A Battle Is Fought to Be Won Read online

  A Battle is Fought to be Won

  Francis Clifford

  © Francis Clifford 1960

  Francis Clifford has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1960 by Hamish Hamilton Limited.

  This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books Ltd.

  For

  PETER

  Vivat In Pace

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE - THE BRIDGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART TWO - THE TOWN

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  Part Three - THE VILLAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There were young knights among them who had never been present at a stricken field. Some could not look upon it and some could not speak and they held themselves apart from the others who were cutting down the prisoners at My Lord’s orders, for the prisoners were a body too numerous to be guarded by those of us who were left.

  Then Jean de Rye, an aged knight of Burgundy who had been sore wounded in the battle, rode up to the group of young knights and said: ‘Are ye maidens with your downcast eyes? Look well upon it. See all of it. Close your eyes to nothing. For a battle is fought to be won. And it is this that happens if you lose.’

  From a Medieval Chronicle

  PART ONE

  THE BRIDGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gilling crouched behind the low bank and stared across the dazzling paddy stubble towards the culvert where the road block had been set up. Daylight was little more than an hour old but already the sun-gutted Burmese plain trembled under the returning heat. Even the two bullock carts which dawn had revealed interlocked on the culvert’s hump seemed to quiver slightly as if they were possessed of some vibrant inner force. There was no other hint of movement, either along the rim of the gully where the Japanese were entrenched or in the direction from which Rance’s company was about to attack. The deception was complete. For as far as the eye could see not a single living thing showed itself.

  Gilling lowered the binoculars and glanced nervously at his watch. Ninety seconds to go. His own company was deployed in line behind the bank and he had gone to ground beside his senior platoon commander, Subedar Nay Dun. Their eyes met briefly, then shied away. The silence was intense, broken only by the solid click of a rifle-bolt being eased home somewhere along to their left. It was as if the whole world were holding its breath; as if no one existed between them and the vast discoloured distances. And yet, within two hundred and fifty yards of where he lay, Gilling knew that Rance’s men were squirming invisibly over the dead bristle of last year’s rice and that the Japanese were waiting for them, flattening themselves against the brick-hard earth of the gully which skewered the road.

  Seventy seconds now. He experienced a melting sensation in the pit of his stomach and his palms began to ooze a chilly, unnatural sweat. This was the third successive morning that the enemy’s suicide squads had been found to have penetrated behind the brigade, but it was the first time he had been involved in flushing them out. Yesterday the Sikhs had done it; the Gurkhas the day before. Now it was the Frontier Rifles’ turn. Rance’s company and his own. Kachins and Karens.

  He focused his binoculars on the culvert again. It had been quite impossible to move in any closer. The crumbling irrigation bank which screened them from the Japanese in the gully was fronted by a tawny, ironed-out expanse that offered not the slightest vestige of cover. It was suicidal ground over which to have to attack and the longer he looked at it the more thankful he was that his task was merely to support Rance’s advance with covering fire.

  Forty seconds. One eyebrow raised, he shot another strained glance at Nay Dun, but except for the tell-tale twitch of a cheek muscle the Karen’s toffee-coloured face was as impassive as ever. A butterfly jazzed past, chopping heavily on the silent air, but across the plain nothing stirred. The deception still held. Gilling licked his cracked lips, then screwed his head to either side. Not a man moved. The line of waiting riflemen, the Bren-gunners, the mortar crews — all had the trance-like rigidity of figures in a tableau.

  He checked with his watch again. Less than twenty seconds. Each one seemed to be stretching out elastically into great lengths of time. Sweat salted the corners of his mouth and he could feel his heart beginning to thud against the cage of his ribs. For a moment or two his thoughts were filled with an intense pity for Rance. Then the tension squeezed his mind dry of every scrap of emotion and he was only conscious of the strengthening beat of his heart measuring out the count-down.

  Ten seconds ... Nine ... Eight ... Seven ...

  He lifted his eyes, and in the instant of doing so he saw Rance’s Kachins rising to their feet. Dwarfed by the intervening distance they sprouted suddenly from the ground, singly, in twos and threes, in clusters, and started to stumble forward.

  The nearest Bren shattered Gilling’s throaty cry. Almost simultaneously firing broke out along the bank like a stick whipped back and forth across railings. Craning round he saw that both mortars had already loosed off. Clumsy with haste he fixed his binoculars on the gully again, waiting for the strikes, and when the stabbing, blood-red blossoms came he saw that both were short.

  Shifting half right he picked out the lanky figure of Rance in the centre of the Kachins’ forward platoon. The other platoons were slightly in the rear, one on either side. All of them were well spread out, section by section, travelling at a steady jog-trot. They were still two hundred yards from the culvert, moving diagonally across Gilling’s front. The binoculars brought them in very close. The sun blinked on a bayonet; on leather. Revolver in hand, stooping a little, Rance was a yard or so in the lead. He seemed strangely unconcerned, almost as if he were deaf to the firing; oblivious of danger.

