Forgotten Life. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ great therapeutic value. I was with three men who were about to be sent home after long service abroad; for myself, I had still a lot of time to serve out. So I never knew if the requisite grips were applied. But for me, returning to Blighty when the war had been over some while, and put out of mind, I found that no one wished to hear. The jungle experience was too alien.

      Why did no novelists or poets spring up to celebrate the experience of Burma from the common soldier’s point of view? It was an undemocratic war. Only officers spoke about it later – heroes like Bernard Fergusson and ‘Mad’ Mike Calvert, and of course Slim’s own fine book on the campaigns, Defeat into Victory. They all stuck to autobiography or fact. Hardly a poet spoke up. There was Alun Lewis, but he shot himself before going into action.

      One of Lewis’s poems tells how:

      But leisurely my fellow soldiers stroll among the trees.

      The cheapest dance-song utters all they feel.

      It’s a lie, an officer’s snotty lie; Lewis did not know what he was talking about. Delightful irony reposed in singing those ‘dance-songs’. Their superficiality, like our chatter, served to cover momentous upheavals of feeling. ‘Paper Doll’ and ‘Moonlight Cocktail’ had marvellous surreal effect in our jungle hideouts.

      We woke the next morning under the great trees, eating a hunk of bread and marmalade for breakfast without washing. The place was as waterless as a desert – and as deserted. No sign of our plane, and the monsoon-bearing wind blew stronger. The smell of smoke came to us.

      Hour succeeded hour. We strolled about in the sun, hats off – it was our pride that we never got sunstroke or wore topis, as an earlier generation of regular soldiers had done. The smoke could be seen. It thickened until gradually it shrouded the blue sky. A forest fire was approaching. We could hear its roar and crackle. It was as if a stampede of animals was coming our way.

      What were we to do? There was no escaping from our position. The fire was approaching at brisk walking pace, burning up the trees in huge brands on either side of the airstrip, triumphant and furious. Rapidly it came, and still no rescuing plane.

      We moved into the centre of the grass strip. Jungle blouses went on, to protect our skins from flying sparks. The sky was black, the whole forest on either side blazing red. We crouched to the ground. The heat seemed to swell about us.

      The fires on either side moved parallel with each other like friendly rival expresses. Linking them across the open space ran a wave of flame, consuming the grass, turning what was green black, leaving behind it cindered ground. It dashed towards us like a rip tide.

      Standing, we heaved our kit on to our backs. As the wave reached us, we jumped. That is how you evade a forest fire. You jump over it.

      ‘So much for fucking Burma,’ said Bert Lyons.

      There we stood, in a land of black ash. The great fire swept majestically on, about its own purposes, leaving smouldering destruction on either flank. We looked at each other and laughed. Then we lit up cigarettes.

      ‘Where’s that bloody plane?’ we asked.

      We spent another night out in the open, on the burnt earth. Next morning, an aged Dakota with the American star on its wings landed on the black airstrip; we climbed readily enough into its hold, and soon were flying westward, over the Chin Hills towards India and a quieter life.

      History is what happens to contemporary events when they have receded enough for us to draw a moral from them. What is the moral of the Burma campaign?

      That change is all. Three years after the victory of the Forgotten Army, Burma was granted independence. Although the Japanese had packed their bags and left, Britain was unable to regain the confidence of the Burmese people, who had twice seen their fair country reduced to a battlefield – Burma, that most religious of countries. Nor could the brave Indian Army be relied on to hold down Burma by force. India was being returned to the Indians. That was the British will: while behind that will was American pressure; righteous to a fault about British and Dutch Far East possessions, the United States nevertheless let itself be led into another war that has been seen since to have caused more damage and destruction in Vietnam, Cambodia, and surrounding regions than even the Japanese dreamed of.

      Nineteen thousand men of British and Commonwealth origin – the greatest number being Indian other ranks – died in the Irrawaddy crossings by Mandalay and Meiktila. In the earlier battle of Kohima, over two thousand men of British 2 Div, for which I was a pale-skinned reinforcement, died. All told, in Burma, there were seventy-one thousand British and Commonwealth casualties. Japanese casualties have been numbered at 185,000.

      A memorial was erected to the British dead at Kohima. On the memorial is carved a free translation of a Greek epitaph, which reads:

      When you go home

      Tell them of us and say

      For your tomorrow

      We gave our today.

      Sadly, it was no one’s tomorrow, despite the brave words. The British got out. The Burmese then sank under a repressive regime. Various kinds of struggle still divide it. Visitors from outside are scarcely welcome.

      The bamboo grows beside the rivers where once we so bravely, so fruitlessly, drove from Milestone 81, through Kohima and Imphal, down the Tiddim Road, across Chindwin and Irrawaddy, to a ruined Mandalay. A lot of tomorrows lie buried along the route.

      4

      Clement sat over his brother’s old exercise book for a while, engaged in unconstructive musings. Then, sighing, he made a few phone calls. As he was setting the phone down, the intercom buzzed. It was Michelin.

      ‘Your supper’s all ready, Clem. And I’m just off out.’

      ‘Got another party?’

      ‘Yes, another party …’

      ‘Oh, well, enjoy yourself.’

      He went downstairs slowly, dragging his steps so that anyone observing him might imagine there was something weighty on his mind. Downstairs, where the temperature was cooler, Sheila was in the conservatory pouring herself another glass of white wine.

      ‘Where’s your glass?’

      ‘Oh, I left it on my desk upstairs.’

      ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll get another. It’s so hot, Michelin has laid a table outside by the pool for us. She’s just gone.’

      ‘Another party …’

      ‘Good drinking evening.’

      She was pouring wine slowly into the glass she had taken from the cabinet, letting the neck of the bottle chink once against the rim of the glass to emphasize the benefaction of what she was doing. It seemed to him, watching her, that her strong nose was slightly less sharp this evening, as if a certain watchfulness, apparent in her manner during their time in the States, had now relaxed.

      Passing him the brimming glass, she said, ‘If you go outside, I’ll bring the food. It’s all ready.’

      The garden was still mainly in sunlight, slanting over the old brick walls. The little pool was in the shadow cast by the Farrers’ СКАЧАТЬ