CHAPTER VII
The special briefing conference called the night before by the surprise visit of General Stilwell, in his new position as Commanding Officer of the Chinese Yoke Force, had lasted until well past two A.M. There was now a half-smile of satisfaction on the Colonel’s face, for all things considered it had been a worthwhile meeting. Certainly he could have spent a year dealing with the New Delhi Staff and never cut half as much redtape, nor got down to the essential facts as had been reached in his six hour conference with the General.
The Colonel paused by the headquarters telephone and stretched his massive arms and yawned. He put through the call to the motor pool, then walked back to the dining room of the headquarters. The priest lifted his silken white head upward from the circular teak dining table, his blue eyes alert. “They’re not calling you away again, Ray, lad?” he asked inquisitively, seriously.
“No, Father,” the Colonel sat down. “That was Ringa. One of those wild driving trucks ran him off the road. The jeep’s in a ditch.”
“Is the lad all right?” The priest leaned forward concernedly.
“Fine,” the Colonel sipped his coffee. “Just a little scared because he damaged a fender. He loves that jeep.”
“He’s a nice lad, he is,” the priest dipped his toast into the egg yolk and bit into it carefully. “When do we get down to why I’m here?”
“Right now,” the Colonel replied. “I’m not going to give you too much of the whole picture,” the Colonel paused. “For your own good. You understand.”
“Ay. In case they should catch up with the old man.” The priest chewed.
“In case.” The Colonel put down his coffee cup and picked up his fork tapping it lightly on the plate. “We’re finally going to start to fight back, Father,” the Colonel looked at the priest.
“Ay. And it’s high time,” the priest’s eyes twinkled.
“The main burden of the fighting will rest with the Chinese. Two divisions under the command of Stilwell, one division in reserve. The reserve division is being trained in India, the other two near here.”
“Ay,” the priest smacked his lips. “And do you think the Chinese can fight?”
“I believe in General Stilwell. He believes in them. In any event they are better than nothing,” the Colonel paused, then straightened adjusting in his chair. “Besides, and this is very confidential, there are American fighting men in India.”
“You don’t say.” The priest showed genuine surprise.
“They’ve been training in India for some time. They’ve kept it remarkably secret. They’re battle-tested veterans from the South Pacific for the most part,” the Colonel smiled looking at the surprised priest. “They’ll be troops of the Wingate type. Long range penetration. They call themselves Merrill’s Marauders. Frank Merrill commands them. You know Frank, don’t you?”
“That I do,” the priest said picking some dried egg yolk from his beard. “And a fine man he is.”
“Tentatively, I should say, the campaign should start in mid-February,” the Colonel said. “It will be one of the great curiosities of this war. The British with South Africans, Gurkhas, Singhalese, and regular English troops will attack on the Arakan front. Wingate and his Chindit Raiders will go down the middle. There will be Chinese here with Merrill’s Americans swinging behind the lines. There will be our Kachins, of course. And building the Road behind the troops will be Americans, negro and white, Nagas, Indians, Chinese.”
The priest took a cigarette from his pocket and lit up. The melting pot. This was it. The time had come. Finally. “And what of my Kachins?” the priest asked delicately, as if afraid of the answer.
“The Kachin people have a big job, Father. They are to provide all the intelligence for Merrill, for the Chinese, and in part for Wingate,” the Colonel hesitated looking at the priest. “And they’re to carry on an extensive guerrilla campaign; harassing the rear areas, blowing bridges, and railroads, cutting communications, ambushing. In a way the success of the entire plan rests with the Kachins.”
The priest was looking down at his plate, fingering a piece of toast crust with his cigarette hand: “And you expect heavy casualties amongst my Kachins, do you?”
“I don’t know what to expect, Father,” the Colonel said gravely. “That is one thing an officer must learn if he is to be worth his salt. War is an uncertainty.”
“Ay. Tis that,” the priest said, grinding out his cigarette. “Tell me, how do you expect to supply all these troops?”
