Chapter 13
When I was about fourteen I sat three exams in mathematics, and scored 27 per cent in algebra, 10 in arithmetic, and 0 in geometry. It was below par even for me, and that third mark in particular rankled so much that I actually did some work for a change, mastered the simpler theorems, pinned Pythagoras (and his corollary) to the mat, and became something of an authority on the angles within a circle. It didn't get me within a rod, pole, or perch of passing Lower Maths (O-level, I suppose it is nowadays), but it was a fatal application just the same—or so I sometimes think, on the basis of if-I-hadn't-done-so-and-so, such-and-such-would-never-have-happened, which is a futile speculation at the best of times. Still, if I hadn't learned those circle theorems, I'm pretty sure that things would have been different one night south of Pyawbwe.
We left the town in mid-April, and spent the next two weeks jaunting peacefully down the road on the heels of 5th Div, who were clearing the way to Rangoon. According to one military history, they encountered only “slight opposition”—one of those phrases which causes me unreasonable annoyance, because while it may be slight to a historian, it certainly wasn't to the man on the spot, whoever he may have been. But whatever trouble they struck, we were a long way behind, taking in the scenery which was increasingly fertile and occasionally jungly, lush and green in the hot spring sunlight after the arid paddy of the Dry Belt. It was as pleasant as a journey can be in the back of a rattling 3-ton truck when you have nothing to do but bask in the heat, punish the water chaggles, watch Grandarse perspiring, and envy Stanley's ability to sleep like a babe with the Bren clasped upright between his knees and his head cradled on the flash eliminator; monotonous it might be, but it beat the hell out of marching and fighting. Only very young soldiers and head-cases object to boredom in war-time. Back in Ranchi, before the campaign began, I had been silly enough to remark to Parker that I was brassed off waiting to get into action, and he had grinned pityingly and replied: “You won't be sayin' that in a month or two.” Now, after Meiktila and Pyawbwe, I knew how right he'd been, and understood Nine Section's content as the long dull miles rolled slowly past. I could even endure a neighbour's composition of “South of Meiktila”, hummed to himself in a soft, maddening murmur:
Then the lads on the mortars got weavin',
They had the Japs on the run.
South of Meik-til-la,
Down Pee-aw-bee way-y-y…
over and over, ad nauseam, as he polished his awful lyrics—no doubt W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Hammerstein used to do the same sort of thing, but without the risk of being hurled bodily over the tailboard around Milestone 200. As I said earlier, it has since found its way into an anthology of Second World War songs, but no one sang along at the time; it was too hot, and too excruciating.
Although 5th Div were taking the strain, we dug in and stood stag at night as carefully as we would have done if we'd been up front. Jap might have been thoroughly hammered at Meiktila and Pyawbwe, and his armies split and scattered,* but he was still there, both sides of a bridgehead no wider than the road itself which 5th Div and ourselves were driving into southern Burma. High command may have known how badly his military machine had been thrown into confusion, but we didn't, and it was a dead certainty that he had more men in his three armies, spread from the Salween river in the east to the jungly hills of the Pegu Yomas in the west, than the 17th and 5th Divs combined. So each night the road south of Pyawbwe, for a hundred miles and more, was a series of armed camps waiting to be counter-attacked and taking no chances.
Digging in was much easier now. In the Dry Belt the excavation of a slit-trench four feet by four by two had been a back-breaking struggle with pick and shovel against ground as hard as flint and full of stones, and the entrenching tool had been as much use as a tea-spoon; once Grandarse, a skilled navvy among other things, had taken pity on my incompetence and plucked me one-handed out of my half-finished pit and completed it himself with huge smashing strokes of the pick. (“It's nowt tae dee wid stren'th, Jock; it's knawin' ’oo tae swing a pick, sista, an' thoo's got nae mair idea than parson's grandmither. Coom oot!”)
