NTR: Nothing to Report

By James Leasor

"Superbly authentic atmosphere, taut narration" - The Observer

"Mr. Leasor brings to 'Nothing to Report' a journalist's straightforwardness, and an on-the-spot sureness about how frightened men behave, that are both refreshing and effective." - Spectator

In the early spring of 1944, when the British fortunes of war in the East were low, the Japanese invaded India. From General Headquarters, the word went out that the invasion must be stayed whatever the cost and thus it was that the men of draft RAKXK were sent to one of the unknown, unheard of places in India to defend one of the smaller sectors of the front. NTR is their story and tells of their battles, their loves, their deaths. For they travelled halfway round the world, they endured dangers by land, sea and air, and then, in the end, what was the message they sent back? NTR - Nothing to Report. The reason behind this, illustrating all the irony of war and its consequences, is related in James Leasor’s semi-autobiographical, moving and realistic novel.

“...Before a battle, everyone comports himself in a different way, and one that is curiously symbolic of the man himself. There are those who lay out their kit neatly by the side of their bed roll, and then calmly, so it seems, unroll their mosquito nets and lie down, ready and willing for sleep, no more concerned, at least to the looker-on, than if they were off on a week's holiday next day. There are others who lie, nets up, surrounded by busy mosquitoes, talking with friends in low tones, trying to peer through the dimness of the night and see the future and the day beyond. Still others smoke nervously and constantly, jamming their cigarettes through the hole in the concealing tobacco tin, lonely, yet drawn in on themselves like snails with their feelers beneath their shells.
All waiting. All passing the time in the only way they know that would make it seem to go quickly. But for all of them, the time drags slowly, and there is no way of making it hurry. Some lucky ones actually fall asleep unexpectedly, and lie on their backs, fully dressed, snoring. But even for them, two o'clock eventually comes; for some too soon, and for others far too late...”

“...When the dust had cleared there was no-one left among them to grumble at all, not even Mr Brown. Ten men accounted for in an instant by one shell that had been made months before in a munition sweat shop outside Yoshida City by bare-foot, hungry workers; that had been carried a thousand miles in a ship with some hundreds of British civilians who were being transferred to Changi Jail from Hongkong, and then up through Malaya to Bangkok and Rangoon; and then brought lashed on the backs of mules, six shells a side, to Nyaunglebyin, where a gun crew of unknown Japanese lubricated it with urine and slapped it in the breach....”

“...Men who had come from opposite sides of the world to meet so fiercely thus in a place none had heard of a month before. Men who did not hate each other because they did not know each other, but who were intent on killing quickly if they could, for otherwise they might be killed themselves...”

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Leasor
• Release date: Jan 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908291455

James Leasor

James Leasor was one of the bestselling British authors of the second half of the 20th Century. He wrote over 50 books including a rich variety of thrillers, historical novels and biographies.His works included Passport to Oblivion (which sold over 4 million copies around the World and was filmed as Where the Spies Are, starring David Niven), the first of nine novels featuring Dr Jason Love, a Somerset GP called to aid Her Majesty’s Secret Service in foreign countries, and another series about the Far Eastern merchant Doctor Robert Gunn in the 19th century. There were also sagas set in Africa and Asia, written under the pseudonym Andrew MacAllan, and tales narrated by an unnamed vintage car dealer in Belgravia.Among non-fiction works were lives of Lord Nuffield, the Morris motor manufacturer, Wheels to Fortune and RSM Brittain, who was said to have the loudest voice in the Army, The Sergeant-Major; The Red Fort, which retold the story of the Indian Mutiny; and Rhodes and Barnato, which brought out the different characters of the great South African diamond millionaires. Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes? was an investigation of the unsolved murder of a Canadian mining entrepreneur in the Bahamas,He wrote a number of books about different events in the Second World War, including Green Beach, which revealed an important new aspect of the Dieppe Raid, when a radar expert landed with a patrol of the South Saskatchewan regiment, which was instructed to protect him, but also to kill him if he was in danger of falling into enemy hands; The One that Got Away (later filmed with Hardy Kruger in the starring role) about fighter pilot, Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from British territory; Singapore – the Battle that Changed the World, on the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1941; Boarding Party (later filmed as The Sea Wolves with Gregory Peck, David Niven and Roger Moore) concerned veterans of the Calcutta Light Horse who attacked a German spy ship in neutral Goa in 1943; The Unknown Warrior, the story about a member of a clandestine British commando force consisting largely of Jewish exiles from Germany and eastern Europe, who decieived Hitler into thinking that the D-Day invasion was a diversion for the main assault near Calais; and The Uninvited Envoy, which told the story of Rudolph Hess’ solo mission to Britain in 1941.Thomas James Leasor was born at Erith, Kent, on December 20 1923 and educated at the City of London School.He was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment and served in Burma with the Lincolnshire Regiment during World War II. In the Far East his troopship was torpedoed and he spent 18 hours adrift in the Indian Ocean. He also wrote his first book, Not Such a Bad Day, by hand in the jungles of Burma on airgraphs, single sheets of light-sensitive paper which could be reduced to the size of microdots and flown to England in their thousands to be blown up to full size again. His mother then typed it up and sent it off to an agent, who found a publisher who sold 28,000 copies, although Leasor received just £50 for all its rights. He later became a correspondent for the SEAC, the Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command, under the inspirational editorship of Frank Owen, after being wounded in action.After the war he read English at Oriel College, Oxford before joining the Daily Express, then the largest circulation newspaper in the free world. He was soon appointed private secretary to Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the newspaper, and later became a foreign correspondent. He became a full-time author in the 1960s.He also ghosted a number of autobiographies for subjects as diverse as the Duke of Windsor, King Zog of Albania, the actors Kenneth More and Jack Hawkins and Rats, a Jack Russell terrier that served with the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.Perhaps his greatest love was a series of cars, including a 1937 Cord and a Jaguar SS100 which both featured in several of his books.He married barrister Joan Bevan on 1st December 1951 and they had three sons.He lived for his last 40 years at Swallowcliffe Manor, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. He died on 10th September 2007.

