34. Jungle Warfare

It is sometimes tempting to think that, if only one had done something different or not done something, things would have turned out better. Most of us can point to some moment where a casual decision had a profound effect on our lives: turning right instead of left and meeting the girl you ended up marrying, leaving a candle burning unattended and destroying the house. For me, when I pointed the burglar out to Manesh is one of those moments.

Naturally, at the time, I had no idea of how significant it was. It was only three or four years later when I met Manesh again that I found out the details of what happened at the courthouse after I had left. When I ran into him, he had lost a leg to gangrene after being wounded on patrol in the jungle and he was selling children’s toys in the street.

It turned out that he made them himself. Wooden birds; hens and ducks with a long handle coming out of the tail so that the child could push them along. The wheels were mounted with the axle off centre so that the bird waddled from side to side as it moved forward and they were realistically carved and coloured so that they were almost works of art. I think that Manesh, having lost his leg, had found something that he had a real talent for, although he told me that he struggled to make enough from them to keep body and soul together.

I didn’t recognise him until he called out to me from his seat at the roadside.
“Hey, Tommu!” he said. “Is that you? How is your father these days?”
“Manesh! Hello. I didn’t see you there. My dad’s not very well, I’m afraid. He’s been suffering with pains in his legs and knees for a while now, and he doesn’t go out much these days.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that. You don’t realise how important your legs are while they are working well. He’s the last of the old breed, you know. They knew how to do things in your father’s time. They took no nonsense, when his generation ran the show. He wouldn’t have been letting these savages get out of line.”

“My father?” The description didn’t really tally with my own impression of his service in the Guardians. In his day, I thought, the Guardians had mostly been occupied with farming, not fighting wars.
“Yes. He would have given them what for! He would have kicked ass.”
I tried to change the subject.
“It’s been a few years, Manesh,” I said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you since just after the fire.”

“That’s right. It’s been a tough time. Especially since I was invalided out of the service. You could probably use a nice duck. Look, this green and brown one would amuse any child. See how it waddles. Very realistic, I think.”

“I don’t have any kids,” I answered then, seeing his face fall, I continued “but I’ll have the duck anyway.”
As I felt in my pocket for a coin, he began to unscrew the handle and fold the toy up for me.

“I always thought of you as a friend, Tommu.” As he moved forward to hand it to me, I had to move away to avoid the smell of rum on his breath. “Even at the worst of times, I would think ‘Yes, if Tommu were here, he wouldn’t let me down.’
I remember the night we went together to the hangar. I helped you to get those pictures. Do you remember how I persuaded the captain to let you have them? And then you handed us Senn on a plate. It seems like yesterday.”
“Senn?” I asked uncertainly.
“Oh yes. You recognised him but it was us that got the truth out of him.”
“Senn was the name of my burglar?”

“That’s right. He thought he was tough, but a night in a room with Manesh soon put him right. Before he died he gave us everything he had. Names, places, times. Dozens of them. Everything we needed to react.”
“What? He died under interrogation?”

“Like I said. He wasn’t as tough as he thought. At first, he wouldn’t say nothing. Then he came up with a couple of names; but by the end he was squawking like a parakeet.”
“And you arrested all these people?”

“Most of them, I’d say. But by the finish he was so eager to give us names that some of them were people that didn’t even exist. That’s how he was talking. He was even making up names, just to help us.
Of course it would have been satisfying to be able to get back to him and confront him with the fact that some of the things he’d told us weren’t strictly true, but by then it was too late.”
“What sort of people did he name?” My curiosity overcame my uneasy desire to make my excuses and leave.

“Oh, all sorts. People you would never have suspected. But the real gold dust was the jungle stuff. He told us how to get to one of Hama Batu’s camps. He had actually visited it at some point and he gave us the directions. And that was right. Mind you, I’d probably still have my leg if it hadn’t been for getting involved in the jungle.

I don’t count the cost though. I would have put my head on the line to protect the Village and a leg isn’t much. Just the price a veteran has to pay. But if it hadn’t been for Senn, if you hadn’t pointed him out, I daresay that I wouldn’t ever have gone into the jungle at all.”
“I should be going.” I said. “My Dad’s expecting me.”

“Well give him my best regards. It’s been great meeting you, Tommu. To think that, if it hadn’t been for you, there would probably have been no war. That’s what I always tell people. I tell them that if it hadn’t been for Tommu and Manesh, we would never have been able to attack Hama Batu on his home ground. The whole thing would probably just have fizzled out.”
“Now wait a bit.” I interjected. “I can’t see how there wouldn’t have been a war without me.”

