by Brian Mooney
They fetched the deer they had shot, bundled themselves into the back of the truck without further comment, and we dropped them off at their column headquarters.
As we approached Dukma Dam, where was located the nerve centre of this huge concentration of men and weapons, the sight of much purposeful activity astonished us.
First, my attention was drawn towards the sky where the sun was setting in extravagant splendour. Then I looked at the earth, already darkening under lengthening shadows. Finally, I turned to the lake, which lay pallid in the plangent light like polished pewter.
A curious old-fashioned biplane was coming in to land on an improvised airstrip. It was cruising to get up wind. Its First World War silhouette stood out against the peach-pink sky. It was being flagged down by a stocky individual in shorts and a singlet stretched tight across his huge chest, who was plainly recognisable as Chesty Jennings.
A jeep was racing up with frantic haste to come alongside as the plane landed, every so often leaping bodily into the air as it accelerated over a bump, and as it did so, bouncing another item of priceless equipment out of the back – for the strip had only recently been hacked from the paddy-fields by our riflemen using their entrenching tools, and it was still rough and uneven.
My driver had meanwhile pulled our truck up at the top of the dam. From such a vantage point, although I had been all too long absent, the Jehu in the jeep was easily identifiable. That crooked, intent posture, those blazing eyes, that hawkish profile, those smashed-in teeth accentuating the tendency towards nutcracker – all would have been unmistakable even without the red bank on the battered hat which proclaimed its owner’s status.
Joe Lentaigne was characteristically indulging his reckless passion for jeep driving and handling the vehicle as if it were Ben Hur’s chariot.
Through an open glade to my right a tired patrol from 46 Column was trudging wearily home to camp. They bore slung on a pole between them a deer, trussed up as professionally as by Sioux hunters. I watched as their mates swarmed out of their grass-thatched bashas (huts) to welcome them. Some scurried busily to and fro collecting firewood. Others honed knives, built hearths, prepared spits. Their waspish wit drifted up to me in caustic commentary.
Further off, a fatigue party was constructing a timber stockade to surround their camp. It was an exercise in utilising local techniques and materials in extempore and was intended as a corral for the little herd of milch-goats they had dubiously come by. They were methodically plunging the sharpened stakes into the portable brazier erected next to the farrier’s anvil.
He, clad in his traditional leather apron and with a pair of tongs in one hand and a hammer in the other, was putting a redly glowing horseshoe to the near-fore of a piebald pony. Clang! Clang! Clang! The smell of its scorching hoof rose up like singeing feathers.
Within a reserved plot at the dam’s foot, fenced with spiny buckthorn branches to protect it from the stolen goats, three detached British ‘other ranks’ and a corporal were cultivating a vegetable allotment. These dedicated gardeners had made the soil fertile by the liberal application of human muck which they dug from old solidified cesspits and dried like sulphur. In combination with prodigious quantities of horse dung, this manure had produced vegetables of unmanageable size and shape and of a hitherto unheard of grossness and coarseness. In the gathering dusk, the inky aubergines glowed like polished globules of purple enamel; they hung beneath the leaves like gigantic scrotums. The sinister convoluted tomatoes with their diabolical intestinal shapes looked like fruits of evil. On a fence of bamboo canes to the rear, the huge rioting vines of runner beans would have scared witless any Jack discovering their scimitar-shaped pods on his beanstalk.
Suddenly there sang out from the shore of the lake a cry for help. Everyone within earshot rushed thither.
A comrade was in difficulties. An over-adventurous angler, not satisfied with tiddlers, was wrestling with an enormous catfish. It was an ugly-looking, mammal-featured brute, thrashing away furiously about twenty yards from the bank. It had sought shelter in the shallows by running up the line and then getting itself entangled in quantities of mud-weed.
The fish had succeeded in quelling the inexperienced angler, whose yelps for help brought to the scene numerous men, who they threw themselves off the bank and into the water.
From the opposite shore half-a-dozen canoes had launched and were rapidly approaching. Their wet paddles glinted in the weakening sun like warning signals from flashing mirrors.
