by John Harris
Ginger reached for another banana but he stopped and looked at Malaki as a thought occurred to him.
‘How do you feel about setting about blackies, Joe?’ he asked gently.
Malaki looked up, his face dignified. ‘Because their skin is the same colour as mine,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t follow that we’re brothers.’
‘They’re Africans, same as you,’ Leach pointed out.
‘The Russians are Europeans, man, same as you,’ Malaki replied. ‘Would you call them your brothers?’
‘Yes, mate, every time.’
‘Don’t you have any feeling at all about it, Joe?’ Ginger asked.
‘I’m paid to obey,’ Malaki said. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’
‘But, Christ,’ Bolam joined in eagerly, ‘you come from a place only a hundred and fifty miles from King Boffa Port. These blokes are your mates.’
Malaki gestured angrily. ‘I came from Asimano,’ he said. ‘It was poor and there was no work, and Britain gave my father a job. I chose the Army and I’ll stand by it.’
‘Christ!’ Leach rolled his eyes. ‘These saints! It’s a bloody fine cause to get killed in, I must say.’
‘You’ll never get killed, Leach,’ Snaith said quietly. ‘You’ll never make it.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Leach said, with the air of a man preparing for martyrdom in a good cause.
‘Then who says you’ll be killed?’
‘You ever taken a good hard look at your equipment?’ Leach asked. ‘Rifles that were used in Korea. Wireless sets that are out of date. Lorries that are falling apart. Ships that are scrap, and aircraft that are suffering from metal fatigue.’
‘Metal exhaustion, more like,’ Spragg grinned.
‘Did you know,’ Leach went on, ‘that all the ships here came off the Reserve, and half the officers who’re skippering ’em have been passed over for promotion? Naval rubbish heaps, mate, run by officers without hope.’
‘Go it, Leach,’ Private Wedderburn shouted, less concerned with making trouble than with having a little fun. ‘Give it ’em, boy!’
Leach climbed on to his bed. It made him feel taller and bolder. ‘Back home, brothers,’ he said, ‘they’re downing tools over it! Why don’t we?’
‘That’s it!’ Spragg said. ‘Down tools! We ought to have downed tools when they cut pay.’
‘You want to watch it, Leach,’ Welch said soberly. ‘They can nick you for this. It’s incitement to mutiny.’
‘Get out of it, man,’ Leach said. ‘We’re only standing up for our rights.’
‘We’ve got to stick together,’ Ginger agreed sententiously. ‘If one makes a fuss he’s a troublemaker. If we all make a fuss, it’s a legitimate grievance.’
‘Ginger wants to do his detention without having it interrupted by fighting,’ Snaith grinned.
There was still a chance that the whole affair would descend to the farcical, but it so happened that Spragg had a brother in one of the transports lying in the harbour.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Our kid’s ship’s printer on the Aronsay Castle. He’d make us some pamphlets.’
Ginger looked up. ‘What’d we put on ’em?’ he asked.
‘Workers of the world, unite!’ Snaith jeered.
‘Up the Red Flag, and bring your own bombs.’
‘Go Home, Yanks.’
‘Kiss me while I’m conscious.’
The suggestions were rowdy, derisive and raucous, and nobody even now took them very seriously. Yet, somehow, beneath the chaffing, there was suddenly an element of seriousness and resentment. The pay cuts had been a blow to them all and, though none of them had complained particularly about being sent overseas – none, that is, except the few like Ginger – it was suddenly beginning to dawn on them that what they were being asked to do could earn them, in addition to hard work and possible injury and death, no thanks from their countrymen at home and disgust from the rest of the world.
Leach and Spragg had their heads together now, writing on the back of an envelope.
‘Leave it to us, Ginger,’ Spragg said, looking up. ‘It’s half done.’
‘How are you going to pass ’em round?’ McKechnie asked. ‘That’s easy,’ Wedderburn said, collecting the dominoes. ‘Give a handful to the hut orderlies. Leave a bundle in every tent.’