  The mortars were short again. Gilling bawled at the crews but his words were beaten back into his mouth by the din. The deep cough of the Brens was punctuated by the ceaseless rattle of rifles and staccato bursts from sub-machine-guns. A hot, bitter smell wafted along the bank. The air was losing its clarity, buffeting this way and that.

  Rance had got to about a hundred yards from the gully. He had lengthened his stride and Gilling saw him turn his head, gesturing with both arms. The Kachins were bringing their weapons down to hip-level, thrusting the bayonets forward. Some of them were drawing their chopping knives. Here and there a man fell, hugging himself, pitching headlong as if he had tripped.

  The noise was deafening. One of the mortars suddenly found the range and a mottled explosion erupted from the gully only a stone’s-throw from the culvert. Wildly, Gilling shouted his relief. Beside him, Nay Dun was screaming instructions to his Bren-gunner.

  Rance had less than a hundred yards to go now. He was at full stretch, his long legs pulling him clear of the leading group. More men were going down and for the first time the onward rush showed signs of faltering. The wide, blunt arrowhead was losing its shape; breaking up. Twenty yards further on and t
he flanking platoons started to go raggedly to earth. But Rance and the men in the centre went on, bent forward as though they were struggling into a gale.

  Gilling’s hands were shaking so violently that he could scarcely keep the binoculars steady. His nostrils were filled with brown dust and the drift of acrid smoke. Rance was barely sixty yards from the gully and he dared not support him much longer, yet it seemed almost criminal to lift the covering fire at such a moment. He delayed a second or two, filled with dread, then sounded three sharp blasts on his whistle. The firing ceased abruptly, as if a switch had been thrown. A brief, shocked silence enveloped the bank. Then the brittle crackle of the Japanese automatics beat against Gilling’s ears and he heard the faint, child-like cries of the charging Kachins.

  Rance was closing in with what was left of his leading platoon. When he was twenty-five yards from the culvert he hurled a grenade. He seemed to do it with curious, unhurried deliberation, checking in his stride as he bowled his arm over. Then Gilling realized that he had been hit. He hobbled a couple of strides, spun round and slowly subsided, clutching his thigh. Through the binoculars Gilling could see him twisting on the ground, arching his back. The few Kachins who were still on their feet carried on past him, firing from the hip, brandishing their knives. But none of them reached the gully. One by one, with dramatic suddenness, they collapsed like puppets abruptly severed from their strings.

  Gilling stared at the scene in utter dismay. The power of decision seemed to have been drained from him. For a long moment his mind struggled dazedly to accept that the attack had failed. The surviving platoons would never go forward now. The most they could hope was to extricate themselves without too many losses. He understood this completely; appreciated their need for urgent support. But it was the sight of Rance, writhing slowly like a chrysalis within yards of the culvert, that numbed his brain.

  Even as he looked, two Japanese scuttled from the gully and ran towards Rance’s agonized figure. He caught the sharp hiss of Nay Dun’s indrawn breath; felt him stiffen. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the subedar jerk his head sideways; raise an arm in expectation of the command to open fire. But Gilling couldn’t bring himself to give it. The words choked on his tongue. He found himself trapped in a state of raw-nerved bewilderment. Rance was every bit as much a target as the Japanese. With stupefied fascination he watched them grasp him by the shoulders and drag him into the gully. It took only a few seconds but the time seemed everlasting, and all the while he was hating himself, appalled by what was happening and yet feeling powerless to prevent it.

  Only when they had disappeared from view did he bark out the order. Instantly, firing rattled and spat from along the bank and the mortars planted their savage flowers around the target area. Under cover of the barrage what was left of the Kachin company began to withdraw in short, scrambling rushes. There was a leaden weight in Gilling’s heart as he watched them pull back. The picture of Rance’s capture remained printed on his natural vision. And when his gaze eventually met Nay Dun’s again he read an accusation in the subedar’s yellowed, unblinking eyes which made him want to cry out: ‘What else could I have done? God Almighty, what else?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Forty minutes later Gilling stood with Lieutenant-Colonel Church under the gold-mohur trees where battalion headquarters was located. The clump of trees ringed a squat white pagoda which had the appearance of a soiled cake decoration. Crawford, the adjutant, was with them and leaf-splintered sunlight dappled their faces. Beyond the shadows the empty plain burned steadily in the heat.

  Church said: ‘Brigade’s ordered the Gurkhas in. It’s no reflection on us. They want the road cleared at the double and we’d have taken too long to reorganize.’ He paused, then rested his eyes on Gilling. ‘Are you absolutely sure he wasn’t dead?’

  Gilling nodded. ‘I could see him quite clearly, sir. That’s why I held my fire.’

  They were repeating themselves, but this time Crawford said: ‘It would have been better if you hadn’t, Tony.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Better for Rance.’

  ‘It would have been murder. If we’d opened up while he was —’

  ‘It couldn’t have been worse for him than what’s happened.’

