The Ravi Lancers (46 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ Himat Singh stammered. He recovered himself and said, ‘I brought down a very sick man from my squadron. I’ll wait outside.’ He walked out, closing the door carefully behind him.

The doctor said, ‘Well, I fear that is the end of the secrecy about your little mishap. From what he saw me doing he will know that you have had VD.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Krishna said, ‘Himat’s a good chap.’

‘But he worships the CO,’ the doctor said.

‘Anyway, I don’t think I’ll last long enough for him to do anything about it, even if he decides it’s his duty.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The CO’s sending me out on a fighting patrol tomorrow night.’

‘H’m. That’s fine. Dress ... He sends some officers out a lot.’

‘Yes, but I think he hopes they will come back safe. He was very upset about Mahadeo Singh. I may be imagining things, but with me ... I am not sure.’

‘Well, if you’re going out on a patrol tomorrow, you’d better get some sleep now. Good night.’

Krishna went to his dugout in the Rear HQ area behind the third-line trenches. The blanket was spread on the camp bed, and a candle shed a golden glow on the rafters and sandbags and the boarded floor. Hanuman hung his gas mask on a nail beside the door, and his equipment on another, then knelt to take off his boots. Krishna sat down at the crude plank table and rested his head in his hands.

He had to bring back two prisoners, alive, from the German trench system opposite. The Germans would be aroused by tonight’s performance, and exultant over their success. Ten dead, six wounded, one missing. And for the Germans probably nothing, unless some of the bombs hurled into their trench had taken effect.

It was easy enough to plan his patrol ... there was just so much length of trench, its shape exactly known; so much wire, all shown on the wire maps. One went one’s course, into the muzzles of the guns. Whether one lived or died was pure chance, not skill. But this was what the Europeans called ‘Oriental fatalism’. Was that why he had to do it? Because he was an oriental?

He pulled out her letter from the breast pocket of his tunic and read it:

Dear Krishna,

I hope you are well. We have been having dreadful weather here ever since you left. You must have taken the sun back with you???!!! The work in the factory is very boring, but also quite dangerous if you get careless. A girl in my shed lost two fingers yesterday. She was lucky not to lose her hand. We have been promised a week’s holiday beginning on Monday, August the 4th. They are altering the machines or something and there will be no work for us while they are doing it. I miss you so much. Oh, darling, I long for you. I must be a very wicked woman for I can think of nothing but you, day and night, even when I am in bed. I am afraid of losing my hand in a machine because I am always daydreaming!! But I am not really afraid because I would rather lose my hand than lose you. Darling, can you please get leave and come over?

Diana

There was a PS written hurriedly and badly, as though in the dark.

PS We wouldn’t have to go to Shrewford Pennel. I have not told anyone there about my holiday yet.

He read it again, although he knew it by heart. Then he took his new fountain pen from his inner pocket--Warren would not allow officers to wear them where they showed--and wrote quickly.

Dearest Diana, We are now in the line before Perouges, and when we are relieved will go into immediate reserve...’

That was censorable. Why did he put it in then? Because he wanted Diana to know as definitely where he was as he knew where she was, either in the dingy rooming house, or the noisy factory. Anyway, he was the regimental censor for the officers’ mail. He wrote on:

I cannot get back to England unless I am wounded, which may happen. There is a lot of patrolling and there are rumours of a big new offensive. But if I survive this month I am due for 72 hours leave. I will apply for my leave to start at 0700 hours on Tuesday, August 3rd.

He stopped. Then what? Supposing she could get over to France, where could he meet her? And then what? He felt the familiar trembling in his loins. They must have three days undisturbed, to get to know each other, to make love, to walk in peace, arm in arm, as she liked to do.

It was past three in the morning. He went to the door blanket, stirred Hanuman with his foot and said, ‘Give my salaams to Captain Sohan Singh, the quartermaster-sahib.’

The orderly got up, rubbed his eyes, took his rifle and gas mask--and went off. Krishna sat down to wait. Warren Bateman would not think of routing the quartermaster out of bed at 3 a.m. on a personal matter ... but he was English. He, Krishna Ram, was the Son of the Sun, and a prince of ancient India.