In the softer dark earth of the south even I could dig a pit in under an hour, and at one place where we stayed two nights, and the earth was a firm sandy clay, the section amused itself constructing a network of tunnels connecting pit to pit—quite unnecessary, but fun to do. It was the best position we ever had, for there was a fine field of fire across flat open ground to the jungle edge, a nearby tank* where we bathed, and our brigade box enclosed a little village on the road where we could get mangoes and the magnificent jungle bananas, which are a brilliant scarlet in colour and three times the size of the ones that you buy in supermarkets.†
Our pits were on the edge of the perimeter, facing west; somewhere beyond the jungly fringe ahead lay the Pegu Yomas, where Jap was reportedly getting his breath back, and patrols had brought in rumours of enemy movement in that direction. We operated the normal two-hour stags, and for added strength a platoon of Jat machine-gunners from the Frontier Force Rifles set up their guns between our pits. The Jats are a tough lot, from the Punjab, tall, light-skinned, and not unlike the Baluch hillmen of our brigade; being originally from Central Asia they looked as much like East Europeans as Orientals, with their narrow moustached faces and thin straight noses. Nick watched approvingly as they mounted their heavy Vickers pieces and took careful sightings across the open ground before setting the guns on what was called “fixed line”. The object was that, with the guns angled so that their lines of fire intersected, the gunners could simply keep their fingers on the button in the event of a night attack, and a blanket of fire that nothing could get through would cover our whole front.
“That'll gi'e the boogers a belly-ache, John,” said Nick, and the Jat havildar* grinned wickedly. “Tik hai,† ”said he. “Japanni wallah come this way—bus!” He fed a belt of ammo into his Vickers, took a last squint along the sights, and accepted one of Parker's cigarettes, which he smoked in the approved sepoy fashion—the butt between the pinkie and third finger of the clenched fist, the smoke being inhaled through the mouthpiece formed by the curled forefinger and thumb. A variation is to cup both hands together to form an air-tight pocket, but either way will make your head swim, and you won't want to smoke for a week. It was nothing new to the section, but now several of them were moved to try it again, and the peaceful dusk was shattered by their gasps and retchings.
“Obviously one inhales more air,” wheezed the Duke, “but why that should make the dose more powerful I can't imagine. You'd think it would dilute it.”
“Christ, it's like smeukin' owd socks an' black ploog!” croaked Wattie, racked with coughing. “It's woors'n Capstan Full Stren'th!”
“Ye could git the habit, mind,” said Grandarse, hawking and weeping. “By God, it's got a kick till it!”
“Daft boogers,” said Nick, who smoked a pipe.
“Can't see meself gettin' used to it,” said Parker. “Makes me wonder why I ever started the bleedin' things!”
“Never fancied ’em, mesel,” said Wedge primly. “Saved me money.”
“Git hired, ye clean-livin' git!” said Morton, having coughed himself to a standstill. “Ye'll joost spend it on drink.”
“Route marching in Blightly started me,” I said. “Everyone lit up at the ten-minute halts, and I felt out of it, so I began cadging fags, and then buying my own.”
“Ah'll bet ye took yer time aboot buyin'!” snapped Forster. “Mean Scotch ha'porth. Coom on, then, gi'es one! W'at the ’ell's this—doo Morrier? Wid a bloody cotton wool tip? That's a tart's cigarette, man!”
“Give it back if you don't want it,” I said.
“Piss off an' gi'es a light. Bloody ’ell, Ah might as weel be smeukin' fresh air!”
Filtered cigarettes were rare in those days, and considered effete. Lung cancer, passive smoking, and health warnings were unheard of, almost everyone smoked, and those who deplored the habit did so as much on mo
ral as physical grounds—there was a sense, among the godly and school authorities and my aunts, that it was sinful, not because it fouled the atmosphere or damaged the health, but rather because it betokened a low character.
“It boogers yer wind,” conceded Wattie, inhaling with satisfaction. “Thoo, Grandarse, tha'lt nivver win Grasmere the rate thoo's puffin' awa'.”
“Knackers,” retorted Grandarse. “Ah'll win Grasmere. Fags nivver done me nae ’arm. Ah joost smeuk it in an' fart it oot, an' Ah's in grand fettle.” He demonstrated thunderously, guffawing, and those nearest recoiled in disgust. The Duke, still inhaling thoughtfully through his fist, ignored him.
“There must be a scientific reason why the mixture of air and smoke has such a wallop,” said he. “Something to do with the diffusion of gases, wouldn't you say, Jock?”
“Ask Grandarse. He's the great diffuser.”
“I'm sure we did it in physics…what's Boyle's law?”
“Watt's pots never boyle.”
“Hee-bloody-haw! Is that your own?”
“No. 1066 and All That.”
