The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  When he was alone with the prince he said, ‘Last night I meant to reprimand you very severely, and perhaps send you back to India for what I considered gross slackness in allowing the officers to behave like desi babus ... but the fact is that you were the commanding officer. You were within your rights to run the regiment the way you thought best. I am only very sorry that you seem to have learned so little of what I have been trying to teach you for the last nine months.’

  ‘I have been learning,’ Krishna Ram said.

  ‘Not much, apparently,’ Warren said. ‘I am going to make one change in the officers. Flaherty will become adjutant and Dayal Ram go to the Signal Section.’

  Krishna’s eyes flickered at that, and he said, ‘Has Dayal been unsatisfactory, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Warren said grimly, ‘I just think this will work better.’

  He meant that he would trust even a Eurasian to enforce his will upon the regiment, rather than any Indian, even Dayal, even Krishna ... especially Krishna; and he saw in Krishna’s face that the prince understood.

  Krishna Ram got up, saluted punctiliously and went out, closing the door carefully behind him.

  Warren Bateman watched him go with pursed lips. He looked about ten years older than when he had last seen him. He was not surly or sullen over his reprimand--far from it, it was almost as though he felt sorry for Warren. And also as though his mind were some distance off, groping, thinking ... about what?

  Krishna, too, was changing. Everyone was changing. But was the changing for good reason or bad? Were the changes themselves desirable or not? That was the heart of the argument he’d had with Joan his last night at home. He had hoped for some warmth in her, especially in love-making, which seemed to have become more and more distasteful to her, but at his approach she’d talked about the girls offering their bodies in the Strand, and said, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have one of them? They’re patriotic, too. I think women should accept love only from pacifists.’

  ‘From slackers like Ralph,’ he had said angrily.

  ‘You keep him out of this,’ she had flared up, suddenly fierce as a hawk. ‘He’s ... how could you understand?’

  He had said, ‘I understand that if we loosen our morals, we can’t win this war--and we don’t deserve to, because we shall have lost what we are fighting for.’

  She said, ‘Warren, you’re becoming more brutal, more narrowminded and obstinate every day.’

  ‘I am not changing!’ he said vehemently then. ‘It is you who have changed ... you and people like you! You wouldn’t have tolerated Fuller a year ago. Now you upbraid me because I snubbed him in the lane. A year ago you wouldn’t have had a good word to say for well-bred girls who act like cheap harlots--now you say they have a perfect right to. A year ago so-called ladies didn’t wear trousers everywhere, puff cigarettes in public, and...’

  She said wearily, ‘It’s the war, Warren. The longer the war goes on, the more changes there will be. Some for the better. Why shouldn’t a woman smoke in public? What’s disgraceful about it? Some for the worse ... like the state of mind you and all the patriots are getting into, here and in France, and Germany and Russia, of course. Everywhere! You were a gentleman once. A gentle man. Now you’re an officer. It took this war to show that the two don’t really go together.’

  ‘That’s an insult,’ he had said, ‘and a damned lie! ‘

  A damned lie, a damned lie, a damned lie ... the words kept repeating themselves in his mind. Was that what was on Krishna Ram’s mind, too? Was that what troubled Diana’s brow?

  Dayal Ram took his transfer to the Signals with a hurt stiffness that Warren tried to assuage with praise for the work done. Then Flaherty came in, and Warren said, bluntly, ‘I am making you my adjutant, Flaherty, because I need another Englishman close to me.’

  The big Anglo-Indian flushed with pleasure and there was a wetness in the corner of his eye as he said, ‘You can count on me, sir.’ He added, ‘I didn’t want to wear a turban but the Yuvraj said we must all dress alike, like the men.’

  ‘Well, you’re not one of the men,’ Warren said. ‘You’re the adjutant, my right arm, and my eyes, too, seeing that my intentions are carried out in the letter and in the spirit. Our officers are individually excellent fellows--most of them--but there is a spirit, something about them taken together, that is devious ... Indian. I am unable to be everywhere at once. I am going to rely on you to cover my back.’

  The lieutenant said, startled, ‘Literally, sir? You mean that you think someone might try to murder you? By God, if...’

  ‘I don’t think so ... yet,’ Warren said. ‘I meant it figuratively--I want you to see that when my back is turned all that I have ordered is not ignored.’