The quartermaster appeared in twenty minutes, bowing. Krishna thought, he’s not saluting but bowing and making
namasti
; he knows this is not British military business. He said, ‘I want a good hotel room in Paris, for three days from August 3rd.’

‘Oh, in August,’ the captain said with a sigh of relief, speaking in Hindi. ‘That is no problem, highness. I was afraid it might be for the next few days.’

‘A double room ... make it a suite, in the best hotel in Paris,’ Krishna said. He added, ‘Some place too expensive for most British officers to go to.’

‘I understand perfectly,’ Sohan Singh said, rubbing his hands. ‘It will be an honour to provide this for my prince. I wish I could do more.’

‘I shall pay,’ Krishna said.

‘There is no need,’ the fat captain said. He was on his hunkers now, squatting like a merchant in his store window, an attitude wildly incongruous with his uniform and rank badges. ‘There is plenty in my private fund to cover it. You recall, lord, the fund I am building up from the profits of the brothel.’

‘Oh.’ Krishna had forgotten all about that. He said, ‘So that’s going well?’

‘Very well, lord. And certain other transactions I carry out with our GS wagons, also my operations on the Bourse. We have over a lakh of rupees in the fund now. Some of it is in stocks, but some is in gold ... buried where I can get it if we have to retreat.’ Krishna shook his head wonderingly. Apart from the hundred thousand rupees Sohan Singh had amassed for what he and Krishna might regard as the public service, there would certainly be half as much again for the service of Sohan Singh. Well, he had earned it. He said, ‘You have had no trouble with the Military Police over the brothel?’

‘None, lord. One sergeant-major stumbled on it by mistake, but he is being well taken care of.’

Krishna said, ‘I want you to keep a list of anyone seriously wounded or killed, Sohan. Send a hundred rupees to each one’s next of kin in Ravi, at once. And have your father or uncles find out what state each family will be in, with the man dead or disabled. Of course there will be British government pensions for them, too, but we may need to do more. I shall write to my grandfather about this.’

‘It shall be done, lord,’ the quartermaster said.

‘And, if we have as much money as that, give the Brahmin a thousand rupees to spend on his
mandir
.’

‘It shall be done, lord.’

‘See that all this is done, whatever happens to me.’

‘Prince, I pray...’

‘That’s enough ... give me the address of the hotel in Paris where you have it arranged.’

‘I can tell you now, lord. It will be the Meurice Hotel. I have an understanding with one of the assistant-managers there over certain loans I have made to him.’ He bowed and
namasti
’d himself out of the room. Krishna Ram picked up his pen again:

I shall be in the Hotel Meurice in Paris from early afternoon that day. Can you arrange to arrive after 4 p.m., when I will be waiting for you in the lobby? You will be known as Mrs. Krishna Ram. Or I will meet your train if you can let me know which it will be. Perhaps you could telephone the hotel, from Boulogne or Le Havre. I believe there is a through line.

He ought to add some endearments,
All my love
, or
Longing to see you
. But how petty that would be, appended to the central thought of the two letters; that she had asked to spend a week alone with him, as his mistress; and that he had accepted. He signed his name, sealed and addressed the letter, and stamped the envelope ‘Passed by Censor’ with the little rubber stamp on his table.

Then he reflected that officers’ outgoing letters were often opened by the Brigade Intelligence Officer, or by the Intelligence staff at Division. And he was going out on patrol. Better not to mail the letter until after that. Take it on the patrol, in his pocket? But if he were killed and his body brought back, his papers would be given to Warren Bateman, who would then see and read the letter, and know what his sister was doing. But he ought to know. Really, he, Krishna Ram, should go and tell him, to his face. It would come to that soon enough.

He put the letter into his breast pocket and buttoned the pocket down. If he came back alive from the patrol he’d give it to Sohan Singh and tell him to post it through channels which would avoid all military censorship. That would be child’s play, for Sohan.

Thunder growled all around in the night. Krishna waited, commanding himself not to look at his watch again until he had counted to two hundred slowly. ‘We’ve got to keep it up ... at all costs,’ Warren Bateman muttered, at his side. Krishna said nothing. Warren was talking to Shikari. The dog whined and thumped his tail. Warren said, ‘They’re planning another big offensive ... Krishna, did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, sir ... Do you think we’ll be in it?’

