The crisis lasted only a short while. Nerve-taut, soaked with fatigue, his mind cleared. The temptation was still with him, but — deep down — he knew that he’d got to live with himself when this was over — and live with Nay Dun while it lasted. He was in no state to appreciate that these considerations carried equal weight; to realize that the contemptuous challenge of the subedar’s yellowed eyes reflected nothing more than his own estimation of himself. All he understood was that he couldn’t face Nay Dun and give the order to pull out. And for that reason he feared and hated him — as if he were a second enemy, as demanding as the Japanese were merciless.
*
Ten minutes had passed since the firing ended but already they seemed like hours. And nothing had broken the daubed pattern of scrub and shadow out of which the Japanese must eventually emerge.
But at last, with a sharpness that made Gilling stiffen, he heard the punk of at least three mortars loosing-off almost simultaneously. Moments afterwards, preceded by a moaning compression of air, the shells exploded on the escarpment. Jagged buds of flame splintered into leaping fans of earth. Leaves showered like confetti and the blast swept up the steep hill-side, flattening the grass, whipping against covered faces and screwed eyes. Hardly had the air cleared than another salvo burst on the wooded slopes, black and orange-red, deafening.
There was nothing to draw the Karens’ fire. Scattered about the slopes around the hairpins they could only lie in their hollows and suffer the bombardment, lifting their heads between explosions to watch for the first signs of the Japanese breaking cover. Of necessity the assault would be frontal — out of the forest and through the sparse scrub until it reached the base of the escarpment, after which the road would have to be fought for ledge by ledge. There was no other way for them to come — except by looping round into Bandaung along the Meingyi track. When the mortars opened up Gilling was inclined — once and for all — to discount the possibility of the Japanese having discovered the track’s existence. But the longer the bombardment continued on its own the more uncertain he became. Time and again he looked for the warning Very light, and though he looked in vain the suspicion grew that they were merely being kept occupied while their flank was turned.
For half an hour without pause the hill-side erupted under the concussive impact of high explosive and it was almost a relief when he eventually saw the first wave of Japanese rise from the shadows below and start towards them. The mortar-fire intensified, but with it now was the crisp, stammering note of rifles and automatics from both sides. Gilling watched the green-khaki figures jink through the scrub. There were about thirty of them that he could see and from his high place they looked deformed, ape-like as they ran with their weapons carried low beneath their forward leaning bodies. Half-dazed, he glimpsed another extended line of men rise unevenly to their feet and start in pursuit. Some fell almost at once; some made a few yards and went deliberately to earth. But others came on, determined, dangerous, straightening up as they met the rising ground, lifting their spiked rifles. ‘Banzai!’ they shouted, and the cries sounded inhuman; animal. A few got as far as the first ledge and Gilling heard the sharp crack of grenades — though whether the nearest Karens had thrown them or they were the ones he had planted he couldn’t tell.
A bitter-smelling haze hung in the foliage; swirled around blast-stripped branches. The atmosphere sucked this way and that; rattled and pounded. Flames licked among shattered prongs of dry bamboo, dribbling tendrils of smoke. Men cried out, their voices harsh; high-pitched. And once, in a momentary pause, the mules linked the stuttering clash of sound with their own terror.
A third wave of Japanese started on its way and Gilling ducked as fragments from a mortar-shell jarred the boulder in front of him. Already he was wondering how long they could withstand the pressure. Despairingly, he wished they were better equipped to hit back. A single mortar could have plastered the forest edges; a handful of cup-dischargers could have hurled grenades into the intervening areas of scrub. But they had neither. Rifles and grenades apart, their armament consisted of three Brens and half-a-dozen light automatics. Moreover, their ammunition was limited and the Brens couldn’t go on pumping out cross-fire indefinitely. It would be an achievement if they denied the escarpment until sundown.
