Road of Bones

by Fergal Keane

  * The famine was caused by a complex interplay of factors: a cyclone that devastated huge areas of rice cultivation; the loss of Burmese rice imports after the Japanese occupation; rumours about shortages and subsequent hoarding of food; incompetence and corruption in the regional government; and the failure of the British and Indian governments to act speedily. Food was being shipped out of Bengal to support the war effort while the population starved. As the historian of the famine, Richard Stevenson, writes: ‘The famine in Bengal was caused by a lack of money, not by a lack of food. A hyperinflation was created in Bengal in 1942 as a result of the war and as a result of government policies. A part of the population, British and Indians connected with the war industries, was protected … the other part, the cultivators and the fishermen, was not protected … The economy of rural Bengal was too simple and impoverished to withstand the profound and prolonged disruptions applied to it by the government, a British government, in pursuit of its war goals.’ Richard Stevenson, Bengal Tiger and British Lion (iUniverse, 2005), p. viii.

  † Twenty out of twenty-four INA soldiers trained in espionage and parachuted behind allied lines were captured; two raiding parties landed by submarine were also arrested.

  * The transformation was directed by General Sir Claude Auchinleck who replaced Wavell as C-in-C India in 1943. Auchinleck began his career in the Punjab Regiment before rising to become one of the most senior British generals. He was immensely popular with the Indian troops.

  SEVEN

  Jungle Wallahs

  By the time they reached the training camp at Ranchi, the officers and men of the 4th West Kents were an exhausted mass. Stiff and sore, they climbed on to waiting trucks which took them to the base where Colonel Saville had imagined his subalterns playing polo and the old soldiers in the ranks had spoken of armies of punkah-wallahs cooling their afternoon naps. The shock of the Ranchi base was profound. It was desolate and dusty and they would live in tents; the place was generously populated with snakes and scorpions, one of the latter giving a painful sting to Ivan Daunt as he worked on repairing a storage building. Daunt recovered after a few days but found little of the Ranchi experience to his taste, although with considerable sangfroid he went on to help his company win the weekly snake-finding contest, organised to entertain the men and keep the serpent population at bay.

  One of the first challenges for the West Kents was to get used to living and working with the great and unsung hero of the Burma campaign – the mule. During the misery of the retreat from Burma in 1942, General Slim had realised the imperative of creating armies that could move swiftly, unencumbered by dependence on ‘the tincan of mechanical transport tied to our tail’. The immediate answer to this problem was the mule, a crossbreed of horse and donkey with greater intelligence and endurance than either. Without these beasts the armies would never have been able to fight in the trackless expanses of the jungle, where trees barred the way to jeeps and the ground became a sucking swamp in the monsoon. As John Winstanley recalled, ‘The mules, of course, were with us all the time. They were our lifeline. We were now an animal borne infantry battalion.’ The search for sufficient mules for Slim’s army ranged far and wide. In one instance 650 mules were transported from Bolivia by an Anglo-Argentine cattle-rancher, Robin Begg, who brought a team of Argentine gauchos with him on the ship to India. The animals were so well cared for that all but three survived the rigorous journey.

  Lieutenant Tom Hogg was allocated five chargers and sixty-five mules. As the son of a farmer, he was judged the right man for converting the 4th West Kents to animal transport. There were several London bus and taxi drivers among his men and he wondered how they would make the transition. There was no need to worry. ‘Many became so attached to their particular mule that they would not allow anyone else to touch them, and later on, grieved terribly when some of the animals unavoidably got wounded or killed in the fighting.’ But Ivan Daunt remembered how the mules learned to regard the approach of a soldier with foreboding. ‘Oh dear, oh dear … as soon as the mule sees you coming towards him … Cor blimey, poor buggers, I felt sorry for ’em. Some of the climbin’ they had to do.’ A mule could take loads of up to 80 pounds on each of its flanks, and in the case of mountain artillery mules more than twice that amount. The mules had one major disadvantage, though. In the still of the jungle, their braying carried long distances and alerted the enemy. The 14th Army solution was to cut out the vocal chords of the unfortunate beasts. A Chindit remembered one mass de-braying: ‘Round came the doctor with a chloroform rag, put over the mule’s mouth or it may have been an injection, I don’t remember. However, one soldier had to sit on the mule’s head with a thing like a dunce’s hat as soon as the doctor cut into the mule’s sound box! The chloroform and blood was so unbearable that the bloke on its head could only stop for a few minutes as it nearly put the soldier to sleep; so all had to take turns. It was horrible – I took my turn!! … When the operation was completed [we were] told to undo our ropes and await the water-man … After one or two splashes the poor animal looked up, all glass eyed, struggled to its feet and tried to use its voice … with no sound coming out!’

