State of Siege

She lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. I watched her face for a while, and then my eyes closed. After a moment or two, I heard her say my name.

“Yes, Rosalie?”

“Perhaps we should wear our clean clothes tomorrow.”

7

The attack on the city began just before dawn.

I thought at first that it was the voices of the men in the living room that had awakened me. Some sort of argument was going on, and another man was speaking on the telephone. He kept repeating the word “impossible.” The argument seemed to be about someone named Dahman who had moved his troops without authority.

Then, I became aware of an irregular thudding that sounded as if, somewhere in the building below us, the wind was slamming a heavy padded door. Only there was no wind.

I opened my eyes and saw Rosalie standing by the window. There were lights flaring in the sky behind her. I sat up and gasped as I realised how sore my body was. She looked round. I got off the bed carefully and went over to the window.

Rosalie was looking over towards the bay. As I joined her, two cones of orange flame stabbed the darkness there. The sound took about three seconds to reach me, and, as it thudded against the windows, there were two more flashes. This time I caught a momentary glimpse of the shape behind them, and knew why the forts commanding the sea approaches to Selampang had not surrendered to Sanusi. The Sundanese navy consisted of only five ships: one lighthouse tender, three small patrol vessels and the flagship, an elderly destroyer which the Government had bought from the British and re-named Semangat. I had seen her in Port Kail. She had four 4.7-inch guns.

She was firing into an area to the left of the racecourse, and you could see the flashes of the bursts reflected on the smoke drifting away from earlier ones. Rosalie said that the barracks were in that direction.

“What should we do?” she added.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

She came back with me and we lay together on my bed, listening. Two men from the next room had gone out on the terrace now and were discussing the situation in low tones.

“What will happen?” Rosalie asked.

“I don’t know enough about it. I suppose these people have established some sort of defence line on the outskirts. If so, the other side, with their tanks and guns, will find the weakest spot and blast their way through. This naval bombardment is just the preliminary softening up. I suppose it’s meant to impress the civil population, too. But it’s the tanks and guns that will decide the thing. Unless Sanusi has tanks and guns to fight back with, there’s nothing he can do to stop them. I’m certain he has no tanks.”

“Has he guns?”

“There are a couple of anti-tank guns down in the square. I suppose he has a few more dotted about the city. I don’t know how old the Government tanks are, but unless they are very old indeed, the shot that those guns fire won’t even knock a dent in them. They might stop a light armoured car, but nothing heavier.”

“What will happen, then?”

“That depends on how hard these people fight.”

“But you said they cannot win.”

“I don’t think they can. It’s only a question of how long it takes to defeat them.”

She was silent for a moment, then she said: “To kill them all, you mean?”

“Most of them, anyway.”

“They might surrender.”

“They might, yes. Let’s hope they will.”

“Yes, let us hope.” She must have guessed from my tone that I did not think that there was much likelihood of it. The Government were certainly not going to let Sanusi get out of the trap once he was in it, and Sanusi would not be such a fool as to believe in any promises they might make. Besides, when street-fighting began and men began to kill at close range, it became difficult to surrender.

I was remembering a Fusilier sergeant I had met in Burma. It was some weeks before we went into Mandalay. My company had been clearing a forward airstrip and were waiting to be flown out to another job. This sergeant had come out from the Eighth Army in Italy, and because we had both been in the desert with Auchinleck, we had started talking. He had had experience of street-fighting against the Germans, and had later become an instructor on the subject. He had developed a passion for it that even he, I think, suspected to be a trifle unhealthy. All the same, he could not wait to get into Meiktila and try his skill on the Japanese.