by Ian Blake
‘I assume you’ll be wanting me,’ he said.
‘Not this time, Dick,’ Tiller answered. It had never occurred to him that Coates would even think he might be needed. ‘No room in the dinghy, I’m afraid.’
Coates grunted something and turned away.
Tiller, Sandy and Dopey lowered themselves cautiously into the rubber dinghy, which bounced alarmingly on the water. Each was armed with an M2 carbine and hand-grenades. The crewman rowed them silently to the beach, some fifty yards away, and said he would return for them when they signalled to the ML from the beach.
The beach was quite firm but immediately to their right they could see the beginnings of a mangrove swamp which probably hid the muddy estuary of a small chaung. They moved inland on a compass course, their automatic carbines at the ready, and were soon making their way through sparse, chest-high elephant grass interspersed with denser clumps of bamboo. In the darkness ahead an owl hooted twice.
As the ground began to rise the elephant grass grew thicker and higher, and here and there palm trees rose up tall into the night sky. The elephant grass made it difficult to see any distance ahead and Tiller, who was holding the pocket compass in front of him, was careful to ensure they kept their bearings.
After a while the elephant grass became shorter and more sparse and Tiller could see that the ground now started to rise sharply up to the hilltop where the fire had been lit. There was no sign of it now.
Tiller turned and said in a low voice: ‘We won’t go straight up. Too obvious. We’ll skirt round and approach from inland.’
Sandy and Dopey nodded.
‘Don’t fire unless you’re fired upon,’ Tiller added.
They followed the contour of the hill inland, but a swampy area soon forced them to take a higher route. The ground squelched under their feet and mangrove roots snared their boots. Behind him Tiller heard Sandy stumble and swear under his breath, and he could feel the sweat cascading down his face. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and felt the sweat sting his eyes. Again, somewhere ahead of them, an owl hooted twice.
The nature of the ground gradually forced the three men higher and higher until they came to a flattened area, some sort of vegetable garden, long abandoned. They skirted it and then turned directly uphill.
As they approached the summit the hillside became bare of vegetation. At one point Tiller dropped on to his haunches and waved the other two down. He studied the shape of the hilltop against the night sky but could see nothing moving. He got up and moved slowly forward, his ears straining for any unfamiliar sound. About twenty feet from the top he waved the other two down and moved forward by himself in a crouching position before crawling the last few yards to the top.
Beyond the ridge there was a large dip in the ground before it rose again. Beyond, Tiller could see the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Now he understood why they had only seen a momentary flicker of the flame: the signallers had built the fire well below the second ridge in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped hollow. Provided the flames were kept to a reasonable height, the only direction it could be seen from was the south. He probed the darkness around the glowing fire but could see no movement.
Tiller turned and beckoned to the other two.
‘What do you reckon?’ he whispered when they joined him. ‘Looks deserted to me.’
‘Perhaps they’ve got a nice little ambush laid on for us,’ Sandy whispered.
‘You mean from that ridge? That’s the only possible place.’
‘I’ll take a look-see,’ Dopey suggested and Tiller nodded.
Dopey slid away into the dark.
The other two waited, half expecting the rattle of automatic fire. But nothing happened and a few minutes later Dopey was back shaking his head.
‘Not a dicky-bird,’ he murmured.
‘Strange,’ said Tiller. ‘Perhaps they heard us coming and just made a bunk for it.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Sandy. ‘Let’s put that fire out and get the hell out of here.’
While the other two covered him Tiller moved forward and inspected the fire. It had been well laid and a pile of branches was stacked beside it. Tiller seized one and began scattering the burning logs. Then he scooped up loose sand and earth and quickly managed to douse the fire completely. He gathered up the spare branches, lugged them up to the far ridge and threw them over the edge into the mangrove swamp below. It seemed a rather pointless exercise, but it was, he supposed, better than nothing.
