To The Coral Strand

by John Masters

  I took back the letter and put it into my pocket. I hesitated a moment, and that moment of standing there, staring at them, may have had important effects later. They must have thought I had come out hotfoot, direct from the King, with orders to execute a traitor; and, obviously, to appoint someone in his place. But for a few moments I did not know what to do.

  I could take over the corps myself. Then my credentials might be queried, my authority demanded. Being superseded in command was far more serious to most of these clots than losing a war. Certainly there would be frantic jealousy, and the consequences of that might be worse than the normal and to-be- expected incompetence. Some of the men in that room must also be in the plot to sell out to the Indians - but which? At that instant, not knowing who might have talked, or how much, someone was quaking in his boots, someone was wondering how to put me out of the way.

  I made up my mind. I must work through the senior officer. I turned to the major-general commanding the infantry division, and -- ‘Sir, His Majesty charges you with the command, and appoints you to the rank of lieutenant-general ... May I have a word with you in private?’

  The major-general, Sher Khan, called for the sentries to come in. No one spoke while they lifted the corpse and half carried, half dragged it outside. Sher Khan said, ‘The rest of you - get the mess cleaned up. Wait here.’

  Then he and I went into one of the bedrooms. He bolted the door. ‘There must be other traitors. Who are they?’ he asked. ‘I need to know. Otherwise I may entrust one of them with some vital job.’

  He looked haggard and very old, though he was hardly fifty. You’re probably on the edge of the plot yourself, I thought. I said, ‘His Majesty did not reveal that to me, sir ... Can you tell me briefly what is happening?’

  Sher Khan stared down at the bed, his hands shaking. He pulled himself together with a visible effort and began to talk.

  The Indians were advancing on a broad front - up the gorge itself astride the main road, and wide round both north and south flanks. None of the dispositions we had planned had been made. ‘Gokal’s orders,’ he said miserably. ‘He said --’

  I interrupted him. What Gokal had said or done no longer mattered. He was dead. ‘Have you had any identifications of units yet?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The 1/13th Gurkha Rifles on the north, and the 3/5th Mahratta Light Infantry on the south.’

  ‘In the centre?’

  He said, ‘Tanks of the Central India Horse, and infantry - 2/18th Royal Garhwal Rifles ... They’re going to have us surrounded if we don’t pull back.’

  I said, ‘All those are in different brigades. My God, it can’t be possible!’

  Max and I, both commanding battalions, served in Burma together under a flatulent genius who had read too much American Civil War history and had a cold contempt for men whose skins weren’t white. Inspired by this combination, he had launched us not once, nor twice, but three times, on grandiose double encirclements, like a boxer trying to hit his enemy on both ears at the same time. Needless to say, the despised yellowbellies had counterpunched straight back down the middle, smashed the pivot, overrun guns and headquarters, and left Max and me to get our battalions back as best we could, without ammunition, food, or medical help. It seemed incredible that Max was doing the same now. If all three of his brigades, and the armour, were in the line he had no reserve to speak of.

  We sent for the intelligence officer and he gave us more identifications, more reports from spies and guerrillas. There could be no doubt about it. Max was committing a cardinal sin.

  I talked rapidly to Sher Khan. A great victory lay to hand. His eyes began to gleam. Every soldier dreams of the laurels, of the people in the street saying, ‘That’s him, the man who won the Famous Victoree.’ Sher Khan may have been on the edge of treason and he was not the most intelligent man in the world, but he could see this clearly enough. There were some technical points to be agreed, where to put the anti-tank guns, and when and where to commit the tanks - but the outline was plain enough. ‘It only needs energy and decision, sir,’ I said, ‘and the will to fight.’

  He was eager to go, then. ‘One moment, sir,’ I said, ‘I have another message for the officers, from His Majesty.’

  The grey look returned to his face, but he nodded and we went through to the hall. The murmur of nervous conversation ceased. I stood there, suddenly aware of my dinner jacket. I took it off, for the day had become warm now. The white shirt and black bow tie did not seem so odd. I gathered their eyes to me. I began.

