by Brian Mooney
I saw this as pretended candour. There was a pause.
‘You weren’t expecting, were you, to come in with us?’
‘Well – er – yes.’
‘What a pity’ he murmured to himself. ‘And such enthusiasm! There’s an Animal Transport Officer I want – could do with someone to take charge of Brigade Headquarters defence platoons – want an officer to organize rations – investigate distribution of loads – work out duty rotas. All the same, I can’t take you in with me.’
He shook his head with mock ruefulness.
In my desperation I began to tremble and stammer.
‘What?’ he demanded furiously.
But I was unable to say a thing.
‘Do you,’ he barked, ‘know anything about pack-animals?’
‘Pack-animals? Why – naturally. I’m an expert on pack-animals!’
‘You are? Then why didn’t you say so, if you’re so keen to come in with
us?’
‘Mountain Artillery is famous for it!’ I said.
‘In that case I might be able to use you. The circumstances are entirely different. Of course it would mean your shelving your camouflage responsibilities temporarily. Would you object? Would you be prepared to do that?’
‘Oh no, sir! Oh yes, sir! Not a bit!’
‘It would have to be done, you understand, quietly – without GHQ’s connivance.’ ‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, stretching out his arms over his head and pushing his legs out under the table as an indication of dismissal, ‘that puts a completely different complexion on the matter. You’d better go down to the stores and get yourself kitted out. The quartermaster will allocate you a tent. I’ll have to speak to the Brigadier, of course, to secure his permission.’
‘So – you’ll take me?’
‘Temporarily, yes. But you’ll have to prove you can make yourself useful.’
‘Thank you, Brigade Major, sir. I’m very grateful.’
I withdrew hastily through the lantana scrub towards the quartermaster’s tent before I should say anything further that might make him change his decision.
That evening, as a symbol of having started on a completely new career with 111 Brigade, I consigned my topee to their muddy waters. It slipped slowly out of sight as if unwilling to leave me, floating away sadly on the surface of the filthy pond and out into the dank obscurity of the dark, hot night like the vanishing ghost of my camouflage commitments.
In its place, I put on my head the coveted Gurkha hat, cocked rakishly sideways. Then I entered the Brigadier’s mess tent in order to make the acquaintance of the other officers who were at dinner. They were a craggy lot. The greenish glare of the pressurised kerosene gas lamp revealed a selection of countenances, hard-bitten and unhandsome.
They had come in and dumped themselves down and gobbled up the food without an atom of ceremony, encouraged apparently by Brigadier Joe Lentaigne to get their snouts into the trough in this inelegant fashion. It bespoke a deliberate disregard for traditional officers’ mess manners which betokened disenchantment, I suppose, with the ballerina school of behaviour.
Joe Lentaigne himself was like a great gaunt, belligerent, battered vulture. He talked with a slight lisp on account of his front teeth having been bashed out while he was leading his battalion during the retreat from Burma. He was full of coltish, middle-aged fun in a galumphing, carthorse kind of way, although neither was he without subtlety. Periodically he used to allow himself to surrender to an infectious, boyish sort of high spirits which he was not too pompous to translate into juvenile exploits, for he loved dashing around in jeeps and terrorising junior officers into accepting hair-raising joy rides.
In the middle of the meal, a great big floppy moth blundered into the tent wall from outside with a sombre thud. It bulged out the canvas as if someone had thrown a cricket ball at it. Then a huge, heavily carapaced cockchafer, armoured with hirsute claws like a crab – its blades whirring as noisily as a gun-ship’s wings and every hair-follicle rigid – zoomed through the tent-flap on a helicopter errand and hit against the lamp with a crunch like the crushing of an empty match-box. It fell into the soup tureen with a plop, its wings flailing like egg-beaters. Everything reeked of damp.
