. But the men were gone. It was evident that after going through all the daily motions of tidying their quarters, the troops had quietly deserted.
Dinu had spent the night on a cot on the veranda of Ilongo’s mother’s house. He woke up early. Both Ilongo and his mother were still asleep. He looked at his watch. The train to Penang wasn’t till midday; many long hours lay ahead.
He stepped outside and looked up at the mountain. The light had begun to change; the forest seemed to be coming alive. It struck him that he had never photographed the chandis at this time of morning. He spotted Ilongo’s bicycle, standing inside a doorway. He decided to cycle up to the mountain with his cameras.
He put his equipment together quickly and cycled faster than usual. When he got to the stream he dispensed with his usual rituals: instead he went straight up to the clearing and set up his tripod. He was changing a roll when the first raiders flew over Gunung Jerai. At first he paid no attention, assuming that the planes were landing at the Sungei Pattani airbase. But minutes later, when the forest began to reverberate to the sound of explosions, he knew that something was wrong. When the next flight of bombers came by he looked more closely. The planes were flying quite low and there was no mistaking their markings. They were Japanese.
Dinu’s first thought was for Alison. He hadn’t seen her since she’d left for the beach, with Arjun, but he remembered that she had planned to go to Sungei Pattani that day—she had told him this the day before. She had errands to run.
It struck Dinu that she was probably still in town. He left his tripod standing where it was and hurried down to the bicycle. He went first to Morningside House where the cook confirmed that Alison had left the house very early that morning, in the Daytona. On his way out Dinu stopped to check on Saya John. He found him dozing peacefully in an armchair, on the veranda.
Cycling down to the office, Dinu noticed that a large number of people had collected on the parade ground. On approaching he saw that Ilongo was addressing the assembly, standing on a chair, speaking in Tamil. Dinu caught his eye and signalled to him to step aside for a quick word.
‘What’s happening, Ilongo?’
‘Haven’t you been listening to the radio?’
‘No.’
‘Japan’s entered the war. The airstrip at Sungei Pattani has been bombed.’
Dinu took a moment to absorb this. ‘Alison went to Sungei Pattani this morning . . .’ he said. ‘We have to go down there and see if she’s all right . . .’
‘I can’t go right now.’ Ilongo gestured at the people assembled on the parade ground. ‘They’re waiting . . .’
‘Why—what do they want?’
‘The managers of some of the neighbouring estates have abandoned their offices and driven off to Singapore. Our people here are worried. They want to make sure they’ll get paid . . .’ Breaking off to reach into his pocket Ilongo pulled out a set of keys. ‘Here—you go yourself. Take the truck.’
Dinu pushed the keys back. ‘I don’t drive.’
‘Then wait—I’ll be done soon.’
Dinu watched from the balcony of the estate office while Ilongo addressed the assembly. The meeting seemed to last for ever: it was noon by the time the crowd began to disperse. Shortly afterwards Ilongo started up the truck, and they drove off in the direction of Sungei Pattani.
They soon ran into another crowd. The air raids had ended a good few hours before, but people were pouring down the road, heading away from town. Many were on foot; several families had their belongings slung over their shoulders, tied up in sheets; a boy was pushing a bicycle with a huge radio strapped to the carrier; two men were pulling an elderly woman behind them in a makeshift trolley. Nearer town the roads were clogged with honking cars. Sitting stalled in the truck, Ilongo began to ask questions, leaning out of the driver’s window: he learnt that the air raid had taken the town by surprise; there had been no alarms, no warning. Now, everyone who had the option was heading into the countryside, to wait out the trouble.
They parked the truck behind a shop and walked into town. They checked all the places where Alison might conceivably have gone—the banks were empty and most of the shops had their shutters down. Alison’s hairdresser was gone.
‘Where could she be?’
‘She’ll be all right—don’t worry.’
On the way back to the estate, they took a road that led them past the perimeter of the airstrip. The apron was littered with smoking heaps of metal but the runways were untouched. They came across an Indian—a caretaker who told them that there was a rumour that the Japanese bombers had been guided in by a spy, a traitor from the British forces.
‘An Indian?’ Dinu asked apprehensively.
‘No—an Englishman. We saw him being led away, under arrest.’
Dinu was both shocked and relieved.
It was only when they were back at Ilongo’s house that Dinu remembered that he’d been planning to leave for Penang. He decided to put off his departure for the time being: he couldn’t leave without making sure that Alison was all right. He went up to Morningside and sat down to wait.
By the time Alison’s car came up the driveway it was almost sunset. Dinu was at the door, waiting. The relief of seeing her unharmed had the effect of uncorking all the anxieties of the day. He began to shout as she stepped out of the roadster. ‘Alison . . . where the hell have you been? You’ve been gone the whole damned day . . .’
