The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (50 page)

Gor-Blimey came up, panting like a dog.

‘I'm knackered,' he said. Blood was streaming down his face from a cut on his temple. He swayed on his feet. After a moment, he recovered. With eyes half-shut he said, ‘Secure this officer and see he does not escape. He must not be ill-treated. The other bunkers …'

He slipped down against the bank. We saw there was blood all over his tunic.

‘Hang on to this bastard,' Enoch said.

As I sat on the Jap officer, Enoch ran down to Gor-Blimey and dragged him in to our position of relative safety. We could see then a ragged wound in Gor-Blimey's chest. He opened his eyes, looked at us, and belched up blood. His hands fluttered and he lay still.

‘Oh Christ!' I heard myself say. ‘They've killed dear old Gor-Blimey!'

‘Well, we'll settle this fucker's fucking hash for him!' Enoch said. He jumped up and thrust his bayonet into the Jap officer, right up to the hilt, until it squelched.

The firing was still going on, the twenty-five pounder blasting away whenever it had a line-of-fire, although Jap
mortars further back were now responding. All told, we took care of twenty more bunkers, main ones and auxiliaries. Some time during the melée, the long awaited Lifebuoys came up, and we burned the bunkers out. It was a massacre. After a while, we began to take prisoners.

By the end of the long bloody afternoon, Peter was ours. We had a string of thirty prisoners, tied in a line, hands behind backs, with their own signal wire. The rumours had been true. The Japs were in a far worse state than we were, filthy, starved, diseased. Many of them had a fever and looked at death's door; but as long as they had been able to stand, they had been able to lean to and fire out of their bunkers. Brave bastards, brave to the last! – And fucking stupid too.

Jackie Tertis and I were rounding them up into some sort of shit-order. Tertis was staggering about almost as much as the Japs, and looked almost as black and ragged.

‘How're you doing, Jackie, mate?'

He grinned at me, and was no longer baby-faced. With a would-be playful gesture, he swung the rifle to point at my guts. ‘I'm doing all fucking right. What did you expect? I can look after my fucking self. And I'll tell you something for nothing – if one of these fucking slant-eyed pricks here makes a wrong move, I'll shoot the cunt in two!'

Our pathetic prisoners stood before us with drooping shoulders, plainly expecting to be blown to hell at any moment. None of them made a move.

‘Get stuffed, Tertis! This lot's fucking had it.'

‘Just let them try it on, that's all, and I'll shoot the cunts in two.'

‘This bunch of heroes can hardly stand, never mind run.'

‘I'll shoot the cunts in two!'

He swung his rifle up as if to do what he said. The Japanese bent their heads and swayed slightly, as if facing a stiff breeze.

We'd hoped for a good night's rest, but mortars were pounding our positions. For a while, it looked as if we might even have to withdraw. But ‘B' Company somehow managed a sortie by moonlight, thinned though its ranks were, and clobbered one mortar position. We slept, and in the morning
had a go at one last group of three bunkers that had somehow escaped detection. The Japs put up little resistance and we bagged some more prisoners. They were meek and respectful, standing about with bowed heads. The shit had been knocked out of them. They cowered before Tertis.

Our doctors attended everyone. Stretcher parties were busy loading casualties on to the backs of the mules for the hellish journey down to the road. Even there, their troubles would be only just starting; the hospitals of Comilla and Barrackpore were a dismaying journey off.

Freed from the wireless set for a couple of hours, I should have got my head down, but for once weariness had gone too far for sleep. I wandered over to the mules, exchanging grins with the Pathans, and there was Geordie Wilkinson, painfully lashed over one of the largest, blackest brutes.

‘Geordie, old mate!'

He looked ghastly. His face was dead white, its tan washed away. His entire uniform was dark with blood. The bandage round his stomach was soaked with blood. Another bandage round his upper leg was cleaner, although there too the blood was beginning to show.

He opened his eyes. I stood by him, trying to smile at him. ‘Do you want a fag, mate? How about a Blighty Players?'

He moved his head. His eyes closed again and he said, quite distinctly, ‘They got me in the guts, mucker … I reckon I'm a sort of goner, like.'

I took his hand. ‘You'll be okay, Geordie. They'll patch you up. We'll all see you down on the road. The Japs are packing it in, did you know that? They've had their fucking chips.'