Sometimes, on a special occasion, Joe Lentaigne could be lured by Briggs, the Signals Officer, into soliloquizing on strategy and tactics, and Rhodes James, the Cipher Officer, would sit sadly gazing at him through his thick lenses, his head cupped in his hands. Alternatively Geoffrey Birt, Engineers, or John Hedley, Intelligence, or Chesty Jennings, Squadron Leader RAF liaison, might twit Doc Whyte ironically about some spurious medical problem.
The pressure lamp would hiss and the mosquitoes whine and drone like dive-bombers; and Joe Lentaigne would warm to his theme of long-range-penetration groups as potential aggressors in hit-and-run tactics. This was the only sort of conversation ever exchanged, except in rare moments. Social intercourse was as good as non-existent. My first impression of them was of a dedicated group of ungracious puritans.
You felt that the jungle, just outside the mess tent in the velvety blackness, wanted to ingest you. The heat was stifling and unmitigated by any breath of freshness. Sometimes there would pass across the camp, like a wet caress, the hot, soft suspiration of a shower.
As we broke up for the night to seek our beds and got to our tents, I noticed the hurricane lamp which was burning in the Brigade Major’s tent, like a beacon. It denoted that Jack Masters was still labouring over the all but intractable problems posed by our unorthodox composition.
I fell into a drugged sleep, punctuated by short bursts of light automatic fire from his comradely typewriter.
CHAPTER TWO
Mule Problems
So, for the nonce, I became the Animal Transport Officer.
I also became the officer commanding Brigade Headquarters defence platoons. This was a situation I was to retain for the duration: it had the unenviable reputation of being on the periphery of the social system, appropriate only to Second Lieutenants.
The Brigade Headquarters defence platoons were pariah platoons, dropped-out-of-favour children, little runts of the piglet litter, and they suffered both from a sense of being neglected as well as from feeling unwanted and unloved. I felt I had a duty to make up for this in some way.
But I still had no idea what those poor children could have done that was sufficiently dreadful to deserve the stigma of my leadership. Perhaps they had simply become scapegoats for some unseemly battalion frolic or folly? Whatever it was, it failed to reveal itself further. In fact, they became so docile that I grew extravagantly devoted to them.
Brigade Headquarters was a body consisting of specialists highly vulnerable to surprise attacks from unpredictable quarters. It must have amounted in toto to a string of about fifty load-carrying mules and riding ponies and a column of about one hundred men. To prevent attack, and as a precaution against being overrun, they invariably attempted during actual operations to attach themselves to one or other of the fighting columns held in reserve.There were bound to be, however, occasions when this could not be managed.
In the event of finding themselves unprotected and unsupported – as when manning a perimeter at night when they went into harbour, or providing certain patrol and reconnaissance duties inseparable from a defence role – they were allocated two defence platoons of fifty men. These were drawn in equal proportions from the 3/4 Gurkhas and the 4/9 Gurkhas.
I was their commander and masqueraded under the name of Orderly Officer. The Orderly Officer – for such indeed was the high-sounding title Masters had invented for me – was to be smuggled in amongst the senior officers, the proved experts and the professional foot-sloggers, to be a sort of maid of all work and universal dog’s body. There was no official place for me on the allocated establishment.
Let nobody think, however, that I was disappointed at being assigned to this humble position. I was tickled pink. But before Masters could
arrive at such a crucial decision and confirm me in my appointment, I had to prove to him that I could indeed make myself useful.
I threw myself wholeheartedly into this challenge, but with such eagerness that I actually became a casualty before the Brigade even got away from its Lalitpur training-ground.
I had arrived at the Brigade Headquarters coincidentally with some new mule-harness which had been specially adapted to accommodate our heavy radio sets and the generators upon which our communications depended. Briggo, Lentaigne and Masters were impatient to see this equipment tested.
As we were about to evacuate our present camp and set off into the unknown for our longest and most realistic training exercise, the matter was urgent, for the whole purpose of the exercise was to set up a radio communications network and try it out under realistic conditions.
