by Brian Aldiss
I washed the sweat off my face and neck and dressed myself. The billet I lived in was beautiful. The rooms downstairs were high and cool, the staircase had an elegant curl, and there was a carved front door. Before the war, the place had belonged to a prosperous planter who headed for Australia when the Japs arrived and got himself killed in a bar-room brawl in Darwin. Under Jap rule, the building formed part of the Neutrals Camp, where Swiss and Swedes and their assorted women had been confined for the duration. Now it was a sergeants’ billet. I tried out a quick daydream about Margey’s and my living here when the British troops left, complete with bearers to wait on us; but the bearers would not stay still, and became petty officials in the new Indonesian order instead.
Nobody was about outside. The sun had already achieved tyrannical power and anyone who could scrounge a way off official duties would be stretched out on his charpoy.
The line of Dutch houses, with their neglected gardens and riotous shrubs, was sheltered by deciduous trees, doubtless imported from nurserymen in Amsterdam. As soon as I stepped out of their shadow, my body oozed sweat into my newly laundered jungle greens. A butterfly flew past me at waist-level, its wings as big as saucers.
I strolled over to ‘M’ Section, to get a vehicle to take me into town. Things were a bit jungly in ‘M’ Section. It had taken over a large thatched barn and fortified the space all round with rattan screens and barbed wire. There was a guard permanently on the gate, though he sometimes dozed under his square of thatch.
A few vehicles stood frying in the sun. In the shade of the barn, other vehicles were being repaired. Most of the vehicles and all of the repair equipment was Jap. It was an indication of feeling in the House of Commons, as well as of the situation in India and the NEI, that 26 Div had never managed to come up to strength, and relied heavily on commandeered equipment. The fact that such equipment as was permitted came via Singapore added to our problems. There was a shortage of everything – the ‘Q’ stores could not even provide new socks. If 26 Div did not pull out soon, it was going to be reduced to growing its own food in earnest.
Colour-Sergeant Ron Dyer stood at the entrance to the barn, smoking. He was a regular, and had been through the Arakan. At his waist he wore a Jap aviator’s sword, which made him look like a pirate. Apart from this weapon, and his revolver, he wore a filthy pair of dungarees, boots, and nothing else. His great chest and glistening belly were streaked with dirt. Directly he saw me, he set up an outcry and moved sluggishly about in mock-panic.
‘Right, lads, watch your vehicles! Watch those tyres or they’ll be all gone like shit off a hot stove. Keep your eye on anything this bloke can lift. Watch your rings! What do you want here, Stubbs? Got a gin-palace to flog me cheap?’
‘You’ve got fuck-all here anyone would want to swipe, Dyer.’
The gin-palace scandal was something I would never live down, not if I served another hundred years in the army.
If equipment was in short supply in Medan, matters were much worse in Padang. Padang lay south of the equator, on the other side of the island. Any goods intended for Padang had to make a sea-voyage from Medan of some twelve hundred miles. Air transport was scarce. There was a hazardous trail over the island – the trail five hundred miles long by which I had travelled to Medan – but that had always been threatened by extremists and was now entirely in their hands.
Padang was an outpost – an outpost which began to look increasingly forlorn as the political situation deteriorated.
One thing the garrison in Padang needed: a signal station. Their radio equipment consisted of battered old 22 sets. These relayed messages up to a hill station above the town, a place called Bukitinghi, from which signals were relayed over the mountains to Medan. Bukitinghi came under threat, with a signals captain shot up on the hazardous road back to Padang. A proper mobile signals station – known throughout the army as a gin-palace – was ordered. The message went to Bukitinghi, to Medan, to Singapore, to Calcutta, to Delhi, and so back to 26 Div supply base, many hundreds of miles away in Amritsar.
Six months later, a supply ship landed a gin-palace at Belawan, the port of Medan.
That gin-palace was the reason for my being on detachment in Medan. I had been despatched from Padang to collect the gin-palace by road. The Mendips had supplied a truck, a driver, two BORS, a Bren gun, and a load of supplies, and we had driven that marathon road across the interior of Sumatra, over a massive mountain range amid still-active volcanoes, past Lake Toba, down to Medan. What a ride! The adventure of my life! There’s no more marvellous country anywhere in the world. We were not shot at once.