Despite his anxiety he was strangely free from panic. For the time being his powers of imagination had been immobilized. His stunned concentration was riveted on the scene below and all thoughts of the Meingyi track had been blasted out of his mind. He watched the enemy come stumbling forward; the line break as the others had broken. As before, a percentage kept their feet and lodged themselves under the lee of the lowermost ledge. Fearing a build-up at such close quarters he started to slither down the hill-side, grenade in hand. He had gone less than twenty yards when, by chance, he saw through an oblique gap in the trees one of the Japanese mortar-crews in action. There were two riflemen within earshot and he yelled at them to quit their weapon-pit and join him.
‘There.’ He pointed, jabbing the air, short of breath. ‘Over there. See them? Three hundred yards.’
He waited until the Japanese kneeling beside the mortar was hit, then moved on down the slope, leaving the Karens taking slow, deliberate aim. Foliage stung his face and arms. Zig-zagging, he followed the beaten grass lanes between weapon-pits and the lower he went the more intense the firing sounded. As he reached the exposed area around the demolition a shell struck into the broken shelf close to his right and the blast threw him off balance, rolling him into the open. It was several seconds before his brain cleared. Drunkenly, he raised his head. The din was suddenly muted and he didn’t immediately appreciate the danger of his situation. The roped Karens near the base of the escarpment looked very close and, almost curiously, he noticed a swarm of butterflies lift off the bodies as a ricochet broke dust over them. Then, as his wits gathered, he felt scared. Cumbered with equipment he sprinted for cover, throwing himself behind the bole of a teak tree. He was beginning to feel dreadfully alone, yet he was impelled to go on. He made for what he thought was an empty weapon-pit, only to find that he landed on top of a dead rifleman. The hot gasp of air expelled as he crashed down, the yielding softness of the limp body, drove him away. Baboon-like, he raced to the pits covering the second hairpin. The Bren-gunner alongside whom he went prone spared him the briefest of glances, then snapped a short burst into a couple of Japanese heaving themselves on to the road. They were near enough for Gilling to see their knee-high puttees, the baggy trousers, the cloth pouches slung across their chests. One collapsed, but the other scrambled back into safety. Dead or alive, their comparative proximity was brain-chilling.
Moving again, Gilling found the junior platoon commander, Jemadar Saw Bwe. Sprigs of leaves were stuck in his hat-band. Mouth-to-ear, the jemadar shouted: ‘Some are working towards the rock-face on the left.’
A shell exploded with a cataclysmic roar. Bullets tore through the varnished undergrowth and the sound was like someone flipping a pack of cards.
Gilling bawled back: ‘What about the dead ground in front of you? Can’t you get at them there?’
‘No more grenades, thakin.’ The jemadar’s skin had the bluish tinge of extreme exhaustion. His eyes burned. ‘All used up.’
The grenade in Gilling’s hand committed him. ‘Cover me, then.’
He went forward, crawling down the steep slope. When he was about fifty feet from the lowermost ledge he eased out the pin and tossed the grenade high, controlling the throw. It pitched on the lip of the road, roughly where he had hoped, and bounced over and out of sight. Earth and stones rocketed up as it detonated, and the sharp, ear-splitting crack was followed by a scream that made his stomach squirm.
He made his way back to the jemadar, eyes screwed in a permanent wince. ‘You’ve got to keep them off this ledge. Think you can do it?’
‘I’ve three dead and five wounded —’
‘Can you do it?’
‘For a while, thakin.’
Gilling nodded. ‘Keep me informed.’
He struggled away, feeling like a deserter. Another wave was on its way in across the scrub, but he was more worried about the Japanese who were endeavouring to get a foothold on the rock-face. On the way up he found three more dead Karens and one, a lance-naik, wounded in the chest. He got his shoulders under the lance-naik’s body and carried him pig-a-back, sometimes on all fours, sometimes in lumbering rushes. The air barked and whimpered. A bullet smacked into the ground near his head and glanced off with a fluttering sigh. Gritting his teeth Gilling humped the N.C.O. over the loose surface that had avalanched down from the mined road. Here and there, as he went higher, he passed weapon-pits; saw glistening brown faces under broad-brimmed hats — fierce, sullen, shocked, leaden-eyed. They were faces he knew — comrades, brothers in arms — yet somehow they had lost their identities. They belonged to strangers, all of them — strangers who peopled a demented dream.
