The meat stunk. They moved down about fifty more yards to the next ford. Con cut into the elephant grass. He sliced the side of his face in the grass, then his forearm. The mosquitoes and flies and other insects attracted by the bad meat and blood began to swarm around him. Con did not move but could feel the insect bites raising huge, round welts on his face. The welts itched terribly. He rolled the meat into the water slowly. He edged out with it and slid it into the drop-off at the edge of the ford and waited. The current was swift and he hoped it would carry the meat downstream. In any event it seemed safe. The crocs weren’t feeding.
He crossed his hands and cupping them brought them together twice. The hollow dovelike signal was returned. He slid into the water. He had crocodile on the brain, he knew, as he placed his feet on the bottom warily. He still couldn’t see the other side. The water was almost to his knees then above his knees, then to his waist. He waded carbine held high in front of his head, finger on the trigger. In his own ears the ripple of the water sounded like the waterfall at Grand Coulee Dam.
La Bung La lay on the edge of the stream his carbine pointed to Con’s back. It was still chilly but La Bung sweated and the right corner of his mouth jumped convulsively and he felt trapped with Nautaung’s eyes boring into his back a few feet behind, then Con’s back disappeared in the river mist.
Con gained the other side and climbed the bank. He scouted ten yards out, listening. He threw a small stone toward the other bank. The men on the bank saw the ripple of the stone. La Bung hesitated, turning round slowly. Nautaung motioned him forward. La Bung slid into the water. The patrol crossed.
On the other side the jungle was not so dense. They moved off south away from the town, so as to come up more from its rear. They saw many unoccupied positions on the way. Con marked them on the map. It was almost mid-morning before they got close to the town, and the men were beginning to get careless, Con knew.
It was always that way on patrol. The deeper you get without running into anything the more confident the men become and the greater the confidence the greater the carelessness, and then you were in trouble.
Finally they crawled up to the clearing of the town and observed it for over twenty minutes. They saw some of their own men, a group of Kachins in native dress, talking to a group of soldiers. They had been sent into the Japanese camp with a cart pulled by a domesticated water buffalo and the carcasses of two slaughtered water buffalo as presents for the commander. Apparently they had sold the Japanese their story of collaboration and their promise to supply them further as they seemed to have free run of the camp. Con only hoped that they could make it back by tomorrow night’s radio. It was the break he had hoped for but not counted on.
They started back a different way. They never came and went the same way on a patrol. They were about half-way to the river and suddenly the old man knew it was going to happen, then a few minutes later Con got the feeling. A minute later they all knew it and began to move very cautiously crouched tight and low, and Con thought he heard one unnatural little sound and signalled them down. They went down quietly.
High on a platform in a tree to their front a Jap was watching them. On the ground under a tree thirty of them were getting ready in dug-in positions. Con got up. The patrol got up. They moved forward and through the foliage Con sighted the ladder leading up the tree in the distance and as he signalled the men down the Japs opened up in unison.
La Bung searched the brush for Con desperately. Con had crawled back away from the fire and to his right. They had a thirty-ought-six in there and the big gun was thump, thump, thumping away. The action of that gun made a hell of an impact on a man from a purely psychological point of view, Con thought again.
At first Con thought they would have to try and go round the left but after a moment he knew that’s the way the Japs had figured it so they would have to try the right even if the foliage was comparatively sparse, the ground open and flat.
Con finally got Nautaung’s attention and signalled for him to swing the outfit and for a second La Bung had sight of him but Nautaung turned and fired one quick shot right across the Subadar Major’s bow, and then the Subadar Major heard the blood-curdling Jap combat scream, followed by two more in quick succession: Banzai, Banzai; and the Subadar Major began pouring round after round toward the voices.
They made two quick runs to the right and then they heard the planes overhead, American fighters coming in to soften up the town, or, Con thought, they had spotted the truck activity while out on a freewheeling mission. The Jap fire slackened off and they made a run for the river.
