Flight by Elephant

by Andrew Martin

  Sitting in on the conference was Sir John Rowland, the man whose plight had triggered the whole adventure. He shook Mackrell’s hand, and later wrote that he formed the idea that Mackrell would ‘make the grade’, being ‘part of the society of tough guys’. Sir John briefed Mackrell on the likely condition of those left in the jungle. He thought Captain Whitehouse and Dr Burgess-Barnett were ‘not at all well’. What he said of Mr and Mrs Rossiter and baby John we do not know.

  If Mackrell was delighted to be on his way back to the Dapha, Sir John was equally pleased to be coming away from it. He had had a quick transit from Dapha. He stayed only one night at the river, which was a fine one, enabling him not only to wash but also dry his clothes. ITA man Black, Captain Street and policeman Webster had had two elephants to spare. Sir John had left the camp riding behind the mahout on one of them; behind Sir John sat Milne, and behind Milne sat the railway accountant, Naidu, who by now couldn’t walk even if he’d wanted to. Five Gurkhas who’d become sick on the trek were accommodated on a second elephant. The rest of the men who’d come out with Sir John walked.

  We will stay with Sir John for a few days.

  On 8 August, he had the enjoyable chore of shopping for new clothes in the small town of Margherita. The next day he was driven to the airbase at Dinjan, where he thanked his former dinner guest, Wing Commander Chater, for having dropped food on the Tilung Hka camp. The wing commander then flew Sir John – in the very Dakota from which the food had been dropped – 600 miles through heavy rain to Dum Dum aerodrome, Calcutta, the rail and ferry connections between Calcutta and Assam now being out of action by Congress-inspired Civil Disobedience, which had flared into riots, as those campaigns tended to do.

  On arrival in Calcutta, Sir John found his favourite hotel, the Great Eastern, to be full so took a taxi to the only other option for a man such as he, the Grand. The Grand had rooms even though it was bulging with servicemen. On the 11th, Sir John had a decent hot-weather suit made up more or less instantly by a tailor on Chowringhee. He found difficulty in getting the trousers over his left ankle because of the swelling caused by Beri-Beri, which he had identified as his major remaining enemy. (He always spelt it with two capital Bs.) However, on returning to his hotel room, he took immediately to his bed for another reason: ‘a sharp attack of malaria’.

  While Sir John had been flying to Calcutta, Mackrell had been collecting ‘vital supplies’ in Margherita. These included plenty of fruit (which he had felt the lack of on his first expedition) and a crate of whisky. On the evening of 15 August he, and all his supplies, arrived at the intermediate camp of Simon in a flotilla of canoes punted along the Buri Dehing by Mishmi tribesmen. The low jungle on the riverbanks contained ‘Imperial pigeon by the hundred’, and numerous wild elephants, balefully trumpeting in the descending gloom for no reason that Mackrell could see. Along the way, the Mishmi boatmen had proposed calling a halt and striking camp, ‘because it was raining!’ (the exclamation mark is Mackrell’s). At Simon, Mackrell took delivery of a number of Kampti elephants, as pre-arranged. In the negotiations at Margherita, he had been offered Burmese elephants, but had rejected these because his mahouts were not used to them. It has been mentioned that a hired elephant usually came with its mahout, like a taxi with its driver, but in this case most prudent mahouts might not want to go where the elephants were going. So Mackrell assembled separate teams of mahouts and elephants, then put them together. These were new mahouts, not the ones who’d been with Mackrell at the Dapha the first time around – all except for Mackrell’s personal ‘chauffeur’, Gohain, who was accompanying him once more.

  The plan was that the party would continue on foot to Miao, but insubordination was in the air in India that August and the mahouts went on strike over pay. They were ‘put up to it’, Mackrell wrote, by a particularly bolshie ‘opium mahout’ (that is, a man badly addicted), name of Ragoo. For once Mackrell’s powers of persuasion failed and he had Ragoo arrested by a military policeman at Simon, not for refusing to work but for inciting the others. The others then agreed to continue at existing rates of pay if Ragoo were released, and this was done.

