‘Fuck this shite!’ Grabbing the Bren by the muzzle with both hands, Grant whirled it around his head like an athlete taking part in the hammer-throw at the Highland Games, finally releasing it to send it spinning into the undergrowth beneath the trees at the side of the road.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doin’?’ spluttered Kerr, outraged. ‘You go and fetch that back at once, d’you hear? That’s army property, that is!’
Grant grabbed two massive fistfuls of the front of Kerr’s shirt. ‘It never ends!’ he raged. Thrusting the lance corporal away from him, he unbuckled his webbing belt and shrugged off the shoulder straps, letting it all fall to the road, then began tearing at the rags of his shirt until he had completely ripped it off and stood there, bare-chested.
Kerr blanched. ‘Calm down! Get a hold of yourself!’
One of the Australians tittered nervously.
‘I’ve had it wi’ this shite!’ roared Grant. ‘D’you hear me? I have had it! It never fuckin’ ends! It never—’ Too choked up with fury and despair to speak, he roared incoherently, then seized Kerr’s throat with two massive paws and began to choke the life out of him. His eyes bugging out of his skull, Kerr turned even redder in the face than usual, gasping for breath as he clawed futilely at Grant’s brawny arms.
‘Oh, shit!’ said Torrance. ‘Give us a hand, Lefty!’ Torrance and Rossi each grabbed one of Grant’s wrists and tried to break his grip on Kerr’s throat.
‘I think he’s having some kind of nervous breakdown,’ said Sheridan.
‘Oh, no kidding!’ said Torrance. ‘Haven’t you got something you can give him?’
‘Like a sedative?’ She shook her head.
Torrance gave up trying to prise Grant’s fingers from Kerr’s throat. Unslinging his Thompson, he moved behind Grant and tapped him on the back of the skull with the butt. The tap had no discernible effect. Torrance hit him again, slightly harder. It still made no difference. Strange gurgling sounds were issuing from Kerr’s mouth: in a few more seconds he would be dead. Realising that trying to knock a man unconscious gently was a contradiction in terms, Torrance stopped holding back, slamming the Thompson’s butt into the back of Grant’s head with all his might. This time Grant finally released Kerr, and Rossi had to pull the lance corporal aside as Grant pitched forward, unconscious. Torrance took the log-line from Grant’s pack and used it to tie the big man’s wrists behind his back. Kerr stood there, one hand on his throat, gulping air into his lungs.
‘Oh, nice work!’ Sheridan crouched by Grant’s head and prised open his eyelids to look into his eyes. ‘Give him a cerebral haemorrhage, that’s really gonna help.’
‘What was I s’posed to do?’ asked Torrance. ‘Stand by and let him throttle Primsie?’
‘There was no need to hit the poor guy with your gun.’ Finding blood oozing from a graze on the back of Grant’s head, Sheridan bandaged a gauze pad over it. ‘You may have given him permanent brain damage.’
‘He’s a poor guy?’ spluttered Kerr. ‘That bloody barmpot just tried to strangle me!’ Grimacing, he delivered a savage kick to Grant’s ribs. He would have delivered a second, if Rossi had not pulled him away.
‘Awreet, Primsie, lay off him. Can you no’ see he’s had enough? After what we’ve all been through these past two weeks, the wonder of it is we’re no’ all off our heads.’
It took the combined efforts of Kerr, MacLeod, Torrance and Rossi to carry Grant back to the regimental aid post. ‘Why’s this man tied up?’ demanded the medical officer.
‘He lost his head,’ explained Kerr. ‘Got violent. Laid hands on an NCO. It was necessary for us to restrain him.’
‘Could be he’s had a mental breakdown,’ Sheridan added. ‘I suggest we keep him under sedation. Do you have any sodium amytal?’
The medical officer stared at her. ‘Sodium amytal! I haven’t even got enough morphine.’
Venables led Torrance, Kerr, MacLeod and Rossi back up to where they had left Lieutenant Jennings. They found the subaltern just below the crest of the hill, supervising as his men dug slit trenches. He arched an eyebrow when he saw Venables returning with four of the Argylls. ‘You four still here?’
‘Seems our transfer back to our own mob’s been delayed, sir,’ said Torrance.
