by John Masters
‘And the rissaldar-major?’ Warren said. ‘You promised to keep the regiment here in order to protect the RM, didn’t you? Now you don’t care what happens to him?’
‘I do care, sir,’ Krishna said. ‘But I think I can guarantee him a great future out of the army, in our state--I would like to have him as my Chief Minister when I succeed to the gaddi--to compensate him for anything you do to him. But in any case I cannot allow one man’s fate, neither his nor mine, to cause any more death or disillusion. The regiment must go back to India.’
He looked determined but not hostile, Warren thought, and thinner than before. Perhaps he had been fasting while he squatted crosslegged in solitude, in the Indian way of bhairagis and sunnyasis. But how out of place in an Artois farmhouse! And how different he had become from the cheerful young aristocrat of the dak bungalow at Kangrota!
Krishna continued, ‘The war is becoming more inhuman every day. Our gods are human, and allow for war, but not for mechanical destruction. They are not themselves mechanical and cannot tolerate mechanization. But every day the war forces us to become more machine-like, less human and so--according to our belief--less divine, for the gods that humans worship are themselves, really, human too.’
‘Go on,’ Warren said, hearing Flaherty’s disdainful sniff beside him. Flaherty was so eager to disavow his Indian heritage that he wouldn’t accept even what was patently true; and this that Krishna Ram was saying was true enough ... only irrelevant.
Krishna said, ‘It isn’t only the war ... it is Europe. In trying to learn the European way of making war we have learned European ways of thought. The ties that bind us to our own principles, our own ways of thought, have been weakened, or destroyed. There have been rapes and petty thefts, all entirely foreign to our men. Absence without leave, desertions even ... unheard of before we came here. Lying to escape punishment. Deliberate waste. We have caught a disease, just as my grandfather warned me...’
‘You call Western civilization a disease?’ Warren said. Krishna was still at attention the other side of the table, but for the first time since he had joined the regiment, the facts of the difference in their rank, and of his position as Krishna’s commanding officer, were not present in Warren’s mind. It was almost as when they had first met, at the cricket field in Lahore, and he was interestedly sharing opinions with a member of a different culture.
‘Yes,’ Krishna said, his face sad. ‘It has symptoms ... what that young sowar brought up in durbar--the false Christianity that preaches love, and kills ... that teaches poverty, but takes ... that preaches tolerance, like to Mr. Fleming--and rejects ... the fever that enabled Europe to conquer Asia, and believe that there was nothing to be learned from the conquered ... If we don’t go back now, it will be too late. It may be too late already. We, all the Indian troops here, will take this disease back with us. Instead of believing that a man’s inner posture, his relationship with his soul, is more important than his position on earth, many will believe that only victory, self-fulfilment matters... which is the same as saying, getting your own way regardless of what outrages on the body and soul you have to commit ... This will spread in India, which will not help either India or England. The sowars and sepoys are not political themselves, and never will be, for the most part. But the disease they carry will infect all India. The politicians will not act like Indians any more, but like Europeans. There will be political crimes, that India never knew ... murders, assassinations, poisonings, the killings of women and children ... I beg you, sir, let us go now.’
Warren said, ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Warren drummed his fingers on the table, looking out of the broken window of the little room while he marshalled his words. At last he said, ‘What you said about Europe is partly true. My old CO, and the Commissioner of Lahore, both thought it would be dangerous to bring Indian troops to France, for different reasons. But the war hadn’t really started then. We took it lightly, being cocksure of the outcome. Here in France we learned in suffering that the outcome was not predetermined ... that it depended on our beating the Germans to their knees, smashing them in battle, face to face. We cannot achieve victory without hardening ourselves ... but we do not have to remain hard afterwards.’
Krishna made a gesture of disagreement but Warren said, his voice rising a little, ‘It is true! So, after we have won, you can go back to your old ways. But first, we must win, or the world to which we return will be a different one.’
‘It will be anyway, sir,’ Krishna interjected.
‘A German world, which we will not tolerate ... We are going to win. You are going to help. The effect on your soul, or whatever you call it, or on the souls of other Indians, matters as little as the fact that you or I may be killed the day after tomorrow. I hold you to your promise.’
‘Very well, sir,’ Krishna said. ‘I suggest, sir, that you make sure that your orderly is always armed, and covering your back, wherever you go. The news of the offensive has pushed some of the men ... and officers ... to the end of their tether.’
‘And you’re encouraging them to get rid of me?’ Warren sneered.
‘No, sir. The trouble is that some are not thinking of me as they used to, as a Son of the Sun, but only as your second-in-command, and assistant. The ones who are stretched near the limit will not confide in me.’
He saluted and went out. As the door closed behind him, Warren said, ‘What did you make of that, Flaherty?’
‘About what you’d expect,’ the captain growled. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to send him back to India, at once, sir? He says the men just think of him as the second-in-command, but it’s not true. He can twist them around his little finger. And the officers even more so.’
‘It might be wise,’ Warren said, ‘but I’m not going to do it. I’m going to show him, in battle, that he’s wrong and I’m right... I’m not going to sign any more papers. I’m going out. D Squadron are playing hockey, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir ... But wait till your orderly can get his rifle, please, sir.’