‘I saw my own fucking guts hanging out, mucker.'

A medical orderly came up, as weary, filthy, and unshaven as the rest of us, moving down the column of mules. He pushed me out of the way to examine Geordie's securing straps.

‘Is he—?' I asked.

‘We're moving this batch of wounded off straightaway. This bloke's had a jab of morphine, so he's not suffering pain. Is he a mucker of yours?'

I bit my bottom lip. ‘One of the best,' I said, and for some reason the words started me crying.

In my ammo pouch, against the sten magazines, I had stuffed the picture of Hanuman. I pulled it out, creased,
stained, and folded, and tucked it into Geordie's shirt, against his clammy chest.

‘It's the old Monkey God, Geordie, remember? The Monkey God … Look after him for me!'

‘The Monkey God …'

Geordie was the only bastard in the squad who hadn't kidded me about Hanuman, Vishnu, and the rest. As I stared down at his pallid ugly face, my tears came again, and I turned my head away so that the Pathans would not notice.

When I looked again, the line of mules was already moving away through the nearest trees. Geordie would be lucky if he made it back to base-hospital. Hanuman wasn't going to be much help.

With victory – with the minor victory of Aradura, our mood changed. We had survived, and Aradura was one jungle-mountain we would never have to climb again! For a while there was not even the need to keep our heads down.

As the patrols were bringing in their shit-stained prisoners, the RAF finished making an air-drop of ammo, water, fags, and rations on Aradura. ‘A' Company was getting its share under the watchful eyes of RSM Payne and Inskipp. Inskipp had a shoulder wound and his left arm was out of action, but he refused to be evacuated.

I sat in one of the bunkers, talking to Wally as he operated our wireless set under Boyer's supervision. Casualty reports coming in suggested that the Mendips had suffered less badly than we feared.

‘We didn't live in vain, Wally,' I said.

He clapped me on the back, right across my prickly heat. ‘That's God's truth, me smelly old mate! I bet you was praying to your fucking old monkey god this time yesterday, weren't you?!'

‘Who were you praying to, Churchill?'

‘Come orf it, Stubby, I been keeping myself morally pure lately – that's what did it!'

‘You haven't got much fucking choice in this neck of the woods, have you? You know old Geordie got a packet didn't you?'

‘Yeah. Poor old Geordie! I reckon he's had his fucking chips. Right in the fucking guts …' Wally screwed his face
up as if thinking. ‘Nice old lad, Geordie – his trouble was, he didn't believe in anything.'

Without arguing with Wally – always a useless occupation – I was unconvinced by this implied reason for Geordie's packet. After all, I had survived so far, and what did I believe in?

‘Oh, fuck!' I said. ‘What a fucking fornicating shower it all is!'

Aylmer came over, bringing us two packets of cigarettes and a half-
piyala
of rum-and-water each. While Wally got on with Boyer's messages, Aylmer and I sat on one side, smoking and sipping our drink.

‘This rum should help my dysentery!'

‘Yes, it'll clear it up like one o'clock! In the old days, surgeons used to give their patients rum before they sawed their legs off. Without it, nobody would have survived the ordeal.'

We watched the Japs being marshalled into bundles by Harding and Charley Cox. When Harding and Charley got their cigarette issue, they lit up and then, rather sheepishly, offered one to the nearest Japs.

‘That's the way to kill the little bleeders off!' Wally remarked, looking round from the set. ‘Give 'em a de Reske!'

Bamber, who was near Charley, called out angrily, ‘Hey, Charley, don't give those bastards a drag! They'd kill you if they had the chance – they were shooting our fucking mates yesterday!'

‘Don't worry, I'll shoot 'em if they try anything, but they're human same as we are,' Charley said cheerfully.

‘Not in my fucking book, they aren't,' Bamber said, and he turned away.

We had secured Peter, a lonely pimple on a big ridge. But the sitreps coming over the air were startlingly bad. Nobody else had any joy on ill-fated Aradura. The Royal Welch had been forced back, owing to impossible fighting country as much as anything, and the rest of the battalion had had to move back for lack of support. We were alone on Aradura, and the situation looked grave. We were ordered to dig in.

