by Kim Newman
Vinh was waving his Colt .45.
Minutes passed. Some of the weaker prisoners sagged. Others got fidgety.
"Stan Butler, come out, come out," yelled Vimto. "Olly-olly-ox-in-free!"
"He'll be half-way to Saigon, by now," Terry said.
Vinh marched over, furious, pistol cocked.
"Or Hanoi," Terry allowed. "He was a bus driver. Terrible sense of direction."
"Escape is not possible."
"Captain, do you really think one of your guards would put it in his report if he fell asleep at his post?"
Vimto obviously had thought of that, but couldn't afford to lose face. Only the prisoners would suffer now. Later, he was quite capable of having some sixteen-year-old NVA peasant shot as well. The Captain put the muzzle of the gun to Terry's nose, and grinned.
"Not so uppity, eh?"
Terry stared the treen down.
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
Bob heard something. A boom, off away in the distance, like far-off thunder. He thought it was panicked blood pounding in his ears, but he realised Terry and Vinh heard it too, and were distracted from their face-off.
It was a thrumm, now. Like a gramophone played too loud three doors down, rattling ornaments on the mantelpiece, but too distorted to make out the tune. There was just a throbbing bass line.
Vinh, strangely, was struck afraid. He backed away from Terry and looked up into the sky, clutching his gun as if it were a lucky charm.
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dummm-dum. ..
It was music. Ominous oom-pahs. Someone laughed in surprise. Vimto shot him in the knee.
Bob recognised the tune as the words cut in.
"Ifyou go down in the woods today" sang Henry Hall...
"It's the bloody 'Teddy Bears' Picnic'," said Terry.
Accompanying the song was the slicing of helicopter rotors. Vimto was issuing orders in rapid Vietnamese to scurrying guards. Bob's stomach sank. Anything that scared Vinh's boys was not necessarily good for the prisoners.
The music filled the air like a hailstorm. Bob felt it in his teeth.
Tum-te-tum-te-tum-te-tum-te-tum-te. ..
"Look!" said Terry, pointed.
Above the treeline were ten helicopters, in a loose vee formation. Westland Wessexes and Scouts. The music came from loudspeakers mounted over their cargo doors.
Some of the prisoners started waving their arms and dancing for joy. Rescue was at hand.
Vinh shouted orders up to the observation tower. For a moment, Bob was certain he'd have the machine gun rake the exercise ground and massacre the prisoners. Instead, the gun was pointed at the sky.
Some of the men were singing along.
Bob found himself humming, dit-dit-de-de, dit-dit-de-dum...
Something flared from the lead wokka, burning a trail across the sky, imprinting a neon squiggle on Bob's eyeballs.
"Everybody down," Terry yelled.
Henry Hall—mainstay of Children's Favourites, hosted on the BBC Light Programme by Uncle Mac throughout the halcyon decade of Bob's childhood—whispered thunderously, as the delicate sounds of his band drowned out explosions and gunfire.
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The rocket detonated in the observation tower. Guards and the gun exploded out of the fireball and rained around in flaming chunks.
Today was the bloody day, the day those sodding teddy bears finally had their fucking picnic!
This was not a day anybody wanted to be in the woods!
The guards started shooting the prisoners. A bullet spanged in the dirt between Bob and Terry. They rolled backwards, towards a hut.
Machine guns opened up from the helicopters, stitching across the village at random, killing as many prisoners as guards. Bob realised this was not a rescue mission. The men in the helicopters probably didn't realise they were attacking a prison camp. Everyone who died was a treen. That was how you knew one Indo-Chinese from another. The ones you killed were the enemy.
Eddie Booth and Bill Reynolds jumped up and down and waved in the middle of the carnage, trying to signal the wokkas. The machines circled the village, machine-gunning and firing missiles.
Everything was on fire.
Terry had swiped a rifle from a dead guard. Bob knew he was looking for Vimto. But this was Indo-China. You didn't kill who you wanted to, you killed who you could.
Terry shot a jabbering guard.
Bob felt burning thatch fall on his legs. Terry dragged him out of the fire.
