One thing was certain: they were not going to distress me by letting a hint of worry show in their letters, which were full of news and trivia and comedy. (I hope mine were, too; I was guiltily aware of being a poor correspondent who wrote briefly and usually when I wanted something; my last had contained a request for cigarettes.) My father wrote that they were on their way, and described how my aunts, those genteel maiden ladies, had exclaimed in dismay on learning that I had started smoking, at which my grandmother, a lively nonagenarian, had demanded to know if they would deny the solace of tobacco to a man who was standing at Armageddon; she had added mischievously that there were worse temptations than cigarettes for a young soldier in the Orient, and she didn't mean drink, either. This had opened up such visions of their nephew's possible depravity that they couldn't sleep, and in the waking small hours my elder aunt had been sure she'd heard the rattles which meant that the German bombers were dropping poison gas; she had ventured out, in dressing-gown, slippers, and gas-mask, with her handkerchief steeped in eau-de-cologne, and the A.R.P. wardens had found her shining her torch on the local pillar-box to see if it had changed colour.* And so on…my grandmother had taken to referring to two of the Nazi leaders as “Ribbonstrip” and “Gorbals”; my father had been to see A Night at the Opera and wished that he could swing on trapezes like the Marx Brothers; there had been unpleasant scenes, with allegations of fixing and corruption, at the church jumble sale, because the minister's daughter had won the prize doll by correctly guessing its name (“Wellwoodina”!); my father and mother, respectively Liberal and Conservative, were thinking of voting Labour at the forthcoming election because the candidate was one of my father's patients and an old friend—it was a picture of that happy, funny, eccentric family of mine and their little world, so far and yet so near.
Corporal Little asked me what I was grinning about, and Forster opined that it was a loov-letter frae soom bint, an' yer wastin' yer time, Jock, she'll be gittin' shagged by soom Yank pilot, and Grandarse said, leave the lad alone, he'll larn for hissel'. Oh, yes, you got the cream of intellectual discourse in Nine Section.
The tanks rumbled to a halt not far from a low bund, and about fifty yards beyond it lay the temple wood, dense and silent in the sunlight. We debussed, and Long John and Gale and Sergeant Hutton passed among us, checking that all was as it should be. There were three companies of the battalion spread across the paddy facing the wood, with the Shermans at intervals, but we were aware only of the sections immediately on either side. And there we waited, the section in a rough line, settling our equipment, taking a last swig from the chaggles, charging our magazines, and finally, at a word from Little, fixing bayonets.
So it was going to be a pukka attack—until that moment I, for one, had not been sure what the object of the operation was; the strength of our force, the presence of the tanks, had suggested something big, and now it was confirmed. The screen of trees beyond the little bund looked peaceful enough, but Jap would be there, well dug in; he would be watching us at this moment.
There are few sounds as menacing as a bayonet being fixed. Mine was the old sword type with the locking ring clicking into place with the smoothness of good Edwardian machinery; Grandarse, on my immediate right, was nipping his fingers with one of the new pigstickers, and cursing, his face crimson in the heat; on my left Parker was drawing his kukri and re-sheathing it, and automatically I reached back to make sure mine was loose in its sheath, and that my knife-hilt was handy in my small pack. Suddenly it seemed very hot indeed, with hardly a breath of wind; just behind us the Sherman's engine coughed and roared; a bearded and turbanned head peered out of the turret and shouted in Hindustani to someone inside and the roaring died to a murmur.
Little came towards me, two grenades in his hands. “Gi'es yer Bren magazines, Jock, an' tek these; they're Stan's.” Stanley was number two to Steele, the Bren gunner, and Little was seeing to it that he had plenty of spares.
“Are we going in, corp?”
“Aye, in a bit. When the Yanks ’ev doon their stoof.” He nodded past me, and as I tested the grenade pins and put them in my pouch I turned to look; I had been aware of a far-off murmur, growing louder; from behind us three distant dots in the sky were coming closer—Tomahawk fighters in camouflage paint which covered the famous shark's jaws with which the Flying Tigers decorated their engine cowlings. They came roaring in at tree-top level over us and zoomed up in a climb as they passed above the wood, banking as they soared up into the blue.
“Advance to the bund!” shouted Hutton. “Take cover—an' keep yer ’eids doon!”
