Gilling shrugged, tongue-tied, and walked on. The sun hit him as he left the trees and he winced as the instantaneous spurt of sweat stung the prickly-heat across his shoulder-blades. He walked leadenly, beset by the lingering sense of failure, haunted by the bestiality that morning had let loose.
The company’s shallow weapon-pits straddled the road like the results of a bombing. As he drew closer he recognized the compact figure of Nay Dun and at once he was uneasy. So long as he had remained under the trees he had been able to delude himself that the sense of nightmare would pass. He had been able to gain something from Church’s weary strength and Crawford’s bitterness. Even Perry’s nervousness had tended to buttress his shaken morale. But here, out on the empty plain, alone with the Karens under the hard sun, there would be no one to protect him from himself. And he knew that all Nay Dun would offer was a watchful, alien impassivity that would be like a mirror in which he would see the secret things he already feared might possess and destroy him if he failed to keep them under control.
CHAPTER THREE
He had been less than three years in Burma. As recently as eighteen months ago he was still with the Colonial and Overseas Bank in Rangoon, and it was only a year since he was commissioned in the 2nd Frontier Rifles. He and Glazebrook were the first non-regular officers to be posted to the battalion, and though they had been received with a certain patronage, the initial coolness in the mess had quickly thawed. Other erstwhile civilians had subsequently joined the unit and they, too, had added their leaven, gaining the respect and confidence of even the most hidebound professional.
But nothing had changed between him and Nay Dun. The subedar’s attitude was the same now as when Gilling first took over the company. Rigidly correct, it lacked all warmth and never for one moment had Gilling been made to feel that he wasn’t on trial.
He had written home about him soon after coming to the battalion. In a letter to his father he had said: My second-in-command’s a Governors commissioned officer with the rank of subedar. I’d say he was about forty, though it’s often difficult to assess a hillman’s age. But he’s already clocked over twenty years’ service and his row of medal ribbons is a good five inches wide. Makes me feel very naked! I reckon he’s forgotten more about the game than I’ll ever know and I can feel him watching me sometimes, almost as if he’s waiting for me to slip up. He’s as inscrutable as the Sphinx, though, and never says much, one way or the other. And yet, curiously, he’s a tower of strength. Given time, I suppose I’ll find out what goes on behind the mask, but so far I feel that I’m cheek-by-jowl with a stranger ...
They were in barracks then — the mornings spent on the scorched clay parade-grounds; the afternoons in the wooded practice areas near by. In those days they were playing at soldiers; going through the motions. The nearest fighting was a whole continent away and to be in uniform was merely a sop to one’s conscience. Sometimes the conversation in the mess meandered around the possibility of the battalion being sent overseas — to North Africa, perhaps, or to Abyssinia. A recurring sense of guilt fostered the hope, but there was slight chance of its fulfilment and everyone knew it. Meanwhile they endured the frustration of regimental duties and the monotony of endless training routines.
Every week-day morning, at seven precisely, an immaculate Nay Dun would have the Karens drawn up on the company parade ground for Gilling’s inspection, and at four-thirty every afternoon they would be dismissed. It was like working to somewhat rearranged banking hours. More often than not the evenings were free and by six, bathed and changed into freshly-laundered khaki, Gilling would be driving down to Mandalay for dinner or on his way to the club or walking over to one of the married officers’ bungalows outside the battalion lines. There was always somewhere to go; something to do. And no matter how strongly the subedar’s critical vigilance had weighed on him during the day he could invariably shrug it off with the first whisky-soda.
During those first few months he had no difficulty in keeping Nay Dun’s attitude in perspective. But later, when the unit was alerted and they were moved south-east into the mountainous wilderness along the Siamese border, it became less easy. The barrack-square had trapped him into little more than errors of parade-ground procedure. But the jungle was a chaotic new world and his lack of experience put him at a disadvantage with even the rawest Karen recruit.
