The silence returned, and with it the illusion of a world that had gone forever. It even seemed that the hot, heavy silence had hushed the explosion because, for a brief second, the sight of the tall column of water alongside Dragonfly seemed to be without noise. Then, of course, the sound of the explosion rolled across the river. Dragonfly was already far down by the bows, rolling over and going fast. As she went down, Captain Nathan heard another rolling explosion but this scene was worse. The LST had been loaded with gasoline and the explosion had set the cargo on fire. The ship was sinking in the center of a pool of blazing gasoline and the screams of her crew defeated even the heavy humid air.
Then Nathan saw the cause, a horned black sphere bobbing in the water, heading towards Cicala. There was no point in trying to turn, the gunboat couldn't make it and, anyway, the effort would create suction that would draw the floating mine in. He couldn't tear his eyes off the approaching object until one of the Australian troops on board acted. Sergeant Shane dropped flat on the deck, racked the bolt on his Lee-Enfield and fired a shot. The mine exploded, still well over fifty yards away. Shane held his rifle over his head. “Rule .303! Let's see the Teas do that with their Crapnikovs!”
“Get a Bren Gun team onto the bows. Pick those damned mines off. Tell the other LSTs to do the same.
There was a ragged staccato of shots and three more explosions. Then silence. The last of the floating mines had gone. After a few minutes, the convoy started to move forward again, now with the riflemen and Bren gunners in the bows scanning for the mines. They'd only been moving for a few minutes when another shattering explosion tore the silence of the river apart. Only this one was different, the previous two mine explosions had been columns of water beside the victim, this time the LST was surrounded by the blast, then a tall jet of water smashed through her bottom and broke her apart. She sank instantly.
“Sir, why are those logs moving towards the explosion?”
“Oh God, crocs. Riflemen, pick those logs off, they're crocs going after the survivors.” There was a blast of rifle fire and a deeper thud as one of Cicala's two pounder's opened fire. It was the right weapon for a job its designers had never considered, the crocodile exploded in a spray of blood. The gunner switched fire to another “log” near to the swimmers around the sinking LST and was rewarded with another eruption and spray.
“Number One, get us over to that LST now and pick those men up.”
Captain Nathan felt Cicala thumping forward. He wanted to shake, the LST had hit a bottom mine, probably a pressure mine, and another one could finish Cicala before they even knew it was there. The sensible thing was to stay clear, but just a couple of weeks earlier Jim Ladone in Hood had faced down the two largest battleships in the world because he had a convoy to protect. He'd set the bar high and Nathan wasn't about to let him down by taking the easy way out.
Like Hood, Cicala got away with it. The survivors were picked up, even some of the terribly burned crew from the first LST to be hit and some Dragonflies. Then, the convoy started backing up, returning to Mandalay. Floating mines, they could deal with but they stood no chance against pressure mines. Until they were cleared, the Nanyin River was closed to shipping. Looking at the wounded on the deck aft, Nathan was reminded of the last verse of Kipling's poem, the one few people repeated
“On the road to Mandalay, where the old Flotilla lay, With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!”
Twinnge, On The Mandalay - Myitkyina Road, Burma
“Mud, mud, glorious mud.
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!”
His little daughter loved the Happy Hippopotamus song. He could sing it for hours and she would listen, her eyes entranced. But, she was in Australia and he was here in Burma. Wallowing in mud. And, the Hippos were wrong, mud wasn't glorious, it was horrible. A thick orange-red gloop that got everywhere and choked everything up. It got into suspensions and drive trains and exhaust systems. The American six-by-sixes were handling it without too much trouble but there weren't enough of them. Most of the truck transport was old British equipment and it lacked the all-wheel drive and powerful engines of the American trucks. All too often, the older trucks were getting stuck and the six-by-sixes would have to turn back and tow them out. Some stretches were so bad that the only way the older trucks could get through at all was with the help of a tow from the sixes.
It was the trucks themselves that were doing it. They were combining with the rain to churn the road surface into this thick, horrible mud. The first convoys had got up to Myitkyina without too many problems but each one that followed was having a harder time. Each truck convoy made the roads worse, each day that passed the rains got heavier. The Australian troops had thought the Monsoon had started but they'd been wrong. There had been a Tea unit in Rangoon, a Long Range Recon Patrol or Lurp, the Teas had called it, and they and the Australian unit had had a friendly exchange of prejudices. One that had taken up 150 yards of the High Street and wrecked three bars.
Afterwards the units had become firm friends and the Teas had told the Australians what the real Monsoon was like and when it would come. In about ten days time they'd said, two days ago. They spoken of rain so heavy that nobody could see more than a few feet, of torrents of water that appeared from nowhere and swept away anything in their path. And they'd spoken of the dreaded cloudbursts that would drop inches of rain in a few minutes and anybody caught in the open would drown while standing on their feet.
They'd given a lot of other advice as well, which could all be summarized as “in the Monsoon - don't” . Yet, it was obvious that they loved the monsoon as well as feared it because it was the rains that made their crops grow and brought richness to their farmland. Only, the Australians didn't love the rains they were seeing and now they feared the monsoon. Nobody had told them that the dirt roads turned into mud wallows before the monsoon started. Behind them, far behind them, engineers were black-topping the road, turning it into an all-weather highway but that wouldn't help the trucks now. Captain Golconda knew his truck column was way behind schedule and saw no way of making the time up.
Then, a miracle. A stretch of the road ahead had been smoothed out. It was still muddy, but it wasn't churned up. Some engineers had improved it a bit, probably put stone gravel down to stabilize the soil. Perhaps they could make up some time after all. One of the lead six-by-sixes stopped at the edge of the improved section, dropped the Bedford it was towing, and set off down the road. It had made about a hundred feet when there was an explosion that wrapped it in flame and smoke. As the dust cleared, the six-by-six was on its side and burning, wrecked beyond hope of redemption. Anti-tank mine, Golconda thought, he should have known.
“Down, everybody down! Ambush!”
He didn't know it was, but better safe than sorry and, anyway, the doubt only lasted for a second or two. There was a staccato crackle of rifle fire, the rapid, light snap of the Chipanese Arisaka assault rifles and the slower, painfully slower, thuds of the Australian's Lee-Enfields. The Brens cut in as well, they evened things up. Nobody argued when the Bren was described as the best light machine gun in the world. The firefight was desultory, as if the Chipanese guerrillas weren't really trying too hard, just going through the motions. In fact, the Australian troops seemed to be gaining the upper hand if anything. Then there was a new sound, explosions. Golconda recognized them, the Chipanese 50 millimeter mortar. That was the reason, the Chipanese were just keeping the trucks held on the road so the mortars could get at them. He ducked into his Dingo scout car and got on the radio.