‘Fire!’ General Sein Lwin barked.
The Burmese artillery thundered their salvoes of death upon the village. The barrage was intense. The heat from the flashing guns parched the air and singed the leaves of the teak, putting to flight irate wings that had nested the night on the boughs of the trees. The teak swooned in despair and the foliage ran riot, loveless, while the guns roared in a carnival of smoke and lightning. A while longer, thought an ebullient General Sein Lwin, before the village was pulverized, and that was when he would send his troops in.
‘Send the troops in now,’ he ordered an hour later. His casualty would be less, the general estimated hopefully, but still worried about the mines.
The first wave went in, the adrenaline pumping in the soldiers as they charged up the gorge, shouting their battle cry, but in a flash, the earth heaved under and around them, and devoured them whole along with their officers.
The second wave had not realized what had happened and didn’t know what was in store for them as they joined their comrades in the dominion of death. Charging through the dust and flying mounds of earth, the third wave was mowed down by concerted motor and machine-gun fire.
It was then that General Sein Lwin realized that something was terribly wrong. It wasn’t just the mines.
The Karens were firmly entrenched and were better-armed than he had assumed….But above all, they were waiting for him! The realization subdued him with shock. By the time he pulled himself together, the fourth wave had realized what they were up against, and were rolling back in confusion and defeat.
‘Call off the attack! Call off the attack!’ General Sein Lwin bellowed and his remaining officers relayed orders like automatons, themselves confounded by the rapid deterioration of the attack.
*
Back on the Hill
The fusillade from the Burmese artillery had abated, and the advancing tide of soldiers had faltered to a straggle. Dust and cordite fumes were clearing with the wind while Solomon assessed the damage his camp had sustained. Many bunkers had caved in, hit by multiple salvoes; the teak reinforcements were reduced now to burning cinders—a pyre on which the mangled, broken dead lay. Apart from that, there were some injured by splinters and flying debris. Some of them would fight yet, while some would have to be evacuated across the river, where they would receive medical attention from the Red Cross.
God bless the Red Cross, he thanked gratefully.
He darted along the perimeter of his defences, keeping himself low, wary of a sharp shooter’s lucky bullet. He ensured that his men were in position on the flanks to shoot down at any of the soldiers who might hazard the arduous climb. He then summoned his lieutenants to the command bunker for a situation appraisal.
‘They will take a while regrouping,’ he said, ‘but they will be back soon.’
‘The mines are gone, they’ll know,’ said a lieutenant, grinning with satisfaction over the surprise the charging troops must have felt.
‘We have to move around our mortars,’ advised another.
‘They will try to knock them out next time, I know,’ Commander Solomon agreed, nodding his head.
‘Move them around the camp; they’re light, but make sure of the trajectory,’ he insisted. ‘The mouth of the gorge has to be ranged in. We must not let them get into the village.’
‘What about the students?’ enquired one of his men.
‘There are some who want to fight, Solomon,’ reminded an aide.
‘Maybe we can use them as reserves,’ proposed another. Commander Solomon then remembered the students in the village. He had been preoccupied by the next onslaught that was expected. He thought over the question for a few minutes and debated in his mind on the wisdom of arming them. He appreciated the fact that he needed every available fighting man now, especially in view of the legion hiding in the teak, but he had a larger consideration on his mind.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘Get them across the border now, and let them take the wounded with them.’
‘Why?’ asked one of his aides, more curious than resentful of Solomon’s decision.
‘Because,’ Commander Solomon answered, ‘they’re just students, untrained and undisciplined for this kind of fight…and are bound to get in our way should the fight reach us here.’
‘Quite right,’ agreed a lieutenant.
‘Besides,’ Solomon continued, pausing for a moment before he disclosed his paramount reason, ‘they are Burmese and we are Karens; they are citizens and we’re rebels, right? The truth is that simple.’
‘They’re no more citizens now than we are,’ commented a lieutenant.
‘I’ll accept that,’ interposed Solomon, exhaling slowly before he tried to explain his view on the matter to his lieutenants. ‘The problem they have with their government is a Burmese problem and that problem has to be solved by them. They’re demanding democracy for their society, while our demand is for independent statehood. Besides, we have not been invited to join their cause and I can understand why; these are two different issues that cannot be mixed now. It would be bad politics for their leadership.’
