by Brian Mooney
Suddenly her face registered a most marked change of expression. She changed her tactics. She decided to bolt. It was something which I had not the slightest intention of allowing.
‘Hang on to her!’ the others were shouting. ‘Hang on to her!’
She started off by adopting the short trot. It consists of head erect, ears pricked, eyes blazing. It is always indicative of an obstinate, angry mule on a rampage, and I was too familiar with the symptoms from my time in Mountain Artillery to want further demonstration of them. At the last moment, it is true, Thaman Bahadur flung himself at her head-harness in a desperate attempt to stave off disaster, but she shook him off.
I put both arms around her neck affectionately, raised my feet from the ground and curled them across her withers, and dedicated myself either to our dying together or to my going down with the ship.
There is no doubt that the position I adopted must have had a singularly constricting effect on her freedom of movement. It was evident immediately that she had decided on a strategy for ditching me.
She made straight for a thorny bush. I, on the other hand, having my back to her line of direction, could not see what was coming. But by this time I was committed. I was faced with the alternative either of hanging on and taking the consequences, or of falling off and foundering beneath those flailing hooves, which would not scruple to kick me to pieces. Naturally I hung on.
She went through that bush like one of those automatic, armoured, mine-exploding floggers they used to employ for clearing paths through mine-fields in the Western Desert. It neatly ripped every stitch of clothing off me.
I heard a gasp of awe go up from the spectators. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lentaigne and Briggo start in my direction with a jerk of dismay but Masters, I recall, remained as indifferent as if watching a professional circus.
For my part, I simply surrendered myself to the rhythm of the ride and to keeping my arms round her neck and my feet round her shoulders. I could rely upon the fact that, with a 600lb weight on her back and me draped round her foreparts, it was not going to be easy for her to continue to be sprightly.
True enough, quite soon I noticed that she was flagging. She had done enough damage, God knows, what with my hat hanging on one branch and the remainder of my clothing on another. Now I felt reasonably secure she would be content to surrender her independence. She might legitimately give up without in any sense comprising her integrity.
Both my short puttees were also unravelling from around my ankles and eventually what I had vaguely feared – or hoped for – happened. She got them entangled around her legs.
She faltered; recovered; faltered again; and then came down on her knees and her nose with such a bang that she precipitated me several yards in front of her. Her load came off her back and bowled forward like a Barnes Wallis bouncing bomb and came spinning towards me on steel reinforced corners until it came to rest, with stunning numbness, on my already much lacerated right fore-arm. I didn’t feel it. The whole limb had simply gone dead like frozen mutton.
Briggo, Lentaigne, Masters, Thaman Bahadur and the rest now arrived. They had tracked me with Red Indian cunning by means of my trail of torn rags. They found me sitting on the radio set with the reins already gathered in my hand (it is needless to state that they were broken). The creature and I were gazing darkly into each other eyes, having somehow arrived at a deeper level of comprehension.
‘Load up!’ I managed to say crisply, as the rest of the team staggered up.
She had had enough. Her flanks were heaving, her big was champed, her neck was flecked with foam and her nostrils were red and distended.
‘Quickly!’ I said impatiently, fearful lest she might recover her spirit of waywardness.
But she had absolutely and finally submitted.
They loaded the radio set and the generator awkwardly enough and she made not a movement of protest.
I handed the reins to the muleteer. ‘Lead her away.’ ‘Are you OK?’ people now asked.
I knew what was in their minds, without their telling me. My fellow officers were beginning to wonder, ashamedly, whether I might not perhaps be a little better than, or at any rate not quite so awful as, on first acquaintanceship they had imagined.
Early one morning about a week later, Brigade Headquarters set out. The other columns had left several days previously and we were to rendezvous with them at a spot two hundred miles distant and there fight out a mock battle – two of our columns out of the four having been detailed to act as enemy.
