Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

Turning his eyes from the shining pagoda on the opposite bank, he scanned the edge to search for any cause of the odor. He reckoned it to be a decaying carcass of livestock caught in a pool nearby.

A little sand bank stood where the opposite woods got sparse. Kasuga found something like a decayed tree trunk laying on the sand there. The moment he fixed his eyes upon it, he held his breath.

It was a crocodile with its tail tip dipped in the water. Flattened out on the sand, it didn’t move—as if dead. But it radiated a strong presence. Its skin was mottled with innumerable tawny and dark green scales, reminding him of an ancient mosaic art. Two rows of sharp, pointed prominences ran along the spine to the tip of its tail. It looked encased in armor.

And its eye was the most impressive thing of all. The whole eyeball was golden and shining, except for a vertical slit as sharp as a knife-cut. Standing motionless, Kasuga couldn’t avert his eyes from it. The corners of its mouth had given him an image of a laughing countenance, and reminded him of a smiling face of the supine Buddha statue seen in every temple. Feeling even a holiness, he was bewildered. But the snaggleteeth sticking out from the lips were all sharp, and that made him also feel something evil. He couldn’t suppress a dim uneasiness.

Suddenly, the crocodile rose to its feet as if it had noticed the gaze. All its limbs were as small as the hands and feet of a human baby—quite an imbalance compared with its stout body and tail. Soon it veered with an awkward gait, then slithered down the slope, and vanished silently into the dark water. Ripples caused by its dorsal scuta appeared on the surface a moment later. The crocodile seemed able to swim under the water at a remarkably high speed, quite contrary to its sluggish action on the ground. After the ripples subsided, not a trace of the crocodile remained.

Kasuga exhaled without noticing. It seemed that a long time had passed.

Remembering the rudgi’s tale, he got a spooky feeling and thought the cause of that stench might have been a man-eater crocodile, as the man had said. But the crocodile Kasuga had seen wasn’t so big. It was two meters long at the most. It couldn’t prey upon human beings. It might occasionally devour a drowned body drifting nearby, but certainly it couldn’t attack a man, judging from its lack of speed on the ground.

Kasuga’s thoughts turned back to the facts: he came here to fight a war. It was no time to fear animals when the possibility of the enemy counteroffensive was increasing. It didn’t suit a soldier to lose nerve in the presence of a mere crocodile.

Encouraging himself, he came back to the woods where morning dew still remained on every grass blade. Kasuga picked up the canteens and began climb-ing up Hill 353. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about the crocodile. Its figure crossed his mind over and over, as if branded on his memory.

A crocodile wasn’t indigenous to Japan, and he had never been to a zoo or an aquarium. Only after he had joined the Southern Army did he step on foreign soil for the first time. But he hadn’t seen a crocodile in Shanghai, Malaya, or Sin-gapore. For Kasuga, a crocodile had been nothing more than a grotesque villain in myths and fairy tales. However, the real thing was beautiful enough to override those poor images. It had a certain grandeur suitable only for the legitimate descendant of gigantic reptiles that ruled the earth long before humans did.

On his way to the position, Kasuga ran smack into First Lieutenant Okawa, the Sixth Company commander, and his outfits in a communication trench. He

stepped aside and saluted in haste. But Okawa passed through at a rapid pace, as if ignoring Kasuga, and ascended the slope toward a watchtower near the hilltop.

The commander’s face stiffened clearly. Several servicemen followed with the same look.

Kasuga felt a presentiment of emergency and ran toward the machine gun post of Tomita Squad. Surely every fire trench on the route had already looked like an overturned anthill with many flustered soldiers. Some wore camouflage nets covered with full of branches and leaves and stayed ready for action. This made him even more tense.

He plowed his way through the crowd, regretting having fetched the water so leisurely. The moment he arrived at the gun position, Superior Private Etsutaro Hirono rushed up to him. In Tomita Squad, Kasuga was a marksman, and Hirono was a loader. Hirono caught him with astonishing news. “The enemy landing operation has just started!” he yelled, leaving Kasuga speechless.

“When the fog cleared, one sentry post reported sighting an enemy fleet off the coast of Kyaukphyu. It’s large-scale. They’ll come at any moment.”

Kyaukphyu, the northernmost port, was the biggest town on the island. It had some concrete buildings, which was the only difference between it and the island’s other towns, and Kyaukphyu had a naturally good port and suitable places for airfields. It was no wonder the enemy had chosen it as an objective.

“I can’t believe it’s a real one,” Kasuga said. “Isn’t it a false attack or a reconnaissance in force, as usual?”

“No, it isn’t,” Hirono replied. “This time, a big fleet has come with a big battleship and a carrier. Engli are serious!”

“Where is Sarge?”

“I don’t know. Even the platoon commander isn’t here. Everyone is annoyed!”

“Have we gotten any orders?”

“Nothing so far. Maybe Sarge will bring some. If it should be to defend Kyaukphyu Port to the death, the battalion commander would order us to perform an all-out banzai charge against enemy tanks, and we would all be annihilated sooner or later.”

Ramree Garrison was no more than one battalion strength, as Hirono implied.

That’s why Sixth Company was on guard alone at the long coastline, reaching no less than sixty kilometers from Kyaukphyu to the mouth of the Yanbauk River far south. If determined enemies attacked it, everybody knew they would have no way to defend it.

“A banzai charge? Don’t worry, guys. It can’t be done!”

Kasuga and Hirono turned back to hear a sudden, raucous voice. A big NCO was standing there smiling. It was Sergeant Keiichi Tomita, their squad leader.

“What comes after defending this place to the death? You know? Losing such a rural island or two doesn’t matter now. I’ve heard the Army brass hats are sane.

They can’t order such nonsense. Well, I’m going to have a look over the Engli fleet now. Follow me!”

It was no time to leave the machine gun unattended, but Tomita dangled binoculars from his neck and started running, quite indifferent to the astonished faces of Kasuga and Hirono, who had no option but to run after him. Tomita made his way not to the hilltop watchtower—the best viewpoint—but to the north bunker. Unlike other positions, which were in confusion, this bunker had been empty and silent when the three had reached it.

Tomita laughed and said, “Oh, it’s lucky to get a vacant room. I was heading for the hilltop post first, but I saw the Sixth Company commander just on my way. If he finds me there, he’ll know I left my gun alone. I’ll catch hell from him.”

Though it wasn’t better than the hilltop post, they could get a wide view here, as well. Kyaukphyu was one of the major ports of Arakan. In spite of this, all it had ever been was a port with occasional cargo ships transporting salt. It had been a quiet port.

But the scenery through the loophole had changed completely. Many ships covered the normally calm and void port, which looked like an international port such as Kobe or Yokohama. All were enemies. Miscellaneous warships painted in light gray, characteristic of the Royal Navy, were afloat about five kilometers from the shore and didn’t move; it seemed they had anchored there. Apparently some had already begun setting landing crafts on the water. Kasuga could see cranes working busily.