“That just about sums up my education,” said the Duke glumly. “Christ, the things I've forgotten in five years! Used to know all about gases, once…maybe I'm thinking of Avogadro's hypothesis, whatever that was.” He shook his head. “I dunno why my parents bothered. Thirteen years of wasted time, apart from cricket. D'you know, I doubt if I could parse a sentence nowadays, and I'm buggered if I know what a gerund is. Supposing I ever did.”
“A gerund ive is a passive adjective—but don't ask me to define either of them.”
“As for bloody geometry,” said the Duke, “I can't even remember what an isosceles—”
“They're at it again!” cried Forster. “Lissen' ’em! Eddicated fookers—Ah doan't think! Doan't knaw their arses f'ae ’oles in't grun', eether on ’em! Shawin' off wid a' the shit they didn't larn at their snob skeuls!” He got up, stabbing an aggressive forefinger at the Duke. “Lissen you, clivver-clogs! Ye doan't knaw owt woorth knawin'! You or that Scotch twat—’ey, Jock, gi'es anoother fag, ye mingy sod!” He puffed it alight and blew smoke at the Duke. “Ye should ha' gone till elementary skeul, you! Might ha' got soom sense lathered intil ye!”
“You think I didn't get leathered?” asked the Duke.
Forster made an unbelievable noise of derision. “If ye did, it didn't larn ye owt! Bloody took-shops! Ah nivver saw a bloody took-shop, but Ah've larned things you'll nivver knaw!”
“I can well believe it,” drawled the Duke, and the tone and the look were like a red rag to Forster. He stiffened, spat, and leaned forward.
“Can ye, noo? Ye're that bloody smart, aren't ye? Awreet—you that's so bloody full o' science an' shit—tell us: if yer drivin' a bus, an' ye cross yer ’ands on't wheel—w'at ’appens?”
“I've never driven a bus—” “Naw! Not you! Nivver woorked in yer fookin' life!”
“—but I imagine you cross your hands to make a sharp turn.”
“That's w'at ye think, eh?” “What does happen if you cross your hands on the wheel, Foshie?” I asked.
“Ye git fired! Sacked! Kicked oot on yer arse!” His voice was shaking; all of a sudden, where I thought he had been merely needling, he was pale with anger. “Ah knaw, ’cos that's w'at ’appened tae me! The fookin' inspector saw us, an' Ah got me cards, theer an' then! Oot on't bloody street, November sivventh, nineteen-thurty-bloody-fower! W'ile you an' Dook were at yer fookin' posh skeuls, larnin' nowt an' stoofin' thasels in took-shop! On't bloody dole! But you—w'at the ’ell dae you knaw aboot that!”
Abruptly he turned on his heel and threw himself down beside his pit, drawing violently at his cigarette. Grandarse raised his head, surprised; the Duke was chewing his lip. If any two men in the section detested each other, he and Forster did, but it had never been so open before; at the same time, there was that in Forster's outburst which gave the Duke pause. Forster sour, Forster sneering, Forster scrounging and subverting, we knew—but not Forster in a storm of bitter indignation.
“It's ’ell in the trenches,” said Parker philosophically. Then the Duke said, in a quiet voice:
“That's a bit rough, I must say. They sacked you just for that?”
“Aye! Joost fer that! Roof, be Christ!”
“Well,” said the Duke, “I'm sorry, Foshie, but I don't see what it's got to do with what we were talking about—”
“Naw, you bloody wouldn't!” He was quieter, but still plainly full of bile. “You ’evn't a wife an' two bairns an' fook-all but the dole to live on!”
“Give ower, man,” said Nick.
“Give ower me arse! Stook-oop bastard meks me sick!”
The Duke sat up, slightly pink, and since Peel wasn't present I brought the ponderous weight of my one stripe into play.
“Cut it out, Foshie, Forget it, Duke—”
“Foshie,” said the Duke, “if you've got something up your nose, blow it out. It's not my fault you were on the dole—”
“Ah nivver said it wez!” Forster rolled up on one elbow. “But Ah'll tell thee this, Dook—if Ah'd ’ed thy chances, Ah'd nivver ha' bin on't bloody dole neether! Ah'd ha' made summat o' me bloody sel'! Nut like you, that nivver knew ’oo weel off that wez! An' bloody Jock theer! A' you twa knaw is w'at ye doan't fookin' knaw, the pair on ye!” He glared and turned away, grinding out his half-finished cigarette. For a man who had been known to crawl all over the truck looking for abandoned dog-ends, this was proof of strong emotion indeed.
