“Thirdly, the strategically vital position of Myitkyina means that the enemy cannot allow us to hold it indefinitely. They will be forced to contest our hold on the base and thus expose themselves to our firepower. We will have artillery in the base itself and we can use airpower based in Assam and southern Burma. It will be impossible for the enemy to bring artillery or anti-aircraft guns of his own to contest our control of the area so we will be able to fight on our terms and with every advantage.
“Our base at Myitkyina will be resupplied by this road here from Mandalay and by means of the river Namyin. We can also bring in supplies by air if necessary, again from the airbase at Mandalay. We propose to start moving troops into this base area within a few days, hoping to have the new base established and operational before the Monsoon starts.
“Thank you.”
General Moses sat down. Sir Martyn felt his unease grow. The Monsoon was coming, and with it weather that could ground Triple Alliance aircraft for days at a time. Even the new Thai F-105Bs would be incapable of flying when the rains really started, as for the Indian Air Force's older jets and piston-engined aircraft, they would be out of the game completely.
And, when the rains started, the roads would be turning to mud. He remembered how The Ambassador had told him the importance of good roads in fighting insurgencies and his unease increased. This Myitkyina operation simply wasn't the way she'd taught him about fighting insurgencies. He spoke quietly to the Indian Cabinet Secretary
“Sir Eric, please will you organize a top secret encrypted and scrambled telephone call to Washington as soon as possible. I need expert advice.”
Indian Embassy, Rangoon, Burma
Sir Eric knocked on the door of Sir Martyn's room. “Your call to Washington Sir Martyn. Its ready in the Communications Room.”
They went down to the secure communications facility in the Embassy Basement. Sir Martyn picked up the telephone attached to the facility and waited while the call was connected. Soon he heard the familiar contralto, unmistakable despite the distance and cryptography. “Sir Martyn, it is a pleasure to hear from you. How may I be of assistance to you?”
Sir Eric watched him explain the Australian plan. Then there was a pause for a few seconds then Sir Martyn started to go white, holding the telephone a little further away from his ear. He started writing down notes on a pad beside the communications console. At the end of the monologue he heard Sir Martyn add.
“Madam Ambassador, I can only say how pleased I am that you confirm my gravest reservations over this operation even though I lack the professional knowledge and standing to express them so forcefully. I will take your advice immediately and thank you for agreeing to inform the Americans of what is happening. Good afternoon Ma'am and thank you.”
Sir Martyn got up shakily and poured himself a very large drink. “She wasn't very pleased.” He looked at Sir Eric ruefully. “In fact her mildest comment was 'I cannot leave men alone for five minutes without them wandering off and getting into trouble' and I got the feeling she meant it. I don't think she believes the Myitkyina operation will be successful.”
INS Cicala, On The Nanyin River, Burma
“By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me.”
The singing came from the messdecks. Kipling's words were probably the most evocative ever written and always caused those who had served East of Suez to stop for a moment with a dreamy expression on their face. Commodore Nathan was no exception, when he heard the song, he stopped what he was doing and looked out of the bridge at the convoy heading upriver to the new base at Myitkyina.
The two gunboats, Cicala and Dragonfly were ancient by all standards except those of river warfare where fresh water and a lack of strenuous demands on the engines made for a long life. They were thumping along, escorting a group of freighters. Actually, the ships were LSTs, officially Landing Ship Tank, but universally known as Large Slow Targets. These weren't even real LSTs, they were a small cousin of the American-built ones, but up here large was still the right word. The ships were a long way upriver of their normal haunts and a bit too big to maneuver in the river, but needs must when the devil drives. The combination of supply demands and the beginning of the monsoon rains had made the road up to Myitkyina a nightmare of traffic jams.
“On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!”
Nathan wondered how many people in the convoy knew that the road from Myitkyina to Mandalay really was the one Kipling had written about. Different war, different era of course but the same road. And dawn really was coming up like thunder out of China. Every day now, the heavy black clouds to the North were gathering, denser, blacker, more threatening. One day, one day soon, they'd burst out and sweep south and the Monsoon would have started in earnest. All they'd had so far were the precursor rains. A mere smattering compared with what was to come. Reading about it was one thing, experiencing it was something else.
“We us'ter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak. Elephants a-piling teak, In the sludgy, squidgy creek, Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!”
That was true enough also, the heavy humid air seemed to damp out sound, to stifle words in the speaker's mouth. Even the thumping diesels seemed muted as the ships ploughed on. The gunboats, the freighters, the silent jungle either side of them, the sludgy brown water flowing gently against them. Wide river too, wide and shallow, its bottom a hideous gluey mud.
Looking at his little convoy, Nathan saw there was nothing to indicate that Kipling himself wasn't on board and this could still the time when the British Empire stretched across the world and the Royal Navy was the undisputed master of the seas. Only now, Nathan knew, the British Empire was gone, fragmented, and with it the Royal Navy had gone also. Some of it still served on in the Canadian and Indian and Australian navies and there was a tiny fragment in Great Britain, little more than a reminder of a name that had once been the synonym for naval power.
Then the silence erupted in a demented howl. Low overhead, two Thai F-105s crashed through the oppressive quiet, streaking above the gunboats as they headed upriver. Nathan swung his binoculars onto them, they were loaded for bear, droptanks on the inner wing pylons, a six-pack of bombs on the centerline and four more on each outer wing pylon. Well, Nathan thought, it was back to 1959 with 1960 just a few days away.
Number One was watching the jets shrinking as they howled upriver. “How do they do it Sir? Twenty years ago, they were just another obscure little country nobody could quite find on a map. Now our air force pilots fly F-84s if they are lucky or F-72s if they are not. While they fly those.”
“Money Number One, back when The Triple Alliance was being formed, the Thais signed trade deals with everybody. Good honest deals, ones that profited everybody. Only those deals put them in the center of everything financial. Then, there were a flood of businesses, banks, trading companies, all leaving Hong Kong before the Japanese could take over. They all went to Bangkok. You have a bank account Number One?”
“Of course Sir. Bank of Gujarat.”
“Which is 30 percent owned by the Thai Farmer's Bank. So when you pay your bank charges every month, a third of them go to Thailand. The problem is, Number One, that we and the Australians are thinking about now and the next five years. We have to, we've got problems that have to be solved if we're going to be around beyond five years. They're thinking about the next decade and the next century. Oh, they've got the short-term problems too but they're able to look at those in the long-term context. Thank God they're on our side.”