Around the time that Captain Ito and Stanley, escorted by bayonet-fixed ferocious soldiers, were making their dangerous expeditions into the dense Malay jungles to broadcast Japanese propaganda, another pigment was added to the stroke on the Japanese canvas.
The cry for freedom and independence of a national kind was growing stronger. And there were those who neither had the patience nor the inclination towards non-violence, whose faith in Japanese deliverance made any future British promise dubious. While India had sprung a Bengal tiger who chose not to vegetate on Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent pursuit of independence, Burma saw the emergence of an Aung San.
Seduced like Subhas Chandra Bose by the Japanese propaganda, he championed the cause of his country’s independence and, with the typical pride of his people, set forth to claim his entitlement to that Japanese promise. He, too, had envisioned a prominent Burma in the new order of things. The politics were apt, the cause noble and the vision understandable. The Japanese were, in any event, intent upon their capture of Burma in their design for their Greater Far East Co-Prosperity Sphere and take India.
Aung San and his entourage of 30 young lieutenants made their way to the Japanese, crossing the border at Thailand. They were mentored and trained by a Japanese officer called Suzuki Keiji, known better among the 30 as ‘Bo Mogyo’ (Commander Thunderbolt). Suzuki Keiji was head of a special intelligence unit called ‘Minami Kikan’, formed to support a national uprising in Burma. Having secured their military training and promise of liberation, they returned to Burma with the Japanese Army.
The force re-entered the country across bridge 227 over the river Khwae Yai. The Japanese built several bridges along the Thai–Burma border between Ban Pong in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma in 1943 to support its forces logistically in the conquest of Burma, and eventually, India. A quarter million South-East Asian civilian labourers and about 61,000 prisoners of war (PoW) were used for the construction, of which 90,000 civilians and 12,000 Allied prisoners died.
In his entourage was a young lieutenant—a protégé, faithful and astute, who held promise for a future Burma.
His name was Ne Win.
Captain Ito’s canvas of a victorious Japan and overlord of the new world order caught fire as the stroke of the brush reached the Imphal pass between Burma and India—its flames slowly and inexorably singeing the cameos of facile conquests as it crackled downwards, taunting the vulnerability of the Japanese Army. Until that moment, the Japanese Army had not really engaged a resolved opponent in equal combat on the battlefield. Determined to teach this Oriental tyrant a lesson in seasoned warfare and exonerate the degradation it had suffered, Field Marshal Sir William Slim’s Fourteenth Army began orchestrating its lethal arsenal of war, smelting the Japanese from the landscape that they had been painting.
After the fall of Myitcheena in 1944, the Fourteenth Army’s 33rd Corps secured crossings over the Irrawaddy River near Mandalay in January 1945. Late in February, the 7th Indian Division leading IV Corps seized crossings at Nyaungu near Pakokku. The 17th Indian Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade followed them across and struck Meiktila. Meiktila fell on 1st of March. The town was captured in four days, despite resistance to the last man. By the end of March, the Japanese had suffered heavy casualties and lost most of their artillery, including their chief anti-tank weapon: type 94-37mm gun.
Mandalay fell to 19th Indian Division on 20th March.
The race for Rangoon was on!
*
A Japanese Military Base
193 kilometres North of Rangoon
Burma
The base was a cauldron of fire, its hungry flames fiercely lavishing the combustible material strewn about by the shattering detonations that resounded like violent claps of thunder throughout its perimeters. Dense smoke billowed like pluvial clouds above the base, now littered with the dead. The Japanese anti-aircraft guns had put up strong resistance to no avail as the silver birds flying high above were beyond the reach of their belching, discordant roar.
‘Captain sahib!’ shouted Sergeant Joginder Singh at Stanley as the cacophony of the guns subsided. The drone of the bombers above had receded with gloating satisfaction at the knowledge that it had inflicted irreparable damage to the enemy who the planes had flown over.
‘The Japanese are leaving!’
Stanley looked around and appraised the scene that greeted him. The Japanese were indeed leaving, abandoning their wounded as the rearguard, expecting them to fight to the last and claim immortality in the heavenly abode of their emperor and a god incarnate. This was no longer a proud army with lofty ambitions, he observed. It was a desperate army in rout with no reserves to absorb battle setbacks and regroup as a deterring force. The INA detachments like Stanley’s, seeking refuge on their bases, were mostly ignored and left to fend for themselves.
In their grasp for a big slice of the global pie, they had delinquently neglected the logistics essential to keep an over-extended army as a flexible and cohesive force. The prolific industrial response by America to the Pearl Harbor bombing had put back in the Pacific an awesome navy, depriving the armada of Admiral Yamamoto dominance over the sea lanes and disrupting their supply lines extensively.
With the war in the West at an end, the British could now concentrate on their foe without distraction. Compounded by the wrath of a people exacting a pernicious retribution upon them in their backyard, the Japanese fighting capability was soon reduced to suicidal heroics—kamikaze or hara-kiri! The Tanakas of this medieval army chose to ascend to their emperor’s heaven, screeching blood-curdling ‘Ban Zais’ on their dying lips, while the more civilized Itos sought honour in the second.
‘Maa ki Phudi!’ cursed Sergeant Joginder Singh in scatological Punjabi, no longer concerned with propriety. Captain or no captain, theirs was an orphaned army anyway.
This captain was no better off than him, he thought; capture or death awaited both of them.
