“She’s a lovely child,” I said kindly when I’d admired the photograph for the tenth time, “now do you think you can move your arse and get the men on parade before the Colonel comes back from Headquarters.”
I liked Gibraltar. Everything seemed to be comfortable there. We had good quarters and plenty of free time to visit the town. I sent a box of oranges home and I had a note from Mother to say that they’d arrived and that John loved them. After that, I’d send the odd gift for him, clockwork toys when I could get them and once a little bullfighter’s uniform. Elizabeth wrote once, very affectionate and grateful for the toys. “But he still loves the train set best,” she said. John had written ‘love from John’ in higgledy-piggledy pencil on the bottom of her letter. I kept that letter for ages, in my breast pocket until it disintegrated in the blood that spread from my chest when I was wounded.
When war was declared in September, I thought we would be sent home to get ready to face the Germans, but to my surprise we had orders for India and enshipped within three weeks. Now there was a to-do with Lewis. He went berserk at being sent even further away from his Sarah and their baby.
“I can’t go,” he said, white faced, wild eyed and pacing around the sergeants’ mess. “I won’t. I can’t leave them at home if there’s going to be a war.”
“Be reasonable,” I said, trying to calm him. “You’re a twenty-year man like me; you have to obey orders. Sarah will be fine, her mother and father are only ten minutes away from her in the town. They’ll look after her.”
But my words weren’t enough. He went to the Colonel and begged and pleaded, but to no avail and in the end he ran out of the camp and into the town. It was a terrible shame because even before he’d married Sarah, he’d started to reform his ways and since the wedding, my pal had been a model of temperance and good sense. But this night he lost it all. By the time I’d found him, sent urgently by the Colonel who knew of our friendship and wished to spare the regiment any embarrassment, it was too late. Lewis was fighting drunk and had already broken up one bar and was on to his next. It took me and two red-caps to get him back to camp where he was immediately clapped into jail.
He lost his stripes and spent the entire voyage to India in the hot stinking cells on the lowest deck of the ship and I could do nothing to make his imprisonment easier. I did write airmail to Sarah explaining the situation and asking her to write to him, saying she was all right. Fair play to her, she was champion girl that and wrote a sensible letter that arrived in India only a week after we did. Lewis showed it to me when he was back in barracks, head shaved and very low. “I’m proud of you,” she’d written, “and glad I’m married to a soldier. I’m knitting socks for sailors and Mum and I go to first aid classes. I know we all have to do our bit. Baby Carol sends her best love to her darling Daddy and God willing, we’ll all be together soon.”
He was all right after that, but quiet and not the old Lewis we used to know. But then, we two had grown up by now and left the carousing to the youngsters who now made up the bulk of our company. These men were my recruits on whom I’d been quite hard the last two or three years and I was glad to see that my training paid off, for they were fit and well prepared for anything.
“Will there be snakes, Sarge?” they had asked when we were on board the P&O liner on our way to India, “Elephants? Tigers?”
I nodded yes to all these questions. “There will and a lot of hard work too so don’t think you’re going on a holiday. Remember what I told you about taking your malaria tablets and don’t drink mucky water. And if you want to go with the whores make sure you report to the MO the next day.”
They laughed at that. “I’ll be all right, Sarge,” said one cocky young fellow, “I’ve had everything those women can give me, already.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, “but don’t come crying to me when your piss is burning a hole through your cock.”
We’d talked like that in the army, all men together. It meant nothing and I rarely heard even the worst blasphemer use such words in front of a respectable lady, but it was normal day-to-day language for us so they took no offence. I watched them gather together around the table in the centre of their narrow ship’s quarters, noisily debating what I’d said and boasting about the women they’d had or pretended to have had.
