Quartered Safe Out Here (21 page)

The Sittang, according to the gazetteer, is unnavigable in this region, and I'm not arguing, if its monsoon tributaries are anything to go by. The canoe made it across the chaung and back three times, but foundered on its final trip, and Parker and I had to flounder ashore. Fortunately it wasn't far, and the current was even slower than it looked, possibly because, to quote the gazetteer, the waters hereabout “carry a great deal of silt in suspension”: it was like wading through dirty custard.

We squelched on along the bank, and as the rain slackened and the sun became visible through the mist and cloud across the river, my spirits rose. We'd taken a prisoner, such as he was, and the fact that he was alone suggested that there was no large Jap presence in the neighbourhood, or he'd have been with them. That left the dacoits, who were reported to be using discarded Japanese weapons in their attacks on villages, and I've no doubt that as we marched I was remembering:

and reflecting that this was the very territory where

It had been one of my father's favourites; I could picture him reciting as he showed me how to maintain a camp-fire, Masai fashion, feeding a log into the embers on a hillside in Glen Elven. He had never imagined that the listening small boy would some day encounter the real thing.

That happened when we reached the village just on nightfall. It lay on the far side of a jungly stretch through which a narrow track twisted and turned so abominably that I began to have visions of losing our way altogether. The track had an alarming habit of petering out in swamp or undergrowth, and we hacked and splashed, being bitten witless by leeches and mosquitos. Once we found the way blocked by a stream unlike any I've ever seen: it looked exactly like milk, and there were dark snake-like shapes moving in its depths.

“Watter-snakes,” said Grandarse. “Bastard things.”

“Are they poisonous?”

“Ah nivver foond oot,” said Grandarse, “an' Ah's bloody sure Ah's nut gan to noo.”

So we turned aside until a tangle of roots and creepers enabled us to cross, ploughed on into the undergrowth, and I was just starting to have pups at the prospect of bedding down in that green mess for the night when we came out of it, and saw the lights of a village less than half a mile away.

Wattie scouted it and reported. “Nee Japs, but there's soom foony-lookin' boogers in theer, Ah'll tell thee.” There were, too, ten or twelve of them, Burmans all
right, but not your average peasant—there were plenty of those, women, children, and old folk, quietly going about their business, but my attention was fixed on the Dirty Dozen, taking their ease round a fire before the biggest basha in the place and looking like fantasy pirates, some with scarves round their heads, others in straw hats, and all bristling with enough assorted cutlery to start a shop—dahs, swords, knives—and several undoubted Jap rifles.

They were dacoits, no question, but far from terrorising the village they seemed to belong to it, judging from the way the children were playing among them. No doubt the proper course would have been to disarm them and take them in for questioning, but I could think of four good reasons against it: there was nothing amiss but their villainous appearance, they weren't disturbing the peace, there were too many of them for comfort, and I'm not Sanders of the River. Also, they greeted us with the Burman's unfailing courtesy, rising as one man with nods and becks and evil grins, and I was wishing I knew the Burmese for “good evening” when the local headman appeared.

He was a jovial old buck in a spotless white robe, a brass medal of George V on his imposing stomach, and a staff of office which he flourished in welcome. He spoke excellent English, ushered us to the fire, ordered up refreshments, and established his bona fides by singing “Keep the Home Fires Burning” in a thunderous baritone; he had learned it, he said, in France with the Burma Rifles in the First World
War, and did an encore while his gang of cut-throats beat time and hummed along, offered us cheroots, passed the mangoes, and cast envious glances at our Bren gun.

They were armed, the headman said, against possible attack by dacoits who were taking advantage of the troubled times to plunder far and wide; several villages nearby had suffered from their depredations. He translated this into Burmese for the benefit of his other listeners, and the gang round the fire shook their heads in concern. Then, of course, there were the unspeakable Japanese—none of whom, fortunately, were in the vicinity at present, but if we wanted any help in slaughtering stragglers his lads would be charmed to assist, in return for a few grenades and any spare small arms we might have about us.

It was so reassuring that I didn't sleep a wink—not that I could have even if I'd wanted to, for we all bedded down on mats on the long verandah of the headman's house with his numerous family, Granny being discreetly positioned between the brutal soldiery and the younger females, and she snored like the Last Trump. What with that and being eaten alive by mosquitos and my suspicions of the bandits in the next basha, I spent most of the night pacing the village street in my monsoon cape, reflecting that if I had studied just a little harder I would have been snug in student digs in Hillhead with nothing to worry about but lectures and exams in anatomy—and just that thought was enough to make my present lot seem very
heaven, wet and mosquito-plagued though it might be. There would be time enough for desk-work and the humdrum business of making a living in civvy street, and then this little outpost at the back of beyond would be like a dreamland, long ago and far away. How many times, in the late ’forties and ’fifties, did one see a sober citizen in his office throw aside his pencil and stare at the window and exclaim: “Oh, God, I wish the war was still on!” It is a strange echo now: who could possibly want to be at war? Nobody in his right mind, and of course the sober citizen wasn't longing for battle and sudden death, but remembering the freedom of service life, the strange sights and smells of places just like this, the uncertainty of tomorrow, and the romance of distant lands and seas. They have their hazards, but once you've trodden the wild ways you never quite get them out of your system.

