A Rude Awakening

I handed him my glass, which vibrated with the enraged activities of the shitbag. I wove my way across the room. ‘You cunt, they do wear fucking knickers,’ I announced to the assembled company.

Johnny Mercer’s laughing face loomed into mine. Johnny was shorter than I, a red-faced, rat-faced Cockney who made an indifferent RASC sergeant.

‘I was watching you catch that bit of wild life in your beer, mucker,’ he said. ‘It reminded me of what the old Venereal Bede said about human existence, that it was like some horrible hairy flying abomination belting in through one window of a great hall straight into some poor cunt’s wog beer.’

He started howling with his homemade brand of laughter, and I joined in. Smiting him on the shoulder, I pushed through the crowd towards the mess door. It stood open to let the heat and smoke out. I blundered through, emerging almost at a trot into the steaming night.

You could tell blindfold that Medan was just one degree off the equator. The air suppurated like primaeval broth. A million monstrous little things unknown in England expressed their beings in sound so urgently that it was hard to know what was air, what noise. I stood there, swaying slightly, and flipped my fag-end away into the night. Its parabola was cut short in mid-air. Something had gobbled it up before it fell.

The headlights of a battered fifteen-hundredweight truck penetrated the darkness and moved down the road from the direction of the guardhouse.

They turned uncertainly in at the mess gates, revealing themselves as two eyes the colour of mule urine. They backed away to one corner of the enclosure. There was a smashing sound, sustained and quite leisurely, as the fifteen-hundredweight struck our old wooden summerhouse and ignored it. RSM Dickie Payne was returning, drunk as always.

I stood there listening with remote pleasure as Payne drove forward and then, presumably more by accident than in a spirit of revenge, back again, continuing the demolition of the summerhouse. Johnny Mercer staggered out of the mess to see what was going on.

‘Merdeka! Our beloved RSM still battering his way through life … I need a pee …’

He turned to a nearby bush. The sound of his urine streaming on the grass reminded me of similar needs. As I moved to one side of the building, lobbing my tool out, the RSM’S vehicle swerved forward again. The glow of his headlights swept the ground ahead.

Two frogs lay clasped together, one on top of the other, in a shallow puddle – it had rained heavily at sunset. The frogs were motionless, staring ahead into a cold Nirvana of amphibian copulation. I directed a scalding jet of piss on them with such force that they were flipped over, showing their death-yellow bellies. I laughed as I pissed, churning them up, watching them struggle.

The damned truck was nearly on me. I was so taken up with the frogs that it almost ran me over.

‘Payne, you pissy-arsed fuck-pig!’ I yelled, jumping backwards as the ghari reared forward.

Payne had the truck door open, holding it with one hand while he steered with the other. He was half falling out of the cab as he backed the truck towards one side of the mess. He shouted something incoherent as he shot by, sweaty face gleaming.

And then the amazing happened. At the time, standing there clutching a dripping prick, I thought only how appropriate it was that the rear end of the truck should begin to sink slowly into the ground. The RSM’S response was to rev his engine. The ground collapsed. The truck settled down on its haunches, cab rearing into the air. Mud splattered from its still-spinning front wheels.

Cursing, Dickie Payne fell clear, landing on hands and knees in my pissy puddle among the frogs. He scuttled away into the bushes while the engine died. As the truck sank backwards still further, the yellow beam of the headlights swung upwards till it illuminated the top branches of a nearby tree. With avian imprecations, a terrible feathered thing took flight and clattered into the darkness.

Johnny was at my side, laughing as if his ribs were trapped in a suit of armour. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in!’ he kept saying. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in! Isn’t that just like life?’

This statement, no less than the truth, somehow settled the question of whether or not I should hang around the mess. Politeness had kept me there; after all, they were standing me a farewell party. But there had been a similar thrash the night before, and another was planned for the day after, all three being designed as a wet run for a grand party on Saturday night – which, it was foreseen, would be traumatic enough to require a succession of tailing-off parties, continuing long after I had flown to Singapore to catch the troopship.