The Duke opened his mouth and closed it again. Parker made a restraining gesture towards him and winked at me. “’Oo's fer a brew-up, then? Wot say, Jock—’ow abaht workin' yore well-known magic an' treatin' us to a fragrant steamin' pialla? Arraboy—wiv my permish you'll get a commish! Got the grub-box there, Dook? Let's ’ave a dekko at wot we got, then, eh?”
It petered out there, as most section quarrels did that stopped short of blows, with the older hands changing the subject and the principals lapsing into tight-lipped silence: damp it down and let it lie. I brewed up, with Parker pattering, and presently the tensions disappeared; by the time we were on to the second pialla Forster was grinning sourly again and cadging another of my du Mauriers, while the Duke, across the fire, was talking to Wedge and Stanley about K-rations as opposed to compo. But from time to time he would glance in Forster's direction.
Finally we turned in, which consisted of rolling up in our blankets beside our pits, but I wasn't like sleep at all. It was one of those tropic nights that travel agents dream about, warm and still, with a huge Burmese moon high in the deep purple sky, so silver-bright that it lit up the perimeter and the whole open ground to the feathery jungle edge. With the Jat guns and their crews in among us, the perimeter was thick with blanket-wrapped bodies; everyone was down except the men standing stag, two every thirty yards or so in their slit-trenches, and the Jat duty gunners sitting by their weapons. I was having a last (unlawful, since it was after dark) cigarette, shielding the glow in my cupped hands, when a figure approached from the far end of our section position: it was the Duke, his blanket round his shoulders, picking his way through the sleepers.
“Can't kip,” said he, squatting down. “Too bloody riled. I should have pushed that griping sod's face in. Shouldn't I?”
“No point. He was just letting off steam.”
“Yeah—in my direction, as usual. He's a needling bastard. I can do without it.” He pulled his blanket closer. “Anyway, I'm buggered if I'll tailor my conversation to suit him. What the hell did I say, anyway?”
If he couldn't see what had irritated Forster, there was no point in telling him; it wouldn't have been easy, and I wasn't inclined to try.
“God knows. Maybe he's got a touch of malaria; he's looking pretty yellow.”
“Who isn't? Anyway, as a matter of principle, I want to finish our discussion. So say something educated to me, will you?” I stared. “Anything, go on!”
“Have you been hoarding your rum ration???
? I wondered.
“No. I just want a minute's civilised conversation in which every other word isn't ’fook'. So humour me. Or tell me to piss off, if you can't be bothered. Anything'll do, so long as it isn't about the bloody Army, or Burma, or Japs—just for a moment, before, I was remembering school, and it was a pleasant change.”
Being curious, I asked: “What school was that?”
“Oh, you've never heard of it.” The moon was on his face, and I saw the wry grin. “Little place in the West Country, run by a retired I.C.S. wallah who liked to imagine he was a housemaster at a big public school. He had us playing the Eton field game, no kidding. But it was all right.” He shivered, huddling in his blanket. “Come on, for God's sake—conjugate something, or tell me the principal exports of Bolivia. Or the Corn Laws. Or valency tables. Any damned thing.”
He was in a curious state; if action had been imminent I'd have said he was edgy. It came to me that I really didn't know the Duke at all; we were so used to his languid, damn-you-me-lad style that it never occurred to us that there might be someone else behind it. However, if he wanted eccentric diversion…
“You mentioned isosceles triangles…will it do if I prove Pythagoras for you?”
“Jesus,” he said, “the square on the hypotenuse. I'll bet you can't.”
I did it with a bayonet, on the earth beside my pit—which may have been how Pythagoras himself did it originally, for all I know. I went wrong once, having forgotten where you drop the perpendicular, but in the end there it was, and the Duke's satisfaction was such that I went on, flown with success, to prove that an angle at the centre of a circle is twice an angle at the circumference. He followed it so intently that I felt slightly worried: after all, it's hardly normal to be utterly absorbed in triangles and circles when the surrounding night may be stiff with Japanese. When I confessed that that was as far as my mathematical genius went, he seemed contented enough, and settled himself to sleep, having thanked me between yawns. I asked if he wasn't going back to his own pit, and he said he couldn't be bothered.