To the end of his days he was troubled with dreams of the terrible hand-to-hand combat in the jungle. John had been part of the force which came to relieve Kohima and drove the Japanese Imperial Army back into Burma, one of the most catastrophic retreats in the history of war, with thousands of men starving to death in the mountains. Colonel John Shipster knew he was dying, and his son Michael asked me to record some of his war memories. I came to the story of Kohima through the father of a close friend of mine. Shells landed in the midst of the wounded, food and water began to run out. They fought off wave after wave of Japanese attacks while the defensive perimeter shrank to a mere 500 yards. Donald Easten was a company commander at the siege of Kohima, when a small British force was surrounded by a vastly stronger Japanese army and held out against a two-week onslaught. I came to know them both because I am writing a book about one of the most terrible encounters of the war in the Far East. In this season of remembrance Donald is thinking of his brother, his brother-in-law, and his first cousin, all of whom were killed in the early years of the war. "I just burst into tears," she says, "knowing that a command of mine had ended somebody's life." They are gentle people for whom war is a thing best remembered in quiet voices. One night her crew brought down a German bomber. He was a soldier in Bill Slim's 14th Army – the "Forgotten Army" which turned the tide of battle in the east – and Billy commanded an anti-aircraft crew in London. Donald and his wife Billy will wander up the lane to the church to commemorate Remembrance Sunday. To reach his home, you drive down a narrow lane past the village church. To borrow – and slightly alter – a famous line: I had not thought debt had undone so many. I catch my face in the mirror and realise that I look exactly the same. The motorists on either side of me look grey-faced, mortgaged, forlorn.
The journey itself is a meaningless blur. This highway of road cones and Little Chefs is a fit landscape for the tedium of modern driving. Twice this week I have driven along this rue sans joi in the driving rain. Or perhaps more accurately, the response of the sane mind to the desolate England of the M25. Perhaps it is nothing more than the reasonable response of the sane mind to the reality of a northern European winter. I don't think I suffer from so-called "Seasonally Adjusted Depression". Fortunately the nature of my work ensures reasonably regular, if brief, periods of escape to the south. These and the promise of work in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are reversed and Christmas carols are sung on the beach.
It is a nagging melancholy for which good company and laughter are the best antidotes. The gloom comes in at the end of October and sits like a coastal fog until spring.
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