Commander Solomon waited for a response from his men and, receiving none, was satisfied that his men were keenly following his argument.
‘We are fighting for our rights to Karen independence in this country, and the fight is with the Burmese government. Our fight will continue until we have achieved an accord, whether with this government or the next.’
‘But won’t democracy be a wonderful thing for everyone?’ asked a lieutenant.
‘I’m certain it will be,’ answered Solomon. ‘But let us not confuse the issues involved here. Although we migrated to this land across the Gobi desert—which our legends refer to as the River of Sand—more than 4,000 years ago, we still don’t have a homeland. They, the Burmese, moved in later and what did they do? They grabbed the country. The animosity between our peoples go back hundreds of years, and is still evident in modern times. We know full well what the attitude of the present government and of the previous one has been to our people.
‘What we don’t want is a future government of theirs to think of us as convenient partisans to be opportunely used and discarded once they have achieved their objectives.’
‘Yes, just like the British had done to us,’ commented an elderly guerrilla.
Commander Solomon had elucidated his concern for the political future of his people, and his men were beginning to comprehend the depth in meaning of what he had stated.
‘So our message to the Burmese and their governments, this or another, will always be the same. We cannot be kept away from national politics anymore. We are not a seditious people, nor are we like Khun Sa, the Shan and this army. We are not drug barons fighting for poppy fields. We are just a people who want recognition of a Karen state, not a country, mind you, where our people can live their lives in peace and preserve their heritage,’ Solomon concluded.
The guerrillas had no quarrel with their commander on his emphasis for the need to emerge from the conflict in the country as an independent entity with rights to their existence; they had taken to arms for that very purpose. They discerned the wisdom of their commander in advising them against the danger of subverting or diluting their perspective.
‘We’ve had a breed of irresponsible and inconsiderate individuals in the movement, whose cynical heroics have tarnished our cause and distorted our tradition of generosity and kindness with their thirst for blood,’ reminded Solomon to his men.
‘But that is the past. Today, we are a different breed of men, better educated and sensitive to our need of a future. Our people require a capable generation to espouse their needs and we are that generation. Ours is the responsibility, and we will die if we have to, to achieve for them their dreams,’ he entreated his men.
The men were quiet for a while, each empathetic of the pain and hope in Solomon of a future for a people in which they wouldn’t need guns to preserve their identities. Commander Solomon then returned to the subject of the fugitives in his camp.
‘We will shelter those who come to us, regardless of who they are. We will feed them and protect them and ease their pain if possible, but we will not arm them here because this fight is ours,’ he asserted.
Commander Solomon had spoken his mind and he hoped that his concern for the students would perceive the extent of his concern for the bigger picture. The students were merely a transient element in this conflict, while their struggle would probably be ongoing until a solution was found, and that initiative lay with the Burmese, if not with the world.
‘Do you think Aung San Suu Kyi will succeed?’ asked a lieutenant.
There was a keen interest amongst the guerrillas in the appearance of Aung San Suu Kyi on the national political stage. They had followed with admiration her progress in defiance of the military government, and had almost considered her cause as victorious when she won the elections—until the generals in Rangoon had declared it void. They were surprised, however, when she was placed under house arrest; they had expected worse.
‘She’s been given the Nobel Prize already, don’t forget,’ Solomon answered and continued, ‘it gives a signal to the present regime.’ He had been relieved at the concern expressed by the world community.
‘Yes, she should, if the world bodies and the media accelerate their censure of the present regime. And I pray that they do before the bastards in Rangoon think of a way of doing away with her,’ a lieutenant voiced his personal apprehension.
‘Yes. She’s our only hope!’ declared another.
‘Yes, she is,’ Commander Solomon agreed, and said so with conviction to his men. ‘As the daughter of Aung San, I expect that she will honour her father’s promises to our people.’
He knew that the cause of the Karens was of little significance, and didn’t quite merit attention in the international spectrum of politics compared to the stature her call for democracy would achieve in the eyes of the world. And if the NLD came to power, the Karens could hope for a fair and reasonable hearing at the table. But the Karens needed her respect for that, and the only way he could think of earning that was to get the students to safety across the river. These were the people who, when she came to power, would play a role in the reconstruction of the nation…and he hoped they wouldn’t forget the Karens who had provided them with sanctuary.
