Quartered Safe Out Here

by George MacDonald Fraser

  As Nine Section beavered away, ripping, dragging, lifting, and carrying with a fine energetic rhythm, the W.O. would stride over every now and then to peer suspiciously at our stacks, obviously comparing them with those of the other units. After a while he seemed to grow less anxious, and when we broke for tiffin he even remarked favourably on the amount we'd shifted.

  “’Ard graft,” panted Wattie, reclining against a wheel of our 15cwt and mopping his chest. “By God, it beats ’ay-mekkin’!”

  “Ah could stand that, an' a',” said Grandarse, a rich cerise from his exertions. “Aye, w'at? A lang day i' the Lorton Valley, wid the farm lassies bringin' the bait* an' nasty big pints! Eh? Ah could fettle a coople this minnit, could Ah nut?”

  “Pints or lassies?” jeered Forster. “That's a' the ’ay-mekkin' thoo ivver did, Ah'll bet. Aye, oonder the bloody stacks, wid yer arse gan like a fiddler's elbow. Shaggin' an' suppin', that's your idea o' woork.” But Grandarse was too intent on his chaggle to retort.

  “I'd sooner be working down here than up there,” said the Duke, watching a Dakota wheel lazily away, its bearded unloader leaning out at a perilous angle to watch a falling bale. “You know they have to change those Sikh crews every few trips? Fact—after a while they get disoriented, forget that they're two hundred feet up. They think they can step out, that the ground's just a yard beneath them—and some of ’em do. Lost a few men that way, I heard.”

  “Aw, cobblers!” said Forster. “Ye tellin' us they can't tell ’oo ’igh up they are?”

  “It's reet, tho',” said Nick. “Ah ’eerd that f'ae a feller that seen it ’appen. Big Sikh joost walked oot efter a boondle; they ’ed to scrape ’im intil a mess-tin; nowt left but ’is beard an' bangle.” He raised his voice to the skies. “Doan't loup oot, Singh lad! This isn't Spiattri!* Ye'll nivver bounce!”

  We worked through the afternoon, and none more zealous than Nine Section; when the other fatigue parties were calling it a day, sitting or lying in the shadow of their transport, draining chaggles or emptying them over sweat-plastered heads and dusty torsos, Nick and Wattie and Grandarse and even the egregious Forster were still scouring the littered plain, finding overlooked boxes, plodding back with their burdens, and generally heaping coals of fire, it seemed to me, on the head of the mistrustful W.O. It had its effect; I heard him saying “Good lads”, as they trudged by, setting down the last loads with the sighs of men who have toiled well in the vineyard; Grandarse responded with hearty affability. “Aye, wahm woork, staff! Nowt like a good job weel dyun, eh?”

  By the time the last crate was in place, and the three-tonners were rumbling away to the central depot, the W.O. was being almost amiable. He waited until the other parties had gone, and Nine Section had completed a lengthy toilet in our 15cwt and emerged in shirts and hats, and told me to fall them in. As they fell in, tired but decent, behind them two of the W.O.'s minions were going over our truck with practised hands; he waited for their nod, and surveyed the section with a knowing, satisfied smirk.

  “Good enough, then. They've worked well, corporal—and you've behaved yourselves, haven't you? Yerss, I know you have!” He was looking positively roguish. “Oh, yerss, because I had the eye down on you—and you knew it, didn't you? You couldn't old-soldier me, my sons—the name's Croft, not soft. Well, fair's fair; I'm a man of my word—over there, corporal, under that tarpaulin. Help yourselves, lads, and don't say I'm not good to you!”

  Beneath the tarpaulin were a few bags of tea and sugar, a carton of Lucky Strike, and a couple of cans of condensed milk, and the section fell on them with cries of astonishment and gratitude that were touching to hear. The W.O. watched with a tolerant eye as they climbed into the 15cwt, exclaiming over his bounty.

  “I didn't body search ’em,” he told me confidentially. “Creates a bad impression. Anyway, no need—I've got eyes in my arse, and they knew better'n to try it on.” He shook his head. “Desperate lot, your mob. Notorious—have been since Marlborough's day, I shouldn't wonder. Well, they don't call you the Reivers for nothing!” He chuckled indulgently. “I just showed I was fly to them, promised ’em buckshees—a bit o' stick, a bit o' carrot, works wonders. All right, corporal, fall out!”