At the farther end of the lake, an outboard motor craft was manoeuvring, throwing up sheets of spray. Its revving engine sounded like a distant saw-mill. Several DUKW amphibious trucks, crammed with burnished brown bodies, were languidly practising some sort of assault landing or river crossing. They looked like miniature ships momentarily abstracted from an invading armada. Nearer at hand, the glistening heads of swimmers were bobbing up and down in the waves like glass floats.
While I was contemplating this crowded scene, there emerged into the lake from behind a projecting sand-spit a contraption – it was a kind of raft – which could only have been constructed by some Huckleberry Finn. It cruised slowly into view round the screening promontory. Propelled by two Red-Indian-brown protagonists who poled it dexterously forward, it carried plumb in its centre a little wooden hut from whose grass-thatched roof protruded a bent stove-pipe, picturesquely belching out smoke.
The sun had meanwhile set. It was the magic hour of the golden cow-dust. Through the shimmering haze kicked up by their hooves, the men were leading the mules down to water them at the lakeside. This was that twilight time, captured in dozens of devotional paintings of the subject and commemorated in song and story, when Shri Krishna and his cowherd companions lead their herds home from the forest. The acrid smell of horses bit into the nostrils with a pungent scent of embalmers’ spices.
In the bat-haunted banyan tree at the water’s edge, which harboured ghosts as well as fruit-sucking vampires, the flying foxes were already beginning to squeak and rustle. One by one, their huge bodies dropped heavily out of its branches and flapped lopingly off, to consummate a nightly tryst with the neighbouring jack-fruit trees.
Suddenly from a little temple whose shikara was just visible above a nearby mango-orchard, there burst forth the rough timbre of conch-shell horns and trumpets, accompanied by the melodious tintinnabulation of gongs and bells. The local pundit was celebrating the evening a rati. His Hindu ritual spelt out for me, too, a message: namely that it was time for me to resume my duties.
Shouldering the pack which contained my few belongings, I marched down the slope of the dam to report my arrival to Jack Masters. He looked and behaved so exactly as he had on the first occasion of our meeting that I had difficulty in imagining he could even have moved from his chair.
‘Oh!’ he said indifferently, as soon as he caught sight of me. ‘So it’s you!’ It was the sort of greeting that you might have given to a debt-collector. ‘Glad you’re back! Hope you’re better!’
‘Yes, sir! Reporting for duty, sir! Much better!’
‘H-m-m-m!’ he said, biting savagely into the end of a pencil. He looked ill and sallow and haggard. ‘I want you to get down and deal with the defence platoons.’
He launched characteristically into a sequence of orders. The defence platoons had become perfectly unmanageable. A man called Frankie Turner, who was a Vetinerary Corps Major, had turned up to take charge of the animal transport. ‘And I want you,’ he concluded, fixing me with a gimlet eye that went right through me, ‘to practise airdrop recovery, plus the disposition and the lighting of bonfires. Take your men out and do it several times a week, at night, in the jungle!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m quite pleased with you. You showed courage in carrying on as you did. I’m going to take you with me. You will be the Brigade Headquarters Orderly Officer. It’s a controversial decision. Kindly see that I don’t regret
it!’
‘Tha
nk you, sir.’
Punch-drunk, I was just staggering out when he called me back. ‘Oh, Baines, come ’ere. By the way.’
Something awful was coming – if I anticipated it rightly – and I was correct.
‘I had to find a temporary orderly for one of the Rear Headquarters officers – I forget ’is name – so I detailed one of your riflemen. Thaman Bahadur’ll tell you about it. ’Is name’s – what is it – oh, yes – Dal Bahadur. But he’ll be back before we go into action.’
‘Mighty good of you!’ I thought.
Imagine my consternation. What a homecoming! I could have wept from vexation of spirit.
One dazzling bright winter morning about the middle of December, our training suddenly came to an end. A group of column commanders abruptly put in an appearance at Brigade Headquarters, apparently summoned to an important conference.