The mist was gone and the sun shone hotly on the water, and they could see the planes overhead.
“We’re all going at once,” Con said. “When those fighters see us begin to cross they’ll be all over us. You with the automatic rifle, spray the other side. You with the other one spray everything around here. Everybody get a grenade ready,” Con ordered in Kachin.
The automatic sprayed.
“Now,” Con yelled. “Now.”
They all hit the water. They were three-quarters across with one sniper peppering wildly at them when they knew a plane had them sighted.
Upstream came the plane the 50-calibers splashing water. Down went the six men under the water. Con came up. Blood streamed in the water. Nautaung came up and grabbed for a body near him. He pulled it up. There was only half a head. He eyed Con. The Dua motioned to dump him. Nautaung pushed him back in the water.
Then Subadar Major La Bung came up screaming with only a stub of one arm where the 50-caliber had ripped it off above the wrist. Con hit him in the head with his carbine and he and Nautaung dragged him to the shore. The last glance Con had of the river was the blood crazed crocodiles splashing, ripping at the carcass of the young half-beheaded Kachin.
They fixed a tourniquet on La Bung. Half-dragging and half-carrying him they raced up the creek-bed, sending a runner ahead to prepare a stretcher. They paused at the clearing in the creek-bed and gave La Bung a morphine and headed for the nearest village. They picked up four Kachin civilians to help carry the litter, and in the next village they found a mule and used that to transport La Bung.
They made the semi-permanent camp at sundown. Doc Travis went to work on La Bung La, his first actual wounded field case. An hour later Ringa came in with two more wounded. Niven had been in since that afternoon.
Con had the new radio operator, Bill Goodwin, have base stand-by for a late report. They worked under kerosene lamp-light until all the info had been transcribed to a master map.
Ringa in his first job had been superb, Con thought reviewing his report.
Con gave base all he could on the late radio and requested planes for the wounded but that the first light plane out would fly Lau’rel with the master map, and to give a personal explanation.
Con’s own deduction was that the Japanese were perfectly aware of the plans of the attack on Walawbum. The Colonel’s return message was received a little after midnight.
PEARSON TO REYNOLDSMarch 1 44
MORE THAN PLEASED WITH PINE INFO. IN VIEW OF SAME MY ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS THAT YOU ISSUE DIVERTING ATTACKS EARLY IN THE A.M. SOUTH OF WALAWBUM.
PEARSON
CHAPTER XXV
After the Colonel’s midnight message had been filed Con and Nautaung went to work on the maps and aerial photographs. They worked by a kerosene lamp but in the headquarters clearing the full moon was so bright it was easy to read by its light.
It was decided on a series of attacks in the ancient Kachin fashion. The old Kachin warrior called the tactic the left-hand right-hand attack.
You laid both hands on the ground fingers spread, hands about two feet apart. The tips of your eight fingers are your approximate places of attack or, preferably, ambush. Then as the enemy retaliates you pull the hands back and closer together and draw the fingers that are your attacking points closer together.
You stop and ambush again in the eight places.
Th
en the four units that are the fingers of your right hand are pulled back and together as a fist, the four units joined. Here another ambush was set-up while the left hand was executing, simultaneously, the same maneuver. Finally, far back in the hills and at a pre-arranged picked position the two hands, and thus all the units, join forces for one final ambush, and, then, disperse in groups of eight or ten through the jungle and reorganize at another pre-arranged location several miles away.
The Japanese proved an ideal enemy for this sucker tactic and the Kachins, born with the knowledge of it, executed it flawlessly; for if any one unit were encircled or ran into other such misfortune they could make their jungle dispersal at once, while the other fingers, or fighting units, continued to function as to procedure.
So they chose eight points of attack about nine miles below Walawbum on the Walawbum-Mogaung road.
“I will be the left-hand, eh, Dua?” Nautaung asked.