  If he hadn't been four ranks above me I might well have given him my opinion of his aspersions on my regiment. As it was, I felt I owed the section an apology on his behalf, but since I was up front with the driver I didn't get a chance to make it, although when we debussed I remarked to Nick that the W.O. was a cheeky son-of-a-bitch. He looked blank.

  “Ah didn't knaw w'at ’e was talkin' aboot. Did you, Wattie?”

  “Ah wasn't listenin',” said Wattie with contempt. “Service Corps, Ah've shit ’em. Pathetic.”

  We were at the pits. “Awreet,” said Forster, “git the groond-sheet doon, an' let's git crackin'. ’Ey, Duke, bring them chaggles ower ’ere.”

  The Duke, bent under the weight of a dozen bulging chaggles, gave me an apologetic look. “I feel like one of Fagin's apprentices…oh, well, when in Rome. Here, Foshie.”

  Forster upended the chaggles one after another, and before my astonished eyes a mound of sugar grew on the groundsheet. Nick fingered it critically.

  “Soom barmy booger didn't sup a' ’is watter. Ah, weel, it'll dry oot.” He took off his hat, disclosing half a dozen packets of cigarettes, then stooped and opened his bush-shirt to release a deluge of cigarette packets. Forster contributed even more from within his shirt; he then pulled his trousers out of their puttees, and wriggled, and more packets piled up round his ankles. Further sensational revelations followed: Grandarse's capacious britches yielded, of all things, several pounds of loose tea (“Ah doan't fancy the flavour o' that bloody lot,” said Forster) and from beneath his vest he brought out flat tins of fish in tomato sauce. “We'll swap ’em tae the Goorkas for chapattis, an' that. The lal sods'd sell their sowls for ’errin's.”

  It was the same with the rest of them—every man-jack had plundered comestibles about him, inside buttoned sleeves and trouser legs, under shirts, in hats; tea, sugar, and cigarettes, mostly, but of condensed milk, pipe tobacco, tinned fish, bacon, spam, and sausage there was no lack, and by the time they were finished that groundsheet looked like Harrods food hall. I felt quite guilty, not contributing. Then they stood around and admired it.

  “We'd best gi' soom t'Sivven an' Eight Sections,” said Nick.

  “W'at for?” said Forster, shocked. “We kliftied* the bloody stoof!”

  “Gan, ye greedy booger! This lot'll last tae Rangoon, easy! Any roads, they knaw we were oot on the drop, an' Ah doan't want Jonty Armstrang gan through oor groob box w'en we're in kip. He's a thievin' bastard, yon. Tell ye w'at—we'll let ’em ’ave the bookshees that gormless Service Corps wallah gev us!”

  So they did, with the loose tea and sugar that wouldn't cram into our chah and cheeny boxes, and the odds and ends of tins left over when the mortar box containing our delicacies had been filled. Hearing Nick setting aside cigarettes for Hutton, I felt absolved of all qualms of conscience; my main concern was how the devil they'd managed it; lined up before the W.O. there hadn't been a suspicious bulge anywhere, and I hadn't noticed any surreptitious work during the drop collection.

  “Ask their ancestors,” said the Duke, when I put it to him. “It's a gift—and from what I've heard, a regimental tradition. If he'd frisked them, they were dead men, but they had him weighed up, I suppose. Mind you, I thought Grandarse was looking a bit too dropsical for comfort, and if that clever W.O. had thought to walk round them, he couldn't have helped noticing that half of them had humps like Quasimodo. Silly ass, asking for it!”

  “How d'you mean?”

  “All that fly-man stuff about the Pink Elephant—it was like a red rag to a bull. Oh, they came prepared to fill the chaggles with sugar or tea, but it was his smart cracks that made ’em rob him blind. He's lucky they left the wheels on his jeep.”

  “What's the Pink Elephant?”

  “It was a pub or club
sign, in Kandy or Colombo—somewhere in Ceylon, when the—–th Battalion were there. Sodding great thing, I believe, about twenty feet high. Someone made a bet—and it vanished. Turned up months later in the corporals' mess at the depot, back home. So I'm told.”