“Take my word for it. Hasiki would have won his argument if it hadn’t been for you. I got there just in time to stop him. I walked into the conference the next morning to tell them, and they had just agreed to let him turn loose the prisoners. The whole thing would just have been over.

Even then it was touch and go. Hasiki would have taken away the prisoner and nothing would have come of it. Knowing Hasiki, he would probably have given him some sort of pension or reward. But fortunately, Gardener Lomu was there. He saw right through Hasiki’s tricks. He knew him from way back and he soon put a stop to it.

‘This softly, softly stuff, Hasiki. You can see where it’s got us.’ That’s what he said, or words to that effect. ‘We have the information we need and we are going on the attack.’ And the Captain Major agreed with him. There were no flies on old Paitor. He ordered Hasiki to send out the troops, and for me it was the best thing he could do. I was in the right place at the right time to see some action, and all thanks to you.”
“So what happened after that?” I asked, a bit shocked.

“Well I was put in charge of one of the platoons to go into the jungle. A separate group went out to hunt down the people in the Village that Senn had named but the jungle was the big prize. That was where you could make a name for yourself, and I was in on that from the very start. I went home and packed and we reported in at midday.

We travelled up to the plantation in the Gardeners’ coach. Can you believe that? The Gardener’s own coach. And we were in the jungle first thing the next morning. More than sixty of us, armed to the teeth. It was a tough assignment, I can tell you that. But we were a rough, tough lot taking it on.

I can remember one night, sitting in a ditch. The mosquitoes were biting the shit out of us and I could smell the plants in the ditch next to me. Khaki weed. You know how that stuff stinks and so I took the khaki weed and I crushed it in my hand and rubbed it all over my arms and legs and face. Then the insects left me alone.

So I told all the men to get khaki weed too and to rub it on themselves and we had no more trouble from mosquitoes. That’s what we were like: resourceful. Nothing was going to stop us.
The Shadows didn’t understand that. They thought that when they got a few of us, we would stop. But no matter how many they could pick off with their hit and run tactics, no matter. We were going to keep on coming at them.”
“So did you find their camp?”

“Oh yes. Exactly where we’d been told it was. Miles and miles into the jungle. We’d lost nearly a fifth of the men by the time we got there, and of course it was deserted. Nothing left behind. They had known we were coming. But they kept attacking us and we kept fighting back. A lot of us were wounded by that time, of course, and there was no proper medical treatment, so we had to fight our way back home.

My leg was bandaged and it was hot and swollen but I never thought anything of it. We were the toughest group that you could imagine. We just kept on going.”
“How big was the camp that you found? Had there been a lot of people there?”

“Well they’d left, of course, so who can say for certain. But yes, quite a number. There must have been space there for at least twenty. More than twenty. Say thirty or forty. Or even more. Anyway a lot of them. But we didn’t care. We kept on going, no matter what.”
“And did you capture any of them?”

“Well we killed a number. I would say up to ten. Yes. At least ten. But capturing them would have been damned difficult. They would attack from out of nowhere and of course they used those poison arrows, so even a slight graze was already a serious problem. And then they would fade into the jungle as if they were, well as if they were shadows.

I suppose that is why they gave themselves that name. It was just like chasing shadows. Your hand closes on something and when you open it, nothing there. But we fought our way back to the plantations and we could confirm the location of their camp. And we had brought back a lot of weapons and things.
So we were among the early expeditions to the jungle. We led the way.

In those early days, they were real opposition. They had lived in the jungle and they knew it like the backs of their hands. Those were tough times. But we fought them; every inch of the way. It wasn’t like later when a lot of them, even in the forest, had come from the Village. And later, of course, they had captured rifles or stolen them in the Village. That made a difference.

That was the problem, of course, as fast as we got rid of them, they would get new recruits from the Village and the plantations. If the Guardians in the Village had kept things under control and stopped them from going into the jungle, we would have won the war by now. Finished. But they weren’t firm. If you can’t stand the fire, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.
Yes. Everything that we won in the jungle was lost in the Village and that’s the sad truth.”

Manesh paused.
“But I can see that you need to get on Tommu. You’ve no time now to listen to me, so you must go. I can see that times have moved on. You need to get back to your father.”