Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

Suddenly the sound of exhaust was heard, and three Lockheed P-38 interceptors appeared in the northeastern sky. All flew so low that Sumi could distinguish each pilot’s face. The flyers passed over them quickly, like arrows, and went off toward the setting sun with wings sparkling.

“Did they spot us, Lieutenant? Those aircraft have radio sets,” Arima asked worriedly.

His face darkened. Sumi felt ill at ease but didn’t have enough energy to discuss anything else. And he also knew it wouldn’t get them anywhere if they did.

“As long as we can’t down them, it’s senseless to worry. Now we take a rest for half an hour here as we planned,” he snapped.

Arima still seemed unable to shake off uneasiness.

“Don’t worry, Arima. We’ve disguised ourselves. And it’s already gotten darker. All Engli pilots are night-blind. They can’t even find an elephant in an open field. We didn’t get strafed on the boats last night, did we?” Yoshitake said to encourage Arima and others.

He uplifted their spirits a little. Each soldier smiled, unloaded his equipment, and sat down on the spot.

Having been detected by the British unit and with the double setback of the death of Murakami, they no longer trusted their disguise much. But some credibility of their disguise was restored when they weren’t strafed by aircraft. They, all tankmen, had dreaded aircraft as their natural predators.

Sumi stuffed his mouth with a stale rice ball and gulped water from his canteen. He remembered he hadn’t been frightened to see the P-38s up close. He had never thought of himself as brave. Far from it, he sometimes mocked himself as a wimp. The buzz of an aircraft flying low was often inaudible until it was close, and it was frightful enough up until then. His sense of fear might have worn down, and, if that was true, it could signify disaster.

However, the effect of a rest was significant. The soldiers’ spirits seemed to have picked up again. Some started chatting and burst into laughter. All the men got into their rhythm as one team. They had grown accustomed to the tense atmosphere of infiltration duty and the physical hardship of forced marches.

Sumi stood up and climbed up a nearby ridge alone to get a wider view for orientation.

A thin ocher line of a road meandered gently from east to west beneath his eyes—Payadgi-Ramree Road. It was no distance at all. He figured they could reach it within half an hour.

The march on the forestry road had been faster than expected. He spread out his map under the red evening glow and located their present position with his compass and binoculars. It was about the middle point between Ramree Town and Payadgi Plain. Surrounding hills offered them good cover and made it an ideal point for crossing.

But there were problems. Enemies occupied the road.

He could see several dark green trucks parked on the shoulder of the road. Soldiers of about one company were mending the road. Many turbaned Indians, stripped to the waist, were swaying their picks or shovels ardently, stirring up yellow dust. The roads here were no more than oxcart trails when the scramble for Ramree broke out. The enemy was expanding it in a hurry, probably to construct an arterial road for their mechanized troops.

Hiding himself behind one tree after another, Sumi crept in closer and peered into his binoculars.

These soldiers were not well armed. He saw some bolt-action rifles, like the Japanese model thirty-eight, here and there among them. But there were no automatics. None of the four trucks he saw had an onboard machine gun. One M3 middle tank guarded them. It was troublesome. But unlike Japanese tanks, this tank had neither a machine gun nor a pistol port in its rear. His men could out-

flank it easily. Indians were not supposed to continue laboring after dark, so they would probably pull out before long. The rescue party could break through at night if they encamped nearby.

When Sumi returned to the party, the soldiers were looking around and talking among themselves in whispers. They were watching an east ridgeline facing the coppice.

“What’s up?” Sumi asked in a hushed voice.

“Oh, we’ve been waiting for you, Lieutenant,” Yoshitake said. “Morioka and Pondgi say they saw some soldiers that might be friends moving in that mountain some time ago.”

Sumi peeped through his binoculars, but the mountain was in the shade of the ridge he had climbed up a little while before. Although he strained his eyes, he could find nothing.

The two said they had seen several small things that looked like Japanese helmets moving in a group below the ridgeline. Further, Pondgi insisted he had seen the glitter of a bayonet’s reflection.

Sumi always relied on Pondgi’s excellent eyesight. He could see a very long distance and often saw things before others did.

“Are you sure those helmets were ours? Not Engli type?” asked Sumi.

Pondgi answered, “Yes, the shape of the Engli helmet is much different, Master Sumi.”

“Well, how many soldiers did you see?”

“Five or so. I wasn’t certain because they went over the ridge.”

As Pondgi said, a British soldier usually wore a strange helmet that looked like a washbowl. It was distinctive enough that this sharp-sighted man couldn’t have mistaken it.

Sumi realized the credibility of the information and secretly bubbled with excitement. If Pondgi’s eyes were right, it meant that they had finally found a friendly troop. If he could catch them and head to Taungup with them, he would save his face as a rescue party leader. He wouldn’t have to take the trouble to go all the way to Yanthitgyi.

Shimizu abruptly intervened. “Did you really see it? Why would Japanese soldiers be roaming around here now? All the garrison has already gathered at the east coast far from here. Think before you speak, or I’ll make you pay for this!”

His voice was sharp and fierce, and he seemed still on edge.

“Sarge, I heard the battle in the north part of this island was also a hard-fought one. Maybe those are some of the troops from that battle. They might have gotten lost or failed to follow the main body for some reason,” replied Morioka timidly.

Sumi thought Morioka might be right, but, at the same time, what Shimizu said also sounded reasonable. The enemy landed at Kyaukphyu nearly a month before, and it was more than ten days since the main body of Ramree Garrison had retreated to the defense position in Hill 509. Therefore, Sumi couldn’t assume that any friends were wandering around in these mountains. Moreover, if Pondgi was right, he couldn’t make out why the soldiers kept their bayonets fixed during a march in mountains. Anyway, nothing would be verified until they actually saw these alleged comrades.

“Well, it’s useless to argue,” Sumi said. “If they’re really friends, they’ll go toward Yanthitgyi, for sure. We can meet them somewhere between here and there later.”

The dark of the night soon wrapped up the whole coppice. Led by Second Lieutenant Sumi, the rescue party descended the ridge. Nobody spoke, and only faint rustles of clothing were heard.

They reached the foot of the hill in no time. Sumi stopped them briefly to listen to a distant sound. The mumbling exhaust note of a tank could be faintly heard. When it faded away, he let the party advance to a growth of weeds just beside the road. From there he saw two tail lamps of the tank wavering in the far west. Soon they also faded out, and complete darkness enshrouded them all.

“Listen, men. We’re going to go across this Payadgi-Ramree Road. A wasteland with no cover spreads out over the road. And you’ll find woods on the far side of it. It’s the next rendezvous. Be on the lookout for enemies.”

Sumi deployed the soldiers in a line along the road. Some security guards remaining behind the tank might be strolling around, so it was time to be fully on the alert.