It was to be an exercise to end all exercises, designed not only to test the radio communications and set up new frequencies, but also to weed out every unassimilable element. I prayed that I might not be one of them. During the interval since my mishap with the mule, my injured arm had deteriorated to such an extent that I wondered whether I possessed the stamina to put up with the pain and inconvenience.
The previous night I had been assailed by self-doubt, coupled with an onset of fever which I imagined to be a recurrence of the malarial attack I had sustained while on the North-West Frontier, but which was actually caused by the tissue-damage inflicted by that transmitter falling on top of me. It had been a night of such electrifying bone-ache that I felt as if I was being hung, drawn and mentally tortured.
Now, as dawn seeped across the sky and penetrated the phantom-ridden corners of my tent, I welcomed its advent with renewed courage. I raised my fever-grizzled head, sweat-saturated, from its pillow, gingerly nursing my inflamed limb. It would be up to me to take full advantage of this opportunity for ‘making myself useful’, as Masters had demanded, and I was determined that no mere physical handicap should prevent me exploiting it. I was hell bent on achieving the coveted distinction of becoming a recognized member of 111 Brigade, come what might.
I dragged my body from off the palliasse and staggered out into the light. The effort was so great that I almost capitulated. The thought of a clean hospital bed was undeniably tempting. As I walked past the medical unit, however, I determinedly rejected all inclination to succumb.
A convoy of transport was lined up along the roadside and squads of demented Rice Corps (RIASC) sepoys were defiantly demolishing our tents and piling them feverishly into the backs of lorries. It was the last we should see of them, or our beds.
I paused for a moment to watch the medical marquee come tumbling down. Doc Whyte appeared to be away at breakfast, but I was astonished to see Dal Bahadur securely established there.
He was sitting on top of one of the ready-packed yakdans (square leather boxes), exchanging the time of day with the Gurkha medical orderly who had been left behind on duty.
It seemed like one of those fortuitous occasions which cannot be entirely dismissed as coincidence. A shudder of joy shot through me. I saw that I could turn the moment to my advantage.
The pair of them, fair-skinned and fine-boned as delicately featured porcelain figures, looked like wayward children pitilessly evicted by a ruthless landlord. They jumped and saluted me.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I smiled.
‘I’m just here, sahib,’ replied my little friend (for such I can hardly avoid calling him), ‘to help Krishna Bahadur with the medical yakdans.’
If I could engage his sympathy, this would be an opportunity of utilising this friendship with Doc Whyte’s medical orderly to cadge some pain-killing drugs while the doctor was absent.
‘I don’t suppose you could help me!’
He smiled back at me extraordinarily sweetly. Dumbly I exposed my gangrenous limb.
It was a dreadful wound and stank horribly. At the sight of it, he went as white as a sheet. His huge brown eyes clouded with concern instantly. Wordlessly I put myself at his mercy. I supplicated him with joined palms like a professional beggar. We all three remained thus mute while he and the medical orderly examined the swollen flesh but scrupulously avoided touching it. Suddenly he took the pulsating member between both of his hands with incomparab
le gentleness. Shivers of anguish like tongues of molten flame shot up and down the surface of my skin. A rainbow appeared amongst the shimmering globes of St. Elmo’s fire, followed by a peacock; then a salamander; finally, the twelve apostles.
Then I raised my head, and we gazed at each other as if we had been together been through some massively traumatic experience. He was dripping as much sweat as much as I was.
‘You’ll have to come back and show it to the colonel-sahib.’ His words sounded dull and inadequate.
‘If only,’ I replied, ‘you could wangle me some pain-killers!’
He glanced depreciatively towards the yakdans and made fluttering gestures in thir direction.
‘They’re packed up,’ he said, as if they had contained an imprisoned spirit or bottled djinn.
I sank dispiritedly to the ground, depleted by pain, frustration and disappointment.
Before I had time to despair, however, his defences suddenly collapsed. He threw himself down beside me and his fingers explored the locks of the yakdans as if he would release them through very urgency.
