by Brian Mooney
When he arrived, we examined the body. The first thing we had to do was remove the gorging leeches from the orifices of the head. Ears, eyes and nose were entirely obscured by them. Two voracious specimens had taken up residence in either nostril, and were swollen to such an enormous size that it proved almost impossible to dislodge them. The inside of the man’s mouth was also full of leeches.
We then unbuttoned his trousers and submitted the lower limbs to examination. A number of leeches, bloated with blood, were clustered in the aperture of his anus. Another’s tail wiggled from the eye of his prick.
‘Could it be,’ I stammered, ‘I mean, his death – what about the leeches? Can he have bled to death?’
‘A distinct possibility,’ Doc Whyte concurred. ‘Having regard to his weakened condition.’
A second incident occurred a few days later. We had left the swamps and were proceeding through tall trees. Above our heads, in their upper branches and cushioned among swags of Spanish moss and encapsulated in wads of lichen, there flowered sumptuous sprays of purple orchids, like luscious bunches of magenta grapes.
I was marching behind a bunch of British Other Ranks. They constituted that group of specialists attached to Brigade Headquarters, such as Signallers and like experts, who were not commissioned.
The scene was informal and the atmosphere animated and relaxed. Snatches of conversation drifted back to me. They were joking about booking a houseboat near Dhal Lake in Srinagar via Briggo’s radio network to Rear Headquarters, in readiness for leave. It was generally assumed that our evacuation from the battle-zone could not now be long delayed. Doc Whyte was marching only a little distance ahead.
Suddenly the homely badinage and jesting companionship of this group of idly chattering soldiers collapsed, caving in upon itself like a hollow object disintegrating under pressure.
One of the men fell to the ground.
As if in a set of flashlight stills, I saw a series of tableaux. Each one was distinct, completely uncommitted to continuity of movement. A man stood with distraught gestures and an anguished expression. A second man, his face magnified in my memory into a monstrous mask of incomprehension, was caught napping, his eyes as vacuous and sightless as those of a Greek statue. A third, the subject of a quicker reaction, started away horrified, his face mottled by disgust and shock. Another grasped his rifle grimly and took first pressure on the trigger, searching the distance for the source of the onslaught. We all assumed that the man to whom the injury had occurred must have been shot – picked off by a sniper.
Some soldiers took up defensive positions facing outwards. Others bent down to help their comrade, now lying on the ground. Yet more remained transfixed, incapable of coherent action.
More vividly than all of this, however, I recall the slightly stupefied expression on the face of the man on the ground, and his half-startled, half-instinctive movement to put his hands up to his neck. They never got there.
The expression died stillborn. The stupefaction of his features faded and the tide of life which they had represented subsided.
A gash had opened in the side of his neck, just behind his throat. Out gushed his life’s blood. It pumped and squirted in spasms, staining the carmine-coloured mud a brighter red. By the time Doc Whyte arrived he was dead.
It was difficult to take in the finality of what had happened. Inadequately we stood around the blood-saturated corpse, now hideously disfigured. We gazed down at the drained white face of the man who only recently – less than three minutes ago – was planning how to spend his furlough. Doc Whyte made his examination.
The results of this post-mortem carried out at the scene of the accident and in the blood-drenched mud, together with a few brief facts pieced together from the man’s medical history, were very remarkable. When they became available, they revealed a most extravagantly unlikely set of circumstances.
The man had been insignificantly wounded by a minute shell-splinter from a Japanese mortar bomb during one of our earlier actions against Kyaungle. The tiny particle of steel, sharp as a razor blade and pointed as a needle, had remained inside him, and the apparently trifling injury had remained untreated. Then the cicatrice healed over. The fragment thereupon proceeded to travel all over his body. It had finally landed up in his neck. Some incredible mischance had there caused it to sever the main jugular artery.
This incident had the most unnerving effect on all of us. We had been in Burma for more than ninety days. This was the period universally agreed upon by all parties as a maximum one beyond which Chindit troops were not expected any longer to be able to support such conditions. An incident such as the one I have just described brings many hidden disharmonies to the fore. We all felt rotten, but then we were already in a deplorable condition. Jungle sores, tic typhus, pneumonia and pleurisy were ubiquitous.
But for those of us who marched with the Brigade Headquarters at that time, I think the most distressing thing we had to contend with were the cerebral malaria cases we carried around with us. These were soldiers so desperately ill that they required constant medical attention and supervision. Doc Whyte had set up a sort of mobile dressing station for them. It travelled around with us, in order that he could give them his personal care.
The continued presence of those sufferers, quite unconscious and with fevers ranging from between 108° to 112°, was a constant source of worry. Dragged around on improvised mule-litters, fed on brandy, sugar and water by a little tube passed through the nose to the stomach, relieved by a catheter tube up the urethra and exposed to all sorts of infections by the necessity of being treated with saline drip, they presented a spectacle – with their bottles of saline solution suspended above them and their tubes and strappings – that was a dreadful reminder of what could happen to any of us.
