Quartered Safe Out Here (5 page)

What I had been trained for was to be an obedient cog in the great highly-disciplined machine that was launched into Europe on D-Day. That would at least have been in civilised countryside, among familiar faces and recognisable environment, close to home and the main war effort, in a campaign whose essentials had been foreseen by my instructors. The perils and discomforts would have been no less, probably, but they would not have been unexpected. It is disconcerting to find yourself soldiering in an exotic Oriental country which is medieval in outlook, against a barbarian
enemy given to burying prisoners up to the neck or hanging them by the heels for bayonet practice, among a friendly population who would rather turn dacoit than not, where you could get your dinner off a tree, be eaten alive by mosquitos and leeches, buy hand-made cheroots from the most beautiful girls in the world (with granny watching, puffing her
bidi
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and rolling the tobacco leaf on her scrawny thigh), wake in the morning to find your carelessly neglected mess-tin occupied by a spider the size of a soup-plate, watch your skin go white and puffy in ceaseless rain the like of which no Westerner can imagine for sheer noise and volume, gape in wonder at huge gilded pagodas silent in the wilderness, and find yourself taken aback at the sight of a domestic water-tap, because you haven't seen such a thing for months.

It seemed a terribly old-fashioned kind of war, far closer to the campaign my great-uncle fought when he went with Roberts to Kandahar (he's buried somewhere in Afghanistan; I wore his ring in Burma) than to what was happening in Europe. Compared to that, or the electronic campaigns of today, it looks downright primitive. (Not that the electronic campaigns won't be primitive enough, when the barrage lifts and the infantry start walking.)

If it seemed somehow to be a long way back in time, it was also a very long way from home, and had taken a lot of hot, weary travelling to get to. It was a far corner
of the world, and even although a letter written in Carlisle on Sunday could be in your hands in a
chaung
by the Sittang on Thursday, when you opened the blue air-mail form and saw the well-remembered writing, you had the feeling that it came from another planet. That's not a complaint, or an attempt to suggest special hardship; our campaign, or at least what I saw of it (Imphal and the northern khuds being something else) was probably no harder than any other. But you did feel the isolation, the sense of back of beyond. Perhaps that came, in part, from being called “the Forgotten Army”—a colourful newspaper phrase which we bandied about with derision;
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we were not forgotten by those who mattered, our families and our county. But we knew only too well that we were a distant side-show, that our war was small in the public mind beside the great events of France and Germany.

Oh, God, I'll never forget the morning when we were sent out to lay ambushes, which entailed first an attack on a village believed to be Jap-held. We were lined
up for a company advance, and were waiting in the sunlight, dumping our small packs and fixing bayonets, and Hutton and Long John were moving among us reminding us quietly to see that our magazines were charged and that everyone was right and ready, and Nixon was no doubt observing that we'd all get killed, and someone, I know, was muttering the old nonsense “Sister Anna will carry the banner, Sister Kate will carry the plate, Sister Maria right marker, Salvation Army, by the left—charge!” when a solitary Spitfire came roaring out of nowhere and Victory-rolled above us. We didn't get it; on the rare occasions when we had air support the Victory roll came after the fight, not before. While we were wondering, an officer—he must have been a new arrival, and a right clown—ran out in front of the company and shouted, with enthusiasm: “Men! The war in Europe is over!”

There was a long silence, while we digested this, and looked through the heat haze to the village where Jap might be waiting, and I'm not sure that the officer wasn't waving his hat and shouting hip, hooray. The silence continued, and then someone laughed, and it ran down the extended line in a great torrent of mirth, punctuated by cries of “Git the boogers oot ’ere!” and “Ev ye told Tojo, like?” and “Hey, son, is it awreet if we a' gan yam?”
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Well, he must have been new, and yet to get his priorities right, but it was an interesting pointer.