‘Ye Japaani aadmi mein lund nahi hei kya!’ he wailed derisively, not being able to help the profanity. To him, the Japanese Army had lost its rapacity—a penis that was fast shrinking and, along with it, bastardizing his dreams of taking up a position in a new India!
Another spectre of a more frightening nature hovered over him, for in his mind’s eye he could see his fellow sardars, a proud warrior lot of the British Indian Army, marching triumphantly towards them.
‘Mera gaand phutti gaaye,’ he moaned, feeling terribly denuded.
Stanley chuckled at the litany pouring out of the sardar’s heart and left the sergeant to worry about the sanctity of his posterior as he mused upon an insouciant kaleidoscope of time. He and his unit were caught in a war at the wrong time with the wrong army, wearing the wrong uniform and were to be wronged for the wrong reason, he thought dejectedly. God would understand, he mused, but would the British?
The question whirled in his mind, toiling for a palatable answer but found none. He was, however, relived that the Japanese wouldn’t be the judges; the British would, and he expected that they would be more civilized in the treatment of their captives.
‘Sergeant!’ he barked, asserting his authority as he recovered from his thoughts.
‘Gather the men immediately,’ he ordered, ‘I have a plan.’ The fires had died and the smoke cleared, unveiling the wreckage of machine and men the aerial assault had caused.
Diligently, Sergeant Joginder gathered the handful of men around Stanley; men who had been defeated twice by two different armies in a short span of three years, men whose spirits were shaken by the mocking cry of irony.
‘I know many of you are thinking of desertion,’ he said, ‘but deserters forfeit any respect that might be accorded to them by any army.’
‘Then what are we to do?’ demanded the demoralized soldiers, staring at Stanley with disbelief.
‘Fighting the British is senseless,’ one of them declared.
‘And for who?’ asked another scornfully. ‘For the Japanese?’
‘No,’ Stanley said. ‘We will not fight. We don’t have to.’
‘This is our only chance,’ implored the sergeant, ‘before the Japanese themselves have fled and there is no one to shoot us for desertion,’ he reasoned.
Stanley stood calmly, cognizant of the soldiers’ dilemma and raised his hand to gain their attention.
‘Are we combat soldiers?’ he asked argumentatively. ‘Have we killed a single British soldier? The others have, but we haven’t. Yes, we are in the INA, but the arms we bear are for defence only,’ Stanley argued with the sudden lucidity of a desperate mind.
‘We are a propaganda unit and the greatest crime we are guilty of is talk; talk that hasn’t actually incited a mass revolt amongst our countrymen on the other side,’ he added.
Sergeant Joginder Singh and the men around Stanley gaped at their officer, wondering what the captain was driving at. Immediate escape in the absence of the Japanese appealed to them the most.
‘What are you trying to tell us, Captain?’ asked the sergeant. ‘I’m afraid we don’t understand.’
‘Very well, I’ll come to the point,’ replied Stanley.
‘Where do you think we can escape? You’re not following the Japanese, right?’
‘That’s right,’ answered a soldier affirmatively.
‘Which means that you plan to hide amongst the civilians and take your chances.’
‘Yes,’ confessed a soldier.
‘So far so good, but I don’t believe that you can get very far on your own. Don’t forget the Burmese. To them, we’re all part of the Japanese Army. We don’t have an ally…even Aung San has crossed over to the British. They’ll kill us as readily if they get hold of us,’ warned Stanley.
Stanley was not certain if they would be able to elude the British until the end of the war, nor had he reason to believe that they could survive in hiding individually amongst the people, considering that the chaos would soon precipitate indiscriminate killings by an avenging indigenous population.
‘But as a group holding onto our arms, we will have better odds at survival,’ Stanley said.
The group of men around Stanley fell silent and began to balance the odds of surviving the war. What the officer said made sense, especially regarding vengeance-seeking vigilantes of the land waiting in the wings to settle their grievances, but they were hesitant and undecided on surrendering their immediate freedom to whatever plan their officer had.
‘My plan is to fall back a little where the Japanese have left and take control of it until we reach Rangoon. They had heard that their leader, the Bengal Tiger, was dead, along with a Japanese general Tsunamasa Shidei in an air crash a week ago while retreating from Rangoon before its imminent fall to the British.
‘Colonel Loganathan and his men should be there. I doubt the Japanese would still be around,’ Stanley argued, explaining his plan to the soldiers, but aware of possible mutiny fermenting in the minds of his partners in misfortune.
‘We will police the area until the British arrive, and then surrender. We could be seen as a lot discharging a worthy duty in the face of defeat.’
It was evident to the men that the disorderly retreat of the Japanese Army was creating a backlash in the areas that they had vacated, which were now devoid of law and order—a vacuum which was getting filled with a native enterprise of loot and plunder, with little regard to life and property. Aung San was yet to appear with a police force.
‘We will ask for fair treatment according to the Geneva Convention, for we are still soldiers in uniform,’ he promised his men.
‘The British will take us in as PoW, which is better than getting shot or ill-treated as deserters.’
‘Now, who will join me?’ Stanley demanded, intuiting in the vacillation of his men, an opportunity for his own survival and the fulfilment of his obligation to his men as an officer.
His sudden forceful call for a consensus hastened his men to reckon with the perceptible facts of the moment. Being foreigners in a country that was in the grip of anarchy, they too realized that they were safer together as a group. Rather than risk an individual attempt at escape with a very likely certainty of being apprehended and slaughtered by a volatile mob, they decided to entrust him with their lives.