The troops had some justification for thinking and talking about evacuation. But it was not to be. Outside the battle-zone and beyond us, another sort of war was being waged pointlessly and privately. It was the battle between our higher commanders.
Very little of this fanatical contest filtered down to the men in the field. But, on account of my close contact with the Brigade Commander in the ordinary run of business and also by reason of my occasional co-operation with ciphers, a considerable amount of it was known to me.
I was aware of the bitterness, stalemate and deadlock which existed between Lentaigne and Stilwell. Stilwell was accusing 111 Brigade of having unnecessarily abandoned Blackpool and was demanding that we move north and try again. Jack Masters was trying to prevent 111 Brigade from being sacrificed to Stilwell’s egotistical mania, and as a result being completely destroyed. He was opposed to our being ordered into further action because he considered we were physically and mentally incapable of it. All such protests, of course, were of no avail.
We were ordered to take Point 2171 and push on down towards the main Jap lines of communication in the valley.
But before we arrived at this point of decision Masters did his best to adopt a bellicose stance and to occupy a position that was potentially threatening to the Japanese lines of communication. Acrimonious messages were winging back and forth between Lentaigne and Brigade. Lentaigne and Stilwell had ceased to be on speaking terms. Meanwhile Masters and Calvert (still attacking Mogaung) had entered into a lively correspondence in limerick verse of a consistently high standard, and of exceptional quality, via light plane. We had all become exceedingly light-headed.
We had now left the leech-infested swamps bordering on Indawgyi Lake and were established in the hills. From here, Masters once more started sending long-range patrols to beat up the Japs in the valley.
At one point during these activities I was pushed well out beyond Brigade Headquarters group, with my two defence platoons covering and blocking off a track intersection, and commanding the lower slopes which tumbled into the valley. It was two mile or so away from Brigade Headquarters and was just distant enough to give me once more that pleasant feeling of independence from Mast
ers’s dominant personality.
I was taking advantage of this unaccustomed liberty to have a look round. I took a section patrol in a wide sweep through the jungles, which in the monsoon rains were looking particularly magnificent. Apart from the fabulously flowering trees and shrubs, I discovered nothing of significance. When I returned to my encampment, it was late afternoon. I found a message waiting for me to the effect that a ‘sahib’ had passed through from 30 Column with a patrol and had asked for me. He had apparently been so anxious to make my acquaintance that he and his platoon had sat down and waited for half an hour. On my failure to appear, they had departed. They had continued on their way into the valley where, so the ‘sahib’ had informed Thaman Bahadur, they intended to waylay a Japanese convoy on the road. Before he left, the ‘sahib’ had particularly asked Thaman Bahadur to say to me that he was sorry.
I wondered who it could be. I assumed that the bit about ‘being sorry’ referred to some message which he had been charged to pass on to me from Brigade and which my absence from the place had constrained him not to deliver.
On the following day my forward picket reported a strong group making their way up the path through the lantana scrub from the plain. They were taking so little care to conceal themselves that it was assumed they must be our own troops – probably the patrol who had gone through on the previous day. This turned out to be the case.
They looked so crestfallen and bedraggled that I forbore to question them. They passed through with severe, unrelenting looks on their faces, glancing neither to left or right. To the remarks of my men they simply returned a perfunctory ‘no’ or ‘yes’.
They were, however, unable to resist the inquisitiveness and charm of Dal Bahadur, who successfully wormed out of them the secret that they were seeking to keep safe for their own Commander and for Brigade.
Dal Bahadur passed on the information to me. They had lost their officer in a brief action during the night. Only a few shots had been exchanged. At the first enemy onslaught a bullet had entered his forehead – it made only a little hole, they said – and he had died at once. They had then disengaged from the action and retired, abandoning his body to the enemy.
That officer had been Mike MacGillicuddy. He left me with a heavy sense of regret. We had quarrelled badly and never had the chance to make up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Court Martial
While we were loafing about under these circumstances, we became involved in a local vendetta. A group of villagers came trooping into camp. I remember glancing incuriously at them. One of them had his hands tied behind his back. Some sort of criminal, evidently. These fellows had their own exemplary forms of justice. I do not recall feeling the slightest sense of empathy, nor did I find the situation in the least extraordinary. One’s capacity for reacting to unusual circumstances had become blunted.
And what, in any case, had it got to do with me? If certain people had formed the habit of constantly coming and going – trading in rice, in lives, in lies, in hastily garnered and quite irresponsibly misleading pieces of gossip about the enemy – was I therefore obliged to pay attention to every petty informer who had simply made commerce out of these things?
The answer, surprisingly, was yes. It was part of the intelligence gathering function of every guerrilla fighter, and consequently every Chindit. I assumed that these villagers trooping into camp – abject and half starving as they were, for all that they retained a diffident dignity – were just another aspect of the underside of our operations.
Consequently it was only when the word got about that there was to be a court-martial that I sat up and took notice. Consumed with curiosity, I made my way to Jack Masters, who was interrogating the villagers. I did not put in an appearance at a particularly appropriate moment.
‘Ever served on a court-martial?’ Masters challenged me.
