Marine H SBS

by Ian Blake

  Wright had his night glasses trained on the sandoway. ‘Looks all right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But there’s something about its behaviour that’s fishy. It appeared too abruptly. From nowhere.’

  ‘Probably came out of one of the chaungs.’

  ‘You could be right, Taffy. That could be it. I’ll go alongside and drop two of you off, but I want the other two to ready the cockles. You’re going to have a look-see to check if there is a chaung over there.’

  ‘Fair enough. You come with me, Tiger. Sandy and Dopey can get the cockles launched.’

  The ML lurched forward and slowly circled the sandoway. More crew spilled on to its deck from the bamboo deck house and there was a lot of pointing and high-pitched excitable talk which floated across clearly to the ML as it manoeuvred to come alongside the anchored vessel.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Taffy asked the interpreter.

  ‘They think we sink them,’ said the interpreter cautiously.

  ‘Why should we do that?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. Not deliberate. By accident.’

  ‘They obviously don’t think much of our seamanship,’ Taffy remarked.

  ‘Simple people,’ the interpreter said humbly.

  ‘Jeez, I’ve heard that before, too,’ said Sandy. ‘If you ask me I think they’re as smart as a wagonload of monkeys.’

  The ML eased its way alongside the sandoway. Covered by the two twin Lewis guns which were mounted either side of the bridge, Taffy and Tiller jumped aboard. The interpreter followed and the ML backed off, but the Lewis guns remained trained on the other vessel’s crew.

  ‘Who’s the captain here?’ Taffy asked. He held his M2 in the crook of his arm as if out shooting rabbits, but Tiller, less sure of the situation, kept his at the ready. The interpreter repeated Taffy’s question in Arakanese and a tall, but bent man stepped forward. He wore at his waist a large dah, a native sword, from the hilt of which flowed a long tassel of horsehair dyed blood red.

  ‘Ask him for his papers and where he’s come from and where he’s going.’

  The captain handed over the papers and launched into a long and involved explanation. The interpreter handed the papers to Taffy, who looked at the Japanese stamp and handed them back.

  ‘Have a look around, Tiger.’

  Tiller pushed between the crew and ducked into the crude bamboo-mat-covered deck house. A curious acrid smell hung in the air and the floor was littered with the crew’s clothing. In one corner a pot boiled on a Primus stove; otherwise, the deck house was empty. He went out, found the hatch into the hold and shone his torch into it. It, too, was empty. Then he shone his torch around the deck, up the masts and under the folded sails. The crew watched him in stoic silence.

  ‘Anything?’

  Tiller shook his head. ‘The hold has obviously had rice in it recently. That’s all. No engine.’

  Taffy scratched his head. The crew of the sandoway continued to watch him silently. ‘Ask them what they were doing up that chaung?’ he told the interpreter, pointing towards the river bank.

  The interpreter’s question threw the crew into confusion. They all began gabbling at once, gesticulating at Taffy, at the bank, at themselves. The interpreter waited patiently for the hubbub to die down. Then he said: ‘They no go up chaung. Kattu too big for any chaung. They stay on Mayu, they say. They deliver rice to Rathedaung. Now they go home.’

  ‘And where’s home?’

  Even this seemed a matter of dispute, but eventually the interpreter said: ‘Up river, they say. Htizwe.’

  ‘Tell them to stay where they are until you tell them they can go,’ Taffy said, then gestured for the ML to come alongside. The interpreter climbed back on to the ML, and the two canoes, which had been circling nearby, moved silently alongside the sandoway.

  Tiller had already inspected the canoes closely and knew them to be the normal eighteen-foot Mk II types used by the SBS – more advanced models of the one Tiller had used on the Bordeaux raid. They were made of rubberized canvas stretched over a wooden frame and took a crew of two, who sat in watertight manholes. These more advanced types had a rigid frame with collapsible crossbars which allowed the canoe’s beam to be reduced by two inches so that it could be passed through the torpedo hatch of a submarine. Inside each canoe every inch of space was used to stow the buoyancy bags, and the rations, weapons, water, spare ammunition, medical box, repair kit and infrared signalling equipment which made each craft and its crew an independent fighting unit.