‘We’ve got to be. I’ll speak to the general. I’ll make sure we are ... What time is it now?’

‘Two-thirty-five, sir.’

‘Five minutes to go.’

The lightning was almost continuous now as the storm slowly advanced from the south-west.

Warren Bateman said, ‘One minute, Krishna. Good luck.’ He held out his hand. Krishna shook it. At 2.40 a.m., he climbed on to the firestep and started through the British wire, followed by his men in single file. The CO had not liked this part of his plan, of setting out late in the night rather than in the traditional early darkness. ‘If you are delayed or lose your way,’ he said, ‘you’ll finish up out there in broad daylight. First light’s 0441 tomorrow, you know.’

Krishna Ram had agreed with the danger; but the Germans were always much more alert in the early hours and his plan depended both on their fatigue, and on the fact that many of the trees of the Bois de Perouges were still standing behind part of their line. The British had taken aerial photographs of the trench system and had numbered every sector, from north to south, successively. Each communication trench began a new sector. The Ravi Lancers faced Sectors 74 to 80. The remains of the Bois de Perouges was immediately behind Sectors 76, 77, and 78, with a few stumps of trees standing even in front of the German lines. Krishna had decided that there was no hope of catching the Germans unawares in the front line; but if some of them could be manoeuvred into using the communication trenches, prisoners might be taken there.

The easiest way of doing that was to fake an attack on a sector of the front line. From what Hauptmann von Gerhard had told him, when the British artillery lifted, the Germans sent men up from the rear to the front trenches. To capture one of them he must cross the front line and lie in wait over the communication trench, say a hundred yards back. Here the stumps of wood would help. It was a risky plan, but better than crawling up to alert and ready machine-gunners.

He crawled on in the uncertain darkness. Was that the guns? No, thunder, close to the west now. A large drop of rain landed on the back of his hand. He crawled on. Compass bearing 56 magnetic would take him to the centre of Sector 78. He must be about fifty yards from the German front line now. 0258 hours. He stopped, and the men stopped to right and left. A tremendous explosion overhead made him start half up. As he sank down again, understanding that it was thunder, the rain broke. Lightning seared his eyeballs. A sharp click close behind him was followed by a brighter, longer flash, and a clap of thunder that rattled his teeth in his head, as the bolt struck ten feet from him. The British guns opened up for the ten minute preparation fire which the CO had been able to wring for him from Brigade. Now he had to move fast. The artillery barrage was hitting the centre of Sector 75, a quarter of a mile to the north, his left. He reached the German wire and the sowars started working quickly with the long-handled wire cutters. He didn’t hear the snip and click as they cut through, though he was six feet away, so the Germans thirty feet off certainly could not have. He crawled under the wire, his rifle pushed forward, knowing that the patrol was at his heels. He peered over into the trench. No one there. He rose, crouched, and jumped across. One by one the others followed, wraiths in the streaming rain. The artillery fire still exploded close to the north. Shell splinters whined over and a flare rose from the German trenches. Krishna crouched against a tree stump and froze still. The hovering ball threw its pale light on the array of stumps, the slanting rain, and then went out. Krishna hurried on. Twenty paces, thirty, forty. Now left. Check the bearing. 326 magnetic. Ten paces, twenty, thirty ... here it was, the communication trench. The British artillery stopped firing. He was just in time.

He waited. His men crouched ready, three at each traverse. Once they had the men they wanted between two traverses, they’d block off a bay by killing the men front and back, then drop into the bay to get the ones in the trap.

A minute passed. Two. The Germans usually sent their reinforcements forward within half a minute of the ending of the barrage, as the British had discovered, time and again, to their cost.

Three minutes. Four. In the name of God, he could wait no longer. His plan was a precise thing, not a matter of waiting for something to happen. Thank God for the rain and circling thunder. What in hell had happened? The Germans always sent up reinforcements ... To the north-west, about where the next communication trench was, he thought he saw the gleam of a bayonet tip ... and another ... several, in line. A solution struck him and he almost laughed. Too late to do anything about it now. He signalled his men in and they began the return. This time they found two German soldiers patrolling the piece of front-line trench they had to cross to get back to No Man’s Land. Krishna signalled two sowars up close. He whispered to them, ‘Next time, bayonet! ‘