Quartered Safe Out There: A Harrowing Tale of World War II

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Naturally, he was a general favourite in that company of young men, half of us British, the other half drawn from most of the warrior races of India; Thapa was the only Gurkha, but there was also a black Nigerian and I think one or two Malays—it was a remarkable international mix with one common goal, a commission in H.M. Forces, and I wish some of our race relations experts could have seen us, and heard the entirely uninhibited mess discussions on politics (this was shortly before Indian independence and, just for interest, a majority of the Indian cadets were against it), religion, sport, military shop, social gossip, world affairs, and so on. Indeed, I wish I had tapes of them myself: our average age would be in the early twenties, ranging from pink schoolboys from England to a gnarled Pathan (he must have been all of twenty-nine) with three rows of ribbons, and we talked and argued with a freedom that would have had a T.V. discussion host reaching for his panic button. One result of this was that I saw a most disturbing phenomenon: an angry Gurkha.

  We were talking politics, and a clever and articulate Congress Party supporter, who happened to be extremely swarthy, got very emotional. “You British,” he cried, “with the help of this type of people—” here he indicated Thapa and a couple of Sikhs “—have been exploiting this land for centuries! You have bled India white!”

  One of the Sikhs murmured behind his gin and tonic: “It hasn't had much visible effect on you,” which was well below the belt, but it might have passed if the Nigerian hadn't laughed fit to rattle the chandelier. Thapa elbowed him, muttering to him to shut up, and the Congress boy, mistaking the gesture, rounded on Thapa and was ill-advised enough to call him “a monkey bastard”.

  Thapa's grin vanished as though it had been wiped off. He didn't say anything, just stared at the other, and then suddenly turned and ran out of the mess. Some of us went after him, calling him to come back, but he ran full tilt to his quarters, where we found him unearthing his kukri from a tin trunk while his native bearer gibbered in a corner. Thapa was mouthing dreadful things about sons of owls and swine, and it took four of us to wrestle him down while some brave soul stood on his wrist and secured the kukri. Then we sat on him until the Senior Under Officer arrived, by which time he had stopped struggling and we judged it safe to let him go. But he was still grey with rage, and when the S.U.O. had finished tearing strips off him he flatly announced his intention of killing the Congress boy at the earliest opportunity; there was no doubt whatever that he meant it. We reasoned with him, literally for hours, pointing out that he'd certainly swing for it; that meant nothing, and it was only when the S.U.O., inspired, assured him that as a murderer he hadn't a hope of a commission, that he showed signs of weakening. Finally, round about lights out, he gave his word of honour not to avenge the insult provided the Congress wallah apologised—which I'm bound to say the latter did with a good grace. But Thapa would not shake hands, or even look at him thereafter, and he was never quite the same cheery companion again. I suppose he's dead now—Gurkhas are not noted for longevity—and I sometimes wonder where the Congress boy is, and the laughing Nigerian, and the Sikh whose snide crack started it all.

  With the Army reduced to a shadow of its old self, there are many fewer Gurkhas in British service nowadays, and they look subtly different from the happy little toughs of forty years ago: they are taller and better shaped, and the broad grinning faces I remember have given way to more refined and serious features. The race can hardly have changed in so short a time, and I wonder if they are being recruited with a view to size. Or perhaps I'm just imagining the change; even half a century ago a Gurkha on parade was as regimental and poker-faced a soldier as any, and it was only up the road, with his catapult in his pocket and his pigtail and kukri bouncing as he trotted along, that you got the big grin and the cheery wave and the high-pitched yell of “Shabash, Jock! Rangoon jao!” That's how I remember him, and always will.

