#10
From The Memories of the General
Yu'an Province, China, 29th November 1940
Yu'an County is a mixture of plains and mountains. The River Han winds through it, carving a path through hillsides so that, in places, the mountains border the river so closely there's no bank to be spoken of. It is astonishingly beautiful, and fundamentally wild. The cities and towns on the plains cannot hope to tame such vast nature.
On a day in November, three years ago, this breathtaking place had become a front line in the war. The terrain was unfamiliar to the Japanese, and there were guerilla enemies hiding in the scrub and constant attacks from the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and, worse, there was said to be another considerably large arm of the Chinese Army fast approaching. The Japanese were very vulnerable.
The plan – a dramatic three-day assault on the area to secure the position - had already failed spectacularly.
Lieutenant General Sonobe was forced to call a retreat, but there was no cover, the Japanese lines spread out and broken, and huge losses inflicted. The retreat turned into a scramble, every man fleeing for his life.
In was in that chaos that the then Lieutenant Sendoh, accompanied by his Warrant Officer Myagi and the fifteen surviving men of his platoon, were retreating. They had already been separated from the main company by fierce shelling and found themselves on a bomb-cratered dirt road winding back down the mountain. Their radio had been damaged, they were out of contact, and the situation was fast becoming critical.
For the moment, they paused in the road, catching their breath.
"A road!" Private Inagi exclaimed in exhausted relief, "we should follow it down the mountain. We're bound to meet up with the company at the bottom."
"Keep your opinions to yourself, Private!" Myagi snapped at him, wiping sweat out of his eyes. "Lieutenant, your orders?"
Sendoh looked up from where he was wrapping a strip of bandage tightly around his knee. He'd been lightly grazed by shrapnel, and although the wound wasn't troubling, he didn't want to leave it open to infection.
Before he could reply, a hail of machine gun fire suddenly pocked the road nearby in quick and ferocious thunder. Sendoh was immediately on his feet.
"Get off the road!" he shouted, "into the jungle! Move!"
The troops, weighed down by their heavy packs, pushed and shoved one another as they scrambled off the roadway and into the thick trees, struggling to make headway against the unyielding bushes and entangling vines even as bullets peppered the broad jungle leaves behind them.
The thick foliage was almost impossible to pass. Sendoh shouted them on until they were out of immediate sight of the road, then they hid themselves in the undergrowth. They lay bellies down, gasping for breath, listening to the sounds of battle and shelling.
"What are they shooting at?" Private Yamoto muttered under his breath. Sendoh wondered the same thing.
Sendoh took quick stock of the troops as they waited. They'd already lost six men. Fifteen was all that was left of his platoon. They were all stressed and exhausted. It had been a long three days without sleep; a demoralising battle culminating in an ugly retreat and heavy casualties. Some of the men could no longer keep their heads up, resting their cheeks tiredly against the fallen leaves and churned soil. Sendoh could feel the exhaustion in his own limbs, dragging him down like lead.
The noise of shelling ceased, and from the road came instead the distinct thunder of passing troops.
The Chinese, Sendoh guessed. There was no chance of simply following the road now. The whine of a passing artillery reached them.
Launch an attack from the jungle? Now? He considered his options carefully. What good would it do? Without the radio Sendoh had no way of knowing what orders were being issued by the Captains and the Lieutenant General. It was possible the Japanese had organised an attack, or ambush, further down the road, and any attack on Sendoh's part now could jeopardise it. This was no time for heroics.
"We'll stay where we are," he told Myagi beside him, "lie low, and move out at nightfall."
As evening fell, he sent a scout to check out the situation on the road.
"I saw bodies," the soldier said as he returned, looking shaken. The boy couldn't have been more than nineteen. "Further back along the road. Japanese."
"Any survivors?"
"I didn't get close enough to see. They're about five hundred metres down the road. It looked pretty... messy," he gave a shiver.
Sendoh refrained from showing his disappointment. To think that there had been another Japanese platoon so nearby, but he hadn't been able to join up with them in time, and that they had perished on the road.
Myagi gave the young private a bracing pat on the shoulder while Sendoh considered his next move.
"We should go and recover the men's tags," he said finally. "And they may have a working radio."
Myagi gave a nod. "That's wise," he agreed, and turned back to the troops. "Pack up! We're moving!"
There was really very little left. The troop appeared to have been hit by a direct shell. Ten or eleven men, although they were so jumbled up, Sendoh couldn't even be sure. Parts of them had been hurled as much as ten feet away, and smears on the dirt road indicated where Chinese troops had trampled over them. There seemed no hope of finding a working radio. They recovered a handful of tags, and were just finishing up, when someone called out - "this one's alive!"
Sendoh and Myagi hurried over, followed by the first aider.
