Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser Page A

we watched the Japs swarming aroundthe burning wreckage in a way which would have recalled Osbert Sitwell's remark about “those clever, patriotic apes of Japanese hurling themselves about”, if I'd known it at the time. They looked like energetic khaki goblins, and when I whispered this to the Duke, lying alongside, we discovered that we had both suffered infant nightmares from George MacDonald's goblin stories; his imps had had tender feet, without toes, and could be laid out by stamping on them; at this point Sergeant Hutton told us to fookin' shut up, and a moment later the altercation broke out in the dark behind us, between Forster and a Sikh over the possession of a chaggle—it lasted all of three seconds before being snarled to silence.
    “Stupid sods!” muttered the Duke. “Can you beat it? Forster's thirsty, so 200 men risk getting killed!”
    The only other memory I have of that night is of the anxious, sweating face of a tank officer thrust close to mine, asking if everything was okay. He was crawling round the perimeter—which consisted of men lying on their weapons, since there had been no time to dig in—and when I said we were fine he exclaimed: “Thank God for that! Well done, well done!” and scuttled off on all fours. It seemed an odd inquiry—obviously everything was okay, inasmuch as Jap hadn't found us; if he did, it wouldn't be. Another lesson noted: if you're jittery, keep it to yourself; my nerves were fine until he arrived; afterwards I was decidedly restless.
    There wasn't a Jap to be seen at dawn, but since they were in large numbers between us and Meiktila it wasnecessary to get into cover without delay: when a small force is cut off, as we were, the best it can do is hole up, wait for a chance to slip out, and in the meantime annoy the enemy in any way it can. It was something new to me, this Fourteenth Army attitude of regarding a defensive position not as a place where you waited to be attacked, but as a base from which you sallied out to observe or clobber the foe. It was done on a big scale at Meiktila, and on a small one in the little village where we joined up with the rest of the battalion later that day, after a quick march through the dry paddy on which Grandarse trod on a krait, which is among the most venomous snakes on earth. It was a nasty shock to both of them; he cried “Ya booger!” and went up three feet, and the krait shot out from under and disappeared into a crack in the sunbaked earth.
    The village was a neat little stronghold, surrounded by a high embankment with openings north and south where the road ran through. This bank, which was plainly pre-war, had evidently been built as a defence against the ubiquitous Burmese bandits, and once we had strung wire beyond the outer slope and dug our pits on the inner one, we were nice and snug. The section brewed up, and while the light lasted I started writing a short story about a sixteenth-century High-lander cruising through the wilds of Lochaber who suddenly becomes aware that he is being stalked by a beautiful young woman who is even more expert a woodsman than he is. Considering our position, Freud, had he been there, would probably have saidsomething trenchant, but all I got was Sergeant Hutton snapping:
    “Stop bloody scribblin', git off yer arse, an' git fell in wid your rifle an' kukri. Yer gan on tiger patrol. Put yer p.t. shoes on, leave yer ’at, an' report to Mr Gale.”
    “Are you going?”
    “Nah, joost ’im and you and two oothers. Ye evn't done a tiger patrol * afore, ev ye? Nah, neether ’as Gale.” He considered. “Aye…’e's joost a lad—but ’e's a good lad. Reet, git crackin'.”
    Gale was perhaps a year or two older than I was, about twenty-two; he'd joined the battalion when I had, so he was not experienced. But he was, as Hutton said, a good lad, brisk, active, and with a gift of easy command, neither too stiff nor too affable, the kind of subaltern that the British Army has turned