The sun came up slowly, the thick mist which lay over the river gradually vanished and after two hours marching we came to the village where I had spent the night in the pagoda. There was a small market, and with some of the remaining coins from the notes I had changed I bought some bananas and rice cake to see us through the two days’ march to Man Ying. Bland put the purchases in a bag he was carrying and we set off again.
It was just after noon. I was on a small bamboo bridge which crossed a stream, and glanced back to check that both Bland and Lacey were still following. Lacey was about twenty yards back and Bland about the same distance further away. Satisfied, I carried on. At the same time I looked for a spot where we could stop and have a rest. At last I found a nice grassy bank beside a small clear-running stream in the shade of some trees, sat down, and waited for the other two. Lacey arrived and sat beside me.
‘Blimey Fred, isn’t it hot?’ he gasped out.
‘Where’s Bill?’ I asked.
‘Oh, he’ll be here in a tick,’ he answered, and lay back on the grass.
Ten minutes went by, then another five, and still no sign of Bland. ‘Are you sure he’s coming?’ I asked Lacey with some concern.
‘Yes, he was on the bridge the last time I saw him,’ he answered, getting to his feet.
‘Well, he should have been here by this time,’ I said, getting up. ‘We’re going back to have a look for him. You look to the left and I’ll keep my eyes on the right.’
We both made our way back to the bridge. ‘You stay here and I’ll go over to the other side,’ I ordered. ‘If I see him, I’ll give you a shout. You do the same if you see him.’
But there was no sign of Bland anywhere. I went to some people working in the fields close by and asked them whether they had seen a bearded Englishman. They said no. We eventually went back to where we had stopped for a rest, in case he had got past us somehow, but again there was no sign of him.
I climbed a tree and sat high in the branches and had a good look around. Some distance away I saw a person walking across the fields of growing rice, towards what looked like another Mission. I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Bill!’ The person stopped and looked in my direction. I shouted a second time, but the person ignored my shout and disappeared behind the wall of the building.
I got down from the tree and said to Lacey, ‘Come on, he has gone to that big white building over there.’ It was about half a mile away. We hurried through the trees towards the building, which had a high tower with what looked like a bell in it. Around it was a whitewashed wall. The path took us to a door in the wall. The door was open so we entered into a yard. At the base of the tower was another door. I knocked hard. After a few moments we could hear the slip-slop of sandals approaching. The door opened and a wrinkled old Chinese woman came out. She was obviously surprised at seeing us, for her eyes opened wide and she stepped back with a start.
‘Have you seen an Englishman?’ I asked in Mandarin.
She shook her head and said ‘No!’
Being thirsty, I asked the old lady if she could give us a drink of water. She waved us into a room where she told us to be seated. We both sat on high wicker bamboo chairs and she disappeared through a beaded curtain, leaving us alone.
I glanced around at the décor. Tapestries hung on two walls, and along the wall opposite the door was a long and high bookcase. I rose from my seat and went and looked at the books. To my utter surprise the case contained books by Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Dickens and other well-known poets and writers, while on the lower shelf were large red bound books on English law. Further along and on the bureau were photographs of cricket teams like those of Eton or Harrow. I drew Lacey’s attention to all this, but he was not interested.
The old lady returned with a tray containing two glasses of what looked like ginger beer and two large slices of pink melon. Behind her came a young Chinese man in thick horn-rimmed spectacles and wearing European clothes on the top half of his body, Oriental ones on the bottom part. He greeted us in Chinese and held out his hand for me to shake. I took his hand and returned the greeting. Lacey did the same. I then thanked him for allowing us to rest in his house. He replied that this was not his house but his uncle’s. I went on to tell him that we had lost our friend. He told us that he had not seen any other Englishman.
It was getting towards five o’clock in the evening, so I ventured to ask the young man, ‘May we stay the night here, so that we can make a search for our missing friend tomorrow?’
‘I shall have to ask my uncle,’ was his reply. He left us, and Lacey and I set to devouring the juicy melon and cold drink.
It was getting dark as we sat waiting for the return of the young man. The old woman went around the room lighting small oil lamps that cast weird shadows.