His train of thoughts was rudely interrupted when a salvo crashed into the village. The second attack was on, he surmised.
‘Get the students out now,’ he shouted above the din of the explosions, ‘and everyone to their bunkers.’
The melee among the students was apparent as they rushed to the river, some crowding onto the bamboo rafts while some braving the swift current with bare feet, seeking the shallow depths of the muddy waters. Several shells fell amongst them, exploding and tasting blood, chastising them for their errant ways. They, too, would have to pay their price. Salvo after salvo exploded in the village while Solomon and his men prepared for the next assault.
*
Two hours into the attack had cost General Sein Lwin 300 dead and injured. The general’s chagrin at the appalling decimation of his troops presently found its relief in the bark of the artillery, now firing and venting his rancour upon the village that had dared to tatter the morale of his army. He swore he would exterminate this camp, and called his officers for a conference to revise his battle plan.
‘Fellow officers,’ he raged, ‘I know it will be hard but we must flank them, and very quickly at that. We can’t keep sending our men through that gorge!’
‘Yes, sir,’ concurred a major, ‘they’re heavily concentrated on top there.’
All his officers nodded in a daze.
‘We will keep pounding them to keep them down while a body of our troops moves out to the right and scale the hill. Do it silently,’ the brigadier ordered.
‘When you’ve secured your position, radio back. Then we’ll move a body up that blasted gorge and synchronize our attack,’ General Sein Lwin spat out his strategy vehemently, and nominated the officer who would lead the flanking troops.
‘With attack from two sides, we should be able to dislodge them from their positions quickly. No prisoners. Is that understood?’
General Sein Lwin had laid down his rule of combat; he was now thinking of genocide.
‘They’re bound to have men on their flanks, sir,’ advised a junior officer.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ resorted the beleaguered general, scowling with rebuke at the hesitant officer. ‘Just execute the order. And for God’s sake, be soldiers, not women!’
The bellicose general was thinking of a far more dangerous consequence that would befall him if he failed to take the camp. How would he explain the failure to the chairman—the supremo who sat in the safe confines of his home in Yangon?
General Sein Lwin watched the troops move out for their perilous climb to flank the Karens, while some took up position for the charge of the gorge. It was noon already and the atmosphere was incandescent with urgency, for he would have a few hours of sunlight left to exact some measure of retribution, he thought ravenously.
Several huts had caught fire around the village, burning down and reducing themselves to crackling embers. An evanescent veil of smoke and dust was smouldering and disappearing with the breeze, only to appear in another place, like apparitions of giant butterflies in search of nectar among the dead in the village, thought Solomon.
An hour and a half later, Commander Solomon’s men, embedded on the slopes of the hillside, noticed the rustle of leaves and heard the faint snap of twigs in the thick foliage advancing towards them from below. They sent word to Solomon.
The salvoes from the artillery had been falling at an even interval on the village, and the guerrillas, keeping track of the intervals between the salvoes, had been busy scurrying from bunker to bunker and shifting their mortars and machine guns. They couldn’t estimate the strength of the force moving up the hill, but knew that the Burmese wouldn’t venture a small body. This had to be the flanking movement Solomon had taken into account earlier in laying out his strategy for the defence of the village.
‘Open up the mortars within a hundred metres of their approach,’ advised Commander Solomon. That, he calculated, would compel the advancing force to break their crouch and expose their positions—just the kind of vulnerability his machine gunners could exploit with excruciating effect.
‘Aim your machine guns low and use your grenades if they get any closer,’ he ordered, and signalled his gunners at the mouth of the gorge to be alert for the expected rush of the enemy. He was rather surprised that the enemy was considering a two-pronged attack instead of their usual human wave tactic, and grudgingly admitted his respect for the Burmese commander. It also told him that the enemy wanted his hill dearly.
The gunners on the flank opened fire with their mortars and machine guns suddenly, when the cautiously creeping and advancing jungle had reached the hundred metres, catching the soldiers in complete unpreparedness, and cutting them down low like a monstrous scythe shearing undesirable weed.
‘Attack…! Ah….Ah. Under attac….’ a garbled radio message escaped the lips of a dying officer, and in the confusion, the order to charge up the gorge was given. General Sein Lwin had just committed the lives of a hundred men to the waiting guns of Commander Solomon. The Burmese Army was to learn that fighting in the paddy was not training enough to catch this enemy unawares.