But if we resented, and took perverse pleasure in moaning (as only Cumbrians can) about our relative unimportance, there was a hidden satisfaction in it, too. Set a man apart and he will start to feel special. We did; we knew we were different, and that there were no soldiers quite like us anywhere. Partly it sprang from the nature of our war. How can I put it? We were freer, and our own masters in a way which is commonly denied to infantry; we were a long way from the world of battle-dress serge and tin hats and the huge mechanised war juggernauts and the waves of bombers and artillery. When Slim stood under the trees at Meiktila and told us: “Rangoon is where the big boats sail from”, the idea that we might one day get on one of those boats and sail halfway round the world to home might seem unreal, but it was a reminder that we were unique (and I don't give a dam who knows it). We were Fourteenth Army, the final echo of Kipling's world, the very last British soldiers in the old imperial tradition. I don't say we were happy to be in Burma, because we weren't, but we knew that Slim was right when he said: “Some day, you'll be proud to say, ‘I was there’.”

Mind you, as Grandarse remarked, we'd have to get out of the bloody place first.

“Aye-aye, Jock lad, w'at fettle?”

“Not bad, sergeant, thank you.” “Champion! They tell us yer a good cross-coontry rooner?”

“Oh…well, I've done a bit
…”

“
Girraway! Ah seen ye winnin' at Ranchi—travellin' like a bloody trail ’oond w'en the whistles gan on. ’Ere, ’ev a fag.”

“Ta very much, sarn't. M-mm, Senior Service…”

“
Sarn't's mess issue, lad. Tek anoother fer after. Aye, ye can roon…woon a few prizes in Blighty, did ye?”

“Well, now and then…seven and six in savings certificates, that sort of thing…”

“Ah'll bet yer the fastest man in't battalion, ower a mile or two. Aye, in the brigade, likely—mebbe the division—”

“Oh, I dunno about that. There must be some good runners—”

“Give ower, Jock! A fit yoong feller like you? Honnist, noo—wadn't ye back yersel agin anybuddy in 17th Indian? Well aye, ye wad! Ootroon the bloody lot on them, eh?”

“Well, I'd be ready to have a go…”

“Good for you, son. An' yer a furst-class shot an' a', aren't ye? Good…yer joost the man tae be sniper-scout for the section.”

“Eh? Sniper-scout? What's that?”

“Weel, ye knaw w'at a scout does. W'en the section cooms till a village, the scout ga's in foorst, t'see if Jap's theer.”

“To…er, draw their fire?”

“
Use yer loaf, man, Jap's nut that bloody stupid! Usually, ’e let's the scout ga through, or waits till ’e's reet inside the position an' then lays ’im oot, quiet-like. So the scout ’es tae keep ’is wits aboot ’im, sista, an' as soon as ’e spots Jap, ’e fires a warnin' shot…an' boogers off. So ’e'd better be a good rooner, ’edn't ’e?”

“Does it matter? I mean, if he's surrounded by bleeding Japs, he might as well be on crutches—”

“Doan't talk daft! If ’e's nippy on ’is feet ’e can git oot, easy! Didn't ye play Roogby at that posh school o' yours?”

“Yes, but the opposition wasn't armed. Oh, well. Here—you said
sniper-
scout. Where does the sniping come in?”

“Aye, weel, that's w'en we're pullin' oot of a position, nut ga'in' in. Sniper-scout stays be'ind, ’idden in a tree or booshes or summat, an' waits till Jap cooms up…”

“And then snipes one of them?”

“Aye, but nut joost anybuddy. ’E waits for a good
target—an officer, or mebbe one o' the top brass, if ’e's loocky—”

“Bloody lucky, yes.”

“…
an' then ’e nails ’im—”

“—
and boogers…I beg your pardon…buggers off.”

“That's reet, son! ’E gits oot an' ga's like the clappers—”

“
Being a good long-distance runner. I see. Flawless logic. Well, it must be a great life, as long as it lasts—”

“Well, it's a job for a slippy yoong feller, nut owd fat boogers like Grandarse, or ’alf-fit sods like Nick an' Forster. Ah'm glad ye volunteered, Jock. ’Ere, ’ev anoother fag.”

“Thanks, sarn't, but I wouldn't want to spoil my wind. By the way, does a sniper-scout get extra pay? You know, danger money?”