‘The keys!’ he murmured desperately. ‘They’re with the colonel-sahib. He’s having his breakfast.’
‘Go and get them, both of you! Say someone wants some headache powders.’
In my insistence, I leaned towards him. He was gnawing his knuckles. I grasped him, with my hands incongruously placed on his delicate shoulder-blades. I felt his limbs articulating loosely beneath the pressure of my exploring fingers. Turning him around, I gave him a gentle shove.
They trotted off as obediently as little boys.
While they were away, I probed the lump under my right armpit, and gloomy thoughts began to circulate. Then Krishna Bahadur returned. Without further ado he opened a yakdan and gave me from his bountiful store a boxful of blissful pills – enough to have kept me high for the whole exercise. I downed three of them in an instant.
Brigade Headquarters loaded up and moved out. I stood at the side of the track and shielded my eyes against the rising sun while the long line of muleteers – some grinning facetiously – filed past me. I was watching to see if I could intercept a signal from Dal Bahadur. As he went past, he shot me an ambiguous glance. It was too cryptic to be susceptible of interpretation.
To all intents and purposes that ends everything I am able to recall about that exercise. Of course I was found out. After flogging up hill and down dale in a haze of pain and rugs for the best part of a fortnight, I finally collapsed and was carted off to hospital and given a scolding for having improperly manipulated those pills out of Doc Whyte’s medical orderly. Indeed Doc Whyte was so cross that he threatened to have me court-martialled.
Dal Bahadur remained behind and I received no news, during that trying period, of what had happened to him.
I was away in hospital, and recuperating on sick leave, for a couple of months. I was lucky with my arm, for I narrowly missed having it amputated. There had been an evening in Lucknow when the surgeons had decided to cut it off. That same night, by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune, it began discharging its purulent matter. On the following morning, the inflammation was so reduced as to make draconian measures unnecessary.
CHAPTER THREE
Ready for War
I returned to active duty, keenly anticipating a joyful reunion.
I found that the situation with regard to 111 Brigade was completely changed. When I left, we had been an enterprising, talented, autonomous force with an amateurish predisposition towards extemporisation. Wingate had not had time to hammer home his message. On my rejoining the Brigade (it must have been towards the end of October) he had cemented his influence with Churchill at the Roosevelt conference in Quebec, and building on that astonishing success, he had turned everything to do with long-range penetration into a larger dimension.
The new scheme was to form a Chindit division under Wingate’s operational control comprising upwards of 23,000 men. Wingate was promoted to Major General. Not only had he succeeded in prising this huge number of men out of the nerveless control of GHQ, but he had also obtained the use of a sort of private air force.
Joe Lentaigne was not unnaturally aghast at having his independent command snatched away from him. Nevertheless, I took the trouble to reassure myself that this reorganisation met with the wholehearted support of all hands.
The positive influence Wingate was having was convincingly demonstrated within half-an-hour of my arrival. The Brigade was undergoing a series of joint inter-column exercises near Jhansi. For this purpose, the columns were grouped fairly closely into a single catchment area round the shores of a considerable lake.
Brigade Headquarters was encamped where the road from Jhansi ran across the large embankment, called Dukma Dam, which held back this body of water. I was being driven to this rendezvous from Jhansi station by an attached British Service Corps private of indeterminate vintage who was not even a Chindit.
About fifteen miles from our objective, where the road entered an area of dense, virtually untrodden jungle, he suddenly announced: ‘We are now entering 26 Column’s and 90 Column’s training area!’ This observation he volunteered quite chattily. I thought he was making a factual statement, like a tour-operator’s courier commenting on a noteworthy locality. I was on the point of framing a suitably non-committal response when it occurred to me that perhaps the remark was intended as a warning.
This suspicion was no sooner formulated than vindicated. A couple of shots rang out, followed by several others. A bullet tore through the truck’s tarpaulin cover.
My driver immediately pulled the vehicle off the road and drew to a shuddering halt. Then he threw himself onto the floorboards. I thought we were being attacked by dacoits.