They could not wait for the signallers to return, but by way of a deterrent Tiller quickly laid an elementary booby-trap with a trip-wire and two of his grenades. It was an old trick which he had been taught at the start of the war. He tied the trip-wire to two rocks so that it stretched at ankle height across the path to where the fire had been laid. Then he took out the safety-pin of one of the hand-grenades, pressed its handle into the ground and weighed it with one of the stones. He then repeated the process with the other grenade. Anyone hitting the trip-wire would dislodge the stones, allowing the handles to fly off and activate the grenades’ fuses. It was a crude and not very effective booby-trap, as the grenades would expend most of their fragmentation power on the ground, but it was better than nothing.
The SBS patrol retraced their steps as quickly as possible and were wading through the elephant grass near the beach when they heard the owl hoot for the third time. Tiller paused.
‘What is it, Sarge?’ Sandy breathed in his ear.
What was it?
Tiller’s sixth sense told him something was not right, but the alien environment made him doubt his own intuition. The air was leaden with heat and in the distance thunder rumbled. He realized then that they were retracing their footsteps exactly – always a basic error.
He indicated for the other two to follow him and moved off to the left. If it meant wading through the edge of the mangrove swamp, so be it.
They emerged from the chest-high elephant grass right where the mud and the mangrove began and as they did so light automatic fire opened up on them from their right.
Phut, phut, phut. The bullets struck the elephant grass behind them as they dived for cover into the mud and mangrove.
To Tiller’s surprise he heard the fire being returned from the mangroves in front of them. Then the twin Oerlikons on the ML opened up with a stream of 20mm tracer shells that seared through the elephant grass. There were two piercing screams, followed by silence.
Tiller waited and then levered himself up cautiously. There was a movement ahead of him and he found himself facing Coates and the fourth member of the SBS team.
Coates was resting his carbine on his right shoulder, his forefinger resting on the trigger guard. Tiller had often seen photographs of big-game hunters carrying their weapons in a similar fashion.
‘What the fuck . . . ?’ he began.
‘I’m glad you at least had the sense to come back a different way,’ Coates said brusquely. ‘Let’s see what damage we’ve done.’
He strode off through the elephant grass, followed by the others.
A hundred yards along the beach they came across a carefully prepared ambush position. Two men in a uniform Tiller had never seen before lay dead in front of it and a third lay on his back some yards away. He was still alive but he died in one final spasm as they came up to him. By his side was a Japanese light machine-gun with a haversack full of spare magazines. There was a smell of burnt grass where the Oerlikon tracer shells had singed the undergrowth.
‘Burma National Army,’ said Coates turning over one of the bodies with his boot. ‘You were lucky to get away with that, Sergeant.’
‘How did you get ashore?’ said Tiller. He thought he’d made it plain to Coates that he had had no need of him.
‘In the rubber dinghy, of course. Danforth told me to stick to you like glue. Immediately I got ashore and heard that owl call I knew you were in trouble.’
Coates spread out the rain capes belonging to two of the dead Burmese an
d began methodically searching the bodies, throwing any documents he found on one of the capes and any weapons he found on the other. Tiller noticed that he went about his task with practised ease.
‘But why?’ he asked. ‘It was just an ordinary owl.’
Coates glanced up and gave Tiller what even in the dark Tiller could see was a withering look. ‘You don’t get screech owls on the coast. Only inland. Don’t you know that? No, there’s no reason why you should. Anyway, once we knew what was happening they never stood a chance. But then neither would you have if you’d come back the same way.’
‘Glad I did something right,’ Tiller retorted. He felt rather like a schoolboy being reproved by his form master.
Coates shrugged, wrapped up the two heaps in the two capes and tied a knot in them. He handed the one containing weapons to Sandy.
‘Dump those on the way back,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the documents and look through them later.’
He pointed to the light machine-gun and haversack, and said to Dopey: ‘You take those. They might come in useful.’
Dopey glanced at Tiller, who nodded.
‘Right,’ said Coates, ‘let’s signal for the dinghy.’
Back on the ML Coates disappeared below with the documents and Tiller joined Davy on the bridge as the ML surged slowly ahead.