A regal sun was setting in the western sky, glimpsing briefly at the Burma–Thai border and the teak that surrounded the village, helpless at the drama that was ending for the day. Men had fought for their prejudices and ideologies, shedding blood and shattering bone throughout its cosmic ascent during the day. It felt a moment of respite from the carnage below, before it bid the horizon farewell, but only for a moment. It knew, with a sense of futility, that when it visited this sky again in the morning, the men below would resume the bloodbath aggressively as the day before.
*
General Sein Lwin, seething with frustration, ordered his troops to regroup again and, as they began to tend their wounded and cook the first meal of the day, he gathered his officers and pondered upon a way to salvage the military disaster of his Tatmadaw. The generals in Rangoon would be unforgiving, he feared, but despite the staggering casualty, there would be a reprieve if they did take the Karen camp. Of that he was sure.
‘We can’t wait until their ammunition gets exhausted,’ he lamented. ‘We’ve got to find a way.’
‘What about the air force, sir?’ asked an officer. ‘Surely they can strafe the camp.’
‘They won’t send the planes. They’re far too precious,’ the general stated sarcastically. He knew that the country’s fledgling air force was unwilling to risk its planes to enemy fire ever since they lost a few of them during earlier operations.
‘I’ll try anyway.’
This was the army’s fight and the events of the day had distanced him from the prospect of a quick victory, the general thought bitterly. His causalities had been preposterous. Damn those Karens, he cursed and recoiled at the imminent disgrace that would certainly cripple what was left of his career should the Karens succeed in repelling his forces any further. He urged his men to focus on a victory that he sorely needed now. His wrath had dissolved into self-pity, and was nearing a state of sulking when an officer suggested deploying all their troops in one thrust and overwhelming them with numbers. ‘And lose half of them in one go?’ demanded the general. ‘Talk some sense, man!’
‘Even if we do it, the dogs could run across the river,’ commented another officer disdainfully.
‘That would be a pity because our dead wouldn’t be avenged,’ observed one bitterly.
‘I wish we could get in from behind and attack,’ thought an officer out loud.
‘What?’ General Sein Lwin’s ears pricked with alertness on hearing the officer. An alternative to a frontal assault sounded appealing to him, but thought he had examined the possibility earlier.
‘Fetch me the map,’ he ordered and reached for his torch, wondering whether he had overlooked an inconspicuous feature on the map, and began to hope for a track besides the river that could lead his men to the rear of the camp. One just had to look for it, he said to himself, attempting to convince himself that he would discover one.
A thin sharp beam roved the map as his finger coursed along its geographical contours, eagerly searching for a physical feature that he may have missed or had not considered. He was looking at Thailand beyond the Karen camp.
‘Behind the camp is the river. It’s Thai territory,’ observed an officer unwittingly.
‘I know that, you idiot! But who’s to tell? The river flows through our territory as well,’ snarled General Sein Lwin in vexation, while his mind raced the contours of the map, probing for an answer. There was none on his side of the border. Think! He demanded of his mind while his officers remained prudently silent, allowing the general’s finger to circle a spot on the map.
*
Commander Solomon made the latest assessment of his defences. He had lost 50 of his men, mostly to howitzer fire and the wild bullet that had found its unwary victim. He considered his casualty rate high, considering that the fight had yet to reach the camp. The dead were hastily buried with little ceremony. The war had ended for them, but not for the living. The living had the morrow’s problem to handle, and his was the responsibility to ease that problem without a shadow of sentiment.
‘They’ll be back in the morning, starting with a bombardment. We know the pattern now,’ he told his men after the burial.
‘They must have lost around 400 men,’ a lieutenant projected, ‘but they still have a sizeable force.’
‘Pity, we can’t take the fight to them in the night,’ said a lieutenant regretfully. The guerrillas were adept at fighting in the dark. They knew their jungle well, but realized that Solomon would not risk an adventure that would endanger the efficacy of his defensive strengths.
‘I think we’re done for the day,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘Get back to your bunkers and patch up what is possible. Also check your ammunition,’ he instructed. ‘We should be receiving supplies shortly before the moon reaches mid sky.’