At midnight some change in the rumble of the artillery brought Warren upright in bed out of sleep. He sat there a while in the darkness, listening. The ground shook as always, the broken panes in the window rattled as always. The sound of the guns almost, but not quite, drowned the hiss of the rain on the tiled, patched roof. Each time the near battery fired, Warren said under his breath, ‘There! Take that! Bloody Hun!’ seeing in his mind’s eye the machine gun post pulverized, the smashed bodies, the avenues of wire being ripped to shreds. After half an hour the guns still thundering like distant surf, he went back to sleep.
He awoke to a formless screaming that sent his hands grabbing for the revolver in the equipment slung over the head of his bed. Then a sharp explosion seared his eyeballs with yellow flame, bits of something smashed into the brick wall over his head, and the window blew out with a tinkling of glass. For a second longer things fell or bumped or rattled. Then, in the silence, he heard a long low breathing, a bubbling breath that became a rattle, a sigh, and died. Beyond, a voice called, ‘Sahib! Colonel Sahib! Ap thik hai?’
He jumped up, and switched on the flashlight he kept on the stool beside his bed. A big khaki hump lay sprawled in the doorway, in a spreading dark pool of red. He bent over it as his orderly ran in, a hurricane lantern in his hands.
Warren turned the twisted head on the floor up a little and saw that it was Captain Flaherty. He was dead, his chest and stomach blown out. Distinctively waffled metal shards stuck out of the walls, or lay on the floor. Flaherty had been killed by one of the new British grenades. The orderly knelt in horror beside the dead adjutant, facing Warren across the body.
At length Warren said grimly, ‘Tell the woordie-major to send a party to clean up this room now, and prepare a burial party for ten o’clock.’
The guns still shook the earth and sky. It was three in the morning, and someone had tried to murder him. Flaherty had had the room across the
hall of the little house. Perhaps he, too, had been kept awake by the guns, and had seen someone creeping up the street, to drop a grenade through a broken window, or roll one in through the doorway.
On an impulse Warren pulled on his boots and greatcoat, crossed the street, and entered Krishna Ram’s billet. Hanuman lay sleeping across the door. He sat up, rifle in hand, when Warren stirred him, ordering, ‘Out of the way!’ He followed Warren as Warren entered Krishna’s room, where a hurricane lantern was burning. Krishna Ram was sitting crosslegged on the bed, his palms joined. He looked up, as Warren came in.
‘You keep late hours,’ Warren said.
‘I was meditating, sir.’
‘Did you hear an explosion just now?’
‘The guns?’
‘No. An attempt to murder me. A grenade in my room.’
Krishna Ram said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Flaherty’s dead, trying to save me.’
Krishna muttered, ‘Dand, just as the Rawal warned me.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Warren asked belligerently. ‘Something a Brahmin warned me about before I left India--that some of my people might resort to force before I felt compelled to do so myself ... This is what I was talking about in your office, sir. This, that has happened, could not have been done by anyone in the regiment a year ago. It--the seed or foetus of it--was not in them then. It has been put there. Please, sir, go to the general. It’s not too late.’
Warren said, ‘When we come back from the attack--if we do--you will find out who murdered Flaherty, and report to me. Meantime, I’m appointing Sher Singh as adjutant, and Dayal Ram to D Squadron.’ He swung out and back to his own room, where he watched a party with buckets and cloths clean up the floor.
Twenty-four hours later the Ravi Lancers were in the communication trenches, moving up. Warren, at the head of the regiment, had thought that surely a path would have been cleared in front of them; but in these first hours of Z Day the trenches seemed to be full of ammunition fatigues, sappers, signallers laying wire, gunner observation groups, and ration parties. He would shuffle twenty paces forward, then stop for ten minutes. Then on again. The rain fell steadily out of a dark and windy night. The bombardment, on which 890,000 shells had been expended so far, continued at the steady pace that had characterized it from its beginning a week ago. Perhaps this was the surprise which he had assured Krishna Ram that the Army Commander would have up his sleeve--to continue the bombardment, to which the Germans must by now have become numbingly accustomed, and attack out of it with no further warning.
The wind was in the south, and there would be no gas; but a group of his men were carrying, strapped to their backs, two of the three German flame throwers captured by Krishna’s last patrol. The third had been used up finding how they worked. He ought, as Flaherty had nervously reminded him, to have sent the weapons back to brigade; but he had said, ‘I’m damned if I will. It isn’t as though Intelligence didn’t know that the Germans had flame throwers. These we’ll keep, and use.’ That would give the enemy a surprise, all right; it might turn the tide in some critical situation.
He plodded forward. Who had tried to kill him that night? Not who had thrown the grenade--in dealing with Indians that was always unimportant--but who had told him, guided him, to do it? Not Krishna; he wanted to overcome Warren alive: triumph over a dead man would have no savour. Pahlwan Ram or Sher Singh, perhaps; they could summon the nerve to do it, if they thought it would save their skins; in the desperation of their funk they would not realize that it was too late for that, with the attack definite and the regiment committed to it. Of the VCOs and men ... very difficult to say. There were too many of them for him to be certain that none was harbouring some secret grudge or hate or fear.
