Alms for Oblivion: Sunset on the Pacific War

PROLOGUE

GO EAST, YOUNG MAN

‘Well now,’ grinned the fat man as he finished his third pint of bitter, ‘after your five years’ holiday I hope you’ll be thinking of settling down to a decent job of work.’

Like many others in uniform I was getting used to this old joke; I made a polite but unconvincing effort to smile. Something, I realized on this May morning in 1945, was gravely wrong with my sense of humour. Outside the stuffy, overcrowded bar with its wrought glass mirrors, enamelled pump handles and remnants of Victorian bric-a-brac, London sparkled in the midday sunlight. The fireworks of V.E. day were barely cold. But already the wine of victory had turned to vinegar; disenchantment had set in. Europe was a desert of rubble whose embittered, starved and disease-ridden population watched with apathy the preparations for a hideous peace. While Russian soldiers raped and murdered in Vienna, Prague and Budapest, Englishmen talked with admiration and affection of good old Uncle Joe, and on V.E. night I had heard voices in the crowd before Buckingham Palace call out, ‘Joe for King!’

In truth my own ‘holiday’ had lasted a good deal longer than five years, for I had first gone to war soon after leaving Cambridge in 1936; I had spent the greater part of the next three years in Spain, serving in the Nationalist armies—at first in the Carlist Militia and later in the Spanish Foreign Legion. I had joined the Nationalists to fight against Communism, which I believed—and still believe—would have engulfed Spain if the Republicans had won the Civil War. However, in Britain General Franco had not enjoyed a good Press and in the eyes of some of my intellectual friends, for whom an uncritical enthusiasm for everything Russian was, since 1941, the indispensable equipment of a patriot, I was little better than a Fascist; I found it useless to point out that nearly all my companions in Spain had been either monarchists, whose loathing of all totalitarian systems was as strong as my own, or professional soldiers who viewed all politics with suspicion and contempt.

By the end of the Civil War I had seen enough fighting to last me a lifetime and, after severe injuries to my jaw and hands from an enemy mortar bomb, I was temporarily unfit for any more. For the first four months of the European war, therefore, I had been a civilian. But as a result of a chance meeting with a friend in the War Office, followed by an interview in one of the dustier and more depressing rooms of that cheerless building, I soon found myself commissioned into the British Army, in the service of a paramilitary organization that has since became famous under the title of S.O.E. or Special Operations Executive. This organization, whose purpose was to promote subversion in enemy and enemy-occupied territories, has in recent years aroused considerable controversy, attracting from different quarters some excessive praise and much unmerited abuse. For me it proved a first-class travel agency, sending me at His Majesty’s expense to countries that I could never otherwise have hoped to visit.

Thus, after taking part in a number of small raids on the coast of France, I had dropped by parachute in the late summer of 1943 into southern Albania; I had travelled on foot and horseback the length of that country until, some nine months later, I was flown from Montenegro to S.O.E. headquarters in southern Italy. Arriving back in England with frayed nerves, corns on my feet and a useful experience of political intrigue, I had dropped in December 1944 into south-western Poland, a member of a small mission to the Polish Underground Army—or what was left of it after the heroism and tragedy of Warsaw. For a month we had eluded German pursuit, owing our lives to the courage and self-sacrifice of our Polish friends: then we had witnessed the sickening spectacle of the Red Army’s progress through Poland and its subjection of that incomparable nation. There had followed a month in an N.K.V.D. prison and another month in Moscow before I had returned by slow stages to England, the end of the European war, and the welcome of my fat friend in the pub.

I was worried and ill-tempered as I walked down Piccadilly on my way to lunch with a brother officer. It was all very well, I reflected sourly, to talk about settling down to a decent job of work; but the work we had started in 1939 was not yet done. Large areas of south-east Asia and the Far East were in the hands of an enemy less efficient, perhaps, than the Germans, but still formidable. In any case I was not yet due for demobilization. There was nothing to keep me in England. My marriage had collapsed; I was in the process of a divorce. My private life was an ugly mess. There were plenty of married men in our Far Eastern forces who had not seen their families for years; what conceivable justification could I have for staying at home? I had, too, a more positive reason for going.