She snapped back at him: ‘And what about you? Where were you last night?’
‘I was at Ilongo’s,’ he said defiantly. ‘I’m going to leave . . . for Rangoon.’
She gave a hard little laugh. ‘Good luck to you then. Let’s see how far you get.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was in Butterworth this morning. There’s chaos on the roads. I don’t think you’re going to get very far.
‘Butterworth? What were you doing in Butterworth?’
She raised an eyebrow and her voice went cold. ‘It’s none of your business.’ She brushed past him and went up the stairs to her bedroom.
Dinu stood fuming in
the porch for a few minutes and then followed her up the stairs. ‘Alison . . .’ He knocked at the door, his voice contrite. ‘I’m sorry . . . I was just worried.’
She opened the door, wearing a white satin slip. Before he could say any more, she threw her arms around him. ‘Oh, Dinu.’
‘Alison . . . I was frantic . . . you being gone all day, with the bombing . . .’
‘You shouldn’t have worried. I was fine—nowhere near the bombs. They were hitting the port and I was on the other side of town.’
‘But why did you go there anyway . . .? All the way to Butterworth? What for?’
She took his face between her hands and kissed him. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘Let’s not talk about it now. Let’s just be glad we’re together and we’re both all right.’
thirty-three
Several hours passed without the 1/1 Jats receiving any word from divisional headquarters. Just after nightfall, a convoy of trucks arrived to move them to another location. They could tell they were travelling north but it was very dark and they could see nothing of the countryside.
At dawn Arjun discovered that they were encamped inside a rubber plantation. Beyond a few hundred yards the greenery seemed to solidify into a circular, bark-striped wall. Between the canopy of green leaves above and the carpet of dead foliage underfoot there seemed to be no direct light and no shadows. Sound appeared to travel and linger without revealing its point of origin. It was as though he had woken up to find himself inside an immense maze where the roof and the floor had been padded with cotton wool.
At the morning’s briefing they learnt that the battalion was now positioned near the township of Jitra, very close to the northernmost tip of the Federated Malay States. Here the peninsula narrowed to a thin neck, forming a bridge between Malaya and Siam: any army advancing from the north would have to squeeze through this gullet and it was here that a southerly advance could best be throttled. The 1/1 Jats, along with several other battalions, had been concentrated along the north–south highway. It was along this road that the Japanese were expected to make their advance. Chance had thus thrust the 1/1 Jats into the first line of defence.
Arjun was commanding his battalion’s C Company: they were positioned a few hundred yards to the left of the north– south highway. Hardy was with D Company, on the far side of the road. They were flanked by the Leicestershire Regiment on one side and the 14th Punjab on the other.
The first job was to dig trenches, but here again the terrain proved deceptive. The soft loamy soil was easy to dig into, but hard to shore up. Ground water leaked in at unpredictable depths. The wireless sets began to malfunction and the problem was traced to the environment: the placement of the trees was found to interfere with the reception of radio waves. Even runners could not be relied upon. Disoriented by the geometrical maze of the plantation, they kept losing their way.
Then the rains broke. It dripped constantly and this too reinforced the impression of being locked inside a padded cage. Looking up, the soldiers would see rain pouring down from the sky. But by the time the water reached them, the showers had slowed to a steady drizzle. The dripping would continue long after the rain had stopped. They would look up to find that the skies had cleared; yet down where they were the rain kept falling, hour after weary hour. It was as though the leafy canopy were a wet mattress, emptying slowly under its own weight.
With the soil turning to mud, their jeeps and lorries began to slide out of control. The vehicles were found to have been equipped with sand-grip tyres, intended for use in the deserts of North Africa. Orders were issued banning them from entering the plantation: supplies now had to be carried in on foot.
On the afternoon of the second day, Hardy came running over and dropped into the trench. Arjun could tell from his face that he was ripe with news.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Just heard a rumour.’
‘What?’
‘There was trouble with the 1st Hyderabads, at Kota Baharu.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘After the first Jap attack there was a panic at the airstrip. The airmen were Australians and apparently they left in a hurry. The Hyderabads’ NCOs wanted to pull out too but the CO wouldn’t let them. They mutinied, shooting a couple of officers. They’ve been disarmed and arrested. They’re being sent to Penang, as a labour force.’
Arjun surveyed his trench, looking uneasily at the faces of his men. ‘Better keep that to yourself, Hardy.’
‘Just thought I’d let you know.’
The battalion’s headquarters were deep inside the plantation, well to the rear of Arjun’s company. Late on the second day, signals engineers laid a telephone line. The first call was from Captain Pearson.
‘Contact?’