"I owe you, our kid."
"I'm paying you back for that Stanley Matthews cigarette card."
There was an explosion, very near. Eddie Booth was tossed up in the air and came down in flames. It was no use. The wokkas were going to blitzkrieg everyone and everything. They were going to die. Terry?" Aye?"
When you went out with Thelma, you know, for those two weeks." Forget it." But did you..." Yes."
Bastard, Bob thought. "I forgive you," he said.
"So do I."
Then the shooting stopped. A xylophone sounded in the song's middle-eight. Crackling fires spread. A few people were moaning.
Bob and Terry were still alive.
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Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
The helicopters touched down, rotors slowing. The music faded.
A rotund officer, wearing a panama hat over earphones and cricket-pads over khaki drills, jumped out, accompanied by a small mongrel dog and juniors with guns. He strode straight under the whipping scythes of the rotors, towering over men who bent double. Pausing, he took a deep breath, and said, "I love the smell of burning flesh in the morning. It tastes like...cooked breakfast."
We soon realised the man who had stepped out of the sky was Major Nigel "Mad Nye" Molesworth of the Long Range Jungle Patrol Group. Terry was greatly dischuffed to discover the LURP hadn't made a special raid to rescue us.
What theyd seen from the air was a couple of hundred yards square of empty jungle — our exercise ground — that was the nearest thing theyd find to a cricket pitch this far up the Ulu. They even parked two of their helicopters at either end to act as sight-screens for the bowlers. Apparently, it was Sunday, and Molesworth always played cricket on Sunday. He wasnt going to let a little thing like the Indo-China War break that habit. He even insisted on breaking for tea at four sharp, and served cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. He had a standing order with Fortnum and Masons Hong Kong branch.
Terry and I were too exhausted to complain. We werent the only survivors; of the 200 or so of us there, perhaps 50 had been killed or injured, and a few of the guards had disappeared into the jungle to chance the snakes and their own punji traps.
So we sat there and watched the cricket. Molesworth ordered two of the helicopters to ferry survivors back to our lines south of the DMZ, starting with the most urgent casualties.
Molesworth quickly fixed on the tall and athletic Bill Reynolds, reckoning that any West Indian must be a born cricketer. He was right. Bill was a demon bowler and a handy batsman. Terry and me had always reckoned cricket was for nancies — not a proper game like football — though we both kept quiet about that. Molesworths Gurkha wicket keeper had a necklace of human fingerbones.
Lieutenant Darbishire, the bespectacled medical officer and the nearest thing to a sane man in the unit, got us to help him out collecting identity discs from the dead.
"This Noote sounds VC material, " he commented.
Late that afternoon, with Captain Jennings at the bat, an enemy patrol found us. Some of the guards must have got through to make a report. The
Back in the USSA
treens could hardly miss a load of helicopters and two-dozen white-clad Ruperts hitting a ball around the jungle. They opened up with small arms and grenades. Molesworth ordered the machine-gunners to keep them at bay while the last few overs were played. I revised my opinion of cricket. Or decided that nancies were a lot harder than we had thought.
Jennings was bowled out and, since his side needed
thirty off two overs to draw level with Molesworth, gracefully conceded. Molesworth considered it and accepted. I knew damn well he'd have liked to play it out to the end.
We realised that all the other survivors had been ferried out by now. Terry, Bill Reynolds and me were the last Loamshires left. We had no choice but to go along with the LURP.
Molesworth was the last aboard the bus. He strolled over to the machine Terry and me were in, bat slung over his shoulder, stumps under his other arm, pads flapping in the downdraft from the rotors. He sat down next to me and unbuckled his pads. Over the racket of the engine, the door-gunner pumping tracers into the jungle below. This time, the loudspeakers were playing <( Nellie the Elephant"
"The Mekon don t play cricket, " he shouted to me, "chiz chiz. "
Bob had realised within moments of setting foot on the sound stage that he came at the absolute bottom of the pecking order. Having written "the original book" made him of considerably less interest to grips and extras than, say, being the lad from the canteen who brought down the tea-urn and biscuits.