Book preview

N T R — Nothing To Report

In the early spring of 1944, when the British fortunes of war in the East were low, the Japanese invaded India.

Viewed against some other catastrophes of the war, this was only a minor invasion; an intrusion of some 20 miles or so on the North-East frontier. But, at the time, it was considered very important indeed. Political discontent was rife in India and there was constant fear that the British would withdraw as they had already done in Malaya and Burma. If this invasion were not checked and the Japs flung back there might be revolution in India.

The story concerns a draft that was sent to help repel the invasion. An odd lot, that draft, and not quite sure what it was all about. The author tells of men in adversity, some shrewd, some cynical, some loved and others lonely. In the end they sent back the message N T R—Nothing to Report. The reason behind this, illustrating all the futility of war and its consequences, is related in this moving and realistic novel.

NTR-Nothing to Report

by

James Leasor

Published by

James Leasor Ltd at Smashwords

81 Dovercourt Road, London SE22 8UW

www.jamesleasor.com

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 978-1-908291-45-5

© James Leasor, 1955, Estate of James Leasor 2012

For Mary and Roy Meyers

When you go home, tell them of us, and say: For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

Greek epigram, carved on the memorial to the 2nd British Division at Kohima

He's a cheery old card, grunted Harry to Jack, As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

* * *

But he did for them both with his plan of attack. . . .

Siegfried Sassoon

NTR

The military censor was a short, fat man, with thick fingers and a bad temper. He was in the habit of undoing the top button of his khaki trousers whenever he sat down, because, if he did not, the sheer weight of his flesh would snap the button's thread.

He was sitting thus, slackly, at the mouth of his tent on a camp stool he had scrounged from somewhere, when the jeep arrived. It was stamped I., for Information, with the heraldic sign of a wide-open eye in white under the windshield. A war correspondent climbed out slowly and handed a sheet of flimsy to him. As he read, he stroked his chin with one hand, frowning, and his lips moved. He was a slow-thinking man.

Oh, no, oh dear, no, he said at last. Can't have this at all, at all. He looked up in reproof and surprise.

Why not? asked the other man bluntly. It's true, isn't it?

The censor pursed his- lips together.

"There's been no official communique about it so far, he said cautiously. As soon as we have the handout, we shall release it."

"I don't care a damn about that. I want to get this through. It's true, isn't it?"

The fat man said nothing. Slowly, deliberately, he folded up the sheet of paper, first one way, then another, and put it behind him on a wooden box under a flat stone so that a stray breeze of afternoon could not blow it away.

Then he said, I don't know. I just don't know.

The two men glared at each other, the one tall and lean and raw with weariness; the other, smug on his folding stool. Then the correspondent shrugged his shoulders, and turned back to the jeep that was waiting, engine puttering.

For some time after the dust of his departure had settled, the censor sat on, then, with a shake of his head to frighten off the flies, he stood up, folded his stool carefully, for such stools were rare and valuable, and laid it behind him in the tent.