‘Nothing yet,’ said Arjun. The day had faded almost imperceptibly away, the gloom deepening slowly into a dripping, clammy darkness. At that very moment, the dark wall ahead was pierced by a red flash.
‘Sniper!’ said the havildar. ‘Down, sah’b, down.’ Arjun lunged face forward into the ankle-deep water at the bottom of the trench. There was another shot and then another. Arjun fumbled for the phone only to find that the line had gone dead.
Now the flashes of gunfire began to range through the surrounding darkness. The shots sounded at irregular intervals, punctuated by the dull thud of mortars and the spitting of light machine guns. To the right, from the direction of Hardy’s emplacement, there came the sound of a Bren gun. This brought only a moment’s relief, for Arjun noted suddenly, with an odd sinking feeling in his belly, that the Bren was rattling on too long: it was as though the men were too panicked to remember the ordered bursts that Hardy had tried to drill into them during weapons training.
Now the enemy snipers appeared to be on the move, pivoting freely around their position. As the hours passed the trench began to seem more a trap than a shelter: there was a peculiar defencelessness about being pinned into a stationary position by a mobile adversary. When they returned fire, it was as though they were letting fly randomly, in the way that a chained animal circles at the end of its leash, snapping at an unseen tormentor.
The dripping of the trees continued without interruption through the night. Soon after daybreak, they saw a Japanese spotter plane, circling overhead. A half-hour later another plane flew by, dipping low over their lines. It left behind a trail of paper that fluttered slowly down from the sky, like a great flight of butterflies.
Most of these sheets settled on the canopy above, but a few trickled through to the ground. Kishan Singh fetched some, handing one to Arjun and keeping a couple for himself.
Arjun saw that it was a pamphlet, written in Hindustani and printed in both Devanagari and Arabic script. It was an appeal directed to Indian soldiers, signed by one Amreek Singh of the Indian Independence League. The text began: Brothers, ask yourselves what you are fighting for and why you are here: do you really wish to sacrifice your lives for an Empire that has kept your country in slavery for two hundred years?
Arjun heard Kishan Singh reading the pamphlet aloud to the others and the blood rushed to his head. He shouted: ‘Hand those to me.’ Crumpling the pamphlets, he buried them deep under his heel, in the mud. ‘Anyone who’s found with these,’ he said crisply, ‘will be up for court martial.’
Minutes later, with a blast that was like a moving wall of sound, the Japanese heavy artillery opened up. The first shells went skimming over the tops of the trees, sending down showers of leaves and small branches. But then, slowly, the explosions began to move in their direction. The earth shook so violently as to send the water at the bottom of the trench shooting into their faces. Arjun saw a fifty-foot rubber tree rising gracefully from the earth and jumping several feet into the air before somersaulting towards them. They flattened themselves at the bottom of the trench just in time to get out of its way.
The bombardment continued without a break for hours.
Manju was in a deep sleep when Neel shook
her awake. She rolled over, in a daze. It seemed as though weeks had gone by since she had last slept. Jaya was a colicky baby and often cried for hours. Nothing would stop her once she started. Even Woodward’s Gripe Water had little effect: a tablespoonful would send her into a light doze but an hour or two later she’d be up again, crying harder than ever.
Manju glanced at Jaya’s crib and saw that she was still asleep. She rubbed her eyes and turned away from Neel. She could not disguise her annoyance at being disturbed. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Why did you wake me up?’
‘I thought you’d want to know . . .’
‘What?’
‘The Japanese have entered the war.’
‘Oh?’ She still could not understand what this had to do with her being roused from her sleep.
‘They’ve invaded Malaya.’
‘Malaya?’ Now everything was suddenly clear. She sat up. ‘Arjun? Dinu? Is there any news?’
‘No.’ Neel shook his head. ‘Nothing directly. But the radio said something about the 11th Division being involved in the fighting. Isn’t that Arjun’s division?’
She’d had a letter from Arjun just last week. He hadn’t said very much about himself—just that he was well and thinking of her. Mostly, he’d asked about Jaya and her own health. He’d also mentioned that he’d met Dinu and he was fine— Dolly had been glad to hear that.
‘Do you still have Arjun’s letter?’ Neel asked.
‘Yes.’ Manju jumped out of bed and went to fetch the letter.
‘Does it say anything about his division?’ Neel said.
The numeral 11 leapt at her almost at once, from the folds of the page. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s his division.’ She looked at her husband and her eyes filled with tears.
Neel put his arm round her shoulders and held her tight. ‘There’s no reason to worry,’ he said. ‘As far as I can make out the 11th Division is headquartered very close to Morningside. Dinu will let us know what’s going on.’ Then the baby woke up. Now, for the first time, Manju was grateful for Jaya’s cantankerousness. Her ceaseless crying left her with no time to think of anything else.