*
About 105 kilometres from Rangoon
Stanley and his band of eight men fell back a little before Rangoon—steering clear of the populace—and occupied a small school, long desolated. It was, however, adequate for their shelter until the British came. Scouring the countryside for sustenance, meagre as it was, they began to discharge their responsibilities as policemen—albeit without sovereign authority, in the few weeks of freedom that lay ahead of them.
The countryside was indeed infested with dacoits and looters; unsavoury elements of the land, armed with indigenous weaponry and an occasional scavenged gun, who preyed on the refugees of war now disoriented by a changing tide of power foreign to them. With deplorable disregard for human life, these bandits and looters butchered and plundered their way through the only possessions of menial value that the helpless refugees carted or carried on their backs.
Appearing to be armed more sophisticatedly than most of the looters, Stanley and his sullen band actually sported a few British Three-O-Threes and obsolete Japanese single shot rifles. Between the nine of them, they shared the only Sten gun and were dangerously low on ammunition. Despite being inadequately armed, they patrolled the neighbourhood, and the few weeks of policing were not without encounter and peril for Stanley and his motley army. But nobility had a way of wearing a hero’s garb, and it was one such encounter that would remain etched in the memory of his nondescript army.
‘Captain sahib!’ yelled Sergeant Joginder Singh when he saw a convoy of refugees ahead of him as they went on one of their morning scouts. He reined the pony cart, which was their transport, to a standstill, and shouted, ‘Looters! Dekho….Dekho!’
Stanley appraised the situation and, in an instant, realized that a looting in its early stages was in progress. The looters didn’t seem to possess a gun, he noticed with great relief, but they outnumbered his strength; he had brought only three of his men today, leaving the rest at the school.
The Sten with them, however, bolstered his morale and encouraged Stanley to draw closer to the convoy of refugees. Grabbing a rifle at random, he jumped out of the cart with a command.
‘Sergeant! Stay with the men and cover me.’
The men were nervous at being outnumbered, but the command of their officer prompted them to obey, and they quickly brought their weapons to a state of readiness.
‘Stop!’ commanded Stanley in a deep voice, bolting his rifle and aiming it at the man who appeared to be the leader of the bandits.
It was the leader. Tall and tanned by a marauding sun, this man was hefty and wielded in his massive hands an obnoxious daah, a deadly native sword that could cleave through flesh and bone without a smirk. But this was a daah that had truncated less of Japanese limbs than it had savaged many an unarmed refugee.
‘Kway Kalaa!’ the leader swore as he turned and stared into the barrel of Stanley’s rifle.
‘Drop the daah and tell your men to lay down their weapons…. Now!’ Stanley barked, steadying his aim and summoning all his will to remain bold, ignoring the stinging insult of being called an Indian dog by the snarling Burmese bandit.
He realized at that moment that he had every reason to fear for his life. The damned rifle was not loaded! Some idiot’s carelessness and his own lapse were going to cost him his life. ‘Damn!’ he cursed, and felt mortified. The bandit leader did not drop his daah but stared at Stanley with loathing. He firmly griped the daah, and poised truculently for a sweeping strike. For a long moment, the tall Burman gauged the possible outcome of a conflict despite the cold glare of the rifle. He wanted to murder this Indian but the bastard had the gun in his hands, and so had the other dogs in the cart, he accepted with bitterness.
‘Drop the daah now or I will shoot!’ ordered Stanley, staring resolutely back at the Burman, his mind furiously calculating the arc the slashing daah would take. It was time for another miracle, Stanley thought ruefully, and wondered whether he was running out of his share when the bandit leader dropped his daah. Martyrdom wasn’t his cup of tea, decided the leader and spat on the ground. He would leave that to the Aung Sans of the country, he thought, and signalled to his men to discard their weapons. The bandits retreated and soon, like evil gnomes, seeped into the porous countryside.
For the refugees, it was a moment of salvation and their gratitude, though enormous, could only be expressed in frugal terms. Rice, salt, tea and some dried fish were given as a gift to the soldiers which, to Stanley, were reassuring promises of the essential goodness of mankind. They returned to the school, the good deed of the day done, and prepared a meal for themselves. Each thought of the morrow and the day after, and waited for the British to come.
*
A Burmese Village near Stanley’s Camp
It was on a Sunday morning, when waiting for the British who seemed still distant, that Stanley had a craving for meat and announced his welling appetite for a sumptuous meal to his men.
‘Let us go and get a goat…’ Stanley’s announcement wasn’t over yet when he realized that the sergeant and a few of the men had scrambled to their cart and were waiting for him with expectancy. None of them had had a decent meal in what seemed an eternity, and the mouth-watering aroma of a mutton curry captivated their imagination and galvanized the men into action. There would be no problem following the leader this time, Stanley thought, amused at the scene.
‘Where to, Sahib?’ asked the driver of the cart, his yellowing teeth flashing in a wide grin.
‘There’s a village nearby,’ Stanley said. ‘We will go there and try to buy a goat,’ he proposed, pulling out some crumpled currency which was the sole wealth he had managed to acquire until now.
‘Theek hai, Sahib,’ gleefully acknowledged the driver, jerking the reins of the pony as the animal laboured for another day’s mournful clop.
The pony looked as emaciated as the men it was carting about, Stanley noted, and reminded his men to gather some fodder for the animal while looking for his goat. They arrived at the village shortly after and alighted from the cart, surveying it for any hostile elements.