After some time the young man returned and handed to me a small piece of paper. On it was written in English, ‘Please come with the bearer of this note.’ It was not signed, but whoever it was must have had a good education by the style of the writing. So without any hesitation we got to our feet and followed the youth.
It was fully dark as we followed him in an east-northeasterly direction, which meant that we were going nearer to Man Ying. I was still very concerned about the disappearance of Bland, but I was equally puzzled to know who we were going to see.
We had been walking along the top of the paddy fields for about half an hour when I saw lights some distance away. The young man stopped, pointed at the lights and said, ‘That is the place.’
We entered the village which seemed to be ablaze with lights. There seemed to be many people there awaiting our arrival.
I had a good look around to see if there were any Europeans in the village, but could see none. All were Orientals and dressed as such.
The young man led us to a pagoda, which was also brightly lit. Before entering we removed our boots and socks. Our guide motioned us towards some chairs set at a long table. Then he disappeared.
There was plenty of activity as young girls and women went about the task of placing dishes of all kinds of food on the long table. Some of the girls glanced at us sitting there, and giggled among themselves.
‘Well, it looks as though we are going to have something to eat,’ said Lacey, licking his lips at the sight of the numerous dishes of fruit and other food.
‘Looks more like a bleeding banquet to me!’ I replied.
Leaning over to whisper, Lacey said in a low voice, ‘I wonder who this bloke can be?’
Before I could answer, our guide reappeared. He walked straight toward us and, leaning down, asked us to stand, which we did.
Everyone in the room stood and faced the door. In strode a well-built man dressed in a white open-necked shirt and white trousers. His hair was jet black, as were his eyes, which had a piercing look as if he knew what one was thinking. His face was round and flabby with a double chin and a sallow complexion like a half-caste’s, making the eyes seem even blacker. He was taller than both Lacey and me.
As he neared us he put out his fat stubby-fingered hand in friendship. I took the extended hand and shook it as warmly as he did. In perfect English he asked our names. I told him mine and introduced Lacey.
‘I’ll bet you chaps are devilishly hungry, what?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir! We are,’ I answered with a broad grin. ‘Thank you for asking us to come and join you here. And what do we call you, sir?’ I asked.
‘Me?’ He pointed to himself. ‘Just call me Saubur.’
He smiled and watched my face. I tried not to look surprised by covering up with a wry grin and answering as calmly as I could. ‘Very well, Saubur, but this surely is not an English name, is it?’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s an Oriental name,’ he smiled, still watching my face.
‘When I got your note written in that very good hand,’ I flattered him, ‘I thought you could be either English or American.’
‘Well, let’s cut out the chat for now,’ he said, waving a thick podgy arm towards the table and chairs. ‘Let’s dine.’
He moved to the head of the table while Lacey and I sat on his left hand side. A woman sat on the corner between me and the saubur, and another young woman sat on my left between Lacey and me, then another woman sat beside him. Opposite me sat our young man and guide with a very young woman on each side of him. Another young man had joined the party and sat opposite Lacey. All the women had that Oriental beauty and were all of our age or maybe a little younger. But my mind was not on the girls. I was deep in thought at what the sergeant had told me about the saubur. If what the sergeant had told me was true, then we both had got to be very careful or we might not get out of this place alive.
The feast began with the saubur banging his chopsticks on the table and shouting, ‘How-Lah,’ to which everyone also shouted and got stuck into the food. Two young boys with large jars went around the table pouring out the clear water-like rice wine into everyone’s glass. This wine, even drunk in moderation, can knock you out in a very short time if you are not used to it, as we had found out on a number of occasions prior to the beginning of hostilities. Drinking a glass of water the next morning to ease the dryness in the throat makes you drunk again!
I looked at Lacey. He was swigging it down as fast as his glass was filled, but I refused it completely. One of us had to stay sober. I made the excuse to the saubur that I had just recovered from a bout of malaria and did not wish to bring it back on by drinking alcohol. He was a little put out by this at first, but when Lacey, who was lisping a little already, confirmed what I had said was true, he seemed to accept it.
