Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

Something seemed to have dragged him into the water. Some strong force was at work under water. Then another, and still a third man submerged. Each went off in a flash, without leaving anything but a small swirl on the surface. Hell had broken loose amid the uproar of shots and screams.

The water looked white and cloudy, as if milk had been poured into it. He could tell the reddish spots drifting in places were stains of human blood. Then his eyes caught something alive, looking like a rock, churning up the blood stains and surfacing without a sound. First its head appeared, covered with ugly, dark-green lumps. Then a trunk, looking like it was clad in armor, came up before Kasuga’s eyes. It was far longer and thicker than a Burmese sampan and was so huge it made him gasp. Two bony ridges resembling horns ran on its head.

And the small eyeballs embedded under the horns glittered to reflect the flare, emitting an unfathomably devilish light. Kasuga opened his eyes wide. His own fragility and transiency were the only things he could think of, by then semi-conscious of what was going on around him.

The terror was swimming majestically. There he saw the dragon, and it became clear what his dream had really meant.

The golden eye cast a glance at him and submerged again. Only a few ugly, swollen knobs and dorsal fins remained slightly above the surface now. Brushing past him, the ominous, edgy fins built up speed and rushed forward. And ahead, he saw Tomita’s back. Coming to his senses, Kasuga hollered at him, “Sarge! A crocodile is coming at you!”

But his voice was half drowned out by the sudden roar of gunfire. A machine cannon boomed. Columns of water rose fifty meters to the left. A jet-black silhouette loomed up in the corner of the mangrove when Kasuga looked around.

A gunboat was coming. Upon hearing the din, it must have come around to this cove. As its engine roared, a searchlight went on at the broadside, where muzzle fires were flashing furiously and a frantic whistle echoed across the water.

Again the columns of water rose a hundred meters forward this time. The enemy hadn’t spotted them yet. But it was only a matter of time in this brightness. And during this chaos, the huge carnivore was closing on Tomita.

Nevertheless, Tomita remained unruffled. Things had gone this far to encounter the gunboat, the most dreadful of all. He had heard Kasuga’s warning, in spite of this desperate situation. And in an instant, he had also chosen what he must do first.

Kasuga didn’t know when he had drawn it, but Tomita already had his semiautomatic pistol in his hand. He was agile and thorough, as if he expected things to develop this way.

He turned back as efficiently and accurately as a machine and found the crocodile rushing toward him. Having cocked the slide without a moment’s delay, Tomita held the gun aloft and aimed at the space between two ridges on its head rising up to the surface—likely, it was where a brain fit into a cranium. It was the weakest point, no matter what creature it might be. All his action was fluid and worthy of his reputation as a hardened veteran. He spent only three seconds from turning back to laying his gun.

But three seconds was a long time. At least on the edge between life and death, it was hopelessly too long. Enormous triangular white jaws came up from the water with startling speed and leaped at Tomita. His pistol discharged and made an arc in the air, and the two figures disappeared in Myinkhon Creek with a splash at the same moment.

“Sarge!” Kasuga cried out.

Tomita’s pistol fell right in front of him. Immediately he tried to pick it up, but it slipped through his fingers and sank into the water helplessly. So he drew his bayonet, attached to the belt of his fundoshi—there was no other choice.

Having witnessed those armor-like scales, he guessed the bayonet might have no more effect than a toy, but it was still better than bare knuckles.

Darkness began wrapping up the surroundings again. The flare was burning itself out. Under its last flame, the upper half of Tomita’s body suddenly burst out of the surface about ten meters to the right of Kasuga.

Tomita was still alive. His face was puzzled rather than pained. He seemed unable to understand the preposterous calamity having just befallen him.

The crocodile had possibly changed the way it held Tomita in its mouth, momentarily permitting Tomita’s return to the surface; suddenly, he submerged and never came up again.

The beam of the searchlight stroked the pitch-dark surface. Apart from the light, sheer darkness covered everything. Kasuga frantically paddled through it.

Flight was his only option.

He had imagined his own death many times as a way to accept it. Death had nearly come with the aerial bombs at the bunker in Hill 353, or with the mortar shelling in Mountain Maeda. But if death knocked for admittance with a scaly reptile, he would never open the door.

His home arose in his mind—gentle waves washing the white beach rimmed with pine trees. The thin trail of kitchen smoke rising over the house where he had been born. Over the threshold, he could even see the clean white bedding laid out on the newly made tatami mat. And beside the room, he saw the

long-missing faces of his parents, smiling.

This was not a human world. If he wanted to survive, he couldn’t be in such a place any longer.

Kasuga shielded himself behind entangled prop roots and studied Myinkhon Creek. The roar of machine cannons had ceased; the enemy might have lost sight of them. There were no whistles; only the shaft of the searchlight came through the mangrove. However, it also went away, keeping pace with the dwindling exhaust hum.

It was the third time he had landed on Ramree Island. He peeped at the creek through the loathsome mangrove and thought it was infinitely wide. Having failed to cross twice, he had no energy to try it anymore. In the first place, he had lost his precious bamboo pole during his desperate flight. Even if the enemy completely withdrew, he couldn’t swim across it as long as a herd of crocodiles prowled there.

A deep sense of fatigue swept over his body. He was too tired to even sit on the ground. Kasuga lay on the mud spread-eagled.

Something clinked in his haversack—it was Hirono’s finger bone in his mess kit. Now, quite unexpectedly, he became the only one who could deliver

Hirono’s ashes. As matters stood, he could hardly expect to return home alive, but it was still a possibility. Hirono had died a gallant death, for sure. If only Kasuga could make it somehow, Hirono’s remains could be nicely consigned to his ancestors’ tomb, and his family would know how he had died and how stately his last moment had been.

But then, what could he do for Tomita? He had not so much as a pinkie bone.

Not even a chip. How could he show his face in front of Tomita’s family, only to tell them that Sarge had been killed and devoured by a crocodile? How in the world could he report such a word with no glory, with no honor, and with no hope at all?

His sense of life had been very simple for the past month at the front. He was alive if he wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t go to pieces over every single death of a comrade. Nevertheless, he burst into tears. In this stillness of the night, he found himself unable to hold it back.

Kasuga had no strength to evacuate further inland anymore, so he climbed a nearby tree and passed the night there. Anything was fine, as long as he could stay away from the water. Sitting on a fork and bending his legs, he didn’t even realize when he fell asleep.

When the first light awoke him at last, he sensed someone approaching.

The tide had gone out below the tree. He could see many vertical roots protruding from the mud, which had been submerged completely when he climbed the tree. Threading its way through the maze of roots, a group of figures came toward him. They seemed to be locals, because each man wore a scruffy lungi wrapped around him with a muddy shirt. Except for the leader, they all carried bulging rucksacks on their backs. They might be farmers carrying produce.