Forgotten Life. Brian Aldiss
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said he could do nothing till eight this morning. We had to sleep on the tables in the mess. So we did, for about three hours. (The mess is a concrete floor and a thatched roof, by the way.)
At six, as day was dawning, we were woken by the cooks. Cooks are worse than corporals. We had to get up then while they prepared breakfast. Later on, we checked into this most derelict of tents and here we are. I’ve had a snooze. Now this note. We haven’t the faintest idea what will happen next – except that we are on our way to Burma to fight the Japs. I shall not name that country again. It’s against regs. Take it from me that it is less a country, more a state of mind. The Id of the modern world.
The food would make you sick, but we’re used to it.
There was a notice on Dimapur station which said NEW YORK 11,000 MILES, TOKYO 5,400 miles, LONDON 8,300 MILES. That’s how far we are from civilization.
Our detail is under command of a cheerful sergeant called Ted Sutton. He’s from Yorkshire, a brickie foreman in civvy life, and one of the best men I ever met. Nothing upsets him, nor can you put anything over on him. Privately, I worship Ted and his cheerfulness. I’d follow him anywhere. No doubt I shall have to.
I’m very cheerful. The awfulness is exciting. But I’m also a bit fed up (or Chokka, as we say here). I wanted to get to China. You know how I’ve always been mad about things Chinese. It’s quite close. Chunking’s the place to be – Chiang Kai-shek’s capital. Constantly bombed by the Japs, full of filth and mud, so I heard from a chap in a bar in Calcutta who’d been there. That’s where I long to be. (Okay, I’m daft, but it can’t be worse than – where we’re going …) I volunteered twice, knowing the Chinese are bound to be short of radio ops. But no joy. Funny, the Chinese aren’t trusted. Yet they’re our allies. (I saw some beautiful Chinese girls in Calcutta but never mind that!)
Oh, we’re supposed to parade or something. I’ll post this here or God knows when there will be another chance. Here we go! Love to all.
Milestone 81
8th Oct. 1944
Dear Ellen,
Some address, eh? Some place!
Plenty of through traffic, as you might expect. We’re literally perched on the edge of a road. And what a road! I wish you could see it. It would satisfy your craving for ‘mad things’!
I wrote to you last from another world. Something has happened since then; that old world has gone. This is a different world – a sub-world of men only and grave intentions and festering discontent and rationed food and that particular brand of ‘organised chaos’ in which the British Army specializes. Well, before I get too philosophical, I’d better tell you how we got to Milestone 81.
Was there ever such a day – or such a road! We started out from Dimapur (if you got my letter from there, which I doubt, because the camp was so appalling they probably burn all letters), where this road begins. It runs on to Kohima and Imphal – famous, legendary names, local equivalents of Valhalla. We travelled in a three-tonner, eight of us. All I could do was stand looking out of the back and marvel, along with a bloke from Warrington called Fergy. Some of the others – amazing! – weren’t interested, and didn’t look. I bet you would have done.
Like the Burma Road, this road has been built by coolie labour – is still being built, because owing to landslides and rockfalls it is never completed. It’s been hacked out of jungle-clad mountainside. I’ve never seen such mountains. Jagged, steep – someone’s going to have to fight over mountains very similar. Many trucks have driven over the edge. It’s easy – just a moment’s lack of concentration … You can see the skeletons of crashed trucks down in the valleys, far below. Sometimes we passed strings of men, almost naked, with buckets balanced on poles over their shoulders – down far below, or far above the road. And here and there, too, working by the little threads of river in the valleys, peasants – bent in typical peasant posture, working. Even war brings them no relief from work.
It’s a one-lane road, with lay-bys every so often to let convoys pass each other. Each milestone marked – each an achievement.
At Milestone 81, I got decanted, and here I am. A real soldier now. In a WAR ZONE.
Royal Signals is strong here, along with other units of the famous British 2 Division. We are now part of the multi-racial Fourteenth Army, more familiarly known as the Forgotten Army. The Forgotten Army. The name clings like mustard gas. Everyone here grumbles like fury. I have to hide the fact that I’m enjoying it all.
Later. Sorry, interruption. I was talking about the people I now must work with. They have every right to grumble. They are more or less resting after the battle of Kohima. ‘One of the worst British battles of the war.’ Kohima’s only a few miles ahead of us. It’s now safe in British hands, what’s left of it, and all the Japs are dead. Very few prisoners taken.
The chaps complain because they think they should be sent home, or at least be given leave in India. Instead they face another campaign. And they have only me to tell it to. I think they hate me – inexperienced, pale-skinned, and having missed the hard bits … Most of them have already served three years out here. No home leave. Offered no prospect at all of getting home as long as the war with Japan lasts … which could be a century.
Morale’s low. You get the idea. They romanticize themselves as the Forgotten Army. Very bitter. I was still in the Fourth Form when they came out here.
‘What bloody good are you going to be, Winter?’ That’s what one bloke asked me yesterday. I can’t say how many times I’ve been told to ‘get some service in’ – which I am doing. Trouble is, we all go about in the bare buff, as they say, and everyone here is baked dark brown. I’m conspicuous because as yet I’m still lily white from England. Another week or two of this sun should cure that!
The only person who has been friendly so far is a Birmingham man, Bert Lyons, whose father owns a bicycle shop. He and I had quite a good talk by the light of a small lantern last night. Bert seems to have the same kind of sense of wonder as you and I. He’s also a radio op.
The Japs are still marching on India. Though we turned them back at Kohima, they are still regarded as almost unbeatable. Bert says it’s because they can live on so little – a handful of rice a day. Whereas we are decadent. He says the British Empire is finished. The Japs took over Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma itself so easily. It’s incredible. Are they going to rule half the world? Slim, the commander of the Forgotten Army, calls them ‘the most formidable fighting insects on Earth’. I guess dealing with Japs is a bit like that – fighting giaut invading insects from another world. The tales of their cruelty are legendary.
Before reaching Milestone 81, we reinforcements had a chance to talk to some troops who had been in Orde Wingate’s Chindits – heroes all – and they were in no doubt about just how tough all encounters with the Jap were likely to be. (If they got wounded in the jungle, these Chindits were given a shot of morphine and left with a revolver – to shoot themselves rather than fall into Jap hands.)
Anyhow, I’m now a member of ‘S’ Signal Section – their sole new recruit. The other reinforcements are spread throughout the division. I’ve not been through ‘S’ section’s harrowing experiences, about which they constantly tell me. Am I welcome? Certainly not. I’m a representative of ‘The Blight’ (Blighty), the country thousands of miles distant which has ignored them and their exploits for so long. Thank God for Bert Lyons. ‘Don’t worry, we’re all puggle,’ he says – puggle being our word for le cafard…
Such mighty things happening. Conversation so trivial – apart from those terrible experiences – some of which I now know by heart. God, what these poor so-and-sos have been through. And more to come.
I’m off on duty now. Love to all.
Milestone 81. Assam
13th Oct. 1944
Dear Ellen,
Hope to hear from you some day. Letter from Mum, which I’ll answer soon. Perhaps you could show her this one to be going