“You can expect ’em to be pretty rough. They’re evil little sods, and couldn’t care less about the Geneva Convention, so there’s a chance they’ll beat you up – not just for information, but for spite. You know the drill: give ’em rank, name, and number, nothing more. Don’t lie to them. Keep your head up and look ’em in the eye. If it’s an officer or someone who speaks English, tell ’em they’re losing face by ill-treating a prisoner; it’s been known to work. But first and foremost – escape! Don’t be daft about it; wait for an even chance, and go! And keep going! You know how to look after yourselves. Don’t trust the Burmese unless you must; they’re mostly friendly, but they’re scared stiff of Jap, so watch it.” The last thing he’d said was: “Whether you escape or not, don’t give up. Remember they’re a shower of sub-human apes, and you’re better men than they’ll ever be.”
He was describing, absolutely accurately, an enemy well outside civilisation, but nothing we hadn’t know since the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore. Like everyone else, I suppose, I wondered how I would be if they got hold of me, which isn’t a happy thought in an o.p. at four in the morning … and Nick stirred beside me and asked in a whisper what time it was.
I had only to glance at the luminous dial of my watch to send my thoughts off at another tangent: breakfast at home, with my parents presenting the watch on my eighteenth birthday: there was the old, stiffly-laundered tablecloth bearing in its centre the faint embossed legend “Chicago Athletic Club” – not pinched by an itinerant relative, I may say, but a flawed item bought by my thrifty grandmother from the Paisley mill – and the triangles of toast in the rack, the monthly jar of marmalade with the golliwog label, the damp strong smell of the tea-cosy when my mother lifted it from the pot, the curious wartime breakfast of scrambled powdered egg and “Ulster fry” (one of Spam’s poor relations), my father glancing through his Glasgow Herald before checking his battered leather prescription book and hurrying off to his round of visits and morning surgery, the little electric fire making its occasional sparks … and in the darkness a few yards away a shadow was moving, and it wasn’t a pi-dog this time; it was small and stunted but definitely human, standing in a slight crouch, a rifle held across the body, then moving slowly forward.
I had only to slide my hand a few cautious inches to touch Nick, and his head turned; I didn’t have to point. I can see his sharp face with the heavy moustache, and the movement of his lips, pursed as though to shush me – which wasn’t necessary, really. We lay holding our breaths, heads close together, willing our bodies into the ground as we watched the figure advance, a slow step at a time, the dark blur of the head turning from side to side. If he held his course he would pass about five yards to our right; in that light he would have to be a bloody lynx to make out two figures on that broken ground – unless we moved. The temptation to get my hand on the stock of my rifle was strong, but I resisted it; by good chance the muzzle was pointed almost straight at him, and if he did spot us I would have to be damned slow not to get my shot in first … He was level with us now, treading delicately with barely a sound; he paused to look back and gestured, and other figures, equally small and ungainly, emerged from the gloom in single file – Jesus! there were eight of them, moving like misshapen little ghosts. It took them an eternity to pass our position, while I let my breath out with painful slowness and inhaled again; once I felt rather than heard Nick give a tiny gasp, and as the last figure faded into the dark behind us I turned my head to look at him. To my amazement he was grinning; he gave that little patting motion of the hand that says, settle down, take it easy, and when I stirred a finger towards the Verey pistol, lying between us, he shook his head. Still grinning, he put his lips to my ear and whispered:
“Goorkas! Ey, and they nivver even smelt us!”
Sure enough, a few minutes later, came the faint sound of voices far behind us; they were at the wire, making their presence known.
Another anti-climax – and another lesson, which I learned when it grew light, and silence was no longer necessary.
“How the hell did you know they were Gurkhas? They looked bloody like Japs to me!”
“They did to me, an’ a’ – at foorst. They’re a’ shortarsed boogers, sitha, but there’s one way ye can always tell Johnnie Goorka fra’ Johnnie Jap – Ah mean, w’en it’s dark-like, an’ ye can’t mek oot their fesses, joost their shapes. Ah didn’t spot it till they was near on past us. Always look at their ankles, Jock! The Goorkas, see, wear short puttees, like oors, so their troosers is baggy reet the way doon till their ankles. Noo, Jap wears lang puttees, nigh on up till ’is knee, so ’is legs look thin, ez if ’e ’ad stockin’s on!” Nick chuckled, well pleased. “An’ they walked reet by us! Heh-hee! The boogers!”
“Shouldn’t we have let on?” I realised the answer to the damfool question even before I’d finished asking it.
“Git hired,5 Jock! Ye’ve bin on night patrol – if soom booger challenges from underfoot, ye’re liable to do ’im! Ah want to die me own fookin’ way, not wid a kukri up me gunga!” This seemed to prompt another thought. “Ayup, tho’. Look, we’ll ’ev to tell Tut Hutton that we saw ’em, but we’ll not let on till anybuddy bar ’im. Mind, noo, Jock – doan’t tell nobuddy else.”
“If you say so – but why not?”
“Ah, they’re grand lal lads, the Goorkas – but, man, they’re proud! An’ they tek their sojerin’ seriously, an’ a’.” He wagged a finger. “Ah tell ye, if they foond oot they’d coom near treadin’ on us in’t dark, an’ ’edn’t spotted us, they’d ga fookin’ crackers! They wad, tho’! The naik6 leadin’ that patrol wadn’t ’ev to git busted – ’e’d bust ’is bloody sel’, man, oot o’ shame! An’ Ah’m nut kiddin’.” He shook his head in admiration. “So we’ll say nowt aboot it – bar to Hutton. Awreet, Jock? Good lad.” He had another chuckle to himself. “Walked reet by us, an’ a’! Nut bad, eh?”
I sympathised with the Gurkhas, having no doubt that in similar circumstances I could have walked through the whole Japanese Imperial Guards Division without knowing it. “All we had to do was lie still,” I suggested.
“Aw, aye? Is that reet, Jock? Girraway! Ah’m glad ye told us.” Cumbrian sarcasm is never applied lightly. “Lissen – the Goorkas is the best night scoots in the bloody wurrld! By God, there isn’t many can say the Goorkas nivver spotted their o.p.! Noo, an’ Ah’m tellin’ ye!”
“Right pair of Mohicans we must be.”
“Aye, laff, ye girt7 Scotch git! Looksta, if they’d bin Japs, an’ we’d fired oor Verey, they’d ha’ bin nailed, ivvery bloody one, on the wire wid their arses oot the winder! Wadn’t they?” He was quite belligerent about it. “Awreet, then! We did oor job, an’ the Goorkas missed us! An’ that’s nut bad! That’s a’ Ah’m saying!”
Well, he was infinitely better qualified to judge these things than I, and his words prompted a disturbing thought: if I’d been alone in the o.p. I’d certainly have fired the Verey, the Gurkhas would have been caught in the glare, and might well have been wiped out by a nervous Bren gunner making