‘Shove a few in the canteen,’ Leach suggested.
‘How about the cookhouse? Everybody goes there.’
‘Put a few in the bogs,’ came a derisive yell from the back. ‘Everybody reads there. They won’t be wasted, either.’
‘How about the ships?’ Spragg asked. ‘We’ve got to have the Navy with us.’
‘They’ll be with us,’ Leach reassured him. ‘They’ve had their pay cut, too.’
‘They’re all anchored offshore.’
‘What’s wrong with ship’s boats?’
Everybody in the hut seemed to be shouting suddenly, with Malaki and Snaith pushed into a corner and defending themselves against the arguments of their friends. Only Ginger, perhaps because of his greater familiarity with authority, seemed to be conscious of the danger. He was sitting on his bed, forgotten, gaping round him at the uproar.
‘Christ,’ he was saying slowly as he realised Leach and Spragg were serious. ‘Christ, there’ll be trouble.’
Seven
Such was the feeling of discontent among the men of Hodgeforce that Private Leach’s plan swept him along faster than he had hoped even in his wildest moments. The dissatisfaction was already there. It only needed putting into words and the words translating into action.
When Leach contacted a friend of his who was a fellow trade unionist and Party member, in the corvette Duck, he was amazed at the vehemence of the response there. The ship was blessed with a captain who had been passed over for promotion and, but for the emergency, might have finished his service in the naval backwater where he had been indifferently carrying out duties of no great responsibility. The urgent need to commission ships from the mothball fleet had forced him into a command, however, and, instead of looking on it as a last-chance opportunity, he regarded it more in the nature of a nuisance, arriving as it did in the last few months of his career, and he gave remarkably little towards it.
Armed with a kitbag of inflammatory leaflets, printed under pressure by Spragg’s brother on the old flatbed press of the Aronsay Castle, Leach returned to his friend twenty-four hours later and, in no time at all, the leaflets were being delivered by postmen and messengers aboard the picket boats of the escort vessels which had been assembled in the harbours and creeks of Pepul.
Another kitbagful had been dumped in the lap of Corporal Clark, of the RAF Regiment, and the leaflets had found their way into the billets of the RAF just across the road from the army camp. Before two days were out, practically everyone below non-commissioned rank had seen them. Even a few of the corporals and sergeants had seen them, but those few who had considered the pamphlet at all had been either sympathetic or had diagnosed it as the work of a crackpot.
Leach had learned his job well, however. Although he was no intellectual, he knew what to say and how to say it, and all the grievances, all the troubles, all the worries of the amorphous mass of men who comprised Hodgeforce were brought together by the bitter words on the yellow pamphlets printed on the Aronsay Castle.
Small groups began to gather over the tea and wads in the NAAFI, in the temporary workshops of the RAF, and over the beer in the shore canteens of the Royal Navy. And slowly but surely these small groups came together, like iron filings attracted by a magnet, and clotted into a solid movement. No longer was it a case of individual grievances. The grievances had suddenly become communal.
Meetings began to take place secretly behind the hangars and among the army vehicles and in the messdecks, and the word was passed round – quite deliberately but quite untruthfully – that the officers were aware of what was being said and sympathised to the last degree. The decision to hold a mass meeting on the footbal
l ground behind the naval canteen at Pepul was reached first of all aboard Duck but it was found, on enquiry, that other ship’s companies had had the same idea, and once again the movements jelled and became one; and the idea that had started in the billets of the 17th/105th came back to them as a mass protest organised by the Navy, to which were invited men of the Army and Air Force.