The dying man was a little way off the road, a few paces into the jungle where presumably, he'd been flung in the blast. Only the thick foliage had saved him from being noticed by the passing Chinese troops. He lay in a bog of mud and blood. His face and torso had been burnt. His right leg was missing entirely. Sendoh saw the stripes on his collar and sucked in his breath.
"Major General?"
The man looked weakly at him. Sendoh was astonished. This was an important man! He should have been with the main column, overseeing the operation. He had been second in command after the Lieutenant General himself. Now he was alone, here. Dying.
Sendoh was struck, for the first time, with the realisation of just how badly things had gone wrong.
He had aimed to meet up with the rest of his company, but now he questioned whether the company even existed any more. What if the entire division had been wiped out? What then?
The Major General took a shallow breath. "Lieutenant..?"
"Sendoh. Lieutenant Sendoh, Sir."
"Sendoh," the man wheezed, and something of a distant smile flickered over his bloodied lips. "Ah, yes. I remember – your father -" he coughed, and blood dribbled down his chin.
"Don't try to speak, Sir. Save your strength," he lifted his hand to gesture a private over. "Bring water," he demanded.
"We could assemble a stretcher, Lieutenant," Myagi suggested doubtfully.
Before Sendoh could respond, the wounded General clutched his uniform fiercely. "Don't you die here," he hissed ferociously. "Lieutenant Sendoh, don't you die here." He seemed somewhat delirious with the blood loss.
Sendoh tried to comfort him. "There's an aid post not far away," he lied. "We'll get you there soon. But drink some water first." He pressed a bottle to the man's lips.
The General released his grip on Sendoh's shirt slowly. The water spilt onto his lips and over his chin, but he didn't drink. His eyes slipped closed. Sendoh waited hopefully, but the man did not move again.
His eyes flickered to the roadway where the decimated bodies of so many strong, young men were gathered in a slaughterhouse heap. He felt sorrow rise up in him like a wave.
We are still alive, he told himself optimistically. We are still alive.
Ten days later, he was still repeating the same thing.
They never did find the rest of the company.
Sendoh remembered from earlier briefings that there were outposts in the area. Bases where they could find assistance. Pockets of Japan along this unfamiliar, isolated front. He could even remember their approximate locations. He just wasn't sure where he was in relation. But he had pointed his troops in the direction of his best guess and assured them he knew the way. What else could he have done?
But the jungle was a death trap. With all its poisonous inhabitants, snakes, spiders and leeches, infection-laden water and tempting but deadly fruits and foliage, it was some small wonder that they were all still breathing. Their rations had run out two days before, and they were struggling to locate anything that they could risk eating.
Some men had taken chances on unknown berries, and were now suffering from chronic stomach pains and dysentery. It had become a struggle even to walk.
They were all ashen faced, sweating, eyesight swimming deliriously. Small black flies kept gathering around Sendoh's mouth, and he waved them away only half-heartedly now. They always returned.
At the front of the platoon, two men were hacking a path through the jungle with their bayonet fixtures. It was not the right tool for the job, and it was extremely slow going.
And still Sendoh couldn't even be sure they were walking in the right direction.
"If we make it out here..." Myagi was mumbling deliriously, "...we'll sure have a story to tell, won't we, Lieutenant?"
Sendoh only grunted in reply. He stared at his own feet, willing himself simply to place one in front of the other.
"Maybe a promotion. They'll make you a Captain, for sure." Myagi smiled wistfully to himself. "We'll have a party that night, I tell you."
Behind them came a crash as one of the privates fell through the thick leafy foliage and hit the floor in a dead faint.
Sendoh saw Myagi roll his eyes slightly as they turned back.
"Get water for that man," Sendoh said, though his voice sounded foggy, his tongue dry and heavy in his mouth.
"There's none, Lieutenant..." someone spoke up.
"But we stopped at a stream only yesterday," Sendoh commented in surprise.
Myagi leaned towards him and whispered, "That was four days ago, Lieutenant."
Sendoh sighed. He didn't have the energy to deal with such problems. It was hard to focus even on simple things now. He shook his head foggily.
"We'll fix up the stretcher," he said. "Unpack it."
The troops slowly set to work, their hands clumsy. Myagi looked up at him. "Are you sure we can carry him?" he muttered in a low voice. "It might be better to leave him here."
Sendoh shook his head. "It won't be much further," he said with conviction. "We'll take him with us."
"How do you reckon that?" Myagi replied, surprised.
Sendoh frowned. "Because if it's more than two more days, we're not going to make it whether we're carrying him or not."
Myagi stared at him for a moment before giving a long, unsteady sigh. "We've seen some real shit, Lieutenant," he said sombrely. "Some real ugly crap. I don't regret it, you know. In fact I'll be damn sorry if this is the last one."