  The men learned to move silently through the jungle, and learned how to react if they made a noise or heard a noise. As one British officer remembered, ‘the answer to noise was silence; this was particularly important at night – to freeze for as long as it takes and let the enemy make the mistake and make a noise – although it could have been a monkey following us through the trees.’ The troops were taught how to prepare panji pits as booby traps for the Japanese: these were staves of sharpened bamboo placed in and around concealed pits. They could be smeared with dirt or excrement to ensure the wound inflicted would become poisonous. They learned, too, how to remove leeches by burning them with a cigarette: simply pulling them out with your fingers left the head embedded in the skin and caused blood poisoning. To their disgust, the leeches proved adept at finding their way into the most intimate corners of the anatomy. In return for gifts of cigarettes and salt Indian labourers showed them how to make shelters and beds from bamboo, and which plants were edible and which to avoid. Men from the pioneers, like Ivan Daunt, learned to construct bridges for fording jungle streams and small rivers. Daunt also recalled that they were introduced to American K rations, which included such treats as chopped ham and eggs, veal loaf, instant coffee, cigarettes and chewing gum. All the 4th battalion men regarded them as infinitely superior to the British diet.

  Troops heading into the jungle for the first time learned how easy it was to become lost and to miss a target by a wide distance. An officer later recalled, ‘It was often proved that some soldiers would nearly always move to the right around an obstacle in their path, others would always go round to the left of it. If one continued moving this way for, say, 1,000 yards the objective could be missed by a large margin. The soldier had to bear this in mind and make corresponding corrections as he moved.’ Above all, no one wanted to find himself alone in hostile jungle.

  They carried out mock attacks. Ivan Daunt was lying in a ditch when a senior officer appeared and said, ‘bang bang bang … I am a machine-gunner.’ The men in the ditch were supposed to consider themselves dead. But one of the 4th battalion wags replied, ‘Yes, sir, and I’m an anti-tank gun.’ As Private Daunt recalled, ‘It cracked us up.’ On another occasion, during a night exercise, a patrol surrounded a group of officers sitting in the dark and talking, a habit that might cost their lives fighting the Japanese. The men captured them with a shout of ‘Gotcha!’

  There was a growing feeling among company commanders like John Winstanley and Donald Easten that the exercises were exposing the inadequacy of their commanding officer. After talking it over, the younger officers went in a delegation to see Lieutenant Colonel Saville. Donald Easten described what happened next. ‘We went to see him and each of us told him in turn that we had no absolutely no confidence in him. So he turned to us and said: “Do you realise this is mutiny?” A
nd we said: “It might be, we don’t know. But we have no confidence in you, in putting the lives of our men in your hands in action in Burma.”’ The 4th West Kents were by now part of 161 Brigade, whose commander was the avuncular, if occasionally fiery, Brigadier Frederick ‘Daddy’ Warren. As the senior officer among the group John Winstanley was nominated to take the matter to Warren. ‘He gave me absolute stick … for this mutiny really … to go and say that you are not going to go and work under this man! … and I was sent packing, and the man was removed because as the brigadier said, “Well, you’ve made it impossible for him to command anyhow.”’ Lieutenant Colonel Saville was sent to a staff appointment in Delhi. The man who replaced him would make a profound mark on the 4th West Kents and the whole story of Kohima: he could inspire devotion among his men and the contempt of those he crossed, and he would carry the 4th West Kents through their darkest days.