Jennings smiled without much humour. ‘Yes, so I heard.’
‘I thought maybe they could be attached to my section,’ said Venables. ‘For the purposes of drawing rations and the like, I mean.’
‘All right, corporal. I’ll let Sergeant Lynch know.’
‘You don’t need to clear it with the CO, sir?’
‘With Brigadier Duncan hors de combat and every other senior officer dead or dying, that leaves Colonel Anderson in command of this brigade,’ said Jennings. ‘We’re surrounded by Japs and running low on ammo and rations. I’d say the colonel has more important things to worry about right now than whether or not I let four stray jocks attach themselves to my platoon. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Venables grinned. ‘When you put it like that, sir…’
‘Where’s Dr Sheridan?’
‘She’s attached herself to the RAP, sir.’
Jennings nodded thoughtfully. ‘Probably the best place for her, for now. Carry on, Venables.’
‘Right-oh, boss. Come on,’ to the corporal told Kerr, MacLeod, Torrance and Rossi. ‘I’ll introduce you to my cobbers.’
They headed off through the trees to where half a dozen Australians sat with their feet dangling in slit trenches, cleaning their Lee-Enfields. ‘Hey, Jim!’ called one. ‘Is it true what they’re saying about the Nippos cutting off the road to Yong Peng, the brigadier gone troppo and the wireless gone bung?’
‘Yeah, well, “Andy” Anderson’s in command now,’ said Venables, ‘so at least there’s someone in charge who knows what he’s doing.’
Venables’ comrades cheered: evidently they had a high opinion of their colonel.
One of them indicated the four Argylls. ‘Who are the Poms?’
‘Primsie Kerr, Slugger Torrance, Jimmy MacLeod and Lefty Rossi of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Seems they got separated from their mob and somehow wound up here. They’re gonna be joining our section, at least until we get back to div. Lads, meet Bluey Quinn, Spud Edwards, Agony Payne, Florrie Ford, Mother Hubbard and Snip Taylor – collectively known as Jim Venables’ Bushrangers.’
‘Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, eh?’ Hubbard rose to his feet. ‘One of you bastards broke my jaw at the Union Jack Club last year, put me in the Royal Alexandra for six weeks.’
‘Sorry about that,’ said Kerr.
‘I’m not,’ Hubbard grinned. ‘I managed to tear it off a bit with one of the nurses while I was there, so it was well worth it.’
‘Get your gear on,’ Corporal Venables told his section early the following morning. ‘We’re pulling out.’
‘Isn’t there supposed to be a battalion of Nippos between us and Parit Sulong?’ asked Quinn.
‘There is, mate. But there’s something wrong if a few hundred of us with Marmon-Herringtons, Bren carriers, twenty-five-pounders, mortars and grenades can’t smash our way through a Nippo roadblock or two. The Poms are holding the bridge at Parit Sulong. That’s just a dozen miles up the road. And it’s only four miles to the start of the Parit Sulong causeway. If we can reach that by sundown, we’re home and dry.’
‘What’s the Parit Sulong causeway?’ asked Rossi.
‘That’s your worst nightmare,’ said Payne. ‘We drove along it on the way here – seven miles of causeway, straight as a die, with nothing but padi fields on either side. Any Nippo planes catch us crossing there will have a field day strafing our column – we’ll stand out like dogs’ balls.’
‘Which is why we’ve got to reach it by nightfall, you drongo,’ said Venables. ‘The Nippos can’t strafe us if they can’t see us. The CO’s got it all worked out – we’ve only got to worry about ambushes for the first four miles, so we’re doing that in daylight. They can’t ambush us once we reach the causeway – no cover, is there? It’ll be a snack, I tell ya.’
‘A snack?’ asked MacLeod.
‘A piece of cake,’ explained Quinn.
All was chaos on the road, where the officers were trying to marshal fifty vehicles into some semblance of order: there were armoured cars and Bren carriers, Quad tractors towing twenty-five-pounders, lorries of every shape and description, most of them laden with wounded. At either end of the convoy the infantry assembled to defend the vanguard and rear: Australians in tin hats, and turbaned sepoys. The column must have covered a mile of road.
