I know lots of second world war veterans who rather enjoyed their war against the Germans. But I’ve never met one who enjoyed his war against the Japanese. As the Eastern Front was to the Western Front, so the Far Eastern front was to the European/North African front: the fighting was more implacably brutal, the conditions more ferociously grim, the chances of coming out in one piece notably slimmer.
That’s why, in dark times like these, I find it of such great comfort to read a novel like Harold James’s The Scorpion Trap (Janus). It’s a brilliant fictionalised account by a former Gurkha officer of those hideous and terrifying early stages of the war when implacable Japanese overran our colonies. On the Burma retreat alone, our forces lost around 13,000 killed, wounded or missing. But 30,000 of them made it, after a three-and-a-half-month, 1,000-mile retreat to the Indian border — still carrying their arms, still keeping their ranks, still with their dignity intact.
And their reward? Indifference bordering on contempt. When they got to the Indian frontier, there was no decent accommodation to shelter them from the monsoon, nor were there any cooking posts or even mosquito nets, in a region swarming with mosquitoes. Where their brethren returning from Dunkirk had been treated as heroes, these men were made to feel like pariahs. After all, as senior commanders like Wavell knew — and as the press dutifully repeated — the Japanese were short-sighted, buck-toothed and absolutely no match for British troops showing even a modicum of spirit.
The Scorpion Trap is named after a popular Japanese shock tactic, horribly effective against a retreating army. You send small numbers of troops to race ahead on your enemy’s flanks and form roadblocks across his line of retreat. Then while he is held up by your scorpion’s pincers, the main body of your army — the stinger — comes up from behind to administer the coup de grace.
Harold James, the author, wasn’t involved in the Burma retreat. But as a 19-year-old officer on Wingate’s First Chindit Expedition he could easily identify with those who were. In one of the book’s many memorable scenes, the hero’s company of Gurkhas are trapped the wrong side of the Sittang river after the bridge has been prematurely blown by sappers. None of his Gurkhas can swim but he’s not going to leave them behind. He swims to the far side and eventually, miraculously, finds the only boat that hasn’t been destroyed and returns to rescue his men. Something just like this happened to James, behind enemy lines at the Irrawaddy.
I’d recommend the book hugely to military buffs. Not since John Masters has anyone described so beautifully the relationship of trust and affection between a Gurkha officer and his men. Even more impressive is his ability to think his way into the heads of those at a higher level of command. You feel what it is like to be a battalion commander, casting a paternal eye over your stripling majors, captains and lieutenants; and how it is to be a lieutenant general like Sir Harold Alexander, torn between obeying your orders to hold Rangoon at all costs and your knowledge that the situation is hopeless and the sooner you get your men out, the fewer you’ll lose.
What I find, though, as I get older is that I’m less interested in war books for their pornographic military details and more for what they tell us about life and the human condition in extremis. The scene which touched a chord more than any of the combat sequences was a lightly done one involving expatriates who can’t quite believe that their glorious colonial existence is about to end forever.
It involves the Whitcomb family, fleeing from Moulmein in the nick of time to friends in Rangoon. ‘The servants were taken aback at the small amount of luggage when they came out to unload the car; in their experience, the English always seemed to travel with a great number of suits and appendage. Jack’s wife, Celia, was surprised as well. “Oh dear! Is that all you were able to bring with you!”’ Later, when it’s suggested that Rangoon may fall too, ‘an expression of fear’ flashes briefly across Celia’s face, before she says quickly: ‘Oh, let us forget the war for a moment. You have had a long journey. Take the opportunity to relax.’
I think we most of us feel that way now, don’t we? Moments of dark, shuddery dread, which we strive constantly to stifle with lovely hot baths, or G&Ts, or games of bridge, or fond thoughts about how beautiful and talented our children are. But the looming economic catastrophe isn’t going to go away, any more than those advancing Japanese divisions in 1942 were likely to say: ‘Right, let’s turn round now and leave these people in peace.’
The depressing aspect of reading a book like The Scorpion Trap is that it confirms how powerless we are against the sweep of history, how remarkably prone our leaders are to making exactly the wrong decision, and that there is no barbarity so unspeakably awful that men will not gleefully commit it given half the chance.
But there’s an uplifting aspect too. As well as bringing out men’s worst behaviour, great crises can also bring about the best. And though things can get tough, very, very tough, they do eventually end and they are survivable. Harold James, still going strong into his eighties with his adoptive Gurkha family in Nepal, is living proof of that. ‘The oldest hath borne most: we that are young/ Shall never see so much nor live so long,’ says Shakespeare. I do hope he’s right. But if not, let us give thanks to the lives of men like Harold James for setting us an example.
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