Forgotten Life. Brian Aldiss
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I’ll then have to be careful what I say. Of course our letters are censored by one of the officers for safety’s sake.
I’ll tell you what our billet is like. Very picturesque, I assure you.
I’m lodged in a tent consisting of a spread of brown tarpaulin over a patch of steep hillside. Lodged is the word. When I got here from Dimapur, five men already occupied the tent. If you can call it a tent. They made room for me, and so I found lodgement on the outer side, just about.
My bed or charpoy is home-made. I can’t say I’m proud of my handiwork, but it’ll do. A bit Robinson Crusoe! It consists of a ground sheet stretched across four bamboo poles which are lashed together with old signal wire. This masterpiece is balanced on empty jerry cans, stacked so that the bed is roughly level on the uneven ground. My mosquito net is secured to ropes overhead, so low that the net is uncomfortably close to my face. Never mind – I can see the stars at night.
Apparently we are 4,300 feet above sea level. It’s as if we were perched on the top of Ben Nevis. From my charpoy, I can see a hill whose peak is a thousand feet higher than we are. It towers above us, jungle-clad all the way. Not long ago, it swarmed with Japs. By propping myself up on one elbow, I can see the great road, winding and winding on for miles, always carrying its slow crawl of convoys. What a window on the world! Behind me, on the slope where we are perched, is an untidy waste land, only partly cleared. It was also Jap-infested until recently. In it still remain all the vantage points, fire bays, and tunnels the Japs dug. They were killed by grenades and flame-throwers, and their bodies walled-in where they lay. No wonder the hillside has a thriving rat population …
I was asleep last night when a rat jumped on to my charpoy and ran across the net over my face. I struck out violently at it – and dislodged my charpoy from its pile of cans. Consequently I was pitched right out of the tent, where I rolled some way down the slope, naked as the day I was born. The other blokes just laughed or swore because I had woken them. I had to laugh myself.
Mum asks if we have any entertainment. Three nights ago, the Army Cinema rolled up and showed us Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady, which I now know nearly by heart. The men just sat about on the hillside, watching. You should – or shouldn’t – have heard what they said they’d do to Margaret Lockwood. Out here, a white woman is almost a mythological creature.
Can’t be bothered to write more. I like this place – it’s so weird, though everyone takes it for granted. We haven’t even got a NAAFI, where you might linger over a beer or a coffee.
One entertainment is to watch the agile Naga women climb up and down the steep hillsides to harvest tea in the distant valley. They don’t look as good as Margaret Lockwood. They scale the slopes with huge wicker baskets secured to their backs by wide leather straps running round the forehead. It’s a tough life, and they can’t let the war get in their way. Do they consider their surroundings beautiful, I wonder?
Love to all.
Milestone 81. Assam (Nagaland)
18th Nov. 1944
Dear Ellen,
Still in the same spot. This outdoor life must be depraving: what do you think? Yesterday I stole something …
My orders were to report to the MO for various injections – TAB and so on. The MO – how typical of an officer – had appropriated for himself what passes out here for a ‘cushy billet’, a bungalow belonging to a tea planter who is now probably sitting out his life in New Delhi (unless the Japs got him). It felt quite odd to be ‘indoors’. The waiting room in which I was made to kick my heels for a good half-hour actually boasted a couple of cane armchairs and a crammed bookcase. What an anachronism! Books! On one shelf was a paperback with a title that immediately attracted me. I started reading it there and then.
Right after the first page, I knew that that book had to become part of the booty of war. ‘Loot what you can’ is an ancient warrior’s slogan. Even a 1/3d Pelican. By the time the doctor summoned me, it was safe inside my bush shirt. The book is Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, and tells of the rise and fall of poor suffering humanity over the next few billion years. (Are we rising or falling just now?)
Stapledon is an even better companion than Bert Lyons. He’ll come into action with me (we’re due to go forward soon). He provides an antidote to the triviality of daily conversation (which is in contrast to the majesty of our surroundings), which centres largely round the subjects of Kohima, sex, and the possibilities of getting home. Only Stapledon and his preoccupations seem a match for these stirring times. A cure for transience.
End of true confession. Sorry to write in pencil.
Love to all.
Milestone 81. Nagaland
30 Nov. 1944
Dear Ellen,
Many thanks for the letter with all the sordid details of your birthday. Or at least some of them. You’re really getting a big girl – and who is this fellow Mark who is taking such an interest in you? Full details please. The mouth organ sounds like a great attraction.
Sorry I wasn’t with you to have a slice of that cake. Rations or no rations, Mum obviously did well. Our rations here are awful. I won’t go into details, but I’m always hungry. Everything we eat has to come down that winding road from Dimapur which I described to you earlier. Sometimes the ration wagon rolls over the cliffside. Then we go short. The chaps in my tent talk about cooking up rats, and swear that rats and canned Indian peas taste good – but that’s just to impress the newcomer in their midst, I hope.
Forgive this awful colour ink – all I could find.
Rumours abound. We are at last about to move forward into action. So they tell us.
‘I heard the Captain say
We’re going to move today.
I only hope the blinking sergeant-major knows the way …’
This camp, now so familiar, is temporary. Everything is temporary along the Dimapur road. Maybe one day they will let it all revert to jungle. The air’s so fresh and good here and I’m secretly so excited.
It’s not only the air that’s fresh. So’s the water. Washing is quite an adventure. I wish I could draw. Facilities are just about nil at Milestone 81. Our only place to wash is at the mouth of a huge cast-iron pipe which snakes down the hillside and terminates here at a concrete base. The pipe vibrates with power and water gushes forth, splashing everywhere. In order to wash, you have to strip off entirely and then fling yourself into the stream. It’s like jumping in front of a cannon! It’s easiest to take the full force of the water smack in the chest – difficult to do because slippery green algae grow on the ever-wet concrete.
The water’s freezing cold. It’s come down from five thousand feet in a great hurry. Soaping is mighty difficult. However, my hardened campaigner friends tell me that it could be the last running water we’ll see for months. (They’re ever optimistic.)
We’ve just been issued with new chemical stuff called DDT. We’ve had to dip our shirts in it and run the liquid along the seams of our trousers. This will prevent lice and other nasty things at a time when it looks as if we shall be unable to wash clothes for months at a stretch.
You see what a funny life your brother leads. It’s better than school. And to toughen us up, we’ve been made to climb down into the valley and back, with kit. I tried to get a piggy-back off one of the Naga women, but no luck. We can’t climb the mountain above us, because that’s where the Nagas live and they must not be disturbed.
Yours till the cows come home.
Manipur, I think
20th Dec. 1944
My dear Ellen,
Guess what? It’s Christmas Day! Yes, 20th December.
The world has done one of its marvellous changes. Everything is different. I’m different. I’m rolling forward into ACTION. Imagine! This green and dusty world is slipping towards jungle