Inside, it was very hot, and the light filtering through the canvas made the air milky-coloured and dim. He peeled off his shirt and his trousers, then sat down on the edge of his truckle bed and pulled off his shoes without unlacing them.

Two insects crawled slowly up the canvas above past the maker's name, on and up to the pointed roof.

The censor lay perspiring in his underpants, eyes half closed in the fug. I wonder if it did happen, he thought drowsily as sleep came nearer. I wonder if it did. . . .

It happened all right, but perhaps not in the way the journalist had described it (because he had only heard of it from survivors); and perhaps not quite as the censor imagined it (because he was an unimaginative man). But it happened.

The first shell landed harmlessly in the centre of the ring of cook-house ovens, throwing up a thin plume of dust. It was a dud.

But by the time the astonished cooks, with ladles still in their hands, realised it was a shell at all, the second arrived and blew, them all—ladles, dixies and ovens, too—in a wide and messy arc up against the wall of scrub from which the cooking area had been hacked.

For a moment there was silence; then a terrified screaming of jungle-birds, a moaning from one of the dying men. And then, thin distant shouts from other parts of the hill as the men of the 1st Battalion The Brentshire Regiment began to realise that this noisy, frightening amalgam of confusion, surprise and pain was war.

It was Saturday morning, and nearly lunch-time. Time for the mash of dehydrated potatoes and soya links, staple food of His Majesty's 14th Army in Burma. Time for a quick, welcome wash in a canvas bucket of yellow water that had been so carefully carried back from the nearest chaung for just that purpose. Time to comb your hair and squeeze out the soft blackbeads that life in the jungle and inadequate washing in filthy water implanted like seeds in the skin.

But this Saturday there was only time to run and time to die.

Men who had gathered in the fold of the hills where the cooks were busy, so that at the shout " Khana up—come and get it" they could hurry back with the huge steaming cauldrons of hash to their sections dug snugly into their positions on the hills, now ran shouting up the stubbly slopes again to shelter, not knowing what was happening, only that it was alien and beyond their control. Others, the unlucky ones, writhed slowly and miserably, scooping up handfuls of the grey dust in their giant agony.

Colonel Blenkiron, the CO., who had been sitting on a tin box in his rather special bunker—only special in that the earth walls were lined with plaited bamboo so that the crawly insects and pale worms that burrowed out of the ground did not drop on him as they did on the men he commanded—ran out into the open.

He had no particular plan in mind; but he felt vaguely that it was better to be out than in at such a time. It showed the men you weren't afraid and skulking away in some deep fastness. He had been soldiering for years—since the Afghanistan affair of '28, as he would tell newly-joined, newly-commissioned officers —but this was his first command in action. He wanted desperately to make a success of it.

He shouted irritably, " Paul, Paul. Where are you? Anyone seen Captain Grant?"

There was no reply and indeed no-one near enough to make reply. Everyone was too busy buckling on belts, pulling spare magazines out of bunkers deep in the body of the hill, wondering what to do.

Then Captain Grant, the adjutant, came running up, worried-faced, his revolver in his hand. Just as if he were Captain Bloody Stanhope in Journey's End, thought the CO. sourly, for he did not like his adjutant overmuch. The fellow had been an actor; you couldn't trust that type at all. Always were acting a part; always on-stage, never themselves, he thought. Grant saluted.

The CO returned it and said: What the hell was that? I didn't know the Jap had any guns near here, as though he was surprised and hurt that they should have them so near without either his knowledge or his permission.

Can't make it out, sir, replied the adjutant dutifully. Unless it's our own stuff off target and falling short.

No. 'Tisn't that. We've got no stuff near. It's all been pulled out two nights ago over the Pass.

I see. Looks as though the Jap knows that, too. The adjutant put his revolver back in its web holster. He thought he looked a bit foolish to be holding it in his hand.

Well, get a patrol out to scour round and see what's happening. Stand everyone to in full battle order and shoot on sight. I'll try and get Brigade on the wireless.

The CO found comfort in making obvious decisions, in issuing orders, delegating authority. In making a mass of minor decisions he thus subconsciously absolved himself from the need of making a major one. Grant went at once to C company because he knew Blake, the commander; they had been to the same O.C.T.U. in England.

Hear that bang? Grant came to the point at once. Well, get a patrol out right away all round the perimeter to see what's happening. Say, an officer and nine men. O.K.?