  Gilling blinked at him, frowning. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Church interposed: ‘Sam means that the poor devil has been killed anyway.’

  ‘Killed?’

  Church took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  Crawford’s voice shook. ‘Because they’ve stuck his head on a bayonet and shoved it on top of the bullock-carts. That’s how.’

  Horrified, Gilling ejaculated: ‘They’ve what?’

  ‘I didn’t believe it either,’ Crawford said, ‘until I went out to the O.P. and saw for myself. The swine have even put a cigarette in his mouth.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’ An image formed hideously in Gilling’s mind, nauseating him. He said it again, pitched low, drawn out: ‘Oh Christ.’

  No one spoke for a while. They had been in almost continuous action for over three weeks and the battalion had already suffered upwards of eighty casualties. Death and mutilation were novelties no longer. But there had been nothing like this before; nothing as foul and frightening and inhuman as what had befallen Tim Rance. A miasma of evil seemed to pollute the atmosphere, filtering under the trees from across the plain.

  The rumours were true, then. These things happened ...

  Gilling heard himself saying: ‘He was alive. I had the glasses on him and saw him struggle when they —’

  ‘You’ve nothing to blame yourself for.’ This was Church, his voice clipped with fatigue.

  ‘I should have done something.’ Gilling moved his hands distractedly. ‘Something.’

  ‘You couldn’t have anticipated this sort of thing.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘None of us could.’ Church removed his wide-brimmed hat and mopped his forehead. He looked old suddenly; the face more lined, the wiry hair more grey. ‘In any case —’

  A distant booming cut him short. The explosions sounded like the pounding of surf; the small-arms’ fire like the snapping of innumerable twigs.

  Crawford’s eyes blazed. ‘That’ll be the Gurkhas.’

  The three of them hurried to the edge of the trees. The taut line of the horizon was already obscured by dust which rose from a point about a mile away. There was nothing more to be seen, but Gilling’s imagination congealed with renewed horror around the sight which awaited the Gurkhas when they moved in close.

  Even now his mind could scarcely grasp the reality of it. The insistent sense of personal guilt mingled with the horror as he recalled Nay Dun’s harsh, unblinking gaze. And he felt a kind of weakness take root in him, part of which was fear and part a distrust of his own competence to provide leadership in the face of such cold-blooded savagery.

  *

  ‘Brigade, thakin. Brigadier Wemyss.’

  ‘Again?’ Church nodded to the stocky signals havildar who had just saluted. ‘Very well. I’m coming.’

  He turned heavily towards the pagoda. Watching him go, Gilling said: ‘Has everyone heard about Rance?’ He could think of nothing else.

  ‘It was going the rounds well before you got back. I’d say you were about the last to learn.’ Crawford extracted mucus from the corners of his bloodshot eyes, then looked hatefully across the plain. The firing had petered out some minutes ago. ‘I hope the Gurkhas gave them hell. I hope they gave the filthy bastards absolute bloody hell.’

  There was nothing to keep Gilling at headquarters but he found himself delaying his return to the company. He stayed with Crawford for a while and they lit cigarettes. If Crawford wondered at his continued presence he didn’t remark on it, but eventually he muttered: ‘Well, I’d better go and see whether the Old Man wants me.’

  He had only taken a few paces when Church reappeared. They waited for him, heeling the cigarettes
into the ground.

  ‘The road’s open,’ Church announced, ‘so we can be expecting some transport through — aircraft permitting. It seems the Gurkhas didn’t find it all that easy. They’ve retrieved seven of our wounded, by the way.’ As if reading their thoughts, he added meaningly: ‘I gather they were well clear of the gully ... Do the necessary, will you, Sam? I’m going over to get the Kachins sorted into some kind of shape.’

  Crawford nodded. A mule brayed nearby.

  ‘Have you anything for me, sir?’

  ‘Not at the moment, Tony,’ Church said. ‘You’d best be off.’ Then: ‘Tony.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, what you did was absolutely right — understand? Remember that. Don’t reproach yourself.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Gilling saluted and picked his way through the hotch-potch of headquarters company. The diminutive figure of his Karen orderly, Saw Tun Shwe, ducked under some branches and tailed along at his heels. Men squatted beneath the trees, smoking, oiling their weapons, dozing uncomfortably in their equipment. Others moved purposefully from point to point. Everywhere the broken light was heavy with a brooding tension.

  Perry, who commanded the mortar platoon, called to him as he passed and loped across. He was in the middle of a cold shave and his freckled face was badly nicked around the chin. He had joined the battalion within the last two months and was painfully eager to please.

  ‘Were my fellows all right?’

  ‘Fine, once they got going.’

  ‘They seemed damn slow to me. I was watching from the O.P. and I thought —’

  ‘Then you saw what happened?’

  Perry moistened his lips. ‘Rance, d’you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it — and I wish to God I hadn’t. With the cigarette it looked like something at a fairground. Three shies a penny — you know?’ The line of his mouth slackened in a queer way. ‘Christ, Tony, what sort of war is this?’