Commander Solomon reconnoitred the perimeter, supervising the placement of lookouts and wandered towards the gorge. It was eerie with the silent testimony of the dead that they would never see the rainbow again. A melancholy wormed into his hardened warrior heart at the thought as he strolled back towards the river bank, sighing gloomily as he sat and listened to the rippling flow. He enjoyed the peace and the silence upon the river and was thankful to God that he had lived the day…and as the moon rose high to the midheavens above, he saw a bamboo raft with boxes of ammunition touch the riverbank and unload its lethal stock of sustenance. He strolled back to the bunker, savouring the delightful aroma of pork being cooked in the village, humming to himself an old Karen ballad.
Heaven vast the Eternal placed,
Earth beneath the Eternal placed;
Heaven and earth He cleft apart.
Placed whom when He would depart?
The Eternal ordered Heaven vast,
Fixed the earth’s foundation fast;
Heaven and earth asunder cleft,
Man and woman there were left.
Like a top the round earth spinning,
How lived folk on the beginning?
Like thread on reel it circles round,
What have the first folk on it found?
Round the earth spins like a top,
Turned as reel without a stop;
Here the first folk lived at leisure,
Here the first folk lived for pleasure.
But where is the leisure, where is the pleasure? Solomon asked, looking up at the sky.
*
Having studied the map astutely and concluding that there was no track that his troops could take to spring upon the camp from behind, General Sein Lwin began to crystallize an audacious plan that would restore the honour of his rank and the esteem of his troops. He motioned his officers to gather around him for the revelation without a second thought.
‘The answer is at the river,’ he announced emphatically.
‘But that’s beyond the Karen camp, sir,’ remarked an officer.
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ the general bellowed. God, why did he have so many inept officers under his command, he bewailed to himself. He granted that they were all graduates from the academy, but he wished that he had some like the Karens now, practical fighters and not classroom warriors who were good at shooting civilians. He felt ashamed with the perfidious thought and controlled his anger immediately.
‘Here,’ he announced, pointing at a spot further down the river, ‘should be shallow waters. A battalion of our troops will cross the river skirting the hill and get onto land.’
His officers looked askance on hearing the general’s words but said nothing, having lost their appetite for another bout of chastisement. They had had enough of the general’s bellicosity for the day.
‘I know it’s Thai territory, but the operation will be quick, and we can race back to our side of the river before the Thais can react,’ the general said.
‘What do we do if we encounter border guards?’ asked a lieutenant colonel in earnest.
‘Sensible question, Colonel,’ the general commended, feeling that he was getting somewhere at last. ‘As usual, they will have few border guards, who can be contained easily. They will not be a threat; the mere size of our troops will intimidate them. Carry some grenade launchers with you,’ he ordered, and designated the lieutenant colonel as the officer to lead the operation.
‘Now, this is what I plan,’ announced the general. ‘At about 6:00 am tomorrow morning, we will start a bombardment from here. By that time, you should have positioned your troops across the river behind the Karen camp.’
‘I will be there,’ answered the lieutenant colonel, having recovered from the dismay a moment ago when the general had chosen him to lead the expedition across the river.
‘It shouldn’t take you more than, say, three or four hours to be in position, and you should be able to hear the bombardment from there,’ the general said. ‘Wait for a red flare in the sky at 6:45 am. That will be the signal for your troops to double back across the river and charge the Karen camp from behind.’
‘Understood,’ acknowledged the lieutenant colonel, swallowing his unease.
‘There will be no radio contact of any kind from your side until you are back on our soil,’ the general ordered. ‘The Thais might stumble onto our frequency.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the lieutenant colonel.
‘Good,’ observed General Sein Lwin. ‘From here, at the same time, we will charge up the gorge, drawing their fire…which I don’t think can be much. I expect the continuous barrage from our howitzers would pin them down until the last possible minute.’
‘Thank God the mines are gone,’ expressed an officer with relief.
‘Thank your dead comrades,’ snapped General Sein Lwin.
‘Ideally, you should have crossed the river when we reach the outer perimeters of their camp,’ the general said. ‘They will be distracted and their fire will be diverted…and then, gentlemen, we have them in a nutcracker.’