For my part, I was as excited as they were because I was returning to my beloved India but I kept that a secret. It wouldn’t have done to let them know. But as we neared Bombay, I went on deck to look for the first sight of land and found myself in tears. It could have been the spice-laden air or maybe the sight of the cheerful semi-naked fishermen in their wooden dhows, weaving in and out of the passage of our ship that caused my emotion, but whatever it was, I felt as though I was coming home. How strange, that I should have two equally important places in my heart.
We’d only been back at the Meerut camp for a couple of months when the Colonel called me to his office.
“I’ve orders here, Sergeant. You are to report to Major Derry in Rangoon. They want you to train for jungle warfare.”
Rangoon was across the border in Burma and a long trip from Meerut but I enjoyed the journey, looking out of the train window and holding my breath in excitement when we passed exquisite pagodas and Buddhist shrines. I was proud that I’d been chosen and keen for a new experience but was aware of one fly in the ointment. That bastard, Captain Parker was sent with me.
“This will be considerably different from your Frontier adventures,” he said with his usual sneer. “You’ll be very much the new boy here. No opportunity to show off, I’m afraid.”
I nodded, not bothering to reply, other than a courteous, “Sir.” I never knew why he had it in for me, although, in truth, he had it in for anyone who saw through the veneer of outward flash to the cowardly heart beneath. I turned back to the scenery, leaving him to read his newspaper for the umpteenth time. He had no interest in where we were going; only what he could get out of it.
He was lucky. The Admin. Officer had gone down with a bad case of fever and as soon as we reported for duty, Parker was given a cushy office job. Consequently, he didn’t do any training. But I did.
“I’ve heard impressive things about you, Wilde,” said Major Derry when I reported to his office, “from my good friend Colonel Barnes. I sought you out particularly when I was assembling this team.”
“Thank you, sir. How is the Colonel?”
“Retired. At home and fretting for action. I’ve got his eldest son here, Lieutenant Jack Barnes. Nice lad. Eager to please.”
Jack Barnes and I got on famously, although we made sure that we were lieutenant and sergeant at all times and never let our friendship interfere with the chain of command. He was dark, like his mother and had the same sweet personality. He never had any side to him and I used to think that he’d never be able to kill anyone, but he foiled me, being as brave and adventurous officer as you could wish. Those public schools taught more than Latin and Greek, I realised later, when I saw him cut throats without blanching. That was two or three years later, when we got into real action.
“One yellow bastard less,” he would grunt, wiping blood off his bayonet and God help any Jap who put his hands up to surrender. We didn’t take prisoners. I know because I did my fair share in disposing of them. It was different then, they killed us, we killed them.
“I do hate this war,” Jack said one night, when we were resting up in a cave on our retreat. “It’s made me coarse when all I want to be, is decent.” He sighed and looked out onto the thickly wooded hills beneath us. “My mama would not have approved.”
I was glad that I got him out alive when we were retreating from the Japs. He lost a leg but I carried him through the jungle. I couldn’t leave him. He had a chance, not like poor Lewis.
When I got home, after the war, I had a nice letter from Colonel Barnes inviting me to visit him and Jack at their home in Ireland. His middle son had emigrated to New Zealand having survived the war intact, but
the youngest, a boy of only eighteen had been killed in Normandy. I did see them once or twice, stopping off on my way to stay with Elizabeth but I never stayed more than a couple of hours. It didn’t seem fitting, somehow. Besides, on my trips to Ireland all I wanted to do was to be with her.
But back to the training. It was hard and I didn’t like the jungle. The heat and humidity was overpowering and regulated everything we did. You would be wet with sweat after a few minutes on patrol and the humid air sapped the strength of even the fittest man.
“Keep your eyes open at all time,” warned Major Derry as we went on patrol through the dripping green forest. “Everything is your enemy.”
It was, too. The trees hid all manner of wildlife: snakes, spiders and leopards. I saw tigers a few times and bloody huge they were, but surprisingly shy, considering that they could be man-eaters. Above us, where the canopy thinned out, the trees were home to monkeys and bright coloured birds who were always ready to give your position away. I learned to cope with it but I would have given anything to be back on the Frontier where the enemy might be just as deadly but at least you could breathe.
