The Chequer Board (16 page)

He asked them in English who they were. Either they could not or they would not tell him. They held him covered by their rifles and took his revolver from him, but
left him his haversack of rations and emergency kit. Two of them got behind him and prodded him with their rifles, and made signs for him to walk; two went ahead of him in single file. They took him, along the same jungle path, deeper into the country, in the same general direction, westwards.

They marched him for about two hours. He was quite unaccustomed to marching in the tropics, and it was a very hot afternoon. He moved blindly, with sweat pouring down him, utterly exhausted at the end. He lost all sense of the direction of their march; he did not know where they were going to, and did not care.

They walked into a village, in the dusk, a little place of only fifteen or twenty houses. He was bundled at once into what seemed to be the village lock-up, a small hut of very stout bamboos, with no window, and with a rough iron hasp and padlock on the door. He sank down on the floor in exhaustion. After a quarter of an hour, his perceptions returned to him, and he could take some interest in his surroundings. His lock-up stood in the garden or compound of a native house. Between the lock-up and the house there were men camped, and cooking over a wood fire. Presently the door opened and a steaming bowl of boiled rice with a little fish on the top of it was shoved in to him, with an earthenware chatty of water.

An hour later the door was opened again, and he was taken to the house by an armed guard. It was quite dark by that time, and the main room of the house was lit by two hurricane lamps. It was a native house of wooden posts and palm-leaf thatch, with the floor raised about four feet from the ground; but in it there were a table
and two chairs. The place was full of young men, all armed with rifles and revolvers or automatic pistols of one sort or another; many of them also wore their dahs, long straight steel blades with clumsy wooden handles.

There was a man seated at the table, a young man, with short cropped hair and a lean brown face, dressed in a longyi and a khaki jacket. On one arm he wore a white brassard with a large five-pointed red star on it. Behind him, on the ground, a young woman sat, cross-legged.

He said in quite good English, “Sit down there.” Morgan sat down on the chair before the table; his guards took their places behind him. He looked at the red star and thought, Communist. That had him foxed; there had been nothing about Communists in his briefing. He did not know what that might mean for him.

The man asked him his name and rank, and what aircraft he had been flying. Morgan told him these things freely. By that time, in Burma, the regulations about prisoners giving information to the enemy had been greatly relaxed. Cases had occurred of prisoners who had been tortured by the Japanese to give information which would not have harmed the Allied cause a great deal if it had been disclosed, and who had died bravely and unnecessarily. Now it was assumed that codes and radio wave lengths were all compromised immediately a prisoner was taken, and an organisation had been set up for changing them without delay. Prisoners threatened with torture were allowed to talk.

The man asked, “Where did you fly from?”

Morgan said, “From Cox’s Bazaar.”

He was asked about his mission, and he told them, to destroy Japanese military shipping on the river.

Then, “How many aeroplanes have the British got at Cox’s Bazaar?”

So far, Morgan had seen no sign of any Japanese. He said, “Before I answer that, will you tell me who you are?”

The man said, “Answer the question. How many aeroplanes have the British got at Cox’s Bazaar?”

Morgan said, “It varies every day.” And then he said, “I want to ask you formally to take me before an officer.”

The man said, “You are before one now. I am a captain in the Burma Independence Army, Captain Utt Nee.” He paused, and then said, “I have no time to waste. If you do not answer the questions, it will be bad for you.”

The pilot said, “I’ll do my best, but it’s not easy to answer that one. Aircraft move about very quickly. One day there might not be more than fifty on all the airstrips at Cox’s. Another day there might be three hundred or more. It varies so.”

There was a stir among the men in the room. Utt Nee said, “You are lying, Englishman. You never had three hundred aeroplanes on the whole Burma front.”

Morgan said, “I’m not lying at all. I’m counting in the transport machines as well as the first-line aircraft. If you take in all the aerodromes in Bengal, the total of aircraft on this front would be more like three thousand. There’s the American Strategic Air Force that’s as large as ours.” He went on to tell them more about the figures, judging the information to be valuable in making an impression on these Burmans.