During the meal the saubur spoke to me in English about the war and things in general, but when he spoke to our young guide he spoke in a language which was foreign to me, not Mandarin. This, I was sure, was so that I would not know what they were talking about. They periodically glanced at me as they chatted. I was sorry that they knew that I could understand Mandarin.
During the conversation with the saubur he asked me where we were heading, and where we had been. I explained to him what we intended to do, and told him how some weeks before we had been robbed of all our belongings and money. I put emphasis on the word money. It was during this line of enquiry that the saubur said he was sorry about what had happened to Sergeant Friend and the others. He then asked where I was at the time.
‘Oh, I was at Man Ying, laid up with the fever,’ I answered, which was not an untruth, and which he may have known anyway.
‘They were ambushed by bandits, you know?’ he said, showing no sign of sorrow.
‘Yes, Sergeant Friend told me all about it,’ I replied.
‘They stayed here for a couple of nights,’ he said. ‘We had some great time,’ he added, smiling to himself.
It made me wonder if this bloke was playing cat and mouse with me. At times he seemed genuine, at others not. I did not like it when he talked in the foreign language with that young nephew of his.
He surprised me with his next statement. ‘Do you know, Fred,’ – he looked at me with his eyes squinting like black slits – ‘that Sergeant was a bloody fool.’
‘Oh, why is that?’ I asked, looking at him, and at the same time silently agreeing with him.
‘Because,’ he began slowly, ‘I told him that it was dangerous to go that way.’ He paused for a moment, put some food in his mouth, took a sip from his glass, then continued. ‘But that stupid fool ignored me and my warning.’ He took some more food from one of the dishes and ate it. Then, looking at me, he asked in between chews, ‘Why is it that a man like him gets the stripes?’
‘Don’t ask me a question like that, Saubur,’ I said. ‘Ask those people who dish them out.’
After that, the saubur brought the women into the conversation, but this time he spoke in Mandarin. Lacey was still tipping the wine back and was beginning to get quite drunk. The thing that began to worry me was that he might get fresh with either of the women next to him. I would have rather he got blind drunk than start something like that, but one could not tell with Lacey.
Once, when I picked up my glass to drink what should have been water, I smelt the wine. I pretended to drink, and as I put the glass back onto the table I ‘accidentally’ knocked it over. I begged my pardon and said that I was sorry to all around me. The saubur then said something to his nephew in that strange language.
I was enjoying the food. There was plenty to go around and certainly a variety. I was making the most of the opportunity, for I had no idea when we would get the next meal.
Then the saubur stopped eating, looked hard at me with his cold dark eyes and asked, ‘Fred, how would you like to stay here with us?’
‘What?’ I asked in amazement, taken completely by surprise.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘you seem to be an intelligent sort of fellow. You speak the language pretty well. My nephew here tells me that you are an NCO. I will pay you well and feed you well, as you have been fed tonight.’
‘But, but,’ I stammered, trying to get a word in.
But he continued, ‘Are you married, Fred?’
‘No, I’m not married,’ I answered, at last getting a chance to speak.
‘Well, then, you can have any woman here, except this one.’ He patted the woman on his left. ‘You can have two, if you so wish it.’
‘No, thank you very much,’ I replied. ‘But tell me why you want my services?’ I was watching him closely.
‘Well, Fred,’ he began, ‘for many miles around here there are bands of marauding robbers and bandits.’
I nodded in agreement, but said nothing.
‘I want to protect my property against them,’ he continued. ‘Should they try to attack me, I want someone like you to train some of my servants and people to do the right thing at the right time.’ He paused and stared at me. ‘What do you say?’
I did not answer immediately, and thought what action he would take if I refused, and whether or not he was genuine. Was he hinting to me that he was the number one bandit in the area and wanted to keep off intruders to his territory? I had to tread extremely carefully here, I thought, or else both Lacey and I could end up in a shallow grave. From what I could see, this man had very few scruples and might stop at nothing to get what he wanted. For what seemed an eternity I held back from answering him. I glanced sideways at Lacey. Looking at the big drunken sod, I thought, what use is he to me now? He was grinning all over his face and his beard was covered with fat and grains of rice. He was swaying back and forth, with a glass of wine in his right hand and his left arm was around the shoulder of the woman on his left. Well, I thought, if it is our last meal, at least he is enjoying himself.
