If he went on like this, he would run the risk of getting lost. He knew he must hold on until he could get treatment in a decent hospital in Taungup or Rangoon. Dropping out of the line would mean death when the troops evacuated the island. He kept walking on, breaking into a sweat.
Gradually, the water exuding from the mud increased and covered the whole ground with a murky liquid sufficient to reach their ankles. The odor of the sea became stronger, as well.
The trail they were walking on had turned into a creek threading through the woods. The water level often reached to Kasuga’s hip, and it irritated the gash of his shrapnel wound mercilessly. Every step he made betrayed him, causing him to sink deep into the mud. It got hard even for him to pull his foot up.
He didn’t have his own watch and couldn’t trace the setting of the sun under the thick green canopy, under which it was always dark, even during the day.
They had gone down Yanthitgyi Hill 604 about an hour before, though Kasuga wasn’t sure of the exact time. They had been walking in the damp areas ever since. Tomita, who had kept his pace without a hitch ahead of them, abruptly stopped in the middle of intertwining branches and pointed forward. “Maybe Myinkhon Creek is over there, men.”
Through the overlapping layers of greenery, Kasuga, Tada, and Kayama found a conspicuously broad creek. Everyone ran to the edge to get a better look.
About three hundred meters wide, muddy water flowed by slowly in front of their eyes. The opposite side seemed to be an unbroken belt of mangrove. Far above, they could see many peaks of the Arakan Mountains against the glorious orange sky. It was the mainland of Burma. It extended all the way to China and to their homeland further beyond.
Kasuga heard Kayama murmuring, “I want to go home.”
Tomita was reading the map. Kasuga was surprised to see that the map was no more than a shoddy sheet of straw paper, on which some wriggling lines had been scribbled with a pencil. Relying upon such a map, Tomita had broken through the maze of mangroves. Kasuga had a new admiration for his superb skill. Just then, Tomita raised his head and uttered a sharp alarm. “Leave the edge at once! An enemy is coming!”
The four immediately scurried back into the mangrove, almost a knee-jerk reaction. Pressing against the entangled roots of a big tree, Kasuga peered over his shoulder at the creek. The low-pitched hum of exhaust reached his ears, a gunboat appeared from his right, and the cleaved wave washed his legs.
It was a ragged barge, willy-nilly equipped with a field gun rather than a gunboat. It made everyone skeptical about the real state of the Royal Navy—supposedly matchless in the world, but even this barge was threatening for the Japanese Army now. A machine gun was installed on the side, and a white sailor was standing behind the gun. Clearly, enemies were ready to check any crossing operations planned by Japanese forces.
“It’s too bad. We can’t roam around during the day,” Tomita grumbled to himself while he watched the gunboat going north on Myinkhon Creek.
Kasuga also expressed his anxiety. “This creek is too wide, Sarge. Can we really wade across?”
“Of course not! Didn’t you watch the enemy boat sail through? Your feet can’t touch the bottom, you moron!” an irritated Tomita snapped at him.
“Why am I a moron? You said earlier we could wade across this creek,” Kasuga responded.
“I can’t help it. That’s what I was told. I’m surprised to see this too.”
“Maybe the tide is in the middle now, so it’s deep enough for some boats to sail. But it may get more shallow at the ebb.”
“Pinhead! How can we wade through this broad creek in the daylight? That battered barge isn’t the only enemy we have to cope with. What do you do if aircraft come hunting for us when we’re tottering in the water?”
“Then what will we do? Do we have to swim across at night? I’m not confident I can swim that far.”
“Neither am I! I’m not a competitive swimmer. But, listen, what else can we do now? I don’t know how many boats Garrison HQ has. But I don’t think it has enough to allocate some to us. There’s no way but to make a raft or something and cross this damn water with it.”
Kasuga fell silent. He didn’t have a counterargument and knew nothing could be done even if he had.
Something inside made him yearn to go home. He had made up his mind to sacrifice his life for the empire more than once. However, his firm resolution flickered with seeing the route before his very eyes.
“I don’t think the company commander has crossed the creek,” Tomita said.
“He must be here somewhere if he’s still wandering. Now split up and search for him.”
A desert island called Leikdaung lay in front of them, like it had been pushed out from the opposite bank. They set that as their common landmark and arranged the time, place, and password for assembling. Then Tomita Squad separated into two parties.
Kasuga set out searching the western area with Tomita. Bathed in the setting sun, the mountains of Arakan were dyed red.