‘Talk about a cast of thousands, eh?’ Torrance had to shout to make himself heard above the growl of engines and the occasional grating of a clumsily handled gearstick.
‘Aye,’ said Rossi. ‘Tell Mr DeMille I’m ready for my close-up.’
The column set off just after seven o’clock, the vehicles crawling forward in low gear to match their pace to that of the infantry. Torrance, Rossi, MacLeod and Kerr found themselves marching in the vanguard with Venables and his men. Colonel Anderson marched with them, a dark-haired man in his early forties, his rugged good looks marred only by the squinty, myopic gaze behind his round-framed spectacles. Flanking parties moved through the rubber plantations on either side, probing at the undergrowth with bayonets fixed to their rifles.
Hearing the drone of an aero-engine, Torrance glanced up and saw a plane circling far above the convoy. It was too high to make out the markings on its wings, not that he needed to: he had not seen a single RAF aircraft since the campaign had begun.
Rossi was gazing up at it, too. ‘Keeping tabs on us,’ Torrance told him, ‘like them vultures following Ralph Richardson across the desert in The Four Feathers.’
Rossi aimed the Bren at it, squinting along its sights.
‘Don’t waste your ammo,’ Torrance told him.
‘Aye, well,’ said Rossi. ‘The bastard’s fuel canna keep him up there all day.’
Eight hundred yards from the starting point, they passed the lorry Torrance had missed the day before, its wooden sides and canvas canopy riddled with bullet holes, three corpses in Australian uniforms sprawled on the tarmac nearby. In addition to shooting them, the Japanese had set about them with their bayonets, mutilating them savagely. Beyond the lorry, the armoured car that had been escorting it lay on its side, a charred and smouldering wreck.
Venables nodded at the corpses. ‘That could’ve been you,’ he reminded Torrance.
‘Oh, Christ!’ Torrance’s stomach heaved at the sight. ‘Kill a man, well… that’s all part of the game. But cutting him up after he’s dead? There’s no need for that. Bloody savages we’re up against here, Jim. Nothing but bloody savages.’
‘Aye,’ said Rossi. ‘Savages with the very latest in modern armaments.’
Searching the trees on either side of the road with his gaze, Torrance pulled back the cocking handle on his Thompson. ‘So where are the bastards that did it? I thought there was s’posed to be a roadblock here?’
MacLeod shrugged. ‘They must have pulled back. Who knows? Mebbe they’ve pulled out altogether, an’ yon road’s open all the way to Parit Sulong.’
‘Some hopes!’
The road led them through a cutting, the foliage-covered banks no more than seven or eight feet high even where it was deepest: a fine place for a roadblock, and an even better one for an ambush. Marching in two long columns ahead of the convoy, one on either side of the road, the infantrymen surveyed the trees closely, expecting the rattle of machine guns to send streams of lead spraying out of the gloom beneath the rubber trees at any moment. Torrance’s palms were sweaty where they gripped his Thompson, his mouth dry. He wiped his brow with the sweat-rag tied to his wrist, and wished he could take a pull from his water bottle; but to do that he needed to sling the Thompson from his shoulder, and he dared not risk it. Besides, he knew the convoy was short of purified water: he had to make what was in his bottle last until they reached Parit Sulong.
Hearing the drone of an aero-engine, he looked up and saw a Japanese dive-bomber screaming towards them, following the road as it came in at a height of no more than a couple of hundred feet. ‘Take cover!’ he shouted, ducking down behind a Bren carrier. Other men dashed into the trees on either side of the road.
The bomber’s machine guns stuttered. Bullets tore through the treetops to the south of the road, missing the convoy entirely. Torrance heard shrieks of agony coming from the undergrowth, and then the bomber flew directly overhead. Reaching the far end of the convoy, it banked steeply, made a wide circle, and then roared along the convoy from the other direction, strafing. Again it missed the vehicles, the streams of lead tearing through the canopy of the trees on the north side of the road. A few men fired Brens at it, until their officers told them not to waste ammo.
Kerr shaded his eyes against the sun, gazing back down the length of the convoy. ‘No’ a single vehicle hit!’ he crowed. ‘Did I no’ always say the Japs canna shoot for toffee?’
‘What are you blathering about?’ asked Torrance.