You never get malaria out of it, either, and while mine hasn't troubled me for years, that's no fault of the buzzing pests which infested that village in their billions. By morning my face was swollen beyond recognition, and most of the section, and the younger villagers, had been badly bitten. Granny and the older generation, being made of leather, were apparently anopheles-proof; she clucked in dismay at my appearance, and gave me a fine old herbal (I hope it was herbal) ointment to rub on, which if anything made it worse.

The armed Burmese had slipped away during the night, the headman was nowhere to be seen, and
I didn't know whether to be worried or not. The hell with them. My hated tommy-gun had collected another fine patina of rust in the soggy atmosphere, and I oiled and cursed over it while Grandarse bargained for provisions with the villagers, airing his Burmese with “
Jet-oo lo jinde?
”, which means “Have you any eggs?” They inquired by signs how many he wanted, which was what he'd been waiting to be asked for weeks. He beamed and cried: “Shit!”, which is the word for “eight”—needless to say, he went on to purchase eight cheroots and eight mangoes and eight bananas; any other number would have seemed tame to him.

We scouted in a two-mile arc beyond the village without seeing a soul, or anything but misty plain and scrub. We brewed up at noon in the shelter of a palm-grove, and were making our way back reluctantly for another night in Mosquito City when we hit on something that altered the whole nature of the patrol. In a ramshackle basha hidden away in a little chaung we surprised four Indian soldiers in their underclothes; their uniforms and equipment were gone, but two of them still had rifles which they snatched up at sight of us, only to drop them as hurriedly when we covered them.

There was no doubt what they were: Jifs, deserters to the Japanese. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, had a little Japanese pamphlet on him, which might have been some sort of identity card, but in answer to questions they stubbornly pretended not
to understand, which was nonsense: an Indian soldier with absolutely no English at all was a rare bird. My Urdu was good enough to ask their names, ranks, and regiments, but all I got was a blank stare. They just weren't talking. The question was what to do with them, and Forster had the answer.

“Shoot the boogers,” said he.

“Don't be a bloody idiot!” I snapped, all the angrier for not knowing what to do next.

“Ah's nut the bloody idiot!” he retorted. “W'at ye gan dee wid them, then?”

That was the difficulty. If there had been one or even two of them, we could have kept them prisoners through the night and the next day of the patrol, but four was too many, even disarmed. They were dead men when the Army got them, a court-martial would see to that, and they knew it; they would certainly try something, and God alone knew what that might lead to. And I didn't know what to do. The crisis had come, in totally unexpected form.

Grandarse suddenly thrust one of them against the wall and put his bayonet to his throat. “W'ee the ’ell are ye, ye bastard!” he shouted, and the man just glared and closed his mouth, tight.

“He's a fookin' Jif!” said Forster. “They're worse'n the bloody Japs! Shut the boogers, Ah say! Christ, Ah'll dee it!”

“Shut up or you're under arrest!” I said, which is the weak n.c.o.'s last resort, but I was rattled and couldn't see the simple, obvious solution. It had all happened
too quickly, and I could only look at the four brown faces in silence, for no one else was saying a word. They were ordinary
jawans
,
^*
skinny and helpless-looking in their shorts and singlets—how they'd lost their uniforms, when they'd deserted, what they were doing there, I still don't know. They were watching me, ugly and sullen, but not scared. Of course, shooting them was out of the question…but listening to the silence I had a horrid feeling that if I
did
give the unthinkable order, the section would obey it—Forster for certain, Wattie and Morton probably, perhaps even Grandarse and Nick; they might not do it themselves, but they would not object to its happening. If you think that atrocious—well, it is, by civilised lights, but they don't shine, much, in war-time. (They mustn't, or you'll lose.) The section were hard men, used to killing as a matter of course, and these were traitors who wouldn't have hesitated if the positions had been reversed.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure those Jifs would have been dead if I'd given the word I had no intention of giving. I'd heard the section, only a week or so earlier, discussing the deaths of some Japs who'd been found asleep in a basha out towards the Pegu Yomas—the soldier who'd found them had woken them up, and
then
shot them, and the feeling of Nine Section had been that it didn't matter, but on the whole he had done the proper thing, because it wasn't right to shoot men asleep.