‘Quite a character, that bloke,’ Davy said cheerfully. ‘He was clucking around after you like an old hen. He didn’t think you were safe ashore on your own. It seems he was right, too.’
The ML skipper glanced mischievously at Tiller, who just said: ‘We’ll have to step on it if we’re going to get to that island by dawn.’
When they reached the northern end of Akyab island it took them some time to find a convenient chaung to lie up in. As they drew the camouflage netting over the ML the first glimmer of light was already showing above the Yomas. It was a black morning with towering cumulus clouds and no sooner had the crew finished putting the netting in place than the heavens opened and Tiller, lying in a bunk immediately under the deck, fell asleep to the rhythm of the rain pounding above him.
7
Tiller was awake and half sitting up immediately the crewman’s hand touched his shoulder. He could still hear the drumming of heavy rain on the deck above him.
‘The skipper said you’d probably want to know that we’re underway, Sarge.’
‘I thought we weren’t going to move until after dusk,’ said Tiller, swinging his legs off the bunk. He could feel the movement of the ML as it sliced through the waves.
‘It is after dusk,’ said the crewman with a grin. ‘You’ve been out for twelve hours. Mr Coates said to leave you.’
What the fuck was it to do with Coates? Tiller wondered irritably as he pulled on his boots.
‘There’s some hot soup in the wardroom,’ said the crewman.
Tiller thanked him and buckled on his belt with its commando knife and .45 pistol attached to it. The wardroom was only for officers but Davy ran his ship his way and the entire SBS patrol, including Coates, had been given automatic entry into it. They were all there now, eating tinned soup and bread.
Coates glanced up and said: ‘You had a good sleep,’ in his matter-of-fact way. He looked as fresh as he had the previous evening.
‘I hope we all did,’ Tiller replied. ‘We won’t be getting much from now on.’
‘Never sleep much anyway,’ Coates said offhandedly. ‘Spent most of the day going through the documents from those Burmese.’
‘Anything of interest?’
‘It’s obvious the Japs are in the process of moving a BNA regiment into the area to try and counter our activities.’
‘What is this Burma National Army exactly?’ Sandy asked him. ‘We know they’re collaborators, but where did they spring from?’
Coates was in his element explaining the pre-war Burmese independent movement, the ‘Thirty Comrades’ who had formed the Burma Independence Army to fight for freedom from British rule, and how the Japanese had used this small force for internal security after they had invaded the country. Once Burma had been conquered, he explained, the Japanese turned the Army into the Burma Defence Army, which became the Burma National Army when Burma was granted independence by the Japanese the previous year.
‘Is that right?’ Tiller queried. ‘I thought the Japs ruled the country as the occupying power.’
‘So they do in reality,’ said Coates. ‘But the Burmese are only just beginning to realize that. Incidentally, it’s only the ethnic Burmese who collaborate. Most of the hill tribes like the Karens and Kachins loathe the Japs.’
‘Complicated business,’ said Tiller, but in his mind anyone in uniform firing a weapon at him was fair game.
‘War always is,’ Coates grunted.
By the time they’d finished their meal the rain had stopped and Tiller went on to the bridge to join Davy. Akyab island was now just a thin line on the horizon to port; ahead lay the six-mile-wide estuary of the Kaladan. The South African took Tiller below and spread out a chart of the river.
‘Plenty of depth under our keel for at least thirty miles,’ he said. ‘We should easily cover that distance in the dark, provided we don’t encounter any Jap river traffic. If we do, then we’ll just have to lie low up one of these chaungs for another day.’
‘And after thirty miles?’
‘It begins to get shallow and, as you can see, it also starts to narrow quite a bit. I wouldn’t like to take you much further than, say, here.’
He pointed to a bend in the river near the outflow of a small chaung. ‘You could either cut across land to Apaukwa or go by canoe.’