‘Are your rifles loaded?’ he asked his men, making sure that his was. He did not forget the recent lesson he had learnt. The men nodded in affirmative and felt remorse; they had come close to losing this officer last time, a man on whom they had depended for their survival.
Stanley stopped at the village square and assumed a benign posture, not wanting to antagonize or frighten the villagers. He saw chickens, ducks, geese and pigs—all cackling, quacking, hissing and grunting about their day, leaving the worries of the war to their owners. Time for them was the division of day and night; life was when the blood circulated in them and death was when it stopped. Stanley marvelled at the simplicity of their existence which did not carry the burden of memories or the anguish of the future.
Stanley looked for a goat, and found a few some huts away. He approached a hut, calling out for its tenants. He stopped a short distance away from it when no one came out. By now, the villagers had begun to gather around, watching the armed men invading their village. Stanley cautioned his men to be alert.
‘I want a goat for my men,’ he spoke in an amiable voice, pointing to a stout billy goat that his eyes had chosen for food.
‘We are very hungry and haven’t eaten for days,’ he explained, gesticulating as he spoke, hoping that his message would be understood by the villagers.
The villagers watched him in silence as he made gestures of feeding himself and patting his stomach. They comprehended Stanley’s meaning but also eyed the rifle in the other hand with distrust, mostly with rebuke, for he was not one of their kind; he was a soldier, and they had come to revile soldiers these past years.
‘We will pay for the goat!’ assured Stanley, pulling out his currency and showing it to the villagers. ‘Who is the owner of that goat?’ he asked, pointing at the one he had selected.
The villagers remained scornfully silent and watched the drama that was unfolding before them. Some of the children clung to their parents in fear, while some actually smiled, innocent of the temper of the village, Stanley saw, and was moved with a profound sorrow for the children. These were little hands that should be clapping and little voices singing with joy, he thought, and not threatened by the banality of war.
‘Please,’ he entreated the villagers again, ‘we mean no harm. We just want a goat,’ he said.
The villagers were adamant in denying him his need and dared him with their silence.
Stanley raised three fingers in exasperation and said, ‘I will count till there.’
He then targeted the goat with his rifle and patiently curled an impelled finger around the trigger of his rifle.
‘At the count of three, if no one comes forward to claim the goat, I will shoot it,’ he issued an ultimatum, trying not to let his anger edge into his voice. His ultimatum elicited no response from the villages except an involuntary flinch when the sharp report of a single shot from his rifle reverberated throughout the village.
Stanley had his goat.
*
It had been some time since Stanley and his men relished a stomach-filling meal and indulged themselves voraciously on it. The meat was succulent and as they ate, an atmosphere of contentment settled amongst the men. They looked at Stanley and, for the first time, a feeling of brotherhood overwhelmed them. From resentment to reason and dependence to comradeship, their short journey had taken them. They now felt forlorn that their journey was coming to an end.
‘Captain sahib,’ the sergeant looked at Stanley and enquired, ‘what do you plan to do after the war?’
Still chewing on a piece of mutton, Stanley considered the question. The wistful thought had been on his mind.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied dolefully. ‘Malaya would probably never be the same…and…’
‘Don’t you want to go back to India?’ interrupted one of them in surprise.
Shaking his head almost imperceptibly, he answered, ‘I’ll stay on in Rangoon for a while and then decide.’
‘Do you think Gandhi will get the independence for India?’ asked one of the men eagerly.
‘I don’t know,’ Stanley replied, shaking his head. ‘But I know something,’ he said and paused for a moment to chew on a piece of mutton.
‘This war will change many things, my friends,’ Stanley continued. ‘I think or at least hope that people will get tired of killing people and want to live peacefully for a long time to come.’
Like his men, Stanley, too, wished an end to the violent forces of destruction and the killing that stupefied him. He hoped that the period of rebuilding ahead by almost all nations on the globe would necessitate an environment of compromise and rapprochement that would prevent the firing of guns by men in a millennium. He was not to know then that man’s ideologies had irrevocably acquired the taste of power with the knowledge that no other statement of power spoke better than that spoken from the barrel of a gun.
*
Stanley’s Camp
April 1945
Two days later, an advancing patrol from the vanguard of Field Marshal Sir William Slim’s army was sighted from the roof of the school by a vigilant Sergeant Joginder Singh.
‘Captain sahib,’ he called out anxiously, ‘the British are here!’
Stanley’s leg sprang into action on hearing the sergeant’s call. There was no time to be lost. He bounded to the lone mast still standing in the school yard.
‘Get the flag!’ he shouted, indicating at the piece of rag they had preserved for the occasion.
The men hurriedly hoisted their flag of surrender on the mast and gathered around with their weapons, awaiting further instructions from Stanley.
‘All right, my friends,’ he said. ‘We have been waiting for this moment and we’re ready for it. Fall in now and remember, I’ll do the talking and I want everyone to be calm,’ he reminded them and instructed them to lay down their weapons in front of them.
‘Don’t worry, everything will go well,’ he reassured them.
Each of them felt ridiculous about their charade and suppressed the swelling doubt and fear that tugged at their hearts. They accepted that they were now past the moment of choice and left their moment of reckoning in their captain’s, the British and God’s hands. Stanley hoped he was right, looking at the group of men who had placed their faith in him, and silently prayed.
‘At-ten-tion!’ he commanded his men as soon as he saw the patrol moving into the premises, bringing his men and himself into a prefect military posture. The patrol kept their distance, covering Stanley and his men with their weapons—wary of a possible ambush, and surveyed the picture before them. They were surprised at the theatrics but mostly relieved that the men before them were not Japanese!