The mangrove extended indefinitely in front of his eyes. The once-clamorous birdcalls suddenly faded away as dusk fell. But there was still no change in the strange vitality permeating their surroundings.
Abruptly, one of the overhead branches creaked. Startled, Kasuga stopped. He strained his eyes and found a stout branch nodding. Something was moving from one tree to another.
“Oh, it’s a monkey. Probably a crab-eating macaque hunting for food,” whispered Tomita, ahead of Kasuga.
The branch just above Kasuga wasn’t the only one nodding. Many boughs and branches swayed here and there. He heard each creak, but he couldn’t catch a glimpse of the animal, however hard he might try to find it. The treetops, which protected them from the eyes of airborne enemies, were melting into the darkness. The whole area was turning into the world of nocturnal animals, which put him on guard.
Alarm welled up deep inside. The flowing water had already reached Kasuga’s shins, and he sensed something touching his anklebone. He looked down to see a black metallic box floating near his leg.
It was a mess kit made of aluminum—unmistakably one issued by the Japanese government. Judging from its square design and good finish, it might be for an officer’s use. He immediately remembered First Lieutenant Kishimoto, for whom they were searching.
“Isn’t this his mess kit?” Kasuga asked himself as he picked it up excitedly and called out to Tomita, “Sarge! I found a mess kit!”
A big tree towered about ten meters to his left. Standing beside it, Tomita was staring at something at its base. His profile looked frozen.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Kasuga.
Tomita looked back and slowly pointed down at a spot.
Silt was exposed around the roots of the tree. Kasuga’s eyes focused on an elongated item laying there.
It was a human left leg amputated at the groin. Looking like it had soaked in water for a long time, it was grotesquely whitened, clubbed, and swollen. But there was no conspicuous rot. Kasuga could tell that the leg hadn’t been laying there for long after it had been severed from a body.
He had seen amputated human limbs many times even before the Battle of Ramree broke out. He wasn’t in the mental state in which every sight struck terror in his heart anymore. But the sight of the leg came too abruptly to accept.
Resisting nausea, Kasuga asked, “What’s all this about?”
“I don’t know. But this is Japanese. It’s too white for Burmese,” answered Tomita in a low voice.
Kasuga regained his composure a little, and showed Tomita the mess kit. “I picked it up over there, Sarge.”
Tomita opened the lid. Kasuga also looked but could find nothing but a few grains of rice. Tomita closed the lid and tied up the mess kit to his belt. Then he put his palms together in prayer toward the leg and started a thorough inspection of it without a wince. When he lifted up the thigh, a calf half-buried in the mud came out. It wore a leather boot—clearly not a private’s gear. Kasuga w
atched with his lips closed firmly.
Tomita asked, “Is this mess kit all, Kasu? Did you find any other belongings?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Likely a part of the company commander’s remains.”
“I think so. The mess kit and the boot—both are for an officers’ use,” Kasuga agreed.
But he still had some doubts about the state of the leg. From the first glance, his eyes had been focused on many deep incisions, each about an inch long. He thought they were postmortem wounds, since all the gashes had lost color evenly.
Who had made those, and for what purpose? Why did this severed left leg lie alone here?
Tomita raised his head and asked, “Where are the other parts?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?”
Tomita said with confidence, “No way only this left leg could be here! The rest should be somewhere near. Let’s find it quick!”
Kasuga and Tomita found a flat place, slightly higher than the others, behind the big tree. Accumulated mud formed a natural trapezoidal stage that looked like an embankment. They saw few vertical roots on the stage, quite a difference from the rest of the mire. Kasuga supposed that place might not submerge, even at high tide.
The two climbed on the embankment to get a better view, and they found it about thirty square meters. It was covered sporadically with miscellaneous weeds.
“Oh, it’s terrible,” Tomita blurted out a hoarse voice.
When Kasuga heard it, his eyes had caught a reddish-brown blotch at his feet.
There spread a puddle of half-clotted blood like a bubbling jelly. Its breadth, extending to at least four square meters, eloquently told the story of its possessor.
The mud around it had been churned up entirely, which allowed anyone to figure out that something had dismembered the kill there. The two gazed silently at the puddle of blood for a while.
The sun had now set completely, leaving only a faint violet light in the western sky. Nevertheless, it was still stiflingly muggy in the humid mangrove. In the foul air, Kasuga’s nose caught an odor. The area reeked of something rotten—the smell of something like meat and mud commingled. It didn’t come from the amputated leg, or from the half-coagulated blood. He knew he had smelled it before a number of times. It reminded him of the story of Myinde told by the rudgi. The golden eye with a vertical slit flashed in his mind.