  He did not at first sight cut an intimidating figure. The new CO was about five foot nine and not heavily built. But Lieutenant Colonel John Laverty had a presence that could cow the toughest of the battalion’s hard men. He was forty-four when he came to lead 4th battalion, still a comparatively young man but nearly two decades older than most of those under his command. Laverty was variously known as ‘Texas Dan’, because of the cowboy-style military hat he wore, or ‘Colonel Lavatory’, the latter nickname apparently derived from a rugby song the precise lyrics of which have been lost to history. Neither men nor officers ever dared to use the nicknames to his face. Laverty carried a long bamboo rod to use as a climbing stick; it could also give him the appearance of a prophet descending from the heavens with the judgement of God.

  John Laverty did not tolerate muttering from his officers. When Lieutenant Tom Hogg went to him to complain about problems created by a soldier in his platoon, Laverty immediately asked him which rifle company he wanted to join. ‘By those who understood the situation this amounted to a “slap across the face” for me,’ recalled Hogg. ‘In fact, that aspect of it went completely over my head at the time, and I enjoyed the prospect of doing some real fighting.’

  One of the battalion medical orderlies, Lance Corporal Frank Infanti, gave a different picture of Laverty. Infanti had a troubled history with the battalion. Both his parents were Italian and this had led to his brother being interned in the opening months of the war, ironically while Frank himself was being evacuated with the West Kents from Dunkirk. When he was refused permission to visit his brother in the internment camp Infanti said he would no longer carry a rifle. In a moment of compassion the then CO decided against disciplinary action and made Infanti a medical orderly. ‘I got on extremely well with Laverty because I’m a little fella. I would never have got in the army normally because I’m too short. And he sort of respected me because I kept up with everybody! On the marches and all that. He was an unusual bloke, Laverty. He used to call me “Doc” Infanti which was a great compliment to an orderly … he spoke in a very cultivated voice … almost as if he had had elocution lessons.’

  John Laverty was born Henry Jarvis Laverty in Londonderry on 8 October 1900 to a prominent family in the building trade. His father Henry built the Protestant cathedral of St Anne’s in Belfast and had a large brickyard in Carrickfergus, which one employee reckoned had ‘made the mortar for half the houses in Carrick in those days’. He went to school at Foyle College, which numbered a Lord Chancellor of Ireland, numerous rugby internationals and a Viceroy of India among its alumni. A month before the end of the First World War, John Laverty applied to Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1921. These were bad years in his home country. Ireland was convulsed by war between the IRA and the forces of the crown. As a member of a prominent Protestant family who had decided to join the British army, it is safe to surmise that John Laverty would have had little sympathy with Irish rebels.

  What Laverty retained of that Ulster Protestant upbringing was the flinty outward manner of a man raised among righteous but unyielding citizens. His son Patrick, who saw his father only once during the war, thought him a soldier to the core. ‘Pure and simple he was a warrior. That is what he was good at … He was pretty tough. They called him bloody-minded and I think he probably was. You didn’t get anywhere. I mean once he made up his mind he couldn’t be varied at all. He was absolutely pig-headed in that regard.’

  After three years in the Inniskilling Fusiliers, Laverty joined the Essex Regiment, where his index card referred to him as ‘Mad Jack’, possibly a reflection of the bloody-minded personality described by his son and some of his junior officers. His war-fighting experience was gained in the small colonial police actions of the inter-war period, firstly in Kurdistan and later in Sudan. He was awarded a Military Cross during the suppression of the Kurds in 1932 and was later promoted to be Inspector of Signals for the British-controlled Iraqi army. By the time the Second World War broke out John Laverty was back with the Essex Regiment, with the rank of major, and had married Renee Stagg, a doctor’s daughter from Southend, whom he had met while playing golf. Within a few months of their wedding she was pregnant with the first of three children. On the outbreak of war Laverty was posted to the East End of London on ‘anti-panic’ duty, while Renee and her baby were sent to Shropshire to escape the Blitz. ‘There was a big parting of the ways. Everybody was going through those kind of separations,’ Renee recalled. John Laverty was eventually posted to serve with the Essex Regiment in India in 1942. By the following year he had been promoted from major to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel and sent to lead 4th battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, into battle.