On my way home from Russia I had spent several days in Cairo, where I had renewed an old friendship. Major David Smiley, a regular officer in the Household Cavalry, with whom I had worked closely during my first months in Albania, was passing through on his way to the Far East. A year younger than myself, short and wiry, with very bright blue eyes, an alert, inquisitive manner and a jerky, often abrupt style of speech, he concealed behind a disarming modesty and shyness a shrewd, objective mind, a cool judgment and the stoutest heart I have ever known.

Over a delicious lunch of shishkebab and Turkish coffee in a small Arab restaurant he had told me that he was bound for Siam to train and lead guerrillas in operations against the Japanese lines of communication between Indo-China and Malaya; if I cared to join him, all I need do when I reached London was to send him a signal from our office in Baker Street.

Although born in India I knew nothing of the Far East, and had previously felt no urge to go there; but Siam appealed to me as a romantic and little known country, and the prospect of such important and interesting work with Smiley attracted me still more. By the time I reached the club where I was lunching I had made up my mind to go.

The two lieutenant-colonels in the Far Eastern Section of our office in Baker Street were cordial and co-operative.

‘We’ll signal Smiley right away,’ they promised. ‘But in any case you needn’t worry. There’ll be plenty of man’s work in Burma and Malaya as well as Siam. Give us a couple of weeks to arrange your transfer to this Section and fix you up with an air passage to India; but you needn’t be in too much of a hurry because the monsoon is well under way out there and nothing much is likely to happen in the field just yet. Why don’t you take a bit more leave? You could probably do with it after Poland and that Russian prison. Meanwhile, here’s Juliet, who’s just back from our headquarters in Calcutta—she can probably give you a few useful tips.’

Juliet was a trim and self-possessed young woman with soft brown hair, faultless curves and inviting dark blue eyes. Most of her advice on the Far East proved inaccurate; she did, however, give me a few tips of more lasting value, and she was a sparkling, even bewitching companion and partner in pleasure.

From this exhausting diversion I soon felt obliged to take a short rest; and so I invited myself to stay with some cousins near Dublin. Whether that was the best way to restore my health will be doubted by anyone who remembers the generous hospitality of the southern Irish to members of His Majesty’s armed forces on leave in their country. It needed more than a vigorous walk in the Wicklow Hills to work off a heavy drinking session in Davy Byrnne’s or the Royal Hibernian; on the other hand there was no breath of disenchantment in the wind that kissed the bracken on the Sugar Loaf, no gleam of cynicism in the sunlight that gilded the stones of Trinity, no suspicion of reserve in the welcome extended me by everyone I met, from the great John McCormack, his vitality undimmed by age and illness, to the porters in the Shelbourne or the peasants in the country around Bray. Most of them, I remembered, had close friends or relatives in the fighting services of the British Commonwealth.

Back in London I stayed in St. John’s Wood with Collin Brooks, at that time the Editor of Truth; he and his family were old friends of infinite kindness, patience and stamina who had often given me shelter during and before the war. From their house I made daily visits to Baker Street. Juliet was busy giving instruction to another officer; but the two lieutenant-colonels greeted me as cordially as before.

‘We’ve had a signal back from Smiley,’ they told me. ‘He’s dropped into Siam and wants you to join him. You’ll have to report first to our base at Kandy; they’ll send you on to Calcutta, where you’ll find the Siamese Country Section. We’ve applied for your air passage and we’ll let you know as soon as it comes through. Meanwhile, here’s Geraldine who’s just back from Kandy—she’ll probably give you some useful tips.’

Geraldine also had a trim figure. . . . The remainder of my time in London was a frenzied round of parties, bars and night-clubs, which did nothing to restore a constitution already weakened by the two extremes of Russian and Irish hospitality. One morning, fearing that I was sickening for something, I decided to consult a doctor whom I had known for some years. After examining me and asking a number of questions he reached for his prescription pad, scribbled a few words and pushed the piece of paper across the desk.

‘I think this should fix you,’ he observed drily.

It read simply: ‘Say no thank you three times daily.’

Young man, I told myself severely, Go East. A week later I was in India.

I

‘EVEN CARIBUS LIE AROUND AND SNOOZE’

My destination was Ceylon: to be exact Kandy, where S.O.E., under its Far Eastern disguise of Force 136, maintained its own headquarters staff among the many that contributed to the glory, and variety, of South-East Asia Command. But my aeroplane would take me no farther than Karachi, where I was consigned to a transit camp on the edge of the Sind Desert, along with a large number of other officers who were southward bound.