‘What’s going on, d’you suppose?’ I demanded uneasily of young Lawrence, a platoon commander whose sector abutted mine. It was so distantly located from his own Column Headquarters, however, that he was accommodated in our mess, and he had become my interpreter of the infantry outlook.
‘They’ve come to report progress.’
‘Progress towards what?’
‘Well, if you want to know, they’ve come to report to the old Man the fact of our final preparedness. That’s what my column commander told me.’
‘You mean our training’s over!’ I exclaimed aghast. ‘Looks like it.’ ‘We’re ready for war?’ ‘You seem surprised.’
‘To tell the truth, I hadn’t even thought of it. I assumed we’d go on playing at soldiers for ever!’
‘Not a hope,’ he replied, smiling ruefully.
‘Are you ready?’
He shrugged indifferently.
‘I suppose so. One gets accustomed to the idea of being committed.’
The distinguished panel of column commanders filed into the mess-tent. Joe Lentaigne preceded them like a Lord Chancellor heading a procession of judges. It was planned to be an impressive ceremony, and it would have succeeded in being so, except for one tiny accompaniment.
A puckish fellow had started prowling through the camp. He was seeking to suborn the troops, and even incite them to acts of insubordination. Now he grasped the opportunity thus offered to spring recklessly into open mutiny.
The spirit of Christmas, that is to say, was abroad. None of us, however, could have guessed he would prove sufficiently daring to attack the senior officers. Imagine our surprise, therefore when he began dispelling the sombre atmosphere created by Joe Lentaigne and wrecking the gravity of the gathering.
After two or three hours of mounting conviviality, there was only one conclusion anybody could come to. The score or so of spectators which any event collects, and who had gathered outside as spies, were able to drift away, perceptibly relaxed. They passed on this conclusion to their fellows: the Lord of Misrule had arrived; the Brigadier had been observed to get quite drunk – although of course, still a perfect gentleman – and everybody was at liberty to follow his example.
About a week before Christmas, Joe announced that 111 Brigade had won first prize in the Divisional Headquarters lottery, and was to be entertained by a troupe from ENSA. The news was not received with much enthusiasm. The various column headquarters were so uncooperative that Brigade was virtually compelled to take over. Joe Lentaigne detailed his staff to stand in and complete the necessary arrangements.
A couple of marquees were erected – one for the males of the troupe to sleep in, and another for the females – while a further two marquees were joined together to form an improvised stage and proscenium in front of which the audience was expected to dispose itself on the slope of the dam, as in a Greek amphitheatre. A row of chairs in front was to accommodate the column commanders and the senior officers.
When all these dispositions had been completed, Lentaigne asked: ‘Do you think we ought to put a guard on the women?’ He plainly expected, if not Vera Lynn, then at least a bevy of lust-inciting Messalinas.
‘Whom do you actually aim to protect them against?’ I could not help but enquire. ‘I mean, is it from the Gurkhas or the Cameronians, or do you visualize your staff as becoming inflamed with fatal passions?’
‘Nobody likes to entertain such a possibility!’ said Lentaigne.
‘I know. All the same it is important. In the first place, the defence platoon would never challenge a gang of marauding Cameronians to a confrontation. They have far too much respect for the British troops to be used with any confidence in opposition to them. In the second place, if it is your staff who you expect to behave in this manner, then hadn’t they better sort it out between themselves and leave the Gurkhas out of it?’
I was determined to get the defence platoons relieved of this distasteful chore, and I succeeded.
‘One squad of King’s Own and one squad of Cameronians to mount guard consecutively.’ snapped Lentaigne.
When the theatrical troupe arrived, however, it was plain that we had been over-zealous. Their passion-provoking propensities turned out to be limited. There were five women and five men. Their abject desire to make themselves acceptable was rather pathetic. They became the subject of a little homily from Lentaigne.
