On the morning of March 1st they set two poles in a clearing near the semi-permanent defense perimeter, and strung a snatch line across the poles. Attached to the lines was a canvas bag with all the Japanese documents taken in what the Kachins now called the luncheon-ambush. A light plane came in with a snatch hook in the early morning and the documents were base bound.
After the successful snatch Con, Nautaung, and Subadar Major La Bung La took three small patrols and headed for Walawbum. They cut off the trail about six miles from the road and hacked their way through dense jungle until they came to a small river. The river was not quite knee deep and they marched in it for four miles, and until they thought they would all scream from the steady pressure of the swift water against their shins that after a mile felt like raw exposed bone, dead weight. They cut out of the river and back toward the trail about half-mile from the town and hacked their way until they came to a small dry creek bed. They set up a small base. Nautaung headed north with seven men to go just above the town, and La Bung La headed due west so as to approach the town from the south. Con and five men went straight toward the town. It was noon and they were to meet in the creek bed at sundown. If, by chance, they couldn’t get back by then they were to hole up during the dark hours and make their way when the now full moon would be high around 2100.
In each case it was a precarious patrol. Walawbum lay on the other side of a north-south river which was a deep river in places and about sixty feet wide. The small river and dry creek bed they had traveled to reach this, their jumping off place, ran in an east-west direction from out of the hills dumping into the main river at a perpendicular near the town and the road. They had to cross this main river to get to their respective objectives. Each had from three to four fords to choose from but the question was whether these were being defended or not. Con had ordered the patrols to fight only if fired upon first.
Nautaung’s was the first patrol to complete their mission and return to the heavy jungle near the turn in the dry creek bed. He had made his patrol easy, crossing at the ford of his choice without opposition or delay and he had followed a tree line to within one hundred yards of the Japanese regimental command post. Con came back second. Two of the fords he had chosen were being outposted and he had worked further down stream in the denseness of the river foliage before he had made his crossing. From there he went straight in undetected and mapped the motor pool, then observed the road for over an hour. What had surprised Con in his observation of the road was the five tanks. It was definitely priority information since Headquarters C.B.I. had definitely concluded it was impossible to move tanks this far north in this terrain. Immediately after his return to the creek bed he had dispatched two runners to the semi-permanent base to have that information radioed immediately to Main Base. Then he and Nautaung had sat down in the dark shadows in the small clearing of the darker than dark green jungle and begun to outline their respective reports on the master map. It was almost sundown when they finished and Subadar Major La Bung La returned and saluted rigidly, grinning:
“Subadar Major La Bung La reporting from patrol,” he said formally, the corner of his mouth quivering.
He had saluted so hard, so thoroughly that inwardly Con was forced to laugh. Someday, Con said to himself, he’ll rupture himself saluting like that.
“Good boy, La Bung,” Con said. “How did it go?” he asked feeling luckier than lucky with them all in and not a shot fired and having seen the tanks and all before sundown.
“No trouble, Dua. Got all the information. Good information.”
“Sit down. Move it here and we’ll take it from your map and put it on the big map,” Con said. “Hold the flashlight, Nautaung.”
Con laid the master map on his bush hat. The Subadar Major took his map from his belt case. La Bung pointed to the town and began to call off the enemy positions he had sighted. He showed them the positions of the enemy dug by the river but unoccupied, outlining them with his finger in the dirt as Con transcribed them to the map. La Bung showed where he had crossed the river and how he had worked into the town from the south. It was a neat way to go in, Con thought. La Bung had a head when he wanted to use it. Nautaung asked La a question about a position, keenly interested in its construction. Con was studying La Bung La. La Bung had on a khaki shirt and the black beret and jungle pants and boots. His carbine lay across his wet legs and he did not have on a cartridge belt for the fast moving patrol but his beloved binoculars hung from his neck. Then something struck Con and to Nautaung’s consternation he suddenly began to question La Bung fiercely, relentlessly. Nautaung couldn’t figure out what had come over the Dua. The Subadar Major soon became flustered from the intense, sharp line of the interrogation and began to get all mixed up.
Suddenly Con stopped the questioning abruptly: “All right La Bung, go clean up,” he ordered.
La Bung La saluted rigidly and left.
“Go get one of the men from his patrol, Nautaung. Bring him here,” Con said. “That rotten son-of-a-bitch.”
“You think he lies, Dua.”
“I’m damn near positive, old man. Look at your boots and look at mine. The river on this side where the fords are are of sand. Generally the river, looking from the north, is making a large sweep to the left and has dug into the far banks in its rush from above. Therefore the far side is cut out of the earth. We are both mud almost to our knees. The mud came from the far side. He has none. Only a little sand.”
“I will go get the man, Dua.”
Nautaung left. La Bung La was washing. He was thinking they would be in Bahmo in a few months. He would see his property. He would be a respected land-owner and have a fine pension from the army. It was so close now. The white man was such a fool. He knew nothing of patrols. Training he knew something of but not patrols.
Nautaung came with the young Kachin whose clothes were sweat through. “This Gum Bye,” Nautaung said.
“Greetings good soldier, Gum Bye,” Con said in Kachin.
