by Brian Mooney
The Brigade certainly needed it. I too, my twenty-eight days of solitary duty having been accomplished on the top of that hill, found that my reserves of energy needed recharging and that I was sorely depleted. The period had certainly proved an eventful one. It turned out to have required an expenditure of effort on my part over and above what I was really capable of. It already seemed months ago that I had first climbed those mountains and come face to face with the Japanese beyond the taung-ya cultivation and the patch of tomatoes – and like half a lifetime since I had made love to Dal Bahadur in the thorn thickets at their feet.
I will not dwell further on the Brigade’s failure, nor reopen old wounds by pointing out some of the reasons for it. Nor will I not indulge in recriminations about who was responsible for it. In passing over these events, however, it would be less than candid not to admit that one of the principal reasons for our defeat was the failure of 14 Brigade and the West African Brigade to reach us.
Defeat or failure notwithstanding, at Mokso Sakan Jack Masters immediately performed another of his redoubtable feats of magistery. He ordered that the famous Sunderland flying-boats be brought it and landed on Indawgyi Lake. This actually happened, although they had to be withdrawn from anti-submarine patrol in the Indian Ocean for that purpose. How strange those huge, clumsily proportioned planes must have looked flying inland over the mountains of Assam, several hundred miles from the sea.
It proved to be a most creative action, which allowed us to evacuate all our sick and wounded. It probably did more than anything else to reestablish the morale of the troops. Six hundred men – sufferers from sickness, starvation or shock, as well as battle-casualties – were by this means evacuated, and enormous quantities of replacement arms, ammunition and equipment flown in.
Dal Bahadur’s and my share in these provisions was to secure a little outboard motor which we soon attached to a dugout. By means of this contraption we were enabled for a few tender moments to escape the feeling of eternal surveillance. We made secret daily excursions to an unfrequented inlet where we experimented with underwater gymnastics.
A big church parade was held during which God was not only invoked, but also actually congratulated for having in so conspicuous a manner intervened to save us.
I wrote an epic letter home. Rather an interesting episode ensued from it. Naturally I had spilled the beans in this letter, and it never got past the censor. I hadn’t really expected it to, and, of course, I only wrote it at such length in order to give rein to my feelings. It achieved its objective better than I could have expected. Something of the smell and the mud and corruption prevailing at Mokso Sakan must have adhered to its pencil-scrawled pages. It found its way to New Delhi and was deposited with G II (Camouflage) at General Headquarters, who was responsible for me. Instead of reprimanding me as I deserved, he consulted the Deputy Chief of Staff. They both agreed it was too good to destroy. They had it cyclostyled and circulated it, in the form of an anonymous communication from an active-service solider, to all the officers attached to GH. It was to serve as an object lesson in what the eastern operations were like. I learned about this from my G II himself. He told me of it during my interview with him when he was making my final report.
***
Dal Bahadur and I performed twice daily under water. We were becoming positively proficient. However one afternoon this playtime period was terminated – and our peculiar practices interrupted – by Mike MacGillicuddy officially approaching me. He put in an appearance at my bivouac and asked – I cannot imagine why – for my advice. Jack Masters had ordered him to prepare for fortifying Mokso Sakan, should an occasion arise when we might need to defend it. MacGillicuddy was accordingly going round, examining fields of fire and establishing block-houses and bunkers which could operate effectively in the event of an attack. He sought my opinion on some aspects of these projects, and so, instead of being able to get away with Dal Bahadur and practise swimming, I was stuck with MacGillicuddy, trailing around after him in the heat, making an ass of myself.
I trailed around after him in the heat, making an ass of myself. We ended up having a blazing row, largely, I fear, because I still hadn’t forgiven him for his exhibition of showmanship at the crossing of the Irrawaddy.
