‘In all there were seventeen British battalions, five Gurkha battalions and three West African battalions in the Special Force. No Indian battalions were used, owing to the difficulty, at that time, of special feeding, cooking, camp followers, etc, insisted upon by the Indian army, whereas all the battalions in Special Force could, and did, eat any type of food, although certain special provisions were sometimes made for the Gurkhas.’23
With admiration, Calvert later wrote, ‘At one time my brigade major, Francis Stewart, had to compete with seven different races in Brigade HQ, comprising British, Indian, Burmese, Karens, Chinese, West African, and Gurkhas.’24 Finally, on the basis of his personal experience, Slim offers this appreciation, an appreciation that puts some of the racial delusions entertained early in the East African campaign fully and finally to rest:
‘In Burma we not only fought against an Asian enemy, but we fought him with an army that was mainly Asian. In both respects not a few of us with little experience of Asians had to re-adjust many ideas, among them that of the inherent superiority of the white man as a soldier. The Asian fighting man is at least equally brave, usually more careless of death, less encumbered by mental doubts, little troubled by humanitarian sentiment, and not so moved by slaughter and mutilation about him. He is, by background and living standards, better fitted to endure hardship uncomplainingly, to demand less in the way of subsistence or comfort, and to look after himself when thrown on his own resources.’25
One subject about which no man fighting for any side, either in East Africa or Burma, harboured a single delusion was the difficulty to be faced in contending with raw nature. And raw nature in the tropics was a matter far divorced from raw nature as it was experienced in Europe. With the vagaries of weather everyone had to contend, but there all similarities between the fronts ended. To the lasting misfortune of the men who fought in the tropics, the threats and dangers imposed by nature arrived in a multiplicity of forms.
Occasionally, one supposes, soldiers fighting in Europe were bitten by dogs, scratched by cats, or bedevilled by lice and insects; if so, their problems with the animal kingdom were minuscule when compared with those of the tropical fighting man. Writing about East Africa, Christopher J. Thornhill recalled:
‘Charging rhino were to be a feature of this campaign – we had to get used to them and more or less dodge their cyclonic onslaught; for nothing but death will stop a rhino once he takes it into his head to charge, and it is not always prudent to let off firearms when enemy patrols are about. That day I counted no less than eight full-grown rhino disturbed by our advance, three of which charged, two of them being shot.’26
At Maktan on 3 September 1915, Angus Buchanan recorded this diary entry:
‘Out on reconnaissance, to position enemy holding about eight miles west of our camp. Moving quietly through bush – our party two whites and two porters. On outward journey ran across a rhinoceros, who charged on hearing stick break underfoot; but he stopped about ten yards short, when he then got our wind, and cleared off rapidly with a quick turn and snort, apparently afraid of us. Self and companions, at the sound of the rushing crash of the charge, had backed behind stoutish trees, with rifles ready, but the natives, in an incredibly short moment, had squirmed frantically into the bushes overhead.’27
As W. E. Wynn wrote, ‘In peace we laughed at the rhino, behind his back… In war the rhino was no longer funny. He was a nuisance. To my own knowledge eight men were killed by charging rhinos.’28 W. T. Shorthose, after reporting a number of men killed or wounded by buffaloes, went on to state: ‘Not only from German rifles did our men suffer in the East African campaign. I am correct in stating that numbers of carriers were taken by lions, also sentries, others crushed to death by elephants or tossed by buffaloes and rhinos, and many poisoned by the bite of snakes.’29 Given the incredible abundance of East African wildlife and the utterly uncertain nature of its reactions to man, the threat it posed was ever-present. Francis Brett Young describes a fine bull oryx several times charging his column before a thin line of machine-gun porters finally parted from before its straight horns, which allowed the cornered beast to escape into the bush.30 The aggressive African honey bee – today called ‘the killer bee’ in the United States – several times disrupted entire military columns on the march.31 And at least once, at Tanga, the viciousness of the bees played a significant role in a British defeat:
‘As a matter of fact, wild bees worried the Lancs a good deal. It sounds ridiculous, but I saw it myself. Apparently wild bees were in abundance in some of the palms, and bullets happened to break up their nests. They all came out angry and stung anything in their way. I myself got stung twice by angry bees, and some of the Lancs were stung all over by hosts of these little pests. Of course, they said the Germans had let bees lose on them, but this must be nonsense.’32
When a predator was involved, a sudden attack could be far more threatening:
‘The enemy soon got to hear that we were in their neighborhood, especially as we were getting in the Government tax food from the various villages, to prevent it falling into the enemy’s hands. However, we had our own troubles close at hand, for a few days after making our temporary camp and erecting shelters, a leopard, coming into the camp at night (we had, of course, no fires), seized and terribly mauled my white companion. The horrible beast, sneaking in, had seized his victim by the head, and, dragging him off his stretcher, had actually taken him away some fifteen yards before we were able to help him. Being asleep at the time, I was rather muddled for a few seconds when his shrieks started, and I fear was all too slow in coming to his assistance. It was not till he had cried out “chui” (leopard) that the situation was made plain to me, and meanwhile the man-eater was worrying him.’33
Minutes later, at the opposite end of the camp, the same leopard attacked and attempted to drag away an askari. Throughout the East African campaign, raw nature could be as dangerous as the enemy.
In Burma, the threat – if slightly different – proved no less ubiquitous and appeared again in a variety of forms. When the 7th Armoured Brigade arrived in Burma straight from combat in the North African desert, Rangoon was already under attack and in a state of chaos. Captain the Rev N. S. Metcalfe, Chaplain to the 7th Hussars, went with the transport officer to the zoo in order to recover some RAF vehicles thought to have been abandoned there: ‘Fortified by the report that all the animals of a dangerous nature had been destroyed, we made our entry only to discover that some were very much alive, and outside their cages! There was a tense moment when it was discovered that a “tree trunk” was really a crocodile, and a “rope”… a full-size boa constrictor!’34
Training in eastern India before Wingate’s 1943 penetration into Burma, David Halley relates a narrow escape:
‘One dark and starless night, a Gurkha sentry was standing to his post, alert and keen as Gurkhas always are. The jungle here seemed to us thick enough by day, as the visibility was never more than about fifteen feet, but at night it was impenetrable. The Gurkha strained his eyes this way and that. It was coming near the hour of dawn, when the enemy is most likely to make his attack. The slightest unnatural movement would herald his arrival. At last came the sound for which he had been tensely listening, a stealthy crackle in the undergrowth… He crouched, ready to spring. A slinking shape materialised, blacker against the surrounding blackness. The Gurkha leaped and clutched, then, with a startled cry, let go his hold and departed at speed into the night.
It