Quartered Safe Out Here. George Fraser MacDonald

       Chapter 3

      Because I dislike books which bewilder me by taking for granted technical details which I don’t know, and also for the record, I shall say how we were dressed and armed. Burma was a barebones war; in many ways we were like soldiers of the last century in that our arms and equipment were of the simplest; it was so because it was largely a close-contact, hand-to-hand war in which, while tanks and aircraft and artillery played an important part, it was first and foremost an infantryman’s business, and actions tended to be on a small scale compared with the battles in Europe. By today’s standards we were sparsely equipped. Thank God.

      The uniform was all dark green; even underpants, vests, and socks had gone into the big dye vat at Ranchi; watch-straps had to be green or khaki. You had two shirts, two pairs of trousers, puttees (a better protection than anklets against leeches and other crawlies), and boots – British-made, if you were lucky, rather than the clumsier Indian pattern; later we sometimes wore captured Jap jungle boots, with their thick crepe soles. A few – Parker, for one – dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow, claiming that it prevented blisters. It was also messy, and stank. I tried it – once.

      Fourteenth Army’s distinguishing feature was the bush-hat, that magnificent Australian headgear with the rakish broad brim which shielded against rain and sun and was ideal for scooping water out of wells. In some ways it was a freak, in the steel-helmeted twentieth century, and it may have cost some lives under shell-fire, but we wouldn’t have swapped it. It looked good, it felt good; if you’d been able to boil water in it you wouldn’t have needed a hotel. Everyone carried a razor-blade tucked into the band, in case you were captured, in which event you might, presumably, cut your bonds, or decapitate your jailer by stages, or if the worst came to the worst and you were interrogated by Marshal Tojo in person, present a smart and soldierly appearance.

      Equipment consisted of the standard web belt; cross-braces; pouches worn brassière fashion; small pack containing two mess-tins, pialla (enamelled mug), knife, fork, and spoon, housewife with needle and thread, water purification pills, mepacrin (to ward off malaria, which it didn’t), and any personal effects you felt like carrying, plus your rations; a pint water-bottle; entrenching tool, a steel mattock head with a detachable handle; and a log-line, a five-yard coil of thin rope. The last three items hung from the belt behind. A small trouser pocket contained a field dressing, but everyone scrounged a spare one because the gauze made a splendid sweat-rag-cum-neckerchief.

      Weaponry was equally simple. There were a few tommy guns (but none of the hated Stens, the plumber’s nightmare) in the company, but the standard arm was the most beautiful firearm ever invented, the famous short Lee Enfield, either of the old pattern with the flat backsight and long sword bayonet, or the Mark IV with the pig-sticker, a nine-inch spike with no cutting edge. The old pattern, which I carried, was the great rifle of the First World War, which the Old Contemptibles used with such speed and skill that the enemy often believed they were facing automatic weapons, and one German general told of how his division had been “shot flat” by its disciplined fire. It held ten rounds with its magazine charged, and another up the spout, had an extreme range of close to a mile, and in capable hands was deadly accurate up to four hundred yards. I’m no Davy Crockett, but I could hit three falling plates (about ten inches square) out of five at two hundred, and I was graded only a first-class shot, not a marksman. The Lee Enfield, cased in wood from butt to muzzle, could stand up to any rough treatment, and it never jammed. “She’s your wife,” as the musketry instructors used to say. “Treat her right and she’ll give you full satisfaction.” And she did, thirty years old as she was; treating her right consisted of keeping her “clean, bright, and slightly oiled” with the pullthrough and oil bottle in her butt trap, and boiling her out after heavy firing. She’s a museum piece now, but I see her still on T.V. newsreels, in the hands of hairy, outlandish men like the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan and capable-looking gentry in North Africa, and I have a feeling that she will be loosing off her ten rounds rapid when the Kalashnikovs and Armalites are forgotten. That’s the old reactionary talking: no doubt Agincourt die-hards said the same of the long bow.

      Nowadays the automatic rifle, and concentrated firepower, are the thing, spraying rounds all over the place – which must give rise to hideous supply problems, I imagine. We had it drummed into us that each round cost threepence; “one bullet, one Jap” was proverbial, if obviously impractical. I know I sound like a dinosaur, but I doubt if the standard of marksmanship is what it was – it can’t be, except at short range – and I wonder what happens if, say, a bridge has to be blown from a distance, because there’s no fuse, and someone has to hit a gun-cotton primer the size of a 10p piece at two hundred yards? (A Sapper lieutenant did that in Burma, with a Lee Enfield, one shot.) Possibly such problems don’t arise in modern high-tech war, or perhaps they just plaster the bloody thing with automatic fire, and hope. But I digress. We carried fifty round apiece, in a canvas bandolier draped over the buttocks.

      Apart from the bayonet, the other essential sidearm was the kukri, the curved short sword of the Gurkha, slung behind the right hip. Mine cost me ten rupees, and some swine pinched it near Rangoon. The alternative was the dah, a long, broad-bladed machete.

      In one pouch you carried two armed 36 grenades (Mills bombs), and these posed a problem. A grenade has a split pin holding in place an arm which, when the pin is withdrawn, releases a plunger which causes havoc with a fulminate of mercury detonator; depending on the internal fuse, you then have five or seven seconds to get rid of the thing, or good night, sweet prince. The cast iron casing is split into segments like a chocolate bar, and on explosion these segments (plus the base plug) will take care of anything within five yards, give or take. The question is, do you when given grenades to carry render them safe by hammering the split ends of the pin apart, or, bearing in mind that an angry Jap is not going to stand around while you un-hammer them, do you leave the pins so that they can slip out easily? The thought that Grandarse, who would make a bullock look security-conscious, is snoring beside you with his pins loose, is no inducement to untroubled sleep. In practice you just left them extractable with a sharp tug – and if Victor McLaglen, who is to be seen in old movies yanking the pins out with his teeth, ever tried it during his own army service, his incisors must still be in Mesopotamia. You do it with your finger or thumb.

      There was another type of grenade, the plastic 77, which was a smoke bomb. It also sprayed phosphorus about, and was used in clearing bunkers.

      In the other pouch were two Bren gun magazines, holding between 25 and 30 rounds, for the section’s light machine-gun; rifle and Bren ammunition being identical. The Bren gunner normally fired from a lying position with his number two alongside to change magazines if required and turn the “immediate action” plug when the gun jammed, as it could when overheated. It was a good gun, but needed intelligent handling, for when held firm it was accurate enough to punch a hole in a brick wall with a single magazine, and to get a good spread the gunner had to fan it about judiciously. It could also be fired from the hip, given a firm stance, for without one it would put you on your back.

      Any other weapons were a matter of personal choice.