They asked about the number of tanks and guns, but although he had some idea of this he professed ignorance; the figures were not so impressive. “I’m in the Royal Air Force,” he said. “We see tanks and guns about in parks and on the roads, but I’ve no idea how many there may be. I’d only be guessing if I told you any numbers.”

The man said something in Burmese, and Morgan was taken back to the lock-up. There was no bed or furniture of any kind; clearly he would have to spend the night on the bare earth, and that was not too clean. In the semi-darkness, in the few gleams of light that came in through the bamboo walls from the lighted house, he sat down in a corner, leaning up against the walls, his feet stretched out along the ground, to wait for sleep.

Half an hour later the door opened again, and he got to his feet. His guards were there, but with them was the young Burmese woman whom he had seen sitting on the floor behind Utt Nee. She had two blankets in her arms.

She said in English, “I have brought you some blankets. This is a very poor place, and you will have to sleep on the ground. If you have to stay here another night, my brother will have a bed built up for you.”

He said, “I say, that’s very nice of you.” He took the blankets. “I’ll be perfectly all right with these.”

“Have you had enough to eat and drink?” she asked.

He said, “I got some rice—I don’t want any more to eat. I’d like another jug of water.”

She spoke in Burmese to the guards, one of whom went off to get it.

He said, “Tell me, are you people fighting the Japanese?”

“You must ask my brother that,” she replied.

He said in wonder, “You speak English very well.”

She laughed. “I ought to. I worked for Stevens Brothers in Rangoon for three years. I was Mr James Stevens’ personal secretary. Before that I was at Rangoon High School.”

He said, “What are they going to do with me?”

“They are talking about that now,” she replied. “Probably they will hand you over to the Japanese.”

“The British will give you a good reward if I am taken back to them unhurt,” he observed. “It’s all written in Burmese on a sort of handkerchief in my haversack.”

She said a little scornfully, “We know that, Mr Morgan. They will not pay much attention to your ransom money—there are more important things than that which will determine what they do with you.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said awkwardly.

The guard came back with the chatty. “Here is your water,” she said. “Is there anything else you want?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good night, then,” she said, and went out. The guards locked the door behind her.

Morgan was left standing in the hut with the blankets in his arms, wondering. The girl had spoken to him just like an Englishwoman, though she was indubitantly Burman. She had a lilting accent to her voice; she had a broad, yellowish face, with slanting eyes, and straight black hair done in a knot behind her head. She was dressed in native costume, with bare feet thrust into sandals.

He turned, and made a rough bed of the blankets on the ground and lay down, wrapping himself around as a
protection against mosquitoes; and presently he fell asleep.

Next morning he was taken out at dawn and allowed to wash in a bucket of water, and to go to a latrine, and given more rice. An hour later he was taken to the house again. There were fewer people in the room this time. Again Utt Nee, the Burman with the red star on his arm, interrogated him, the girl sitting on the floor behind.

Utt Nee asked, “How many soldiers have the British at Cox’s and near by?”

Morgan said, “I don’t know—quite a lot. Not many English troops, but a great many I.O.R.s—the Indian Army. I should think there might be three or four divisions.”

“You mean forty or fifty thousand men? It will go badly for you if you tell us lies.”

“I should think that’s about it. I don’t know much about the Army, though.”

There was a quick interchange of sentences between the around him in Burmese.

Utt Nee said, “If the British have so many men as that, why do they not attack?”

Morgan said, “They are attacking in the north, and on the Chindwin. Now that the war with Germany is pretty well finished, masses of stuff are coming out here. By the spring we ought to be advancing all over Burma.”

The Burman eyed him steadily. “What do you mean, the war with Germany is finished?”

Morgan said, “Well, we’ve got up to the Rhine.”

“You mean, the river Rhine? The river between Germany and France?”

