“You will have your pension,” Con said. “Nautaung told me some things and you will have it. And the three of us have that secret,” he said in Kachin so the Doctor would not understand.
The darker than dark brown Mongolian face grinned whitely, weakly, then his yellow eyes rolled to the Doctor.
“He doesn’t know our language,” Con said in Kachin again. “He doesn’t know what the hell we’re talking about.”
The Subadar Major managed the slightest nod, then dreamed on in his new world, or his old world, or whatever it was. The Doctor leaned over and gave him another morphine, then shook the plasma bottle once to see if it was draining properly.
They went back over by the medical kit and the makeshift bamboo operating table. Con undid his canteen and took a drink. He offered one to Grey Travis.
“Not while I’m working.”
“Don’t be an ass, Doctor,” Con said. “And take me with a grain, will you. I wish I had time to explain everything I ask of you. But I don’t. Here,” he handed him the canteen. “We don’t drink really. We nip. On a deal like this one we may be up for three or four days and the booze keeps you going,” Con said softly, gently. “Take my word for it, will you.”
Grey Travis hesitated a moment. “Sure,” he said. He drank and smacked his lips.
“I hardly take any,” Con said. “I hold the whiskey in my mouth till it burns or until it almost makes me vomit, then I let it go down. The smallest possible amount always.”
“You haven’t had much sleep,” the Doc said. “You say we attack again in the morning?”
“Yes, early.”
“You did all the field operating before? You were damn good, the base Doctor said. Did you like it?”
“Truthfully, it was interesting. But I think I’d rather operate on white men than Kachins.”
The Doctor was thoughtful a moment. “I was brought up to hate niggers,” he said with his slight southern accent.
“And Kachins?”
“They’re not like niggers at all.”
“I’m glad you said that,” Con said. “By the way, Danny went back in yesterday.”
“Against orders I suppose.”
“Doctor’s orders,” Con said. Then on the other side of the perimeter the firing began. Con listened intently for a moment. “It’s nothing.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’ll be able to tell. You’ll know what their stuff sounds like forever and after the first time you heard it go by.”
“I suppose.”
“I’ve got a meeting. Get some sleep will you, Doc? You may get some business tomorrow.”
“Right away. Here,” he reached into his breast pocket, “I’d like you to see this. My family.”
He handed Con the clipping.
Con unfolded it. It was from the society page of the Nashville Journal. A plain, cold, attractive young woman in a dark dress seated in a large chair in a rich looking living room with four young girls in white draped attractively around her. The caption said: “Daddy Overseas. And underneath: Mrs. Grey Travis, wife of the socially prominent Nashville physican, formerly Miss Grace Stallman of this city, and her daughters pictured in the living room of their Riverside Drive home. Doctor Travis is reportedly now serving in the armed forces in India. He is a Captain in the Medical Service, the fifth generation of his family to serve his country in wartime.”
“You should be proud,” Con lied feeling nothing. “I’ll see you early.”
He went back to the C.P. He broke a case of Dewar’s White Label scotch and gave Niven and Ringa two bottles each. They went over the plans.
“I’m going with you, Ringa,” Con said.
“You’ll command?” Ringa asked.
“No. Not until your hand and Niven’s hand join.”
“I believe in this plan,” Ringa said. “It’s sound. It’s tricky. It’s got no loose ends.” He was looking at the map.
Con’s eyes were fixed on him, the baby face. Ringa was crude but there was maturity and a brain. A quick to calculate sound hard brain and a man to back the thought.
Niven noticed Con’s open admiration.
“How about taking some Bangalore torpedoes?” Niven asked.
“Take whatever you like to do the job. What time is the dawn, Nautaung?”
“About oh-five hundred.”
“Be ready to move then.”
“Ammunition?” Ringa asked.
“Two extra bandoleers and the automatics in proportion. I will keep the mortars with me with four extra mules of ammo. After you have made your initial attacks on the road, and initial withdrawals, I’ll start to pepper the road from the point where the two hands will eventually meet for the final ambush.”