But that was six weeks ago. Since then, the Indonesians had gained confidence, knowing we were pulling out, and closed the overland route. There was no way of getting the gin-palace to Padang, except by sea.
Meanwhile, the road between Medan and Belawan port became increasingly dangerous. I was given an escort to drive to the port and pick up the gin-palace. When we arrived, we found not one but ten gin-palaces. There they were, in a line, sitting out in the flaming sun beside a deserted go-down. The signal to Amritsar had become garbled on its way back to base.
I drove our one gin-palace back to Medan as ordered. It was like driving an oven on wheels.
At Div HQ I tried explaining the whole thing to an RASC major who took a dim view of the matter. Eventually, he agreed to send a signal to Amritsar to get the situation clarified. Messages went back and forth, days seeped by. I was ordered by the same dim major to form a convoy and collect the other nine gin-palaces; they were to be guarded carefully in Medan until they could be shipped back to Calcutta.
Our convoy was fired at and one Indian driver was killed. We arrived at the harbour. The nine gin-palaces had gone.
That was the story, and many a bitter laugh it raised.
In the popular version of the story I had done an arms-deal. I was in charge of the vehicles and so was responsible for selling all nine on the black market to the local branch of Soekarno’s TRI; I had made a fortune. My version of the story was that the RASC major had made the killing. What had really happened was that the Indonesians had driven them off. The vehicles had been left standing on the dockside by the Indian RASC with ignition keys in the ignition locks.
This was why Colour-Sergeant Dyer, not a man normally given to humour, cried aloud, ‘Watch your vehicles,’ whenever I went near ‘M’ Section. The one gin-palace we had rescued stood, practically unused, in his park. It would never reach Padang. Some humorist had stencilled the word MERDEKA in neat yellow letters on its sides.
I gave Dyer a fag and we had a little chat.
‘It’s all right for some, Stubbs. I shall have to hang on here till the Div pulls out at the end of the year. They can’t do without me – I’ve only got Wogs under me. We’re supposed to be patching up any vehicles we can lay our hands on to sell to the bloody Dutch when they take over.’
‘It’ll be a bloodbath then, I’m told.’
‘You wouldn’t fucking chuckle it will …’
We sucked on our cigarettes. Monkeys ran in the high branches above the barn.
‘It’s a terrible thought. Sumatra’s such a beautiful fucking island.’
‘Beautiful buggery. It’s easy for you to say, mate – you’re off home thora pechi. They can all kill each other down to the last little black baby for all I care, once I get out of here.’
‘You’re being unkind. Ron. It’s not like you.’
‘You can stuff your hypocrisy, too. These people mean nothing to us, and we’ve no bloody business being here. You know who let us in the shit same as I do – the bloody Americans. In particular, Harry Truman and General Fucking MacArthur. The NEI is part of the Pacific, and the Americans should have administered it theirselves, instead of off-loading it on to Mountbatten.’
‘I suppose it’ll sort itself out in the end.’
‘They’ve got to sort out their own bloody troubles. Me, all I want is to get out of this fucking uniform.’
As it happened I ran across Ron Dyer a year or two later, in Civvy Street. He had joined the police. He had lost a stone or two and looked good in his uniform.
An Indian driver came over, grinning, and climbed into one of the Jeeps parked under the trees.
‘There’s your gharri, Stubby-lad. See that little bugger doesn’t bash it up or flog it to the Sumatrans.’
I climbed in, gave Ron a wave, and we bowled down the Serdenweg and into the centre of town. As we were going at a brave smack, the whole gusto of life hit me. For the moment personal problems were forgotten. We were at the heart of things; the thought that we could be shot at at any moment just enhanced the tide of the blood. And Margey was not far away – Margey, mine, mine, semi-mine. I began to sing.
I see your face in every flower,
Your eyes in stars above:
It’s just the thought of you –
The very thought of you, my love.
When it was travelling at speed, my voice was quite as good as Bing Crosby’s.