‘I can understand your predicament, Saubur,’ I said, picking my words very carefully, for after all, our lives might depend on what I said next. ‘Can you understand the position that I am in?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, bringing his black eyebrows down into a frown.
‘I mean, Saubur, that I owe allegiance already to my king and country, to which I swore an oath, and it is my duty to try at all cost, even my life, to make every attempt to re-join the first British unit that I come into contact with. I am deeply sorry that I can in no way repay the wonderful hospitality that you have shown to my friend and myself. I am sorry, but I must refuse your proposal.’
He leaned his big bulky frame back in his chair, shook his head slowly and said, ‘I cannot, for the life of me, understand you British.’ He slapped the table with his two palms. ‘You are being knocked for six all around the world with no sign of winning, and you sit here and talk about oaths and duty!’ He dropped his head and shook it from side to side as if in disgust at my answer to him.
‘Yes sir, we are taking a beating.’ I leaned forward, getting a little more confident. ‘But we haven’t fought that last battle yet!’ I grinned at him and waited for his next comment.
It seemed that what I said and how I had said it had eased the situation, at least for the time being, for he raised his large frame out of the chair and said, ‘Well, I suppose you’ll want somewhere to sleep.’
We all rose from the table, and I answered, ‘Yes, please!’ As an afterthought, I asked, ‘Could you supply me with a guide at sunrise to go and look for our lost friend?’
‘Don’t you worry about that, it will be taken care of,’ he told me, putting his arm across my shoulder.
He called to one of the boys who had waited at the table and spoke in that foreign tongue. It was obvious that he was giving the boy some orders. Without another word to us, the saubur left the building, and the boy motioned to us to follow.
Lacey was the worse for drink and had to have my help to walk. ‘Why didn’t you go easy on that rice wine? You bloody fool!’ I grumbled and swore at him.
His answer was, ‘Itsh the besth time I’ff had frr a long time.’
‘Do you realise who we are with?’ I asked, trying to make him see sense.
‘Who cares?’ he sniggered.
The boy led us to some cattle sheds and motioned us to wait. When he returned he was carrying a couple of blankets. He led the way up a bamboo ladder to a hay loft above some stalls, dropped the blankets and indicated that this was where we were to sleep.
I struggled to get Lacey up the ladder with the help of the boy. Lacey fell flat on his face in the corner and I covered him over with one of the blankets. I thanked the boy who turned and went back down below. In no time Lacey had rolled over onto his back and was snoring like a pig.
I then set to work gathering enough straw together to make a ‘dummy’ alongside where my companion was sleeping, covered it with the blanket and placed my bush hat as the head. Somehow I still did not trust the saubur. After that, I selected the darkest corner and covered my legs and feet with straw. I sat and waited. What I waited for, I had no idea, but the two Orientals talking in that strange tongue at the table made me very suspicious. I sat perfectly still, for the least movement made a creaking noise. It seemed hours. Lacey was snoring his head off.
My eyelids began to get heavy as I sat there in the darkness. I had begun to nod when I heard a slight noise from one side of the loft and became alert. My eyes tried to pierce the blackness, and then I saw it. A large rat was sniffing about. Slowly it moved towards where my friend lay, unconscious of the intruder. I let out the breath that I had been holding so as not to attract attention, and watched the dark long-tailed creature as it stood on its back legs and explored the covered body of my friend. I relaxed a little. The sudden tautness to my nerves had caused me to break out in a cold sweat, so that I was soaking wet, but I couldn’t help a grin as I watched the animal pull itself up and sit on Lacey’s heaving belly. For a moment it sat there, seeming to enjoy the motion, then it slid down between Lacey and the ‘dummy’ and went out of sight.
