to the night-sounds and to the odd tricks that your eyesight can play you, causing bushes to stir when they’re perfectly still, or detecting movement from the corner of your eye which isn’t there when you look at it directly. You learned not to concentrate your thoughts, too, for that can take you halfway to sleep – not that this was a problem at Meiktila, where we got adequate rest. Later on it was to be different; when you’re weary to the point of utter exhaustion, keeping awake on stag can be a real ordeal, for you mustn’t move too much or the enemy out yonder will have you marked; you find yourself swaying and realise you were half away, and snap out of it, and a few seconds later your legs buckle and you collapse in your pit – how my knee-caps held out in Southern Burma I’ll never know. You must get up at once, pinch yourself hard, and stare for all you’re worth, or you’ll start to sway again. And so on.
The chief irritant on stag was the “up-you bird” (I give the bowdlerised form of the name) familiar to all who have soldiered in the Far East. In fact, it is a large lizard, said to have a vicious bite, which inhabits drains in the civilised areas; where it lived in the Dry Belt, God knows. It starts up at night and drives strong men mad, for its call is a harsh whirring sound culminating in a melodious “Up you! Up you! Up you!” Half an hour of this, and you become convinced that there is a human being out there, chanting obscenely at you; it is a rare night when some blanket-wrapped form doesn’t come bolt upright with a raging retort of “And up you, too!”
Apart from listening for the enemy, you had to keep an eye and ear open for night patrols returning; it’s a good patrol that can arrive back exactly at its starting-point, and occasionally dark forms would emerge unexpectedly from the gloom, hissing the password. There was a gap in the wire opposite the platoon on our left, manned by a picquet with a Bren, and that was where they would re-enter.
There was a formula for the password, which always consisted of a seven-letter word – “Victory”, for example. In theory, the patrol, when challenged, would identify itself, the sentry would whisper “Victory”, and the patrol would prove its bona fides by responding with whichever letter of “Victory” corresponded with the day of the week, using the Morse alphabet. Thus, if it was Sunday, the correct reply was the first letter of “Victory”, which is “Victor”, if Monday, Ink, if Tuesday, Charlie, and so on. Who thought this up I don’t know, but if he could have heard Grandarse, who seldom knew what day it was at the best of times, and couldn’t spell anything longer than “pint”, trying to persuade Forster that he was not a Japanese White Tiger, he would have thought of something less sophisticated. You may imagine the exchange:
Grandarse (hoarsely from the dark): Is that thoo, marra? It’s me!
Forster (being awkward): Victory.
Grandarse: Ye w’at? Aw, shit, aye … Victory. Haud on, noo. (to a fellow-patroller) ’Ey, Wattie, w’at day is’t? Thoorsdeh – awreddy? Girraway! Aye, weel, let’s see … Moondeh, Choosdeh, Wensdeh, Thoorsdeh – v … i … c … aye, t, that’ll be reet! Tock! ’Ey, thoo on stag, Ah’m sayin’ Tock! Are ye theer?
Forster (knowing it was Thursday when the patrol left, but that midnight has passed): Booger off, yer a fifth columnist!
Grandarse: Bloody ’ell! Whee th’ell’s that? Thoo, Forster, ye git! W’at ye playin’ at? It’s me, sayin’ Tock!
Forster (relenting): It’s Friday, ye daft sod!
Grandarse: Ah, the hell! W’at is’t, then? Orange?
Forster: Awreet, bollock-brain. Coom in if yer feet’s clean.
Fortunately this happened on a night exercise at Ranchi, not in the field, where the system worked well enough, although I sometimes wondered what would happen if a Gurkha or Baluch patrol hit the wire when Grandarse was on guard.
My own stags were marred by only one alarm. It was after a two-day duffy to the south, when we had bumped Jap in numbers, and there had been enemy activity elsewhere on the perimeter for some days previously, so I was more on edge than usual. It was the cold watch, four to six, and I was shivering as I lay alone3 on the bunker-side, scanning the shadowy open ground and envying the section in their blankets ten yards to my rear. Once or twice I’d thought I’d heard something apart from the usual night-sounds; there was a little wind playing across the earth, rustling the fronds in the distant wood, just the thing to mask stealthy movement. I peered across the bunker’s top, wishing there was a moon; the sky hadn’t begun to lighten, and ten yards away the landscape was just a blur; a Jap fighting patrol could get to within a stone’s throw undetected, if they were quiet enough … was there something out there, beyond the shadows, or was it just my imagination? The dark seemed thicker in that direction … and then I froze at a sudden faint noise, as though a boot had been dragged across the ground, the sound cut off almost as soon as it had started.
There was a dull thumping, too – but that was me, pressed against the bunker, with my heart moving into fourth. I eased my safety-catch forward and laid a sweating finger along the trigger guard. There had been a sound … there it was again … a soft, irregular scrape, as though someone were moving an inch at a time. It was closer now, not more than a couple of yards away … now it had stopped, to be replaced by something that brought the hairs upright on my skull – the sound of breathing. That put it beyond doubt: someone – and it could only be a Jap – was in the little area of dead ground which I couldn’t see beyond the bunker.
At least it wasn’t hard to do the right thing – lie dead still, and with extreme care ease my rifle forward just a little, finger on the trigger, eyes fixed on the dark curve of the bunker top … but, dammit, that was useless! If he wanted to get inside the perimeter, and why the hell else should he have crawled so close? – he’d come round one side of the bunker … or the other. Which way? I must ease myself down from the bunker-side, and back until I could cover either side – but movement meant noise … should I shout the alarm? I hadn’t seen anything … but he was there, and if I yelled, the section would be on their feet, and he’d get somebody for certain … but if I lay doggo, waiting for him to move – and without warning a hideous white face shot into view over the bunker top, glared into mine from not a yard away, and vanished!
For an instant I was paralysed, thank God, or I’d have fired from pure reflex action – and that would have been deplorable, and threepence wasted. For before I could move, let alone shout, a large pale-coloured pi-dog trotted out from beyond the bunker, snuffled at the wire apron, took a discontented look at me, and mooched off into the gloom. The false alarm can never be as bad as the real thing, but it can set the adrenalin pumping just as fast. Watching the brute disappear I reflected that to the fatal perils of enemy rifles, bayonets, artillery, grenades, mortars, punjis, malaria, dysentery, and poisoned wells, I would have to add another – heart failure.4
This was an ever-present risk on that other form of stag, the o.p., or observation post, which consisted of two men well outside the wire, lying up in any convenient concealment with a Verey pistol. The procedure was simple: you lay doggo from some time after dusk until dawn to give early warning of any enemy fighting patrol advancing to the perimeter, which was done by letting them go past and then firing the Verey. After which it was advisable to leave the o.p. at speed, since the firing of the flare was a certain giveaway of your position; what happened next depended on the circumstances, as Sergeant Hutton explained:
“Git back in the perimeter if ye can, but if Jap’s at the wire keep clear, or ye’ll git thassel shot be soom booger or other. If ye lie off somewheres ye might git a Jap on ’is way yam, but don’t git thassel killed. Yer oot theer to watch; that’s yer furst job. Dee w’at Nick does an’ ye’ll not be far wrang.”
After which Nixon and I slipped out in the dark and made our way cautiously to a fold in the ground about a hundred yards out which Hutton had marked the previous day. The grove which lay on the section’s right front was now behind us, invisible until the moon came up, and even then only a vague blur, for it was a murky night. We lay in silence, listening to the “up-you” birds giving their midnight chorus, shifting only a little now and then to avoid cramp; my chief worry, since we were lying prone, was that I would drop off to sleep, so I kept a piece of stick upright