Before leaving London I had been well endowed with that sacred gift, Priority, and so it is unlikely that I should have lingered in Karachi had I not, with my faultless genius for putting spokes in my own wheel, developed an acute and laming attack of gout. In the cool and beautifully run R.A.F. hospital I soon recovered; I also learned some disturbing things about the habits of this new enemy I was going to meet.

Among the patients with whom I became friendly was a young subaltern of an Indian infantry regiment, who had been wounded and taken prisoner by the retreating Japanese in Burma; they had tied him to a tree and detailed one of their number to shoot him. Luckily the man detailed was a young soldier and nervous; the bullet struck my friend in the shoulder, the Japanese ran off to rejoin his fellows, and my friend was released later by his own men. He urged me most seriously not to let myself be taken by the Japanese at this stage of the war.

I reached Kandy on the ominous date of Friday, 13th July and spent the week-end in that delightful mountain capital. The morning after my arrival I had an interview with Brigadier John Anstey, the senior officer, who endorsed with enthusiasm my request to drop into Siam; he pointed out that the campaign in Burma was drawing to its close, and when the great attack was mounted against Singapore and Malaya S.O.E. would have a vital operational role to play in Siam, through which country ran all the Japanese lines of communication with French Indo-China. Although, under Japanese military pressure, Siam had declared war on Britain, there was strong anti-Japanese feeling in the country, and many high officials and officers of the three armed services were secretly working for the Allies. A guerrilla organization, known as the ‘Free Thais’, was already in existence and British officers were required to train and arm these irregulars and prepare airstrips and dropping grounds in the jungle.

The Siamese Country Section was in Calcutta, where I should probably find Smiley. He had been dropped into north-east Siam in the last days of May, but had been terribly burnt three weeks later by the premature explosion of one of S.O.E.’s new toys—an incendary brief-case designed to burst into flames and destroy the documents inside in the event of enemy ambush or surprise; Smiley was packing documents into it when there was a short-circuit and five pounds of blazing thermite spread all over him. For a week he lay in agony, unable to sleep, with first-, second- and third-degree burns and a hole in one arm full of maggots; he was, of course, without medical attention. At last he was picked up by an aircraft of the Siamese Air Force and taken to an airstrip, where a Dakota landed and flew him to Calcutta. By now he should be nearly well enough to return to the field.

Among the brigadier’s staff officers at dinner that evening I found an old friend, Major Alan Hare, who had distinguished himself in Albania during the terrible winter of 1943-4; he had emerged with severe injuries from frostbite and the immediate award of the M.C. for outstanding initiative and courage. Like myself he was part of the Drang nach Osten by S.O.E. officers that had followed hard upon the end of the war in Europe.

There was a curious incident before dinner. While we were having drinks on the palm-thatched veranda I was talking to Wing-Commander Redding, who used to run our Air Transport Section in Baker Street; suddenly I heard a faint plop and saw with horror that a gigantic black scorpion had fallen from the roof on to his head. With commendable presence of mind he jerked his neck smartly, so that it fell on to his shoulder, whence he brushed it to the floor. A young bull terrier and a small black puppy made a concerted dive at it, and were only just restrained in time from rushing to certain death when somebody inverted a half-pint tumbler over the creature; the glass was barely wide enough to contain it. The officer with whom I shared a hut at the training camp a few days later had an even greater shock when he found a Russell’s viper in his shirt.

In the holding and training camp on the plains near Colombo where I was sent to await an aircraft for Calcutta I found a wide variety of races, white, brown and yellow; there were British, French and Dutch officers; there were Javanese, Siamese, Burmans, Karens and Gurkhas, and there were Malayan Chinese and Annamites, all waiting or training for operations by parachute, submarine or canoe. I spent my time trying, unsuccessfully, to learn a little Siamese; listening to blood-curdling lectures by the Medical Officer on the treatment of malaria, cholera, typhus, smallpox, snake-bite and syphilis; and politely declining offers to send me on a jungle-training exercise, carrying a fifty-pound rucksack. A heavy rucksack, I told the training staff, was a white man’s burden that I was not prepared to tote; a small haversack such as had served me well in Albania and Poland was the most I would allow to aggravate my prickly heat; anything bulkier must be carried by mule, pony, bullock-cart or local labour—or abandoned. I never had cause to change this view.

