“What about the Americans?” Con asked. “Didn’t they offer any help?”
“Two American non-commissioned advisors took part in the sacking of one of the villages. They were both drunk, one Kachin elder told me and another confirmed him.”
“Did you report it?”
“I was going to yesterday. But I thought I should do it personally as long as I was coming out.… Incidentally, I was at the Chinese regimental command post when they took an airdrop. As the sacks of rice came free dropping from the planes a soldier went out and tried to catch one. Naturally it cut him in half. Do you know, that in spite of that man’s death, several other soldiers ran out on that drop field and tried to catch those sacks of rice. Four were killed all told. And if it hadn’t been for the officers ordering them away from the drop area God knows how many would have gotten it.… it’s almost unbelievable the stupidity of some of those people.”
“They’re like cattle,” Con said. “I think we ought to get to the Colonel with this business of yours while the getting is good.”
“I think so. I wanted to hear your comment first.”
“I haven’t much. It’s well, let’s say that for me it’s anti-climactic. I don’t feel anything. In a way I’m glad I don’t. Maybe I can approach it with more of a level head. I really blew my gasket over this Lewje business,” Con said.
Then Con told him about his examination by Major Jake Alofson. They had a good laugh.
“Toss me a towel,” Danny said taking his feet out of the pan.
Con tossed him a towel, then reached over and picked up the foot-pan. He poured the scotch from the pan back into the scotch bottle and shook it up.
They went over to the Colonel’s. Colonel Pearson said that he would report the incident immediately. He told them that they would have to get back into their troops the next day. Headquarters was planning a push. He told them that it would be their job, in conjunction with the Chinese-American Mars Task force, to throw a temporary block on the Road in the rear of Jap lines as Ringa had done previously; detailed instructions to follow within the next few days. He stressed that the plan was now over a month old and in no way the aftermath of the incidents that had taken place within the last few days. Danny and Con reiterated their argument that they were not line troops; however they were forced to agree that the plan seemed feasible and, if properly executed, not too much of a gamble. They readily agreed to execute their part of the plan after the Colonel had offered that they wouldn’t be called on for any further line activities. Before they left Colonel Pearson informed them that the base was having a party that night and would like to have them present. They said they would come.
They returned to their cottage. It was five o’clock. They began to drink. They didn’t eat supper. They drank their supper instead. After dark they started for the Colonel’s house where the party was in progress. Everyone, not assigned to guard or radio, was there. Red Cross women and nurses from Dinjan had been imported, the enlisted men given a bonus ration of beer. The whiskey the Colonel had imported from Calcutta, and a record player played loud and brassily. The furniture had been pushed aside and there was mixed jitterbugging and soldiers jitterbugging with soldiers.
Con and Danny wrapped themselves around the bar like a cigar band around a cigar. They got practically paralyzed. About eleven things began to slow up. Danny asked Con to fight.
“Why if you’d be sho kind as to remove your monocle I’ll knock your oversized head in,” Con said drunkenly, grinning.
“I shall owe you a bottle of scotch for every time you can remove this monocle. No one has ever removed shis monocle, old man,” Danny said adjusting it, then bowed.
Con swung hard hitting Danny up on the shoulder. Danny swung back hitting Con up on the side of the head at almost the same instant. They stood in the center of the room trading blows. A couple of the party-goers believing it to be serious tried to intervene but the Colonel stopped them.
They both bled. Con kept aiming glancing blows at Danny’s monocle but couldn’t knock it out. The men began to cheer. Con and Danny swung viciously, grinning and bleeding. Danny clobbered Con on the side of his head with a vase. Con threw a chair and missed, then rushed. He and Danny toppled over a divan onto the floor rolling over and over. Con hit his crazy bone and the sudden nausea caused him to vomit slightly. Danny catching a glimpse and smelling it simultaneously released a little of his own. Suddenly they felt cold water rushing over them. They looked up from the floor. Pearson was standing there with a water pitcher in hand. Lying on the floor they released their holds and began to laugh.
They returned to the bar after freshening up. They drank for two more hours. Neither one of them remembered how they got back to the cottage.
Con got up at five. He wasn’t sure, at first, where he was. He sat on the bed and smoked a cigarette and drank from a water pitcher. His mouth felt like he had been chewing on jockstraps. He wondered if Danny was still sleeping. He looked in Danny’s bedroom. Empty.
He went into the living room. Danny was sitting on a small prayer mat in the lotus seat. He didn’t see Con. Danny was naked except for a thin loin cloth and the monocle in his eye. He had his stomach drawn in almost all the way to his spine. Then he pushed it out into a round ball. Con thought it was impossible for anyone to draw in his stomach that far.
Then Danny let the center and left part of his stomach in its normal position and drew it on the right side, alone, until it rested against the spine. Then the left side alone. Then the left and right side of his stomach he drew back leaving the center sticking out. Then he sat absolutely motionless staring as if into a void. Con watched him as he sat there thinking that he wasn’t even breathing. Con watched over fifteen minutes. His thirst returned. He went into the bathroom and got a drink, then lay down on his bed. A short time later Danny came in.
