“Subadar Major,” Con said sharply. They all looked at the Dua.
“Yes, Dua,” La Bung La replied. They all glanced at the Subadar Major.
“You will get a stretcher party in case there are any wounded,” Con said. They all looked back at Con. “Eight men from Du Danforth’s company. Have them make the litters and stand by.”
“Yes, Dua.”
“Check with Billingsly about the mules. I want the best mules with the radio. One of the mules that carried the radio to this camp was lame. Tell Billingsly no more of that.”
“Yes, Dua,” La Bung La smiled slightly, the right side of his lip quivering. Glad of the opportunity to berate the muleskinner.
“Niven,” Con said turning to him. “You stay with Lau’rel. He’ll be in charge of the mainbody.”
“Sorry, boss,” he said quite soberly now, “but that’s my equipment and I belong with it.”
Niven was looking down and Con saw that he had cut him. He knew that if he lost Niven or the radio they had had it. One could not function without the other. They might as well stay together. It was a mistake to even suggest he go with Lau’rel: “Good, Jim,” Con adjusted. “I’m staying behind and I just thought you might be of help to Lau’rel.”
Danforth stared at Lau’rel, wondering why the Filipino had been put in charge. He had been out here two months longer and by right it should be his job. He spit and took out his trench knife. He began to clean his nails.
“I say, Con,” Lau’rel said, “don’t you think Danforth might handle the show a little …?”
“No more talking,” Con snapped, glaring at Lau’rel. “I have orders to give. There will be no questions until I’m finished,” he said sternly looking around the group. “Lau’rel,” he looked back at the Filipino.
“Yes, old man … sir … Con.”
“You will be in charge of the mainbody.”
“As you say. Righto.”
“Danforth’s company,” Con turned to the half-Indian, “with one platoon in reconnaissance will come first,” he looked back at the Filipino. “Then the mule train. Then your company in the rear, Lau’rel.
“The outposts of the north and south will furnish the rear guard action. You will proceed to the drop area. It isn’t far from the Chinese border, Lau’rel. Mind yourself for bandits. If you hit something, hold with what you need. By-pass with the rest and get to the drop area. You must take that drop tomorrow,” Con paused. He took out a pack of cigarettes, took a cigarette from the pack.
Con turned to Danforth: “Danforth, you make the fight if you hit something. But Lau’rel and that mule train must get to the drop area and take that drop,” Con tossed the Chesterfields to Nautaung and motioned the pack around the group.
“Nautaung and I will stand here with the litter party and Nautaung’s company. We will guard the Du Island’s withdrawal. We will make another ambush here where Nautaung’s company is now dug in: four hundred yards down the valley trail.”
The firing below ceased. The men looked around. Then the firing began again, but only the pinging sound of the small .25 caliber Japanese rifle. Then the Nambu gun. Then the hollow hoot of a knee mortar.
“Don’t worry,” Con smiled. “The Du Island has made five positions to withdraw to. That is only his second withdrawal.”
At once and all together, the leaders pictured the outpost withdrawing in the night to its secondary position.
“Lau’rel,” Con eyed the Filipino. “Let me know when the mainbody is ready to move out. I will give you the order.”
“As you say, old man,” Lau’rel said fondling the silver medallion. “Will I find you here?”
“I have no place to go,” Con smiled. Several of the men in the semicircle sighed.
“Anything else, anyone?” Con asked looking around.
There was a momentary silence.
“How about me making this ambush here?” Danforth burst out. Jesus. Why did he say that. What was that shadowy thing in him that unwillingly forced him into the middle of conflict; that made him uncover and stare at the very corpses he hated.
“Sorry, Johnny,” Con replied apologetically. “Nautaung’s outfit is already in position. Thanks for the offer,” he watched the half Indian, his black head bowed, twisting his knife into the earth.
Danforth suddenly looked up at Con. “Did you burn those fires to suck them up?” Danforth asked, a faint note of admiration in his voice.