  ‘Gentlemen, officers of His Majesty …. General Sher Khan sees the prospect of a great victory before us. In a moment he will give us his orders to bring it about ... We have only to do our duty. His Majesty reminds you that you are fighting for the honour of your names as well as his. He repeats that we are fighting for our future as free men, for the right to rule ourselves in our own way, and not by the dictate of babus in Delhi. If we fail in our duty none of us will ever be able to stand straight and look another man in the eye. We have eaten His Majesty’s salt.’

  I watched them as I spoke. Some kept their eyes downcast and did not look at me. In others, a spark of spirit began to glow. I am no Churchill and there was little emotion in my words, for I could find none. But there was agate hardness, and ruthless determination.

  I ended: ‘I have one final message from His Majesty ...’ I looked slowly round the room, trying not to load my glance too heavily with menace; I didn’t want to drive anyone to desperation. ‘It is this. His Majesty knows that this treason was not confined to General Gokal Singh alone. The action he will later take depends not on words or thoughts but on deeds - on what is done today.’ I saluted Sher Khan, left the room, and sat down exhausted on the veranda steps. Gokal Singh’s body lay on the grass, covered by a blanket. No one went near it.

  And the will to fight. Those were the key words. I knew why Max was coming on like an amateur. I had seen that formation many times before - in the military history books, in the diagrams showing the methods used in our old battles against petty rajahs, nizams, amirs, shahs, and mandarins, from Suez to Peking. I could quote the text, written about 1870: ‘Against an Oriental opponent, too much manoeuvring is a waste of time and can lead to disorganisation. It is usually best to go straight for him, confident that a determined assault, pressed home, will cause his febrile enthusiasm, unbacked by discipline, to evaporate. A few scattered groups, led by individual brave men, may fight with desperation, and cause considerable damage, while the rest flee, but even this serves in the end only to destroy the enemy’s leadership and break his cohesion ...’

  Max was treating us just as the old Indian Army had treated his ancestors. For ‘Oriental’ substitute ‘old-fashioned’, ‘non-progressive’, ‘reactionary’, or any of the other labels the Indian radio had been tying on to us for the past six months, and you had Max’s tactical doctrine.

  I got up, went back into the hall, and listened to the last part of Sher Khan’s orders. The colonels and brigadiers hurried off. I checked with Sher Khan to make sure I knew what was planned. Then I got into the Bentley. Now my real job began - to force the commanders to fight.

  I drove south across the plain, on rutted cart tracks, found a brigadier, and listened while he gave his orders. I went up to the battalion in contact and heard the sharpening of the fire, so much so that the Indian artillery, which had been very quiet, opened fire. But our men held them. Returning to brigade headquarters I saw another battalion marching off post-haste to enter the general reserve for the great blow.

  At twelve I ran back to the Bentley and drove to the main road. Max was getting annoyed, and now his medium artillery began to fire. The heavy shells whined overhead with an angry roar, and burst far back where the road came out on to the plain, where the transporters were parked. Other guns began to fire on the Sakti dak bungalow, since the heavier fighting had now made it obvious that there would be no rendezvous with Gokal Singh, no agreed surrender there. I f
ound our tanks, concealed in scrub jungle, the men resting, the junior commanders studying their maps.

  At two I went forward to the leading battalion on the main road, near the entrance to the Lapri Gorge. Here the shelling was heavy and the raw troops looked nervous as men were hit and trenches destroyed. The brigadier came round with me and I thought his men would hold long enough. They were due to pull back in half an hour. Behind them engineers worked with frantic haste to lay a minefield, on to which we would draw Max’s armour when this lot retreated. I visited the anti-tank guns, which were concealed as carefully as possible - not very well, but one or two of our own fighters were always in the air, and the Indians had not attempted to come over.

  Going back, on my circuitous way to the northern flank, I found the commander-in-chief’s Rolls parked in a grove beside a small stream that crossed the road there. The old Prince, dressed in a magnificent Mogul costume of green and gold silk, was eating lunch off silver plates laid round him on the grass. His chauffeur was preparing a hookah, and the groom was currycombing the grey charger tethered to a tree.

