  As they crept from the shelter the girl’s eyes sought out her cart and its precious load. “Never touched it!” was her joyous exclamation. “Stick around and they’ll get your radar,” was the sergeant’s encouraging comment. “Some dirty spy has put a finger on this spot. That’s the third time they’ve been over here.” “Spies?” Her eyes opened wide. “Sure,” he grinned, “India is full of spies, particularly this city. These Indian people are always hating someone. Besides, there are a lot of Burmese people here, driven from their homes when Burma was lost. One reason the Japs won that fight was because the Burmese people let the British down.” “Did they?” She was interested. “Did they? Say! They erected road blockades everywhere. Wrecked trucks, blew up the bridges,—everything. But I’ll bet they wish we were back now. What the dirty Japs aren’t doing to them these days! “And we’re going back!” The young sergeant’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Sooner than you think. It’s in the cards.” “Oh! Take me along!” The girl’s excited whisper told of her eagerness. “I’ll sure fix it that way if I can. You’re a real soldier, and you’re on the know. “My name is Ted Mac Bride,” he went on. “Mac, for short. I’d be mighty glad to have you in our outfit, Gale.” “Gale Janes,” she finished for him. “Thanks a lot, Mac. If you’ve got any drag with the colonel, pull a string or two and we’ll do the war together.” “That’s what I will.” For a space of seconds his mind was on the girl, then his eyes roved over their surroundings. “Not much left but the hole where that bomber blew up.” He nodded toward the distant palm trees. “Want to go see?” “No thanks. I’ll leave that to you.” She gave a little involuntary shudder. “It’s almost time for tea over at my club.” She grinned broadly. “I’ll find my coolie and trundle my cart away. Fine practice we had. Less said about it the better.” “Good hunting and mum’s the word.” He put a finger to his lips. Then he was away. An hour later no one would ever have guessed that Gale Janes had ever escaped from the boredom of being a perfect lady. Her “club” was no mere work of the imagination. It was real enough, and quite gorgeous. In the days of peace and plenty it had been called “The Saddle and Gun Club.” Swanky Englishmen in spats and riding breeches had lived there. There they had talked of riding and racing and of elephant and tiger hunts. Now the saddles and guns were serving a sterner purpose. The men had gone to war. And their club had been turned over to the ladies of the U. S. Armed forces, WACS and nurses, with a visiting WAVE now and then. The lounge of the club was an immense place, all screened in and open to every breeze. Here an endless array of easy chairs invited one to rest. At one end of what had once been a bar, sodas, orange juice, tea and cakes were now being served. After a shower Gale Janes had dressed in the blouse and khaki slacks. At the bar she had selected cakes and a tall one of iced tea, then had accepted the inviting comfort of a huge rattan chair. As she sipped her tea she listened to the conversation around her. All of a sudden she became interested in the things a little brown girl—a native nurse—was saying. “It was exciting! Oh, so exciting!” The brown girl’s voice rose. “It was funny too, like a circus. There we were, a hundred and fifty of us,—maybe not so many and maybe more—all retreating, and with a colonel as our guide. “You should have seen him!” She laughed a merry laugh. “There he was—a great man! Oh yes! A very great man! Dressed in a shirt and shorts—his brown legs all covered with hair and over his shoulder a tommy gun. Him—the biggest fighting man in Burma. “Oh, truly!” the native girl went on. “But he was wonderful! Not just funny. He is an old man, but when we waded for hours in the stream, younger men couldn’t take it. They just tumbled on the shore and groaned. But the old colonel,—he marched right straight ahead. “And we girls—” she laughed again. “There were six of us, all native nurses trained by a great missionary doctor. We girls really had fun. We splashed in the water, held our skirts high and sang silly songs. “Because you know,”—she was very serious—“we were retreating from Burma. All our Chinese armies had been defeated. We had to get to India, the colonel and all of us, so we could get more men. Oh, many, many more men! And go back to save my native land, Burma, and then to save China.” “But Than Shwe,”—a blonde WAC addressed the native girl, “Why were there so very few of you? Why not a whole army?” At this Gale Janes turned her chair around to join the circle. “Oh, yes! But no! It was impossible.” Than Shwe spread her small hands wide. “It was a great distance. There are rivers and