  On 16 August, Mackrell was still accumulating elephants at Simon when a runner came in from Miao. He carried a chit that had been brought to Miao from Dapha by an earlier runner. It was written by Black, and it said that Captain Street at the Dapha camp had a bad fever. The next day, another runner arrived with another bulletin from Black about Captain Street. That ‘grand lad, full of life’, as Sir John Rowland put it, had committed suicide at the Dapha camp. He had shot himself in the head with his revolver. This was the first news Mackrell had received from the Dapha camp since the new men had taken over. Given that he himself had dispatched several chits about how he was preparing to return, he found this odd. But he thought he knew the reason …

  At 5 p.m. on 19 August, Mackrell arrived at the cliff-top government bungalow at Miao, the one overlooking the Noa Dehing where he had listened to his HMV radio on 6 June. He waited here a day to rest the elephants.

  Mackrell departed for the Dapha on the 21st, just himself and a dozen elephants and mahouts. Soon after setting off, he saw a man coming the other way on an elephant. It was Webster, the military policeman who had been at the Dapha with Black and the late Captain Street. Webster dismounted. He explained that an attempt had been made to get through the jungle to ‘Rossiter’, as the stranded party was now known, Edward Wrixon Rossiter having taken over the titular role from Sir John Rowland.

  Webster, Black and Street had set off with forty porters. It had been raining heavily, and all the rivers were up. After two days, Street became feverish and returned to camp, where Dr Bardoloi, installed once again as MO at the Dapha, had been unable to bring down his temperature. Street became delirious, talking nonsense, walking about without a hat on a day of hot sun. Behind Dr Bardoloi’s back he took a large dose of an antibiotic called M&B. He then bathed in the freezing Dapha to try and cool down. He shot himself after coming out of the river.

  Malaria, the most likely cause of Street’s delirium, can bring with it demonic visions, and these did not need much encouragement at the Dapha camp. Some of the treatments can also cause depression. On 4 July 1941, for example, General Orde Wingate, who, as leader of the Chindits would go on to lead a guerrilla campaign in the retaking of Burma, attempted to kill himself while suffering from a bad bout of malaria. In his room in the Continental Hotel in Cairo, he stood before the bathroom mirror and stabbed himself in the neck with a knife. He was saved because an officer in an adjacent room heard a suspicious combination of sounds: Wingate locking his hotel room door from the inside; then the crash from his bathroom as he fell. He was at the time suffering from a sense of professional failure, and Captain Street may have felt the same after turning back from the jungle.

  As for Webster, Black and their forty porters … after six days, when they were still only halfway to Rossiter, their rations ran out, and they, too, had been forced to turn back.

  This full-blown rescue attempt came as news to Mackrell. He had been sending chits forward to the Dapha suggesting only that food dumps be created along the first twenty miles or so of the route to Rossiter – this in preparation for his own attempt.

  Webster went on his way, Mackrell on his.

  After crossing the Debang river, that hors d’oeuvre to the main course of the Dapha, Mackrell diverted to the village of Tinguan, to enquire about the Mishmi headman who had been so useful to Mackrell, and who had contracted dysentery at the Dapha camp. He was told the man was dead.

  It was raining heavily as Mackrell proceeded east.

  He arrived at the Dapha camp as the light was fading on Saturday 22 August. There was no reception committee. Black was encamped on the other side of the river, the eastern side, out of sight in the gathering gloom and rain, but Mackrell knew where he was, and Black knew where Mackrell was.

  It seemed to Mackrell that even though he had full authorization for another rescue missio
n, he was being given the cold shoulder, that he was again being required to operate as a freelance. So it was just as well that he had by now made his peace with the mahouts, as it was easier for him to do when all concerned were beyond the reach of officialdom. They had once again become his ‘boys’: ‘Made tea for all the boys while they were pitching the tent.’ The mahouts then cooked a meal; Mackrell had a tin of tomato soup and went to bed.

  Early the next morning, Mackrell saw Black crossing the river on an elephant. Black dismounted and walked through the rain towards Mackrell. They shook hands with barely a word, and repaired to the wide tarpaulin where tea was brewing. Mackrell held his pipe in his hands, but did not smoke it. He later wrote in his diary, ‘I asked him as man to man if I was not right in thinking that neither he nor Webster wanted to see me back [at the Dapha camp] – in fact hoped I would not return. I have sensed this all along as I have never had a message from either of them and no reference has been made to my return at all.’

  Paradoxically, Mackrell was pleased with the reply.