After two months of shooting, he had learned to blend in with the many busily-employed people whose jobs were hard to define. Sometimes, he would be called on for an opinion that would, likely as not, be ignored or overruled by Powell. Very occasionally, he was palmed off on some journalist or television interviewer down to do a story on the film.
Puttnam had gone native and joined the effects crew. He was merrily sloshing buckets of kensington gore over people. Powell was sneakily getting shots of the man from the censors with blood up to his elbows. He was shooting ridiculously violent scenes that he would willingly sacrifice during the inevitable arguments over final cut, just so he could get away with the things he really wanted to keep.
They really did use tomato ketchup. Every time Powell shot a battle scene, the set smelled like a chip shop.
/ love the smell of burning flesh in the morning...
Bob shuddered.
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Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
At first, he had worried that he wouldn't be able to stand watching the filming. He still wore his commando knife and had nightmares. Everything had associations that took him back: noises, sights, smells, phrases.
Though the actors had real-looking guns, they made only the feeblest of pops when they were fired off. Bob understood that the rat-tat-tat sounds were added later by Dino DiCampo, the foley artist. As Rodney Bewes and James Bolam ran across the stage for the dozenth time, stepping between pre-set firework charges, firing their toy guns into the air, Bob was taken back not to Indo but to the Waste Ground where he and Terry played War as kids. The actors were doing the same thing.
He felt an almost physical ache for what was lost. They had played British and Germans. Or, during the War of 1956, British and Egyptians. Then, after they had both seen Jack Warner as the secret agent in / Was a Communist for MI6, they had been parachuted into America to ferret out atom secrets. Thelma had been briefly impressed into service as the Yankee temptress played by Patricia Roc.
If Bob ever had a son, and caught him playing War, he would belt him black and blue. If, as it seemed sometimes, the Indo-China War dragged on long enough for a son of Bob's to grow up and be conscripted into it, Bob would put the lad on the Paddy Boat himself, and send him off to Ireland with all the other beetniki and conchies.
His family had done its bit.
"Again," drawled Powell, who treated actors worse than he treated anyone else, which was quite an achievement. "Try to look more terrified, fellows. The treens are trying to kill you, after all."
In the back of the helicopter, as "I am a Mole and I Live in a Hole" played on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Bob and Terry clung to the webbing and listened to Darbishire's modest war stories. The lieutenant clearly didn't like recounting his own exploits and played everything down if he had been involved. With Captain Jennings, he had actually been to Hanoi undercover, and blown up two American oil-tankers in Haiphong Harbour. Darbishire was keener on regaling them with anecdotes about his comrades.
Molesworth and his band of merry cut-throats specialised in rescuing downed pilots, carrying out daring acts of sabotage along the Casey Jones Trail or having hairsbreadth escapes. They were supposed to be executing covert reconnaissance missions deep inside enemy territory but spent most
El
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of their time on high-profile japes and wheezes. These public schoolboys seemed to be in a different war. Bob couldn't imagine them experiencing the terror, discomfort, misery and doubt that had been his lot ever since Sergeant Grimshaw first called him a tart. In peacetime they'd all be Arctic explorers, mountaineers or in prison.
"Winker" Watson, who had been captured by the enemy five times and on each occasion had escaped in the same way most people would nip out for a packet of tabs, was the door-gunner on this ship. He periodically raked the jungle with fire, claiming to be tiger-hunting.
"Do you know," said Darbishire, "I think Winker's just popped someone."
They looked out of the open door and saw two bodies sprawled in a clearing. Among them were the half-assembled parts of what looked like an American-made rocket-launcher.
"A boundary," said Winker.
The helicopters were playing "pub cricket" scoring runs on the number of legs possessed by their kills. It was considered bad form to take pot shots at innocent goats to get ahead.
Darbishire, trusted to keep the score, made a note.
"You're all bloody doolally," Terry said.
Darbishire shrugged, embarrassed.
"If you think we're mad, wait until you meet the chap at the end of our little Sunday jaunt."