  ‘You can count on me, sir,’ Flaherty said again.

  ‘Now,’ Warren said, ‘I am going to attack a problem which I previously shirked, because it seemed to me to be doing no harm. I have realized that that was simply my weakness. Listen...’ He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

  A little less than forty-eight hours later, near midnight, Warren awoke to a hand gently, insistently pushing at his shoulder. He recognized the new adjutant’s singsong in the whispered words, ‘It iss me, Flaherty, sir. It iss in the back of the other estaminet, sir, the one that iss not the mess. I have seen two go in.’

  ‘But are they actually doing it now?’

  ‘Oah yes, sir! I can smell it... I know the smell.’

  I bet you do, Warren thought; you don’t grow up in Basohli without learning about opium.

  ‘Shall I light the lantern, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Warren said, ‘I know where my clothes are.’ He dressed quickly, found his torch and made sure it worked properly. He said to Flaherty, ‘You have a torch, too? Test it here, pointing down ... Good. We must have no mistake over who or what we see. Come on.’ Then he went with Flaherty at his side to Krishna Ram’s billet. The ape-like orderly Hanuman was asleep outside the door and two other sowars at the end of the hallway. Warren frowned to see them--they were obviously the personal bodyguards he had ordered to be discontinued; but he could deal with that later, after this night’s work had shown them all that he meant business. Flaherty stirred the orderly with his toe and growled, ‘Wake up, you. Tell the major that the colonel-sahib is here.’

  Krishna Ram came out rubbing his eyes in the dim light thrown by Warren’s torch. ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘Get dressed,’ Warren said. ‘No lights or noise.’

  Five minutes later, in the empty street, Warren said, ‘Come close ... I have received information that opium is being smoked in a room at the back of the building that was the other estaminet here. We will go there now to catch the smokers redhanded. When I throw open the door you will be at my shoulders. The adjutant and I will shine our flashlights. All three of us are to note carefully what we see, as we will have to give evidence at the courts-martial that will follow. Is that clear?’

  After a brief hesitation Krishna Ram said, ‘You will catch Major Bholanath, sir. He smokes opium nearly every night with one or two others ... older men.’

  ‘VCOs?’ Warren said.

  ‘Some. And sowars. They have been doing it all their lives.’

  ‘And you knew, and did nothing about it, knowing that the taking of any form of dope is forbidden?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was ... I knew it wasn’t doing any harm,’ Krishna Ram said. ‘Not to these men. It’s our custom.’

  ‘It’s going to end, now, with Bholanath’s being cashiered and sent to prison.’

  ‘He’ll kill himself with his own sword rather than go to prison, sir,’ Krishna said.

  ‘We’ll see. Follow me.’

  Warren started up the street, the others beside him. When they were very close to the estaminet he paused as he heard running feet. The booted feet, approaching from the direction of the school at the south end, came close and loud. It was a sowar of the regiment, dressed, belted, and armed. Warren held out his hand and whis
pered, ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘You, colonel-sahib,’ the sowar barked.

  Warren swore under his breath and said, ‘Quiet! What is it?’ There might yet be a chance, he thought. The runner’s boots had clashed sharp and loud on the cobbles, but men absorbed in smoking opium would not have heard--or cared.

  At the end of the village a trumpet sounded the regimental call, followed by the ‘Stand-to’.

  The runner said, ‘The Duty-sahib says the regiment is to move up the line at once. There is a message from brigade.’

  By now the trumpet’s incessant repetitions were awakening the village. Lanterns glowed, torches flashed, half-dressed sowars tumbled out into the street pulling on boots or breeches. Another trumpet began to repeat the call.

  Warren stood in the middle of the street. They were to go up the line at once. No chance to hold a court-martial even if he did catch them, and get the evidence on them. He made up his mind and turned to the other officers. ‘We’ll have to put this off to another time. I rely on your words of honour that you will say nothing to anyone about what we were going to do. Flaherty, orders in my office in thirty minutes. Meantime, all officers to prepare their squadrons to move up the line.’

  He went to the office, then. The duty officer was Himat Singh. He saluted as Warren came in, his face bright and alert. He handed Warren a message pad. ‘This was a telephone message from the Brigade Major, sir. It came at 0011--nine minutes ago.’