The driver took me a long way round. He must have enjoyed my singing. He breezed by the Deli railway station, where the drivers and horses of two ancient gharris dozed in the sun, and braked flamboyantly in front of the signal office as instructed.
This had been the smart end of town before history overtook it. Like everything else, the building before us had been wrenched out of its intended purpose. Three years earlier, it had been a flower shop, where prosperous wives and daughters of planters came in their white dresses to buy the exotic flora with which Sumatra abounded. It was a low wooden building with large windows; now the windows were boarded and walls of sandbags were piled before it. A Rajput naik stood guard at the entrance.
Inside, each tucked into its own sandbagged nook, six wireless sets were operating, their operators working in R/T or W/T to ALFSEA in Singapore, to Batavia, or to detachments in places like Palembang and Padang. Links to smaller outposts such as Sabang and Benkoelen were worked for an hour or two every morning. A couple of the operators nodded to me; as a spare bod with some understanding of signals procedure, I had been known to take over from them for an hour or two if needed.
The superintendent came out of the rear room, clutching a piyala full of tea. It was Steve Kyle, the thin sharp-nosed corporal who had failed to get the lads out of bed for Agricultural Duties.
‘I want to put through a call to Captain Boyer in Padang HQ,’ I said. ‘Can I borrow the R/T for five minutes?’
‘There’s a lot of traffic this morning, Sergeant. Is it important?’
‘Of course. It’s about my demob next week.’
He went over to his desk and set the mug down, looking at it rather than me.
‘Your message will have to go through Admin. I can’t accept private traffic.’
‘I want to speak to Boyer. If you’re busy, then it’s quicker for us to have a chat over the R/T than to send half a dozen messages each way. Doesn’t that make sense to you, Corporal?’
He faced up to me.
‘It may make sense to you, but you know very well that unauthorised persons are not allowed to go on the air, nor are they even allowed in the signal office. Okay?’ He looked me straight in the eye. Pale and peacetime though he was, he was a determined bugger.
Lowering my voice, I said, ‘You’ve suddenly turned into a stickler for discipline, haven’t you, Corporal? You put on a pretty feeble show this morning. Let me remind you that you have a mutiny on your hands, the consequences of which could be very serious – for you as well as the blokes you think you’re defending.’
He coloured. ‘Don’t give me the Old Sweat bit, for Christ’s sake, Sergeant. You old soldiers have had it, that’s why they’re shipping you home. You’re going to get a shock when you get to Britain: we’ve got a Labour government now, you may have heard. It’s Attlee you’re under now, not Churchill, and things have changed. My chaps refused to dig this morning for the same reason that the British have failed to turn Sumatra back into a colony. Sense prevailed. The bloody war’s over. The ordinary man’s going to have his say – here, at home, and anywhere else you care to name. So don’t use old-fashioned words like mutiny to me.’
Some of the IORS and BORS at the sets were turning round to listen, grinning. When it came to being shit-or-bust, I could teach these rookies things they never knew; but being shit-or-bust was personal, a very different thing from the new couldn’t-care-less attitude coming from Blighty with sods like Kyle. What the hell were they doing back there, Attlee and the rest of them? The Fourteenth Army had fought for India and Burma, and many a good man had gone down, including my mates, the good old lads of the Mendips and 2 Div. Now what was going on? They were giving India away, and no one knew what was happening in Burma.
I said, ‘I gave you an order this morning, Kyle, to get your section out on spade parade. You failed to carry it out. You are involved with the rest of them and that’s got nothing to do with politics. It’s a matter of army discipline. Unless you want trouble, pack in the bullshit and give me five minutes’ air space.’
He began to sweat. ‘Don’t you threaten me, Sergeant Stubbs! You have no business in here. I’d be within my rights to fetch the Duty Officer and have you turned out. You had no business to give me orders this morning, either. That was between Johnny Mercer and me. He’s my sergeant. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you were just coming in from breaking curfew. That’s a serious offence, too, and don’t you forget it.’
He had a point.
‘Thik-hai, if that’s the way you want it,’ I said. ‘I’ll sort you out later, Corporal.’