It was important to Stanley how he and his men would be regarded at that moment, for, on that would depend the treatment they would receive ahead of them. He saw a good number of his countrymen on the other side, and a few of the British who looked a bit nonplussed. Stanley’s apprehensive eye was searching for an officer. He identified in an instant a young British lieutenant gripping his service revolver adroitly in his hand.
‘We are a non-combatant unit of the INA,’ Stanley spoke aloud, expecting to gain the attention of the officer.
‘We have been in the school and have secured the area for a few weeks, and have been waiting for you. We wish to surrender to you,’ he announced resonantly.
‘Bloody hell!’ Corporal Brown exclaimed. ‘The bloke’s speaking in English!’
Stanley heard that, satisfied with the response and stifled a desire to laugh, for it always amazed him to see the startled reaction of a white man when spoken to with proper English by a coloured man. They probably believed seriously that God was an Englishman and that they were the only ones privileged to speak the tongue. They didn’t seem to have a problem with the Pidgin English that sprouted in their colonies; they were delighted and patronizing about it, for it probably affirmed their sense of superiority, thought Stanley.
‘There are no Japanese for miles around and you’ll probably see them only in Rangoon if you hurry!’ he reported, and remained in rigid attention.
‘Lieutenant?’ Corporal Brown enquired. ‘Frankly sir, we should go in and kick their butts, if you ask me,’ advised the corporal quietly into the ears of Lieutenant Murray. Corporal Brown was not without animosity, for he had seen many of his mates falling to enemy bullets in the north of Burma, and during the taking of Mandalay Hill. Anyone with the wrong uniform, to his uncomplicated mind, was simply an enemy. It didn’t matter to him that it was a young Indian major, who was in the lead assault on the hill.
‘Easy, Corporal,’ Lieutenant Murray restrained Corporal Brown. Invested with the more complex responsibility of an officer, the lieutenant was unsusceptible to the diatribe of Corporal Brown. The British Army, the lieutenant believed, was not about fighting one man’s personal derision of the enemy, but was here to reclaim a glory that the Japanese had defiled, and to demonstrate that it was a civilized army unlike that of their foe.
‘Sorry, Lieutenant,’ muttered the corporal, ‘just voicing an opinion, sir.’
‘I understand,’ condescended the lieutenant. ‘They’re INA and not Japanese; we have our strict orders where these chaps are concerned, Corporal.’
‘I’m Captain David and these are my men. I request acceptance of our surrender immediately, and to be treated accordingly as prisoners of war,’ Stanley demanded firmly, fixing his eyes on the lieutenant.
With the revolver back in its holster, Lieutenant Murray strode across the yard towards Stanley and his men, scrutinizing each of them and, finally looking at Stanley, curtly saluted the captain. This man has a sense of protocol and appears civilized, he inferred, and was returning the compliment. They could have hidden themselves in the building and waved their pathetic rag, but instead chose to parade themselves in surrender. The honour pleased him.
‘At ease, Captain…your men as well,’ he ordered and extended a formal hand. ‘Lieutenant Murray. David…did you say your name was?’
‘Stanley David, Lieutenant Murray,’ replied Stanley over the stiff handshake.
‘I will send you and your men with guard as my prisoners for interrogation to Division Headquarters, Captain David, but beyond that, it’s up to the chaps there,’ Lieutenant Murray said.
‘I completely understand, Lieutenant,’ replied Stanley, heaving a sigh of relief.
‘Which unit are you chaps from, Captain?’ enquired the lieutenant, with a scrutinizing look on his face.
‘Propaganda, second division, 4th regiment, Lieutenant,’ answered Stanley.
‘Oh! I see,’ observed the lieutenant. ‘Haven’t had much of a score with your lads on our side of the war, have you?’
‘I guess not,’ acknowledged Stanley.
‘Curious, isn’t it?’ remarked Lieutenant Murray, looking at Stanley again. ‘How’d you get into that uniform…but I suppose you have a story for Division Headquarters, right?’
‘Not a very exciting one, I’m afraid, but I’m glad it’s over,’ replied Stanley graciously.
‘Anyway, Captain David, good luck to you!’
With an army on the march that had little to lose in the capture of the Japanese in Rangoon, Stanley found himself moving behind the vanguard of the British Indian Army towards the city. Rangoon fell, and with the fall, the British could now quarantine their captives securely. For the first time in his life, Stanley saw the insides of a jail—a jail that had seen change of guard and wardens three times in the tug of war.
It was the dreaded Insein Prison, a prison that would incarcerate and punish the criminals amongst the society, or silence the conscientious voice of dissent in the decades ahead, satiating its enormous appetite with variety. But for that moment, Stanley was a morsel, fed into its gullet and ingested without choice—its taste or value yet to be determined and processed by a stomach suffering from the early symptoms of indigestion. The prison was full. The singer, salesman, propaganda soldier was now a prisoner of war.
*
Insein Prison
Rangoon, Burma
The British Army was back in Burma, a country whose population wasn’t too keen on their presence but accepted it as lesser evil. The resentment to colonial rule had incubated an Aung San, until an opportune moment when he had led a delegation of trusted aides to the Japanese. But Aung San, to his dismay, had soon seen the insidiousness of the Japanese and the fallacy of their promise. Their atrocious disregard of the alliance and the dehumanization of his countrymen angered Aung San. He then realized that the independence of his country actually lay in the hands of the British!