He had nearly reached the point where he had left the Karens sniping at the Japanese mortar-crew when he felt the swift pressure of air that heralded a shell’s arrival. He squeezed himself against the hill-side, cringing under the lance-naik’s weight, fingers clawing into crumpled leaf-mould. The explosion almost disintegrated his senses. The wounded man was torn from his back and there was a sudden numbing pain in his right calf. Looking up he saw a turmoil of earth and leaves and, through it, with horror, the twitching, dismembered remains of the two riflemen. He rolled over and groped frantically towards the lance-naik, only to find that he, too, was dead.
An acrid stench was lacquered to his throat. Whirling cores of light coloured his vision. He crawled through a tunnel between clumps of bamboo and hauled himself up the last few yards to the boulders. Saw Tun Shwe was there and said immediately: ‘You’re wounded, thakin,’ but Gilling shook his head. He could feel nothing now and the blood tacking the shirt to his shoulders was the lance-naik’s.
‘No.’ It emerged as a whisper. He shut his eyes, but even the darkness rocked.
‘Your right leg,’ he heard.
They ducked as metal zipped invisibly overhead. On the slope above them a withered tree vanished in an oily blossom of flame.
‘Get some grenades down to Jemadar Saw Bwe,’ Gilling panted, but the words were lost in a sound like a wave breaking.
‘Thakin?’
‘Grenades ... Jemadar Saw Bwe ... Quick as you can.’
His orderly scuttled away. Alone, Gilling pressed his head into the crook of his arm. His body shook. The smell of blood was sickly-sweet and nausea ebbed and flowed. After a while he propped himself on his elbow and glazedly surveyed the scene below. Smoke drifted over the hill-side, veiling the scrub. The fighting seemed to be concentrated in the area of Saw Bwe’s platoon but there was also an increase in the firing on the left of their front.
Peering that way, Gilling suddenly saw a Karen run to the edge of the rock-face and drop a grenade over. He was quite exposed, yet he stood on the brink, a sub-machinegun at his hip, and began shooting with controlled deliberation. It was several seconds before Gilling realized that he was watching Nay Dun in action. Silhouetted against the sky, stubby legs planted wide, the subedar continued to spray sharp bursts at an almost vertical angle. He was a magnificent sight — defiant, utterly contemptuous of danger. His whole bearing testified that what he was doing came as naturally to him as the flinging-up of a salute. He needed neither fear to prompt him nor the desperate summoning of courage. He was a soldier, and this was how a soldier acted and carried himself ...
He stood on the cliff edge like something shaped out of the stone, ferocious, indestructible. And in the quivering, nerve-jangling aftermath of his own exertions, Gilling knew that he could never match him; never — even in enmity — find enough to best his challenge.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun was low now, red and swollen, and the first hint of dusk was in the air. Only an occasional mortar-shell thundered tongues of flame, but the rattle of small-arms continued incessantly and, as the light thickened, the winking flashes showed Neon-bright against the forest.
The Karens were still in possession of all but the first two shelves of the road. The scrub was a graveyard and no new attack had come in for some while. But Gilling wasn’t deceived. Inevitably, as soon as it was dark enough, the Japanese contained along the escarpment’s base would be reinforced from across the scrub; a fresh assault made on the upper levels. And this time it was bound to succeed. There would be no holding them once they could move unseen and worm in close, and the prospect of hand-to-hand, cut-throat fighting was something Gilling dared not even contemplate. Mentally and physically he felt as though he had been pole-axed, but his imagination was becoming increasingly inventive and could still tap the icy, inexhaustible springs of fear — particularly now that darkness was on its way.
What had happened at the bridge and at the culvert could happen again. Here; tonight ... What had happened on the road below in mid-afternoon could be repeated tomorrow ... Details of the atrocities were stuck like transfers to his brain, hideous and demoralizing, and his skin crawled when, unbidden, the thought of being taken alive possessed him.