  ‘Did you order the “Stand-to” blown?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I thought it would save time.’

  ‘Quite right.’ Warren read the message: GERMANS HAVE ATTACKED AREA TRESIGNY-ORIVAL WITH POISONED GAS AAA HINDUSTAN DIV IS OCCUPYING SECTOR BEAUMONT 4587 RIVEDOUX 3809 IMMEDIATELY LAHORE BDE RIGHT JHANSI BDE LEFT. LAHORE BDE SECTOR BEAUMONT TO ROSIERS 4267 71ST PUNJABIS RIGHT RAVI L LEFT MEETING PT BEAUMONT CHURCH AAA 1/12 GR AND R OXF FUS IN RESERVE ONE MILE SOUTH OF BEAUMONT BRIG GEN WILL GIVE ORDERS BEAUMONT CHURCH 1000 HRS MAY 19 MARCH ORDERS ADMIN INTERCOMN FOLLOW ACKNOWLEDGE.

  ‘Here’s the map, sir,’ Himat Singh said. ‘Beaumont’s twenty-eight miles by the most direct road.’

  The field telephone buzzed and the signal orderly on it said, ‘For you, sahib.’

  Himat Singh picked it up and listened. After a moment he said, ‘It’s march orders, sir.’

  ‘Take them down.’

  Warren thought, we’ll have about nine hours to cover twenty-eight miles. But first the men must be issued with rations and get some hot tea. To Himat Singh, writing busily on a message pad, he said, ‘Send the adjutant to the mess when he arrives. All other officers to wait here until I return.’

  He walked quickly down the street, now full of men hurrying this way and that, and the tramp of boots and the crunch of wheels as the GS wagons were brought out and the draught horses harnessed. In the mess he told the dafadar to make him andar rumble-tumble at once, with bread and butter, jam and tea, and to prepare breakfast for all the officers immediately after that. Then he sat, thinking. The Germans were attacking, without any warning. They seemed to have caught First Army with its pants down, as usual. And using poisonous gas. Why hadn’t we thought of it first?

  Poisonous gas ... drifting across the green fields and flower-speckled hedges; poisoning the song birds in their nests and the cattle in the stream and the women hoeing the potatoes.

  He shook his head determinedly. It was a weapon of war, no more. When inspecting the regiment the day after his return he had seen for the first time the peculiar masks that had been issued only a few days earlier. The mask appeared to be a piece of decomposed fish in a black net bag. When facing chlorine--for that was the gas the Germans had used for the first time three weeks ago--the men were to moisten the bag with ammonia by urinating on it and then fasten it over the mouth and nose. Not only was it a disgusting device, but it seemed highly unlikely that it would work. Still, it was the only protection anyone had been able to devise so far.

  He must tell Krishna Ram to bring the regiment up as fast as he could. Fix a rendezvous on the line of march where he could send Mahadeo Singh to guide the regiment to its appointed sector. Extra ammunition in the GS wagons, at least 100 rounds a man and twenty-four belts per gun for the machine guns; more entrenching tools and wire...

  ‘Hazri tayyar hai, sahib,’ the dafadar announced respectfully, indicating the plate of scrambled eggs, the steaming mug of tea, the pot of jam and the pile of sliced bread and butter.

  Flaherty came in and Warren said, ‘You and I and Mahadeo are going to eat now, and ride like hell for Beaumont as soon as I’ve given orders. Just our orderlies, two trumpeters and two gallopers with us ... We’ll deal with that other matter, that was interrupted, some other time.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  May 1915

  Krishna Ram walked across the field and through the straggly wood for what seemed the twentieth time, Hanuman and his trumpeter at his heels. The men were digging in little groups and clumps, under a hot sun. The village of Beaumont was almost intact, for the earlier advances and retreats had passed it by. Villagers were struggling out even now, herding cows across the fields, for the roads were forbidden to them so that they could be used by the flood of ambulance vehicles going forward to pick up the wounded.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The regiment had marched the twenty-eight miles in from its rest area in ten hours, starting at one-thirty a.m. Now the cookers had arrived, but Colonel Bateman had ordered that no one should eat until all the new trenches were at least three feet deep. So the men sweated and dug, dug and sweated, leaning dizzily on picks and shovels, their brown faces lined with fatigue and thick with dust. All about, artillery rumbled like approaching thunder.