An inspired man filled with political acumen, Aung San and his entourage eluded their liberators-turned-captors and had, in the dense northern jungles of Burma, met with the field marshal. Aung San had risked being shot for treason. With total disregard for his life, he had displayed remarkable courage and self-sacrifice, and demanded of the British the independence of his beloved land. His single-mindedness and dedication to his country had earned him the respect of the field marshal, who did not shoot him; Aung San was given the assurance of consideration of his country’s independence. In turn, Aung San was to support the Fourteenth Army with his reformed Burma Independence Army.
And there was the matter of Gandhi in India, who was making a definite impact on British political thinking that the independence of India was assuredly only a matter of time. The INA was an embarrassment to Gandhi’s efforts, but also sensitive for the Indian masses. It was a delicate situation for the British. Those were the thoughts ruminating in the mind of Colonel MacIntyre, sitting at the desk in Insein Prison, when he glumly looked at the task ahead of him—to process speedily the matter of the prisoners of war before the army continued its pursuit of the Japanese defeat.
‘Fetch me this fellow,’ he ordered an attendant, and tossed a dossier on his desk. The dossier was marked:
Immanuel Stanley David
Rank of Captain
Indian National Army, Propaganda Unit 4th
Regiment, Second Division
‘One of Bose’s boys or that Shah Nawaz chap,’ he remarked with a yawn, wondering how the devil this army had ever come about.
‘Not an acquaintance of the Tokyo Rose, are you now? Being a propagandist and all!’ drawled the colonel, laughing at his little joke when Stanley was seated before him.
‘What the devil did you think you were doing with those abominable Japanese?’ thundered Colonel MacIntyre, quite infuriated with the notion that the INA had entertained the thought that they could actually take on the British!
Stanley realized that the colonel was not addressing him singly but as a collective whole, and wondered whether the allusion to the Tokyo Rose would augur the serious charge of sedition.
‘Pardon me saying so, sir,’ Stanley replied with equanimity, ‘the Indian National Army was just an expression of a sentiment that is becoming popular in these times, foolish as it may have seemed…but speaking for myself.’ Then he followed through, ‘I have nothing against the British except their colonial policy, and personally, I think they are better gentlemen than most I have seen.’
‘Humph.’ Stanley’s experience of the Oriental warlords had not been exactly endearing, and the remark provoked the grunt from the colonel. ‘Loser’s tale, eh?’
‘Not quite, Colonel,’ responded Stanley in defence. ‘I’m sorry if I have sounded patronizing, sir, but the truth is that we are also human beings and naturally, as human beings, we desire freedom and dignity even if we are not considered as equals.’
‘I say!’ exclaimed Colonel MacIntyre, raising his bushy eyebrows as he stared at Stanley and blurted aloud. ‘Another bloody patriot!’
Stanley hoped that he had not antagonized the colonel’s sensibilities. Stanley knew that this man had the authority to be lenient, and that he and his men could become mere files to languish in the morass of army bureaucracy. ‘I speak for my men and I, sir. The truth is that none of us were ever combatants. We were writers of stories some read.’
Stanley had presented his case.
Colonel MacIntyre accepted Stanley’s argument without comment. Being well attuned to the tide of change in human thinking and having fought across two continents for the very ideals of freedom from tyranny, his attitude had dramatically changed from those of the old colonial school of thought. A thoughtful silence permeated the room as the colonel perused Stanley’s file with great intent, contemplating the scanty material it held, before he broke the silence.
‘So I see. So I see,’ he observed.
‘I meant no disrespect or offence when I spoke about freedom or dignity, Colonel. I was appealing,’ said Stanley ingratiatingly, and looked into the colonel’s eyes for the judgement that was slowly taking form.
‘I say, old chap, point taken,’ said Colonel MacIntyre. ‘You chaps are getting your independence, no bother. And so are the blokes in this country. It’s only a matter of time. I only hope you know what to do with it. But that shouldn’t be my concern, should it?’ chided the colonel in exasperation.
A curtain was descending upon the British Empire, he surmised. The political process was changing. Britain was spent after years of fighting, and there were the Japanese to contend with still. His job here was to weed out the dangerous elements among the captives and release the rest as a legacy for the nebulous governments shaping on the horizon to inherit. He suspended his train of thought and expelled his decision.
‘Mr David,’ Colonel MacIntyre said. ‘You and your men can consider yourselves no longer under charge of the British Army. You are free to go,’ he concluded, stamping the papers in front of him with a rubber stamp.
‘Thank you, sire,’ gratefully acknowledged Stanley as the colonel stamped him ‘NOT DANGEROUS’. Stanley was given the white card.
Nodding politely at the colonel, Stanley walked out of the Insein Prison after an internment of three months with nothing in his pocket but an exhilaration of joy, the joy of being alive and unchained from the war. He was a free man again, free to explore Burma and discover its quintessence without the yoke of a uniform. He was eager to see what a war-free independent Burma would be like, and perhaps pursue and realize the fulfilment of his Asian dream—a dream that had eluded him until now.
*
Aboard HMS Birmingham
Rangoon Harbour
4 January 1948
The captain of the British cruiser anchored in the harbour looked at his watch. Exactly 4:20 am, he recorded, as expected of him by the Burmese astrologers, he gave the curt order.
‘Fire!’