  Taffy lowered himself into one of the canoes and Tiller slipped into the other. As Tiller adjusted his weight to trim the craft, he retained hold of the side of the sandoway to stay balanced. His hand slid briefly down the rough wooden planks of the native craft and under his palm he momentarily felt something soft. He ran his hand back up the planking until his fingers encountered a scrap of cloth which had become snared in a splinter of wood. He tugged at it and it came away.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said to Sandy, who was in the front manhole. He took his torch out of his pocket and shone it on the scrap of cloth.

  ‘What colour are Jap uniforms?’ he asked the Australian.

  ‘Drab olive green, most of them,’ said Sandy. ‘Why?’

  ‘Like this?’

  Tiller thrust his hand in front of Sandy and shone the torch on the cloth.

  Sandy whistled under his breath. ‘Strewth. Where did you find that?’

  Tiller heard a sound above him and glanced up. The captain of the sandoway, his hand resting on the hilt of his dah, was looking down on the canoe with an expressionless face. When Tiller looked up he moved away.

  The second canoe circled towards them and rafted up alongside.

  ‘What’s the problem, Tiger?’ Taffy called out softly.

  Tiller passed the scrap of cloth over to Taffy and shone his torch on it. ‘Found this snagged on the side of the sandoway.’

  Taffy turned the fabric over carefully under the torch beam.

  ‘Seems brand new to me,’ he said, feeling it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Couldn’t have been there long. Everything rots in this climate.’

  ‘Including my fucking soul,’ murmured Dopey, who was holding on to the bows of Sandy’s canoe with one hand as he cocked the carbine he held in front of him with the other.

  ‘Well, let’s go and see if we can find the owner,’ said Taffy.

  Tiller gestured up to the deck of the sandoway. ‘The captain knows we’ve found it.’

  ‘He also knows that if he moves he’ll get blown out of the water,’ Taffy replied. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

  The two canoes moved away from the side of the sandoway, the crews using double-ended paddles to drive them through the dark, turgid water towards the bank.

  The darkness and sweet humidity of the night enfolded them and the sandoway soon blended into the shadows of the opposite bank, though they could still hear the reassuring grumbling sound of the ML’s engines as it slowly circled the vessel.

  The exertion of paddling, even though they moved deliberately slowly, made Tiller sweat profusely. They were dressed in long-sleeved shirts and long trousers to protect themselves from mosquitoes. These were no problem aboard the ML, but ashore it was essential to protect oneself as much as possible. Everyone took a Mepacrine tablet daily to prevent malaria. But the sickness rate in Burma was still five times higher than the casualty rate in battle.

  Near to the bank the two canoes rafted up momentarily.

  ‘We’ll rendezvous here, by this fallen tree,’ Taffy said to Tiller in a low voice. ‘We’ll go upstream for ten minutes; you go downstream for the same time. If you don’t find the entrance to a chaung in that time, come back. If you do, signal a series of Rs with your torch and wait for me. If I signal first you come back to me. Got it?’

  ‘Supposing there’s a bend in the river?’ said Tiller.

  ‘Then come back.’

  Taffy’s canoe slipped away and was soon swallowed up in the dark. Tiller and
Sandy swivelled theirs and, after Sandy had set a course on the compass grid which would run them parallel with the bank, began cautiously paddling downstream.

  Every so often Tiller looked over his shoulder and then at the luminous dial of his watch. There was no signal from the other canoe and after ten minutes he tapped Sandy on the shoulder.

  ‘Time to turn back,’ he said.

  ‘But do you see what I see?’ said Sandy. He stopped paddling and pointed.

  At first Tiller could not, but then he realized the bank was beginning to curve away from them.

  ‘A bend?’ he said.

  ‘No, that’s the start of a chaung,’ said Sandy.

  He swung the canoe so that it followed the line of the bank. When the canoe had followed it through nearly a right angle Tiller could see that it was indeed the mouth of a much smaller river, an outflow for the monsoon rains.

  Once they were sure it was a chaung they swung back into the main river and signalled with the torch. Dot dash dot . . . dot dash dot. After a moment there was an answering flash in acknowledgement, a pinprick of light.

  Tiller put the torch away and made sure he could draw his M2 from the canoe quickly, then settled down to wait.