They were proceeding north-west into Laos, over mountainous country. The jungle below was thicker, more remote from the War, but primordially dangerous. Bob half-expected a long-necked brontosaurus to poke its head out of the trees, roaring at the flying machines.
Darbishire flipped open a file folder marked "MOST SECRET" and showed them a photograph. It showed a smooth-faced chinless youth with a mop of curly locks in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards, sheathed sword in one hand, bearskin in the other. He stood erect, but had a big, open smile. He looked about fourteen.
"This is Major Basil Fotherington-Thomas. Major Molesworth was at school with him."
"Looks harmless," Terry said.
Darbishire wiped his specs.
"Looks can be deceiving, old man. Fotherington-Thomas has more medal ribbons than Lord Emsworth's prize pig. Mountbatten called him 'the finest jungle fighter of his generation', said he was the new Wingate.
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
He's been out here since '63. We haven't had official word from him in 18 months, but intelligence suggests he is running his own show from some stone age settlement way, way up the Ulu. He's got his own war going, and has been upsetting top brass by popping off some people who are supposed to be our allies. He issues statements, claiming responsibility for assassinations, always branding the dead as traitors or corrupt. He's had a few ARVN Generals killed."
"And were they traitors or corrupt?" Bob asked.
"Well, in all probability, yes. But it still doesn't do just to top them in the street, you know. Due process of law, and all that."
"You've let this go on for a year and a half?" said Terry.
"This isn't the first attempt to, um, re-establish contact with Major Fotherington-Thomas. Have you ever heard of 'Just William'?"
"The tunnel fighter?"
"That's the fellow. Captain William Brown, the solo man. Once sat in one of those enemy tunnels on his own for twenty days awaiting business, then scragged eighteen treens, armed with only a Sykes-Fairburn knife and a torch."
Darbishire dug out another photograph.
"Brown was sent in alone to talk sense to Fotherington-Thomas. Hasn't been seen since."
Bob looked at the photograph.
"Yes, he bloody has," he said. "I saw this bloke dragged up
as a tart in Saigon. He assassinated an ARVN officer. One shot to the head."
"I'm not surprised. Seems 'Just William' has joined the other team. Frightful bad show, really."
Though he must have been pushing eighty, Schmuel Gelbfisch wore a violently orange kaftan over his swollen belly and a leopard-spotted fur hat on his bald head. He was propped up by a nineteen-year-old "secretary" with the shortest skirt Bob had ever seen and soft leather thigh-boots. He had to be arranged in his seat in the screening room like a sultan being lowered into a bath of pillows.
Born in Warsaw, Gelbfisch was the first film producer to relocate from Berlin and establish his studio in the Ukraine, which became the global centre of the entertainment industry in the teens and was only now surrendering its pre-eminence to international co-productions shot with the cheap labour of Spain and the Philippines. The growling bear of Metropolis-Gelbfisch-Mayer, the company Gelbfisch founded with the
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Czech writer Carl Mayer in 1919 to make the silent classic The Blood Lust of Dr. Caligari, was still the most familiar trademark in the world. He had stayed in power longer than any president or monarch.
Martino Scorsese, Gelbfisch's grand vizier, sat immediately to his left and a little below. Michael Powell, a supplicant for once, had dressed up a bit with a beret, and was seated within swatting distance of the mogul.
Bob was jammed in down at the front with the "talent" Rodney Bewes apologetically introduced himself.
"I'm doing my best to be you, mate. Honest."
Bob thanked him. From what he had seen, Bewes was a fine actor, even if he wouldn't last ten minutes in the Wheeltappers much less Indo-China. He'd still have preferred Albert Finney, who had just made King and Country, 2. film about the man who shot Sergeant Grimshaw, with Leo McKern as John Mortimer, the QC whose argument failed to save Arthur Seaton from the gallows. In King and Country, Grim was being played by a much more sinister actor than William Hartnell, the black-browed and scowling Patrick Troughton.
Powell got up and coughed for silence. Bob had expected him to moderate his manner in the Royal Presence, but he drawled as confidently as usual, explaining that they were about to see a fine assembly of the attack on the prison camp. It would be the last scene before the intermission.