‘It’s their diets, you know – they’ve got poor eyesight because they dinna get enough vitamins.’
Torrance gazed across to where men were emerging from the trees, now carrying or supporting the men who had been wounded in the strafing runs, helping them aboard lorries already crowded with wounded. ‘Poor eyesight, my arse,’ he said. ‘He’s probably got orders to leave the vehicles so his mates on the ground can have them once we’re all dead. If you ask me, that Jap pilot hit exactly what he was aiming at.’
The aeroplane turned away and droned off to the north. ‘Did I no’ tell you his fuel would run out?’ asked Rossi. ‘Aye, well. At least he’ll no’ be keeping tabs on us any more.’
Torrance tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to where a second aeroplane now circled high overhead. ‘The day shift just clocked in.’
They had been marching for an hour when they came to the place where the brigade’s B Echelon had parked its vehicles. Here there were burned-out lorries, some with the drivers still seated upright, dimly seen through the starred windscreens. Cooks lay where they had fallen by the ashes of their cooking fires, their skin already blackened by the hot, tropical sun. Not expecting to be attacked this far behind the front line, they must have been taken completely by surprise by the Japanese. A couple of crows squabbling over a dead man’s eyeball took to wing, cawing noisily at the approach of the convoy.
A crimson mist seemed to explode from Snip Taylor’s face, and Torrance saw that half his cheek was missing. In the same instant, bullets whip-cracked past his head, and Spud Edwards shrieked in agony, falling to the tarmac with one hand clutching his shoulder.
The rest threw themselves flat and crawled to the side of the road. Beyond the transport harbour, the ground on either side was more open, too swampy for rubber. Lieutenant Jennings levelled his field glasses. ‘Where the hell is that shooting coming from?’
Torrance pointed to a low ridge covered with trees overlooking the road from the south. ‘There. That’s where I’d dig in if I wanted to hold this road.’
‘Right! Follow me, men. Those reeds should give us some cover. On my word… go!’
They tumbled down the side of the embankment to the marshes below, wading through banks of rushes that towered high above their heads. Occasionally bullets whipped through the reeds, and even more occasionally someone cried out in shock as a bullet tore through his flesh, but it was obvious the Japanese were firing blind.
Only when the Australians emerged from the swamp at the foot of the ridge did the bullets coming down through the trees start to tell again. Kerr shrieked and collapsed. Torrance and Rossi grabbed by him the braces of his webbing and dragged him into cover behind a fallen, rotting tree trunk.
Kerr clutched at where blood spurted from a wound in his thigh. ‘Aw, Jeez! I’m goin’ to bleed to death!’
‘Looks like an artery’s cut.’ Taking out his flick knife, Torrance cut through Kerr’s webbing straps, using one of them to fashion a tourniquet. It stopped the blood from spurting, at least. ‘We’ve got to get him to the MO.’
Rossi gazed back across thirty yards of open ground between the log they lay behind and the cover of the reeds, every inch of it swept by machine-gun fire. ‘And how are we gaunae do that?’
‘We’re not,’ said Torrance. ‘Not till someone does something about that machine gun up there.’
Crouching behind the same trunk a little further along, Florrie Ford took a grenade from a pocket and pulled the pin. As he rose on his knees from behind the log to lob it, however, the machine gun sang out again. Ford shuddered as bullets tore through his torso, and sprawled on his back, the grenade rolling from his lifeless fingers. Torrance, Rossi, MacLeod and Kerr pressed themselves into the ground, arms folded over the backs of their heads. As the grenade exploded, Torrance felt a breath of hot, jagged air scrape across the backs of his hands, but nothing worse. He glanced across at Ford. The Australian’s head was missing.
Rossi nudged him and nodded to where two figures in Brodie helmets crept up through the trees perhaps fifty yards to their right. Torrance recognised one of them as Colonel Anderson, creeping stealthily from tree to tree with his Webley in his fist.
‘Let’s give him some covering fire.’ Torrance levelled his Thompson over the trunk and fired a couple of bursts towards the machine-gun nest above, before ducking down again. The Japanese responded with a prolonged burst that ripped the moss off the top of the rotting log. But now Venables was advancing on their left with Quinn, Payne and Hubbard. Taking turns to give one another covering fire, they dashed to new positions twenty yards closer to the machine gun, taking cover behind standing trees.