It was almost the end of July when I reached Calcutta, arriving in that ugly fetid city on a sticky evening at the height of the monsoon. In the office of the Siamese Country Section—two stifling, noisy rooms in a dingy house on a dusty street full of pot-holes—I was received without enthusiasm by a sweaty, irritable and overworked staff officer; his appearance, like my own, was in squalid contrast to the cool serenity of the neat, pretty young secretaries who flitted in and out among the desks and the clattering typewriters. Smiley, it seemed, had gone to Simla to finish his convalescence at Viceregal Lodge as the guest of his friends the Wavells; I had better find myself a billet in the Transit Hotel until he returned—and now would I kindly get the hell out of the office and keep out of everyone’s way.

This discouraging welcome, not unusual in my experience of reporting for duty in a strange theatre of war, left me nettled but not unduly depressed; for in the same office I met another old friend from Albania, John Hibberdine, a young Captain of the Cameronians who had been my close companion during the gloomy and hazardous days of my reconnaissance of the marches of Kossovo. After my departure for Montenegro early in 1944, Hibberdine had suffered appalling hardship and danger, being chased across north Albania in a series of determined German drives aimed at clearing the country of British Liaison Officers; while lying up in the inhospitable forests of Mirdita he had contracted typhoid, which all but killed him; eventually his companions managed to carry him to the coast, where an M.T.B. took him to Italy. His experiences seemed to have made little impression either on his health or his resolution; for now he was waiting to drop into southern Siam, to the Isthmus of Kra on the Burmese and Malayan borders. In his urbanely cynical company I spent the next two days exploring the restaurants and clubs of Calcutta. The European business community, we noticed, while extending to us the privilege of membership of their clubs, viewed our uniforms with a mixture of resentment and contempt which, as newcomers, we found hard to understand; at times we wondered if they would have preferred the Japanese.

Forty-eight hours after my arrival I received an urgent summons from Smiley to go to Simla to discuss plans. It was accompanied by an invitation from Lady Wavell to stay at Viceregal Lodge. I flew to Delhi and reached Simla on the morning of 3rd August. The next five days were among the happiest of my life. Although the marks of his burns were terribly evident, Smiley had made an astonishing recovery; strolling among the dark green, fir-covered hills, with the gigantic Himalayan snows nacreous and opalescent on the distant skyline, we planned in eager detail the course of our future operations in the field.

We very nearly did not get into the field. The bomb on Hiroshima shattered our pleasant pipe-dream and sent us scurrying back to Calcutta as soon as Smiley had been passed fit by a medical board. We heard the news at luncheon from a very sweet old lady, the wife of a distinguished lawyer.

'Isn't it wonderful?’ she beamed. ‘They’ve dropped a bomb on Japan which has the force of ten thousand tons of high explosive! Isn’t science marvellous? Truly civilization progresses from day to day!’

I could only recall the bitter words of Colin Ellis’s epigram:

‘Science finds out ingenious ways to kill

Strong men, and keep alive the weak and ill,

That these asickly progeny may breed:

Too poor to tax, too numerous to feed.’

It is fair to add that five years later I was to owe to science my own recovery from tuberculosis.

We did not have to linger long in Calcutta. Because of the prevailing uncertainty the Siamese Country Section decided to send in its operational parties as fast as possible. Smiley, now a lieutenant-colonel, left immediately in a Dakota that was going to land on the Siamese airstrip from which he had been flown out the previous month; with him went Brigadier Victor Jaques, commanding all Force 136 Missions in Siam. Jaques was a lawyer who had practised in Bangkok before the war; he had continued to live there during the Japanese occupation, sheltered by the Regent in his palace, where, under the noses of the enemy, he had maintained wireless communication with Calcutta and built up a subversive organization inside the country.

I was delighted to learn that I was to drop in with an old friend, Major Rowland Winn, 8th Hussars, who was also joining Smiley. I had first met Winn when I was a Carlist officer and he a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in Spain. The outbreak of the Civil War found him in Madrid, but his dispatches on events there during the first few weeks were too candid for the liking of the Republican authorities, who clapped him into gaol and sentenced him to death; his life was saved by the intervention of the British Chargé d’Affaires, but he judged it prudent thereafter to report the war from the Nationalist side. In the winter of 1943 he parachuted into Albania, breaking a leg on landing;