‘Excellent plan, sir,’ congratulated the officers. They themselves reckoned it to be the only viable solution that offered a military victory and an end to their agony, and shirked their unease with the issue of the violation of the borders of another country. That, they admitted with relief, was the general’s responsibility alone. They would merely follow his orders.
‘The surprise alone will kill them,’ General Sein Lwin concluded gleefully, and clenched his sweaty palms in earnest anticipation. He would teach these Karens some tactics, he promised himself.
‘All right, I’ll talk to Rangoon and get their approval. Get me the radio,’ the general commanded. ‘Let’s see whether I can swing in a couple of planes to strafe the camp as well.’
*
Military Headquarters
Communications Centre
Yangon
Corporal Kyit Thwe was reading his favourite comic about a Burmese hero—an insuperable army major who consistently defeated his choice adversaries: either the renegade army of Khun Sa in the Shan state or the cowardly Karens hiding in the jungles of the south-east. The Burmese major always prevailed over intense battles, regardless of the difficult terrain, customarily after encountering superior enemy forces behind an abundance of machine-gun nests from which spewed relentless fire that no charging opponent could dream of penetrating. The Burmese major excitedly read the fawning wireless operator, who was in the process of eliminating a series of enemy machine-gun nests all by himself—blazing away with two huge and heavy machine guns that he had wrenched from the turret of a disabled enemy armoured car with his steely hands; the routed enemy beginning to plead for mercy, when the sharp whine of the wireless snapped his heightened imagination from the dramatic climax of the Burmese Rambo’s heroics.
‘Yes, general. Immediately, sir,’ he acknowledged, and dispatched an assistant to fetch General Khin Maung Nyunt. This must be very big and extremely important, he thought, and wished that he was blazing his machine gun at the enemy alongside General Sein Lwin.
‘Speak up,’ General Khin Maung Nyunt commanded as soon as he entered the wireless room.
‘We are on the verge of a victory, sir. The Karens will no longer bother us,’ informed the voice on the radio.
‘Excellent. Good job done, man,’ Khin Maung Nyunt responded. ‘Are you attacking Manerplaw?’
‘Aah….Not yet, sir, but it is a conceivable certainty,’ returned the voice on the other end. ‘We’re about to crack Hill 4044.’
‘That’s not bad news at all,’ commented Khin Maung Nyunt. ‘There’s only one other thing that’s impeding our immediate termination of the enemy, sir,’ the voice on the radio crackled.
‘What’s that?’ enquired Khin Maung Nyunt, suspecting a catch, and began to wonder whether the voice was trying to conceal some kind of a failure.
‘In order to seal the fate of the Karens permanently,’ whined the voice above the static, ‘I would greatly appreciate a token air support, sir.’
‘What!’ Khin Maung Nyunt exclaimed, alert now that his hunch had been correct. ‘Why the aircraft? You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’ Nyunt was averse to deploying aircraft for counter-insurgency operations, especially after the loss of a couple of them recently.
‘Just one or two will do. Fly over the camp once and spray the scoundrels to show them who’s boss,’ the voice on the air wave appealed to.
‘Is that all?’
‘We have pounded them to smithereens already, and our brave soldiers are repeatedly assaulting the camp despite sustaining severe casualties,’ went on the voice, paving the way now to soften the harshness of the truth that the generals in Rangoon would sooner or later get. There was no avoiding the issue.
‘How so?’ demanded Khin Maung Nyunt, disquieted at the trickle of information he suspected would eventually lead to a dismal picture. He disliked losing a large number of soldiers in any single combat. It was bad for morale.
‘The intelligence report was not accurate, sir. There were hundreds of them, nearly matching our strength,’ the voice briefed and continued, ‘they’re using heavy calibre arms that they’ve never had before and they’re actively training our students.’
‘How many have you lost?’ demanded Khin Maung Nyunt in plain cold anger. He would have a word with Myo Mint, he promised himself.
‘Only about one-third our strength, but we got an equal number of them,’ prevaricated the voice.
‘You fool!’ reprimanded Khin Maung Nyunt. ‘Only one-third? Why…that’s the least you could have done with the artillery I’ve given you!’ He’d have the hide of the man, Khin Maung Nyunt vowed.
‘Sir,’ the voice remonstrated, ‘they’re on a steep hill with only a narrow gorge leading to the camp which was mined…and I’m not exaggerating about the weapons. You can verify that for yourself when I capture this camp.’