I suppose so. Send to C company, that's what you do when you're in a mess. You know what C stands for? C for—

I know. I know. You tell me every time I see you. Anyhow, get these characters out on the beat. It's urgent.

Blake shouted, Runner, and when the man appeared: Get over to eight platoon. Give Mr Brown my compliments and tell him to report here at once.

He lit a cigarette. The buck was moving out of his hands as fast as he could pass it.

Mr Brown was nineteen and not yet used to being called Mister by his seniors and Sir by his subordinates. He was a second lieutenant, slightly built, fair-haired and with a wispy moustache which he grew because he thought that it gave him authority and made him look older than he was.

He arrived at the double, his usually smooth, unlined forehead puckered with worry, as if his housemaster were, sending for him on an urgent summons about who should be picked for the match against Marlborough—which, until a few months previously, had been a pretty important matter and deserving of some serious thought. He saluted. Blake waved him to an ammunition box.

Ah, yes, Brown, he began. "A job for you. The C.O. wants an officer patrol out at once to see what's happening. Get a section of your blokes out, jaldi. No rations or anything like that. You can be round the chaungs and hideouts in two or three hours and then report right back here. Travel light, gym shoes if you like. Light and mobile. He repeated the text-book phrase as if it were a talisman that would bring good fortune on the operation. Light and mobile."

What sort of arms, sir? asked Brown, who was enthusiastic enough to be methodical.

Oh, take grenades and Tommy guns. And a Bren with lots of mags. O.K.?

O.K, sir. Mr Brown doubled away back to his platoon with the news. They did not receive it with enthusiasm or kindness.

Trust them to give it to us. Eight platoon—suckers' platoon, said the mournful ones.

Treat us like bloody mules. Might as well act like 'em, said another sourly.

As the section formed up on the hillside in a straggling line, the fourth shell landed about six feet away.

When the dust had cleared there was no-one left among them to grumble at all, not even Mr Brown. Ten men accounted for in an instant by one shell that had been made months before in a munition sweat shop outside Yoshida City by bare-foot, hungry workers; that had been carried a thousand miles in a ship with some hundreds of British civilians who were being transferred to Changi Jail from Hongkong, and then up through Malaya to Bangkok and Rangoon; and then brought lashed on the backs of mules, six shells a side, to Nyaunglebyin, where a gun crew of unknown Japanese lubricated it with urine and slapped it in the breach.

Men buckled on kit, jammed the corks down in their water bottles, wrapped oily rags round the Bren parts in case the dust clogged them, put lucky talismans in pockets: the tiny brass pixie from the Cornish wishing well; a lucky horseshoe. Silly things in which to put your trust, agreed; but oddly comforting when much else was crumbling about you.

Every bunker and hole in the hillside now bristled with the snouts of rifles and Brens and tommy' gun's. The mules were all tethered in an open space and the Gurkha muleteers stood by them, chin straps down, kukris in their hands. In deep bunkers, the wireless operators moved dials, and waved others irritably to silence as their earphones wheezed and squealed with atmospherics. Brigade was unexpectedly off the air. So was Division. The Brentshires were alone.

Only the radio operators, the CO., the adjutant and the R.S.M. knew this. The rest were vaguely comforted by the belief that thousands of their-own troops were near them. All would be well in the end; the last battle belonged to them.

So they lay in their bunkers, enduring the discomfort of tin hats and battle-order, sweating in the holes they had so painfully dug for themselves.

Each man waiting; for what, he did not know.

The doctor waited in his bamboo basha with the walls, thickened by earth and stones, lined inside with beaten-out ration tins to minimise the risk of dust dropping on the wounded. His syringes were out in a row on the white gauze on top of a wooden box. His orderlies talked in low tones, tin hats near them, morphia phials, iodine, bandages, the only stretcher the battalion possessed open on the dirt floor.

The padre had a basha to himself, like the doctor, but packed instead with the unusual impedimenta which his calling made him bring, carried painfully on the backs of mules to their present ant-ridden resting place. Two bottles of non-alcoholic communion wine; a few dozen khaki-backed Bibles and hymn books, some wooden crosses, for graves, about five inches long, like the crosses children carry to church on Palm Sunday, and a surplice now greyish after many washings in the river. These made up the padre's warlike store.

He poured himself half a mug of water and gulped it down greedily. At once the drops of sweat oozed through his skin and ran ticklingly down his back. He rubbed his sodden shirt mechanically against his body and wished the danger would pass.

