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Chapter twenty-four. Famine |
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(174) Not till the middle of May 1942 did we see Laisong again. We came crawling back over the Tolpui pass, exhausted, a shadow of the party which marched off. We were worn out, worked to a standstill. |
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When my relief took over at last - she, brave woman, was a grandmother, the only person who could be found to come - and we fell into the Haflong train, we lay on the narrow benches and just slept. Back at Laisong, we went on sleeping for a week. The Burma Army was falling back then, fighting, to the Manipur border. Imphal was bombed; invasion was imminent; children were being sent away, women were leaving; and we lay like logs on our beds and made up six weeks' arrears. Had Assam been abandoned, had invasion come, had India itself fallen, still we couldn't have staggered as far as Mahur. |