There was a buzz of excited conversation in Burmese.
They questioned him very intently, seeking to trip him up and make him contradict himself. They produced a small school atlas and made him show them the position of the Rhine and the areas occupied by the British and American forces. Presently the questions ceased, and he sat on almost unnoticed while a debate took place between the men, speaking in Burmese.

Once Utt Nee turned to him, “Do you know Major Williams?”

Morgan shook his head blankly. “Never heard of him.”

Presently Utt Nee made a sign to his guards, and they took him out of the room; the debate in Burmese went on hotly behind him. At the door of his lock-up the guards checked; Morgan turned round, and the girl was there.

She said, “Mr Morgan, I want to ask you a few questions myself.”

He said, “Of course.”

“First,” she said, “I want to warn you to speak nothing but the truth to us. It is important to us that we should know the truth of what is going on outside Burma; we have heard nothing for three years except what the Japanese chose to tell us. It is important to you, also, because if my brother finds that you have told one single lie he will have you killed. He changed his name last year. He is now called Utt Nee, which means the Red Needle. Do you know why he is called that?”

Morgan grinned at her. “Well, I can guess.”

She hesitated. “You seem a brave man,” she said at last. “I want you to be careful, too, and tell us nothing but the truth.”

“A prisoner of war doesn’t have to talk at all,” said
Morgan. “You’re a civilised people; you know that. If you mean to kill me if you think I’m telling you lies, I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

She was silent for a moment. “I believe you,” she said at last. “I think that what you have been telling us is the truth. Some of the men in there”—she indicated the house—“think that you have been telling us a pack of lies to try and save your life.”

Morgan said, “I can’t help that. I’ve done my best to answer truthfully, but they asked me a great deal that I don’t really know about.”

She said, “How soon do you think the English will attack? How quickly will they get down here, into the delta?”

He replied, “I don’t know. If I told you anything at all, it would only be my own opinion. If it turned out wrong, you would say that I told you lies and have me killed.”

“But we must have something to go on. How else can we tell what to do?”

He paused for a moment, and then said slowly, “Your brother told me that you are the Burma Independence Army. If you’re the lot I’m thinking of, you fought against us when the Japanese drove us out of Burma; you killed a great many of our chaps. Some of them were tortured.”

She faced him. “That is true,” she said firmly. “We fought to make our country free; we have been exploited by you foreigners long enough. I do not know about the tortures, but we fight our wars more bitterly than you do yours. You are kind to all prisoners, no matter how bad and treacherous they are. My people are not so gentle.”

The pilot glanced at her. “Are you still fighting with the Japanese against us?”

She said vehemently, “Never again with the Japanese.” There was a pause, and then she said, “We are what we say, the Burma Independence Army. You British ruled us simply to make money out of us; you took away our teak and rice and sold them for a high price, and took the money for yourselves. The Japanese promised us independence, so we fought with them to turn the British out.” She smiled cynically. “After that we found that the Japanese only meant to turn us into a colony for their own benefit. They took everything, even the sewing machines out of the villages, and sent them to Japan. They pay our coolies in paper money made in a note machine on the pay desk. Our country is ruined, and we are worse off than we have ever been.”

Morgan asked curiously, “Would you like to have the British back again?”

There was a long pause. “For myself, I would,” the girl said. “We have learned one thing; we are not strong enough to stand alone against great nations. If we have to have foreigners in our country at all, I would like it to be either the British or the Americans, and we know the British better. We have no quarrel with the British people—most Burmans get on very well with most British. But to be governed by your English sahibs who think themselves superior to us simply because of the colour of their skin—that is unbearable. We will not have it any longer. If you try to impose it on us again, we shall murder every Englishman in the country.”

Morgan said, “Starting with me.”

The girl broke into laughter. The guards looked at her uncertainly, with wrinkled brows; they had not understood one word of this English talk. “It is a long time since we have had an Englishman near enough to kill. Perhaps we shall keep you as a curiosity.”