Quartered Safe Out Here. George Fraser MacDonald
figure advance, a slow step at a time, the dark blur of the head turning from side to side. If he held his course he would pass about five yards to our right; in that light he would have to be a bloody lynx to make out two figures on that broken ground – unless we moved. The temptation to get my hand on the stock of my rifle was strong, but I resisted it; by good chance the muzzle was pointed almost straight at him, and if he did spot us I would have to be damned slow not to get my shot in first … He was level with us now, treading delicately with barely a sound; he paused to look back and gestured, and other figures, equally small and ungainly, emerged from the gloom in single file – Jesus! there were eight of them, moving like misshapen little ghosts. It took them an eternity to pass our position, while I let my breath out with painful slowness and inhaled again; once I felt rather than heard Nick give a tiny gasp, and as the last figure faded into the dark behind us I turned my head to look at him. To my amazement he was grinning; he gave that little patting motion of the hand that says, settle down, take it easy, and when I stirred a finger towards the Verey pistol, lying between us, he shook his head. Still grinning, he put his lips to my ear and whispered:
“Goorkas! Ey, and they nivver even smelt us!”
Sure enough, a few minutes later, came the faint sound of voices far behind us; they were at the wire, making their presence known.
Another anti-climax – and another lesson, which I learned when it grew light, and silence was no longer necessary.
“How the hell did you know they were Gurkhas? They looked bloody like Japs to me!”
“They did to me, an’ a’ – at foorst. They’re a’ shortarsed boogers, sitha, but there’s one way ye can always tell Johnnie Goorka fra’ Johnnie Jap – Ah mean, w’en it’s dark-like, an’ ye can’t mek oot their fesses, joost their shapes. Ah didn’t spot it till they was near on past us. Always look at their ankles, Jock! The Goorkas, see, wear short puttees, like oors, so their troosers is baggy reet the way doon till their ankles. Noo, Jap wears lang puttees, nigh on up till ’is knee, so ’is legs look thin, ez if ’e ’ad stockin’s on!” Nick chuckled, well pleased. “An’ they walked reet by us! Heh-hee! The boogers!”
“Shouldn’t we have let on?” I realised the answer to the damfool question even before I’d finished asking it.
“Git hired,* Jock! Ye’ve bin on night patrol – if soom booger challenges from underfoot, ye’re liable to do ’im! Ah want to die me own fookin’ way, not wid a kukri up me gunga!” This seemed to prompt another thought. “Ayup, tho’. Look, we’ll ’ev to tell Tut Hutton that we saw ’em, but we’ll not let on till anybuddy bar ’im. Mind, noo, Jock – doan’t tell nobuddy else.”
“If you say so – but why not?”
“Ah, they’re grand lal lads, the Goorkas – but, man, they’re proud! An’ they tek their sojerin’ seriously, an’ a’.” He wagged a finger. “Ah tell ye, if they foond oot they’d coom near treadin’ on us in’t dark, an’ ’edn’t spotted us, they’d ga fookin’ crackers! They wad, tho’! The naik* leadin’ that patrol wadn’t ’ev to git busted – ’e’d bust ’is bloody sel’, man, oot o’ shame! An’ Ah’m nut kiddin’.” He shook his head in admiration. “So we’ll say nowt aboot it – bar to Hutton. Awreet, Jock? Good lad.” He had another chuckle to himself. “Walked reet by us, an’ a’! Nut bad, eh?”
I sympathised with the Gurkhas, having no doubt that in similar circumstances I could have walked through the whole Japanese Imperial Guards Division without knowing it. “All we had to do was lie still,” I suggested.
“Aw, aye? Is that reet, Jock? Girraway! Ah’m glad ye told us.” Cumbrian sarcasm is never applied lightly. “Lissen – the Goorkas is the best night scoots in the bloody wurrld! By God, there isn’t many can say the Goorkas nivver spotted their o.p.! Noo, an’ Ah’m tellin’ ye!”
“Right pair of Mohicans we must be.”
“Aye, laff, ye girt* Scotch git! Looksta, if they’d bin Japs, an’ we’d fired oor Verey, they’d ha’ bin nailed, ivvery bloody one, on the wire wid their arses oot the winder! Wadn’t they?” He was quite belligerent about it. “Awreet, then! We did oor job, an’ the Goorkas missed us! An’ that’s nut bad! That’s a’ Ah’m saying!”
Well, he was infinitely better qualified to judge these things than I, and his words prompted a disturbing thought: if I’d been alone in the o.p. I’d certainly have fired the Verey, the Gurkhas would have been caught in the glare, and might well have been wiped out by a nervous Bren gunner making the same mistake as I had done. Nick had identified them by the shape of their legs – and that is something you won’t find in any infantry training manual. But then, he was what the Constable of France would have called a very valiant, expert gentleman. The irony was that it almost cost him his life a few nights later.
* embankment
* little
* I have been reminded that the rule of two men to a night stag was inviolable; nevertheless, I am positive that on this occasion I was on my own. The explanation can only be that the section strength had been so reduced by casualties in recent actions that two-men stags were, for a night or two, impossible.
* Ex-Fourteenth Army men may take issue with me for suggesting that a sentry would ever alert his comrades by shouting. The approved method was to have a log-line or creeper running from the sentry to the nearest sleeper, who could be aroused silently by tugging it, and I remember doing this in jungle country farther south. At Meiktila the ground was open, and I don’t recall ever using log-lines there.
* Get hired = get a job. One of the Cumbrian’s many expressions of derision, referring to the custom whereby an unemployed farm worker would stand with a straw in his mouth at Carlisle Cross during the hiring fair, waiting to be approached with an offer of work.
* Corporal
* Great, big, but like “lal” or “lyle” (little) it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with physical size, being just a familiar adjective.
“‘Ey, Jock, are ye any good at ’rithmetic?”
“Not much, sarn’t, I’m afraid.”
“Well, mek’s nae matter. Ah’ll keep thee reet. Noo them – ’oo many fellers is there in’t British Army?”
“Gosh, I dunno. Five million?”
“An’ ’oo many o’ them’s in Boorma?”
“Half a million, maybe?”
“An’ ’oo many o’ them’s in this battalion?”
“About a thousand.”
“An’ ’oo many o’ them’s in Nine Section?”