  Warren Bateman strode up as Krishna reached the left end of the line, where C Squadron linked with the Sherwood Foresters of the flanking brigade, at a brick-lined well beyond the copse. ‘Everything all right?’ Warren asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna said. ‘The men are tired, of course, but they’re not dead beat yet.’

  ‘Keep them at it,’ Warren said briefly. ‘I’m going back to brigade personally, to get more barbed wire. Or have the BM’s liver on a plate ... Stay at RHQ, please, until I get back.’

  Krishna watched the CO walk briskly away. The man was only back a couple of days from a severe wound and a long convalescence, but he seemed to be tireless. What kept him going? Was it pride in the regiment? Determination to beat the Germans? Lust to get at them again, for more killing?

  He set out for RHQ which was behind a hayrick half a mile west of Beaumont. The guns were getting louder, and 41st Field Battery, now in position a mile back, was beginning to range in. Now that he had experienced heavy and medium artillery fire, Krishna realized how relatively ineffectual the 18-pounders were. They would be great for a war of movement, supporting infantry against enemy in the open, or tribesmen or lightly armed irregulars; against entrenched Germans they were of little more use than peashooters.

  So we need bigger guns, he thought moodily, and more of them. More barbed wire, more machine guns, some sort of light machine gun that a man could carry unaided, more lorries. Everything automatic, mechanical. The amount of ammunition being used was too much for flesh and blood to move. It had to be brought up by machines. The shells for some guns were so heavy that machines had to be used to lift them and ram them into the breech. The war was not being fought by men but by machines. Machines had no feelings, and no ability to think, so how would they know when to stop, when to make peace, even when to change the direction of the fighting?

  At RHQ he sat down with his back to the haystack, watching a squad from the Signal Section digging weapon pits and putting out a single apron of barbed wire. Hanuman said, ‘Sleep, lord. I’ll wake you if the Colonel-sahib comes.’

  Krishna nodded. No reason why he shouldn’t sleep. ‘Wake me in half an hour,’ he said.

  He closed his eyes. Sleep, come, he murmured. But instead he was at the table in the e
staminet in Mennecy, Warren Bateman cold and white and bitter at the head, and sweat in his own palms. The words were like lashes across his face. But had he done wrong to try to lead the regiment back to the wellspring of its spirit? And afterwards, only Ramaswami and Pahlwan Ram still there, everyone else slunk off like beaten dogs, Indian pi-dogs cringing before their master. Ramaswami said, ‘He doesn’t seem to realize what he’s saying ... “We must fight for our land, our women, our civilization.” What have France or England or Germany got to do with our land, our women, our civilization?’

  And Pahlwan Ram, always ready with the word that would separate, ‘Yes, and practically calling us savages to our faces..

  Then Krishna had got up and said curtly, ‘That’s enough of that. I’m going to bed.’

  Bed ... dreams ... thoughts ... dreams ... Marthe’s white thighs and brown bush. Or was it Marthe’s? He remembered the silken flesh petals of the servant girl someone--his father? his mother?--had sent him on his fourteenth birthday, to teach him the grace of women. She was twenty, experienced and delicate, a ruby set in her nostril, her brown skin cool under his hand, patchouli scenting her sleek dark hair.

  ‘Colonel-sahib ane-wala hai!’

  He sat up with a start and looked automatically at his wrist watch. Four o’clock. He’d slept nearly two hours. He could smell cooking dal, and noticed the wind was blowing from the southwest. The trenches at RHQ were four feet deep. Some men were still at work, digging communication trenches and machine gun emplacements, the rest were eating or sleeping where they had sat down to rest. He felt a pang of hunger himself, and stood up. Warren Bateman arrived and said, ‘Four GS wagons full of wire are right behind me. See that one goes to each squadron. Then eat. Then go and take command of the Rear Echelon. See that the RAP has good covered exits to the rear. See that the RM has the reserve ammunition well sandbagged.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna said. The CO was beginning to look tired now, but still the orders came out crisp and sharp. His brain was running like a machine that would not stop. Surely, if this great strain continued, it would run off the rails?