  It was surprising how quickly the tide was coming in now, forcing them to circle several times to prevent the canoe being driven upstream. The tide’s speed delayed the other canoe’s joining them but it eventually arrived, and after a whispered conference Taffy led the way into the chaung.

  At its mouth the chaung was easily big enough for the sandoway, but after half a mile it began to narrow quite quickly. Taffy waved Tiller alongside and the two canoes rafted up.

  ‘If the sandoway came into here,’ Taffy said, ‘it would not have gone much further up than this. We’ll land and have a look around. You take the port bank. I’ll take the starboard one.’

  Tiller didn’t know how he was expected to find any clues in the dark, but he just nodded and they made for the left-hand bank. Sandy steered towards a small, sandy spit and the canoe grounded gently. Tiller was out of the craft in an instant, his M2 in his hand. The muddy sand sucked at his boots but he moved quickly on to firmer ground, the weapon cocked and ready.

  ‘Go right first,’ advised Sandy from the canoe. ‘Then I can cover you from here.’

  Tiller moved a little way upstream and then stopped and listened. The silence was eerie and oppressive, unbroken except for the occasional throaty chuckle of what might have been a frog or even some kind of bird. He could not tell whether it was coming from the water or the tangled undergrowth of bushes, mangrove and bamboo thickets which fringed the chaung.

  He crouched on his haunches and flashed his torch on the mud, well aware that doing so might draw the fire of a trigger-happy Japanese. But nothing broke the silence and he played the beam around him, hoping to find footprints or some other sign of life.

  Instead, the light caught two prominent eyes staring at him from the black, glutinous mud and as he jerked back in surprise the creature, whatever it was, leapt into the water.

  He moved on upstream until a tangle of mangrove prevented him going further and forced him to retrace his steps.

  ‘See anything?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘Only something weird that leapt into the water from the bank.’

  ‘A mud skipper, I expect. If you swing the cockle round I’ll be able to cover you going to the left.’

  Walking downstream, Tiller found that the mangrove petered out temporarily. The undergrowth away from the bank of the chaung was thinner and was replaced by tall grass and the occasional clump of bamboo. He looked for footprints along the bank or any disturbance of the ground, but found nothing. He was about to turn round when he came across a narrow path that meandered inland. Where it ended by the bank of the chaung there was a wide circle of trampled mud. He shone his torch on it and then returned to the canoe.

  ‘About a hundred yards down, there’s a path and footprints.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sandy said doubtfully. ‘It could be an elephant trail.’

  ‘I might be a new boy round here,’ Tiller retorted, ‘but I know elephants don’t wear size ten boots. Not even in London Zoo, they don’t.’

  As he spoke the other cockle loomed out of the dark and grounded beside them. Tiller told Taffy what he had seen and the four of them, having extracted their weapons from the cockles, including a Bren gun, made they way downstream.

  ‘They obviously unloaded something here and took it inland,’ Taffy said, looking at the area of mud.

  ‘The rice?’

  ‘Must have been. Crew of six from the sandoway plus half a dozen Japs, say. Between them they could have shifted a lot of rice in a short time, provided it was properly bagged.’

  ‘It looked as if it had been stored loose in the hold,’ said Tiller. ‘There were a lot of loose grains.’

  Taffy shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t ship rice loose. It would be bagged. I expect one of the bags burst.’

  ‘What now?’ Dopey asked. ‘Report back and get reinforcements?’

  ‘You must be joking, Dopey,’ Taffy retorted. ‘By the time the ML signals Cox’s Bazar to tell them what we’ve found and they dispatch reinforcements, the Japs will have picked up the rice, taken it into the mountains, cooked it and eaten it. No, we follow the path, find the cache and set up a nice little reception committee.’

  Tiller nodded his agreement. He liked Taffy’s style, but asked if the ML wouldn’t wonder what had happened to them. Taffy swung his knapsack off his back and produced a small radio from it. ‘The Yanks officially call it the SCR-256, unofficially the handie-talkie. We call it a walkie-talkie. Weighs just 5lb. See what I mean about Yank equipment, Tiger. Usually, they’re not much use in the chaungs and mangroves, but we’re close enough to make contact, I think.’

