by John Masters
Fred stooped, ‘Seen anything?’
The man didn’t look up – ‘No, sir.’
‘What are you loaded with?’
‘One in five tracer, sir … standard for night.’
Fred moved on. They were very tired, half-asleep, yawning. Three hours to first light. He paused, peering out, trying to make sense out of the shapeless dark beyond the wall. By God, there might be no shape, but there was movement – close! ‘Stand to!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Stand to!’ He ran back to the machine-gun sentry and shouted, ‘Open fire, man! On your fixed line!’
The man hooked his fingers up under the safety bar and pressed his thumbs on the trigger. The gun began to rock and shudder, spitting out a stream of bullets, every half-second a tracer blazing into shooting light as it slammed across the dark. The rest of the crew were tumbling into position. Others had taken up the shout ‘Stand to! Stand to!’ From brigade headquarters an artillery trumpeter was blowing the call. And now out of the dark Fred heard the wild, falsetto screaming of the tribesmen, coming in for the attack. He could see the glitter of their long knifes. Where the hell were his men? Coming … the CSM was beside him, roaring like a bull, firing across the parapet … more men were rushing to the wall, taking position, firing. Some of the Pathans were firing now, but not many: they were going to trust to cold steel. He hitched his revolver round, drew it, and checked that it was loaded in every chamber.
They were coming over the wall to his right – D Company’s area – shadowy shapes in black and dark grey, fluttering like moths, steel flashing. And D Company was breaking, taken by surprise in the middle of the night, overwhelmed by this horribly personal war … not shells or machine-guns or impersonal explosions, but dark, white-teethed men, mouths wide, coming at them, screaming. He saw a soldier go down, his belly ripped open, and fired carefully at the Pathan kneeling over him. The Pathan fell. ‘Hold tight, B!’ he yelled. ‘Hold tight!’; and ran towards the centre part of his company, where one of his platoons was the Inlying Picquet. In a few moments, he’d take them up to sweep along the wall to the right where D was no more than a fragment. Better do it now, and cut off the tribesmen’s retreat. A shadowy figure appeared beside him and said, ‘Who are you?’
‘Stratton … Wealds.’
The other said, ‘I’m Graham, commanding brigade reserve – A Company, 4th/4th. What’s happened?’
‘They’re in to my right … overran our D … I’m going to take my Inlying Picquet and seal them off.’
‘I’ll follow you … Once we’ve made contact the other side of the gap, you cover the gap and I’ll sweep through the camp …’
‘Better use bayonets only,’ Fred said. ‘There’ll be a godawful mess inside, everyone mixed up.’
Graham said, ‘Bayonets and kukris … My subadar will be pleased.’
The Wealds’ Inlying Picquet was ready, … jittery, Fred noticed; this was bad luck, so near to going home.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘All right. Advance!’
The British soldiers moved slowly forward, rifles and fixed bayonets out-thrust, the points at chest height. Here was a dead man – British … another – Pathan … a wounded Pathan. A soldier bent over and drove his bayonet through the man’s ear and head. Fred said, ‘Well done.’ Another, this one also wounded, swinging round, pointing a long musket. The musket flared, a soldier beside Fred fell. Others ran forward, bayonets stabbed down … more dead … British – two, three, two here wounded, one in the neck, his head nearly off, he wouldn’t last; the other in the belly – hard to tell how badly. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t stay with him! We’ve got a fucking job to do, man! Get on!’
On … more dead along the deserted wall … now dark, living faces, turbans, the Jats. Fred found a British officer and said briefly, ‘We’ve cleared the wall. I’m going to take it over into my area … How many Pathans broke in?’
‘God knows. My subadar here thought about a hundred.’
The Gurkha captain Graham said, ‘We’ll try to reduce that in the next half-hour or so … I’ll wait until you’ve got the perimeter wall properly covered, Stratton, then …’
A man staggered out of the darkness and Stratton, peering, cried, ‘Govind! Are you all right?’
‘Knife wound in the neck,’ the doctor gasped. ‘They’re in the Field Ambulance … killed all the wounded … butchers … bloody barbarian devils, Muslim swine …’
‘You rest here,’ Fred said. ‘Sit against the wall until we’ve had a chance to tidy things up …. Looks as though you’ll have something to avenge, Graham. Didn’t you have some sick in the Field Ambulance?’
