The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (45 page)

There was another noise. Tension all round, rifle butts gripped more firmly. A password called across the road. Men slipping across to our side. The Assamese!

Then the firing broke out. We had heard a lot of shooting from Jotsoma an hour earlier – the Japs were going in there, by the sound of it. Now came rifle and automatic fire, punctuated by shell fire, from a greater distance. That would be Kohima getting it again! It sounded like a real pitched battle.

But the Assam Battalion kept coming across the road, Kukis, Karsis, and all the other tribesmen. What was more, they formed up behind us, in proper order.

It began to rain, a dull steady downpour. But the
stragglers still arrived. They had walked over the hills from Imphal, and moved without hurry or apparent fatigue.

One of them was saying something in a low excited voice, down on the road. I could hardly hear anything for the drum of rain on my monsoon cape, which was protecting the set. A minute later, Lieutenant Boyer fired a Verey pistol. As bright light broke over the scene, he gave the order to fire. The chaps lining the ditch by the road opened fire. Dusty Miller opened up on the Bren.

There were yells from the thickets opposite, and some answering fire. The Japs were there all right, and must have been on the heels of the Assamese, but they did not venture to cross the road.

Our shooting stopped, the rain petered out. The racket up at Jotsoma and Kohima was still going strong. Poor bastards! We waited for the order to move out, now that the job was done. Word came only when the survivors of the Assam Battalion were clear. We started moving up the track again. Dawn was just filtering in. Our first modest bit of action was over.

By now, Kohima had been six days under siege.

Only when you stood in that landscape, with your boots firm on the ground, could you understand why advances by either side were so slow. Whatever the country looked like from the air, from the ground it was baffling. To the confusion of whatever prehistoric calamity had thrown up this maze of small mountains and valleys, nature had added entangling forest. Every hill, valley, re-entrant, and salient was covered with vegetation which, although from a distance it looked little more than knee-high scrub – so large were the Assamese perspectives – on closer acquaintance proved to be a riot of thorn, bamboo, and towering trees. Every minor feature, nothing on a map, proved capable in actuality of swallowing a battalion. Every hillside mopped up men as a sponge mops up beer.

Every now and then, pressure on the sponge caused a trickle of combatants to emerge. Often they were walking wounded, from one of the sites within the Kohima perimeter, from Garrison Hill, the GPT Ridge, or even the disputed area by the District Commissioner's bungalow – then the most famous building in the world. They passed through
our lines, V Force men, Burmese Regiment, Mahrattas, Gurkhas, Nepalese, Indian Infantry, Royal West Kents, and disappeared again into the consuming jungle, led by Naga warriors. Dimapur was far away, somewhere in the blue distance near Calcutta.

Our attention hinged on Kohima, always Kohima, and what was happening there. The Japs never gave up. Their forces and ours were practically intermingled, and often fought for days on end within a few yards of each other. Behind the DC bungalow, centre of the dispute, the opposing sides lobbed grenades, volley after volley, across the tennis court. The RAF and the Americans were making air-drops of food, water, and ammunition to our beleaguered forces but, inevitably, some of these fell into Jap hands. It was hard to see how either side could survive for long.

There were plenty of other factors we did not understand. Why didn't Sato simply by-pass Kohima – there was nothing there anyone could possibly want, except the command of the Dimapur-Imphal road – and make for Dimapur, the gateway to India and impossible to defend? And why could we not make better progress in relieving Kohima?

The Japs had command of the road at several strategic places. To try to advance down it was to invite ambush and withering fire. It was equally impossible to move along the valley, for similar reasons: that broad valley was constantly under observation. Equally, you could not move along the ridges of the hills – they were too broken, too directionless. We were forced into the undergrowth. And the undergrowth provided the Japs with unlimited cover. They had perfected a system of interdependent bunkers which protected each other with cross-fire; if you charged one, you came under attack from two more. 2 Div was well mechanized, but mechanization counted for little here. Many of us were practising guerilla warfare before we ever heard of the term.