Three o’clock and the attack due to begin at five. He inched forward again. An hour later a white face peered at him and a Canadian voice said, ‘Ravi Lancers? Where’s your CO? ... This way, sir.’ The soldier led him to the dugout of the CO of the battalion they were to pass through for the attack. The Canadian colonel was about the same age as himself. ‘Have a snort,’ he said. ‘Is this goddamn rain ever going to stop?’
He handed Warren a mug half full of whisky, adding, ‘I don’t envy you fellows.’
‘We’ll do it,’ Warren said confidently.
The other looked at him curiously. ‘You think so? I think the Limeys are putting you into the mincer ... Hell, of course you are a Limey. Well, drink that down and I’ll show you the ground.’
Three-quarters of an hour later Warren left the Canadian colonel and went to his command post. Sher Singh was nervous and forgetful as his adjutant, and he wished he could have appointed almost anyone else; but at a time like this the better an officer was, the more he was needed with a squadron.
Krishna Ram came up the communication trench that started immediately behind Warren’s position. ‘The regiment’s all up and ready, sir,’ he said.
‘Ten minutes to go,’ Warren said. The bombardment suddenly doubled, trebled, stepped up to a shattering intensity. The torrent of steel exploded close in front. Curtains of yellow and red flame shook and flashed along the German trenches. Steel splinters whined back overhead and the drone and roar of the incoming shells sounded like a hundred trains rushing simultaneously through an underground station. Shikari began to fidget and whimper at Warren’s feet.
‘This will tell them we’re coming,’ Krishna shouted.
‘Get to your post! ‘ Warren said.
Krishna Ram tramped away. He turned at a few paces, and said, ‘We’re all in the arms of Kali now. The feast of Dussehra has begun ... Good luck, sir.’
‘Good luck,’ Warren repeated automatically. He stooped down and cuffed his dog savagely. ‘Sit still! Quiet!’ Shikari whimpered more loudly, shaken uncontrollably by the thunder of the artillery fire.
Two minutes to zero. The trench was crowded with men, his own ready near the firestep, trench ladders in place, the Canadians pressed back against the parados. The flame thrower detachment was ready in the next bay to the right.
By the glare of the explosions he saw it was zero hour. He blew his whistle, picked up Shikari, lifted him on to the parapet and followed, running quickly up the trench ladder. As he stepped off on to the shattered earth beyond the parapet, Shikari turned and jumped back down into the trench.
‘Come here! ‘ Warren shouted. ‘Heel! Come here ... you bloody coward! ‘
The little dog cowered down, whining. Warren drew his revolver, his head bursting with anger. No one was going to escape, no one, no one. In a bright flash he aimed and pulled the trigger. The fox terrier’s head dissolved into a pulp. Warren turned and began to walk forward. His boot sank three inches into the mud at the first heavy step. A German machine gun began to fire.
October 1915
The machine gun stopped after firing half a belt, and Warren plodded forward. The first wet streamers of light lining the darkness ahead silhouetted the bowed shapes of sowars trudging ahead of him, distorted pack animals with gas masks, packs, equipment, extra slung cotton ammunition belts, rifle, bayonet and entrenching tool. The ground became increasingly less solid as they entered the zone into which the British artillery had fired a million shells. The pace, instead of the one hundred yards in two and a half minutes which had been allowed for, slowed to a hundred yards in four minutes, or five. The creeping barrage of howitzer fire moved faster than the infantry, gradually outdistancing them. The advance was not at an even pace over the apparently level plain that had shown through the periscopes but a slipping and stumbling, now sliding ten feet into the bottom of huge craters, now splashing through two feet of water in the bottom, then struggling up the other side. Warren shouted at the gunner subaltern beside him, ‘Bring the barrage back closer, Bruington.’
‘I can’t, sir,’ Bruington said. ‘We’re going slowly here, but look...’ He pointed, and Warren saw that some of his men were far ahead on the right. He cursed, but there was no way of slowing the
m; nor were they doing anything wrong; somehow they alone had managed to keep to the ordained pace. Then, even as he watched, they went down to a man, as though a scythe had swept through long, waving grass. Star shells were bursting in the livid sky and clear ahead, close, Warren saw the gleam of barbed wire ... new, unrusted wire. The machine gun bullets clacked closer in double, quadruple, uncountable hammering streams. My God, he thought, there must be a score of guns firing, apparently untouched by the tremendous bombardment. His men were going down to right and left, either wounded or diving into shell craters or pressing themselves flat into the mud to seek shelter. The advance stopped.
The advance stopped all along the line. Warren went on a few more painful paces and then jumped down into a crater as machine gun fire slashed and spurted all round him. Geysers of muddy water shot up, soaking him to the skin and fouling his trench cap. Pahlwan Ram, Sher Singh, various orderlies and trumpeters and the gunner party followed him into the huge crater. ‘One of the trumpeters killed, sir,’ Pahlwan Ram said. He was trembling, his face pale and his eyes staring at a point past or through Warren; but there was nobody there.