They fought all that day. The Japs became all riled up and came swarming up the trails after them. Con could tell from watching the truck activity through his field glasses that the Japanese were suspecting a possible major effort. Con sent runners to Nautaung to say that the diversion was pulling strong; wire the Main Base to that effect at once.
The hands joined before sunset. The terrain was all in their favor and they had put punjis in the ground below the position and the Japs came straight-up, up the steep hill. They knocked them back four times, then a little after midnight they dispersed into the jungle with their nine wounded. One Kachin had been killed, and he by his own hand when he dropped a grenade he was about to throw.
As they moved away they could hear the Japs firing periodically into the empty position and finally when they were a good mile and a half away they heard the Japs charge it.
Merrill went into Walawbum. The Marauders’ 3rd Battalion Orange Combat Team, 2nd Company, commanded by a Kentucky school teacher, took a defensive position on the river. The Japs charged in a series of suicide attacks; attacking across an open field, actually trying to cross the field and the river. The attack lasted all day and one night. Two Japs reached the river, and over four hundred died.
The Chinese in a face saving effort began to fight and found out they could. In a mix-up they had attacked a segment of Merrill’s force in the night and the Marauders cut them to pieces, due primarily to superior marksmanship. The mix-up had one good point: the Chinese and Americans learned to respect each other; a vital factor in the fighting morale of both forces.
On March 5th with Merrill in and the Chinese going good Con was getting ready to pull out and rest for a day or two. But on the evening of the fifth the battle lagged and the Kachins were asked to furnish pressure.
The Japs were finding their way in small patrols to the semi-permanent Kachin camp. The patrols came mostly at night and there was firing all night on the line, and no sleep, and always fear that they would come in strength. Fear also that the departure of their patrols would be harassed. Con wanted to evacute the camp but he couldn’t because it was too well dug in and if he evacuated the position the Japs would no doubt occupy it and pose a threat to the Chinese-American flank.
Walawbum fell on the 7th and the Marauders raced south; the Kachins scouting. By the middle of March the Japs had been run out of the Hukawng valley and the Marauders were in a big fight near Jambu Bum.
Con had moved his force south and by the 16th of March the outfit was fully extended; dreary, bleary eyed, and growing careless in their tiredness.
On the 23rd of March Colonel Pearson flew in to talk to Con personally. A battalion of Merrill’s force had been surrounded near Shaduzup. The Japanese had launched an attack in the Arakan. Japanese columns moving with incredible rapidity had flanked Ukrul. Other columns of Japanese had suddenly appeared on the Imphal-Kohima Road. The British 14th Army was cut off from land supply. The Japanese were a mere twenty-eight miles from the Assam-Bengal Railroad; the railroad that was the main supply route for all the Stilwell forces.
The Colonel had given this summary on the edge of the temporary airstrip shortly after his midmorning arrival. The strip was about nine miles from Shadazup and had been cut out of a rice paddy
three days before to evacuate wounded. It was on high ground.
“So we’ve got to have pressure, Con,” the Colonel said. “All you can give.”
Con laughed a sarcastic laugh. “Starting when?”
“Today. At once.”
“Get yourself a new boy. Everybody’s got their ass in a sling because they’re over-extended. Not my Kachins.”
“Do you realize the consequences, Con? If that railroad goes everything you’ve done will have been for nothing.”
“Don’t con me,” Con said. “You know goddamn well what’s happened. No one gives a shit for the Kachins. They delivered and now you whites think you can sacrifice them to save your own ass.”
“Danny’s putting on pressure,” the Colonel said patiently.
“Danny hasn’t done a goddamn thing this month,” Con said. “The Americans and Chinese have been in action for four weeks. The British for four weeks. We’ve been fighting almost consistently for a year. And you want us to take the pressure off them. You must feel like an ass asking that.”
“You have your duty, son,” the massive Colonel said in that fatherly way of his.