‘It’s Christmas for them as well as for us,’ he observed, after someone had made a disparaging remark. ‘Consequently I want you to co-operate in making their stay an enjoyable one. I need hardly remind you that they are all ladies and gentlemen. I know none of you will be so discourteous as to suggest that they are other than entirely welcome. Don’t forget that they’re doing us a favour. How would you like …’ His eye swept round the mess-table and landed on me. ‘How would you like, Baines, to entertain a drunken battalion of Cameronians?’
I could not help but find in my heart a deep sympathy for the troupe in its predicament, for any attempt to entertain the Cameronians over the holiday would be to court the direst consequences. With this chilling prospect in mind, we all buckled to create as favourable an impression as possible.
No sooner had we accustomed ourselves to adopting the lady-like manners prevailing among the Anglo-Indian females (for all the floozies were Eurasian), than Lentaigne dealt us a further crippling blow. It seemed that our private, drunken, misanthropic Christmas was to be completely ruined.
‘Here! What d’you think of this?’
He entered the mess-tent, flourishing a message-form tantalisingly, his face puckered with mischief.
‘Hirohito has abdicated! And the war in Europe is over!’
‘My bet,’ said Briggo cussedly, ‘is that it’s another Biblical quotation from the flaming general.’
‘What’s it say, sir? Are we off?’
‘It’s from the General. It says: “Request permission eat Christmas dinner Brigade Headquarters mess. Arriving 1200 hours. Wingate.”’
The silence that ensued was so solid it could have been quarried.
‘Well!’ said Lentaigne, ‘it’s no good looking at me! I’m not responsible. And what’s more, I can’t even get out of it, so it’s useless asking me to. If the General wants to spend Christmas with us, we shall simply have to resign ourselves to it. We could concentrate on making it enjoyable for him.’
His remark was greeted with a mutter of agreement. I don’t suppose any of us even knew at the time whether we were being sarcastic or serious. But, for my part, I was perfectly sincere. I was keen to get a close look at this famous personality, and thus worried by any possibility of Wingate’s visit being cancelled.
The morning of the fatal day dawned cold and clear. There was not the faintest suspicion of a hitch to mar the final arrangements.
Long before sun-up, I jumped out of bed. The air, as it hit me, was entirely devoid of humidity. There was a continental crispness about it which would not have been out of place in Siberia.
I put on my boots, gathered up my washing kit, and walked to the top of the dam. As I shaved, it was so dry that my lips split and my
skin cracked. When I combed my hair, it stood on end and let out crackles of electricity.
All around me, soldiers and sepoys were similarly performing their ablutions – the Gurkhas trotting out to the trutti khanas grasping their little brass lotas, the King’s Own and Cameronians clutching their folded sheets of bog-bumph. with that quiet concentration and dignity which always betokens men at their morning devotions. Their actions had about them such rightness that in the dawn they appeared singularly beautiful.
It was going to be a beautiful day, for both Christ’s birth and the General’s visit. Imperceptibly the sky began to be tinted with streaks of apricot. Suddenly the sun got up. Absorbed in my toilet, I hardly noticed. In the cookhouses below me, dozens of turkeys were being slaughtered and stripped of their feathers so that we Christians could consume their flesh. At my feet, the water of the lake was still. Only one or two languid fish rose in it, breaking the surface with their bubbles.
The cooks began beating the bottoms of their billy-cans with wooden spoons and from various parts of the camp there arose, like a bacchic Evoe, the invocation indicating that tea was up: ‘Come-n-gerrit! Come-n-gerrit.’
I felt as if I was watching some ritual celebration on the morning of a bloody battle. It made the nearness of our departure for the war zone loom menacingly closer.
In a mood of absorption, I descended to my tent. If today was going to be a ceremonial occasion, I felt impelled to put on something special. I selected my most bleached battledress: even as long ago as that, faded denims were fashionable. Then I nipped smartly across to the mess tent in order to procure myself a breakfast before the morning run started on the tinned hamburgers.
What was my astonishment to find the whole tribe already in occupation. Breakfast was in full swing. It was characterized by a twittery expectation which would not have been amiss in a church outing of pensioners. But whether to attribute this to the promise of Christmas or to the General’s visit was problematical.