‘It’s only a party of Cameronians out hunting, sir!’ he explained, in deference to my terrified expression. ‘Last Wednesday they bagged a village water buffalo. The corporal in charge of the detail’s a real wild man. He said he thought it was a wildebeest, but it didn’t prevent him having to pay fifty rupees in compensation. I only hope they don’t contrive to shoot the sacred cows in their enthusiasm – not to speak of the benighted peasants!’
‘Will we get compensation if they kill us?’ I asked feebly, though feeling decidedly hollow in the pit of my stomach.
‘Come with me, sir,’ said the driver, ‘and I won’t let you down!’
It was as if he had taken me under his personal supervision. His eyes were spitting hostile impulses like snapping dogs and in his excitement he practically knocked me senseless with a blow of his elbow to the solar plexus.
‘Let’s give ’em a confrontation. The General takes an interest in a bit of a scuffle!’
Not knowing in the least what was expected of me – for it was an entirely novel experience – I mutely contented myself with imitating his example. He grabbed a light machine-gun which lay conveniently to hand in the cab of the vehicle, leapt with it into the ditch and crammed fistfuls of live ammunition into the magazine.
I joined him in the ditch. Having myself only just returned from a sort of peacetime establishment, I was unprepared to withstand a siege and not even in possession of a stick.
My companion, undaunted by the presence of an officer at his side to witness his outrageous acts of insubordination, proceeded to discharge burst after burst into the jungle in a display of spirited animosity.
I watched while the scalded leaves trembled in the wake of the white-hot trajectory of his tracer bullets. Complete silence followed. It was as if the forest had been struck dumb by his boldness.
‘You’ve killed them.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ he complained bitterly. ‘Wish I had. Them bastards need teaching a lesson!’
Suddenly I heard a crashing and crackling as of a huge, charging rhinoceros.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I shouted, preparing to run away at the first gleam of bayonet.
I had intended the injunction for my driver. It was taken up instead by our ‘opposing
forces’.
‘Hey!’ apostrophised an aggrieved voice, surprisingly close at hand and with a pronounced Gorbals twang to it. ‘Watch out what yairr doin’ wull yer! That came near me goolies!’
A pale and emaciated face, lean and freckly and surrounded by a ruff of vivid hair which made it look like a recently evolved breed of dog at Cruft’s, emerged from behind some tufts of greenery.
‘We saw yairr comin’,’ it announced ecstatically. ‘Yairr-r-r ambushed – that’s what yairr!’
It then proceeded to perform a sort of tribal dance, similar to the dance I have seen captive storks perform when tantalized by a waving handkerchief.
Finally it threw itself onto the grass verge. It was followed by the remainder of its patrol, their battle-dresses black with sweat, who proceeded to roll and smoke cigarettes unconcernedly.
‘What about me flaming tarpaulin!’ raged the driver at them. ‘What’m I goin’ ter tell me fuckin’ officer? Yer thinks it’s bloody funny, but this is the second time I copped yer friggin’ bullet!’
Then he suddenly dropped his voice confidentially, and demanded, ‘Any
luck?’
The Cameronian corporal glanced at me with extreme distaste and said ‘Nay!’ with such finality that it was quite obvious the driver would not get anything more out of him.
‘It’s all right,’ continued the driver in a tone of revolting sweetness. ‘This officer would never breathe a word.’
Then he turned to me.
‘They generally have a little buck, sir. And of course, I sometimes do them the favour of giving them a lift. Yer see, it’s worth a joint a’ venison for me and me mates. But this time they ain’t gonna trust me. Makes yer
sick!’
He spat contemptuously.
‘Come on then!’ he suddenly yelled at them. ‘Jump in! I ain’t helping yer! Anyway, he’s only seconded to Brigades Headquarters.’
It seemed as if this frank admission of my fearful inadequacy would qualify me for membership of their club; and of course it did.