“By air. The entire operation by air.”
“Jeasus Merry and Joeaseph. By air,” the priest looked at the Colonel incredulously. “Can it be done, lad?”
“It never has been done. But it can be done,” the Colonel said assuredly. “How many Kachins can we get into the action?”
“Off hand I don’t know. Ten, fifteen thousand, possibly. They’re brave lads, they are. As good a fightin’ man as there is. You know what they did to the British?”
“I never did hear, exactly.”
“Well, they knocked the bloomin’ hell out of ’em,” the priest said proudly. “The British took lower Burma in 1856, then went after upper Burma in ’86, they did. But when they got to Kachin country they got the livin’ ’ell beat out of ’em. They had to give the Kachins a separate peace. The British Commander wrote a report sayin’ that takin’ the Kachin country would be like seducin’ a woman. That should you make the conquest you would find out that it was you that had been conquered. In all of their blasted colonizin’ out ’ere it was the only time they were really stopped.”
“So that’s why Danny was so sure they’d make great guerrilla troops,” the Colonel smiled. “He knew their record.”
“Ay. That he did. But the British are reluctant to talk of such things.”
“But you really think, Father, that ten or fifteen thousand Kachins could be mobilized?” the Colonel asked.
“Ay.… Tis possible,” the priest said sadly, meditatively.
A bearer came into the room and cleaned the table and put fresh coffee on the table.
“I’m pulling Danny and Con out,” the Colonel said abruptly. “They’re going to run the whole show.… What do you think about them handling it, Father?”
“From back ’ere, lad?”
“No. I’m bringing them here for a briefing. Then to India for further briefing. They’ll command tactically from the Kachin country.”
“Ay. That is where they should be, with the people. I’m a little worried about the lad Con,” the priest twisted nervously in his chair, lowering his eyes.
“Why?”
“Well, tis rather a hard thing to say.”
“You must tell me, Father.”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s so stable. That monkey, an’ all,” he paused. “An’ he told me he had a bad day a few months back.”
“Baseball players have bad days. And fighters,” the Colonel smiled. Then in a new voice: “You mean that time during the ambush when his legs froze for about sixty seconds and Nautaung had to kick him to break the paralysis.”
“You know about that?” the priest asked.
“I know the whole story.”
“An’ it doesn’t bother you?”
“It’s a chance I have to take. It’s why I picked Con over a lot of officers older than himself. Of a higher rank.”
“I don’t understand you, lad.”
“I picked Con because he’s young and he has an open mind. Because I know if I can harness his energy and direct it I will have myself a real leader, an unusual man. It takes an unusual man to do an unusual job.”
“Tis …”
The telephone rang in the headquarters living room. Momentarily the priest and Colonel stared at each other, listening.
“Excuse me, Father,” the Colonel said getting up.
“Tend to your business.” The priest’s eyes followed the huge lumbering officer as he left the room, hating to see him leave, feeling the aloneness
well over him, blanket him, stifling him.
Who would help him to protect his Kachins, his people, whom he loved, whom he had taken the Holy Oath to guide and protect the rest of his natural life?
Now the allies were sending Chinese troops into Kachin country. The Chinese were no different from the Japanese when it came to occupying a country, the Father knew. Perhaps even worse. How could a man as great as this Roosevelt was supposed to be, be taken in by the likes of the ignorant, shallow, head of the Kuomintang, Generalissimo Chiang Kaisheck.
And American troops. What were they like? And what effect would they have upon the people of the Hills, remembering the demented fury, the zealous activity that was the voice of America building the Road that carried him from the airport to the Colonel’s quarters.
What would be the use of the Kachins liberating themselves of Japanese domination only to have the rape and pillage and crooked rule of the Chinese? Or even the Americans. It was a tragic predicament that small nations would always face.