We moved forward and lay against the low bank, and from overhead came the thundering whine as the first Tomahawk hurtled down in a steep dive; while it was still behind us two small dark objects detached from it, falling at a steep angle to land on the edge of the wood with a crashing double explosion and sheets of orange flame. Smoke and dust billowed up, obscuring the trees, and then the second Tomahawk came, repeating the performance, with the third on its heels. The ground shook as they pounded the wood, which was now entirely hidden by a great cloud; in came the Tomahawks again, unloading their bombs, and this time three of them failed to explode. The aircraft banked away in a great arc, and soon the whine of their engines died away; that was the air strike over, and now it was the Shermans' turn.
As the engines roared, Grandarse, lying on the bank two yards away, looked along at me.
“Loocky boogers, them Yank pilots. They'll be sittin' in the Casanova in Cal the neet, suppin' cocktails. Warra life, eh?”
Parker must have heard him, for he laughed on my other side and turned on his back, looking up at the sky, and hummed:
I'd like to be a wop a.g.
I'd fly all over Germanee
And blow the Huns to buggeree
It's foolish but it's fun!
“Aw reet, pipe doon!” said Hutton, but he was grinning; it must have been a new one to him. But now the Sherman was clanking forward, through a gap in the bund; the great mass of dust-coloured steel rolled on a few yards, and stopped. Its hatch was closed, but the big gun was traversing from side to side, and lowering to the point-blank position. Suddenly it crashed, the tank shook, and the shell burst with an almighty roar in the depths of the wood. Up and down the line the other tanks began blazing away, and then the machine-guns started chattering, and the whole screen of trees was shaking as though in a gale; through the slowly-dispersing haze left by the Tomahawks' bombs we could see the foliage being ripped to shreds. All along the bank men were craning as they watched; I stole a glance behind and saw Hutton was on his feet; farther along Long John was checking his watch; Gale, rifle in hand, his bush-hat at a rakish angle, was talking to his runner. Abruptly the firing stopped.
“On yer feet!” roared Hutton, and as we stood up: “Wait for it!”
This was it, then, the moment you read about in books and see in films—and by God it was happening to me. Ahead the wood still seemed to be sending back the echo of the cannonade, but now the foliage was steady again, and the dust had settled. There was a long moment's stillness, broken only by the growl of the Sherman, holding its ground twenty yards ahead, not more than thirty from the edge of the wood. A branch, hanging by a thread after the bullet-hail, suddenly fell, sending up a little swirl of dust. I glanced right: Grandarse had one foot on the bank, leaning forward; beyond him were two of the new men, the lance-jack and the reputed deserter. Parker, on my left, had his rifle at the port, and beyond him Steele was adjusting his Bren sling, the big l.m.g. resting on his hip; Stanley was removing his hat and replacing it firmly. I found I was hissing through my teeth, and recognised it as “Bonnie Dundee”, but I hadn't time to digest this peculiar reaction when Little was walking forward between Parker and Steele, crossing the bank, and Hutton was shouting again:
“Ad-vance! Keep yer distance, noo! Advance!”
Up the bank and over, the shuffle of boots in the morning quiet, the slight creak and rustle of equipment,
the dark green figures on either side moving in a slow, steady advance; the stationary tank, its tracks clogged with earth and coarse grass, ten yards to my right front, the slight figure of Little, rifle at the trail, his head obscured by the tilted bush-hat, to my left and out in front—and there was a faint crack, like a cap-pistol, from the wood, and Little gave a sharp cough, spun half-round, and went down like an empty sack.
Hitting the deck, face down on the scrubby earth, automatically whipping rifle to shoulder in the lying position, puffs of dust leaping from the ground to my left, Parker rolling over, yelling, the left breast of his bush-shirt blood-stained; a scream from the right, a blinding cloud of dust and gravel striking me in the face, the rattle of machine-gun fire from the wood and the irregular cracks of rifle-fire. Someone was bawling “Covering fire!”, and I was shooting obediently into the wood at ground level, aware that on my right Grandarse was doing the same, and that Parker was crawling rapidly back to the bank—one glance I took, and he was dripping blood as he scrambled to the bank and over. Caught in the bloody open, flat-footed—Jesus! beyond Grandarse the lance-jack was trying to pull himself clear, with his leg trailing, and the deserter was absolutely sitting up! (I still don't know why.) I pumped off another couple of shots, realised the futility of it, looked left, and Steele had the Bren at his shoulder, left hand on the stock, right hand reaching forward for the magazine. There was a sharp clang, a silver streak appeared on the side of the magazine, and Steele reared back, his face contorted, scrambling up on to his knees. Blood was streaming down his arm—the bullet had gone through hand and shoulder. He yelled something and—this I shall never forget—actually shook his uninjured fist at the wood before turning to run for the shelter of the bund.