“Weel, we gonna
sarf karo
^*
’em or nut?” challenged Forster, looking around, and Parker spoke for the first time. “Can't keep ’em overnight, corp,” and the last word made it plain that he was leaving it to me. He regarded me impassively, the old professional. Then he added: “Can't shoot ’em, either,” and I knew the relief of not being alone.

“W'at for nut?” demanded Forster.

“They're bloody Jifs, man,” said Wattie.

“’Oo we gonna look efter ’em?” Grandarse was addressing me.

“We'll take ’em in today,” I said, voicing the conclusion I'd have reached earlier if I'd had my wits about me. “We can have ’em back before dark.”

“Warraboot the patrol? Thowt we wez meant tae ga back tomorrer.”

“I'll worry about that,” I said, and that settled it. We tied their hands with log-lines, and I went outside and took a bearing to get us home by the shortest route. Forster had to have the last word.

“If they'd bin fookin' Japs,” he announced loudly, “we'd nivver ha' thowt twice. Bleedin' Jifs! Ah doan't knaw!”

It may seem that I am making much of a trivial incident, or trying to show how enlightened a Christian I was. I'm not enlightened, and believe that the best way with enemies is the short one, and at least part of the reason for not letting Forster have his way was
that I'd have been called to account, and probably court-martialled, when the story got out, as it inevitably would. But although it had been a thirty-second crisis at most, it had been a vital moment for me: I can look back now and say that there was only one possible outcome, but for half a minute I'd felt the weight—and I never knew any doubts about being in command again.

Coming home on a straight line we hit the chaung about a mile from the river, and found it shallow enough to wade—once the rain stops, water levels can fall at astonishing speeds. We ran into a Baluch patrol who were coming out as we returned, and from the looks directed at our prisoners it was plain that the Jifs had been lucky to be taken by a British unit. We reached the platoon area as night fell, and to my relief the subaltern approved my decision to cut the patrol short. Sergeant Hutton was less impressed: he obviously considered Grandarse's eggs a poor haul. I was just glad it was over, and that I was carrying a Lee Enfield again. I had appropriated one of the two taken from the Jifs, and my tommy-gun has long since rusted away at the bottom of a tributary to the Sittang.

Polling in the 1945 General Election took place between July 5 and 12, and resulted in an overwhelming defeat for Churchill and the Conservatives at the hands of the Labour Party, an outcome which astonished the world, but not the British Army. Servicemen under the age of 21 were not entitled to vote.

“’Ey, Grandarse—’oo d'ye spell Iredell?”

“’Oo the hell dae Ah knaw? W'ee's Iredell?”

“Liberal candidate in Carel.
^*
Ah's writin' yam tae see w'at ’e's on aboot.”

“Weel, Ah doan't belang bloody Carel. Ah belang Peerith,
†
an' Ah doan't ken w'at constituency it's in, an' Ah doan't care ’cos Ah's nut votin', neether.”

“Ye ought to vote, man.”

“W'at for? The Labour man doesn't stand a fookin' chance, an' Ah'm boogered if Ah'll vote Tory. Them boogers ’es bin in ower lang.”

“Weel, vote Liberal, then.”

“Git hired! Ah doan't knaw booger-all aboot politics, but Ah knaw the Liberal's ca'd Roberts, an' ’is family's temperance, so knackers till them. They ’ed a cellar oot at Naworth, boorstin' wid the best drink in the coonty, an' the teetotal boogers poured the lot on't doon drain! Think Ah'd vote for them? Man, they say if ye coom oop at Brampton Court the foorst thing owd Roberts says is: ‘Was there a haroma of drink haboot the haccused, constable?’, an' if the constable says ’Aye, yer woorship, ’e wez pissed rotten', then ye've ’ad it. Sod them.”

“
Ye doan't deserve the vote, you. Does any booger knaw ’oo tae spell Iredell?”

“Give ower, man, ye're wastin' yer time. They'll nivver put a Liberal in for Carel. It'll be owd General Spears, the Tory—’im that wez in't desert wid Lawrence of Arabia. ’E's bin tellin' folk there's twenty million Arabs waitin' on the resoolt o' the Carel election. Daft booger. They reckon ’e'll git back, tho'.”

“Nut if Ah can ’elp it. Ah's bloody votin' Labour, an' Ah doan't give a monkey's left
goolie
w'ee the candidate is. It can be bloody George Formby, ’e'll git my vote.”

“Reckon Labour'll gi'e thee tha job back on't booses, Foshie?”

“Booger the booses. Ah want Choorchill oot, an' his whole fookin' gang. Ah remember the ’thirties, marra, if thoo doesn't. Ah want rid of the bloody Tories, see, an' the lah-di-dahs, an' the lot o' them. They got us into this fookin' war, didn't they?”