For the moment, enough was enough. I checked to see that my revolver was in my holster and my old man in my trousers, and slipped away into the night. Margey, I told myself, meant more to me than all the sergeants in the British Army laid end to bloody end.

CHAPTER TWO (#ucfcf5b00-a0d5-51e6-b008-63fedeb4a3e9)

At the far end of the road from the sergeants’ mess stood an MP’S guardpost. It marked the official entrance into the perimeter of our lines. There, the redcaps underwent their primitive life-cycles, lowering barriers across the road after dark, arresting drunks, and generally making themselves obstreperous.

Inside the perimeter was a heterogeneous collection of soldiery: a small detachment of the Royal Mendips, of which I formed part; several squads of 26th Indian Division, comprising both British and Indian troops; some sinister Dutchmen belonging to PEA Force; and a few other odd bods, including some Japanese troops, who were too useful for nasty jobs to be sent home to Nippon, and a solitary Chinese major who spent his days searching for unmarked Chinese graves. This miscellaneous rabble formed part of the occupying force; we were billeted in varying degrees of comfort in what had been a Dutch suburb, before war overcame the Netherlands East Indies four years previously, early in 1942.

The perimeter defences, like our duties, were ill-defined. Despite many alarms and shoot-ups, we could not get it through our thick heads that the Indonesians meant us harm. After all, we had come to liberate them from the rule of the Japs. The general fucking-about meant that a curfew was imposed between midnight and seven in the morning. During that period, those of the occupying force not on duty were supposed to remain snug within their own lines. The redcaps on the gate knew me better than that.

A searchlight burned above their post, drawing a tangle of ghastly winged life into its net. As I entered the lighted zone, a motor-bike zoomed up behind me. I jumped to one side, fearing another drunken driver. Jackie Tertis pulled his heavy old BSA to a halt a few inches from my Number Elevens, pushed up his goggles and grinned evilly. He left the engine roaring. ‘Want a lift into town?’

‘What about the piss-up?’

‘Like you, I skipped it. Better things to do with my time. Climb on – haven’t got all bloody night.’

He flashed a pass at the redcap who challenged us. Despite my reservations concerning Tertis, I climbed on the pillion and latched my hands under his belt. He was a dangerous bugger in every way, not least as a driver.

Back in our unsophisticated days in India, Jackie Tertis had been a pale little squaddie with wanking problems, afraid to enter a brothel or say boo to a gobble-wallah. Burma had changed all that; after Kohima, Jackie had become tough and nasty, closed to his mates. Promotion had come his way and he remustered as Intelligence. Now he worked on Dutch detachment, prising confessions out of Indonesian prisoners for Prevention of Enemy Activity Force. In truth, I was partly afraid of him.

Beyond the MP post was a sinister dark stretch of road, with empty houses standing on either side. Tertis accelerated through that bit.

‘You going to have a poke?’ he shouted over his shoulder.

‘Yes. You?’

The noise of the engine drowned part of his answer. I caught only the last part. ‘… bloody British Army … no discipline any longer.’

Ahead was a level crossing, made melancholy by a solitary light burning above the gates in the darkness; the railway lines glinted like oiled rifle barrels. Two Dutch officers had been ambushed and shot dead at this spot only the week before. We bounced across the track. To one side lurked the dark shape of the railway station. Beyond it was a small market. After that, street lighting began, each light surrounded by a sphere of illuminated insects; after that, you were in the centre of Medan. The great thing was to be alert, and drop like a stone if you heard anything. (Some weeks later, I made a fool of myself in Winchester High Street, by falling flat on my face when a car backfired.)

We sped over cobbles. There were two or three pedicabs moving about; otherwise, anyone going anywhere went on foot, walking purposefully. Medan was dangerous after dark.