Nautaung grinned. Con looked at the old man, then back to Danforth. Con laughed once, almost disgustedly. They all laughed.
And Nautaung knew that somehow they all felt as if they had played a part in the creation of this ambush.
“Get out of here you fellows,” Con motioned with his arms. “Good-luck.”
They all got up and left except Nautaung.
“There should be a messenger from the outpost soon,” Con said, thinking of Mike Island and his thirty man outpost two miles down the valley trail.
“Du Island is a very good man, Dua,” Nautaung said. “Funny that he will not carry a rifle or any arms.”
“That’s his religion,” Con said.
“That’s what is funny,” Nautaung said rising. “I will go down to my men on the valley trail and recheck all the positions for the ambush. I will wait for you, Dua, in my CP by the trail.” Nautaung looked into Con’s hard brown eyes; shiny and dartingly excitingly alive.
“I’ll be there as soon as I get the troops ready to leave,” Con said. “If a runner comes from the outpost in the next half hour send him here.”
The old man stood up, squared his shoulders, set his eyes level and forward. He saluted smartly and pivoted, a regulation about face, and walked away.
Con looked at his watch. He counted the seconds out loud up to ten. He grinned. He reached over in his pack and took out an old battered book. The Oxford Book of Verse in traveling size. He opened it and began to read.
CHAPTER V
Con stood alone in the empty CP, hearing the final sounds of the main body as they left the hill heading toward China and the drop area. He looked at his watch feeling a sense of accomplishment when he noted that it was only tenforty. It had taken the main body just forty minutes after he had issued his orders to pack up and move out. Four months ago it would have taken them a good two hours and then they would have left equipment scattered all over the area in their noisy haste.
From down on the valley trail the clear sound of the fight echoed against the hills crisp and nasal sounding in the now cold of the mountain night. Still no runner. Certainly a runner alone would have made it from Island’s outpost by now. He couldn’t rationalize anymore; there were wounded. He had better start for the ambush that Nautaung had set up four hundred yards down the valley trail from the CP.
Con Reynolds adjusted the straps of his battle pack, checked his canteens and grenades, slung his carbine. Leaving the CP he cut expertly through the twenty yards of brush, came out on the valley trail near the top of the hill. He started downward, striding easily, thinking of how he wanted to urinate, knowing that nothing would come.
The urge to urinate was a strange thing that all men seemed to have in common when it came to actual combat. Why, he wondered, didn’t a man get prickly or break out with hives or just plain itch instead of getting that imaginative urge to void. Was it that man was trying to make himself physically clean because he felt he might die, just like he tried to make himself mentally clean? Or was it because that was where a man worried about being hit? He wondered if women felt their kidneys floating under similar conditions. It was something to think about. Somehow he felt that something was hidden in it.
The slope of the trail graduated now upward, and he slowed his pace, turned a gentle corner, straightened out, increasing his gait as the trail spilled downward again. He walked leaning forward, quietly on the balls of his feet, the moonglow giving him fair light, then he heard the murmur of Nautaung’s men on the ambush line.
The old man was in a
shallow trench just off the trail in the gloomy shadows of the tall trees: “The runner has just arrived, Dua,” Nautaung said.
“The wounded?”
“They follow.”
“How many?”
“The runner doesn’t know. He just said that Du Island will hold as long as he can.”
“I hope he doesn’t try to hold too long,” Con said sitting down on the edge of the slit trench, hearing the periodic bursts of firing below, the grenades exploding thuddingly.
The men were talking very loudly on the line, then they heard two of them laughing. “I will go quiet those loud ones for good,” Nautaung said.
“As you wish.” Con removed his pack. The old man slipped youthfully out of the trench, across the trail and down the firing line towards the laughing young voices.