For five seconds by the C.O.'s watch, there was silence, and medical orderlies ran among the writhing men and dragged them into the M.O.'s basha. There was not enough room for more than three to he side by side on the ground there, so the late-comers lay outside in the dirt and bled out their thick red blood into the earth from which they had come. Flies buzzed and swarmed over them, crawling round their nostrils and their ears.

A whistle blew somewhere in the mouth of the valley, and on the signal, the first line of Japs came up the valley at a lope. They were the first the Brentshires had seen. They were just like the Japs in American films, wide-toothed, squat, in shabby sand-coloured uniforms with leather belts. One carried a flag, white with a red circle on it. Behind the first thin rank came an officer, a long sword in his hand, looking'to right and left of him, shouting. His face washed and shining with sweat.

The Bren-gunner tucked his butt into his shoulder, shook the sweaty out of his eyes and pressed the trigger. The gun chattered in his hands, the short spiky legs jumping in the. loose earth, digging themselves in. The empty cartridge cases sprayed out in a smoking, reeking heap. The Japanese officer fell forward on his hands and knees.

Rifles ping-pinged and bullets tore furrows in the dust. Three more Japs went down. The rest crawled behind what cover they could find; a dixie, a dead man. Two more Japs ran up, hunch backed, as men always run when under fire, as though by contracting their bodies into themselves they could make themselves unwoundable, invincible, safe, and dropped in a flurry of dust behind some bushes. A few sharp high toothy words, and then came the kok-kok-kok of their gun. Bullets sprayed the mouth of the Bren-gunner's cave. Those inside the cave crammed the cartridges into magazine after magazine, grunting, swearing, absorbed as if they were in a game; intent on beating a rival side with room in their minds only for concentration.

Then the gun jammed.

Number one stoppage, Nob, shouted the gunner, raising his grimy powder-streaked face. His number two pulled over the canvas folder of tools.

Change the bloody barrel, he said. The gunner pulled it off. Someone from the back of the bunker passed up a new barrel, the mouth wrapped in a handkerchief to keep out the dust. They clipped it on. And waited. Two sets of men, staring with red, sore eyes in the direction where they imagined each other to be.

Men who had come from opposite sides of the world to meet so fiercely thus in a place none had heard of a month before. Men who did not hate each other because they did not know each other, but who were intent on killing quickly if they could, for otherwise they might be killed themselves.

Three Japs had been hit. They lay on their backs, a look of surprise on their faces. One bled from his groin. Another had been hit in the head. His eyes stared out of their sockets, the size of onions.

The Brentshires peered out from their bunkers at the smoking afternoon, feeling excited yet sick and fearful because they were young and had never killed anyone till now. The reaction would come later. The nightmares, the sweating nights of fear, the jumping at all the harmless insect noises; the nagging worry: Did I kill anyone? Will I go to hell? Am I a murderer?

Now they had no time to think. All they wanted to do was stay alive.

The Sergeant shouted: Stand by, this is it, and the rest of his words were lost in a welter of noise and smoke and heat and fear, as the shells came in suddenly thick and fast, and cries and screams made a shrill and fearful descant to their thunder. Trees caught fire, and bushes and the dusty green spiky grass blazed as the phosphorous shells exploded, hissing and spouting their liquid terrible flame.

Men staggered choking from their holes in the ground. Some shot their friends, not knowing them in the smoke and heat and dusty confusion. Anyone with a gun who ran across another's path was an enemy. Orders went unheeded for no-one knew in the panic who gave them and for whom they were intended. Then, through the cacophony and confusion, two red Verey lights soared up into the afternoon sky, followed by one green flare.

It was the Brentshire signal to withdraw.

Up from the holes and hideouts, from the wattled secret places of the hill, the men of the Battalion came running, eyes peering wildly out of their blackened faces. Better to retreat and reorganise than to stay and die in a fog of explosion with the enemy apparently everywhere; and the Japs let them go, possibly because they, too, could not see plainly enough through the dust and shambles to distinguish friend from foe.

Company and platoon commanders blew their whisdes when they saw the Verey lights. They shouted to their men, formed them up as best they might in the chaos, grabbed what kit they could, and started off back down the.road towards Ngakyedauk Pass. Dust swirled about their feet several inches deep, rising, blowing about them, making them cough and choke and retch for air.

Every company make their own way back to Skull and Crossbones, the CO. shouted to the adjutant. Pass it on to all company commanders.Skull and Crossbones was the nickname of the last position the battalion had held five miles up the road nearer the Pass.