We were joined at Zubza by a detachment of Pathan muleteers, tall men with monstrous black animals in their charge, over a hundred strong. These cantankerous animals set off wild-eyed into the bush, bearing supplies. Our perimeter had to be extended so that we could give them protection, which caused a certain amount of ticking and grumbling. The culinary habits of the Pathans, the aroma and blood-sucking flies of their charges, made them
unpopular. Besides,
mules
were so primitive. They had gone out with the Great War!

Swinton dealt with that sort of attitude when he addressed us one morning, two days after we had gone down to the road to help the Assam Battalion.

‘You'll all be glad to know that 2 Div is finally moving into action. We are going to relieve Kohima. The rest of the brigade is already in the vicinity, and 5 Brigade is taking up temporary positions nearby. The First Battalion will be moving into action tonight, at midnight. The cooks are laying on an extra issue of
char
, and then we go forward.

‘Naturally, we aren't too keen for the Japs to know about this. They will have their heads down by then, although we are prepared to disturb their sleep if we have to.' We laughed at his assumed consideration.

‘We shall all be glad of the chance to do something positive. And we need a little exercise. We have been sitting on our arses for too long. We shall proceed to Kohima along the Merema Ridge.' He indicated it with a sweep of his arm. ‘We shall move along the Ridge, clearing it of enemy as we go, and we shall deliver a hefty punch at Sato from his left, where he will be least able to deal with it, and where it will hurt him most. He may be well dug in, but we shall dig him out – even if only to give him a decent burial!

‘On this operation, we have two objectives: to kill as many Nips as we can, and to relieve the Kohima garrison. I know you approve of both objectives.' We cheered to show we did. ‘Good. After Kohima, things will be easier. The road will be opened to Imphal and the Chindwin, and life should be simple. This is the decisive point in the war in the Far East – so we all understand, don't we, why the Powers-That-Be had to call in the Mendips for the job!' More cheers.

‘Let me just remind you about the question of supplies. They are vital, as you know. We are going to want to eat up on Merema. We may get some air-drops, but cargoes are limited. It goes without saying that the Fourteenth Army is short of planes! We are lucky to have the Pathans and their mules with us, to bring up rations and ammunition. They are absolutely marvellous chaps and we shall depend upon them absolutely. They come from mountainous regions of Pakistan and are a warrior people; they must be given every respect, for our stomachs if not our lives are in their hands.

‘Good! This is not a picnic we are embarking on. You are
all aware of that. We have a worthy foe, and we shall vanquish him worthily. I will remind you of the words of Shakespeare, which he gives to Henry V to speak before another great battle, the Battle of Agincourt.

‘The going before us will not be easy – we never expected it would be easy – but the victory, I promise you, will be something nobody will ever forget. We shall never forget it, and it will never be forgotten in the annals of our beloved country.'

As Swinton stood down, we cheered, and looked covertly round at one another. How many men there had tears gleaming in their eyes, as I had in mine – and have now, writing of it, all these years after! Those words from Shakespeare seemed to open up something inside us. If I ever come across them now, I can still weep, entirely without knowing why, for they bring back the emotions we felt in those shabby Assamese glades.

‘Bloody good speech,' I said to old Bamber, as we dispersed.

‘Old Willie's got the gift of the gab all right!'

‘Fuck off, it was a bloody good speech.'

‘I didn't say as it wasn't!'

‘Well, don't let your enthusiasm run off with you. “As long as you're listening to speeches, you're doing nothing worse”, I suppose!'

He looked at me. ‘You're young, Stubby, you're a good lad. But life isn't all speeches. It isn't what you says as counts, it's what you do.'

To accompany his talk, Swinton had brought a blackboard, on which his ADC sketched a map of the battle situation. The disputed section of the Dimapur Road formed the outline of the top half of a duck afloat. Kohima was tucked into the duck's head and beak. Above the head lay Naga Village, now in Jap hands. Down below its chest and off the drawing lay Imphal and the road to Burma. Zubza lay somewhere at the highpoint of the duck's tail. Stretching in an arc from
tail to Naga Village was the Merema Ridge, overlooking the road for much of its length. That was our route!