It had been decided that, to bring home to the Government the genuine grievances of the men, small cells must be organised, all answerable to a central cell, which – now out of the hands of Leach – was being organised by cleverer men aboard Duck. Something had to be done. A protest had to be made that would cover all the objections of all those women back in England who had received a cut in the allotments made to them by their husbands or sons or brothers; that would set free all those Reservists who were sweating in Malala – apparently to no purpose – while their jobs were being snapped up by others at home; and would give tongue to the anger of those men who had been paying off mortgages or hire purchase debts and now found themselves in grave difficulties due to the pay cuts or through being Reservists. This protest, of course, would also inevitably cover the complaints of the troublemakers like Leach, and the whines of the awkward and stupid like Spragg who disliked being a long way from girlfriends, cinemas, television and bright lights; and the half-hearted, half-cunning, half-jesting censures of the lazy and the unwilling like Ginger Bowen, who were really only chancing their arm to make life a little easier.
Unknown to General Hodges and the naval and air officers commanding, unknown to ships’ captains, group, wing and squadron commanders; to regimental and company officers – and even, for the most part, to section leaders also – Hodgeforce, which could never have been called an efficient fighting force, was being undermined still further.
It was symptomatic of the state the Army had lapsed into and it was not only unknown to the politicians in England but would also have been, to those who had never worn a uniform, quite incomprehensible.
While the Security Council in New York argued about the effect of the rioting on the force stationed at Pepul, the Prime Minister, back in England, was treading warily in the House of Commons through a maze of half-truths and more-than-truths to avoid announcing that he and his Cabinet, after weeks of hesitation and vacillation, had finally been forced into a decision.
The proceedings had continued along almost restrained lines all evening, dealing as they did with the making over of surplus stores to help the refugees from North Korea. The subject had seemed a safe one and no one had been thinking particularly of Khanzi. Indeed, along the back benches one or two Members were glancing surreptitiously at evening papers which seemed to be more concerned with the size of the force being assembled at Pepul than the reason for its presence there.
‘What opposition could a state of the size of Colonel Scepwe’s offer against a country as powerful as Britain?’ the Courier was asking. ‘Are we not trying to provide a drop-hammer to crack a walnut?’
Then somebody ventured to protest against what China was doing and immediately a discordant note was introduced by Derek Moffat who had not been slow to spot the opportunity to bring up the subject of Khanzi.
‘Our protests,’ he said, ‘would be more effective had we been able to make them with unsoiled hands.’
In the flurry of questions that had followed, the Prime Minister was stung to reply. He had, he said, in the interests of the whole of Africa, requested that Malala and Khanzi should settle their differences, otherwise British forces would have to intervene, in such strength as would be necessary to secure compliance.
He had risen to speak in a suddenly excited House and he now gave a brief account of the events which had led up to the present crisis.
‘During the past few weeks,’ he said, ‘Her Majesty’s Government have thought it their duty, having regard to their obligations under the treaty which gave Malala independence, to give assurances, both public and private, of their intention to honour these obligations.’
His speech was received, if not with silence from the Opposition benches, at least not with uproar and it seemed that for the time being the initiative still rested with the Government. Nothing had yet happened in Africa, despite the gathering of troops at Pepul, and the feeling was still one of hope that the prospect of war might slowly be fading; but a second statement later in the evening by the Foreign Secretary on the rioting at King Boffa Port and at Sarges led the Prime Minister to speak again.
He described the events, deplored the loss of life, expressed sympathy with the relatives of the people involved and ended with the sombre assurance that the Government was gravely exercised by the events and was watching the situation closely.
Immediately there were shouts from the Opposition benches of ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ and the Prime Minister was finally forced to reveal that, in spite of his desire for peace, he had been obliged to play his hand.
‘I have given certain orders,’ he said slowly, ‘but I am not prepared at this moment, because of security, to divulge them.’
Immediately, Moffat bounced from his seat again. ‘Is it war?’ he demanded. ‘Will British troops be engaged in action? Is it the Prime Minister’s intention to become an aggressor?’
Starke hedged, not wishing to be drawn. ‘Certain precautions of a military nature have been ordered,’ was all he would permit himself.
Immediately, the whole of the Opposition began to yell in unison for a proper answer, and an attempt by the Speaker to restore order and return to debate brought Carey to his feet.