In the event, Masters received new orders and the idea of fortifying Mokso Sakan was abandoned. We moved north and later east.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the March Again
It was at about this period that the local people suddenly became rather friendly and eager to help. In the early stages of the campaign, it had been quite the reverse: the villagers had been shy and keen to avoid us. Now, if they did not quite arrive in droves, it was no longer difficult to establish contact with them. The very beautiful daughter of a local headman developed a girlish crush on Chesty Jennings and followed him about like a tame sheep, and our Burma Rifles parties succeeded in sequestering a squad of half-a-dozen elephants with their oozes (mahouts). These proved indispensable in transporting supplies and the sick – for yes, in spite of our having flown out all casualties in the Sunderland flying-boats, the men were again succumbing to various illnesses.
This new willingness on the part of the villagers was a good sign.
No-one is more sensitive to the ups and downs of war than subject populations, which are always rushing off to transfer allegiance at the first hint of fluctuating fortunes. The present friendliness demonstrated an instinctive awareness on the part of the locals that the Japanese hegemony in this piece of territory was finished.
I wish I could have taken a similarly sanguine view of the health of the troops. Jack Masters confessed afterwards that the operations undertaken for the purpose of capturing Point 2171 were as hard on the soldiers as anything he had known. They certainly possessed a horrific quality which was unsurpassed in my own experience.
I attribute this impression to the fact that we were all so desperately ill. The troops’ health was failing rapidly. They were also becoming markedly unstable.
Now this vast column of ours – men, mules, elephants, camp followers, Chesty Jennings’ girlfriend, ghora paltan (white regiment), desi paltan (country regiment) – moved north along the shore of Indawgyi Lake. For several days we cut a swathe through the swamps bordering the shoreline. To our right rose the cloud-encapsulated hills; to our left rippled the water. From above, it poured with rain. They were the worst marching conditions I can ever remember.
Masters again found occasion to employ me.
It was a measure, I think, of the sickness and exhaustion of the British troops at this period that they could no longer be trusted to remain in the column. As a result, many soldiers’ lives had been needlessly forfeited. The simple act of sitting down by the track-side to smoke a cigarette and nurse your lacerated sensibilities without permission seemed sufficient to break a rhythm and thereby start a whole sequence of disastrous consequences. Soon these desperately tired individuals – tired not only physically, but also of their very existence – would surrender to sleep. This gave way to kind of coma, from which often they never recovered consciousness.
Such a situation could not be permanently tolerated. I was the one chosen to circumvent it. While we continued thus slogging along slowly through the swamps of Indawgyi Lake, Masters ordered me to bring up the rear, accompanied by one of my defence platoons. I was to be the last man in the whole column. Even my own defence platoons were to go ahead of me. My job was to rally and collect the stragglers.
Away ahead, the surface of the path through the tic-typhus jungle, the elephant-grass, and the cane-breaks was comparatively undisturbed. After two thousand five hundred men had passed along it, however, accompanied by eight hundred mules and six elephants, it was in an appalling state. In addition, it was covered in six inches in water.
The elephants made huge pot-holed footprints in it, eighteen inches across and two feet deep. Into these deep indentations I plunged up to the knees every few paces, sometimes even falling f
lat on my face and almost disappearing from sight. It rained ceaselessly. Psychologically exhausted by rage, frustration and despair, weakened by fatigue, and racked with malarial and rheumatic pains, I was in no condition to be pleasant to the delinquents I was supposed to cherish.
We generally came upon the first one or two of them after the long halt at midday. As we were the rear-guard, my defence platoons and I lagged about a quarter of a mile behind the last man in the main body. This space was sufficient to give any prospective drop-out the impression that he would be overlooked. The bliss of sitting quietly in the lonely silence could be deceptively lulling and dauntingly sweet.
Then the malingerer would see my Gurkhas as they hove over the horizon. He still wouldn’t know whether they were accompanied by a British Officer and he might consider himself reasonably safe. As they passed, he would throw them a slightly self-conscious and guilty greeting: ‘Hello, Johnny.’ Then the poor bastard would see me.
