‘Get in,’ yelling in my ear. I landed on top of someone. My forehead cracking against the back of his head. ‘Watch what you’re fucking doing,’ was screamed into my face.

Everyone was shouting, ‘Get your fucking head down, you stupid erk.’

The plane passed low again. Had us all wriggling, ducking, swearing. Bullets pelted into the dust which flew high into the air, then fell, covering us like a suffocating blanket.

I watched the planes. Two Japanese Zeros. Swooping and strafing the ground. Their gunfire sometimes pinged and popped like harmless fireworks. But so close. I could see the pilot. Thought I saw him laugh.

Then someone landed on me. A mountain of a man crashed into my back. Winded me. I gulped. Couldn’t yell. There was an explosion, an almighty bang that left everything silent for one brief second. Until stones and earth fell in on us like hail. Everyone was choking and coughing, their arms over their heads and mouths. The dust surrounded us like a London pea-souper. I couldn’t breathe, as sure as if someone had clapped their hand over my face. I scratched at the air trying to inhale. Involuntarily grabbed at the man beside me, who shrugged me off. Gulped mouthfuls of thick unbreathable yellow filth. My mouth was dry, my tongue fat.

The noise of the planes soon faded to a buzz, like distant bees. And I breathed. I breathed a smelly lungful of the sweetest breath I have ever tasted. Suddenly it was over. Japs were gone. The relief had the whole trench sighing as one man.

‘Get off my fucking arm – you’ve broken it, you clumsy bastard.’

Someone was talking to me. I moved off him. Said I was sorry but he’d stopped listening. We began clambering out of the trench, all of us coughing and spitting like tubercular cases. I lost my balance and slid back down. It was then I noticed an unmistakable bulge in the front of my shorts. I had an erection.

‘Come on,’ I heard above me. I looked up to see a hand being held out. Tried to wave it away but the chap insisted. I grabbed his hand hard as a handshake and scrabbled up.

‘Just off the boat?’ he said. Tried to hide my shame as best I could – twisting round, arm in front. Chap looked about eighty. We all did, with our pantomime ageing of dust. I wondered if he’d noticed, seen the bulge. I shook myself loose, dusting down the baggy ill-fitting shorts. Decent again. I started to tell him how long I’d been in India but he’d already walked away.

I breathed out. That was the closest I’d come to real war. I’d been bombed in London. Houses, shops, factories, streets – everyone shaken silly by the destruction. Queenie and I hid like rats. Bailed out the water in the garden shelter. Sat with our candle listening as the planes droned above us. A matter of being unlucky if we got in their way. I was useless to her. But now, with bullets breaking the ground inches from me, I was being aimed at because I was dangerous.

‘Move! Get those kites off the strip. Move! Move! Get it cleared.’

Men started running again. I ran with them. There were two Hurricanes on the runway. Shot to pieces. It was a sorry sight, like birds fallen from the sky after a shoot. Undercarts twisted. A wing lying dismembered. Nose buried in the dirt. Buckled metal. Flapping cloth. Limp, lifeless.

I couldn’t see the rest of my unit, the chaps I’d travelled with. My kit was still on the truck, which was abandoned – tipped at an angle, one wheel in a shallow monsoon ditch.

‘Come on, move it! Get those kites moved!’

I found a place in the gang, thrusting my hands out to join the many others on the stricken kite. The metal burnt. I yelped and pulled my hands off for a second. I quickly put them back before anyone noticed. There were dozens of men round the plane. Grimacing with effort. Trying to keep their foothold on the dry earth. Slowly the kite moved – graceless as a corpse. Soon the sweat we created dripped on to the dusty ground, turning it into a thin layer of mud. I lost my footing. Slipped. Found myself with my face in the warm man-made muck. I got up, my damp hands fizzing as they hit the hot metal again.

First one kite then the next. Pushed off the strip into a graveyard of planes. A despair of kites. No wings. No wheels. No windows. No hope of flying. Pierced with bullet-holes like colanders. The golden powder of rust shaken all over them. Animals had made a home in some.

Seconds after the strip was cleared a plane landed. Vibration like an earthquake. Bouncing along the ground. Dust swirling a sandstorm. Its thunderous engines the only sound. A Vulti Vengeance.

‘That’s lost,’ a chap next to me said.

The pilot got out, jumped down sweeping his hair back. He was no more than a boy, hands on his hips as he looked around. Word was soon out. Jap plane had crash-landed half a mile away. A cheer went up from the tight circle of men round the pilot.

‘Gurkhas will get him,’ same chap said. ‘Just arrived?’ I realised he was talking to me. He was looking down at something on my bottom half. I crossed my arms over the front of my shorts (just in case). Then saw it was my knees that interested him. They were bleeding. Dribbles of blood running down my leg. Couldn’t feel a thing.

‘Just a scratch, nothing serious,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘No. White knees – dead giveaway.’ Looked anything but white to me. ‘You’ve just arrived.’

‘Been in Worli,’ I told him.

‘As I said.’ He stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek. ‘You’ve just arrived. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’ I must have looked puzzled. ‘The slit-eyed bastards,’ he went on. ‘You’ll get used to their funny little ways. They come every day. Bit early today – must be a public holiday or something. Every day though. Could set your watch by the nip in the air.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Maxi. George Maximillian but everyone calls me Maxi.’ His hand was calloused, felt like knotted wood.

‘Bernard Bligh.’

‘What do they call you, then?’

I didn’t answer. Last name I could remember being called was miserable beggar.

They brought him through the camp, down the strip, through the dozens of natives dressed in straw hats and rags. Men and women who’d appeared from nowhere with makeshift shovels, who were smoothing over the freshly made craters. They stopped, along with the men and officers of the RAF, and watched. A Japanese pilot. Hands on his head. Two army men with rifles – fixed bayonet – pointed at his back. Nudging him along. Shouting. Not in English. Foreign themselves. Black. Indian. ‘Gurkhas,’ Maxi said. ‘May not look like one of us but they’re good sorts. You don’t mess with the Gurkhas.’

He was young, this Japanese pilot. This ‘unintelligent slum dweller with nothing worth fighting for except the fanatical belief that his emperor is God’. Looked twelve or thirteen. One side of his face was smashed and bloody. No shoes. No trousers. Bare skinny legs. One foot dragging as he walked, turned at an impossible angle, scraping the ground. He wore just a vest inscribed with their picture writing. Chaps spat at the ground as he passed. Some jeered. Some cheered. Some turned their back. He walked on. Looked at no one.

‘Where are they taking him?’ I asked Maxi.

He shrugged then sighed. ‘Listen, Pop, you know what it says on his vest? The writing on his vest. They all wear them. It says: “I will fight for my country. I will die for my country. I will not return.” We can’t take prisoners, nowhere to put them.’

‘Well, what will they do with him, then?’

Maxi put two fingers up to his temple and said a quiet ‘Bang.’ I felt like a fool. A white-kneed fool who was expecting war to be polite. ‘Quite frankly we’re doing him a favour,’ Maxi told me. ‘Least he’ll have the dignity of an enemy bullet.’

Thirty-six

Bernard

I’d not wanted a war. None of us had. And I never wanted to be out in India. But (I admit) it put a rod in the back and spring in the step of this middle-aged bank clerk who’d thought his life was set. Even started whistling (nothing fancy) now I was part of a team: 298 Repair and Salvage Unit. RAF trained and tested – mechanic (engines) – and proud to be an erk.