mountains. Oh! It was very bad! And we must go fast. Armies, they move very slow. Always there were the Japs. If we meet the Japs by the river or on the mountain, then we are through, finished, all gone, and the colonel he would be gone too, and that would be very bad, for he is a very great man.” “Oh! But yes, it was funny!” The native girl was bubbling over again. “It was—how do you say it? A scream. Yes, it was a scream. We had not much to eat. We were cold and we were sometimes very wet, but you should have seen. “For days we waded down that river. Then it got very big. So we made rafts. We girls wove bamboo mats and put them on poles to keep off the sun and the rain. And Bill, he rode on our raft.” “Bill? Who was Bill?” someone asked. “Bill? Oh, yes! He was a reporter, you know, he writes all about the war.” “But why should he ride on your raft?” the girl with a very long face asked. “Oh, yes! Some man must go on our raft,” the native girl went on. “So Bill, he goes. This raft goes this way, then that way, then it hits rocks. Bill, he must push with a pole. This way—that way—make the raft go straight. “Sometimes Bill, he gets very wet. Then he is cold. So he puts on Etta’s longyi. Etta, she is large. I am very small. Oh, yes! It was a scream. Three days we are on that raft. But I talk too much. I tell you too many things. I not talk so much. Three days we ride on that raft. Then we are there.” “Where?” Gale asked. “I don’t know.” “You don’t know!” one of the girls exclaimed. “Didn’t you have a map?” “I? No. I do not need a map. The colonel, he has the map. I go where colonel go. Always! Always!” Than Shwe, the native girl, threw back her small head and laughed. “And now we are going back. Sooner than you think, we go. And next time we don’t come back walking, wading, barefoot. Oh, no! We come back in—how you say it—in great triumph. And that day, the colonel, he is the very great man.” “But Than Shwe,” another girl broke in, “You left us on a raft riding with that young reporter you call Bill. You just have to finish!” “Bill? Oh yes, Bill.” The native girl brought herself back. “You know,” she sat up abruptly, “We heard airplanes and we said, ‘It is the Japs. They will bomb us. We shall die.’” “Was it the Japs?” a girl whispered. “No. Those were British planes. They dropped packages of food close to the river. Bill, he went off the raft like a beaver and brought us back oh! so much food! Ah, then we had a feast and we all were happy. “Bye and bye we came to a mountain, a very high mountain. And by the mountain was a very little town. “The colonel say: ‘We will go over the mountain.’ “The people of that town say, ‘There is no trail over that mountain. It is very high and very cold. You will die. Besides, on that mountain live head-hunters. They will eat you.’ “But the colonel tightened up his belt. He put his tommy-gun on his shoulder and he said: ‘We will go over the mountains!’ And by God! We did!” “Than Shwe,” a WAC with a long face protested, “You shouldn’t swear. It isn’t nice.” “Well,” the native girl’s eyes gleamed. “That’s what the colonel did say. What he say, I say, and where he goes, I go.” For a time there was silence. Then with a sigh, the native girl concluded: “The mountain, he was not so bad. At the top we got very cold, but we slept together all in a heap and it was not so bad. “And then we came to a hut,” she sighed. “In that hut there was a white man. He said, ‘I came for you. I have five hundred coolies. We came five days. Now you go back five days. The coolies, they carry you, carry everything. Then you are there.’ And see!” The girl spread her hands wide. “Here we are.” “Than Shwe, you forgot to swear that time.” Gale’s eyes shone with a teasing light. “I do that for you alone, in private.” The girl gave her an appreciative smile. “Yes,” she added, “We come. But we go back very soon.” Than Shwe’s story was told. She lapsed into silence. For some of the girls, no doubt, it had been but the telling of an amusing adventure. For Gale it was far more than that, for though a girl, she was at heart a soldier. Her father, her grandfather and all others as far back as could be traced had been soldiers. She was a WAC, but WACS were soldiers too, in for the duration. She had heard sketchy accounts of the colonel’s retreat from Burma. Now, for the first time, in brief but vivid form, she had heard from the lips of one who had joined in that forlorn but glorious march, the entire story. Nothing in all her life had stirred her so deeply, not even her success of the afternoon. “And by God! We’re going back,” she seemed to hear the native girl repeat. “If she goes, I go!” she told herself with deep-seated determination. |
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