‘Er – yes – as a matter of fact I have.’
‘Then make ready to serve on one now. You are officially co-opted.’ ‘Um – er,’ I gasped, ‘I don’t think I have the necessary qualifications.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll explain the procedures. Just help the others, please, to prepare the scenery.’
There were several of us present. I remember exchanging baffled glances with Smithy. ‘What,’ I whispered to him helplessly, ‘does he expect us to do?’
Smithy responded to the summons with his usual resourcefulness. Under his direction we collected some ammunition boxes and yakdans and arranged them like a table. Over the top of them we draped a blanket. Crates of unprimed grenades provided the court’s benches. The president’s chair was a skilfully improvised three-inch-mortar base-plate. Masters, of course, was the president.
I forget who the others were, Briggo, Geoffrey Birt, Douglas Larpent perhaps, maybe even Alec Harper, possibly Major Henning from the Cameronians or Major Heap from the King’s Own. I remember one person who was conspicuously absent, and that was Doc Whyte. He insisted that it was no part of his business. I also remember that I sat on the extreme right.
Macpherson acted as interpreter and conducted the prosecution. I don’t think the poor devil of an accused (the man with his hands tied behind his back) had a defender, and there seemed hardly any point in his having one, because the case was so deceptively simple. He was arraigned upon several charges and there was really no evidence for or against, apart from the fact of the dead bodies. Macpherson and the Burma Rifles people swore and testified to having seen these personally.
The prisoner was charged with having informed the Japanese that certain villagers had provided guides for our soldiers some days previously. The Japanese had then come, crucified the wife of the headman (the headman was one of those present), shot one of his sons, and bayoneted other people. The remainder of the village had managed to run away. The accused denied having acted as an informer.
It was one man’s word against another’s. I believe they designate these active-service affairs, picturesquely, as drum-head courts-martial. The term is certainly evocative. It has a sort of primitive appositeness – a rudimentary rectitude – which is the very fibre of rough justice.
A shaft of sunlight shot through the branches of the teak trees with theatrical effect and illuminated the gathering. We might have been sitting down to some sort of intimate meal like the Last Supper. The prisoner was duly brought to the bar. The first action the court took was to order the guards to unbind his hands. He was then charged.
I was encouraged by this action – for it was a movement towards clemency. I thought it boded well for the prisoner’s fate. It was not achieved, however, without a certain huffing and hawing. Somebody had pressed the possibility that the prisoner might take advantage of the opportunity and dart away into the jungle.
It will appear in retrospect no doubt almost incredible that we could actually have envisaged such a thing, since the man was surrounded by squads of armed soldiers. Yet such an eventuality was seriously considered, and it was not as silly as it sounds. The local people were incredibly clever at merging imperceptibly with the trees. You will readily appreciate that even a modern army, well-equipped with sophisticated weaponry and tanks, may find itself severely at a disadvantage when dealing with slippery peasants. As a consequence, as the man stood before us and shivered, an undertaking was extracted from him that he would not escape.
The ins and outs of the affair could have been unravelled without any difficulty. But the question of equity was complicated by political expediency. We were embarked on the series of actions which were going to result in the reconquest of Burma. The villagers could appreciate this and were beginning to turn in our direction. But whether Macpherson and his Burma rifles men had just stumbled on this situation, as they averred, and were acting as honest brokers; or whether they were attempting to exploit a local feud, and blow it up to proportions which impinged on the Brigade’s security, merely for political ends, or to persuade the Burmese to throw in their lot with the British – these are things I shall never
know.
From the point of view of our side, the whole thing seemed far too damned convenient. The Japanese army was plainly no longer able to tyrannize the local people with impunity in order to win support for their own particular partisans. Now the partisans of the other party – our partisans – were turning to us, obviously desiring, or so it seemed to me, that we in our turn should buy support and win adherents by likewise tyrannizing their opponents.
Sometimes human nature, in all its twists and turns, seems past redemption. The entire proceedings were concluded in about half-an-hour. Although we heard evidence and banded questions back and forth, thus doing our best to make it look as if we were striving to arrive at the truth, there was really nothing to argue about.
I, myself, had propounded, artlessly, the fundamental question at the very outset of the proceedings by asking, ‘Is not the prisoner a Burman?’
‘Yes.’
‘And are not his accusers Kachins?’
My remark was greeted with an uncomfortable silence. Of course it is well known that the Burmans, or plains folk, had always been anti-British,
pro-Japanese and anti-Kachin. The Kachins, on the contrary, or hill folk, were pro-British, anti-Japanese and anti-Burman.
The prisoner’s fate had been sealed as soon as he was brought into camp. No one doubted – not even I, who was quite sympathetic to him – that if he were released from custody he would rush off to the Japanese and tell them all about us.
‘Well,’ demanded Jack Masters, in summation of all these intangibles, ‘is the prisoner innocent or guilty?’ He posed the question to each of us in turn, personally interrogating every member of the court separately.
The answer was a foregone conclusion.
‘Guilty.’ ‘Guilty.’ ‘Guilty.’
Finally he came to me.