It was into this situation that I blundered while making my way towards the mule lines on the morning after my arrival. I was intercepted and brought to heel by the small, moody group composed of the Signals Officer, the Brigade Major and the Brigadier, who were looking rather despondently at a large well-formed mule.
‘Baines,’ said Joe Lentaigne, ‘come over here and give us the benefit of your advice.’
I had shown signs of attempting to circumvent them out of a feeling of delicacy, on account of Briggo’s appearing to be holding forth vehemently to Lentaigne.
‘I’m sorry, Brigadier,’ I heard him say, ‘but I’m only your Signals Officer. I’ve never touched a mule in my life. Moreover I decidedly reject your contention that I have anything whatsoever to do with loading these radio sets. My job is solely to operate them and ensure that they’re kept operational. It does not include having any truck with transport.’
‘But Briggo,’ Lentaigne said mildly, ‘what are we going to do if you refuse? Somebody’s got to make the attempt to get them onto the brute’s back.’
‘I’m afraid I shall have to pass on that one as your responsibility, Brigadier. Why, the fact is, sir, this is the first time I’ve been near enough a mule to examine one; and what I see I don’t like. One touch of those hooves, and your Signals Officer will be a goner!’
He pointed to the hard, horny, narrow little feet, diamond-hard like flints and steel-shod. The animal under inspection shifted uneasily as if kicking was much on his mind.
Lentaigne sighed long-sufferingly and glanced obliquely through his steel-rimmed spectacles at Masters. Masters glanced obliquely at me.
‘Is there something you want? Are you looking at me?’ I asked ingenuously.
‘That’s right!’ they replied in chorus.
‘Are you having me on?’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Lentaigne. ‘We simply want someone to supervise loading these radio sets.’
‘Good heavens!’ I replied. ‘Is that all? I thought you wanted something serious!’
I was astonished at their diffidence.
Briggo gave me an appreciative stare. He obviously considered that my being a candidate for martyrdom and subsequent canonization made me more palatable. The three of them exchanged guilty looks.
‘I’m sure it will be perfectly all right and you’ll be able to load up easily,’ the Brigadier responded encouragingly, with the chilling kindliness that freezes the blood. ‘Jack here tells me you’re a mountain gunner and I know from experience how competent they are with pack animals.’
‘Please sir,’ I begged. ‘Don’t expect miracles. Something may go wrong, for, after all, I’ve been away from Mountain Artillery for more than a year. All the same, I promise you I’ll do my best. I don’t see why we couldn’t accustom this mule, or – if not her – then some other, to carry the radio sets.’
‘Mighty good of you!’ he responded amicably.
‘Will eleven o’clock do? I’ve one or two routine duties I ought to attend to. After that, I shall be at your service.’ ‘Certainly, certainly,’ they replied eagerly.
‘Take her away, then,’ I said to the mule-driver. ‘Have her back here about eleven!’
This conversation succeeded in breaking up my concentration on my duties. Grateful for the momentary reprieve before being sucked into the daily routine, I glanced around. This was the first occasion for over a year that I had been under canvas and out in the open. It was glorious to be communing again with nature. I sniffed up the scents, savouring their freshness and the ravishing smells of herb and shrub. I gulped down the early morning air, so different now at sun-up to the heavy damp air during the downpour of the previous evening which had imparted so joyless a flavour to my induction.
Sparklets of moisture were scintillating on every grasslet, and the sun was flooding the forest glade with light. A mist was rising from the ground in humid heaps and the sun’s rays were plunging through.
The spell was broken by the unmistakable stink of a military jakes drifting into my nostrils.
I changed course abruptly. I was captivated by the prospect of fifteen minutes’ private prayer before starting my duties, and searched out that little hessian enclosure discreetly set aside for the use of officers.