“Extra peh! Danger mooney! Ye've been pickin' oop sivven an' six at ivvery cross-coontry in Blighty, an' ye're wantin' mair? Ye greedy lal git! It's reet enoof w'at they say aboot you Scotchies, ye're a'ways on the scroonge…”

The incident of the three bunkers and my tin of fruit/carrots is engraved on my memory because it was my baptism of fire and, incidentally, the closest I came to participating in our capture of Meiktila. I say “our” inasmuch as the battalion was in the thick of the fighting for this vital strongpoint, which was vicious even by the standards of the Burma war, and
won two decorations and a battle honour, but of this Nine Section saw nothing, and suffered no more than tired feet and ennui from marching around in the sun. They did not make philosophy about this, knowing that these things average out. That may seem obvious, but I had yet to learn it, and I'm not sure that I ever did altogether: it always seemed rather unjust that while one company might be eating mangoes and bathing its feet, another should be getting all hell shot out of it, or that two sections could go in together and one wouldn't even see a Jap all day, while the other lost half its strength in clearing bunkers not far away.

Another discovery was that the size and importance of an action is no yardstick of its personal unpleasantness. A big operation which commands headlines may be a dawdle for some of those involved, while the little forgotten patrol is a real horror. The capture of Meiktila means that gallon tin to me, while other episodes which can still enliven my nightmares receive only a passing mention in regimental accounts, if that. Mention Meiktila to any surviving pensioner of my old section and he will sip his pint, nod reflectively, and say “Aye”; but drop the name of a little unheard-of pagoda that doesn't even get into the index of the big official history and he will let out an oath, sink the pint in one gulp, and start talking.

(It's an illustration of the fortunes of war, a phrase that always reminds me of a night later on, when I shared a cigarette with three men from another platoon, and we talked vaguely of having a pint in the Apple Tree
on Lowther Street when we got home. Before dawn one of them was dead, another had killed a Jap and been wounded, and the third had slept through it—and he hadn't just been keeping his head down, either; he wasn't like that. My own contribution to the night's activities had been to come within an ace of killing a comrade, a recollection that still makes me sweat.)

But we knew that Jap had died hard in and around Meiktila; the rumour ran that in one hospital more than a hundred wounded had committed suicide rather than be taken; this proved to be true. It seemed incredible, after the hammering he'd had at Imphal; from listening to the older heads I gathered that they'd been hoping to hear of cases of surrender at this stage in the war, but apparently there had been none.

From the official map I see that we came into Meiktila on foot from the west, but all I recall is volumes of smoke rising from the cluster of low white buildings between the lakes, and the distant sound of firing and explosions. It isn't much of a place; in the six weeks we were there I never visited what was left of the town proper, but I spent three days at the airstrip on the way out after VJ Day, living on tinned salmon sandwiches and attending a camp concert which featured a bald, bespectacled, desperately dirty comedian who told the story of Flossie the Frog. (I'm sorry, I can't help my eccentric memory.) When we marched in we knew only that it was a vital link in Jap's communications, and that he would want it back.

Our platoon position was on the perimeter, on the
crest of a gentle slope running up from one of the lakes and looking out across a hundred yards of flat ground to undergrowth which you wouldn't dignify with the name of jungle, with a fairly thick wood to our right front. The perimeter was a deep sloping horizontal apron of barbed wire (a better protection against infantry than any upright fence or coils of Dannet), and a few yards inside this we dug our two-man rifle pits with the usual dog-leg pit for the Bren. Behind us was platoon headquarters, consisting of the pits of Lieutenant Gale, Sergeant Hutton, and Gale's batman and runner; behind that was company H.Q., which in my memory consists of the camp stool belonging to the company commander, Long John. There were two brigades of us inside the wire
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which enclosed the two lakes in a box perhaps four miles by three, and when the third brigade came in by air that was the whole of the Black Cat Division within the “anvil”, eighty miles inside Jap territory, “surrounded”, says the history, “by numerically superior forces”, and waiting for the “hammer” of 5th Div—and, in the meantime, Jap.

