Crispinâs Day.
Among the common soldiery was many a moist eye. Amazing to see us all respond to poetry. Or maybe it was funk.
I have to scribble these lines just to tell you about the journey, hoping not to anger the censor. Because it really was legendary â legendary! Not to be measured in miles or the time on a clockface. A move across a great division, like the division between life and deathâ
âInto a land without civilians. Without civilization. Not a place for ordinary human life. You couldnât buy a ticket to get here.
A mysterious mountain country â without living inhabitants, without real roads, without towns, without flags or currencies. The writhing, thunderous, plenitudinous route to war. A newly invented route, patched together out of lanes, jungle tracks, chaungs (a chaung being a sandy stream bed reliably dry in the dry season). On this gallant road we embarked at a dim and secret hour of night, with even our voices muffled, for every sound carries inthe thin air. Weâre travelling from Milestone 81 â home! â to a rendezvous in the country I canât name, called Yzagio. This rather imaginary highway we travel is christened the Tiddim Road. Six months ago, it was all dense jungle and raging rivers. And in Japanese territory.
If you will have nothing of this legend, then I have to admit that this way of the conquerors lasts only about two hundred miles. On it, my girl, we left the old mundane world behind.
After we had passed the blackened remains of Kohima â like all you ever imagined of the Great War â we went from Nagaland into the old state of Manipur. Ragged and brutalized Imphal went by, possessed solely by pigs and vultures. The mountains became more gigantic, the way more unlikely, like something in a dream. All our vehicles proceed at a crawl, in bottom gear most of the time. Headlights are muffled. We ourselves wear a secret, anonymous air. Dispatch riders patrol up and down the convoy, seeing to it that the trucks keep even distance, neither too far from nor too close to the next vehicle. All this in a great fog of dust, the very material of secrecy.
Iâm travelling in a three-tonner with some of âSâ Section and its stores. The stores include immense rolls of barbed wire. So excited was I last night that I climbed over the barbed wire as we moved, until most of me was out on the cab roof, from where I got a fine view of the shrouded nomansland all round us. In that awkward position I fell asleep.
Shouting and noise. Daylight. I awoke. I was hanging far over the side of the vehicle, between cab and body, my legs trapped in a roll of barbed wire, upside-down . In my sleep I had slipped right off the smooth cab. But for the embrace of the wire, I would certainly have fallen to the ground and been run over in the dark.
That was this morning. I live to tell the tale. God knows where we are in place or time â because today we were served our Christmas dinner. Imagine, 20th December! Very surrealist.
We ate in an empty grain store, all built of bamboo and dry leaves. Being a greedy little thing, youâll like to know what we gotfor this monster feast. Well, it was probably better than you will do on the 25th. We started with chicken noodle soup, followed by canned chicken, canned mutton, sausage stuffing, beans, potatoes and gravy, all washed down by two cans of beer, and followed by Christmas duff with sauce and canned pears. Then coffee. A marvellous blow-out!
By way of presents, each man got a handful of sweets and biscuits and half a bar of Cadburyâs chocolate. The CO then made a brief speech and offered us this toast: âTo our wives and sweethearts!â (The old meanie didnât say anything about sisters â¦)
This meal has marked not only the putting away of the old order but the imposition of half-rations. Fancy â the food was bad enough at Milestone 81. But from now on all food has to be
Among the common soldiery was many a moist eye. Amazing to see us all respond to poetry. Or maybe it was funk.
I have to scribble these lines just to tell you about the journey, hoping not to anger the censor. Because it really was legendary â legendary! Not to be measured in miles or the time on a clockface. A move across a great division, like the division between life and deathâ
âInto a land without civilians. Without civilization. Not a place for ordinary human life. You couldnât buy a ticket to get here.
A mysterious mountain country â without living inhabitants, without real roads, without towns, without flags or currencies. The writhing, thunderous, plenitudinous route to war. A newly invented route, patched together out of lanes, jungle tracks, chaungs (a chaung being a sandy stream bed reliably dry in the dry season). On this gallant road we embarked at a dim and secret hour of night, with even our voices muffled, for every sound carries inthe thin air. Weâre travelling from Milestone 81 â home! â to a rendezvous in the country I canât name, called Yzagio. This rather imaginary highway we travel is christened the Tiddim Road. Six months ago, it was all dense jungle and raging rivers. And in Japanese territory.
If you will have nothing of this legend, then I have to admit that this way of the conquerors lasts only about two hundred miles. On it, my girl, we left the old mundane world behind.
After we had passed the blackened remains of Kohima â like all you ever imagined of the Great War â we went from Nagaland into the old state of Manipur. Ragged and brutalized Imphal went by, possessed solely by pigs and vultures. The mountains became more gigantic, the way more unlikely, like something in a dream. All our vehicles proceed at a crawl, in bottom gear most of the time. Headlights are muffled. We ourselves wear a secret, anonymous air. Dispatch riders patrol up and down the convoy, seeing to it that the trucks keep even distance, neither too far from nor too close to the next vehicle. All this in a great fog of dust, the very material of secrecy.
Iâm travelling in a three-tonner with some of âSâ Section and its stores. The stores include immense rolls of barbed wire. So excited was I last night that I climbed over the barbed wire as we moved, until most of me was out on the cab roof, from where I got a fine view of the shrouded nomansland all round us. In that awkward position I fell asleep.
Shouting and noise. Daylight. I awoke. I was hanging far over the side of the vehicle, between cab and body, my legs trapped in a roll of barbed wire, upside-down . In my sleep I had slipped right off the smooth cab. But for the embrace of the wire, I would certainly have fallen to the ground and been run over in the dark.
That was this morning. I live to tell the tale. God knows where we are in place or time â because today we were served our Christmas dinner. Imagine, 20th December! Very surrealist.
We ate in an empty grain store, all built of bamboo and dry leaves. Being a greedy little thing, youâll like to know what we gotfor this monster feast. Well, it was probably better than you will do on the 25th. We started with chicken noodle soup, followed by canned chicken, canned mutton, sausage stuffing, beans, potatoes and gravy, all washed down by two cans of beer, and followed by Christmas duff with sauce and canned pears. Then coffee. A marvellous blow-out!
By way of presents, each man got a handful of sweets and biscuits and half a bar of Cadburyâs chocolate. The CO then made a brief speech and offered us this toast: âTo our wives and sweethearts!â (The old meanie didnât say anything about sisters â¦)
This meal has marked not only the putting away of the old order but the imposition of half-rations. Fancy â the food was bad enough at Milestone 81. But from now on all food has to be
Similar Books