“Weel, Ah'm votin' Labour to git rid o' bloody old Womersley. Ah reckon we'll be better wi' Labour.”

“Girraway, it'll mek nee bloody difference—nut till the woorkin' man, any roads. Them that's better off'll still be better off, nee matter w'ee gits in. W'ee's the Labour man in Carel, Foshie?”

“Ah've joost bin tellin' ye, Ah doan't knaw! But ’e's gittin' the nod frae me, anyway.”

“His name's Edgar Grierson.”

“W'at, ’im that woorked in't Co-op? ’E won't git many votes in Stanwix. ’Oo the hell dae you knaw, Jock—ye're not owd enuff to vote, you!”

“That's right, Foshie. I just know who the candidates are. You big grown-ups ’ll decide who the government is.”

“Ye're bloody reet we will. Weel, Ah'm glad ye ’evn't got the vote, Jock, ’cos ye'd joost vote Tory, wadn't ye—you that wants tae be an officer!”

“No, I'd vote for Edgar Grierson.”

“Girraway! Ah can see ye!”

“W'y'd ye vote Labour, Jock? Shooroop, Foshie! W'y, man?”

“Because my father's Edgar's doctor, and he used to take me to football when I was small—”

“Ye're small yet, soony boy!”

“—and Mrs Grierson made bloody good high teas.”

“Typical! That's yer eddicated man, Grandarse! Votin' wid ’is bloody belly!”

“So you vote for him, Foshie. He's all right—and a bloody sight more honest than most politicians. He
was in this regiment, too, in the Great War.”

“W'at? A bloody officer! Bollocks till ’im, then!”

“No, a private. In the trenches.”

“’E'll do me, then. Booger them an' their class distinction.”

They voted with high hopes, for a better, fairer Britain, and to some extent they got it. Mostly it was a vote to get “them” out—“them” being not just the Conservatives, but all that it was believed they stood for: wealth and privilege and authority as personified by civilian employers and Army officers (who, I suspect, were as likely to vote Labour as Tory, especially the younger men). It was a strange election for me—old enough to lead a section in war, but not old enough to vote. I had no complaints; I wasn't fit to vote, for I took no interest in politics, and my support for Grierson (who got in, I'm delighted to say, and Westminster never saw a better man) was entirely personal. Mind you, better that than voting for a party. And the truth was that while I knew how to be a soldier, and had some idea of how to lead a section, I knew nothing of working for a living, of being a farm labourer, or a factory hand, or being on the dole, or being fired for crossing my hands on the wheel. No, it was their election, not mine. They had earned it.

With the exception of Parker, who I suspect voted Tory if he voted at all (free lances are a conservative lot), and one or two of the rustics, who may have
voted Liberal, they were Labour to a man, but not necessarily socialists as the term is understood now. Their socialism was of a simple kind: they had known the ’thirties, and they didn't want it again: the dole queue, the street corner, the true poverty of that time. They wanted jobs, and security, and a better future for their children than they had had—and they got that, and were thankful for it. It was what they had fought for, over and beyond the pressing need of ensuring that Britain did not become a Nazi slave state.

Still, the Britain they see in their old age is hardly “the land fit for heroes” that they envisaged—if that land existed in their imaginations, it was probably a place where the pre-war values co-existed with decent wages and housing. It was a reasonable, perfectly possible dream, and for a time it existed, more or less. And then it changed, in the name of progress and improvement and enlightenment, which meant the destruction of much that they had fought for and held dear, and the betrayal of familiar things that they had loved. Some of them, to superficial minds, will seem terribly trivial, even ludicrously so—things like county names, and shillings and pence, and the King James Version, and yards and feet and inches—yet they matter to a nation.

They did not fight for a Britain which would be dishonestly railroaded into Europe against the people's will; they did not fight for a Britain where successive governments, by their weakness and folly, would encourage crime and violence on an unprecedented
scale; they did not fight for a Britain where thugs and psychopaths could murder and maim and torture and never have a finger laid on them for it; they did not fight for a Britain whose leaders would be too cowardly to declare war on terrorism; they did not fight for a Britain whose Parliament would, time and again, betray its trust by legislating against the wishes of the country; they did not fight for a Britain where children could be snatched from their homes and parents by night on nothing more than the good old Inquisition principle of secret information; they did not fight for a Britain whose Churches and schools would be undermined by fashionable reformers; they did not fight for a Britain where free choice could be anathematised as “discriminisation”; they did not fight for a Britain where to hold by truths and values which have been thought good and worthy for a thousand years would be to run the risk of being called “fascist”—that, really, is the greatest and most pitiful irony of all.

No, it is not what they fought for—but being realists they accept what they cannot alter, and reserve their protests for the noise pollution of modern music in their pubs.