‘The men know,’ Graham said briefly. ‘Tayyar chha, subadar-sahib? Advance!’
The Mess was nearly all packed up. As a Territorial battalion the 8th did not have much silver or other trophies. The furniture was nof its own, but had been hired here, as at every other station it had occupied since being embodied in 1914. The 2nd-in-command, Quartermaster, three sergeants, and a clerk of the South Wales Borderers had arrived, and had agreed to take over most of the barrack fittings. Stores were now being counted, from tables, office, I.P. – 10 to Lanterns, hurricane – 143 and Paper, toilet G.S., rolls – 1489. The officers were again in the ante-room and billiard room, talking, drinking. There was a different look in most of their eyes now. They had seen war, in its Indian form, and it had marked them.
Major Tomlinson’s hand still trembled; and a livid, hidden scar down his back marked where a dying Pathan, shot by his Webley, had yet managed to stab him. It was his company that had broken in the night attack at Khaza Toi. Tomlinson would never be fit to command troops in action again. It didn’t matter; in a month or two he’d be back in Canterbury, at his profession of assistant bank manager, whence patriotism had dragged him five years ago. Stratton, sitting next to Tomlinson in the anteroom, said, ‘How’s Private Balchin, sir?’
Tomlinson said, ‘Died half an hour before I came to mess … poor devil. I don’t know how he survived this long, seeing what those devils did to him.’ He shook his head, trying to blot out what he remembered. I’ve seen worse, Fred thought grimly – at Passchendaele. A few thousand heavy shells can do worse things to the human body than knives or bayonets or kukris can. But the scenes in the Field Ambulance and along the perimeter wall, when the 4th/4th Gurkhas were cleaning up, had been different … Pathans, stabbing for God, ripping open bellies, slashing off genitals, slitting throats, holding a man from behind, drawing the knife deep across his throat so that the blade grated against the vertebrae … and the Gurkhas, rifles slung, kukris dripping in their right hands, slashing, a turbanned head rolling here, another jammed under a tent fly there, a third being kicked like a football across the barren earth, blood like a river, the Gurkhas laughing and shouting … ‘Ayo Gurkhali!’ they’d yelled, and he’d remember the gleaming red in their eyes, till the day he died …
Mitchell said, ‘Shan’t be sorry when we leave … I never expected to feel that. How many servants will we have when we get back to Blighty? Will the lads of the village lower their umbrellas and get off the pavement when we pass? Who’ll knuckle his forehead, and call us Sahib, father and mother, protector of the poor, light of heaven?’
‘I’m not worrying about servants,’ another said. ‘Getting a job’s going to be hard enough.’
‘Stay here, then,’ Mitchell said. ‘Or come back again after you’ve been demobbed. Lots of jobs going here, there’ll be … police, railways, telegraphs … and you don’t have to start at the bottom. They’ve got jobs reserved for chee-chees and old soldiers, and put them in above the Wogs … us above the chee-chees, of course. Or you could plant tea, or coffee. Or go into trade. Once you’ve taken those pips down, trade won’t look so bloody low as it does now.’
Stratton drank deep of his whisky and soda. It was long and weak, as one drank it out here; and it was cheap. He’d come to depend a lot on his daily chhotapegs and the oc
casional bara. Life was all right in India; but it wasn’t exciting, once you got away from the Frontier. You felt cut off, and the letters from home didn’t help much. In fact, they made you feel worse, reminding you that you were in a hot, barren country full of niggers, while back at home, everyone had forgotten you … Frank was home; or rather was back at HAC, but not at home. He was living in a little room off High Street; he hadn’t seen his kids and didn’t mean to; and he had learned to fly … Carol Adams was married to one of the Woodruffs in Walstone and had had a baby … about three months after the wedding. Well, she’d had a hot twat in ’17, and it obviously hadn’t cooled. Fletcher Gorse had married the American girl Betty Merritt, daughter of the American banker … trust Fletcher to land on his feet … Fagioletti had been home from Germany for a 96-hour leave, but though Ethel said they’d done their best, she wasn’t pregnant yet – but next month she’d be joining him in a sergeant’s married quarter in Cologne … Mother hated living in that bloody great palace with the Hoggins, but where else could she go? Ruth was good to her, but so busy with all her important affairs. Important affairs? Ruth? Well, as Lady Walstone she probably opened bazaars and dished out pies at the Workhouse … But hearing about all this, reading about it, didn’t bring it closer – it took it farther away …
Major Schofield said, ‘I have work to go back to … and I’ll be glad to, I can tell you. Over four years out of my life … can’t call it wasted, but it’s enough … more than enough. It’s you younger fellows I’m sorry for. And I’d recommend you think carefully about what Mitchell said just now. There are jobs here in India, and they pay well.’