Even so, he could still joke about it. In another letter to his father he had written: Nay Dun really relegated me to my proper place the other day. We were out on an independent training exercise when one of my rifle-men was bitten by a snake — just above the ankle. I suppose I was on the spot within half a minute of the first shout, but for the life of me I couldn’t think what to do. It’s not the sort of thing they teach you about in a bank or at OCTU! Obviously, though, it was imperative to stop the poison from spreading — and quickly. A tourniquet seemed the most sensible first step. I was just starting to do something about it when — presto! — Nay Dun arrived and virtually barged me aside. In no time at all he’d produced a razor-blade and made two deep cuts through the punctures. Then he started sucking — and spitting — for all he was worth. After that he lit a cigarette and held the end for a good ten seconds against the wound. The rifleman moaned his head off — and I don’t blame him — but Nay Dun’s promptness probably saved his life. Naturally, I felt pretty foolish about the whole thing: de trop, to say the least. When it was all over Nay Dun gave me one of his special indecipherable looks, but I could imagine damn well what he was thinking ...
It took time for his urban mind to adjust itself to the conditions. His judgement was often at fault and he frequently felt the need for guidance; the reassurance of another opinion. But the subedar’s demeanour consistently discouraged inquiry and prevented development of any real understanding between them. The flaw in their relationship wasn’t something he could bring himself to discuss with his fellow officers. Put into words it would have sounded ridiculous and petty. It was intensely personal, deep, subtle — and as insistent as water on stone. It wasn’t that he was oversensitive to criticism or advice. Indeed, he would have welcomed either. What confused and disturbed him was the enigmatic expression that greeted his orders and decisions. More and more it seemed to him that he was being put to the test and the belief wormed its way into his confidence. Time and again he had the suspicion that Nay Dun read him like a book — every doubt, every hesitancy — and he felt himself gradually being stripped mentally bare by his subordinate’s implacable gaze.
Once, while on a long-range company patrol, he found himself completely lost. For a whole afternoon he fought against admitting it, hoping desperately that the map would at last come to his rescue and begin to make sense. Several times he argued that there was nothing to be ashamed of in consulting with Nay Dun, yet pride prevented him from doing so. He got himself orientated eventually, but the maddening thing was that he felt quite certain the subedar had been aware of their position throughout and deliberately remained silent.
There was no longer an opportunity to escape for a few hours and dine or go dancing or get in a round of golf or sit at the Long Bar with some friends. All that was over. They were still without an enemy; still concerned with make-believe. But they were training the hard way, two hundred miles from railhead and the nearest town, deep in a green, crumpled, cavernous no-man’s-land that was totally foreign to anything he and most of the British officers had ever experienced.
Never for one moment was Nay Dun anything but impeccably efficient. His own platoon was the smartest; the hardest driven. His authority was immense and his standard of discipline the most exacting. His whole bearing carried the stamp of an imported military tradition, but he belonged to the jungle. It was his home, the Karens’ home, and for them the wilderness was signposted as surely as any city street. The only novice, Gilling told himself ruefully, the only blundering outsider in the whole company, was the man in command.
He ate berries once — red, plum-sized things which
tempted him as he sweated along a narrow track. Within minutes his throat dried and his tongue seemed to shrivel up. For half an hour he suffered an intense pain. Anxious to warn others he spoke to Nay Dun, telling him to pass the word throughout the company that the berries were poisonous.
‘They know already, thakin.’ It was said without scorn, but the lack of the slightest trace of emotion in the voice seemed to make the comment all the more pointed. ‘They have known since they were children.’
There were other incidents; miscalculations, errors of commission and omission, small stupidities. And each one undermined a fraction more Gilling’s already precarious self-assurance. In the subedar’s presence he became increasingly withdrawn. To all intents and purposes they worked well together, but inwardly he was on his guard, mindful of his inadequacies and resolved to expose them as little as possible. In moments of depression he came to believe that Nay Dun’s manner — for all its punctiliousness — was riddled with a mocking contempt. And even at the best of times he was never able to shake off the suspicion that he was under constant surveillance; that little enough of himself remained for Nay Dun to uncover.