And there was the Bren gun, the section's most precious possession, lying unattended.
I've asked myself a thousand times: did I hesitate? God only knows, and perhaps some day He'll tell me, for I genuinely am not sure. Probably I wanted to, and this is what has made me wonder; that, and the knowledge that with four men hit all around me in as many seconds, and the shots kicking up the dirt in what seemed to be your proverbial hail of lead, that Bren was about as untempting an article as I've ever seen. And then I was starting to crawl towards it, and Hutton, flat on the ground behind me, was yelling and signalling to Stanley, the Bren's number two, and Stanley, who had been face down just beyond it all the time, was grabbing its handle and hauling it away.
“Jock!” It was Hutton. “Coover ’im!”
For what it was worth I started to fire into the wood, and Stanley and Bren rolled over the bank and out of sight. Behind me Hutton spoke, more quietly now.
“Awreet, haud tha fire! Heid doon!”
I put my head flat on the butt, reaching behind me for another clip from my bandolier, moving cautiously in the belief that any obvious movement was liable to attract those goddamned Jap snipers. To my right Grandarse was lying as close to Mother Earth as his great belly would let him; he looked towards me and blew out his cheeks. There was no one on my left, just two patches of blood where Steele and Parker had been hit. Christ, I thought, are Grandarse and I the only ones left? Intermittent cracks were sounding in the wood, but they didn't seem to be coming this way; the Sherman's l.m.g. was rattling away, and in behind it an Indian soldier (don't ask me where he had come from) was leaning against the metal, clutching his thigh; his trouser leg was sodden with blood.
“Grandarse!” Hutton again. “When Ah say jao,* git oot of it! Jock—five roonds rapid, fire!”
I blasted away, and through the din heard Hutton's “Jao!” and the sound of a great body taking flight. “Reet, Jock—jao!” Grandarse was still short of the bank when I went over it like a bird.
The first thing I saw was Steele, a yard away. He was white as paint, his eyes shut, but his jaw was working up and down. An orderly had torn away his shirt, and his shoulder and chest were a mass of blood; the orderly was padding the shoulder wound while another wrapped a gauze dressing round his hand. Beyond him Parker was propped up against the bank, stripped to the waist, holding a field dressing to his shoulder; Gale was bending over him, then turning away to shout. A jeep came bouncing up to the bank, and Gale helped Parker to climb in; the orderlies were lifting Steele on to a stretcher, preparing to load him in also. I didn't see them, but the lance-corporal and the alleged deserter had both been hit. Farther along the bank rifles and Brens were firing, the Sherman guns were crashing again. I realised that I was sitting idle, breathing hard, and that one knee was painful where I had grazed it in hitting the deck. I would guess that perhaps three minutes had passed since we started to advance. I jerked open my bolt, ejecting a spent case, and saw that my magazine was empty. While I was charging it, a tall lance-corporal whose face, in my memory, is that of the late Lyndon Johnson, came running in a crouch to confer with Hutton. They peered over the bank, and Hutton signalled to me.
“When Kang ga's ower the top, you give ’im cooverin' fire as ’ard as ye can! Stanley, you give automatic fire! Reet, Jack—on ye go, son!”
Kang took a run at the bank and went over, dodging from side to side as he ran towards the still, green figure of Corporal Little, face-down on the earth. Kang dived down beside him, and even as I was firing I could see that he was speaking; I reloaded, and began firing again as he came ziz-zagging back towards us. Halfway he stumbled, Hutton swore, and then Kang came tumbling over the bank in a shower of dust, gasping and clutching his forearm; blood was running between his fingers. He shook his head.