  Captain Donald Easten remembered his arrival. ‘I thought to myself, “Thank God, at last we have someone who knows what he is talking about.” He was not the kind of person you would say, “I would do anything for this chap,” but at least he was competent. You knew his decisions would be properly thought out. I didn’t love him. I don’t think any of us did. We respected him.’ Respect would have been enough for John Laverty.

  The men were coming to the end of their training period and could properly call themselves ‘jungle wallahs’. Ray Street was one of the smaller men in the battalion and weighed only eight and a half stone, but he was quick on his feet and brave, ideal material for a battlefield messenger who would have to run quickly between positions under fire. He had started the war as a soldier in the Worcester Regiment but after undergoing his jungle training in India was sent off to 4th battalion to help bring them up to full strength for the fighting ahead. Street had not seen combat yet, but had heard his father’s stories of the fighting at Gallipoli and the throat wound that had nearly ended his life. His experience of war on the home front had been eventful. Having enlisted first into the Home Guard, Street was allocated to Birmingham city centre and found himself there during a German bombing raid. A stick of bombs hit the street next to where he was standing. Running to the scene he saw that a cinema had been hit and the street was full of screaming, wounded people. He rushed inside to help evacuate the survivors. A woman sat with her arms folded serenely in the seat where she had been watching the film. But her head had been sliced cleanly off by a piece of flying metal.

  By now the old Kentish character of 4th battalion had changed. There was still a core of men like John Winstanley, Ivan Daunt and Donald Easten who had been through France and North Africa together, and who came from within a few miles of each other at home in England. But Ray Street was a Brummie and his mate Dennis Wykes came from Coventry; the new CO was an Irishman; and there were Welsh and Scottish voices to be heard too. The Kentish component had gradually come to accept Dennis Wykes and the other replacements, although he was still some way from being able to call any of them his friends. ‘They looked at us warily as if to say “you haven’t seen any action and we wonder what you’re going to be like.”’

  The oddest of the newcomers to join them in India was the posh boy. Of all the men in the ranks of 4th battalion, John Harma
n was the most enigmatic, not only because of the extraordinary nature of what he would do, but also because his background was so different and his personality so resistant to easy definition. He must have been one of the most unlikely candidates to win the Victoria Cross of the whole war. John Pennington Harman, known to his friends as plain ‘Jack’, was the eldest son of a millionaire. His sister Diana, one of three siblings, said, ‘Although he seemed to disregard society right through his life he wasn’t at all insensitive. It’s just that he didn’t play by the same rules. He found that they led you up blank ways. He didn’t find that he was pursuing the things he was interested in if he conformed.’ At prep school in Bristol he was unhappy; it was not just the normal pain of a child removed to a boarding school at seven years of age, but also the sense of being forced into a straitjacket of discipline and expectation for which he had no sympathy. There was an added complication. John’s dormitory was close to the Bristol Zoo in Clifton and at nights he was distressed by the sounds of animals. They represented, according to his sister, ‘unwelcome captivity and restraint’. He ran away from school twice before his parents brought him home.

  He was then sent to the famous Bedales School in rural Hampshire. Founded by J. H. Badley in 1893, Bedales was a revolutionary establishment by the standards of its day. Stressing that each child needed to be treated as an individual human being, Badley saw the era after the First World War as ‘a great opportunity, one of the greatest in our history, if only it can be realised and utilised to the full’. The school was a haven for nonconformists and while John never focused on his academic work, lacking ‘concentration in things which did not interest him’, he was allowed to indulge his love of nature in the school’s ample grounds. As his sister Diana saw it, ‘he seldom wanted to finish something he had embarked upon – it didn’t seem quite important enough to engage him’.