The guns from the British warship along with UBS May Yu—a war ship gifted to independent Burma by the departing British—boomed, the crash of the salvos ringing in the ears of the citizenry of the city as they rose to the occasion and cheered. They cheered because the foreign naval guns were not firing upon them for once in their recent lifetime. The British guns were instead officially signalling and confirming to them that they were now free. At the secretariat, diplomats and Burmese officials commenced their ceremony for the momentous occasion. The British Union Jack was lowered and the national flag of the country was hoisted as star shells burst above, awakening a drowsy sky. Rifle volleys were fired by the jubilant Burmese soldiers of the new republic. The much-cherished dream of Aung San had become a reality, and with it would also follow what the general had feared.
*
Rangoon
31 January 1949
The Insurrection
The assassination of General Aung San triggered in the country an aftermath of militancy. And as feared by Stanley and his manager and assistant U Maung Shwe, soon the ethnic communities—in particular the Karens—distrustful of Burmese intentions as ever, withdrew from the dialogue, demanding independence. They were ready to carry arms in order to achieve their objective.
The Karen National Union (also known as KNU) was created as a governmental presence for the Karen people in 1947. It created its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), to provide security to refugees or internally displaced Karens. The KNLA attempted to co-exist peacefully with the Burmese majority. Meanwhile, a more aggressive fighting element was formed, veterans of the war, the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO). The KNDO prepared for a total uprising. Towards the end of the rainy season in 1948, the Burmese government, led by Prime Minister U Nu, began raising and arming irregular political militias known as the Sitwundan. These militias were under the command of Ne Win, a major general by then but outside the control of the regular army. The Sitwundan was to disarm the Karens, but some of these militias went on a rampage through Karen communities.
The burning, killing, looting and raping of a people had commenced with sovereign right for the British government of Clement Attlee in their haste to decolonize an empire that was no longer manageable; had disastrously overlooked the need to provide safeguards for their erstwhile loyal subjects and comrades in arms.
Even then, the Karens held leading positions in both the government and the army. The army chief was General Smith Dun. In January 1949, Dun, a Karen, was removed from office and imprisoned. He was replaced with Ne Win by Prime Minister U Nu.
The KNDO rose up in an insurgency against the government and came close to capturing Rangoon itself. The most decisive was the Battle of Insein, nine miles from Rangoon.
*
The Ambush at WetKaw
The End of Karen Ascendance
1 February 1949
While the experienced 5th Burma Rifles stationed in Arakan was being airlifted on the orders of General Ne Win, the Second Karen Rifles—the best equipped battalion of the Karen army of the government—rushed down from Prome to strengthen Karen defences at Insein. An armoured carrier spearheaded 120 vehicles supported by two six-pounder artillery pieces and eight three-inch mortars. On the Burmese side, a six-pounder gun crew and a Naval Bofors gun crew were hastily organized to provide artillery support. In the early morning of 10 February, the mechanized force of the Second Karen Rifles crossed Wetkaw bridge at leisure and commenced to make a dash for Rangoon, feeling invincible and fully confident that there were no government forces or guns strong enough to oppose them all the way to Insein. Fortunately for the government forces, the element of surprise was with them. The Bofors gun mounted on wheels—which was capable of firing 40-mm shells at 120 rounds a minute—stood on the road in their way and opened fire point-blank at 500 yards, knocking out their armoured carrier and damaging one of the six pounder guns.
This was totally unexpected by the Karens who neglected to position a scouting patrol in front. For the next few days there were attacks and counter-attacks, and exchanges of mortar fire between the two forces until the Bofors found clear Karen targets. This demoralized the Karens. Then Nehru’s government shipped arms to the Burmese Army. It was the end of the most crucial phase of the Karen struggle. It was a display of remarkable military capability of the Karens as a fighting force but, sadly, without a disciplined command structure. Yet, they held out in a siege till late May 1949 lasting 112 days.
And along with Aung San’s dream of a unified Burma, Stanley’s stock of tea, valued at 50,000 rupees—considered a fortune then— went up in smoke during the insurrection.
Stanley saw Aung San’s Burma deteriorate into a quagmire of political bickering. Diverse political parties sprouted in the country with dangerous portent, while insurgencies, endemic to the countryside, were beginning to assume cult proportions amongst the ethnic young. Despite the disquiet that had ruptured in the country, Stanley was still hopeful that the nation would find an answer to its problem and iron out its differences, giving him the opportunity to establish an identity in a land to which he had become attached.
Dispossessed now of a business and a means of livelihood in a country where he had decided to remain, Stanley now looked for a job.
He wasn’t quitting Rangoon just yet.
*
A Railway Station
Southern Burma
With a semblance of order restored in Rangoon, U Nu’s inchoate government pursued an ineffective policy of appeasement with the ethnic groups, successful with some but largely unsuccessful with the defiant Karens. But there were those who chose to be assimilated into mainstream life—abandoning their austere habitat on the hills and descending onto the plains below, forming little hamlets and villages behind the line of control to live with the Burmese peacefully. Many of them educated themselves and sought jobs in Rangoon. However, a majority of the Karens remained on their hill tracks, bordering Thailand, staking their claim to an autonomous Karen State in absence of an independent state. They named their state ‘Kawthoolei’, meaning ‘land of flowers’, and to protect it, KNDO continued hostilities as guerrillas, besieging the Burmese as Aung San had foreseen.