Con placed his pack on the forward part of the trench, leaned his carbine against the pack and lit a cigarette. A slight chill ran through him and he felt goose bumps raising on his forearms. Then before he could brush it away a syrupy longing overwhelmed him and in his mind Margaret stood mockingly there before him, long and supple before him, black headed and eyes shining before him. He threw down the cigarette and twisted it deeper and deeper into the earth with the heel of his foot. Frustratedly he felt that somewhere he had let down. This was no time to begin thinking about her.
Nautaung slipped quietly back into the trench. Con looked over at him seeing faintly the old face. There was not a sound on the line now, he noted. “Nautaung,” Con spoke angrily. “I’m going down to meet the litter party.” Con stood up.
“Wait, Dua. They will be here soon,” the old man said straining forward. “Wait just fifteen minutes, Dua. Ten minutes,” Nautaung hesitated. “They don’t expect anyone on the trail. They might mistake you.”
Con stared at the old man, seeing the curious look on his face. For a long moment he did not move. “Ten minutes, Nautaung,” Con sat back down.
Nautaung wondered what made the white man so angry. He was very strange at times. It would be a woman probably. A woman was the thing that would always make a man so angry he wouldn’t care.
And Con knew he had worried Nautaung. It was not right to go down there. They were not expecting anyone on the trail and there was nothing he could do when he got there. He should have known better. In this game you didn’t take chances. You saved them. Nautaung was right to worry. It was damn weak of him to let just the thought of her work him up like that. But on top of the other things, thinking of her had suddenly felt like the strain that would break the rope.
Why, when he thought of her, of loving her, of being in bed with her, did he always have to think of her being with someone else? Not trusting her, not trusting himself; until he hated her for being alive, for ever having known her. What was wrong with him that he had to act like this?
It was like being ruptured slowly; hearing, feeling the sound and sting of the tear. Only when you were ruptured you could fix it up. But this new kind of rupture was one that he had never known, one he could not finger. And he felt the furrow that it was driving in him and he could not finger the furrow.
Because before this last week he had taken the sober time to coach himself in not thinking about it; kept himself so busy and occupied that he did not have time to think, drove himself so hard that he was too tired to think; knowing, absolutely knowing, that he was not fooling anyone. That he would have to face it sooner or later. That in not meeting it fully now, it had begun to wear him down. And if he didn’t face it soon there would be nothing left to face it with.
“They come, Dua. The stretcher party comes,” the old man said eagerly. He had been staring at his watch; the watch the Dua had given him; luminous in the night.
Con Reynolds could not see the litter party and he could not hear them, but he felt it now too. He heard the word spread mumbling down the line, then the line became very tense and very quiet in the cool prime of the night as the men waited, listening.
Up out of the dark of the valley trail came the litter party. They were talking excitedly as they came through the perimeter. There were two walking wounded and two litter cases on makeshift litters of blankets and rifles.
Con directed them through the perimeter, up the one-eighth mile to the top of the hill and into the clearing where the halfmoon came down, shining. The clearing was behind a bunker shielding the now low fires of the deserted headquarters kitchen from the valley side. Con called the walking wounded by the fire, one fleshwounded in the shoulder and the other with small grenade fragments in the legs. He sent them away with a native aid man.
Probably one of our own grenades, he thought. One of the litter patients moaned loudly and hysterically on the ground. Con gave both of them morphine. The first litter case had been shot in the left side of the hip through the pelvic bone. In the cold of the mountain air the left leg had already started to stiffen, but the wound was clean and the boy was not bleeding badly but looked very frightened with the shock. Con cleaned the wound while Nautaung held the flashlight and the other litter patient continued to moan frightfully and incoherently on the ground. He finished cleaning and wrapping the wound, took a cigarette out of his pocket, put it into the mouth of the young Kachin and lit it for him: “Now you are a real soldier. You have tasted the pain of a wound in combat.”
Beyond the nauseating feel of his pain, the young Scout who could not have been more than seventeen, grinned a white toothed grin and Con saw in it all the basic pride of his people. Then Con gave him more morphine and the thick slaughter-house smell of the wet blood began to mingle with the powdersmoke of the still hot rifles of the litter party.