“No. You will be the Subadar Major,” Con said. “We must have a Subadar Major now.”
“I do not wish to be disrespectful,” Nautaung said, “but a Subadar Major is a kind of man that is a man itself. A man of discipline, polish, and his heart must be the heart of a military book. I am no such man.”
“A man like the Subadar Major La Bung La, then,” Con said.
“Very much like that.”
“You don’t think I utilized him correctly? Tell me.”
“Oh yes. A Subadar Major must fight once in a while. The men demand that. That was correct. It is a shame that happened for he had all the other qualities. He fitted the system as few men have. And whether we approve of the system or not we as men created it. And so we must live with it. As we live with the pain and suffering we create also.”
“I understand that,” Con said.
“The system says that the Subadar Major must be of the native class. A representative of his people but also representative of his white officers to his people. So it is an odd man that must fill an odd position. Often his own people fear him for his contact with the white people. And the whites because of his color. He is a man alone, he finds. In garrison it is not so bad. You will find that in the garrison of all the British Colonial armies the Subadar Majors stay together as one. They compete much and the army is the victor for that. But the competition comes usually because they have bragged too much. And they brag to make up for that other thing they do not have,” Nautaung smiled an ancient, wrinkled smile. “I have heard La Bung owns property. It is not the property he wants, I believe. The property, he has fooled himself, makes up for what the white officers have that he does not have. The property makes up for the mistrust of his own people. It is a fool’s revenge but that is the nature of man until it is changed.”
Con was thoughtful. “I never looked at it that way.”
“There is always explanation for man’s way. If you discover this explanation you will never really have surprise for what a man does. It is patience again. You do what you in your heart must do. In you is the explanation.… Ahh, now the talk becomes complicated.”
“Who do you suggest for a Subadar Major?” Con asked after a moment.
“I know a man. He is retired but he will come. He is proud, loud. Very stern. He will fight, too. He does not own property but he has a way of making himself better,” Nautaung chuckled.
“He’s Kachin?” Con asked grinning. He had to grin just watching the old man chuckle.
“Yes. He is of us. He is not too far from here. When he was a Subadar Major in the Burma Rifles he saved his pay for four months,” the old man laughed. “He went to a lawyer in Rangoon and had his name changed legally. His Kachin name was La Bye Ga. Now he is Subadar Major Winston Smythe-Churchill, Retired. Subadar Majors are all,” he circled his forefinger around his ear. “A little monsoon in the brain, always.”
Con laughed, too. “Get him, then.”
“I will send the runner in the morning,” Nautaung said. “It will be good to see him.”
Con offered a cigarette and they lit up. There was no smoking allowed on the perimeter but inside the perimeter and below the sky-line it was permitted.
“But you will not be the left hand tomorrow,” Con said. “I want you to watch the camp and to take the information from the agents we sent into Walawbum with the buffalo meat. That is if they get back.”
“They will be back.”
“I am going to use Ringa for the left hand. Niven for the right. One-half platoon for each of the eight fingers.”
“That is a good size.”
“And the Du Ringa. Have you thought of him?” Con asked.
“We are lucky to have him. He is the strength. I do not say he is good in the heart. But he is strong. He is positive in the way of few men.”
“He has a good head and courage, too,” Con said. “What time is it?”
“Oh-two hundred, Dua.”
“Will you send runners to wake the leaders then. And tell Billingsly to bust open a case of scotch. I think we’ll need the scotch to keep us awake now.”
“All the leaders?”
“The right and left hand. Niven and Ringa,” Con said. “I’m going to see how the wounded are doing.”