  He pulled out the aerial, pressed a button and began talking to the ML. When he’d finished he collapsed the aerial and returned the walkie-talkie to the knapsack. ‘They’ll take the sandoway back to Cox’s Bazar and will be in position to pick us up at dawn the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Any spare magazines for the Bren?’ Tiller asked. He was glad they were taking along a Bren gun. In his experience it was the most reliable and efficient light machine-gun in the business, any Yank invention notwithstanding.

  ‘Plenty,’ Sandy said. ‘And a sack of grenades. There’s also plenty of water but bugger-all food.’

  ‘By this evening you’ll have had enough rice to last you a year,’ Taffy promised him. ‘In the meantime let’s collect that extra ammunition and the water bottles. We may have a long trek ahead of us.’

  They dragged the canoes out of the water and into the mangrove, and put camouflage nets over them. Then they walked back to the path and began to follow it. Immediately they hit swamp and mud and thick, choking mangrove that snagged their feet. The smell of rotting wood and vegetation made Tiller gasp in disgust. At times they had to wade almost waist high through the fetid water. By the time they had reached higher, more solid ground, dawn was breaking. Taffy signalled a halt and he and Sandy each lit a cigarette. This surprised Tiller almost as much as the number of matches it took to light them. No one ever smoked on patrol.

  ‘Leeches,’ Taffy explained. ‘Now’s the time to get rid of them.’

  Tiller looked down and saw something black clinging to his forearm where his sleeve had come loose. He was about to flick it off when Sandy stopped him. ‘You’ll bleed like a stuck pig,’ he warned him. ‘The only way is to burn the bugger off.’

  He came up with his cigarette and applied the lighted tip to the bloated leech, which dropped from Tiller’s arm. Instinctively Tiller stamped on it and the ground became stained with blood.

  ‘They get everywhere during the rainy season,’ said Taffy. ‘You’ll go on bleeding for hours if you pull them off, as the head remains in the skin and continues to emit anti-coagulant secretions. They’ll be on your legs, too.’

  Reluctantly, Tiller undid h
is belt and dropped his trousers.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, looking down at the revolting, swollen objects clinging to his thighs and calves. ‘I knew Burma was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ said Sandy, handing him his cigarette. ‘It’s the flies I can’t stand. I tell you in this fucking country the real enemy is disease, the monsoon and dear old mother nature – not the fucking Japs.’

  5

  They found the cache of rice soon after the sun had risen above the Arakan Yomas mountains, which stretched across the horizon in front of them, dividing the Arakan from the rest of Burma. A thin trickle of the greyish-white grains from a torn bag led them off the main trail into some undergrowth and after a few hundred yards they came upon a disused bamboo hut – a basha in the local army parlance – that stood on stilts in the middle of a small clearing. Sandy wanted to enter the hut but Taffy stopped him.

  ‘It could be booby-trapped,’ he said. ‘Take Dopey, circle round the clearing and check that there aren’t any other bashas nearby.’

  As the other two men moved off, Tiller and Taffy walked cautiously towards the hut, their carbines at the ready. It was unlikely that the Japanese would booby-trap the path because any animal could set it off – but, as Taffy said, you never knew with the Japs.

  They walked carefully round the hut, keeping their distance, before approaching and peering up through gaps in its floor.

  ‘There must be a couple of hundred bags of the stuff,’ Taffy said. ‘Enough to feed a regiment for a week. I can’t see if there’s anything else in there, though.’

  ‘Do we look?’ Tiller asked. He noticed that the ramshackle door, approached by a short flight of rickety bamboo steps, was tightly closed.

  ‘If there’s a booby-trap it will be on the door,’ Taffy reminded him. ‘Standard Jap procedure to put one there. The natives know it and keep clear.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Tiller. He climbed the steps and walked right up to the closed door. He had cleared dozens of booby-traps in his time. The Italians were especially ingenious in planting them, and one of their favourite devices was made of wood and contained just enough explosive to blow a man’s foot off. It was both cheap and effective – a rare combination, for it cost next to nothing to make and left the opposing side with a lot of wounded men who were a drain on resources. Such ingenuity had appealed to Tiller. After all, why kill a man when it is so much more effective to maim him?