There was nothing for it but to leave. As I reached the door, Kyle came up behind me and said, ‘You can see how I’m placed. I don’t want trouble. The British Army has been caught in an impossible political situation and all of us –’
I turned on him angrily. ‘Don’t try and get round me. I’m as pissed off with the army as anyone, and I’ve seen more cock-ups than you’ve had NAAFI suppers. But the whole point of the fucking army is to sort out impossible situations. That’s what it’s there for. Which can only be done with a bit of discipline. Otherwise, we all get shot up. Malum that?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. We’ve only saved ourselves from being shot up here by failing to carry out impossible orders. Reinstating the Dutch can’t be done. In Java, they’re having a hell of a time because they refuse to recognise realities.’
‘Balls. That’s all balls, and you know it. We haven’t enough troops here or in Java, otherwise we could get this lot sorted out in no time. Now, get back to your desk and sort yourself out.’
He pressed his hand to his lips, then turned away. I clattered down the steps of the signal office, lighting a fag as I went. The bastard had really got under my skin, but I told myself that I had better drop the matter and pursue my intention of speaking to Captain Boyer.
Ordering my Indian driver to wait, I walked over to the nearest café and ordered a coffee. The shop owner smiled, recognising me. I thought as I had every day since I arrived in Medan how pleasant this sleepy town must be in times of peace. Tiger Balm’s bloodbath theory must be wrong. Once the British and Dutch had left, quiet would descend.
These euphoric thoughts of a young man I set down here. History is rarely on the side of peace and quiet. Soekarno, the fiery revolutionary, made a doubtfully successful leader of free Indonesia. He was deposed in 1965, when the Suharto regime took power and began by massacring about a million Indonesian citizens, many of them Chinese; since they were labelled Communists, the nations of the West were not too dejected as news of the killings got about, although, as Bertrand Russell said, ‘In four months, five times as many people died in Indonesia as in Vietnam in twelve years.’ I imagine that plenty of the victims were ordinary people like Margey, Tiger Balm, Auntie, Katie Chae, and optimistic old Fat.
If the British would give me no help in getting through to Boyer in Padang, then my Dutch acquaintan
ce, Ernst Sontrop, might come in useful. I paid for the coffee, bought two good cigars, and strolled across the road to the Dutch HQ, which stood conveniently next to the signal office.
It was a building of grey stone, four storeys high and so one of the tallest buildings in the city. It was constructed in a cumbersome alien style with rounded corners and heavily overhanging porticos and pediments which gave its façade several permanent frowns. Once it had functioned as a court of justice, I believe. Justice was now suspended. The occupying personnel were military. Two swart Ambonese soldiers challenged me at the entrance, stepping smartly out from behind sandbags. They looked at my army paybook and consulted with an officer. I was admitted.
In the dim-lit hall, a stuffed tiger prowled inside its glass case, fixing glass eyes upon whoever entered. On one marble wall were mounted skulls of the two-horned Sumatran rhino, while the wall opposite supported a bright mosaic map of the Indies, fringed with exotic tribal figures, together with insects, flowers, and bright-plumaged birds. Beside the lift and the stairs, plants grew in brass tubs.
A grim old receptionist behind a desk tried to persuade me to hand over my revolver. He spoke no English. We glowered at each other before he disappeared, to return with a hulking man who asked me sharply what my business was. When I asked for Sontrop, he shrugged and led me upstairs without a word.
Upstairs were comfortable sofas and a table bearing Dutch magazines. All this foreign colour made me wonder whether any Stubbs had ever been so far from home before. I visualised generation after generation of Stubby ancestors, with big noses, grey whiskers, and bizarre appetites, receding into the mists of time; Victorian Stubbses, Tudor Stubbses, Anglo-Saxon Stubbses, Stone-Age Stubbses, all standing on their home hearth and muttering, in the manner of my father, ‘Why bother about the rest of the world when you’ve not seen all England yet?’
What an affront to those imagined ancestors if I returned to England with a Chinese bride! There could be no more conclusive proof of the far-flung side of my nature.