The centre was rather picturesque. Succeeding occupations by Japanese and British troops had not altered the arrangement of modest Dutch buildings, among them the Hotel De Boer, Reserved for Officers, which stood round four sides of the large open green. The green was fringed with European-type trees, while in its centre stood a fine Batak house, all timber, perched on stilts, its steep roofs curling like sails up to the sky.

Beyond the green Kesawan, the main street began. The Chinese quarter lay to the right. There lived my lovely Margey.

Tertis pulled in to the curb when we reached the square.

I climbed off. I did not ask him where he was going.

‘Watch it,’ he said.

‘You too.’

He roared off down the Kesawan.

Despite all my mates said, it was fairly safe in the Chinese quarter. The Chinese were neutral in the struggle between the Indonesians, Dutch and British. Also, Holland’s tough colonial troops, the Ambonese, were billeted here, and ready to go into action at any moment. In these narrow side streets was more humanity than in the main thoroughfares. Many Ambonese strolled about the roadway, sat in cafés, relaxed at street-corners, in windows, or on pavements. They played guitars and sang – my god, there was ‘Terang Boelan’ again! – and they never forgot to tote their Yankee carbines. With all those Ambonese about, the forces of Soekarno were not likely to try anything in Chinatown.

On the corner of Bootha Street, near Margey’s house, a café did thriving business, its worn tables and chairs spilling out on to the pavement. Lanterns burned, supplementing the erratic electricity supply. The Chinese who ran the café had set it up as soon as the Japanese surrendered, taking over an old shop whose owners had fled or been killed. From the depths of the shop came the reedy whine-and-throb of Chinese music. Many a time when I took Margey there to eat, mine was the only white face to be seen. As I passed, one of the Chinese waiters smiled a greeting. Horatio Stubbs was known in Sumatra.

I felt good. The heat never bothered me; I was born to roast. I had on my jungle greens, puttees, boots, web belt with service revolver, and battered bush hat which I had worn all the way through India, Assam, and Burma, and which I had refused to change for new-issue berets. At the top of my sleeve was the green flash of the Royal Mendips, with my three stripes beneath it. I wore my four medal ribbons – Long Service, Victory, Burma Star, and Pacific (the latter illegal) – in a bar over my left breast pocket. I was neatly turned out. I had shaved and showered three hours earlier, and applied talc to my prickly heat. I clocked in at thirteen stone one, was twenty-three years of age, circumcised, brown as an Indian, sweating gently, and eminently ready for a good fuck.

The metal tips on my boots clipped on the broken paving of the arcade. If any trouble broke out, I was immediately ready to strike or to shoot. I felt like a real good soldier, and a spot of bother would not have come amiss.

At the next side street, I paused, looking round before proceeding. It was a useful position for an ambush. Numerous yards opened up, from the entrances of which it would have been easy to snipe at an enemy and escape laughing. All was clear this evening but the area remained ill-lit. A sort of service lane led behind Bootha Street, allowing just enough width for lorries; but in these downfallen days, lorries had disappeared. At the far end of the lane, a dim discreet light shone from a doorway. I knocked and looked in.

A flimsy curtain masked the entrance. Behind it, six men sat round a table, smoking and playing cards in shorts and vests. The room had few basic features: a cobbled floor, whitewashed walls, a flight of wooden steps up to a loft against one wall. It had served as a store in pre-invasion times. Now there was nothing left to store and it had been commandeered for human habitation. Table and chairs, an ancient sofa, and silk banners on the walls effected the transformation. An old Chinese lady in blue work-overalls sat on the sofa, stitching, watching over a sleeping baby. She looked up and smiled when she saw me. This was Auntie of the round brown face. I was always glad to see her, though she never said a word.

The men at the table were also Chinese, varying in age from a slip of a youth to an old man with a straggly white beard. They were sharing a bottle of beer between them. They had an air of permanence, but in emergencies people tend to spend a lot of time sitting at tables.

Margey’s brother-in-law called to me; he was a podgy yellow man, Hwan Fat Sian.

‘Harrow, Missa Stuss, how you dis eebnin’? You rike drink one bee’ wit us?’