However, when we pushed further into the country, the landscape changed, becoming dryer with sparse vegetation and dusty open spaces. Here the sun blazed down and baked us. Even the protection of our wide-brimmed bush hats offered little relief. Then we were begging again for the shelter of the jungle.
Eventually, our training took us into the Naga hills where we climbed up through rocky escarpments and scrubby trees into country that I could understand.
It was up there that we came across tribesmen who were friendly and keen to take us to their villages. They were good people, simple, but nothing wrong with that and the men were as good fighters, when it mattered, as any of us.
I’ve eaten monkey stew, served by young women in ragged clothes and not even noticed how pretty some of them were, I was that hungry. It just shows you. When it matters, food and drink is what’s important. They were kind though. The cuts and bruises that I’d gathered almost unnoticed on my patrol through the hills, were treated by them with unguents pasted onto strange leaves and wrapped over the affected part. The pus-filled cuts healed within days and I was grateful.
The training lasted for nearly six months and then we had a lull, back in barracks at Rangoon where we sat about, ready for action, but none forthcoming. I went on a course to learn Japanese, but it was difficult. I only picked up a few words, commands and such like and the polite way to converse with a stranger. That seemed ridiculous. Any Japanese stranger we might meet out there would never have been greeted politely.
Rangoon is an exotic city, full of pagodas and strangely decorated temples. I wandered about, having bought myself a camera so that I could take photographs and posted some of them home so that Elizabeth and Mother could see where I was. I lost the camera when we evacuated the camp later on. It was a funny business being in Asia, doing nothing much, when we knew that in Europe a terrible war was raging. I worried about my people at home, but not as much as some of the men whose families lived in cities. We heard of bombing and that was worrying. One of the lads came to tell me one day that he’d heard that his brother had been killed at Dunkirk. That was the first that I’d heard of the place.
I had news of home too. “We are all right and have built an air-raid shelter in the garden,” Mother wrote. “Silly of me, I know, but I can’t bear the thought of being stuck in the cellar with the house crashed down on top of me. We’ve been lucky, though, with very few raids.” Her letter went on in that vein, lucky to be in the country rather than the town but nevertheless, things were difficult. “Jeff and Peter, our two farmhands, have joined up and Billy is managing with the lad and some casual labour from the village. He is very tired.”
It was the P.S. that worried me. “I’ve taken over the dairy again with Miranda Darlington to help me. Elizabeth has taken John to see her father in Liverpool.”
Why would she need Miranda Darlington if Elizabeth had only gone for a few days? I pondered this letter for several days trying to guess what it was that Mother had left out. I didn’t have to wonder for long. A letter from Elizabeth herself, arrived, postmarked Liverpool and sent about six weeks previously.
“I’ve left home,” she wrote, “and come to stay with my father. Billy is difficult again and although, so far, he has left me alone, I don’t feel I can trust him anymore. He is worked to death, you see, because of the war and no-one to help with the beasts and I would help, if he would let me. But things have got bad again between us. Mother tells people that I’ve come to take care of my father, which in a way is true. He is homesick for Ireland and keeps saying that he’ll die if he can’t get back. John is well and growing out of his clothes rapidly. He loves his grandfather and that is a relief because I’ve joined up as a nursing auxiliary and Da takes care of him. I show John his Uncle Richard’s photograph all the time and we try to imagine where you are. Father has guessed about us but I don’t mind. I love you.”
A photograph was enclosed of her, John and an older man who I presumed was her father. They were all smiling and standing in front of a small red-brick terraced house. Beyond them, I could see the street running downhill, houses on either side, until it met a T junction. And there across that road was the unmistakeable hull of a big ship. Elizabeth’s father lived right by the docks.