‘How long for?’ Lieutenant Booth asked. ‘After the Amritsar business, I can’t see us staying in India for long.’
The Regimental Medical Officer looked up from his paper – a Hindu weekly from Bombay, published in Gujrati and Hindi in the Devanagari script – ‘The jobs’ll last you out. You aren’t going to pack your bags overnight … Amritsar proved that.’
‘Well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Govind,’ another young officer said, ‘but I wouldn’t take a job in this bloody country if they paid me five thousand chips a month for it. If I never see India again, it’ll be too soon.’
‘Tell that to your politicians in parliament,’ Govind said. He returned to his paper.
Mitchell said, ‘Well, I’m off to bed.’ He turned to Fred, and said in a low voice, ‘Sorry to bring up shop, Stratton, but I forgot earlier. The CO wants to see you tomorrow, at nine o’clock.’
Fred stood stiffly at attention in front of the commanding officer’s big desk in the orderly room, Colonel Pulliam sitting at the desk, Mitchell standing behind and to one side of the CO.
Pulliam said, ‘We’re off the day after tomorrow and I have to tell you that I’ve put you in for an immediate bar to your MC … you and Govind, who did magnificent work in the Field Ambulance before it was overrun … must have killed half a dozen of those swine himself with someone else’s revolver he’d grabbed. I don’t know when the awards will come through, but I have the Brigadier-General’s word that they will. So, congratulations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ A silver rosette on the purple and white, Fred thought; very pretty.
Colonel Pulliam continued – ‘I have been ordered to transfer one captain to the 2nd Battalion, which as you know is already in India, at Hassanpore in the Punjab. Would you like to go?’
Fred didn’t answer for a moment. Within the week he was supposed to be boarding a troopship in Karachi, bound for home with Daphne. Then … what? Finding a house in Hedlington … looking for a job … what sort of a job? She would never let him take a job in a factory, and he didn’t want to. He was a sahib, and by Christ he’d worked for it, learning how to speak properly, how to play billiards, ride a bloody horse, eat with the right knife and fork. But there weren’t really any sahibs in England, only the gentry, and that was different. What would Daphne say? She talked of England all the time, though it was the hell of a long time since she’d been there … and she’d miss the servants much more than he would. He sometimes wondered if she really wasn’t a little bit afraid of going back home.
To the colonel he said, ‘Well, sir … I’ve been away from home for four and a half years … When would I be demobbed, if I was transferred to the 2nd Battalion?’
Colonel Pulliam said, ‘You wouldn’t … You see, I have been thinking about your future, Stratton. I know your background. You have made yourself into a good officer … an excellent officer, as your two MCs attest … and also, if I may say so, a gentleman. I do not know what career you were thinking of pursuing, or returning to, in civilian life … but I cannot think of any that would suit you better, or half as well, as the one you are now engaged in … an army officer. I am suggesting that you apply for a regular commission. If you agree, I will send it forward this very afternoon, with my strongest recommendations. Then, when you go to the 2nd Battalion, you will be joining a Regular battalion of the regiment, which is badly in need of officers. They are five short on the Peace Establishment. I will send Colonel Trotter, their CO, a copy of my recommendation about you for his information, and I do not doubt that he will be as eager to support it as I am to initiate it. Incidentally, the Brigadier-General in Hassanpore is Quentin Rowland, of ours. I know he will support you if the application needs more support. What do you say?’