I awoke with a start. I was lying on my side. The grey light of dawn had penetrated the loft. Quickly I crawled over to the blanket-covered humps, disarranged the one covering the ‘dummy’ and shook Lacey. ‘Come on!’ I shouted at him. He gave a grunt. ‘Come on! We have to look for Bill,’ I shouted, shaking him. I then crawled to the ladder and looked down. At the bottom with his feet through the first rung was the sleeping boy. I gave the ladder a shake and the boy jumped from the bed, looked up at me and grinned.
Collecting the blankets we descended the ladder and handed them to the boy. I motioned that we wished to wash, and he led us out to a well in the now deserted village. There he left us, returning a few minutes later with two towels. He had obviously had his orders to guide us in the search for Bland, for after a while he went ahead of us leading the way to a number of villages. We went in a circle. No one had seen an Englishman. No one even knew what one looked like, as they had never seen one. They were most surprised when we told them that he looked like us.
We returned to the village at about one in the afternoon to find a meal had been prepared for us. The saubur came to us as we ate and said, ‘So, you have had no luck then, Fred?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘it seems that he has just vanished into thin air.’
‘Was it too warm for you last night, Fred?’ he asked looking at me hard.
‘Warm? No, not really,’ I answered, a little puzzled.
‘Then why didn’t you use your blanket?’ he asked, looking me straight in the face.
‘Oh, well, err..,’ I stammered, being caught out and not knowing what to say. ‘It was a bit warm up there,’ I lied.
‘Your friend slept alright,’ he nodded to Lacey.
‘Oh, he would’ve slept under any conditions with the wine he’d drunk!’ I laughed, trying to change the subject. The man’s face broke into a smile and he nodded his head. So, someone had been up to have a look at us while we slept!
I quickly got off onto another track by saying, ‘I’m afraid that we must be off and make our way to Man Ying. Our friend may be there and waiting for us.’
To this the saubur agreed, saying, ‘Alright, but I do wish that you would change your mind and accept my proposition.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I cannot.’
‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, leaning over the table. ‘I’ll make you a better offer. You can have anything that you require, both you and Lacey. And furthermore, I will get some men to go out and scour the land and bring your friend, err, what’s his name?’
‘Bill,’ I cut in.
‘Bill. We’ll bring Bill back here and then you can decide between yourselves what you want to do. How does that suit you?’
I could not answer, not straight back in all honesty. I had to think. We had another fifteen hundred miles to go, and the further we went the harder it had to get. We, two of us that is, if we did not find Bland in Man Ying, had to go over some of the toughest country in the world with little or nothing.
Then I looked at the man sitting before me. Was he a villain, this well-educated, well-spoken and well-mannered man, or was he having me on and going to use me for other purposes if I accepted? Then the words of the colonel came back to me, wise words of an old campaigner. ‘Don’t get mixed up with any rabble!’ Friend had, and look how he had got on!
‘No, Saubur,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot accept. I must carry on and try to get to India and to join our forces.’ I stood up and put out my hand to show him that I left him in friendship.
He took it and said, ‘Fred, I think you’re a fool, but not the same sort of fool that your sergeant is. Good luck!’
Lacey then shook his hand, and we waved farewell as we left the village with a young boy showing us the way.
The young boy walked with us for a good hour and put us back on to the now familiar road to Man Ying. We evaded two villages and slept out under the trees. We did not wish to get into any more trouble, as we had been informed that some of these villages were very religious and did not like foreigners.
We got in sight of Man Ying about three in the afternoon. It cost me one yuan for the two of us to get across the river. On arriving at the Mission, our first question to the French priest was, had he seen Bland. To our dismay he had not. The priest advised us to go to the YMCA and ask there, but he said for us to be very careful, as they had now become ‘very aggressive’ towards everyone.
Lacey and I discussed this on our own. We thought that perhaps we had misunderstood the priest. We put it down to the fact that we had to converse in Chinese with him and that we had misinterpreted his words.
The next morning Lacey and I made our way to the YMCA. To our surprise it was decked out with red banners with both black and white Chinese characters. As we entered, four men wearing fur hats and long overcoats with red armbands came forward and asked what we wanted. They spoke in Mandarin and were very abrupt.
I asked them whether they had got any information about an Englishman. As I spoke, the young man whom we had seen before came out of a rear room. He was very apologetic and said that he had not heard nor seen anything of our friend.