  Towards the end of our week at Pyawbwe I went for a walk at random, to think about things. A letter from my parents had referred to the imminent collapse of Germany, and the possibility of the whole war being over soon—it must have been natural at home to suppose that once Hitler was out of the way, the whole Axis would collapse, but the thought hadn't even crossed Nine Section's mind. We were in our own hot little world, our own private war, and it wouldn't be over until we reached Rangoon, 300 miles due south, with Jap in between. It might well not be over even then; there would still be Malaya and Siam to clear, as far as Bangkok and Singapore. In Delhi and London they might know that the Japanese position in Burma was beyond repair, but that didn't mean a great deal at our level; he had been bad to shift in the first 100 miles south of the Irrawaddy, and with three times that distance still to go, the outlook wasn't promising. It's all in the point of view: armchair strategists can look at the last stages of a campaign and say there's nothing left but mopping-up, but if you're holding the mop it's different. The last Jap in the last bunker on the last day can be just as fatal to you personally as the biggest battle at the height of the campaign, and you don't look or think much beyond him—wherever he is.

  Perhaps you have to be an old soldier, watching the T.V. news telling you that the Iraqis are on the run and another couple of days will do it and hip-hip-hooray it'll be a glorious victory and the boys will be home before you know it, to feel mounting anger as you watch pictures of the tanks rolling and staff officers looking confident at press conferences and studio pundits pontificating—because you know, even if the complacent commentators don't, that some poor sod is still at the sharp end hoping to God that that bunker is empty and that the ground before it isn't mined. (Forgive me if all my sympathy is with Jamy and Fluellen and Bates, Court, and Williams. After all, what else are the commentators going to say?)

  So, in April ’45 we didn't think of the war ending; it would happen some day, but in the meantime what was the name of the next Jap stronghold down the road, and would our company have to take it? (It's strange, thinking back and remembering, you find yourself falling into the habits of forty-five years ago—bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan. That's how soldiers are; before you know it I'll have developed sore feet just sitting at my typewriter.)

  As I walked that afternoon, I was digesting the fact that my parents had reached that stage of desperate hope when the end is in sight. Churchill's broad, sunlit uplands were coming into view, and the closer that prospect seemed, the more they must have worried, and asked themselves for the thousandth time what cruel fate had determined that while other campaigns were ended or ending, and other people's children could be accounted safe, their wandering boy should be caught up on the last front of all. It must have been a bitter thought, but they kept it to themselves; their last letter had been full of optimism, and even talk of what I might do after the war. Re-sit my exams in the hope of getting into medicine? That, I knew, was what they wanted, and in my first year in the Army I had gone along with it, even to the extent of getting Highers papers from the education office and brooding disconsolately over Livy and quadratics and volumetric analysis, whatever that was. I hadn't the heart to tell them, now, that I had about as much chance of getting into medicine as I had of beating Joe Davis at snooker. It wasn't that war had blunted my brain and blighted my hopes; it was just sheer bloody laziness, reinforced by distaste at the thought of peering at boils and rectums. (Or should it be recta? Which reminded me of the old military joke about the fellow who was wounded in the backside. “Rectum? Bloody near killed him!”)

  No, I had only one ambition now: to get my commission. It was sheer naked pride, nothing else. I thought, with all the conceit of youth, that I was good enough. Better equipped, too, than those contemporaries who had passed where I had failed, and would now be dispersing from their OCTUs with their new pips, wondering what active service would be like, and could they lead people in action. I knew what it was like, now, and that if I shouted: “Come on, Grandarse, Parker, Nick, Forster!” they would follow, even if I did fall down a well along the way. Yes, I wou
ld pass the next board if I had to kill the psychiatrist to do it, and get through OCTU, and with Burma in my pay-book I'd apply for the Gurkhas (oh, lord, I'd have to learn Gurkhali as well as Urdu) or the Dogras, or if I opted for British service, the Gordons, my family's regiment, or the Black Watch…provided the war lasted long enough, for I supposed that once it was over there would be no demand for new subalterns—which shows how little I knew.

  In a way, my problem was the reverse of Dr Grantly's, who didn't want his father to die, but since he was going to anyway, couldn't he get a move on so that Grantly could succeed to the bishopric before the Government fell? My thought was that the war was going to end (and the sooner the better, obviously), but since it wouldn't be tomorrow, couldn't it last at least until I hoisted my first pip? Assuming I survived it, of course. Well, it wasn't up to me; I would just have to wait until the tumult and the shouting were fading, and remind Long John of my ambition.