  He invited me cordially to share his lunch with him, but I refused. He had no idea what the battle plan was and begged me not to tell him. He was sure it was good, but much too complicated for him to understand. One of the young colonels would come to him when the climactic moment was at hand. He looked very calm and sure, and before I left I knelt quickly before him, and placed my hands between his. He squeezed them and said, ‘God be with you, Savage. You are a good man, a real sahib.’

  Over to the north flank: the same situation as on the south - one of our battalions holding two or three of theirs, the rest gone into the central reserve. I drove back to the main road, begged food off the headquarters of a regiment of field artillery, and ate it quickly.

  Crash! On the stroke of four o’clock Max’s artillery opened up all along the front. He had stopped fooling, and begun his attack. Calls for defensive fire began to increase until they came in like a flood. From them, and the occasional situation reports, I could tell what was happening. On the south our men were pulling back, drawing the enemy farther along the slope. Over there I saw shells bursting in the distance, and clouds of dust rising on the ridge. To the north the same, but our men were retreating faster than they should. In the middle, reports of enemy tanks advancing under heavy covering fire. Our anti-tank guns in action. Two Indian tanks on fire, three ...

  Now was the moment. We had them trapped, just as we had planned - half his tanks on the plain, half in the gorge, and no reserve to counter ours. A heavy attack by our fighter bombers had been called for. The anti-tank guns and forward infantry only had to stand firm for half an hour behind the minefield while our own tanks moved up, with the reserve ... They were on the way now.

  The artillery colonel turned to me, his face anxious. ‘The planes aren’t coming.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘No reason given.’

  Who’d ordered that, I raged. But perhaps it wasn’t an order. Perhaps the Indians had raided the fields. Perhaps ...

  ‘Call for SOS fire on A.36,’ the gunner colonel said. I looked at his map. SOS A.36 was right in the middle of one of our forward positions. ‘They’ve vacated it,’ the gunner said.

  SOS on B.7, also in the centre, also where the men were supposed to be standing fast. The line was crumbling at the one point where it had to stand firm. Who was giving these orders?

  Where was the treachery now? The automatic itched against my side.

  ‘Our tanks ceased their advance. Halted at 403621. That’s a mile over there, on the north.’

  Prince Afif rode by alone, on his charger, his scimitar on his shoulder. I jumped into the Bentley and tore up the road. Smoke and dust and bitter explosive fumes from bursting shells lashed at me. If I could reach the armour - if I could get to them, shoot the man who had ordered the halt, take command myself, find the young major, someone, anyone who had a fire in his belly ... I rammed the Bentley along a cart track, turned right, raced it across country.

  I knew what had happened: Max was right, the old textbooks were right - that was all. But there was still a chance. If I could just get to the armoured brigade . . . surely someone would stand fast over there, in the centre, when they saw their old Prince riding forward alone? Surely, just for a few minutes....?

  The rock outcrops concealed a sunken road. I bounced into it and turned left. The sound of aircraft distracted my attention and, looking up, I saw Indian Spitfires overhead. When I lowered my eyes I found myself motoring at fifty miles an hour straight at the dark-green hulk of a tank - a Sherman tank of the Indian Army. I stood on the brakes, and dived out while the Bentley was still moving. I heard the roar of the tank’s ‘75, and felt the blast of the explosion as the shell ripped into the Bentley’s engine. She exploded in flames but by then I was out of the sunken road and running across bare ground. There were other tanks behind the first and their co-axial Brownings tore the air into noisy strips about my ears. I saw a sort of depression near a low bush, and as I dived for it a mad mule kicked me in the back and hurled me into it.

  I felt no pain then, only suffocation, and my breath trying to come in heavy groans. My shirt was getting wet.

  Three or four co-axes were tearing up the earth by my head, like pneumatic drills, deafening me. They stopped, and a colossal explosion showered me with dirt. That was a turret gun again. One more of those would blast me to pieces. I staggered to my feet, wondering whether they’d bother to stop firing, whether they could. Someone might have his finger on the trigger as I rose.

  I stood there a long time, one hand on my belly, blood pouring out over my fingers, hurting badly now, seeing nothing in the low glare of the sun. I thought I was in water, and swimming. Everything was silent. The tank engines must have been running but I didn’t hear them. One of the tanks glided close to me and I tried to focus. Someone was leaning out of the turret.

  ‘Salaam, sahib,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Ap kaise hain?’