The priest sighed, visualizing Danny and Con and their seven or eight hundred Kachins, standing alone as they did now against the forty thousand Japanese that occupied the North Burma area. It stirred him deeply, patriotically, just the thought of his beloved people facing such odds. He saw it all plainly. Danny with his shaven head and monocle, the bandoliers crisscrossed over his chest. Con, young and tall, his brown-red goatee shining in the sunlight. The young brown smiling faces of the Kachin soldiers. Together. They stood alone. His people and the two white men, effecting a chain of events, a magnificent reaction that history would never be able to define: the saving of India for the Allied cause; perhaps the saving of the Suez Canal.
Never so few had stood so steadfast, so humbly yet deeply rooted, in the light of monumental events. Never so few would ask so little reward. Perhaps not even to receive their freedom and return to their old ways, the simple ways of their once happy land.
The Colonel came back in the dinning room and sat down. “The morning message just came in,” he grinned. “Con pulled off a fine ambush. Sucked the Japs up into the hills and chopped them up. He took his airdrops and he’s heading toward China and higher ground to rest his men.”
“Ay,” the Father said. “Twas the fight Danny and I heard the night before I flew out. All night an’ in the morning, too, they fought. Any of the lads hurt?”
“One killed and three wounded. They’re flying out the wounded this morning. Probably have them out already,” the Colonel said distantly, his voice sinking.
The priest crossed himself folding his hands in front of him. Silently he prayed for a moment and then looked up. The Colonel was pouring coffee.
“Go on about Con, lad,” the priest reached over and got the whiskey bottle, pouring some into his coffee.
“Well, Father, I ain’t no West Pointer as you know. But I’ve been in the army ten years now, and I’ve learned some things the hard way,” the Colonel smiled. “Act officers have to learn the hard way mostly.”
“Ay.”
“I’ve met some men in my time who have stated to me, truly that they have never been afraid in combat. That.…”
“Ay,” the priest interrupted. “An’ you don’t believe it.”
“Not at all, Father. I do believe it. But I know that I have just spoken to an ignorant man. A man of no imagination or sensitivity. Of no scope or magnitude of any kind. Courage for the instant is no great quality for a leader. Instantaneous courage is always without consideration or reflection. For every leader there is much more than that one minute to think of.”
The Colonel paused. “It’s good that a man with Con’s job should know fear. Then he will begin to understand it, and can make the adjustment to it. For the most part an American soldier has no idea what he is fighting for. He is resourceful and courageous, yes. But it is a negative resource and courage, born of his environment, of his social fear; his shame of fear. A don’t-let-your-buddy-down sort of thing.
“War itself is born of politics. And very few Americans have any idealogical political beliefs, or any real beliefs outside of the social-moral code. I chose Con because his mind is open and not restricted by any code. So he is flexible, which is the most essential quality of a combat leader. He has the ability to adapt to the uncertain and unknown conditions of war. And he has put fear in its place because now he has knowledge of what a predominantly imaginative thing fear really is.
“Danny agrees with me. He has been through it. Danny knows that man’s greatest evil is not death, but man’s fear of death. Danny has more of a purpose than of just doing a job, and I believe that Con does now too, though God knows who will ever be able to handle him if he gets through this alive. Alive and free to roam this world realizing what he has discovered.”
“God have mercy upon his soul,” the priest murmured contemplatively.
“He is the only man I have,” the Colonel continued. “The only one who has a chance to do what will be asked. That he has completely overcome his fear he has proved by his activities last month. He has overcome that which he knows to be unknown,” the Colonel grinned. “Do you know how I found out what happened that day?”
“Nay,” the priest shook his head then gulped down his whiskeyed coffee in three loud gulps, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I wondered, too.”
“Con wrote me a note. Sent it out with one of his wounded. The note had the whole story; every bit of the story.”
“God bless the lad. It takes a real person to do that.” The priest scratched his head thoughtfully. “What of Con’s background? I know he was out here as a child. An’ that he speaks the Burman language like a native. But what else do you know of him?”
