The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (49 page)

The sodding soggy hillside was pitted with ravines. We went down into one, then had to climb again. We never appeared to advance. Birds ran through the undergrowth like rats. Of course we were lugging our ammo, machine-guns, mortars, and the whole
subcheeze
with us. That day cured me of mountaineering for good.

Towards evening, the rain laid off, the sun appeared, the clouds scudded away to the Bramaputra to draw up fresh loads for the next day. This was not the true monsoon, merely what the Wogs called the
chota barsat
, or ‘little rains'. Everyone realized that the Japs had to be cleared out before the monsoons finally broke.

Steaming slightly, we dug ourselves into a defensive box for the night. Anything was a relief from climbing. We brewed up
char
on our Tommy cookers and ate bully beef and biscuits from our personal rations. Then we got our heads down, and again came that peculiarly stunned sleep, where the body lay in something approaching
rigor mortis
and the mind stumbled along just below consciousness, always alert for danger, imagining horrors and terrible things coming up out of the mud. I never dreamed of home or sex. There was not even that escape from the present.

Sex was in abeyance. During the night, I was hauled out for my spell on guard. My guts were twisting and writhing with the dysentery and I wondered if perhaps a wank might cheer things up. I felt my prick in the dark. It and my balls had shrunk to almost nothing. My ballbag was a little hard wrinkled thing, pathetically trying to turn itself into armour-plating against mortar-fire. I cudgelled my brain for fantasies, for pictures of brothels stuffed with gleaming fannies, but everything had been scoured dry. There was nothing left of me but the soldier.

Next day, the trail went winding ever upwards, the bloody jungle kept growing. I got a Strength Two chirp out of the
Royal Welsh, who were also climbing the shitheap to the top; they were uncertain of their whereabouts. Major Inskipp came and spoke to us, cheering us and saying that it was not far to the top of the Spur, and that the Pathans were bringing Lifebuoy flame-throwers up to help us burn the Japs out of their bunkers. Inskipp was as filthy as the rest of us. We looked every inch a forgotten army.

This was another back-breaking day. The sodding rain came down again and never stopped. You just wanted to lie down and die. Afterwards – even long afterwards – you couldn't tell anyone what it was like.

‘Where were you in the war?'

‘I was in Burma.' Adding to yourself. ‘Fuck my bloody luck!'

About noon, the
khud
-side was at its steepest. Nobody could move forward; it was just impossible. We were shagged out. We had to stop. Stopping was a matter of getting your crutch round the base of a tree, so that you didn't fall back on to the next bloke. All the time, there was the dread that Japs would materialize out of the foliage to one side or other, and shoot us all up. Heads down to protect our fags from the rain, we sucked at de Reskes and stayed within the defensive perimeters of our own skulls, saying nothing. There was fuck all left to say.

Firing broke out somewhere above us – how far, it was impossible to tell, and if you looked you could see nothing, just the water falling at you in great shards from the leaves above. The firing was nothing to do with us.

We'd have been there still if a scout had not come slithering back down the trail to tell us that they had at last found the top of the ridge. The firing was coming from somewhere up there. Presumably we were so late that the other units had gone in without us.

‘Come on the Mendips! Let's get up this bloody hill!' Inskipp shouted. He pressed ahead himself and we followed.

The rain redoubled its efforts too. The crest remained miles ahead. The firing was lost in the drumming of water and the squelch of boots.

The jungle thinned. A miniature cliff loomed, water pouring off it in yellow streams. Orchids grew among the trees like weeds. Our forward patrol had fixed a rope to a tree, and we pulled ourselves up by it, fanning out as we got to the top, running, falling into position with weapons at the ready.

More wilderness confronted us. You could not tell where we were. Still nothing could be seen more than seventy yards ahead, although the jungle had thinned. The Japs might be lying in wait, about to open up on us with all they'd got. A plane roared overhead. How we envied the bastard snug up there in his cabin, heading for a cosy mess, way back at Jorhat or Dimapur. Remember Dimapur? Dimapur had
charpoys
and showers and beautiful canteens.