The second litter case was about the age of the first but very handsome and completely out of his head. Con cut away the blouse of his jungle suit. The boy was gnashing his teeth and he called for some of the men in the party to hold him down. There was blood all over his face, and his jaw and face were swollen black and blue where a bullet had gone under his chin and Con remembered distinctly having talked with this boy a few days before. There was another hole in his chest, on the right side, and it was as small and neat as the hole of a pencil head through a sheet of paper. The boy was crying helplessly and the blood on his face mingled with his young tears.
Con cleaned the wound on the front of his chest and then cleaned the wound underneath his chin and rolled him over. He took one quick look at the back of his head where the bullet had come out traveling upward through his chin and throat, saw the swelling at the back of the head where the brain had been pushed out, wondering why the boy was not completely paralyzed with the sense part of his brain flattened out as it was.
Quickly he rolled him over, laying the welted part of his head gently on a blanket, took another morphine from his pocket and gave him the morphine. Then he took one more morphine from his pocket and gave him that and pointed to the trees: “Take him over there,” pointing to a spot about twenty feet away. The litter party lifted him while one of them held him and they carried him into the dark of the woods.
“Nautaung,” Con said.
“Yes, Dua.”
“Send a runner to the line and to the outpost on the hill. Tell them we are going to fire a couple of shots here. Not to worry. That it is a signal of a sort.”
“Yes, Dua. Right away,” the old man said. “Dua?”
“Yes, Nautaung.”
“I will do it.”
“No,” Con paused. “It will be easier for me. He is not of my people. Thank you, old man.” Then he said vehemently, “No. I will do it. Send the runners.”
Nautaung saluted and left.
Con sat down in the clearing, lit a cigarette, took his canteen from his belt and drank heavily of the laku.
It was not good laku and he thought that he would like to have some scotch right now. He walked back down the hill to the shallow trench where the perimeter was on the valley trail. He opened his pack, took out the bottle of Dewars, emptied his canteen, filled the canteen with scotch, dran
k heavily from the bottle, put the bottle back in his pack and started up the hill.
The old man was standing in the clearing: “The runners are back, Dua.”
Con nodded and walked back into the woods where the litter patient was. He took the .38 Colt, checked the action spinning the chamber, unleased the saftey, pointed the .38 at the wounded man’s head and pulled the trigger. Then he pulled it again and the boy’s body lay quiet.
He came out of the dark of the woods into the light of the halfmoon, placing new bullets into the chamber and not looking at Nautaung, he said severely: “Bury him. Here,” pointing down at the ground with the .38, he walked past the fire out of the light of the moon, out of the clearing down the valley trail.
Nautaung ordered the men to dig the grave where Con had pointed. Then he took the flashlight and walked over to the corpse of the boy and covered it with a blanket. They buried him and the old man ordered them away and stood over the mound of the fresh grave:
“You are fully free now. You have no grief. The grief is with those that live. Tomorrow the worms will eat out your eyes but you do not need them. Do not mind that for while you lived it was men that blinded you alive.” Then he broke a twig from a tree and stuck it into the ground next to the mound. Then he got a smaller twig that was flexible and tied it into a circle and hung it from a branch of the larger twig in the ground. Then he called for the men to make such other little designs to be placed by the mound that they might frighten the evil spirits called Nats away and let his soul have a peaceful journey into the better world that came after each death.
It was almost four o’clock in the morning when Island made his final drawback into the perimeter near the top of the hill. Con ordered Island’s men to head for the drop area with the litter party. There had been no more wounded and according to Island they had taken a very heavy toll with the Japs; the Japs had come straight on, in head-up attacks, bayonets fixed. Only one of them had gotten near the position and Island had gone out and stripped him: “The bloody fools,” Island smiled. “A bayonet charge and no ammunition in their rifles. Corking good show it was. How are the wounded?”
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