*
The months passed. The war widened its horizons and found them an enemy. The battalion moved down to the plain where the roads were choked with refugees and where great pillars of black smoke rose along the skyline. Reality replaced the make-believe. Glaze-brook was blown to bits at Pegu: Mackenzie died of wounds after a patrol-clash. Every company suffered its share of casualties. Shock and fatigue calloused the spirit; blunted the imagination.
And now, within the last hour, the reality had been touched by nightmare. Something monstrous and unnerving had shown itself, and as he walked towards the spot where Nay Dun waited Gilling wondered how long it would be before the subedar recognized that he was afraid.
CHAPTER FOUR
They lay in their weapon-pits all day and there wasn’t a cloud to shield them from the sun. At noon the first squadrons of Japanese bombers went over and they stared up at them hopelessly and watched them go. The tripod-mounted Brens were as useless as toys. Later they watched them returning south — high, unmolested, the formations unbroken. It seemed as if the sky was theirs already, to come and go as they pleased.
Trucks shuttled warily along the road and a few jeeps raced back and forth. Mirages shimmered on the worn macadam and heat blurred the claret hills rimming the eastern limits of the plain. On the plain itself there were occasional clumps of palms which stood like tiny islands surrounded by a vast motionless ocean where flocks of white egrets gathered as if they were sea-birds.
Another glinting wedge of bombers roared north in mid-afternoon and Gilling despaired as he looked at them. The plain was as impossible to defend as the sky. He gazed about him at the immense spread of the land and asked himself how long the division could possibly expect to hold the Japanese in check. The forward brigades were already covering impracticably wide frontages. Even so there were miles of level plain to either side of them where the enemy could roam almost at will, and it was surely only a matter of time before something more powerful than a small, expendable force was moved round behind them during the night.
They had been outnumbered and out-manoeuvred from the start, and now that Rangoon had fallen the pressure on them was irresistibly gathering momentum. The next attack would be more violent than the last; the one after that more violent still. Each would cripple them further and there were no reserves to fill the gaps. Meanwhile their rear bases and lines of communication were being systematically destroyed from the air. It was demoralizing to picture the wooden towns already gutted or freshly spurting flame, the broken bridges, the railway yards in ruins. But all they could do was watch the bombers’ triumphant passage across the sky and wait for another ground assault to come in.
He thought of Burma suddenly as an enormous cul-de-sac; a huge horse-shoe trap. The morning’s fear had not gone out of him and now it was shot through with a premonition of doom. Whether Church and Crawford and the others were privately of the same mind, or whether they still clung to the hems of hope, he did not know. But, strangely, he was always aware of a sense of security whilst in their presence. The herd instinct was at work in him, the desire to be with his own kind, and more than once during the day he looked towards the pagoda and toyed with the notion of returning to headquarters on some pretext or other in order to spend a few minutes speaking his own language; shaking off the feeling of personal isolation.
He moved restlessly around the company’s positions, going from platoon to platoon, and Saw Tun Shwe accompanied him like a second shadow. Once, in late afternoon, an outlying section reported movement on their right flank which turned out to be a mounted patrol of Punjabis. Shortly afterwards firing started up in one of the brigade areas directly to the south of them, but it soon died away. False alarms were nothing new. The burning silence settled over them again and the plain reverted to its primeval emptiness.
About an hour before sundown Abbott unexpectedly came across the paddy stubble from the direction of headquarters. He was a regular, in command of the battalion’s other Karen company.
‘Hallo, stranger,’ It was a tonic to hear his deep, languid drawl again. ‘How’s it going?’
‘So-so.’ Gilling shrugged. ‘You’re way off your beat, aren’t you?’
‘Playing truant for five minutes. The Old Man wanted me, but I was damned if I was going back to my own little hole in the ground without seeing how the other half lived.’
Gilling marvelled that anyone could still raise a smile; still — despite the sweat and grime — somehow manage to appear relaxed and unruffled.
Abbott went on: ‘You had a bitch of a morning, Tony.’
‘I’ve been hating myself ever since.’