  I reflected on all this, sitting round the fire that night, full of illicit tea and condensed milk, excellent chapatti obtained from the Gurkhas for looted tinned fish, plundered peaches, and enjoying unlimited ill-gotten cigarettes, pondering the old West March saying that there's nothing too hot or too heavy, thinking about regimental tradition, looking at the hard brown faces, and reaching a remarkable, paradoxical conclusion which I hold by to this day: in word and deed, I never knew such honest men.

  * War Office Selection Board, which tested candidates for OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit).

  * food

  * Fourteenth Army's various divisions had rather exotic badges which were worn with considerable pride out of the line, but not in action. The oldest was the Black Cat of 17th Indian Division (and I was still stirred, quite unreasonably, to see it on the shoulders of Indian troops when they invaded Goa many years after the war), but equally well known was the Cross Keys emblem of the 2nd British Division. Of the others referred to by Grandarse, there were two Dagger divisions, the 19th Indian (downthrust) and the 20th Indian (upthrust); the spider was worn by 81st West African Division, and crossed assegais by the 82nd West African. Probably not even the legions of Rome embraced as many nationalities as Fourteenth Army.

  * little fellow

  * ale

  * I saw one Zero in the course of the campaign, farther south. It was greeted, inevitably, with the cry: “There's a Nip in the air!”

  * food

  * A piece of Cumbrian folk-usage. Workers in the town of Aspatria (pronounced “Spiattri” in dialect) were noted for wearing clogs, and it was traditional that when the train reached the town the guard would cry “A' they wi' clogs on, loup oot!”, or, simply “Spiattri, loup oot!” Consequently it became a folk-saying, and a native Cumbrian, reaching the end of a journey (such as debussing in the Army) may be heard repeating it.

  * stole

  Chapter 11

  17th Division closed in on Pyawbwe from all directions. Since the last gap in the circle round Pyawbwe had been closed, the [Japanese] garrison had to fight its way out, die or surrender. It chose a combination of the first two, and when Pyawbwe was entered 1,110 dead and thirteen guns were found in the town. Pyawbwe was the only large action in the Battle of the Rangoon Road, and it finally shattered 33rd (Japanese) Army.

  Official history

  And then recall that exhilarating dash that carried you across the Irrawaddy…And there you met the Japanese Army in the open, and you tore it apart.

  FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT SLIM, at a Burma Reunion

  Dust and sunlight and dry rocky plain dotted with mounds and low bunds and an occasional small broken ruin, all stretching away to a distant line of shattered buildings, and beyond them, dim through the heat haze, a long gradual slope ending in a ridge: that is Pyawbwe in my mind. We crossed the plain with the Japanese whizz-bangs exploding just overhead, and reached the line of buildings, and the Japanese died on the long slope, and my feet were killing me through all that scorching, thirsty day: that was the battle.

  Those are the first images, at any rate, that I see when the name of Pyawbwe is mentioned. The incidents of the day come back in a rough, unconnected sequence only when I consider them at length, starting in a Burmese lavatory and ending with a long, sound sleep in a wrecked and rusty railway wagon; I shall fill them in as I come to them—the man who was sick, the row of bodies wrapped in blood-stained blankets in the lee of a little bank, the whine and crack of the Jap 75s, “Remember Arroyo!”, the shell-burst right in Morton's face which never touched him, the cool scummy depths of the well, Long John smiling and adjusting his bush-hat, the sergeant who went stone deaf in the last stage of the advance, the rattle of our rapid fire as we knelt among the ancient rolling stock, the figures running and falling across our front on the slope, the long painful trudge back from the sniper's nest to the section's final position, the faint pfft! of shots fired by some distant Japanese optimist passing high overhead, and the Dubarry–Foster debate which brought proceedings to a close.

  That is my corresponding summary to the official history's. Of the preliminary activity on the preceding days I have absolutely no recollection; we must have come down from Meiktila to the outskirts of Pyawbwe as part of Cowan's encircling movement whereby the town was hemmed in, taking up our position for the final assault in what was to be the last set-piece battle of the Second World War—at least I know of no later one. I suppose it was Jap's last big organised stand; what happened in the following months was the mopping-up of southern Burma. Pyawbwe broke him; we took it before the monsoon, and he had no hope of turning the tide after that.

