Free ELEPHANT MOON by John Sweeney Page A

No, He could not.
    For her, at that precise moment, her faith in God and her belief, long drummed into her, that the British had an especial right to rule over other people, died.
    Mandalay, when Hants & Dorset lumbered through the city gates, was a paradise, the old citadel of the Burmese kings still full of colour and life and market-sellers, unscarred by war. They were billeted in the eerie grandeur – stained-glass windows, mysterious compass and arch designs – of a Masonic Hall high up on a conical hill, overlooking the roofs of the city.
    One evening, just before lights out, Grace discovered the two boys in the cellar of the hall, trying on strange hats and aprons. Half-laughing, she scolded the boys for their cheekand told them not to play with the Masonic stuff again. They left good-humouredly, but Grace suspected that they were hiding something from her.
    They grew too comfortable in the Masonic hall.
    On Good Friday, 1942, the school held a simple service, Grace going through the motions of prayer, her mind elsewhere. When the service was over, she caught up with Miss Furroughs in the garden overlooking the gilded palace of Mandalay.
    ‘We need to leave here, Miss.’
    ‘Oh, no, not that again. Can’t you…’
    ‘We need to leave Mandalay. The Japanese are on the march, again.’
    ‘No. It’s not necessary. We’ll stay…we’ll leave when there is an order. But…so…there’s nothing we can…’ Half-finished thoughts, barked out, the headmistress aggressively indecisive.
    ‘The monsoon will be here in May, then getting to India will be all but impossible. We’ve got to leave now,’ Grace insisted.
    ‘How do you suggest?’
    ‘The bus as far as it can go. Then walk…’
    ‘The bus is old, it won’t get very far. And the children cannot walk.’
    ‘I know the bus is old. But it hasn’t let us down so far.’
    ‘We could fly. People are heading for Myitkyina.’ She was referring to the last aerodrome in British hands in Burma, to the east, close to the border with China.
    ‘Miss, have you forgotten what happened at Rangoon docks? No room for half-castes. Will sixty-two half-caste orphans really get seats on an aeroplane? I don’t think so. It’s better that we drive as far as we can, west, and walk out of Burma.’
     ‘Miss Collins, these matters are not, are not…–’ The maddening half-sentence, ending in thin air.
    The Japanese suffered no such indecision.
    At noon on Good Friday, without warning, without benefit of air-raid sirens, the bombs started to fall on Mandalay, a city built of wood, of shacks and glorious gilt pagodas and royal palaces. The hall stood half-way up a hill, several hundred yards out of the city, giving them a hawk’s eye view of the destruction.
    They saw too much.
    A steady breeze from the west, from the Irrawaddy, cascaded sparks, then fires, igniting market stalls, knots of trees, houses, temples, churches, schools. First whole streets – and every living thing in them – and acre after acre of Mandalay were roaring an angry, raging orange. People washing their pots stood up, heard a whoosh of moving heat, and their lungs caught fire. Shopkeepers dithered, not knowing down which corridor of fire they had to run, and, in seconds, turned to ash and fat. Eucalyptus trees exploded before the rip-tide of heat, spitting out leaping tongues of flaming sap. Fur on fire, monkeys leapt from tree to tree, spreading the heat above the roof tops. At street level buffalo bellowed, stampeding, crushing a confusion of people running the wrong way, towards the flames. Survivors manhandled victims with fried skin to the hospital, only to discover that it was an inferno. A stick of bombs fell on the railway station goods yard, igniting the wagons of a fuel train, and the fire storm consumed the city.
    The children watched the city burn, listless, mute. There was nothing they could do. Grace fussed over the two boys, cuddling Joseph, who at the first sound of the bombs