“Things happen in battle,” said the Sergeant. “Not everything goes as we might wish.”
Now they heard the crack of 25 pounders, and the British guns began to find the range. It was a full a barrage from three battalions, falling first on the bridge sector, and then rolling west along the line of the river where the Germans had taken up positions. After a hot ten minutes, things quieted down, then the pop of mortar fire was heard, and there were shouts of alarm from their forward positions.
“Smoke!” the Corporal shouted, which set the Private to wave dismissively at the enemy beyond their lines. “It’s only smoke,” he said. “They’ve probably run out of ammunition.”
“Don’t be a fool, Packshee. They use that to cover their advance. Now we get our turn. Stay low.”
The Moonbird saw the Sergeant checking his rifle. The burly man waved his broad arm at a section on the right, and three men moved forward toward the bunkers. The sound of gunfire began, first rifles, then a terrible buzzing sound from hell that the Sergeant had heard too many times before, the dread German MG-42 machinegun. The Private stuck up his head, aghast when those rounds began biting into that forward strongpoint, right where the Corporal had told him to set up his Bren Gun.
Then he saw a big explosion there, and a sapper’s body was literally blown up and out of the entrenched position. He shirked in terror, biting his lip, and heard the deep throated sound of the enemy soldiers calling to one another. They were coming. The bunker had been hit with a panzerfaust, and the two man gun crew killed outright.
Sergeant Anandsubramanian whistled to his reserve squad, ordering them forward. “Hold that bunker!”
The Private saw him rush forward, and his heart was pounding. There he was, cowering in a covered trench, the sound of battle all around him now, and it was a terrible sound indeed. He could hear the cries of wounded men, the earth shaking sound of explosions from mortar fire and grenades. But not one of the Engineers had reached the bunker yet, and no one was firing his prized Bren Gun back at the enemy.
He stared through the dust and smoke, seeing the broad figure of his Sergeant firing his rifle at the unseen enemy. Then something just snapped in him, driven by the fearful rush of adrenaline. He could not just sit there. Up ahead, he could see dark shadows looming in the smoke. They were coming!
Private Kapoor was up on his feet before he even knew what he was doing, and he ran for all he was worth. One of the fastest men in the platoon, he was so nimble afoot that he just leapt right over the next trench line where the Sergeant was rallying a squad, and he kept right on running toward that bunker.
“Packshee!” Came the Sergeant’s voice, a shrill edge in it that cut. But the Private kept running, leaping at last right into that strongpoint and looking wildly about to find his Bren Gun. It was laying there on one side, right next to the slumped bodies of two men, their tunics red with the stain of a bloody death.
Whether it was panic, courage, or insanity, it did not matter. Any of the three would have been equally fair reactions to the situation where he now found himself. What did matter was that the terrible energy that shook his frame now set his hands in motion. He seized that gun, setting the bipod legs right up on the edge of that bunker, and then he began to fire it, just as he had seen the British soldiers do, in short, sharp bursts. He fired at the shadows looming in that smoke, his eyes wide with both fear and excitement now.
Packshee was attacking the Germans!
The Sergeant could not believe what he had seen the young man do. He stood up and waved his men forward. “Veera Madrassi, Adi Kollu, Adi Kollu!”
The reserve squad rushed forward bravely, guns firing. They reached the bunker, where Packshee was still spitting fire at the oncoming enemy. To either side of that position, the other engineers looking on began to cheer and shout: “Har Har Mahadev!”
Then the Sergeant saw the cold evil shape of a potato masher grenade clatter off a wood beam, and grasped it as quickly as he could, hurling it back at the enemy. Then two dark shapes coalesced from the smoke and dust to become enemy soldiers. The Sergeant took the first with his bayonet, the second he wrestled with, bringing him to the ground, and all the while Packshee continued firing, and with very good discipline, realizing he was now on his last ammo cartridge.
There came a shout, and the strange sound of other voices calling in that guttural sounding language of the Germans. The shadows receded. Private Kapoor fired his last fierce burst, now out of ammunition, turning wide eyed to see blood all over the tunic of his Sergeant.
Thankfully, it was only the blood from his fallen enemy, and Packshee saw the long knife in his Sergeant’s hand, the fire of rage in his eyes. They heard more harsh shouts. A machinegun buzzed at them, the rounds kicking into the sandbagged position.
“Back!” shouted the Sergeant, and he literally took the Private by his collar and hauled him out of that bunker. The smoke had rolled over them, obscuring everything, as Anandsubramanian dragged his charge along, three other men retired with him, all that was left of that squad. They reached the second trench line that the Private had leapt over earlier, and settled in, choking in the dust and gasping for breath.
They had abandoned that bunker none too soon, for another panzerfaust round came surging in, blasting the structure so badly that the wooden beams of the low roof collapsed. It had been fired for spite as much as anything else, because the German mountaineers were falling back. The crack of those British 25 pounders had dismayed them, and this attack was soon over.
There, still breathing hard in the trench, the Private looked up, wide eyed, at his Sergeant. “We attacked them! Didn’t we Sergeant? Did we drive them away?”
The sergeant gave the young man a long look. He wanted to speak hard words, about discipline and following orders and remembering his training, but he said none of that. The boy in front of him had just crossed over that thin, yet palpable line that led him into manhood, and he smiled.
“You attacked them Packshee. We only came to help. I intend to go right to the Company Subedar and get you a medal! And when things settle down, we’re going right back to that bunker so you can get your Bren Gun. Rest now. Then you can go and look for some more ammunition.”
The private bobbed his head, very happy.
Dusk could not come too early that day, the red sun falling through the haze and smoke of that battle. The Germans did not return. When the Northamptons gave way, the 32nd Sappers and Miners had held the line, and that night they would dig even deeper into the dry ground, their picks and shovels singing as they chinked against the stones.
The waxing gibbous moon sunk low on the horizon, setting very late, just before midnight. The men had eaten and rested from their long day’s ordeal, and Anandsubramanian was sitting with his eyes closed, listening to the night. Then he heard the Moonbird singing, his voice high and bright, yet tinged with a deep sense of sadness, and the resolution of newfound purpose.
All his young life, Private Kapoor had been afraid of the Germans, which is why he had resolved that he simply must go and fight them. His father had told him the story of what happened in his home town of Madras in the first war, when the German raider Emden slipped into the port one night to raise hell. The Germans hit two oil tankers, causing a tremendous explosion that lit the city up with the rising flames. Then they had wantonly shelled the buildings near the harbor, hitting the National Bank of India, the Port Trust, Boat House, and Madras High Court. It was done as much to sew the seed of terror than to do any real harm, the only attack made on Indian soil during that first awful war. Terror did strike the city after that, causing many thousands to flee, and ever after the name Emden was synonymous with the fear raising skill of a daring enemy.