‘God, protect me,’ Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win prayed under his breath on receiving his orders for the day—escort a train across hostile terrain that night and cross a bridge over a ravine until it reached a beleaguered army garrison situated about 160 kilometres away. The garrison had come under attack a few nights ago, losing a good number of its soldiers to commando style raid by a strong force of the KNDO until they were repelled. The garrison was to be reinforced by 400 soldiers whom the train was carrying that evening and, after fortifying the garrison, the army had decided to conduct a search and destroy the operation, and to put an end to the menace of the guerrillas. ‘Everything in order?’ asked Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win.
‘Absolutely fine, sir,’ replied the driver of the armoured car who was to pilot the train that evening.
‘This is a real beauty, Lieutenant. We should have had them earlier, sir. We wouldn’t have lost so many trains to those devils.’
‘We learn from experience, soldier,’ remarked the lieutenant. ‘My worry is that those devils will, too.’
‘Ah…their bullets can’t penetrate this armour, sir,’ responded the driver, proudly giving the armoured plate of the vehicle a resounding slap. He felt impervious to harm behind the protective shield of the armoured plates and was grateful to the government for providing the army with these weapons.
‘All right,’ the lieutenant said, ‘let’s board now.’
Two soldiers moved into the armoured car along with the driver—one of them seating himself behind the heavy machine gun with its lethal snout pointing out of the turret defiantly, while the other took command of the turret’s cannon. Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win then took overall command of the mechanized monster and waved the engine driver of the train to follow, as an orange sun began to bask on the eastern horizon.
‘We will close the hatch in one hour,’ the lieutenant announced as the armoured car fired its engines and majestically rolled ahead on its iron wheels.
There was still light in the sky and the lieutenant personally disliked the claustrophobic quarters of the armoured vehicle. He did not share the invulnerability the driver of the vehicle exuded earlier at the station, nor was he inspired by the awesome look of the army’s prime weapon. Armour or no armour, the vehicle was a sitting duck for dynamite, and he was hoping that the new phenomenon would temporarily arrest the intrepidity of the insurgents who had become accustomed to blowing up unescorted trains.
‘The Kayin s (Burmese for Karen) will be surprised,’ gleefully commented the machine gunner, eager for an encounter to inaugurate his formidable toy.
‘My cannon will blast them to hell, don’t forget,’ remarked the soldier manning the turret, wishing for the moment when he would display his expertise at gunnery.
‘Be alert, comrades. And stop jabbering,’ ordered the lieutenant. ‘Let’s hope that this one gets through. Our fellows at the garrison need us.’
The lieutenant’s command silenced the enthusiastic prattle in the armoured car as the steel monster lumbered over the rail track, clacking the distance as it drew closer to the bridge.
*
At the Bridge
An Hour Later
‘I can see the headlights,’ reported the crouching phantom by the rails on the bridge.
‘That’s not the train,’ observed another. ‘I think it’s the armoured car our man informed us about.’
‘Then it’s definitely a military train behind it,’ asserted another apparition which arose tall from the chiaroscuro shadows of the descending night and whistled. The shrill, sharp signal stirred a flurry of ghostly silhouettes that glided away from the rails towards the bottom of the ravine.
‘We will not engage them in combat this time. They’re bound to be a large body,’ the tall, commanding silhouette advised when the phantoms had congregated below.
‘What do you propose?’ asked a shadow.
‘Very simple, my dear fellow,’ answered the commanding voice. ‘I’ve wired both ends of the bridge. I’ll wait until the armoured care reaches the other side and signals the train with an all-clear sign. The train will follow and when most of the coaches are on the bridge, I’ll detonate both ends of it and send them plunging to the bottom of the ravine.’
‘Fantastic!’ exclaimed an insurgent in ecstasy.
‘Don’t open fire,’ warned the commander. ‘It is going to betray our position.’
‘Okay, boss,’ obeyed the shadows around the commander.
‘As soon as the dynamites go off, I want everyone to scatter and regroup quietly at the town, understand? Quietly,’ he reiterated, and proceeded to take up position for the assault on the bridge.
The armoured car inched cautiously and suspiciously across the bridge—its powerful searchlight turned on and challenging the adversaries of the night with its blinding glare, daring them to a confrontation. Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win strained his eyes through the slits of the armoured car apprehensively, sweeping the tracks ahead for signs of sabotage. The turret gunner, revolving with the glare of the searchlight, solicited with his alert cannon a target for obliteration; the machine gunner’s trigger itched to explode in a soliloquy of death, but to their disappointment, the armoured car railed to the end of the bridge without incident. Deciding that there was no impending attack at least for the night, Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win, overwhelmed with relief, gave the clear sign to the train—steaming and hissing with anticipation on the other side—to follow.
‘Now!’ signalled the commander of the phantoms, as a stretch of coaches outlined the length of the bridge. Two pairs of resolute hands firmly pushed down the plungers of the device that sent their charge to the two ends of the bridge. In an instant, the bridge erupted with an infernal roar, tossing the coaches high into the air in a mesh of fiery timber, steel and pulped flesh as the remnants of the train and the bridge tumbled down into the ravine below.
‘Retreat, now,’ ordered the tall silhouette, leaving an astounded Lieutenant Maung Kyaw Win to witness the raging inferno he had just escaped. And by the time the lieutenant’s speechless men regained their soldierly poise behind their monstrous weapons, the silhouettes below the demolished bridge had vanished into the depths of the night.
‘I’ll get one of those monsters one of these days,’ vowed the phantom commander—the last of the silhouettes to merge into the night—watching the brightly lit armoured car against the burning skyline, whirring its turret and seeking out the perpetrators of the catastrophe, before he joined his men with an intoxicating sense of accomplishment.