Its lower crests were above our camp, its slopes clothed in jungle, its crest hidden by false crests. Everyone looked at it and drew his own conclusions. And at midnight, as ordered, we began moving in single file up the jungle trails, heading for those false crests.

We began to learn the lesson many an army has learnt. Mountainsides eat armies. The true scale of any country can only be appreciated by walking over it. From a distance, the prospect of Merema looked straightforward. Climbing its hillsides seemed to call simply for patience and a little endurance. Yet, once we were under its tree cover, we found how every hillside was broken into dips and depressions and pimples and gulleys. Every miniature plateau offered its miniature ravines and cliffs. And, of course, Merema Ridge was just one comparatively minor feature of the area.

In daylight, thick vegetation cut visibility badly – you could walk into the Japs before you saw them. You might get a glimpse through the thickets of the crest, cloud drifting over it, and think, Thank fuck, we're there at last! You'd reach it, and it would prove to be just another false crest, and more thicket and another crest looming above you. Those bastard and everlasting hills! We didn't know what we were at – it wasn't exactly jungle warfare and it wasn't mountain warfare either. If this was Assam, roll on fucking Burma!

It was a matter of keeping going. We moved ahead for fifty minutes, had a ten minute rest, went on again. It rained hard for two hours. We wore our monsoon capes. You couldn't see where you were going and the trail grew very slippery. We could hear firing and the eternal Jap mortars, but nothing too near.

By first light, we were still stuck on the limitless hillside. Looking back through the trees, you could get glimpses of the rest of the world. It was all jungle. You could not believe that there were two brigades near you. A whole invasion force could have lost itself on Merema Ridge alone.

We dug ourselves in soon after dawn. I helped Tertis dig Gor-Blimey's foxhole while Gor-Blimey did his rounds. We ate a breakfast of eggs and soya-link and
char.
Pickets were set out, everyone else got their heads down. We were having
trouble with the bloody wireless set, and it was hell to get a message back to HQ, though we picked up 5 Brigade loud and clear.

We had patrols out during the day. There was one brush with the Japs, and two of them were killed. Aircraft were flying most of the day, Dakotas and RAF planes, dropping supplies to the garrison at Kohima. And sporadic firing. Only at tiffin-time was there a sort of truce. Thank God the Japs ate lunch at the same time we did.

With dusk, we moved forward again. Forward and upward. The eternal climbing, slipping back, the possibility of losing your footing and falling on to the man behind, or the man in front falling on to you. It was like madness, your leg muscles threatening to seize up, your heart threatening to burst. Although cool came with the dark, the air was suffocating in the jungle, and we were attacked by sodding great mosquitoes that whined and hummed round your face. To begin with, you'd try to smack them out of the way, but it soon became not worth while – easier to let them feed. By morning, our faces were a mass of blotches.

But before morning we had our own bit of excitement. It was a hell of a night everywhere. Kohima was getting a plastering again. The noise came down the valley and you couldn't be sure of its direction: the great hillsides distorted everything. There was also shooting down on the road, and behind us, and above us, and to one flank. It seemed as if everyone was blazing away bar us.

We got word over the radio that a company of Japs was attacking our former position down at Zubza. There were tanks at Zubza now, which had fired their seventy-five millimetre guns into the Japs at almost pointblank range. The surviving Japs were now climbing towards us, and a reception committee was quickly arranged.

It was a relief travelling downhill for a change. We moved to the rear, No. 2 Platoon, through our own troops. Our rearguard was already dug in on one of the false crests. There was a spur here, and Charlie Cox and Dusty set up our Bren on it, with good vision into the jungle just below.

We waited for two hours before anyone turned up.

The Japs came up the trail, moving fast. Their scouts were bayonetted without a word, and the rest allowed to gather on the ridge before our lads opened fire. From the spur, we could pick the rest off as they tried to rush up and
join battle, and we could cover the trail for some way back. Although the poor little bastards yelled and blazed away, they didn't have a hope. We killed thirty-one of them, with no more than a flesh wound among our own men.