Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

“Halt! Who goes there? Identify yourselves!” somebody yelled at them unexpectedly in clear Japanese.

They turned around, reacting to this sudden challenge, and found a small bunker on their left. Two muzzles pointed at them from the dark hole. A bayonet fixed on each rifle was purposefully smeared with a cinder to reduce the possibility of being discovered due to light reflecting off the shiny surface.

“Hey, you kids!” Tomita bawled at the sentries. “Do you know who on earth you’re talking to? We are the HMG Tomita Squad! Announce us to your commander, pronto.”

“Please, wait here a minute,” the sentry said as he turned. The muzzles then disappeared.

The bunker seemed connected with a communication trench. Kasuga heard noisy footsteps of the soldier reporting. After a while, a suntanned man wearing a sword jumped out from a bush at the foot of the hill and came running toward them.

“It’s you, Keiichi Tomita! I’m glad to have you. Really glad to meet you here again!”

Tomita replied to the suntanned man, “Long time no see, Sergeant Ban. Are you the acting commander here? I would never have dreamed that.”

Kasuga felt a sense of relief that Tomita and this sergeant were acquainted. He knew it was not easy to make war beside utter strangers. But, with this chance meeting, Kasuga thought his squad leader would finally be pumped up enough to fight to the limit. Kasuga trembled with excitement.

Ban said, “A damned Consoli’s bomb hit and killed Second Lieutenant Ogino this morning. He was a nice officer. How cruel for such a young guy to get killed so easily. The bombing also slaughtered many draftees at the same time. Everyone had a wife and kids.”

Tomita nodded. “You bet.”

“But it’s encouraging to get your help. The enemy is attacking the west side of this hill. Some will come at us for sure, along that military road, before long. It’s a battle to avenge. If those disgusting tanks come, we’ll smash them by busting them at close range. An antitank gun is waiting for them east of the military road. It would give us a second string to our bow. Thank you for your support.”

Ban’s eyes were nearly filled with tears. And the hostile shelling never ceased during their conversation.

The place indicated by Ban was at a lower quarter of the hill. Kasuga found a covered bunker with an especially terrible roof. Somebody had made it using only bamboo-palisades and dirt. Ogino and his men had apparently made a drastic conversion in a hurry.

However, the position itself wasn’t so bad. If the enemy advanced along the military road, the sparse grove of teak beside the road would obstruct their field of vision for a period of time. Meanwhile, a gunner in the bunker could look out over not only the road but all the open field.

A model ninety-six light machine gun had been set in the emplacement, and two soldiers were busying themselves doing maintenance on it. When they watched Tomita Squad carry in and assemble its HMG, boyish smiles broke out on their dust-and-oil-smeared faces.

A fire trench dug in double extended ahead from left to right. It was dotted with the Ogino Platoon riflemen wearing camouflage nets covered with dead grass. Many bundles of armor-piercing mines laid beside them. Ban came running along the trench and climbed into the bunker. “Tomita, our scout has just come back. Indian troops with tank support are on their way on this very road, as expected. You and your men will provide cover,” said Ban.

Chances were good that this would be the last conversation between the two in this world. Tomita knew it well, and a rather sad smile appeared on his face.

“Leave it to me. I wish you good and long luck!” replied Tomita.

“You too!” Ban hollered. Then he turned and slithered down the slope with an animal agility, vanishing from their view in the twinkling of an eye. As if replac-ing him, a thick cloud of yellow dust rose on the other side of the grove. Kasuga held his breath.

Soaring and billowing, the yellow cloud gradually closed in and wrapped up the teak grove. A huge dark green mass loomed up from it. It was a figure of an enemy tank, which Kasuga was seeing for the first time.

Showing off their stout bodies—as big as two-storey houses and kicking dust up frantically—three tanks came dashing down the road. Judging from the seventy-five-millimeter main gun protruding from the body, it was not an M4, but an M3 type. Whichever it might be, the Japanese’s humble armor-piercing ammunition was no match. Hostile infantries advanced in a queue behind the tanks, hiding them in the cloud of dust—no less than two platoons.

“Fix bayonets!” A sonorous voice of command came from the lower right, followed by many clinking sounds.

Eight soldiers crept out by ones and twos from a trench at the front row. The party was led by two men, each holding a bamboo pole on which a model ninety-three mine was bound. The other six men were carrying bundles of armor-piercing mines. Everyone was stealthily crawling in grass toward the road to blow the tanks up. The others worriedly saw the tank-busters off, with their rifles at the ready in the trench.

An armor-piercing mine looked like a tortoise. Each of its four legs had a magnet, to stick the mine directly on the armor. However, specifications showed that a bundle of five mines was the minimum needed to destroy an M3 middle tank effectively. No one knew whether it was possible to stick the bundle five times heavier than normal to a moving armor properly. If it didn’t work, a soldier’s body would substitute for magnets.

Busting with a model ninety-three mine was much the same. A buster must sneak up to a tank and make it stamp on the mine by sticking the pole forward.

The only thing protecting his life from the explosion was the distance of a few meters, earned by the length of the bamboo pole. Either way, it was close to a suicide mission, but the Japanese had no other options anymore.

Suddenly the leading tank opened fire. The shell burst in the middle of the hill with an earsplitting sound. From the hole, Kasuga saw innumerable clods of earth pouring down. A few seconds later, a second shell exploded. This time, it was much closer to their bunker. The negative pressure blew off the feeble ceiling, and the broad sky appeared overhead. Two young LMG men got rattled. “Sergeant, do you want us to fire?” one of them asked.

Hirono answered back instead of Tomita. “Stupid! We’re still safe. Only a recon in force! They’ve not found this bunker yet.” Although scared, each member of Tomita Squad kept his composure.

As soon as Kasuga heard another kind of cannon’s roar rip the air from the direction of mountain banana, a sharp metallic sound reverberated ahead. The antitank gun, lurking somewhere in the east of the military road, had opened fire, though everyone had forgotten its existence until then. With low-pitched whizzes, armor-piercing, high-explosive shells hit the targets, one after another. The thick tank armors repelled them all, but this strike might have surprised them to some extent, since three tanks came to a sudden stop. Attendant infantries fled beyond the military road. Trying to find the position of the antitank gun, the leading tank sluggishly began turning to compensate for the narrowness of its firing angle. In the number two tank, an Indian man sticking his head out of the hatch was giving directions to the leading one in a loud voice. He was close enough to guarantee a perfect hit if somebody tried sniping from the bunker.

This gave the tank-busting soldiers a rare opportunity. As long as the tanks were stopped, they could carry out their mission much easier. Kasuga watched the scene in breathless suspense. Tomita spoke to him from behind. “Did you sight the gun on the road, Kasu?”