  So I reflected, as I wandered through the rubble-strewn outskirts of Pyawbwe, pausing by the railroad track where the Sappers or the R.E.M.E. had got a hand-cart scooting along the rusted rails as a preliminary to opening the line again. I strolled on and sat down for a smoke and quiet survey of our positions, and the town buildings in the distance. I was in a shady spot, with my back to a half-ruined wall, watching the gekkos on the rocks, one moment motionless, and in the next motionless again after a lightning scuttle too fast for the eye to follow. Only when I got up did I realise that the wall I'd been leaning on enclosed the little room where that wounded Jap had been a week ago.

  I took a look inside. There was the pile of rubbish where he'd been lying—had he been asleep, or half-unconscious with his wound, when we approached? Possibly; he hadn't known I was there until I was inside the door, when he'd grabbed for his rifle. If he'd been wide awake he'd have had it in his hands, covering the doorway, waiting. In which case I probably wouldn't have been standing here now, speculating about the Gordons and the Gurkhas. Wedge and Morton would have got him.

  I went back to the pits thinking

  Two thousand pounds of education

  Drops to a ten-rupee jezzail

  and wondering how much my education had cost, and how many rupees it would take to buy a Japanese .300 rifle.

  Nine Section weren't at the pits; they had walked across to the main highway, a battered bit of tarmac which wouldn't have qualified as a B road at home. Men were marching down it, past our positions and towards the town, long lines of jungle green and bush-hats, one section on the right margin of the road, the next on the left, the third on the right, and so on—that way you don't eat the dust of the section in front. They were swinging along in battle order, looking just like us, except that they were a little less shop-soiled, and they were whistling in unison “Blaydon Races”.

  I'm ready to swear to that tune in court, and it has been in my mind for forty years that they must have been Northumberland Fusiliers, our friends from over the fells, or perhaps Durham Light Infantry, for who else would whistle the Geordie national anthem? But I search the official history's index in vain for those two regiments, and for the Sherwood Foresters—I looked for them because I have a vague memory that as I joined the section to watch the march past, Parker was quoting:

  The Notts and Jocks are a lousy lot

  They lost their Colours in Aldershot

  which is a well-known libel on the men of Sherwood. So what regiment they were remains a mystery—but everyone knew what division they belonged to, and Nine Section let the light of its collective countenance shine on them.

  “’Ey, Wedge, w'eer are ye, ye moanin' booger?” cried Nixon. “Ye've bin askin' after them ev'ry neet—weel, theer th'are, at lang last, so tek a good look! The Flamin' Arseholes!”

  Wedge contemplated them with the kind of rapture he reserved for Miss Foster's pin-up. “Fifth Div,” said he, like a man whose ship has finally come in. “Fifth Div.”

  “’Igh bloody time, an' a',” said Grandarse. “They was meant tae coom through us in Meiktila. Mind? We wes th'anvil, an' they wes meant tae be the fookin' ’ammer. Idle boogers!” He raised his voice. “’Ey, w'at th' ’ell kept ye?”

  The corporal of a passing section raised two derisory fingers. “Six months leave in Paint Jungle—what the hell d'you think? We were waiting for you lot to get out the way!”

  “Cheeky booger!” cried Grandarse, grinning. “Aye, weel, Rangoon's doon that way, lad! Joost keep ga'n, an' if ye drop owt, doan't fret—we'll pick it oop!” The corporal waved, and then they were past, and “Blaydon Races” was faint in the distance.

  To a military psychologist, Grandarse's brief, good-natured exchange with the corporal might have been significant. 5th Div had been meant to relieve us at Meiktila, and it hadn't happened—no fault of 5th Div's, just the necessities of war which had brought us south in a hurry to throw Jap out of Pyawbwe. But if you're Grandarse (or better still, Forster), here is fine fuel for grievance; in no time, you're convinced that you fought 5th Div's battle for them, and belly-ache accordingly—and not just at the time, either. I can hear it, in some ex-Service club forty years on: “Aye, bloody 5th Div! Should ’ev coom through us at Meiktila, but did they boogery! Aye, so we ’ed tae carry the can at Pyawbwe—by Christ, Ah sweated that day, Ah'll tell thee! W'at? An' w'eer were the Flamin' Arseholes, eh? Awreet, Jonty, Ah'll ’ev a pint—aye, an' a small rum. Good lad. But doan't talk tae me aboot bloody 5th Div…etc., etc.”*

