Max Markham is the author of Indigo Bird – An Erotic Novel. For more information on the author and his work, please visit Max Markham’s Section on this website.
Brigadier Mike Calvert
Mike Calvert, a brilliant special forces soldier, was only thirty-nine when his army career was shattered in 1952 by allegations of homosexual misconduct. Although he lived until 1998, neither he nor his reputation ever recovered. He died in poverty, an alcoholic. His story is as tragic as that of Alan Turing, who died, probably by suicide, two years after Calvert’s disgrace, in 1954. There may be a link between the two events.
James Michael Calvert, DSO (Distinguished Service Order) and Bar (1913 – 1998) was a British soldier involved in special operations in Burma during the Second World War. He took part in Chindit operations and was instrumental in popularizing the unorthodox ideas of Orde Wingate. Calvert often led risky attacks from the front, which earned him the nickname “Mad Mike.” “Mad” is the British army slang term for “very brave”. He had “a good war” between 1939 and 1945 and seemed destined for high military command. He was however also homosexual, although the extent to which he was practicing is uncertain; and he had made enemies, some of them in very senior positions. They conspired to stage an alleged indecent incident: Calvert was disgraced and dismissed from the army. He tried to re-start his career as an engineer both in the UK and Australia. He also held an academic position for a time. But he never succeeded. He ended as an impoverished alcoholic, dying in 1998. Apart from the injustice of this, the army was deprived of one of its most brilliant, albeit unconventional, officers.
Calvert was born in India, where his father was a civil servant. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and was commissioned into the Royal Engineers. He was gifted both academically and as a sportsman. He graduated from Cambridge in 1936, having completed the Mechanical Engineering Tripos. He was for a time the British army’s middleweight boxing champion; he also played water polo and swam for the army. After graduating, he was posted to Hong Kong. There he learned Cantonese. He witnessed the Japanese attack on Shanghai and the rape of Nanking. His was one of the first voices to be raised in the army warning of the serious threat that Japan posed to the British Empire. Subsequent events would vindicate this view.
Calvert’s war service included the Norwegian campaign; he then trained commando detachments in Hong Kong and Australia. He was later appointed to command the Bush Warfare School in Burma, which trained officers and NCOs to lead guerrilla bands against the Japanese. Japan invaded Burma in 1942; the Bush Warfare School had to close. Calvert and others from his school raided Henzada after the fall of Rangoon as a deception operation. He and his small unit of a few hundred men were among the very last to leave Burma. It was at this period of his career that he met, and started to work with, Orde Wingate, the unconventional, charismatic Chindit leader and cousin of T E Lawrence.
In India Calvert was reunited with Wingate and the two became firm friends. Calvert led one of the company-sized columns in Operation Longcloth, Wingate’s first Chindit operation in 1943. This was a long-range penetration operation behind enemy lines, which put great demands on the endurance of all who took part. Calvert was awarded the DSO for his achievements on this operation.
This is not the place to consider in detail Calvert’s distinguished role, with Wingate, in the reconquest of Burma and Japan’s eventual defeat. There are plenty of books on this subject, including those written by Calvert himself: Prisoners of Hope, Fighting Mad: One Man’s Guerrilla War, and Chindits: Long Range Penetration. It is however the right place to look at his character. When Calvert was awarded a bar to his DSO for the second Chindit expedition, he was described as: “clearly the most successful and aggressive Chindit commander,” and “a font of positive leadership throughout the campaign”. A Lieutenant in the South Staffordshire Regiment wrote a compelling description of Calvert:
“His hair flops over his forehead, and he has a disconcerting habit of staring at you when you speak to him and yet not appearing to hear a word. His lectures were always painfully slow and hesitant and during training he gave the impression of taking a long time to make up his mind; in action things were very different. He knows all the officers in the brigade and many of the senior NCOs [by name], and his manner and attitude are always the same if he is talking to a CO, a subaltern or a private…” Calvert’s dedication to the troops under his command was one of his most visible attributes. He was “one of the most successful of the Chindit leaders [and] showed his greatness as a commander by reminding his men that, however bad things were for them, things were probably much worse for the enemy.”