“He speaks English,” Nautaung said.
The young Kachin grinned proudly. “I speak,” he said.
Con was very patient and gentle with the boy. He had the boy go over the patrol. Con showed him the map. Gum Bye said he knew all about maps he had one of his own. He began to reach for it to show it off but Nautaung told him some other time. He confirmed that they had not crossed the river but waded along the edge of the river for several yards near a sand bank. They thanked the boy and gave him several cigarettes and sent him away.
The boy went directly to La Bung La and told him what the Dua Con had questioned him about. La Bung La could not believe it. For a moment he didn’t know what to do. Then he had begun to think. He thought what he had been so afraid to think but what he had known he would sometime have to think. The white man must die. He would have to kill him. He had hoped the white man would die some other way. But he would not. So La Bung La would have to kill him or die, or be as good as dead himself. He was thinking this engrossedly when Nautaung came for him. Nautaung read his thoughts. La Bung came with the old man. Con sent the old man away.
“You lied,” Con said to La Bung. “You didn’t cross the river.”
“La Bung did not say directly he did cross the river. A good soldier uses his head according to the situation,” he grinned crookedly, hopefully.
“Do you know that many men depend on your information,” Con said. “Do you know that faulty information can cause much death.”
“I got fine information, Dua,” the Subadar Major said holding up his glasses. “I saw everything from a tree.”
Nautaung lay quietly on his belly in the brush not twenty feet away, carbine pointed.
Con’s eyes raged boringly into the Subadar Major. La Bung La shifted his eyes evasively and began fingering his binoculars.
Con took three steps forward and held out his hand. “Give me those binoculars,” he said coldly, hatefully.
La Bung did not look at him. He did not move.
> “Give me those glasses,” Con repeated in the same tone but more slowly.
La Bung La took off the glasses and eyeing them affectionately handed them to the Dua. The Dua Con turned and walked up the dry creek bed. There was a large, sharp stone on the floor of the creek bed. He raised the binoculars over his head and smashed them into the stone. He picked them up and smashed them again and again until the glass was all shattered and the frame bent all out of shape. He spit on the binoculars that lay on the ground. He came back up to La Bung. A flashlight burned on the ground several feet from them and in the now bare light of shadows and half-shadows Con could see La Bung’s clenched fists and tightly compressed lips.
“I haven’t decided what to do with you,” Con said contemptuously. “To kill you would be doing you a favor. But one thing, La Bung, you’re going to make that patrol. You’re going to make it tomorrow morning and I’m going to make it with you. Do you hear?”
“Yes, Dua,” he said coming to attention.
“I’ll choose the men for this patrol. Be ready to move out at daylight. Now get the hell out of here.”
That night Con had Nautaung select the men for the patrol. There would be six men in the patrol and they would go bareheaded, barefooted, and with no equipment except rifles and one bandoleer of ammunition. It took Nautaung a long time to locate the men he had selected as it was deep oceanbottom black in the jungle with no fires, no flashlights, and the twisting jungle roof that completely hid the full moon.
La Bung La sat in the dark trying hard not to think of his weakness. He had never liked the Dua but during the recent training period he had begun to respect him. He wondered why he had always feared white men. He thought of this for some time and little by little all the white men became the one white man that was the Dua, and soon, knowing that he was in the very center of the perimeter and the all-securing security of the dark, he felt very strong and free to loathe the white man with the free fullness of his loathing of all white men.
Nautaung lay stretched on his back, his head resting on a pack. He could see the tip of the Dua’s cigarette glowing in the dark. He was thinking about the patrol, the Dua, and about La Bung. He had seen La Bung La sleeping on four different occasions and he could not forget it. La Bung slept curled up in a ball. It was as if he were in his sleep trying to be back in his mother’s womb. When a man sleeps curled up like that it was a bad sign in itself, Nautaung thought. Then Nautaung heard the scratching of a match and saw the light of the match reflecting on the face of the Dua, and the Dua read something from a paper by the match-light, then he saw nothing but the dark and the tip of the Dua’s cigarette, and heard only the croaking of the night things, and a large fat insect running over his hand. He brushed it gently away without excitement.
Con was smiling in the dark. In a way, now, he was happy with a happiness he had never known before. He thought of Carla and loved her though she seemed a world away, and knew she was part of his happiness now. That is the way love should be, he said to himself. To have it when you are doing the very best you can of the thing you do the best. That is the right thing for you.
He felt a wanting for her now but it was not a possession. He knew if he had his choice of the places to be he would be here, instead of with her, and that was part of the happiness; feeling that she would understand that. Once, during the first months of the campaign, he had felt very guilty because he had no longer felt a direct love for his mother and father. He had thought if he had received sudden word that they were dead, that being where he was, he would be unable to feel it. He did not feel that way about his sister, however.