It was enchantingly placed, charmingly remote, and concealed from observation by a profusion of pink-and-orange flowered lantana in pink-and-orange perfection. It consisted of a huge trench. Already at this early hour – for the sun was not yet decently risen – great bluebottles were landing in it with resounding thuds, and from its dark depths, cooled a long age in the deep delved earth, a distant but diffused roar was issuing from a disturbed hive. Despite the liberally sprinkled doses of lime about its lip, some of the largest and most determined flies I had ever seen were rooting about among the rotting turds like rutting elephants tearing at teak logs. As I sat down and disturbed them, they rose up, brushing my bare bottom with the soft patter of their tiny wings, and zoomed off towards the side-lines.
Occasionally during the day, while pursuing your lawful avocations in other parts of the camp, you might look up and observe them – these passaging bluebottles like swarms of migratory swallows – in the very act of crossing the desolate places between one protein-rich play-ground and another. Extraordinarily enough they neither inconvenienced nor disturbed us.
All the same, I couldn’t help but subsequently ask the doc.
‘Isn’t it unhealthy?’
‘Not a bit of it. No self-respecting bluebottle is going to abandon all that lovely, fresh shit in favour of these filthy mess sausages.’
On this first occasion, with trousers remorselessly entangled around my ankles, I was struggling to perch on the whittled, white sal pole which was the only provision for comfort, when I heard footsteps approaching through the mud. I had become vitiated with luxury at the Camouflage School and so was unused to such interruptions. I was just at the point of proportional balance and about to launch into the orison of the day from the Book of Common Prayer, so I was incapable of flight. In stalked the Brigadier.
He dropped his trousers without the bat of an eye. It completely ruined the set canticle. Something of my frustration must have imparted itself to him. He turned to me politely and with exquisite solicitousness enquired, ‘Do I disturb you?’ as if asking after my health.
‘Not at all, sir. Absolutely delighted!’
***
Not in the best of humour after this encounter, I resumed my attempt to achieve the animal transport lines and put in an appearance at the morning malish.
This, I ought to explain, is a ritual levée according to a standardised, traditional pattern. It is scrupulously observed wherever a unit occupies itself with animal transport. Malish is the Urdu word ordinarily used for sausage, but in this context it refers to grooming. The attendance of an officer elevates the event into something like an act of Divine Worship. I decided to put in a formal personal appearance and thereby give my new charges an opportunity of getting used to me.
When I arrived at the mule lines I was astonished by what I found.
They were performing – could it have been for my spec
ial benefit? – with a verve that would have done credit to a band of dancing-boys. Indeed it was such an overt display of concupiscence that I concluded that they had guessed my sexual proclivities and were putting on this show with the object of testing or tantalising me.
A cast of thousands, or so it seemed to my over-eager impressionability, was hammering away at the climatic number – although I could not make up my mind whether they represented Eleusinian mystae or Bachic celebrants. They were accompanied by the entire complement of Brigade Headquarters defence platoon as chorus.
They were almost naked. Some – with the exception of their huge military boots and their regulation ball-cloth of wrestler or sadhu – were completely so. They were of many sizes. Some were tall and willowy like the Long Elizas of Chinese porcelain. Others had hollow, concave chests but massive thighs and huge calves. Others again displayed the squat, pugnacious physique associated with load-carrying coolies.
They came, moreover, in all varieties of colour, from the milky white of cottage cheese, through creamy Camembert, to rude Cheshire with its russet, rustic red. They looked good enough to eat.
I swallowed convulsively. The undisciplined screams from tortured taste-buds were rising, and I glanced apprehensively about to see if anyone had noticed; but they seemed sublimely unaware that a monster of depravity had penetrated their paradise. The scene was disarmingly innocent. It was as if there had never existed a Puritan conscience this side of Eden.
The mules were standing about, tethered to shrub and tree. I was appalled to notice that they had not been cleaned. I pointed at the dirty organ of one of the mules and shouted at the boy who stood nearest – he could not have been more than sixteen.