On the table was a large amount of all types of rifle ammunition, some .303 and some .280, also some .45 to go with Colt automatic pistols or Thomson submachine guns. Along one wall, behind the four men, there stood a number of rifles. Among the rifles were six British Army Lee-Enfields. Two of them had the light woodwork of those issued to the Indian Army. The two Indians with our party had had similar coloured rifles, plus the other four made me think that they had at one time belonged to Friend, Ginger, Smith and Ballantyne.
I casually stepped around to the young man and took hold of one of the rifles to look at the butt plate, which would give me the regiment, but as I gripped the steel band around the muzzle there was a sharp click-click behind me. I turned and looked. A man with a fur hat stood directly behind me pointing an automatic pistol at me. ‘Boo-dzor, boo-dzor!’ (Don’t move) he snapped.
The young man shouted to me, ‘Leave them. Please come away!’
I allowed discretion to overrule any thoughts of heroism, let go of the rifle and walked outside the hut. ‘They are our bloody rifles!’ I almost shouted.
The young man followed us out. ‘I am very sorry, but I cannot help you anymore. So will you please go away?’ He was pleading with me.
‘Who are those people?’ I asked.
‘They are the new People’s Republic of China Movement,’ he answered.
‘Oh, so that’s what the priest was on about,’ I snapped, and with Lacey following I led the way back to the Mission.
It was not fully dawn when we were awakened from our slumber by a loud noise coming from the courtyard. We both went out to see what was happening, and found the priest surrounded by a mob of excited people. We asked what was wrong and were told that the Japanese had come over the mountains in the night and crossed the river about thirty miles to the south.
Lacey said, ‘That’s done Sergeant Friend and the others, then.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘it seems that we moved off just in time, doesn’t it?’
‘I wonder what happened to Bland,’ he said.
‘I just haven’t got a clue,’ I replied, ‘unless he got cold feet about coming with us and turned back to stay with Friend and the others.’
‘Well, whichever way it is, he’s in trouble somewhere,’ he muttered.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and we can’t do a bloody thing about it, not now anyway.’
As Lacey and I walked back to finish our disturbed sleep, Lacey asked, ‘What are we going to do now then, Fred?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘the first thing to do, I think, is go down into town and ask if this New People’s Republic want us to help them in any way, as they seem to be the ruling forces in this area. At least we can say that we did offer.’
‘I’ll do what you do, Fred,’ said Lacey.
Later that morning we again went down into town. This time there was chaos. People were running everywhere, carrying large packs and bundles, some with young children and old people. We had seen the same thing time and time again in Burma over the last few months. We made our way through the crowded narrow streets to the YMCA, which was now besieged with people. Forcing our way through we were once again confronted by the same people in fur hats. A young man came forward and asked what we wanted.
I asked him to tell the leader, whoever it was, that we had come to offer our help, as we had heard the bad news. We tried to impress the young man that we were specialists in certain types of army work, and that given the right equipment we could help them, but we must have some kind of arms for our own protection.
The young man turned to the fur-hatted men and told them what I had said. After some talk among themselves, and some laughter, they turned back. Without the young man translating, I knew that they did not require our help, so I said to Lacey, ‘Come on, we are not wanted here.’
As we walked back to the Mission, Lacey said, ‘Hey, Fred! I wonder if that Saubur fellow meant that lot back there when he said other bandits.’
‘So! You were taking notice after all, weren’t you?’ I sneered at him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I only caught snips of what that bloke was saying, the morning before we left him.’
Back at the Mission I went straight to the French priest and said that we would be leaving him early the next morning and that we hoped this time we would not have to return. We thanked him for all that he had done for us. Once again he warned us of the dangers that faced us. I was not so much afraid this time of being robbed, but of someone waiting their chance to get revenge on me for what I had done, for we must pass that same place again on our way to Tengchong. Lacey was a little afraid of going the same way. ‘I don’t like it, Fred,’ he said, ‘they could be waiting for us anywhere.’ I had to agree with him, but asked him what alternative had we got. He fell silent and just followed behind.