Anderson and his companion were less than forty yards from the machine-gun nest, crawling on their stomachs Apache fashion. A head wearing a Japanese field cap bobbed up behind another fallen tree. Anderson’s companion levelled his rifle.
‘Mine, Donnelly!’ Torrance heard Anderson shout, like a player at tennis doubles racing to return a volley. The Webley barked in his fist, and the Japanese fell back out of sight. Holstering the revolver, Anderson pulled a pin from a grenade, counted off the seconds, and lobbed it into the machine-gun nest. There was an explosion amongst the trees and a truncated shriek of agony. Venables and his men charged the last few yards, blazing away with Thompsons and rifles.
After a few seconds’ silence, a call came from the crest of the ridge. ‘All clear!’
The Australians pinned further down the slope cheered.
Torrance nudged Rossi and indicated Kerr. ‘Let’s get him to the doc.’
They carried Kerr back through the marshes to the road. Sheridan sat in the back of a lorry, bathing an injured man’s forehead with a damp cloth. Further back, a medical orderly sat next to Grant, feeding him from a tin of bully beef. Grant did not even acknowledge the orderly, staring unseeing at the canvas opposite, his jaw working mechanically as each spoonful was put in his mouth. When some drool ran down his chin, the orderly mopped it away with a rag.
Leaving Rossi and MacLeod to support Kerr propped against the back of the lorry, Torrance clambered over the tailgate before turning to grasp the lance corporal under the armpits and lift him up. ‘Another one for you, doc.’
‘Aw, Jeez!’ yelled Kerr. ‘Mind my leg!’
‘Oh, stop moaning, you big baby!’ Torrance lowered him to the floor. ‘Maybe give him a shot of morphine, eh, doc?’
‘There’s none left,’ she replied.
Torrance glanced at Grant. ‘How are you feeling, Titch?’
Grant did not even glance in his direction. ‘He’s not said a word since he regained consciousness yesterday,’ said Sheridan.
Torrance felt sick. ‘Did I do that?’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself. He wasn’t exactly compos mentis when you beaned him, don’t forget. He’s retreated into a catatonic state – a symptom of his nervous breakdown, I guess.’
Torrance looked down at the other wounded men in the back of the lorry. Their complexions had taken on an ashy pallor and their eyes were sunk deep in their skulls. Torrance decided against asking Sheridan if any of them would live; he had a feeling he would not like the answer.
‘It’s gonna be all right,’ he announced to the occupants of the lorry in general. ‘We’ve broken through the Jap lines. If everything goes according to Colonel Anderson’s plan, we’ll reach Parit Sulong in the small hours of tomorrow morning. Our lads are waiting for us there – once we get there they’ll whip these boys straight off to the casualty clearing station at Yong Peng.’
He vaulted back over the tailgate and walked to the head of the convoy with Rossi and MacLeod. ‘D’you believe a word of that bollocks you just told Sheridan?’ asked Rossi.
‘Nah, but you gotta say something to keep their spirits up, haven’t you?’
MacLeod took a long pull at his water bottle.
‘Go easy on the ayer, Jimmy,’ said Torrance. ‘We’ve gotta make it last till we reach Parit Sulong – maybe longer, if our lads haven’t brought up any water – and the CSM says a swallow at dusk is worth a bottle at noon. You’ll only sweat it out if you drink it now.’
MacLeod nodded, replacing the cap of his bottle, and wiped his lips on the back of his hand.
Torrance’s assessment that they had broken through the Japanese lines turned out to be over-optimistic: shortly after noon the column came across its first roadblock proper, made from tree trunks felled across the road, guarded by machine guns and mortars. The swampy ground on either side made a flanking attack impossible, obliging the Australians to make a frontal assault. A twenty-five-pounder was dragged up and blew a chunk out of the tree trunk, and some Australian gunners armed only with axes charged in to clear away the rest, hacking at logs and Japanese skulls with equal enthusiasm. When the roadblock was cleared and the Japanese either killed or chased into the swamps, the column resumed its advance, pausing at the roadblock only long enough for the Australians to gather the identity tags from the bodies of their fallen comrades.