He got up. Nautaung got up. It was cold away from the kerosene lamp. They could see each other plainly in the moonlight. It was dead quiet. There were three hundred men in the camp and on the perimeter and it was dead quiet. There were two hundred men outposting and not a shot had been fired. There should be a shot, some kind of a stray shot, or something, soon, Con thought. There must be at least some land-crabs to shoot at this night, or early morning, or hour. Anyhow, this was very unnatural, having five hundred men this quiet. When five hundred soldiers made noise it was nothing compared to five hundred being quiet. Then behind them on the far side of the perimeter they heard a shot, then a series of shots, then an automatic, and several grenades and firing all along the line. They listened but there was no recognizable return fire. They grinned.
“I will shut them up,” Nautaung said.
“I was beginning to wonder,” Con said.
They laughed and went their ways.
Con found the aid station easily in the moonlight. It too was in a clearing and the only campfire was permitted there, though at a distance of nine miles north a small patrol had been sent to light about sixty diverting fires on a high waterless, unoccupied hill.
Doc Travis was fidgeting in his medical box near the fire and near the wounded. Con had given him a bush hat which he had accepted proudly as a symbol of some sort. The hat was set carelessly sideways on his head as if he didn’t even know he had it on.
“What are you doing up?” Con asked.
“Caring for the wounded.”
“You have assistants,” Con said.
“They’re tired.”
“Yes, and tomorrow we attack and when we come with the wounded you will be tired and screw-up because you are tired. But your assistants will be rested,” Con said sarcastically. “That’s the important thing. Look Doc, when I give you an order there’s a reason.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever say that again. This is no place for sorry sons-of-bitches. You do what you’re told until you find out what year it is and you won’t have to be sorry for anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Doctor Grey Travis said awkwardly, his dark sullen eyes perplexed and glistening from the firelight and moonglow. “I heard the firing and …”
“You hear it every night. And you will. And when you don’t you better begin to worry that one of those yellows have slipped through.”
The Doctor took off the bush hat half-squashing it and ran his free hand through his crew-cut hair constrainedly.
“How are the boys?” Con asked in a new voice.
“La Bung lost a lot of blood. He’ll live, I think. The one with the shrapnel in his chest. I got some of it out but was afraid to probe any deeper.”
“And the other one.”
“You want to see?”
the Doctor challenged.
“No. But I will.”
They walked over to him and the Doc pulled the blanket off. The Doc stooped over and began to undo the bandage taped to the side of his legs, whistling softly as he did so.
“You can forget that whistling. No one’s interested in how medically unconcerned you are and whistling is very irritating.”
The Doctor paused, glaring at Con. He tore the tape loose. The pubic hair and penis and testicles of the young Kachin were all blood caked and smeared. The testicles were all black and blue and larger than baseballs. The head of the penis was all grey, yellow and purplish, and below the head in the center was a hole the size of a dime. Delicately the Doctor raised the penis and on the other side the hole was almost the width of the penis with flesh hanging in shreds, then through the testicles sac was another hole.
“I think we can save the penis but as far as I can tell the bullet went through both testicles,” the Doc said. The young Kachin, unconscious, began to urinate all over himself and on the Doctor’s hand.
Absently Con found himself holding his hand comfortingly between his own legs.
“But he had a hell of a shock,” the Doc said. “The shock could kill him. He’s urinated all over and the salt from the urine got in there and though the jolt numbed him I think the salt burns like hell,” he said toughly putting the bandage back. Then he stood up.
Con went over to La Bung. The Subadar Major was awake but his eyes were yellow dreamy with the morphine. He wasn’t even afraid of the white Dua, he discerned, seeing Con.
“It’s not as bad as you thought it would be, was it, La Bung?” Con said.
You cruel son-of-a-bitch, the Doctor said to himself. You rotten bastard.
To the Doctor’s surprise the Subadar Major grinned.
With the morphine and no pain and still being able to feel he had a hand, and knowing that he was alive and soon the fighting was all over for him; and an all-contented strength of no worry and to be fed and cared for like in the womb, and to know you have lived, and will live, really not afraid of white men at all. The only bad thing, La Bung La thought, is now that you can speak anyway you want to him your mouth Won’t work.
Never So Few Page 39