‘A' and ‘B' Companies were now all within one perimeter, and familiar faces were missing. My old pal Chota Morris
had been killed by grenades while leading No. 1 Platoon forward. Handsome Hansom and Ginger Gascadden were dead. It turned into a bad day, despite the charge that had come from our success; everyone was very quiet.

Only late in the afternoon was there cause for cheer. The high ground of Peter allowed us a view of the road. It wound below us, down the glittering hillside. Our artillery was pounding Garage Spur, on the other side of the valley. We could see paddy fields, with Nagas working in them as if nothing was happening. And one of our mobile columns was moving down the road from Kohima! It could not be too long before reinforcements moved up the
khud
to join us, if only we could hang on where we were.

Reaction set in then. The lull in the fighting gave time for thought. That was the afternoon I really got the jitters. By next morning, stuck on that fucking hill in the middle of miles of wilderness, we might all be dead. And I thought of old Geordie, suffering total aggs.

Nothing ever happened out in Assam as you expected it to. We had plenty of defensive patrols out during the night. They came back with nothing to report. There was no firing. No Japs were contacted. The rain fell. It was still falling at first light, when Sergeant Gowland came in with a patrol and reported that the Japs seemed to have disappeared from the ridge. That was the last day of May.

It was two days before we could confirm that Aradura was clear, and confirmatory reports came in from elsewhere. For the first time, the Japs were in retreat. Sato had had enough; he had given the order to withdraw! His battered forces were in retreat south, towards Imphal and the distant Chindwin!

We came down the mountain again, taking our prisoners with us.

The road below us was open and the polyglot Fourteenth Army rolling through. At last we said good-bye to Aradura and stood on the road! Inskipp marched us to a point where a mess and a bath unit had been set up in a broken and deserted hamlet. The mess was a
basha
without a roof; the benches and tables looked like the height of civilization. There stood our fat cooks in their greasy green vests, cocky as ever, Ron Rusk and George Locke.

‘How're you doing, Stubby, boy? How's your belly off for spots?' Rusk had abandoned his old cry, ‘Get in, pigs, it's all swill!'

‘Still burning the
bergoo
, Ruskie? I didn't think they'd let you
admis
this near the firing line!'

‘You want to watch what you're saying to him,' Locke said, digging his mate in his ribs and nodding at me. ‘Ron killed a Jap single-handed yesterday – coshed him over the bonce with a ladle, didn't you, Rusky Boy?'

‘The little bastard walked into the cookhouse and I coshed him one!'

This heroic deed of Rusk's became legendary. It was useless to point out that the Jap in question had probably been on his last legs anyway; Rusk had made a kill, and thereafter it was hopeless complaining about the food or we would be warned that we should get what the Jap got – a cosh over the bonce with a ladle.

At that meal there were no complaints. We sat at the benches and ate real meat, which someone suggested was our old friend the elephant from Merema Ridge. There was beer with the meat and vegetables, Yankee Beer from Milwaukee, with peaches and condensed milk to follow, and a
piyala
full of
char.

It was a very quiet meal. No one spoke, no one looked at anyone else, until Charley Cox said, producing the fruit of long consideration, ‘They're fucking brave bastards, the Japs, all the same.'

‘Bravest bastards in the world, after the Fourteenth Army,' Wally agreed.

Silence again, until Charley went on. ‘You know all the balls-ups our Higher-Ups made? I mean, like about withdrawing amphibious support and everything? It was lucky the Jap Higher-Ups made balls-ups too, wasn't it? What I mean to say, if they'd gone straight for Dimapur before we got to Zubza, instead of waiting to mop up Kohima … well, there wouldn't have been anything to stop 'em, would there?'

‘They'd be in Calcutta, eating in Firpo's by now,' Dusty Miller said.

‘That's what I mean – their Higher-Ups made a balls-up same as ours.'

‘The biggest balls-up was starting the war in the first place,' old Bamber said. ‘Where's it get you?'

‘To fucking Milestone 61,' Wally said.

Silence fell again as we tackled the peaches.

Afterwards, we gathered in the clearing. Inskipp stood up on his jeep and addressed us, thanking us for incredible bravery under adverse conditions. He read out an order of the day from General Grover, Divisional Commander, congratulating all ranks and stating that the enemy was in full retreat. It was our duty now to get after him and not let a man escape. Then Inskipp went off to have his arm attended to.