“Some performance we put on last night,” Con said.
“Bloody rough,” Danny said.
“What were you doing in there?” Con asked inquisitively.
“An exercise of a sort and a little meditation. The exercise was for my hangover. Got rid of that jolly quick.”
And Con saw that he had no trace of a hangover whatsoever.
At noon, in two separate planes, they took off. Con was slightly depressed. He had a bad feeling. He didn’t like to believe in his feelings after he had been drinking, but this feeling was so overpoweringly bad that he thought he must believe in it. The feeling had to do with death. It was not particularly his death, or Danny’s. But he felt it thoroughly and death was in it, or on the edge of it.
The Colonel shaking his hand discerned the feeling in Con. After Con’s plane took off the Colonel felt it too. He knew there wasn’t any thing he could do about it; it was the one feeling you can’t really run from … because you could never really place it. But it always reminded the Colonel of rain.
The sun was shining hotly. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
CHAPTER XLIV
It had all happened so suddenly, with such voracious swiftness that as yet they hadn’t comprehended their predicament fully. Danny and Con and one thousand men of their forces were surrounded.
Two days before they had thrown the block on the Lashio-Bahmo Road. Danny’s force had crossed to the east, the China side of the Road, and joined forces with Con’s in the Kachin Hills. The main body was left to cover the retreat while the four elite companies, two from Danny’s and two from Con’s, threw the block. They held the Road block for twentyseven hours. They pulled out heading east and north. They met resistance to their north and started back south and east. A Kachin company was holding a trail that was a possible avenue of Japanese approach. The Japs had apparently scouted the company’s position, attacked it with a small force, then sent their main body around it. They caught and so quickly surrounded the elite Kachin force on the knob of a small hill, throwing in artillery, that Con and Danny didn’t even have the opportunity to make for high ground. What was worse;
there was no available water.
They dug in consolidating their position as best they could. Night fell giving them temporary relief. In the morning the artillery began in earnest. BOOM-ROOM, went the big guns zeroed in at a point blank range.
“What kind of a fucking gun is that anyhow?” Niven asked. He was lying in the headquarters fox-hole. “There’s no trajectory on those shells. They’re coming right in.”
“They must of barrel sighted it,” Con said. “It can’t be more than four hundred yards away,” he added eyeing the high ground to their front.
“Where’s the bloody air-force?” Danny asked.
“They won’t be in for a half-hour,” Con said. “That is if the weather’s O.K. back there.… it’s going to be hot today. We’d better disperse. Niven, take charge of that radio yourself. Get four or five men and dig it in. Deep.”
“I always end up with the goddamn radio. I’ll bet I’m the highest ranking goddamn radio operator in the army,” he said picking his nose, squinting inquisitively through the gold-rimmed glasses toward the Jap position.
“Let’s go, Danny,” Con said. “You check the southwest perimeter. I’ll check the northeast perimeter. You check Doc Travis and the hospital and I’ll check Ringa and the mortars … we’ll meet at the hospital.”
They started to get up. ROOM.…
“In-coming mail,” Niven said. And BOOM … it was in.
There was a scream, then another, then moaning. Machine-gun fire broke out on the north perimeter. Then rapid rifle and automatic fire.
“Niven,” Con said, “send a runner to Nautaung and tell him to stop that firing. Our ammunition won’t last the day at this rate. They won’t attack until after the artillery stops anyhow. Tell the Subadar Major to meet me at the hospital. Send base another request for a water and ammo drop. Tell them it’s essential we have it today. Check with Doc Travis. Find out what he needs. Absolutely needs. Like morphine. We may be here for a few days. Tell him I don’t want a lot of screaming from that hospital … it’s demoralizing.”
Niven took off. Danny and Con were about to leave on their separate inspections when they heard the fighter planes coming in. Con grabbed his radio. He contacted the Flight Commander. He requested that the planes fly round and round until they sighted the Japanese artillery. He sent a runner to Ringa. Ringa poured three 81mm smoke shells in the approximate vicinity of the artillery pieces. The planes hovered above, circling protectively.
Con and Danny delayed their inspections to review their situation. They were on low ground, almost in the valley of the Road, at the approach to the foothills. The knob of their hill was like the head of a golf club, the shaft behind a narrow trail surrounded by impenetrable jungle. The Japanese had a complete circle around the knob, and in front of the knob they held the high ground that was the gateway to the Hills. The closest water was a half-mile. The Japs held the watering ground. The Kachin forces had ammo for a day and a half, possibly two. It was humid hot, growing hotter. The thick jungle formed almost a ceiling over their heads but the digging men would sweat severely. They would be out of water by nightfall. They figured the main attack would come from the west or northwest where the jungle was sparsest. It would be almost impossible to maneuver groups of men from any other direction. They could expect infiltration mainly from the east, where the jungle was thickest. They decided to locate their main reserves within easy access to these two avenues of approach.
“Where’s Goodwin?” Con asked.