  This being the case, you'd have expected Grandarse to be hurling dog's abuse at 5th Div when they finally came through—but all he came out with was mild pleasantry; he seemed quite glad to see them, and sped them on their way with good wishes. And not just because they were taking the lead and the next stage of the fighting. No, Grandarse was looking farther ahead by now; he had his eyes on a distant goal, which he was confident could be attained, thanks to the system whereby we and 5th Div worked in tandem, first one taking the lead, then the other. I shall let Grandarse himself explain:

  “It's like this, sista. ’Oo far are we frae Rangoon? Three ’oonerd mile—reet. Noo, if 5th Div ’ed coom through us at Meiktila, we'd ha' bin coomin' through them again joost aboot noo. ’Stead o' w'ich, they're coomin through us. Noo then, Ah reckon they'll be kept in froont till they're aboot ’alf-way t'Rangoon—an' then we'll leapfrog them an' git theer foorst. See w'at Ah'm gittin' at? If they'd coom through at Meiktila, like they wes meant to, they'd ha' bin foorst tae Rangoon. As it is, the boogers ’ev ’ad it! We'll be the ones that tek Rangoon!”

  Barrack-room logic at its ripest, plus a fair measure of wishful thinking, but it explained why he had forgotten his fancied grievance against 5th Div. The truth was, however he might gripe and moan, however he might revile the military hierarchy from Hutton to Mountbatten, however he might hate the war and the Far East and wish to God he was shot of them—in spite of all this, Grandarse wanted Rangoon. He wasn't alone: the whole 17th Division wanted Rangoon, with a fervour that had been growing steadily since we crossed the Irrawaddy. In a way, the far-off city had assumed an almost mystic quality, like the High Barbaree or Never-Never or Tir-nan-og; it was the ultimate prize of a long and dreadful war, and once it was taken Burma would be part of military history. Perhaps Slim's speech by the lake had had something to do with it; perhaps there was a hope that the big boats would sail thence indeed.

  Whatever the reason, the Black Cats had come to regard Rangoon as a personal prize. After all, 17th Div, God Almighty's Own, was the oldest formation in Fourteenth Army, had borne the heat at Imphal, had led the way south of the Irrawaddy and broken Jap in the Dry Belt. No one would have dreamed of minimising what other divisions had done—but no one had a better right to the first sight of the gilded Shwe Dagon pagoda and the Gulf of Martaban. Or as Grandarse put it:

  “Ah ’evn't coom this fookin' far for nowt.”

  “You're just a bloody glory-hunter, you,” said the Duke. “You'll be shouting ‘Gung ho!’ in a minute. Want to tell your grandchildre
n how you took Rangoon, do you?”

  “W'at for not? All Ah'm sayin' is, we're entitled—not the bloody Flamin' Arseholes or the Cross Keys or owt like them,” said Grandarse stubbornly. “Any roads, bar Mandalay, it's the only place in bleedin' Boorma that any booger's ivver ’eard of.”

  * Or was it spelled Phlitt?

  † “I'm a Dutchman”, probably from “tap”, meaning mad.

  * Bravo!

  * “Come here, Johnny! I can see you!”

  * I must make it clear, before indignant veterans of the splendid 5th Indian Division call me to account, that the above paragraph was written in ignorance, and gives a false impression. Troops of 5th Div did in fact arrive in Meiktila two weeks before we left the town; in other words, they relieved us as Cowan had promised. However, we of Nine Section, with our limited horizon, were unaware of this; we didn't see 5th Div troops at Meiktila, and nobody told us—or possibly we weren't listening. We had assumed, wrongly, that 5th Div would pass through us at Meiktila, and when this didn't happen and we were sent south to attack Pyawbwe, we were aggrieved. Only now, 46 years late, have I discovered (from the official history) that we were under a misapprehension, and I apologise on the section's behalf for our uncharitable thoughts at the time, and for whatever Grandarse may have said since.