Sendoh shrugged slightly.
Myagi suddenly clapped a hand on his arm. "We'll make it," he announced confidently. "We'll make it for sure. I never met anyone as lucky as you. You're my lucky star, Lieutenant Sendoh. We're gonna live forever."
He stopped short, leaving the story hanging.
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. The trails of the recount swam away from him.
For the first time he wondered... would it have been kinder if they had died there in the jungle, in their strange delirium? Myagi had spoken of horrors back then without knowing any better. Not having any idea what hell really was. What happened when people's luck ran out.
He blinked and saw that the monks were all staring at him, awestruck. He'd attracted quite a crowd, some sitting on the floor with the youngsters, others standing around the back of the group, all listening intently.
"Did you find the aid post?" someone asked eagerly as Sendoh lapsed into silence.
He forced his concentration back to the story. Slowly, he nodded. "We reached an outpost the next day. We made it back. All fifteen of us." He spread his hands to indicate that the tale was over. He no longer felt up to telling it.
The young novices who had been leaning forward, so close they nearly touched his knees, dissolved into animated chatter. Many asked eager questions of him, while just as many chatted to one another
"Let's play Han River," one boy exclaimed excitedly. "I'll be the Lieutenant!"
"I want to be Warrant Officer Myagi!"
Their eyes were shining with excitement.
Sendoh felt a little bit dizzy.
"You'll return to your dorms," a no-nonsense voice came from behind them, interrupting their games. Sendoh looked up to find the abbot staring down at the children fiercely. The adult monks were already beginning to slink away, conscious of the abbot's displeasure. "And you'll reflect," the abbot continued, "on the many thousands of lives this war has taken from us. The brothers, sons and fathers, lost. The families torn apart."
The boys immediately looked chastened, and under the abbot's fierce stare they began to trail reluctantly out of the room. A few sent Sendoh final, wistful glances.
"I hope you will refrain from discussing such inappropriate topics in the future," the abbot continued, eyeing Sendoh coldly. "It isn't right to glorify war, particularly in front of our youngest novices."
"The Captain spoke at my request," Makiguchi interjected immediately, lifting a hand peacefully. "I should have been more mindful of the location. I apologise."
"Hmm," the abbot replied disapprovingly, "don't let it happen again."
He turned to walk back to the place where he had been eating while Makiguchi sent Sendoh an apologetic look.
Sendoh frowned to himself. Glorify war? Was that how his words had sounded? There had been no glory during that fortnight in Yu'an. He had not intended to make the experience sound anything other than the sorry failure it had been – a tragic waste of lives. The idea of making it sound glorious seemed ridiculous. He regretted speaking at all. Why was it, he wondered, that the tales of deepest pain caused such thrill? Why had those young boys heard a story of excitement and adventure when he had thought to tell a tragedy?
The monks had mostly dispersed by now. Kogure seemed to have drifted away, as had the two privates. The adult monks that remained were talking in low whispers to one another, careful not to glance Sendoh's way. But there was one pair of eyes that still watched him with rapt attention. He noticed, for the first time, that the blue eyed monk was sitting only a couple of tables away, staring at him as if mesmerised.
Sendoh's eyes widened in recognition, but the monk quickly looked away as soon as their eyes met. Sendoh watched him attentively, but Rukawa Kaede did not look his way again.
I don't understand myself, he realised gloomily. Why should I find interest in that which causes me such pain?
This Rukawa Kaede...
He shook his head.
I should avoid him, I know. But somehow... I... I can't help wanting to talk to him.
I must be mad.
As they were parting to retire to their cabin for the evening, Makiguchi spoke up.
"Each morning," he revealed "the monks practise their martial skills at dawn. Fighting men like yourselves might find it an interesting spectacle to watch." He smiled in invitation.
Sendoh exchanged a glance with his uncle.
"That certainly sounds interesting," Toranosuke responded guardedly. "We shall try to attend."
"Martial skills?" Toranosuke exclaimed as soon as they had reached their cabin. "Martial! Did you hear him say that?"
"I did," Sendoh replied with a sigh, folding his clothes into a neat pile. "Martial arts are traditional for monks, aren't they? They've been doing it for centuries, the Souhei, and all that?"
"Of course but – but – the hypocrisy of it! Criticising the war, claiming to be pacifists, all the while practising knocking each other around with nun-chucks or whatever – penniless monks playing at being samurai. What a joke! They wouldn't kill a mosquito it if landed on their cock."
"Uncle!" Sendoh exclaimed, appalled. Toranosuke scowled and climbed into his bed.
"Well," he snivelled, "we'll see how little monks play at war tomorrow morning."
~tbc