They came in all shapes and sizes, from the pathetic to the aggressive, and they exploited every device from tears to downright bullying in order to persuade me to let them be. One man even threatened to shoot me, and I truly believe he would have done so had not Dal Bahadur whipped out my revolver.
The way to deal with each one became a matter of trial and error. My approach differed according to experience and the temperament of the individual sufferer. However, I never lost sight of the purpose of the exercise, which was that all them, regardless of rank or physical condition, had to be cajoled – or, if necessary, driven mercilessly – onward. If they were abandoned, they would die.
I would start off fairly guardedly. ‘Having trouble with your feet?’
The wretch has his right boot off, the sock in his hand, and is examining his toes. The flesh there is white and pulpy and I can tell at a glance that he has foot rot.
He looks at me with a gaze full of hang-dog anxiety and I realize at once that he is desperately worried about his physical state. If the lacklustre expression in his eyes is any indication, he has good reason to be. He bears the unmistakable mark of one near death, but he is, thank God, not fighting sick, but maudlin. Thus he is comparatively easy to encourage and coddle on his way.
The next one is a very different proposition. He is reclining comfortably on one elbow, smoking a cigarette, and the look he gives me in reply to my interrogation is cool and level.
‘Come on, Sonny Boy,’ I say to him (quite a different technique, you notice). ‘Get going.’
‘You fucking bastard,’ he whispers venomously. ‘Don’t you Sonny Boy me! I’m staying here! Neither you nor your bloody Brigadier is going to get me to move till I want to.’ He glances about him aggressively. The defence platoon has moved onward, leaving me alone with him. ‘I’m still armed, y’know. It’s you an’ me.’
‘Uh-hu.’ I nod to Dal Bahadur, and he trots off. We have met this situation before. My signal meant ‘Go and get ‘em!’ I did not bother, therefore, to reply to the soldier’s remarks or respond to his rudeness. I act as if I have not even heard him. While I wait, I light a cigarette myself. It helps to emphasize my moral ascendancy and supplement the suggestion that I am invincible, serving to undermine the soldier’s self-confidence.
The defence platoon soon double back and surround him. Their mud-plastered faces and air of indifference as to whether or not they shoot him carry complete conviction. It is such a God-forsaken place – under that leaden sky – that anything could happen.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s you and me. Get going!’
He stumbles to his feet with remarkable alacrity and without a murmur.
Some of them, of course, just sat by the side of the track, picking their noses. They were as tame as sheep. Others pretended they had dropped out of to have a shit. To all of them I was as kind and considerate, or as aggressive and brutal, as their condition seemed to warrant. But I must say, the worst ones to deal with were the emotional ones – the ones that appealed to your softer side and made you weep. Tears, on these occasions, were by no means uncommon. These men were the ones who had arrived at the point where death was infinitely more desirable than their present condition, and who were in effect consciously committing suicide. They were difficult to deal with because I felt a certain sympathy for them. Indeed I had, in my madder moments, considered taking such a step myself.
‘Here’s a funny one, sahib,’ Dal Bahadur said, having learnt by experience to interpret the symptoms, which were plainly distinguishable on the face and characteristic of mental anguish and moral indecision. In this instance they were accompanied by a tic doloureux or involuntary rictus, exacerbated by a St. Vitus-like twitching of the limbs.
I approached the man sympathetically but with an inner dread. Such confrontations often involved a mental struggle for me. They were often more than just a simple matter of life and death, and I was not always qualified to resolve them. It was like trying to rescue a drowning man while being yourself a very indifferent swimmer. Furthermore, I was never entirely free from the fear that, instead of overcoming the man’s negative emotions, they might succeed in overwhelming me. To prevent such a possibility, I always kept Dal Bahadur very close beside me. Now I signalled to him, ‘Don’t leave me!’