Tiller studied the chart. Thirty miles by ML was more than three hours at normal cruising speed. By canoe it was nine hours, perhaps more, depending on the current. If the ground was flat it would be quicker to walk, but only Coates would know that.
But when they asked his opinion, having called him into the chart room, the forester immediately shook his head. ‘It’s flat all right, but it’s all paddy-fields, ankle deep in water, perhaps deeper. Quicker to go on the river. It’s always quicker by river in Burma.’
It seemed sound advice and Tiller thanked him.
‘I assume this time I’m going with you.’ Coates made it a statement of fact.
Tiller grinned. ‘Glad to have you along, sir.’
‘Don’t call me sir,’ said Coates. ‘It makes me sound old. Dick’s my name.’
Tiller asked him if he had ever been in a canoe. ‘Once spent three weeks going down the Irrawaddy in one,’ was the gruff reply. ‘Can handle a paddle as well as the next man.’ And with that Coates stumped out of the chart room.
Davy and Tiller exchanged amused glances. ‘Cantankerous old sod,’ said Davy, but there was a note of admiration in his voice.
By midnight the ML was past Akyab town, an area heavily patrolled by Japanese patrol boats, and had entered the river, though it was too wide to see both banks. Davy kept to the middle of the stream. The water was calm but the tide was ebbing strongly and this held the ML back at first. However, in the early morning the tide began to flood and the ML soon ate up the miles and although it was still pitch-dark it became possible to see the outline of both banks of the river clearly. All night, the gun crews stayed closed up on the three-pounder forward and the twin Oerlikons, which were positioned aft of the funnel, but there had been no sign of any river traffic.
Before dawn broke, Davy took the ML into a small chaung, anchored her clear of an outcrop of mangrove and threw the camouflage netting over her. Sheets of rain blown by the prevailing south-westerly monsoon wind whipped across the chaung and hammered at the ML’s deck but brought no relief from the humid heat that hung over the ship.
By dusk the rain had cleared and the sun went down, a lurid orange orb, its colour reflected on the massive clouds that dominated the western horizon.
In the chart room Davy pointed out to Tiller the chaung in which they were sheltering and then, with his dividers,
measured how much further upstream the ML could safely go.
‘Just a couple of hours’ steaming,’ he said. ‘We’ll go into this chaung here to wait for you. It winds fairly close to Apaukwa and it’s certainly big enough for the cockles. I’ll take you up it as far as I can. How long do you think you’re going to be?’
‘We’ll have to lie up tomorrow,’ Tiller replied. ‘You’d better give us seventy-two hours.’
Davy nodded. ‘We can hang on that long provided we’re not spotted.’
‘Do the Japs have many air patrols?’ Tiller asked.
‘The sky’s ours, more or less,’ Davy replied cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be waiting for you.’
Before the last glimmer of light had left the sky the ML edged its way back into the main stream and headed up river. The guns’ crews were all closed up to their weapons and on the bridge lookouts scanned both banks with night binoculars. The ML’s speed was cut right down and its engines just gave a low burble. One hour went by, then two. Davy cut the vessel’s speed until it was only just moving against the sluggish current.
‘There,’ said one of the crew in an undertone, pointing across the river. Davy nodded and gave orders for the ML to change course.
The chaung did not seem much narrower than the main river but it soon became shallower and at one point the ML ran gently on to a sandbank. It came off easily enough when its engines were reversed but Davy said to Tiller: ‘I can’t risk going any further up. Sorry.’
He turned the ML round, its propellers churning up the muddy waters and eased it expertly across the chaung before giving the order to put the engines in neutral. The freed clutch set up its usual unsettling whine.
‘Slow astern,’ Davy said into the voice pipe and the ML came to a halt close to the eastern bank where it had been built up to channel the monsoon waters into the main river.
Tall palms – called danis, Coates said – and much shorter mango trees studded the bank. One palm, nearly uprooted by the cyclones that sometimes raged across the area, had been blown at a precarious angle over the chaung. Its large leaves, used by the natives to roof their bashas, would help hide the ML from the air.