Now, in his happiness, he knew why. He knew his mother and father would never understand if he told them why. He was not hurt that it had now dawned on him that they did not really love him with love but with other things they had gotten mixed up with love; pride and possession, the very things he had himself exercised with Margaret. It was odd, he thought, that you cannot really love unless you are truly, wholeheartedly first satisfied that you have been right as right is to yourself. Then once you are that way with yourself it doesn’t make any difference whether you love or not; like now feeling all of Carla’s love and knowing the best part of it is knowing it rather than having it. It then occurred to him that it was the first time he had really thought of her since he had come back. I must write and tell her, he said to himself, how I loved her differently and better than ever before when finally I did think of her. And why. I wonder if I could write her that. I wish I wrote better, he thought. How lucky he was to have a woman like that.
Then there was a sudden racket in the jungle. Nautaung saw the tip of the Dua’s cigarette disappear from the night with the first noise.
“I warned the men, Dua,” Nautaung whispered to Con. “We are near a game trail. There will be noise out there all night. That was a deer.”
Finally, except for the two men alternating outpost, they all slept. In the middle of the night they were all awakened when they heard a tiger and a water buffalo fighting in the jungle near the river. No one had said a word but Con thought it had lasted very long for such a fight. Then before he had slept again he had thought that maybe it hadn’t lasted very long at all. You can’t tell, he said to himself, time is not a mathematical thing but a frame of mind. You know that from the fighting; fear puts the brake on time.
Nautaung awakened the Dua half-hour before the dawn. Before that he had assembled the patrol in the creek-bed. Con approached the patrol. “We will stay close together until the light. Then we will form the patrol.” Each of the men had taped a luminous leaf to the back of his clothing. They moved out of the perimeter and up the creek-bed. A half-mile up the dawn came and light seeped through. They halted and Con noticed Nautaung.
“Old man, I didn’t choose you for this patrol. Why are you here?”
The Subadar Major whirled and looked at Nautaung.
“You told me to pick the men,” Nautaung smiled sheepishly. “I choose myself.”
Con thought for a moment. The old man must have a reason. Con never questioned his reason anymore.
“All right, old man.”
The Subadar Major was talking to two of the men. He turned to Con. “These two men will be the scouts. They are ready, Dua.”
“I pick the scouts,” Con said.
“Yes, Dua. I thought I would help.”
“You and I will be scouts, La Bung. I will be first scout and take the right side of the creek-bed and trails. You will take the left and a little rear,” Con said. “All right, La Bung?” he said slowly, very slowly.
“It’s not right, Dua,” La Bung said. “We have rank. It is not correct to be scouts. It is not proper.”
He signalled the Subadar Major over out of hearing distance of the others. “It wasn’t proper to patrol as you patrolled yesterday. Was it? So as long as you are not proper yesterday I will not be proper today,” Con said. “Now obey or it will be finish for you here and now.”
Con called the patrol in tight about him. They were six. “We will move up the creek-bed in column. Five yards apart. When we get to the river the Subadar Major and I will cross first. The rest will form a line and cover us. I will signal you across and the Subadar Major will cover you while I cover the front. The first man over covers the front, the second the rear, the third the front, and so on. Then we will move in the shape of a wedge, Nautaung in the center of the wedge, each man five yards from the other. Any questions?” Con asked. He had spoken in Kachin.
“If we are attacked,” La Bung La said. “What then?”
“We fight only if necessary. We return the fire only to cover our withdrawal.”
They headed down the creek-bed. When they got about a quarter mile from the river they cut to the left and into the jungle. Con came to the river first and only a few yards from the ford he had chosen. A thick vapor mist rose up from the river and the visibility was poor. He signalled the men down. The men lay quietly down in their tracks. They listened. Ther
e were trucks moving around on the other side of the river. As they had approached the river the noise of the birds and monkeys and other living things had quieted until there was no sound. Now in their own silence the sound of the other life returned intermingled with the activity of the trucks on the other side. The jungle floor was dripping wet from the night. Every leaf and plant seemed to be sweating as a man sweats. It was damp cold from the night and the first sound of the trucks had made it colder. The bank where Con lay was only about two feet above the water line. There was a small sand bar directly under the drop-off and from where he lay it was about fifty feet across the river, he figured. But he could not see the other side because of the mist. He was lying in a bunch of elephant grass that was about eight feet high, and which stretched around ten feet from the shore up and down stream over a hundred yards. They were in the middle of the grass.
Con was inching his body forward about to slide into the water when he heard voices on the other side. He froze for a moment then slid slowly back a few feet into the grass. He slid the map out of his belt and marked it. Something dripped onto the map. It was blood. He looked at his hand and saw it smeared red and it began to sting and he knew he had cut it on the edge of the grass as he slid back. Con inched back all the way out of the grass. As he came out of the grass he looked down the barrel of the Subadar Major’s carbine. La Bung La on the flat of his belly was grinning. He looked to the left and back of La Bung. La Bung did not have to turn around. He knew Nautaung’s carbine was zeroed in on his beret.
Con grinned a wild, primitive grin. The Kachins all grinned too as if they knew what was going on between the Subadar Major and the Dua. But they did not know.
They started down river. They worked slowly and quietly. Something splashed in the river. Down they went. Nautaung came up. “Crocodile, Dua.”
Nautaung signalled one of the men forward with the five pound rotten slab of buffalo meat they had carried to test the river for hungry crocodiles.
Never So Few Page 38