  ‘Black said I was quite correct!’

  It was nothing personal, Black explained; it was just that he, Webster and Street felt the baton had been passed to younger men, and they wanted ‘to put the job through themselves’. The two then walked to the long grass of the riverbank, where Black showed Mackrell the grave of Captain Street. It was near the bamboo house that Captain Wilson had built on the point. Mackrell explained his own plans for going forward; Black nodded, and asked what he intended to do about porters. Mackrell said he hoped to recruit some of Black’s. Black nodded again, and he mentioned to Mackrell that most of those men had been banking on returning to their villages. Mackrell said he could only ask them.

  The next day, a Monday, Black returned to Miao, and Mackrell moved into the house on the point. Here, he called a conference of the men who remained at the Dapha. They were all Indians: the mahouts, most of the forty political porters who’d been forward with Black, Webster and Street, and a unit of Assam Rifles – that is to say, about twenty Gurkha soldiers – commanded by a Havildar called Dharramsing. Mackrell had been given the authority to mount a push towards Rossiter, but this was dependent on manpower. Mackrell put his case to the meeting. The Rossiters and the remainder of the railway party were still stranded; they included a pregnant woman, a baby and people in poor health. It was uncertain whether they could continue to be supplied from the air. Would those present – all of whom had been expecting to return to Miao after the failure of the Black/Webster/Street push – be willing to go forward one more time? Mackrell knew this was much more than a question of money and opium. It was about whether the men would risk their lives again. Mackrell looked towards Dharramsing, the spokesman for the Indians in the hut. But the Gurkhas’ faces were impassive. Mackrell would give them time to decide; he stepped out of the house.

  Mackrell walked along the banks of the river in the rain. He knew that if the answer was ‘yes’, he would only be able to take about half the forty porters, the others being in no fit state to return to deep jungle. He also knew that even if the answer was ‘no’, he would have to remain at Dapha with the mahouts in case Rossiter tried to come through.

  After a while, he lit his pipe.

  A Face Like Wood: Dharramsing Decides

  Let us divert ourselves while the Indians decide by asking: how do you keep a pipe going in a monsoon? You could just keep your hand over the bowl. Or the man who was going to be doing a lot of smoking in the monsoon might own a pipe cap: a steel grill with a spring catch, so it would fit any pipe bowl. You could light the pipe through the holes in the grill, and the tobacco would remain fairly dry as it burned. During the Second World War, a firm called Orlik of Shoeburyness, Essex, began making a pipe with a Bakelite bowl that had a ready fitted grill. The model was called ‘The Hurricane’, and according to the advert it was ‘Smoked by Shrewd Judges’.

  Mackrell walked back towards the house on the point, and stood before Dharramsing. Would the men come? Dharramsing had a face like wood. In The Longest Retreat, Tim Carew wrote, ‘the face of the Gurkha, except on the frequent occasions when he is grinning broadly, is expressionless’. Slowly, Dharramsing rocked his head from side to side. The answer was ‘yes’.

  The next day – Tuesday the 25th – Mackrell crossed to the east side of the Dapha, where he began replenishing the camps established by Black and Co. The first of these was at the top of a 200-foot cliff, so a winch was rigged to take the kit up from the river’s edge.

  The day after, he pressed on east, towards the more forward camps established by Black and his men. At these, the rice had been left on the ground, under tarpaulins, ‘and so naturally had been damaged by [wild] elephant’. Mackrell strung the rice sacks from trees, so they would be ready for Rossiter should he come through, or be available to Mackrell and Rossiter on the way back to Dapha in the event of a successful rescue.

  Mackrell also began cutting new tracks along the banks of the Noa Dehing, the route used by Sir John having been obliterated by a rise in the water level and more of the landslips Mackrell had seen from the air. One particular headland – newly created by a landslip – could not be avoided. It had to be surmounted then traversed. While prospecting a route in thick jungle, Mackrell and his men saw a wild elephant. They surrounded it in a semi-circle and clapped their hands to frighten it. The elephant cantered up the hill, crashing through branches, so indicating a possible track and opening out that track at the same time.

  At the top of this headland, Mackrell and his men used kukris, hoes and pickaxes to cut a path that would be wide enough for elephants, and it had to be a good one since there was a 250-foot drop to the river on the right-hand side of it.

