FOUR- The Battle of Rowa
‘Sahibs, very quiet, please,’ Rissaldar Batuk pushed his finger to his lips and signalled gently with his palm that the reconnaissance party should lie down on their bellies. ‘Be snake now,’ and with no further instructions the grizzled Indian NCO wormed forward through the grass in the gloom of dawn.
‘He doesn’t need to worry about the noise; the b****y insects would wake the dead, so they would.’ But even so, Morgan whispered this to McGowan, now promoted from adjutant and commanding a double company of the 10th BNI, as they crept on their elbows and knees through the cacophony of the cicadas’ dawn chorus.
‘Probably,’ McGowan murmured back, ‘but we’re very close now.’
Indeed they were. After five more yards or so of too close acquaintance with damp grass, ant