The soldier, sitting hunched beside the track, his head buried in his hands, took not the slightest notice. Although he must have heard us approaching – for we did not walk but wallow – he did not raise his head or give the slightest intimation that he was aware of our presence. This was a telling indication of his condition.
He was a rifleman of the King’s Own. I could tell immediately that he was not a Lowlander, let alone a Glaswegian. He had some indefinable quality – a sort of softness of psychic silhouette – which those north of the border, with their rugged outlines, do not possess.
I stood beside him quite closely, yet fearing to put a hand on his shoulder as I had originally intended, in case he should do something rash.
‘We all feel like this at times,’ I said, perhaps a bit sententiously, ‘but it does no good to give way to it.’
He jerked his head up so suddenly that he made me jump. My reactions in dealing with these malingerers had become pretty quick, for in many ways they were more treacherous than the Jap.
He still failed to speak, but I could see that he was struggling to formulate words. When they came, they came in a voice that was completely muffled. He simply said, in heart-broken accents, ‘I can’t make it – it’s no use. I can’t make it,’ and then fell back.
I had bent double with my ear levelled to his mouth in order to hear him. Now I straightened up and glanced around. The scene was one of unredeemed desolation. It was relieved neither by sight of human habitation nor, except for ourselves, by any human presence. At a little distance the defence platoon had halted. The men were squatting on their packs and waiting for orders. Squally gusts blew shorewards from the centre of the lake, where a rainstorm was brewing, and among the thickets of pampas grass and in the cane-breaks the tall, feathery grasses – seven feet high – were bending and whipping to the wind. On the tops of the mountains to the right of our line of march, the clouds squatted, grey and solid, and as heavy as lead.
‘Do make an effort.’
The rain began. It needled into my flesh as piercingly as pins. For all the response my appeal elicited, I might have been apostrophising my shadow. At that point I completely lost my self-possession.
‘For God’s sake get up and get on with it!’ I said, aiming a well directed but not very vicious kick at his ribs.
I had expected some sort of retaliation. Instead he rolled over drunkenly, extended his arms and said ‘Shoot me!’ I was so furious that I could willingly have done so.
Dal Bahadur and I exchanged a baffled look. It was plain that we should have to carry him. Neither of us, however, felt much enthusiasm for the project. Never was the succour of a fellow human undertaken with such reluctance.
‘Leave me alone!’ he screamed as we muscl
ed him up and draped his nerveless arms round our quaking shoulders. ‘Let me die!’
I would willingly have done so! However, I had my orders, and I was determined to fulfil them.
On that occasion we staggered into camp well after midnight. Every member of the defence platoon had taken a hand. Jack Masters was so worried about us that he was on the point of sending out a search-party. We collapsed, sobbing with exhaustion and relief, in a heap. During all the hours that the defence platoon and Dal Bahadur and I had supported him, this poor, broken wretch never for an instant ceased abusing us for saving his life. I never even knew his name.
This experience was so unsettling that I began to have serious doubts about was I was doing. The following day, however, we came upon something which gave validation.
It happened during one of our hourly halts. The defence platoon, true to their incorrigible restlessness, was poking about among the reeds, pursuing a snake. They stumbled upon a boot. It was sticking out of a clump of marsh grass, and it was attached to a leg. Further investigation revealed a corpse – one of the King’s Liverpools. Faint traces of warmth lingering in the torso testified that the man was only recently dead.
It was a nasty enough thing to encounter, even if the circumstances had been entirely straightforward, which they weren’t. The King’s Liverpools were one of 77 Brigade’s battalions, and what one of their soldiers was doing here, in this part of the world, alone, and fifty miles from his headquarters, was never to be satisfactorily explained, unless he was a deserter. What was so shocking about the discovery, however, were the hundreds of leeches which clung to the body. They immediately raised doubts as to the cause of death. In the face of such an unusual event, I did not feel confident enough merely to report it. Instead I took the unusual step of sending a message to Doc Whyte.