‘Nonsense. That’s not what I meant.’ He brushed his sandy moustache. ‘How’ve your chaps taken it?’
‘They never beat drums, as you know.’
‘What about the redoubtable Nay Dun?’
‘Saw Tun Shwe’s the only one to have made any direct comment.’
‘Which was?’
‘That the Japs are a lot of savages — words to that effect.’
Abbott nodded, glancing round at the occupants of the nearest weapon-pits. ‘I’d call that merely a starting-point.’ His eyes hardened momentarily. Rance had been a particular friend of his. With quiet vehemence, he said: ‘I’ll never forgive them. Never in a hundred bloody years.’
Neither spoke for a while. Then Abbott continued: ‘I’ve promised my fellows bonus-money.’ He raised his face to the sky as though he were suffocating. ‘Five rupees for every proved corpse and fifty for a prisoner.’
‘Does the Old Man approve?’
‘Haven’t told him about it. It’s a private arrangement.’ He shook his head. ‘Abbott’s privy purse. If I’m broke within the week I couldn’t be better pleased.’
‘You won’t be.’ The remark slipped out.
‘Broke?’ Abbott gave him a searching glance. His lips slowly curled. ‘Defeatist talk, Tony?’
‘I’ve got a touch of the shakes today.’
‘I think most of us have, one way or another.’
Gilling nodded towards the horizon, his despair surfacing. ‘I ask you, Mike, what chance have we got? They’ll have a ring round us before very much longer. It stands to reason.’ Abbott was suddenly a safety-valve for his day-long uneasiness. ‘Their aircraft have ignored us for over twenty-four hours, but that’s not out of brotherly love. I’ve got the feeling they’re just finishing off some loose ends up north before really starting to tie us up in one big bundle.’
Abbott lifted his heavy shoulders; let them drop. ‘God knows.’ There was another pause. Then, with a deliberate change of tone, the drawl emphasized, he smiled and said: ‘All I can say is this is a perfectly lousy way of earning a living.’
Their eyes met; held one another. Chastened, Gilling said: ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’
‘I’ve ha
d the blues myself, don’t worry. It’s an occupational disease. All this bloody hanging about does it — all this Micawber business.’ He adjusted his chin-strap. ‘Well,’ he said presently, ‘this won’t set the Thames on fire. I’d better be pushing along. ’Bye, Tony.’
‘ ’Bye, Mike. See you soon.’
‘You bet.’
Gilling watched him go. To unburden himself a little had been like a letting of blood. It was keeping his weaknesses battened down that allowed them to breed and multiply. Yet, as far as Nay Dun was concerned, he had no choice but to continue to hide them away. To know despair, to experience the first cold fingerings of fear — these were self-destructive enough. But for the subedar to observe them at work in him would be a devastating ignominy. Abbott had recognized the symptoms but there had been understanding in his oblique reproof; encouragement. But neither was to be found in Nay Dun’s mask-like expression. All it ever implied was: A British officer is someone who leads and sets an example. A British officer should be like Colonel Church, like Captain Crawford, like Captain Abbott ...
Gilling remained rooted to the spot where Abbott had left him, watching the burly figure recede — grateful to him; envious of him.
*
The sun fell away westwards towards a cushion of waiting clouds. The company ate a scratchy meal, carried in mess-tins from the slight depression in the rear where there was a spring sufficient to provide for their needs. Gilling ate with them — washing down the rice and stringy meat with a can of heavily-sweetened tea. The mules were quartered in the depression and now, as the light softened and relative coolness came, they grew restless with relief.
The plain began to shrink as the swift dusk set in. The company stood-to and Gilling went the rounds with the platoon and section commanders, coordinating the Brens’ fixed lanes of fire, checking the night’s duty rosters, spreading the password. Though they were in reserve the atmosphere was expectantly tense. Dusk was always a bad time, a dangerous time, prompting the imagination, plucking at the nerves. Only the mules thought otherwise, answering one another boldly as the eerie silence intensified.
A Battle Is Fought to Be Won Page 2