“Duty,” Con laughed sarcastically. “What about duty to my men. Is it my duty to get a bunch of fifteen and sixteen year olds killed to save the ass of that great fighting machine, G.I. Joe? Or the invincible Tommy Atkins? Is that the way those bastards got their reputations,” Con was almost shouting, “by getting some kids they are sure no one will ever hear of to fight their dirty war? I’ll fight. Goddamn it, yes I’ll fight. But those kids are so pooped that we’ve got to take turns staying up to check the perimeter. The other morning one of the outposts didn’t come in and we went out and found the whole goddamn bunch of them sound asleep.… I demand a fair chance.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” the Colonel said. He had never seen Con so red-eyed or dirty. He must have lost twenty pounds in the last few weeks, the Colonel thought. “Think it over,” the Colonel said feeling like a genuine bastard. “I’m going to look around.”
Con’s hand was shaking as he mopped his brow. It was cool but on the edge of the strip, in the open, the sun shone bright and direct. The Colonel started to walk away.
“All right,” Con called. “We’ll start in the morning. But Jesus, Ray, these are kids,” he half-pleaded, red-eyed, crazy-eyed, mean and edgy from the lack of sleep and the scotch that would hardly move him anymore.
Jesus Christ, the Colonel said to himself, how did I ever get into this mess. He walked over to Con and put one huge hand on his shoulder. “Where’s your maps? I think Danny has a hell of an idea. You can co-ordinate.”
“Take your hands off me,” Con said wildly, glaring. Then he started for the headquarters, Nautaung and the Colonel following at a distance.
“I have never seen one soldier like that,” Nautaung said.
“I don’t think he’s afraid for himself at all,” the Colonel said.
“It’s easy for him not to be afraid. He thinks too much of other things. But when a man like that, who knows, stops to think of what he has gotten away with in his lack of fear, then he has the greatest fear of all. All his fear is summed up at once,” Nautaung said. “Because it was there. It takes much not to be overthrown by that kind of fear.”
“But will he be?” the Colonel questioned.
“Not he,” Nautaung said definitely. Nautaung did not add that he thought such a man would go balmy in the head first.
The Colonel believed Nautaung and was relieved. Con had acted very erratically there for a moment. “Did you know that he wants to get married?” the Colonel asked.
“No,” the old man said.
“Well,” the Colonel said, “he does.”
“The young Dua is married already. To the people and to an idea,” the old man grinned. “It is much like love for a woman. In that, though he loves, he knows little of what it is occurring with the love. Which does not subtract from the love.”
They were walking rapidly now and the Colonel looked down at Nautaung and grinned. “They should make you Chief of Staff of something.”
“They should make something of something, first,” Nautaung said. “That would be something.”
The Colonel laughed.
“Do not worry,” Nautaung said. “When he has the time he will consider the difficulty you have when you ask what you must. Do not worry about that.”
And now they could see the headquarters and Con breaking out the map.
CHAPTER XXVI
They put the pressure on with a series of left-hand right-hand attacks. Danny, as if making up for lost time, seemed to be three or four places at once. Merrill’s force fought out of their bad situation at great cost to the enemy and continued to exert pressure. General Slim, given a free hand by the British for the first time, and using brilliant strategy, not only stopped the Japanese advance in Assam but had finally gotten the English to fight. And to give credit where credit was due, the Chinese under Stilwell had made a major effort which contributed to relieving the pressure on the surrounded Merrill force.
At the beginning of the third week in April Con’s force fled to the deep hills for rest. During the week’s rest the sun stopped shining and huge grey clouds billowing like huge cow udders began to form in the sky. The air was wet and smelled of rain. The whole earth seemed to sweat and grow rank; the nights were a bitter flesh-penetrating damp. The leeches, thriving on the moisture, were everywhere. A medical directive to Doc Travis had verified that a young Englishman, a liaison officer with the Chinese, sleeping near a waterpool had been blood-sucked dead in the night.