No one opened fire on us. We advanced again, in line now, Inskipp leading. The jungle closed in. We were forced back into single file. The track No. 2 platoon was following started winding away to the left, separating us from the others, and we had to retrace our steps, fucking and blinding as we went. The other platoons had their own troubles. We had to reform, rest, go ahead, again in single line. After two hours and four rests, we found the ground beginning to rise again. We still weren't at the top of Aradura!

The wireless was yielding nothing, however much I fiddled with the bloody thing during rest periods. I could cheerfully have thrown it over the
khud
-side. I knew the blokes were willing me to get in touch with someone, one of our other companies, Brigade, anyone. Gore-Blakeley sat by me in the slit-trench staring grimly into the jungle. Occasionally, he would say, without turning his head, ‘Keep trying!' But we could not raise anyone. We were just plain fucking lost on Aradura.

We kept moving during the afternoon. The rain kept coming down, firing was maintained sporadically in the distance. Night fell, and the next day we moved on again, at once stiff and limp. Rations were getting low. We were running out of fags and water. We had the feeling that everyone had forgotten about us. Ominously, the firing had ceased, except for an odd round now and again.

The weather improved towards mid-morning. The jungle still dripped even when the rain stopped. We halted in a sort of clearing for a bite of tiffin. A new awfulness crawled inside my blouse. I pulled the blouse off, and a stubby centipede in twelve grey segments fell to the mud. I plonked my boot down and ground it into mush. My chest was covered with dull red blisters.

‘That's all you needed, mate – the fucking pox!' Ernie said.

I let my blouse dry off on a bush while we had another
shot at raising someone. This time, we managed to pick up a section of the Welch Fusiliers, Strength Three. Gore-Blakeley got a report through, gave them our position as far as it could be established, and asked for the message to be relayed back to Battalion. The Welch had nothing good to report: they had reached the top of the Spur, only to encounter the Japs in strength. They had gone in more than once, but against well sited bunkers it was hopeless, and they had suffered heavy casualties. Yes, there was artillery support, but nothing had any bloody effect against those fornicating Jap bunkers.

The mere fact of being in touch with the outside world was something. We heaved ourselves to our feet and moved on once more.

It was on the next day that we finally reached the highest ground. We were no more than half-a-mile off course. Our forward patrol made contact with the Japs, who cut loose with withering MG fire. Even that had the effect of raising our spirits – better to fight the bastarding Japs than the jungle. Against the jungle you could never win.

But could you win against the Japs? We had our doubts. You could not see the sods, so well were they dug in, and so torrential the rain.

We had climbed three-thousand feet of muddy mountain. Now we were fucking well expected to fight.

Being above the great hillside, we found R/T reception was better. The link opened up properly and we learned that the rest of the battalion was close at hand. Within minutes, we had contacted them. What a bloody relief! All parties had suffered the same total aggs we had, and ‘C' Company had taken a hell of a mauling from a platoon of Japs, encountered on a ridge. Good news was that rations were coming up to us.

But the rain came down worse than ever. You couldn't do a thing. You could hardly breathe. The air was water. Every man had prickly heat, which the rain stung and soothed by turns. I could feel my toes rotting off in my boots. It was so impossible that the attack was postponed for the day.

Inskipp came along to break the news to us. ‘I'm sorry to tell you all that the ENSA show due to be held up here tonight has also had to be postponed.' That got a laugh.

Dusty Miller called out ‘While you're watching ENSA you're doing nothing worse.'

We made the best of things, digging in, making drainage trenches, spreading our monsoon capes over the foxholes.

Early next morning, we went in.

Our objective was Peter, a pimple on Cuckoo Spur, which was an outcrop of Aradura and commanded the road. While the artillery from the valley was pounding Peter, we had soup and rum. Somehow we found the strength to fight.

It was bloody murder. I had shed the set, and went in firing the sten from the hip, shouting like fuck, with Feather on one side, bayonet fixed, yelling too, and Ernie the other side, heaving grenades to make the bastards keep their heads down. But they just plastered us with fire, safe in their bunkers. We were charging uphill, perfect targets.

Dave Feather went down almost immediately. Dutt and I just charged on, but it was madness, screams coming everywhere. We were within a few yards of the bunkers when Ernie staggered over. I could see the bunker-slits, see the tongues of fire, coming right at me. I fell by Ernie.