Fred did not wait long. He must have been thinking along these lines for some time, but he didn’t want to push himself forward. The Regulars were a snooty lot, and he didn’t want to risk being snubbed … mechanics’ sons never became Regular officers of the Weald Light Infantry before the war. Daphne? She’d be happy; she’d be staying in India, at least for six years, with all the servants. The baby would be born in India, and there’d be an ayah to look after it. After that, when the battalion’s tour in India was finished, and it was sent to God knows where – Rangoon, Jamaica, Khartoum, England perhaps – well, time enough to worry about that when it happened.
He said, ‘Thank you very much, sir. I’d like that.’
The adjutant of the 2nd Battalion was a tall, fairly senior captain, George Clifford, who wore a black patch over one eye socket, the eye having been blown out at Arras late in 1915. He had spent the rest of the war as adjutant of the Regimental Depot in Hedlington. He had seen no more active service, which he genuinely wanted to, and his temper had soured considerably. Now, as Fred Stratton stood at attention in front of his desk, Clifford’s one dark eye wandered stonily up and down his person, but there were no words until the inspection was finished. Then he said, ‘We wear polished brass buttons, cap, and rank badges, not bronze ones, when serving outside England. We do not wear long puttees, but khaki hosetops with green turnovers, and short puttees – you can have your batman cut them down from the long ones – three and a half folds. Your Sam Browne is nowhere near the right colour – it should be like mine. You can get all those fixed through the dry canteen, or at Ranken’s in Lahore.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Fred said. Clifford was a captain, like himself, but the adjutant was always addressed as ‘sir’ in his office, by officers of equal or lower rank, as the personification of the commanding officer. Clifford now rose and went through a door behind him, closing it. Fred heard some mumbled conversation and wondered if he could stand at ease, or easy. But Clifford returned and said, ‘The CO will see you now.’ He stood aside and Fred marched in, halted with a clash of boots, and saluted, his left hand holding his sword a little below the hilt.
Lieutenant-Colonel William Trotter stood up and came round the desk, his right hand out, ‘Glad to see you, Stratton … Did you see the 8th Battalion off satisfactorily?’
‘At Mari Indus, sir. They had a bit of a party.’
‘Well, I suppose they’re happy to be going home. I’m glad to be out here again, and doing some real soldiering. I was afraid they’d keep us in Germany, or, God forbid, send us to Aldershot or Ireland.’ He returned to his desk and sat down, saying,
‘Stand easy, Stratton … I’m putting you in A Company, as 2nd-in-command to Major Featherstonehaugh’ – he pronounced it Festonhaw, but Fred had seen the name in the Army List and knew how it was spelled. The CO noticed a shadow cross Fred’s face, and went on – ‘I know you have been commanding a company in the 8th since you arrived there from the 1st Battalion – over a year ago, wasn’t it? – but this is a Regular battalion, the war’s over and all our surviving Regular officers are coming back from the war-raised battalions, Territorial battalions, staff jobs, secondments. I’m still short, that’s why I wanted you – but I do have several officers senior to you, so … You’re married, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you want your wife to join you here?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Fred said.
‘Well, when you leave me talk to the Quartermaster. He’s found an old friend in the MES man here … and of course, the Brigadier-General is one of ours. You’ll get a suitable bungalow in no time, then you can settle in. Is there anything you would like to ask me?’
Fred hesitated, then said, ‘Did my application for a regular commission go forward, sir?’
Colonel Trotter smiled – ‘It went forward, Stratton. And General Rowland has sent up a strong endorsement. The rest is only a formality. You can count yourself one of us, from this moment.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Fred said. He wondered why he felt a sensation as of an ironbound door closing heavily behind him. The CO nodded and Fred saluted, wheeled round, and marched out. As he passed through the adjutant’s outer office Clifford said, ‘One moment, Stratton. Here’s a specimen visiting card. Have some printed – Vail Chand on the Mall – precisely like this and make your calls before the end of the week … on the other two battalions – one card for the CO, by name, one for the officers … also the brigade commander and Mrs Rowland … and the DC and Mrs Laslett.’