Con, Doc Travis, and Ringa had the dysentery. Niven’s skin around his armpits and crotch began to mold a greenish mold, and rot with the jungle rot. Lau’rel had come down with several malaria attacks. Bill Goodwin, the young radio operator, had been evacuated with a severe malaria attack and Niven was doubling as a combat company commander and radio operator. The Kachins were in excellent health as a unit though they took great pleasure in attending sick call. The Doctor pacified them by distributing large quantities of salt tablets.
That afternoon they had taken an enormous airdrop because of the possibility that the weather would knock out their airsupply all together. One of the free-dropped sacks of rice had bounced off one of the soldiers and smashed his leg and the Doctor was working on him. The work parties were still gathering up the drop and carrying it to headquarters supply for distribution when one of the hunting parties returned.
The party had brought with them a small baby monkey they had found abandoned and the leader brought it to the headquarters as a present for Con. They were all sitting around the headquarters when the gift was presented, and when Scheherezade saw the infant monkey she began to shriek and jump up and down. Nautaung took the baby and handed it to Scheherezade. She held the infant cradled in her arms, then looked up at Con with a very possessive, satisfied look, and ran several feet to the head of Con’s sleeping bag and began to fondle and pick at the infant. The tiny monkey was the brown of a teddy-bear, with a white human face and seemed very frightened of everyone except Scheherezade.
There was a loud blast from where the air-drop had been taken. They had begun to dynamite the field, to clear it for an air-strip to fly out the injured Kachin.
“I put those Hindus to working on the field,” Ringa said.
“What Hindus?” Lau’rel asked.
“They were some of the people that tried to follow Stilwell out on the walk-out,” Niven said. “They’ve been lost and ducking Japs ever since then. At least that’s their story.”
“I think they speak the truth,” Nautaung said. “They lived with the Karens for a while.”
“What will we do with them?” Lau’rel asked. “Will they fight?”
“I’m having them flown out. They should provide some good intelligence,” Con said. “At least about the attitude of the Burmans. They’re rather educated Indians. Traders, I believe.”
“When’s
the monsoon really start?” Ringa asked Nautaung.
“It will be like this for a week or two. Maybe no rain at all. Then it will begin to rain. But not all at once. It will be nearer the middle of May before the big rains.”
“If the priest was here we could baptize the baby monkey,” Lau’rel suggested.
“Let’s baptize him anyhow,” Niven said.
“Nautaung, you be the godfather,” Lau’rel said.
“Did you hear about the Priest on St. Pat’s day?” Con asked. No one seemed to have heard. “The Colonel told me. He got drunk and was lost. Ever since he went over to Danny’s with Danforth he and the Indian have been chummy. The Colonel said the Father’s trying to convert him. Well, anyhow, they had patrols out looking for the Father. And Danny was really beginning to worry. And Danforth, too. Finally on the 18th the priest thought it was the 17th, he had lost a day somewhere, the Father came staggering back to camp. He was loaded and spreading Irish cheer. He had two presents tied to a tree outside the camp. One was a Mongolian horse. For Danny. The other was a Shan girl. For Indian-John. At least that’s the story Danny told the Colonel. The Colonel said he doesn’t know what to believe anymore.”
“I believe it,” Niven said. “By God I believe it.”
“The priest is generous beyond proportion when he’s drinking,” Lau’rel said in his neat English accent.
Ringa didn’t say anything. He acted as if he hadn’t even heard. He was studying the monkeys. Nautaung had tried to approach them with some condensed milk but Scheherezade began to scream wildly. Nautaung backed away. Scheherezade had a horrible menacing, possessive gleam in her eyes; clutching the infant close.
“I need a patrol to go to Merrill’s,” Con said, “then swing south.”
“Really, Con I’ve had no opportunity to see the Merrill force. But supply is well organized now,” Lau’rel said. “If you’re satisfied with my job here, would you let me have the patrol? Besides, the other chaps could do with a rest.”
“I did promise Lau’rel,” Con said to Niven.
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