“Bus,” was all he said, and Hutton groaned deep in his throat.
Two more jeeps were pulling up, scattering the earth, and the wounded were being helped into them. The one carrying Parker and Steele was reversing with a rasp of tyres, and Parker, his dressing in place, actually grinned and waved with his sound arm. All along the bank men were lying, waiting; I think I remember Long John on one knee, talking to Gale, and pointing off to the left. The firing along our front had died away to an occasional shot or Bren burst; the tank firing had stopped, and the wood itself was silent. They had stopped us almost before we had started, and now they would be reloading in their pits and bunkers, waiting for us to try again.
I remembered the wounded Indian, and took a cautious look over the bank. He was standing up now, talking to the bearded Indian, who was presumably the tank commander, and was looking out of his hatch—something which, in his position, I'd not have done for a pension. I had the impression, from their gestures, that the wounded man wanted to get into the tank, and was being denied. Grandarse rolled up beside me.
“Tich ’as ’ed it! Fook me!” His face was purple, running sweat. “That shows ye w'at air strikes an' tanks is woorth! Fookin' ’ell!”
“Will we go in again?”
“We'll fookin' ’ev to! Not by the front fookin' door, tho'! ’Ey, w'at the ’ell's ga'n on? That booger's ’ed it, an' a'!”
He was peering over the bank at the Sherman. The hatch was down again, and the wounded sepoy was dragging himself in behind the tank, feebly, a foot at a time. He rolled over on his back, his whole trouser leg was black with blood to the thigh, and then he was dead—you could tell from the way the body seemed to subside, as though something had been let out of it.
“Awoy!” said Grandarse, and scrambled to his feet. Hutton was waving to us, and we doubled towards him, crouching to keep under cover of the bank. The rest of the section, what was left of it, was there: Stanley with the Bren, Nixon, Wedge, the Duke, and other men whom I didn't know—this presumably was Nine Section reconstituted; in less than a minute we'd lost over a third of our original number.
Then Gale was leading the way to the left, along the bank which must have curved in towards the wood, for presently we were on the edge of the trees, taking up firing positions. I have to say that I am not sure how we got there; it is another of those hiatuses in memory when nothing much happened to compare with the minute of frenzied violence which had followed our advance over the
bank, or with what was to follow when we got into the wood. That day's battle, for me, was in two distinct parts, both of them vivid in my mind, but the connecting period is hazy. No doubt my mind was too full of what had happened to notice; I don't know how long a time elapsed in making that leftward movement, or how far we came from our original position on the bank, or what units of the company were on either side, or behind. Fighting was going on elsewhere—a young corporal was winning the M.M. clearing bunkers single-handed at about this time—and the interval may have been five minutes or thirty. Battle concentrates your attention on your own immediate front, and all I was aware of, now, was the fringe of trees in which we lay, and the shadowy interior beyond. The snipers who had cut down Parker and Steele and Little and the others must be in the wood ahead and to the right.
Stanley, lying next to me, touched me on the shoulder. Beyond him Gale was on his feet, motioning the section forward and stepping ahead into the wood; someone muttered something about bunkers. Stanley and I looked at each other; what he saw, God knows, but what I saw was his sweating face with the lips drawn back from the teeth. He adjusted the Bren sling; I waited until he was ready and we rose together and moved warily through the fringe of trees. There was undergrowth to our front, so I moved to the right with Stanley at my left elbow.
It was dim after the glare of the open country, but through the trees immediately to our right front I could make out a clearing. What I couldn't see was any sign of a bunker, but they must be in there somewhere, so I took a nervous glance to see that Stanley was still there, and moved on slowly through the trees, safety catch off, finger just touching the trigger. There was no one to my right, and the section was now out of eyeshot to my left; for a moment Stanley and I might have been alone in the wood, but I knew bloody well we weren't; the one comfort was that its other inhabitants hadn't seen us yet. I nerved myself to go on walking, as softly as could be, scanning the clump of bushes ahead, the tree trunks on either side, and the clearing beyond. There wasn't a sound, or a sign of a Jap, and if firing was taking place farther off, I wasn't aware of it. A few more steps brought me to the bushes, and I knelt down, listening.
Quartered Safe Out There: A Harrowing Tale of World War II Page 10