Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

Suddenly the shrill crack of rifle fire shattered the quiet. Somebody at the right wing must have been unable to tolerate the tension any longer.

“What a mess! A damned greenhorn shot without asking. Haven’t they been told to wait for a sweep of HMG?” Tomita gritted his teeth with anger.

But it was too late. He had no time to feel angry. The British dispersed in the twinkling of an eye; the Japanese had to attack ahead of the enemy vanguard. But the enemy fired first. The clatter of hostile light machine gun fire started in the woods, and streaks of bullets stuck into the clearing, kicking up dust. The British vanguard apparently had a Bren gun. With reinforcements joining, the enemy gunfire soon became fiercer. Kasuga realized that a shower of bullets had been fired in his direction. Although they all wanted to fire back, no one could pin-point the enemy lineup. Attackers and defenders had completely changed positions in a short period of time. Panic-stricken, Kasuga clung to the grips.

“Hey, Kasu, can you see that bamboo thicket at about two o’clock?” A vigorous and confident voice rose in the middle of the Bren gun’s reports. It was Tomita.

Kasuga squinted his eyes and saw a small, dense thicket growing low bamboos.

“Yes, I can.”

“Fine! Now, deliver thirty rounds in there, right? Hit the front of the bamboo thicket! It’s about one hundred meters away!”

Kasuga readjusted an elevation and repeated back the order. “Distance, one hundred meters. Right!”

“Fire!”

At Tomita’s command, Kasuga pushed the trigger.

Spitting out yellow muzzle fire, the model ninety-two heavy machine gun roared. Its low-pitched stuttering sound, characteristic of the model, echoed throughout the area. Kasuga frantically hammered away, almost blindly. He delivered some rounds with his eyes shut. However, after he had emptied all the rounds on the strip, the enemy light machine gun had gone silent. A hush had fallen over the clearing and the woods.

Suddenly a scream burst out from the thicket. Someone was yelling something in English. The British might have suffered some casualties. The scream continued, and another shout went up. Certainly the enemy LMG men had been lurking in that very thicket. Tomita’s eyes had been searching for the enemy position while all others had flinched from the vehemence of the barrage. Kasuga was impressed with Tomita’s coolness.

“It’s getting darker now, Hirono,” Tomita said. “Hit it with more tracers this time!”

Hirono quickly beckoned ammo bearers. Just when they were about to reload a spare strip, Kasuga heard a strange noise in the rising wind. A continuous sound pricked up his ears. Hirono was also straining to hear. The sound gradually got clearer; the two were surprised and looked at each other. It was the exhaust note of an engine. Tomita peeped into the binoculars. “Oh, shit! They have a tank! I wasn’t told about that!”

There was no need to wait around. They had already seen a thick cloud of dust rising up over the woods, and they could hear the rattle of the tracks on the trail. “Hey, let’s pull back! Prepare for a crawl.”

Tomita ordered Kasuga and the other three gunners to drag their machine gun and flee to a safer zone. It was far beyond the management responsibility of Tomita, who was nothing more than a squad leader NCO. If things went wrong, what they were going to do might be considered desertion in the face of the enemy. It might well end up in a court-martial. Kasuga objected. “Can we retreat without permission?”

Tomita snapped, “You moron! Look around you!”

Kasuga looked around the battlefield. Soldiers at the left line were furiously packing equipment into their knapsacks, their faces stiff with fear. They were obviously preparing to retreat. Then he turned back and noticed some distant dead grass rustling unnaturally. Apparently some had already started pulling back in the wasteland. He looked further, only to see that the right wing nearer to the enemy front had emptied. He was astounded and looked up at Tomita.

Tomita said, “Now, listen! Those guys don’t have any armor-piercing mines. How do we cope with a damned tank? Tanks will aim at our machine gun first!”

“Kasu, do as you’re told right now, or the shells will come! I don’t want to do a banzai charge. Not in such a dismal place!” Hirono also hurried him. He had already begun pushing the rear carrying handle of the gun. There was no more time to think about options, orders, or strategy. Kasuga held the front handle of the tripod. Crawling, the four gunners managed to move the gun into the dead grass, out of sight. Everyone dropped back. But the bulk and weight of the machine gun hampered them. Crawling on wasteland made progress difficult.

Suddenly Kasuga noticed that all the riflemen around them had gone.

A tank gun was terrifying, for sure. But it was even more terrifying that he had been left behind in the middle of the front line. Kasuga was worried that at any moment an enemy soldier might break through the dead grass with a bayonet-attached rifle in his hands and charge at him. Everyone crawled without a saying a word. Finally Tomita broke the silence. “OK, boys, it seems safe now. Change to four-man conveyance.”

Members timidly stood up by ones and twos. They saw some windmill palms standing along the defile through dead grass. They remembered them well. It was the very place where the stocky NCO had spoken to them. Hill 353 wasn’t far from there.

Kasuga held the tripod with the other three gunners. Shouting together in a harmony, they lifted it up on their shoulders like a mikoshi, the portable shrine of their homeland. When Kasuga braced himself to resist its weight, a howling sound rang out. It was the whiz of a rushing cannonball ripping the air.

He cast a hasty glance backward, and he saw what looked like a high-explosive shell, discharged by an enemy tank gun, exploding on the far bank with a tremendous roar. It was exactly where Tomita Squad had positioned the machine gun before moving it. All were transfixed at the sight. More shells burst there in a row before their eyes. The dry field caught fire at once. Bright flames rose into the sky. Its color was dark and deep, and Kasuga didn’t know the sunset until he saw it.

When Second Lieutenant Yoshihisa Sumi woke up, dusk had fallen. He hurriedly propped himself up. First Class Private Takahashi came into the cell, just as he had ordered.

“We’re all ready for departure, Lieutenant. We’d like to ask for your advice,” said Takahashi.

“How are the boats?”

“We got them, and they’re moored at the mouth of the Taungup River. The party is also assembling there now.”

Sumi leaped to his feet and snatched his sword and the Nambu fourteen pistol from the bedside.

“Take me to the place quickly!”

When the two came out of the old temple, clouds in the western sky were dyed in blazing orange. Night was just around the corner, causing Sumi to fret.

Kicking up dust, the two ran along the dry coast road, dented badly by oxcarts. They came down a grassy knoll facing the river mouth and cleared a small bank. Then a rather wretched settlement burst into view. It was the town of Taungup. Every house facing the water had a raised foundation, built above the surface.

As Takahashi had said, all the members of the group were standing together in an open space where local bazaars sometimes took place. Sergeant Kokichi Shimizu confirmed their arrival and commanded all to fall in line in a perfunc-tory manner. Sumi called Superior Private Yoshioka and Pondgi.