The promise of capture of this bastion of defiance mellowed Khin Maung Nyunt. He wanted the fall of this camp desperately. And as army man himself, he did not envy Sein Lwin’s task.
‘Very well then,’ he announced, ‘you’ll have a couple of our fly boys in the morning over the camp.’
‘Sir, 6:00 to 6:15 am, and not later because they’ll be strafing us then. Thank you…and there’s one more thing,’ returned the voice.
‘What are you bargaining for now?’ asked Khin Maung Nyunt in irritation, fearing that he hadn’t heard the worst yet.
‘I sincerely want to deliver this camp to you, sir, but I fear that the enemy can still cheat the Tatmadaw from a rightful victory,’ replied the voice.
‘What are you getting at, man?’ growled an aggravated Khin Maung Nyunt.
‘There’s a river behind the camp and it offers the rascals an ideal escape to Thailand. I want to prevent that. The Thais treat them well, which will help them to stage a fight another day,’ the voice of General Sein Lwin came clear across the airwaves.
‘What do you propose to do?’ asked Khin Maung Nyunt.
‘Crossing over quickly and springing back on the camp from the Moei River. There’s no other way, but I promise you absolute victory and a termination of the Karen threat for all time,’ replied General Sein Lwin.
‘Do you know what you’re talking about?’ demanded Khin Maung Nyunt, taken aback by the audacity of Sein Lwin.
‘Yes, sir, I do,’ asserted Sein Lwin. ‘Otherwise, you’ll have an empty camp.’
‘Damn,’ cursed the general. He loathed being outwitted by the Karens as much as he disapproved of the Thais who granted his enemies refugee status and allowed them to live on their soil. ‘Very well,’ Khin Maung Nyunt consented after a moment’s deliberation, ‘but make it lightning quick and don’t get caught on the wrong side of the river, because if you do, I will not take responsibility. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’ The traffic on the airwave was terminated, giving General Sein Lwin the opportunity to implement his military acumen, while the generals in Yangon had found a convenient scapegoat—should one be needed.
*
The Hill
6:00 AM
The whole round earth God came to form,
He can make broad, He can make narrow;
The whole round earth God came to mend,
With ease He can make broad or narrow.
Earth is the sleeping place of God,
Hence noiseless thou, with heel-prints light,
Thy way must take;
Earth is His widely spreading couch, soft-footed steal thou through the night,
Lest He awake.
—a Karen saying
In the soporific quiet of the dawn, the few Karen guards on the river bank had not heard the distant splash of wading feet or the suppressed squelch of muddied boots across the border. Commander Solomon had not considered the callousness or desperation of the Burmese Army, that in order to retrieve victory from abject defeat, they would dare risk an international incident with the Thais. He briefly browsed through an album of stamps a childhood friend had given him a long time ago. He had often wondered what had become of the friend in the land of the Brahmins, and smiled at the memory of the days when they had sung the songs of The Beatles as his calloused fingers coursed through the thick mop of hair he wore again. He didn’t know that he wouldn’t live through the dawn as he went to sleep that night.
‘Solomon! Solomon! Wake up!’ cried out the watch as shells from the Burmese artillery exploded in the camp.
‘What!’ Solomon bolted from the soiled and frayed rug that was his bed and tried to orient himself in the confines of the bunker, shaking the torpor away from himself. He had slipped in deep slumber early in the morning. The explosions continued fiercely and within a few minutes, he realized that something was awfully wrong. The Burmese were firing their guns too early for one; they usually waited until the morning mist had cleared before they tried any assault. He rushed out of the bunker with the safety catch of his automatic rifle off for instant fire.
‘Solomon, they’re coming!’ shouted a startled lieutenant.
‘Fire away, give them hell,’ he shouted back, and quickly swept his perimeter with the eye of an eagle. The machine-gunners and the mortar men were responding aptly, and the men on the flanks were ready to lob grenades down the hill, should the Burmese troops try outflanking them again. A few more bunkers were blazing, their dead strewn about grotesquely. The Burmese gunners had scored direct hits, he surmised. He must have lost two dozen of his men already, he calculated; some of them while attending to nature’s call, he thought, angry at the indignity of it all, and jumped into the lead bunker facing the gorge.