“’E'll be at us like a rat up a fookin’ drainpipe,” said Sergeant Hutton, and the section gave pessimistic growls, and spoke with deep feeling of our prospects.

Fortunately I'd been brought up in Cumberland, and knew that the natives would rather moan than eat; the British soldier is famous for complaint, but for sheer sour prolonged bitching in adversity commend me to the English West March. It comes out in a disgusted guttural growl rising to a full-tongued roar of discontent, and subsides into normal conversation:

“In the shit again! Ah've ’ad it, me.”

“We'll all git killed.”

“Fook this!”

“Whee's smeukin', then?”

“Booger off, Forster, scrounge soomw'eers else.”

“Ahh, ye miserable, mingy Egremont twat!”

“Whee's gonna brew up, then? Eh, Wattie, you've got the tin.”

“Brew up yer bloody sel'. Ah've carried the bloody thing a' day!”

“Aw, wrap up, ye miserable sods! Eh, Jock, git the fire lit, there's a lad.”

“All right, you get the bloody sticks.” (Evil associations corrupt good manners, you see.)

“Idle Scotch git! Ye want us to strike the fookin' matches, an a'?”

An outsider wouldn't have realised it, but they were in good spirits, and I should remark here that they were not foul-mouthed, as soldiers go. Many never swore at all, and those who did swore as birds sing, so naturally that you hardly noticed. You must imagine the above conversation punctuated by the Cumbrian's dirty, snarling chuckle; they are the only people I know
who can moan and laugh together; they took pleasure in reviling each other, and I remember those section brew-ups as some of the friendliest gatherings of my life. Little, the corporal, listening, not saying much; Nixon with his pipe under the drooping moustache, spitting into the fire; Steele noisy and assertive, the lean young face eager in the firelight; Wedge working methodically at his rifle, one moment laughing, the next worrying about whether 5th Div could get through before…; Grandarse sprawled contented like a captain at an inn, his
pialla
in an enormous paw, red face beaming; Parker with his sharp Max Miller banter, never stuck for an answer; the Duke yawning and making occasional remarks which invariably attracted mimicry, at which he would smile tolerantly; Stanley off in a reverie of his own, replying quietly when spoken to, then lapsing into contemplation again; Forster's twisted grin as he needled and sneered—“Ah could piss better
chah
than thoo brews, Jock”…“Reet, noo…whee's got the fags?”

If the knowledge that they were surrounded and outnumbered by the most cruel and valiant foe on earth worried them, it didn't show, ever. Times have changed now, and it is common to hear front-line troops, subjected to the disgusting inquisition of war reporters, confess to being scared. Of course they're scared; everybody's scared. But it was not customary to confess it, then, or even hint at it. It was simply not done, partly out of pride, but far more from the certainty that nothing could be better calculated to sap confidence, in one's self, in one's comrades, and among
those at home. If I'd heard Corporal Little voice the kind of anxiety that television so loves to ferret out and harp on nowadays, I'd have wondered if he was the man for the job—and felt even more nervous myself. I was a worried man in Burma, but I hope it didn't show. Nothing put more heart into me, young and unsure as I was—most of all, fearful of being seen to be fearful—than the fact that, being a Scot, it was half expected of me that I would be a wild man, a head case. This age-old belief among the English, that their northern neighbours are desperate fellows, hangs on, and whether it's true or not it's one hell of an encouragement when you're nineteen and wondering how you'll be when the whistle blows and you take a deep breath and push your safety catch forward.

Talk about morale: Nine Section
was
morale, they and the barking Sergeant Hutton, and tall Long John, the courteous, soft-spoken company commander whose modest demeanour concealed a Berserker, and the tough, black-browed colonel to whom I never spoke until he warned me for a late tackle in a bloodbath of a Cumberland Rugby Cup match (Carlisle v. Aspatria) after the war, and all the rest of that lean and hungry battalion. To say nothing of the Gurkhas along the wire, grinning and chirruping, and the fearsome Baluchi hillmen looking like the Forty Thieves. And the green and gold dragon flag of the regiment planted down by the lake, and the black cat insignia of the oldest division in the Army. You felt you were in good company; Jap wasn't going to stop this lot. (The only remaining
question was: was he going to stop
me?
Well, we'd just have to see; there was no sense worrying about it.)