“Hardly anything except what’s on his record. He did live in Rangoon for two years when he was about eleven,” the Colonel lit a cigarette. “He comes from a rather well to do family. And I’ve reason to believe that he doesn’t get on with them very well,” the Colonel paused, then inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “He schooled at the University of Iowa for a while.… I just don’t know too much about him, Father. I just know that he has that impassioned quality. That rare stubbornness. That will to find a worthwhile service in his life, or die in the attempt,” the Colonel walked over to the lamp table and emptied his cigarette ashes in a large bronze ashtray. He studied the little hammered bronze Buddha sitting on the edge of the tray.
To some men, lucky men maybe, there came a time when they must change, that the Colonel knew. And sometimes you never seemed to know these men again. It was like that with Con. Perhaps he would never be close to him again. That already Con had become a part of the people of the Hills and strangely too, he had become a part of the land. The Colonel recalled what Nautaung had told him that night at Fort Hertz, when the wind blew a Himalayan blizzard slashingly against his kereosene lamplit tent.
“Colonel, Dua,” Nautaung had said. “It is my belief that the boy-man Dua is descended from the Magic Mountain of our people.” Nautaung had pointed north to the top of the world. “My Father is there and he has told me. A hundred years from now, Colonel Dua, they will sing songs in the hills of the boy-man Dua Reynolds. Like the spider he has woven his own destiny.”
And the Colonel had believed it. Somehow, some way he was compelled to believe it. And all his life he would remember the quiet unrealness of Nautaung’s voice. It had always disturbed the Colonel that as well as he knew Nautaung he could never remember his face. Sometimes he wondered if Nautaung really existed at all.
He put out his cigarette and stretched. Then he yawned and walked towards the phone.
CHAPTER VIII
That same morning, while the priest and Colonel were in conference at Ledo, Con Reynolds moved his four hundred Scouts farther back into the hills and away from the Road. It was a fine clear day as they marched the eleven miles uphill towards China and the rest area. And as they moved deeper, higher into the hills the column strung out loose and straggling. The earth took on a redd
ish tint.
They set up camp a little after noon in a green mountain valley by a fast Himalayan stream. From the headquarters Con could see the sun reflecting on the rolling red hills with their sparse lines of green trees and the pack mules as they grazed on the rich valley grass.
The decision to rest the men had come on Con suddenly, intuitively the night before. He was dictating his message to Niven, making his report of the ambush and had requested light planes for the evacuation of the wounded. Then he had simply added that he was taking the men into the security of the very deep hills for a rest. It did not strike him fully that he had dictated this until Niven read the message back to him, yet it did not come as a surprise. He accepted it without question and almost immediately sent a scouting party in search of a suitable campsite.
Con stretched, feeling good. He inhaled of the clean mountain air, feeling the sun warm to his face and bare chest. His eyes wandered delightedly over the hidden mountain valley gratifying him with its almost bewitching calm. It seemed unreal; like a strange set of vivid contrasting colors, as if it were a myth and he was a myth standing upon it. It had an ancient sereneness, a tranquility, as if it had always been there without ever being involved in an ice age or a volcanic eruption, and no living hand had touched a pristine tree or disturbed a blade of grass. There was in this mountain valley an alwaysness, a weird spiritual timelessness and the feel it exuded came through to the men and comforted them, refreshed them, soothingly caressing the taut wire edge of their nerves.
It was the Virgin Earth, Con knew suddenly. The Virgin giving her body after eons of Time, seeming to say: I have so long yearned for your eyes upon the nakedness of me. Rest easy. Rest well. Lay your tired feet upon my breasts, lay your weary body to my bosom, let me hold your young faces in my arms. Take me fully for now, for you are deserving of my gratification, and you are in need of the calm I will give you. From me you will gather the strength to fight another day.
Thus the earth might speak. Never before had Con thought of the earth as individually alive, having a destiny to fulfill as man had a destiny to fulfill. Then the earth spoke no longer. He stood motionless, transfixed, waiting to hear her voice. It did not come. And he knew that for now she would not speak.
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