‘My God,’ gasped the machine-gunner, as a burst of automatic fire ripped his chest, killing him instantly. Solomon discerned immediately that the roof of the bunker had collapsed and most of the protective teak and sandbags blown away, which had exposed the gunner dangerously. To his horror, he saw the other inmates of the bunker dead, their blood oozing from gaping ugly wounds. Another direct hit, he guessed, and saw the rush of the oncoming Burmese soldiers. He grabbed the machine gun and emptied the entire belt into the charging troops, faltering their ranks askew with the avenging bullets.
‘The shelling is the heaviest by far,’ rasped a guerrilla who jumped in beside him, and then discharged his magazine into the faltering troops.
‘We’ll have to withdraw,’ shouted Solomon above the raucous noise of the guns and pulled the guerrilla away with him, rolling into a fox hole nearby as several shells from the Burmese guns exploded around the bunker they had just vacated.
‘Looks like an all-out assault to me,’ contended the guerrilla. ‘They’re throwing everything at us.’
‘Let’s give them back everything we’ve got then,’ Solomon said in encouragement, and fired his weapon in the direction of the vacated bunker where the charging Burmese troops were grouping.
‘We can’t hold on here for long,’ observed the guerrilla.
‘We’ll have to regroup and form another defensive line,’ concurred Solomon as the troops grouping in front of them charged.
‘Use your grenades!’ Solomon yelled as he took aim, and fired his automatic while the guerrilla tossed a grenade, following up with another in quick succession.
‘Let’s fall back now,’ Solomon hissed as the grenades detonated.
The guerrilla shadowed Solomon on their serpentine retreat to a bunker in the rear, but as they reached cover, the guerrilla behind Solomon pitched forward in a death roll. He had been cut down by a hail of Burmese bullets.
‘Aeroplanes! Aeroplanes!’ screamed a frenzied voice as two propeller-driven aircraft—Spitfires Ne Win got from Austria— swooped in low from the west, their coughing guns tacking the damp earth with a mass of human flesh. The Spitfires roared overhead and flew unmolested towards the teak, dipping their wings in salute to their comrades on the ground, who would finish the remnants of resistance in the camp.
Elsewhere in the camp, shells were bursting from the raging guns of the legion in the teak. The Tatmadaw had accelerated its battle tempo and their troops had breached the outer defensive perimeters of the Karens. The guerrillas fought back tenaciously, giving ground little at a time and extracting fearful penalties from the Burmese troops, who inched bloodily ahead. Solomon, in the thick of the bloodletting that was now decimating his camp, realized that the battle would deteriorate very soon to hand-to-hand combat, which would deprive his men of the chance to escape into the dense jungles or across the river. Outnumbered and outgunned, he decided to give the command to disperse when a shrill cry from the river snatched his voice momentarily and paralysed him.
‘The river! They’re coming from the river!’
The brief moment that benumbed Solomon telescoped into a spell over the camp, a muteness that descended upon Karen guerrilla and Burmese soldier alike until in an instant, their ears rang with the deafening chilling roar of a legion that appeared from the river front, clad in jungle green.
‘Fight your way out and disperse,’ the recovered voice of Solomon crashed over the hideous roar approaching from the river, triggering the chatter from the guns that had fallen silent for that brief state of suspension in the camp.
The guerrillas had been caught by complete surprise and like the stunned, unsuspecting Thai border guards patrolling the other side of the river at the time, they watched the Burmese troops charging across the river and pouring in to the camp. The Karen defences crumpled swiftly as they fought their way out to disperse into the deep jungles. A symphony of bullets slammed into Solomon, killing him instantly that morning, before he could have tasted his first cup of tea. His camp that had valiantly repulsed repeated onslaughts by the Burmese Army now lay in smouldering ruin. Few escaped the concentrated fire of the soldiers…and the few captured were shot out of hand. The army was not looking for prisoners that morning.
‘Burn the bodies,’ ordered General Sein Lwin two hours later after inspecting the fallen camp. He kicked about the ruins and was disappointed that the students had escaped him, and felt sorry for his troops that the trophies of victory were denied to them. The women of the camp had disappeared as well. He was surprised, however, with the album of stamps that was found intact in a shattered bunker, and wondered who had the time to be a philatelist in the midst of war.