But the biggest boost to morale was the burly man who came to talk to the assembled battalion by the lake shore—I'm not sure when, but it was unforgettable. Slim was like that: the only man I've ever seen who had a force that came out of him, a strength of personality that I have puzzled over since, for there was no apparent reason for it, unless it was the time and the place and my own state of mind. Yet others felt it too, and they were not impressionable men.

His appearance was plain enough: large, heavily built, grim-faced with that hard mouth and bulldog chin; the rakish Gurkha hat was at odds with the slung carbine and untidy trouser bottoms; he might have been a yard foreman who had become managing director, or a prosperous farmer who'd boxed in his youth. Nor was he an orator. There have been four brilliant speakers in my time: Churchill, Hitler, Martin Luther King, and Scargill; Slim was not in their street. His delivery was blunt, matter-of-fact, without gestures or mannerisms, only a lack of them.

He knew how to make an entrance—or rather, he probably didn't, and it came naturally. Frank Sinatra has the same technique, but in his case it may well be studied: no fanfare, no announcement, simply walking onstage while the orchestra are still settling down, and starting to sing. Slim emerged from under the trees by the lake shore, there was no nonsense of “gather round” or jumping on boxes; he just stood with his thumb
hooked in his carbine sling and talked about how we had caught Jap off-balance and were going to annihilate him in the open; there was no exhortation or ringing clichés, no jokes or self-conscious use of barrack-room slang—when he called the Japs “bastards” it was casual and without heat. He was telling us informally what would be, in the reflective way of intimate conversation. And we believed every word—and it all came true.

I think it was that sense of being close to us, as though he were chatting offhand to an understanding nephew (not for nothing was he “Uncle Bill”) that was his great gift. It was a reminder of what everyone knew: that Slim had enlisted in 1914, fought in the trenches and at Gallipoli, and risen, without advantages, on his own merits; his accent was respectable, no more, and he couldn't have talked down if he'd tried. You knew, when he talked of smashing Jap, that to him it meant not only arrows on a map but clearing bunkers and going in under shell-fire; that he had the head of a general with the heart of a private soldier. A friend of mine, in another division, thoughtlessly decorated his jeep with a skull he'd found: Slim snapped at him to remove it, and then added gently: “It might be one of our chaps, killed on the retreat.” He thought, he
knew
, at our level; it was that, and the sheer certainty that was built into every line of him, that gave Fourteenth Army its overwhelming confidence; what he promised, that he would surely do. And afterwards, when it was over and he spoke of what his army had done, it was always “you”, not even “we”, and never “I”.

Perhaps the most revealing story, not only about Slim but about what his army thought of him, tells how he was addressing a unit preparing to go into action. The magic must have worked again, for some enthusiast actually shouted: “We'll follow you, general!” And Slim, with one of his rare smiles, called back: “Don't you believe it. You'll be a long way in front of me.”

Not many generals could have got away with that; one cannot imagine Monty saying it. The irony was that it wasn't true; Slim almost got himself killed in the fighting for Meiktila.

He has been called the best battlefield general since Wellington, which takes in some heavy competition, from Lee and Grant to Montgomery and Rommel. Certainly no general ever did more with less; in every way, he was one of the great captains.

British soldiers don't love their commanders, much less worship them; Fourteenth Army trusted Slim and thought of him as one of themselves, and perhaps his real secret was that the feeling was mutual. I have a picture of him at a Burma Reunion, standing awkwardly but looking so content, with his soldiers jostling and grinning round him—and that day by the lake, nodding and wishing us luck and turning away under the trees.

I know I have not done him justice. I can only say what Kenneth Roberts wrote of Robert Rogers, that the thought of him was like home and safety.