  The advance to Pyawbwe, as detailed in the official history, is complicated, but since Nine Section played no remarkable part in it I am content to pass it by; Jap was swept aside piecemeal, and took heavy casualties, and once Cowan had the town surrounded it was a question of closing in from all sides. Nine Section's starting point in the grand design was a cluster of Burmese bashas, not big enough to be called a village, where we had dug in the night before. It was just large enough to boast a communal toilet, of which I availed myself when I came off stag at dawn.

  Burmese conveniences are curious structures, consisting of a flimsy and barely concealing cabin built on very high stilts and reached by a ladder. The cabin is the upper works, so to speak; there is a hole in the floor, and far beneath is what you might call the pan, except that there isn't one, just the ground. Why the Southern Burmese (for I never saw a skyscraper bog in the north) found it necessary to perform natural functions at such a dizzy height, I never discovered; Parker, who had returned to the section after his convalescence, and had shared the stag with me, supposed that it arose from sheer laziness; the higher the structure, the less frequently would it need to be moved to a new location, for obvious reasons. He may have been right. The Burmese of the south had discovered a dimension of leisure unknown to the West; they lived in their bashas, planted their rice, ate mangoes and bananas, sat on their verandahs and smoked by way of exercise, and enjoyed an existence of complete tranquility which even a full-scale war seldom disturbed. Probably no people on earth move so slowly or so infrequently.

  Which could not be said of me, secluded in the cabin, when a shell burst close by. It would be hard to think of a worse place to be caught during a barrage, and I came down without recourse to the ladder and was crouching in my pit before the echo had died away. It must have been a ranging shot, for no others followed, but it was a sign of things to come, and I time the start of the battle of Pyawbwe from that moment.

  Breakfast was a generous affair that day; guessing what was ahead, the cook-sergeant was lavish with the burgoo, bacon and beans; as a rule he was harassed and defensive, like all master gyppos, but that morning he was solicitous, even anxious, scanning our faces as we came by the dixies with our mess-tins. Perhaps he was wondering how many of us would be queuing for supper. “Git that doon ye, Jock—d'ye fancy a boiled egg an' a', son?” was a far cry from “Ah dae me bloody best wi' the bloody stoof—wadyas expect, sivven courses at the Croon an' bloody Mitre?”

  Not everyone took advantage of his bounty. One of the section, a newcomer from another regiment, was sitting on the edge of his pit, hunched up, when his mucker called me over; he was giving little gasps, holding his stomach, and looking green.

  “What is it, the shits?” Mild dysentery was common enough, and more of a nuisance than an illness; the genuine article, which was to become increasingly common as we went south in the monsoon, can be a killer. He shook his head, groaning, and when I pressed his lower right abdomen he yelped. I told him to report to the M.O. and went over to tell Peel, who was falling the section in.

  “He'll have to go sick,” I said
.

  “Aye,” said Forster. “Sick wid nerves.”

  I said it might be appendicitis—being from a medical family you feel obliged to give idiotic diagnoses every so often—and Forster spat and said: “Ah doot it.” Peel said nothing, and we moved off to the assembly point.

  It wasn't appendicitis, but I'm not saying Forster was right; the man was in pain, and it would have taken an expert to determine what caused it. What was interesting was the section's indifference; whether he was sick or scared made no odds, since either would make him an unreliable quantity in action, and it was never referred to again. They were very practical about that sort of thing, and I don't pretend to know what went on deep in their minds, for it is a highly personal matter, and they didn't talk about it, much less show the least emotion. They belonged to a culture in which “windy” is the ultimate insult, and in which the synonym for brave is “mad”, and that is all there is to be said about it.

  It was at the assembly point, or shortly after, that I saw the bodies, three or four of them, entirely covered in blankets secured by log-lines; there were patches of dried blood staining the coarse khaki. My impression remains that they were not of our company; I don't remember shell-fire at this time, and can only suppose that they were casualties from an early skirmish. No one drew attention to the discouraging sight.