  By late evening on Sunday 30 August, Mackrell and his men and his dozen elephants had negotiated this promontory. They struck camp at a lower point, about twenty feet above the water. Too tired to built shelters or erect tents, the men wrapped themselves in tarpaulins or blankets and in some lucky cases lay down on airbeds – lilos – that Mackrell had brought along this time. When he awoke at dawn on his own lilo, Mackrell counted the elephants. One was missing. It had obviously fallen into the river while grazing. Mackrell noted, ‘Delayed some hours collecting the above elephant.’ They found it grazing once again, lower down the river, having been carried through one rapid.

  Mackrell and his men kept cutting their way forward, negotiating landslips or trying to avoid them by resorting to deep jungle, but here the leeches were ‘terrific’, intolerable. On Friday 4 September, Mackrell and Dharramsing made a long forward reconnaissance on foot but could not find a good elephant track. Mackrell had now been away from the Dapha base for over a week. He had planned to return at this point, having established a route more than halfway to the Tilung Hka, just in case there should be an air-dropped message about what Rossiter was doing. But Mackrell now decided to keep going, before he could be recalled by the men at Margherita. After all, the next message might be telling him to pack up and return to base.

  On Saturday 5 September, Mackrell and his men were camped on the left bank of the Noa Dehing. So far, all the action in this story has taken place on its right bank, and the Noa Dehing has been described as uncrossable. That turned out not to be the case in its upper reaches, and Mackrell and his men had first crossed it – by elephant – when looking for the missing elephant. They had discovered that there were fewer landslips on that side and that it might offer a better route. The trouble was that on the left bank they might miss Rossiter should he decide to make a move; because he and his party, having no elephants, would certainly not be able to cross the river.

  So the plan for Saturday was that men would probe forward on both banks of the river. On that hot and rainy morning, Mackrell, on the left bank, saw one of the accompanying Assam Rifles waving to him from the right bank. He then saw a male European staggering out of the trees towards the soldier. It was Rossiter. Mackrell immediately boarded an elephant and crossed the
river. He shook Rossiter’s hand. Rossiter said that his wife and baby were coming along a short way behind, together with a dozen others, a mixture of Gurkhas and Rossiter’s staff and servants from Putao – in other words, not all of the people who’d been stranded at the Tilung Hka. They had been walking through the jungle for six days, and were very weak. They had ample rice, but much of it was mouldy. Mackrell would later write in a private letter – it was not the sort of declaration he would have made publicly – that Rossiter and his party would have had no chance of reaching Dapha had it not been for running into him. They would all have died.

  Rossiter explained to Mackrell that another Gurkha was coming, some way behind. He had been stung several times about both eyes by wasps, and was practically blind. Mackrell crossed Rossiter, Mrs Rossiter and baby and the dozen Indians to the camp on the left bank by elephant. There is footage of Mrs Rossiter (Nang Hmat) crossing on an elephant with three others. She looks very composed and graceful, with baby John in a sling on her back. Mackrell crossed over with the Rossiters, then dispatched them along the left bank to the camp made the night before. Mackrell himself waited at the crossing point, watching for the blinded Gurkha to come through the trees on the opposite bank. Mackrell would have liked to smoke his pipe, but he’d run out of pipe tobacco. He did not approve of Rossiter having left the man so far behind.

  It was a brilliant sunny day.

  The left-behind Gurkha, wrapped in a blanket, came out of the trees at three o’clock in the afternoon; Mackrell waved and called to him. He then made the international go-to-sleep sign with head on hands. This Gurkha must not have been completely blinded by the wasp stings, because he saw and understood, and after Mackrell had repeated the gesture several times, smiling but insistent, the Gurkha lay down between two rocks and slept. The elephants, or some of them, came back to Mackrell at four o’clock. He crossed the river, woke the Gurkha, made tea for him, then crossed him over the river, riding on the elephant with him, and accompanying him to the camp, where Edward Wrixon Rossiter was drinking tea and eating biscuits with jam on them. It was vegetable marrow jam, obtained by Mackrell from God-knows-where, and carried on the back of an elephant into the jungle. Rossiter’s mother had made this jam when he was a boy growing up in Dublin; it had been a particular favourite of his. We know this from a letter he wrote, and which we shall come to shortly.