The column resumed its agonisingly slow crawl along the road. Night fell, and they trudged on through the darkness. Overhead, the drone of aero-engines still sounded, though with the convoy travelling under blackout conditions they could not have been able to see much.
Someone swore in the darkness up ahead. ‘What’s wrong?’ demanded an officer.
‘It’s the causeway, sir.’
‘Have we reached it?’
‘That’s just it, sir. It ain’t there.’
Colonel Anderson came forward to see what the problem was. The causeway was still there, what remained of it, but bomb craters had blown sections out of it, into which the water from the adjoining padi fields had flooded.
‘There’s no way we can get the vehicles across in the dark now,’ said a subaltern.
‘We can’t very well wait until morning,’ said Anderson. ‘We’ll be sitting ducks for the Jap air force if we try to cross in daylight. Perhaps if we positioned men with torches at each crater…’
‘I don’t think we have enough torches, sir,’ a subaltern said, practical if not very helpful. ‘Couldn’t we turn the headlights on? Just until we get to the far end of the causeway, I mean.’
‘Those Jap planes are still circling overhead by the sound of it. If they see our headlights, I fear the temptation might prove too much for them.’
Standing nearby, Venables took a drag on a cigarette, the orange glow lighting up the palm of a hand cupped against the night.
‘Fags!’ exclaimed Torrance.
‘What’s that?’ said Anderson.
‘You don’t need torches, sir. You need fags. Station two men along the causeway every few yards, all of them puffing fags. As each vehicle approaches, they take a drag. The drivers will have no problem seeing the glow at a few yards, especially if the lads cup their hands behind them.’
‘That’s got to be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,’ said Venables.
‘Not so hasty, corporal,’ said Anderson. ‘It’s a little unorthodox, I’ll grant you, but… you know, that might actually work? In the absence of any better suggestions, it’s got to be worth a try.’
Orders were hissed in the darkness, and the infantry filed forward, their NCOs making sure they all had cigarettes and matches. Where the causeway had been cratered, they took up position knee deep in the water. When the two long lines of cigarette tips glowed in the darkness, Anderson gave the order for the first armoured car to advance. It rolled forward, splashing through the first flooded crater, and laboured up the other side on to an intact part of the road. A Bren carrier followed, then a Quad tractor towing a twenty-five-pounder. Frequently the lorries that followed lacked the traction to drag themselves up the far sides of the craters, and the infantrymen stationed along the road would crowd around the tailgate, putting their backs to it until at last the back wheels cleared the rim and it motored on. Occasionally a wounded man would groan as the lorry he was in jolted through a crater. Progress was agonisingly slow, but at least progress was being made. And no vehicles missed the road altogether to become bogged down in the padi fields on either side.
Torrance, Rossi and MacLeod hitched a ride on one of the Bren carriers bringing up the rear. Dawn was not far off by the time they jumped down again at the east end of the causeway. Anderson was already there at the head of the column forming up on the road. ‘We’ve done it!’ he said. ‘No more than a mile to Parit Sulong! We’ve made it, boys!’
Torrance heard the engine of a lorry coming in the opposite direction. He unslung his Thompson and Rossi readied the Bren. ‘Stand down, lads,’ said Anderson. ‘It’s one of ours.’
The lorry braked at the head of the column, swinging round to slew the vehicle across the road, blocking any further advance.
Anderson strode across to address the driver, who leaned out of the cab and spoke first. ‘Nippos, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘In the village up the road.’
‘Parit Sulong, you mean?’
‘If that’s what the village up the road is called, yeah.’
‘Are you sure they weren’t British? The Norfolks are supposed to be waiting for us there.’
‘Yeah, well, if those were Poms, they’ve got bloody itchy trigger fingers is all I can say.’
Anderson sent a couple of motorcycle dispatch riders down the road to check that whoever had opened fire on the lorry had not been British troops who had mistaken it for a Japanese vehicle. Both returned in a few minutes.
‘He’s right, sir,’ reported one. ‘If the Poms were in Parit Sulong yesterday, they’ve buggered off since then. It’s chock-a-block with Nippos there now. Bloody thousands of the bastards… and they’re waiting for us.’