“With the priest and Nautaung on the line,” Danny said. “The priest was at the hospital early to administer the last rites to one of the chaps. But he went back on the line.”
“We’d better split that threesome up,” Con said. “As well as ourselves.”
“We could put the priest in charge of one of the mobile reserves. Goodwin the other … do you realize, Con, that this is the first time in months that we’ve all been together. I mean what’s left of the original old crew.”
“I never thought of that,” Con grinned. “Ironic, ain’t it. Tell the priest he’s got a command. He’s been wanting one long enough.”
They left and made their inspections. Con arranged for the airforce to keep a plane overhead all day. There was no more artillery. Occasional sniper fire began around noon. The sun beat down unmercifully. The jungle sweat. The two dead mules began to putrify. Flies swarmed. The young soldiers dug. The dead mules began to reek. The wind quit. The soldiers disobeyed and drank their water.
During the mid-afternoon the air-drop force came over. The Kachins cleared some jungle and laid out their drop pattern signals. The water and ammo came down in parachutes. The knob of their hill was small. Most of the water and ammo fell into the Japanese area or hung high on the jungle ceiling. Two Kachins climbed a tree to retrieve a chute and its parcel. They were machine-gunned. One fell hard to the earth. The other remained, dead, entangled in the twine of the jungle above, only his head and shoulders hanging visibly from the green maze, his lifeless eyes open, his tongue hanging out twistedly. Flies grouped to his lifeless form. He was fifteen years old.
Night came. With the dark, velvety, shadowy night came the artillery. BOOM, then instantly, BOOM. Artillery without trajectory. A .45 at two feet. BOOM-BOOM. THUD. Young screams. Tears in the night. Massive horse flies swarming. Mosquitoes impassioned with the scent of blood. And no wind.
A soldier rises out of his fox-hole to crap. Another soldier sees a shadow in the night. He pulls the trigger with a sweaty, frightened finger. Thud. He had forgotten how to properly squeeze off the shot. But the crapping soldier lies dead.
Pass the word: No one leaves their hole.
The men crap and piss in their holes. The flies swarm. In the jungle nothing is ever wasted.
The urine spilling over their pants legs is warm. Several, their mouths parched, squeamishly allow the urine to run over their hands. They press it to their lips. It is salty.
The holes they swearingly dug suddenly have meaning. It is safe in the hole. It is dark like the womb. Like the womb it is safe. Only outside the hole is the uncertain unknown. Tomorrow I will dig hard. I will make a better hole. I will make a top for my hole. A top of wood and dirt for my hole that is my home, sweetest of homes. I will build a hole within my hole in which to crap and piss and lay dirt on the side with which to cover it. The flies shall not have it. It will be the best of holes, my hole.
But I must look out of the hole. Is it possible that all are like me and do not look out of the hole? If that is so the enemy may descend upon us without warning. I must, occasionally, look quickly out of my hole. It is good there are two of us in the hole. It is good to share it.
BOOM-BOOM. Artillery without trajectory.
“I saw the flash that time,” Con said to Ringa. “It’s far down the hill.”
“I didn’t see it,” Ringa said. “I was watching up the hill. It sounded up the hill farther.”
The big gun fired again.
Shrapnel screamed through the perimeter, whacked into the growth, flayed the earth.
“I saw it,” Ringa whispered. “I saw it that time. I’ll try a phosphorus shell.”
He slid back into the mortar pit. Hollowly a shell flew out. It burst brilliantly, showering sparks upon the enemy hill. The Fourth of July!
It was too long.
He fired another. Too short.
How do you zero-in on a target you can’t see?
He slithered up next to Con. “I think I’ve got it. Should I try a barrage?”
“Let her go,” Con said.
Ringa had three eighty-ones lined up. He fired a barrage of three shells each. For several moments there was no answer.
“You suppose we got it?” Ringa asked Con.
The answer: BOOM-BOOM … BOOM-BOOM … BOOM-BOOM … BOOM-BOOM continuously, rapidly, for over ten minutes. And three tree bursts. Relentless.
Artillery without trajectory.
“Ahhhhh aaaaa.… Du Doctor.”
“My
leg … it’s gone. Mother, mother, where is the leg of your loving son? It’s gone and I can’t feel it, mother.”
“Ohhh, Ohhhh, Du … Dua … Duakaba … what is happening … Ohh Duakaba.”
Do not cry, children. We suffer, we die for a peaceful world of tomorrow. Is it not worth it?
The night is wet. There is no wind. There will never be wind again. It is dark. The artillery owns this night. No …
The artillery and the jungle-muffled screams own this night. Partners of the night. No …
The horse flies own the night. They are crazed. Oh feast of all horse fly feasts: blood, urine, crap, death; in the wet night, the dark night. The darkest of all nights. No …
The mosquitoes own the night. It is their night. Oh feast of feasts.
But man owns the night … I rule the earth … And I own the night.
Now you know, man. No one owns the night. You cannot touch what you cannot conceive.
A flashlight beam bounces near-by. Feet stumble through the verdant maze, the carpet of the earth.
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