He had been wounded in the leg, through the thigh, and was sobbing incoherently. I grabbed up his grenades and started to throw them hard as I could at the firing-slits in the bunker ahead. There was cross-fire from another bunker. Our charge withered away. It felt as if all the Japs in creation were firing at us. At me.

They hit poor old Ernie again as he lay. I felt the bullets rip into him. He never made another sound. He had always been a quiet man.

I was just possessed. Nothing meant anything. Ernie's body gave me some shelter. I went on flinging grenades. By luck, I got one through a firing-slit. I was near enough to hear their shouts. There was an explosion, screams. Then their fucking Taishio opened up again. Perhaps one of the little sods had deliberately fallen on the grenade and saved his buddies' lives.

So much for our attack! Fuck Aradura, fuck its very name, and fuck every scab-devouring sod who suggested we should climb the cunting thing! I stayed where I was, scooping a shallow trench for myself behind Ernie's body. What had happened to the rest, I hardly knew. After a bit, I heard Gor-Blimey's whistle, then his voice calling, ‘Stay put and you'll be okay! Keep your heads down!'

He must have been fucking
puggle
to believe I was capable of lifting my head one bastarding inch! I was not the
only one stuck in no-man's land, and a second attack would be coming soon. I stayed where I was, as ordered, clinging to the gudge. The firing had died, except for regular bursts from either side intended to keep heads down. This is what reports call ‘a lull in the fighting'.

‘B' Company, operating along a
mula
to one side of us, had been having mixed fortune. They found themselves facing new trenches, in which the Japs had set up one of our captured twenty-five pounders. ‘B' Company charged and managed to overcome this position, gaining possession of the gun. A Jap counter-attack had been fended off, and one section dragged the gun away while the rest fought off another counter-attack. Heavy mortar-fire was brought to bear by the Japs, and many of our men were wiped out, including Captain Morgan, but the rest had been able to manoeuvre the gun and some shells round to our section of the line. Under Inskipp's command, they manhandled the gun into place. It now began blasting away at those sodding Jap bunkers at almost point blank range.

Before it registered, shells appeared to be falling all round me. I retreated under Ernie Dutt's body in terror. At that moment, I almost did my nut, like the time I found the teeth in the shit at Kohima, but a tremendous explosion jerked me back to what then passed for my senses. The same bunker into which I had thrown the grenade was going up in flames. The Japs must have had a store of petrol in it. My bowels were emptying into my trousers. A little crap more or less would make no difference.

Our brave old lads were getting set for another charge. The MGs were concentrating on one set of bunkers, the twenty-five-pounder on another. The range was maybe forty yards. Surely to Christ, the fucking Japs couldn't stand too much of that!

But directly we were up and running, that impossible deadly stream of fire came at us again. We ran on. You had to run on. There was fuck all for it but to run on. Fire and fucking run on!

I wasn't aware of myself getting up and plunging forward. It just happened. I saw – it all registered afterwards – Jackie Tertis's baby face contorted in a yell of fury and, beyond him, Geordie Wilkinson, mouth shut, charging on. Even as I caught sight of Geordie, he was gone, spinning round, falling. It meant nothing. I charged on with the others.

A second bunker had been blasted open and was half-collapsed. Some genius got a Mills bomb into it, and suddenly it was erupting Japs. They came pouring out of the earth itself, black and smoking. I heard myself yelling – fuck knows what, ‘Kill!' probably!

They were big buggers, not the little bow-legged guys of legend.

They were – shag me, the cheeky cunts were putting their fucking hands up, sticking their hands up, fucking surrendering, the bastards!
Surrendering!
We shot them down as they appeared. As I made it to the bunker with Enoch close beside me, a Jap officer popped his head up, sword in hand. Maybe he was going to surrender it. He was quite spick and span, with a trim little moustache.

‘Get the bastard!' Enoch yelled. We dived together.

The three of us went sprawling across the earth. The Jap half-rose, we grabbed him, and with our combined weights fell back into the ruined bunker. Partly smothered in mud, I saw he was fighting to draw his revolver. But Enoch had him by the throat and was choking the life out of him. I grabbed his wrist, wrenching his arm backwards until something cracked.