He flinched as a shell exploded in the branches of a nearby tree. His nerves were scraped raw and the simplest decision called for an immense effort of mind. For a while, despite Saw Tun Shwe’s insistence, he had been incapable of grasping that he had himself been hit. But gradually, as the numbness thawed and pain became a searing fact, he realized that his right calf-muscle had been drilled through within an inch of the bone. Already there was a marked stiffness, as if his flesh were hardening, yet mercifully his movements were unhampered.
He scrambled from one platoon to another in the gathering gloom, ordering them to carry their casualties back to where the mules were. Singly and in pairs a few Karens scavenged the hill-side and Gilling despaired as the total of those incapable of fending for themselves mounted. There were twelve in all. For some reason, despite the intensity of the bombardment, he hadn’t expected to be burdened with so many. Half as many again had been killed, yet because his senses were surfeited with the simplicity of death he could accept their loss. But the helplessness of the maimed roused in him both dismay and complaint.
Angry snatches of firing came from forest and scrub. A lone shell whooshed down and the mules tethered in the cutting jigged in panic, ears flattened. The wounded were laid out under the bank where the cooks had earlier lit their fires and one glance was sufficient for Gilling to see that some would only live a short while. To move any of them — crudely and in haste — would seem a sadistic crime. Yet it would be a bigger crime if they were abandoned; one which his conscience would never stifle. At all costs they must be salvaged and borne away.
Distractedly, he sent for Nay Dun. He was back at the boulders by then, flinching periodically, growing in bitterness and despair. The subedar’s platoon, already depleted by the loss of Ba Tin’s section, was the weakest of the three; the easiest spared.
Nay Dun came like a lizard, fast and low, and Gilling said; ‘How many of yours are still on their feet?’
‘Ten, thakin.’
‘Including you?’
‘Eleven, including me.’
‘There are a dozen badly wounded. We can’t leave them. There’s only one way that I can see — for your platoon to pull out now and take them with you; one apiece.’
Gilling paused. It didn’t seem like his own voice somehow. Nay Dun said: ‘What about the extra man?’
‘I’ll see to him.’ A Bren chattered. Gilling tried to blink the darkness away. ‘Start immediately. We’ll give you half an hour, then we’ll follow. Wait for us at the third milestone north of the town.’
‘Very good, thakin.’
‘Get the mules back, too.’ A thought struck him; a stab of guilt. ‘The men on the track will have to take their chance. They know the RV.’
To his astonishment, Nay Dun said; ‘I have already called them in.’
&nbs
p; ‘Since when?’
‘Forty minutes ago.’
Gilling bristled. ‘On whose authority?’
‘They were wasted where they were. The Japanese will never use the track now.’
‘On whose authority?’ He was slightly hysterical. ‘Who’s in command of this company?’
Nay Dun said nothing.
‘Enraged, Gilling went on: ‘I’ve warned you before, subedar —’
Chips of stone broke whining from one of the boulders and Gilling flinched unashamedly. Looking up, he had the impression that the subedar hadn’t moved. There was a lengthy silence between them. A ridiculous phrase, a hangover from school, simmered hotly in his mind — ‘I’ll speak to you about this afterwards.’ The logic of Nay Dun’s initiative seemed a reflection on his own competence. He felt further diminished; impotent. Swallowing, he forced himself to say: ‘Counting them, you’re only eleven strong?’
‘Eleven, thakin.’
In the fast-fading light, rimmed by the black line of his chin-strap, Nay Dun’s face was impassive; his beadlike eyes appraising and unafraid.
‘Get going,’ Gilling snapped, unable to hold their gaze. ‘The half-hour starts now.’
He needed him, yet he wished him out of his sight.
*
The sun had gone behind the rim. Forest and scrub and hill-side began to merge. Gilling moved the remains of one of Saw Bwe’s sections over to the left to help plug the gap created by Nay Dun’s departure. They were desperately vulnerable. Eighteen killed, twelve wounded. Nay Dun and ten others gone ... The arithmetic appalled him. The escarpment was held by no more than twenty Karens.
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