There was a common perception among conventional army officers at that time that loyalty was something that soldiers owed to the leadership. Some officers still seem to think like that. Much more recent military memoirs like Nicky Curtis’ Faith and Duty make this clear. But the reality is that loyalty always starts at the top and is reflected down to the bottom. This should be obvious but evidently it is not obvious enough. However Calvert understood this.
So far, so good; but it was also during the Burma campaign that the seeds of the destruction of Calvert’s career were sown. Like Orde Wingate, his unconventional ideas caused him to clash with senior officers: not just British ones, but Americans as well, like General Stilwell. Often he succeeded in winning them over, but not always. It was also in Burma that he met the man who seems to have been the great love of his life, although Calvert might not have used exactly that expression: Captain, later Major, Ian MacPherson of the Gurkha Rifles; clearly an exceptionally brave young man. Better still, Ian MacPherson reciprocated his feelings.
By 1943 Calvert was commanding the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade. As part of the reconquest campaign, the brigade captured and held a forward position near Mawlu. It became known as White City. This fortified position blocked Japanese road and rail communications to their northern front for over two months. White City was quickly identified by the Japanese as a threat. The Japanese mounted a serious attack on the night of 21 March that resulted in “confused close-quarter fighting” that lasted all night. Two Japanese light machine guns were established in the block; a dawn attack led by flamethrower-equipped infantry displaced the Japanese, driving them outside the perimeter. Calvert was instrumental in orchestrating the counterattacks and was frequently under fire. Calvert had two relatively quiet weeks to fortify White City. Under his direction a thick hedge of barbed wire was put in place and surrounded with mines and booby traps. Firing positions were dug in and camouflaged; reinforced with logs and earth, these positions were invisible and all-but impenetrable. Calvert had a not insubstantial arsenal at his disposal.
On 6 April the White City again came under attack. Calvert spent the attack in a dugout, coordinating his troops’ response via telephone. He reported that stiff resistance led by his friend Ian MacPherson had prevented the Japanese from breaching the block.
From 6 April through 11 April, Calvert wrote, “the sequence of attack was the same practically every night and only varied in intensity.” Confident in the block’s ability to withstand any attack, Calvert’s only concern was his rapidly dwindling supply of ammunition. Machine gun ammunition was being used at a frantic pace. Calvert insisted that deliveries of ammunition should take priority over rations. Calvert led several counter-attacks against encircling Japanese forces in person. On 13 April he commanded a much larger attack involving most of the brigade. Despite the intervention of American Mustangs, the attack was a failure; Calvert was forced to order a retreat. He learned that Ian MacPherson, commanding the headquarters company of 77 Brigade, had been killed; his body had been left behind in the Japanese positions. Calvert was appalled. He said he “could not leave anyone like that without knowing for certain”, before starting back to look for MacPherson. Only when his Brigade Major “heaved out his revolver, stuck it in my stomach and said, ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t go back: I was with him when he was killed!’” did Calvert resume the retreat. His distress at Ian Macpherson’s death was obvious to everyone. Later he said that he would never again allow anyone to get as close to him as MacPherson had: the trauma when he was killed was the worst thing that Calvert had so far ever experienced. Nevertheless, Calvert did not – could not – stop being what he was. An officer who met him in Malaya in 1950-51 told me that it was pretty general knowledge that Calvert was actively homosexual and preferred fellow-soldiers. It is not known whether anyone ever replaced Ian MacPherson in his regard. Nor was it clear to my informant that anyone, at least in Malaya, cared very much about Calvert’s orientation. They had more important things to worry about; there was a full-scale jungle war on, now referred to as “The Malayan Emergency”. [Read "Mad Mike" Calvert, A Character Assassination - Part II...]
The Indigo Bird
An Erotic Novel by Max Markham
James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.
James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome. He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder. James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.
The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]
The Indigo Bird is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle US, Amazon Kindle UK, and any other good bookstore.