Men took up the cry, Skull and Crossbones—pass it on, so that others would know where they were heading as they trudged down the road. Those who had no idea of their destination followed the main throng of those who had, and so, as military commentators would like to say, the withdrawal was orderly. It was also quite unnecessary.

The Brentshires had only taken over their new positions from a battalion of the Punjabs a few days previously. They had been told by Brigade that the Japs had withdrawn about the same time, and the CO., believing this, had not checked it for himself. His battalion knew so little about the position and the surrounding country that unless the way back had been plainly marked and quite unmistakable, it is likely that few would have even known its general direction. Now, they stumbled along in single file through the fluffy dust, ducking as the shells screamed, holding their breath until the blast had come and gone. At such a time a marching man sometimes seems to bear a charmed life. He shuffles on, sweating in fear, lest the one he doesn't hear will be the one that gets him, but much more often than not he hears them all and none do him harm. The fact is, of course, that the area of fire is so wide, and the enemy gunners have such a vague idea of the actual size and direction of their target that the wonder is if any men are hurt at all. But at the time, and especially if you are part of the moving target, it doesn't seem wonderful at all: it seems a miracle every time a shell lands without blowing you to pieces.

You trudge along, laden like a Christmas tree, under packs, pouches, blanket, mossie net, water bottle, Bren magazines, grenades, rifle and the other impedimenta of the jungle army; trying to draw your head down into your body and so make it less conspicuous; trying to hunch up your shoulders to protect your ears.

At such times you notice little things you'd never seen before. You see, for the first time, that the eyelets in your boots, where your dubbined laces thread through, are worn to smooth and polished metal; the laces have rubbed away all their black paint. You tread closely behind your best friend and see that his neck, running and streaky with dusty sweat, is scarred by some childhood illness or operation, and you wonder what it was and how old he was; and from that you think back over your own childhood and little incidents come up like twigs of wood in a boiling whirlpool.

You remember a muffin man treading the streets, waving a bell like a leper, calling out, Warm-oh, all warm-oh, and you recapture that tremendous excitement when you beat on the window panes one winter afternoon and he looked at you and winked and smiled and waved his huge clappered bell at you, all in the same movement and amazingly without stopping the cries for his wares.

And you remember being tucked up at night by a mother who was never too tired or too busy to be kind. And when she left you, tiptoeing away down the stairs, you listened for the third one from the top to creak, for then you knew you were alone, with your night light and your dreams and your fears, and the shadows from the street lamp outside the house making figures dance on the ceiling when the breeze moved the curtains. Trudging now in the sweat and the heat and the fear of retreat, those warm, happy, simple, kindly times of childhood come back at you like a flashback in a film, and you want to weep for the days that have gone and will never come again. And for the good people who have gone with them.

The Brentshires marched that Saturday for four hours by the C.O.'s watch.

Grant stayed in the rear, waiting for the outer companies and platoons to get away first, and then, with headquarters company — the cooks, the radio operators, the runners and batmen and drivers — he marched out of the chaos.

He was annoyed at having to leave in this supine way. He would have liked to stay there, dug in, bristling with guns, and fight it out yard by yard. Not because he was heroic or patriotic or anxious for a medal, but because it seemed so foolish to retreat so easily and surrender the few miles of paddy field and jungle that had been gained for them by the Punjabs so recently.

But there, the strategy was not his; nor was the command to retire. He busied himself with the business of getting as much kit on to the backs of the frightened mules as they could carry.

Then, his pack on his back, a stout stick in his hand, he marched off with the rest. Soon the shells were exploding harmlessly in a deserted position.

Parkhouse came out of his tent into the morning, and screwed up his mouth distastefully against the too-familiar sight of the rows of small cone-shaped tents, the flag wrapped round the whitewashed mast, the other officers bending their heads as they left their tents, tugging down their stiffly-starched K.D. bush shirts over their hips, treading carefully over the guy-ropes.

It was eight-thirty in the morning. Time to be moving into your office in H.Q., he told himself. To begin the day's work.

To glance at some stylographed orders, to initial a sheet, and then to put them in the OUT tray and hope someone dropped in for a chat and a cup of char. A tonga clopped by and the driver heaved in his skinny horse. Flecks of foam fell from the beast's mouth into the dust.

Tonga, sahib?

No, thanks.

He began to walk down South Avenue, towards the back of Viceregal Lodge. The tents were dotted all over the lawns on either side of the road.

They had grown up with the Indian hangers-on, the bicycle wallahs who hired out their rickety machines, the tonga wallahs, the bearers, the cut-rate dhobis, like a fester on a once-pleasant