  My head cleared with miraculous suddenness. The pain grew steadily worse, but I could see and understand very clearly. It was Rissaldar Rikirao Purohit, of the Bombay Lancers. I knew him well, because we had fought in Burma together. Also because he had shown me his family’s most treasured possession, a faded letter commending Daffadar Rikirao Purohit of the Bombay Lancers for good work against a Thug gang. The letter was dated March 27, 1826, and signed by William Savage. His great-great-grandfather, and mine.

  ‘Salaam, rissaldar sahib,’ I said. ‘Ap kaise hain?’

  One must observe the decencies. The rissaldar-sahib had asked me how I was, I had asked him how he was. Next must come a formal invitation to be seated, to have a cigarette.

  ‘Tashrif rakhiye,’ I said. ‘Sigrit pijiye.’

  He said, ‘Thank you, sahib. I regret I have to be going.’ He ducked down inside the turret. On the sunken road the Bentley burned with an orange flame and dense black smoke. The man leaning out of the next tank I had also known in Burma and I saw that he was now a daffadar. I congratulated him on his promotion. ‘Thank you, sahib,’ he said, smiling from ear to ear.

  Rikirao’s head popped back up out of the turret. ‘We have been ordered to stay where we are,’ he said. ‘There is perhaps a ceasefire. I think the enemy have surrendered.’

  Agile as a cat he climbed out of the turret and ran to me. ‘Your wound, sahib,’ he said, ‘it is serious. Does it hurt badly?’

  ‘Only when I laugh, rissaldar sahib,’ I said, and fainted.

  When I came round I was sitting up beside the main road. I don’t know how I got there. Rikirao was supporting me in his arms, my shirt was raised, and there were a couple of shell dressings over my wound. My nostrils reeked of iodine and it hurt worse than ever. My daffadar friend jabbed a needle into my arm. A group of soldiers were brewing up tea in a desert cooker - an old kerosene oil can filled with earth and soused with gasoline. A few minutes later a young sowar brought me tea in a mess-tin, b
ut Rikirao said sharply, ‘Not with a belly wound, O outwitted yokel. Are you trying to kill the sahib?’

  Dimly I heard other voices. A staff car had stopped on the road. Max and L. P. Roy were walking towards me. Everyone saluted, and I managed to raise my hand to my forehead.

  Max dropped to one knee. ‘Rodney, are you all right?’

  ‘My pistol went off by accident,’ I said, ‘while I was cleaning it.’ A high proportion of belly wounds are fatal. Internal bleeding would show its effect soon enough and then I’d go out. I didn’t care.

  Roy’s voice said, ‘Colonel Savage!’

  ‘O-B-E-M-C,’ I mumbled.

  It was getting hard to talk straight, the morphia taking effect but the wound still raging, but one has to keep the natives in their place.

  ‘Armed, in action, wearing civilian clothes,’ Roy said. ‘I warned you.’

  ‘General Gokal ... invitation to breakfast,’ I got out. ‘Said, come as you are.’

  ‘And we have half a dozen witnesses to prove that you murdered General Gokal Singh!’ Roy shouted. He was furious again.

  Max interrupted roughly. ‘That can be settled later, sahib.’ He rattled off orders: ‘Get up the jeep ambulance. Take him direct to the C.C.S. You, go with him.’

  Roy said, ‘I shall hold you personally responsible for his safe custody, General.’

  Rikirao said, ‘I’ll take him back myself, sahib.’

  ‘Only when I laugh,’ I mumbled, seeing no one any more, trying to shout it against the encroaching darkness. ‘Only when I laugh ... only when ...’ I lost consciousness, my last thought being a certain knowledge that whether this dark slope led immediately to death or not I would never laugh again.

  Chapter 15

  Major-general Ran Singh Dadhwal, comfortably settled in the canvas chair in his office tent, slowly filled his pipe. Through the open end of the tent he looked out over the plain of Sakti, dull in the twilight. The single bulb, hanging from the ridgepole by its cord, came on, gave out a wavering light, and faded. The general frowned, listening with half an ear for the kick and throb of the generator to start again. When it did, he noted that the current was still unsteady. He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote briefly.