‘Mr Speaker,’ he said coldly, ‘how can we debate a crisis, if we do not know whether that crisis has, in fact, become war?’
There followed shouts of ‘Resign!’ and the debate proceeded sporadically through the noise in the atmosphere of a nightmare, then Carey rose once again. Both sides became silent at last, according him the respect that was his due as Leader of the Opposition.
‘Mr Speaker,’ he said slowly, ‘talk of war pervades European capitals, and in Machingo, President Braka is letting it be known – with the full support of this Government, let it be said – that Colonel Scepwe’s day is almost over. Italy has told us bluntly: Don’t count on our support in the event of trouble. France remains aloof. The United States and Russia are for once in accord in their hostility to this move, and China has promised to send not only volunteers but as much military equipment as is possible. It is also well known that rockets are being moved from the northern borders of Manchuria to Yunnan and Kwangsi. The import is obvious. China is prepared to forget her differences with Russia to direct her hostility towards Great Britain. There is a grave risk of escalation from limited to thermo-nuclear war. If the Prime Minister is prepared to accept that fact without trembling, then all I can say is God help this country that we have him now at the helm.’
In the burst of cheering and abuse that followed, the Prime Minister sat motionless in his seat, staring in front of him. His brows were down and his mouth was a tight line. There seemed, in the confusion of the moment, no reply.
Eight
When Ginger Bowen’s period of punishment came to an end, he determined to celebrate and presented himself at the guardroom dressed with care and showing a dandy’s regard for the shine of his shoes.
Sergeant O’Mara was standing behind the desk. ‘Watch it, Ginger,’ he warned. ‘I’ve got the tumbril waiting.’
Ginger grinned as he gave his name, rank and number to a frowning Corporal Connell behind the desk. He had completely forgotten the talk they’d had, even if Corporal Connell hadn’t.
‘Sarge,’ Ginger said. ‘It’ll be so quiet, it’ll be like Remembrance Day. You’ve got a soldier on your hands.’
O’Mara jerked a thumb. ‘I’d raffle you off as a prize any time,’ he said. ‘Shove off.’
Ginger grinned again and turned out of the camp, his mind busy with thoughts of Sulfika Achmet. Ahead of him the palms cut across the fused yello
ws and reds of a stormy sunset, and he could hear the crickets and the frogs in the heavy scented darkness, and the roaring of the naphtha lamps above the little stalls that lined the long straight road into town. The foliage glowed unnaturally green above them against the backdrop of the sky, and Ginger walked happily towards Pepul, keeping his own company because he was always a lone wolf when in search of pleasure. A few dogs shot out from the shadows, barking at him in lunatic frenzy, then a bus approached jammed to the hatracks with grinning, waving, singing Africans. Every spare seat was packed with suitcases, boxes of fruit and even one or two trussed live pigs blinking with little grey eyes from among the rolls of bedding.
As it stopped alongside Ginger to set someone down, he hopped aboard, indifferent to Camp Standing Orders – which he never read anyway – which forbade the use of native buses. The singing stopped abruptly as he pushed between the crowded people; but Ginger, being Ginger, felt none of the subtle change of atmosphere and begged a light from the man next to him, one of General Ditro Aswana’s Malalan soldiers in American battle equipment. In two minutes he was in conversation, his neighbour joining in reluctantly at first, and within five minutes the whole bus was shouting with laughter at him.
Cutting sharply across the instructions in the little book on how to behave that had been issued to him on his arrival, Ginger made not the slightest concession to the worried suggestions of welfare officers concerned with racialism. He slandered the Malalan armed forces and offered a few none-too-complimentary opinions on President Alois Braka, and called his neighbour a wog, a nigger and a blackie and, against all the predictions of the experts, he wasn’t left for dead in a drainage ditch. On the contrary, before long the catcalls were coming at him from every corner of the bus and he was responding in kind, and the whole busload of them, smelling of sweat and charcoal and palm oil, were hooting with laughter.