I worried about this letter for a week, starting a reply which insisted that she go back home to be safe in the country and then tearing it up and starting another with completely different advice. I couldn’t work out what she meant about Billy ‘being difficult.’ Mother had said he was tired so perhaps he had only been a bit more bad-tempered than usual. And no-one had said that he had been unkind to John. I wondered, not for the first time, if Elizabeth was exaggerating.
In the end, I didn’t write to her at all. I put it off and waited to see if I would get another letter from Mother. It was typical of me, I suppose, but I’ve never been one for confronting that sort of problem. They’d sort it out themselves, I was sure of it. After all, they’d managed without my help for years. But, as I lay on my bunk, sweating and sleepless in the insect-laden night, I would think of Fred Darlington’s warnings and my stomach would turn over. I was ready to believe the worst then.
My posting home came as a complete surprise. Jack Barnes and I were offered Commando training and we both jumped at the chance. I never had any qualms about joining these sorts of units. I was a soldier through and through and always loved action. But it involved more training and that was to be done back home.
We flew out of Burma, in the December, leaving behind sweltering heat, pagodas and the glorious yellow rhododendrons that lined most of the roads and four days later, after a nerve-racking journey across war-torn countries, landed at a bleak and wintery Scottish airfield. What a change. I was permanently cold for the first couple of weeks until I became acclimatised and would spend my free time wrapped in one of my blankets. Some of the other men thought I was soft, I think, but I soon showed them.
We were barracked at a remote camp and many of my fellow recruits to this new force had already seen combat in Europe. At first, I felt very much the outsider but I needn’t have worried. My recent jungle training and my experience on the Frontier held me in good stead and I was well able to keep up with my fellow trainees. The only thing that caused me trouble was the terrible cold. It was a bad winter.
We went into Glasgow when we had a weekend pass and the city was a sad sight what with the blackout and the rubble everywhere. The people all looked exhausted as though the war had taken a personal toll from even those who weren’t actually fighting. But they displayed a deliberate cheerfulness, even though everyone looked as if their skin was stretched too tight over their bones. They had the same sense of purpose as we soldiers did.
Those people scurrying about the windy streets suffered like we did but managed to live with it. Their loved ones were away, some killed, some taken prisoner
and worst of all, some sons or husbands posted missing. It was something I had to learn, being new to Britain in the war. And then there was the bombing. I was frightened when the air-raid warnings sounded, but after a few days, I got used to it like everyone else.
I knew I was going back to Burma; my training couldn’t be wasted, but I was envious of some of the others who were being sent on secret missions in Europe and would be properly in the war. I was being kept in waiting.
“Two week’s leave, Wilde,” said the major who was in charge of our section. “And then we’ll work out how to send you back East. Go and pick up your travel warrant.”
Where to go? That was my immediate problem. I didn’t know if Elizabeth had returned home or was still in Liverpool and she and John were the ones I wanted to see. So I took the train to Liverpool and with Elizabeth’s last letter with the dockside address on the top, in my hand, found my way to the house.
“Uncle Richard!” crowed the red-headed youngster who answered my nervous knock on the front door. He must have been coming up ten years old then and was as awkward and leggy as a young horse. But he recognised me and threw himself into my arms.
“Mum!” he yelled, turning his head into the house, “Mum! It’s Uncle Richard.”
Oh, but she was thin. Dressed now in a grey nurse’s uniform with all her lovely hair covered by a white triangle of cloth and her legs and feet in thick lisle stockings and heavy black shoes. I barely recognised her.
“Elizabeth?” I said, knowing that it was, but unsure at the same time.
She didn’t answer but put up her arms so that I could put mine round her and hold her tight. We didn’t kiss as lovers, not in front of the boy, but pressing her to me in that close embrace was almost as good.
“Thank God, you’ve come home,” she whispered. “I’ve prayed for your safety every night.” Tears had gathered on her lower lid and as we looked at each other, examining every new line on each other’s face, they overflowed and fell unchecked down her cheeks.
The Love of a Lifetime Page 30