He felt his whole body become gooseflesh. “Sarge.”
“Yeah?”
“I think the rest of his body has been already taken away somewhere. It’s a waste of time to search. No! It will be a waste of our lives unless we stop moving around right now,” Kasuga stated.
“What?”
“I don’t know when the accident happened,” Kasuga continued, “but I’m certain something ferocious attacked First Lieutenant Kishimoto.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Tomita, his face enclosed with the darkness.
“I think a crocodile got him.”
He had seen a crocodile in the creek at the foot of Hill 353 and smelled the strange odor, the same one he had first caught near Myinde. And if things went on as he was told in Myinde, drifting around them now would be the distinctive odor of a man-eating crocodile. Kasuga explained the story to Tomita quickly.
Tomita quietly listened for a while, but abruptly raised his hand to cut Kasuga off. “All right, Kasu. Maybe what you are saying is true. They say tigers caught and devoured some guys in the Arakan Mountains. This is a tropical area, and it’s no wonder surprise if such a terrible animal lives here.”
“I’ll bet it does.”
“But think! What will happen if we report this? This is a case of usual KIA. He was killed in action! You see?”
“Killed in action?”
“Yeah! Having been eaten by a croc merely means an accidental death, doesn’t it? His family can’t get a sufficient pension.”
“But the left leg alone isn’t enough to prove KIA…”
“Listen! We found a corpse seeming like First Lieutenant Kishimoto. The remains had been badly damaged, so we completed his burial on the spot. First Lieutenant Kishimoto appeared to have suffered severe attacks from a hostile gunboat during his reconnaissance duty around Myinkhon Creek and died a glorious death in the battlefield. I’m going to report it so, with his mess kit and boot as pieces of evidence. It’s fine. Never mind! As long as we keep our mouths shut, no one will get in trouble,” Tomita said decisively.
So strongly persuaded, Kasuga had no option but to agree. He nodded meekly.
But the spark of fear ignited deep inside his mind wasn’t as easily extinguishable.
Unbelievably, all of Tomita’s concern was limited to treatment for the officer’s bereaved family. Tomita seemed to have no fear of the crocodile since he had no clear image of it. But Kasuga’s own image was quite different.
Kasuga feared he might well end up the same way as Kishimoto if he stayed too long in such a place. He said, “I got it, Sarge. Now that all has been settled, let’s bury him right away.” Kasuga went back to the big tree and lifted up the leg.
He began removing the boot without the slightest hesitation. A putrid smell of crumbled flesh decomposing inside the leather seared his nose, but he knew it was no time to let that stop him. He didn’t even remember he had been feeling nauseous until then.
Looking back, he called Tomita, saying, “I don’t have my shovel here. Lend me your dah. I’ll dig a hole with it by myself.”
Tomita looked surprised at the initiative Kasuga displayed out of the blue, but soon presented him with the billhook. Kasuga mowed a few vertical roots with Tomita’s dah and madly dug the mud. The flesh of the leg had many exposed sores. He managed to lay the leg in the hole in the mud. Tomita then gave him a hand, helping to cover it with mud and soil.
When the two completed the burial and prayed to Kishimoto’s spirit together, deep darkness had settled around them.
No one anticipated they would find Kishimoto so early, so they couldn’t meet Kayama and Tada until ten o’clock, the first appointed communication time.
Nevertheless, the two—having nothing to do anymore—silently began retracing their way through the pitch-dark mangrove to the meeting place.
All of a sudden, Kasuga heard strange sounds in the darkness—intermittent, sharp sounds like the snapping of dry twigs. He concentrated all his attention on the sounds, which sounded like something were crunching a bone. Then he heard another sound, like gurgling. He thought it might be the gulping of a huge animal devouring a chunk of meat. At least, that’s how it sounded to his frightened ears. Unable to stand it anymore, he called Tomita, who was walking ahead of him. “Can you hear that sound, Sarge?”
“What sound?”
“Like something crunching a bone.”
“A bone? It can’t be. Maybe it’s just a twig being broken.” Tomita also seemed to have noticed it, but his tone delivered neither fear nor urgency.
“A crocodile is swallowing the corpse of the lieutenant somewhere near here,” Kasuga said.
“You obsessed idiot! It’s just a monkey making its way through the woods.”
“What on earth is that gurgle then? Does a monkey make such a noise?”
“I don’t know! Stop it! Are you trying to scare me? If the damned croc comes at you, give it a grenade. That’s all.”
Kasuga wanted to get out of there at once. He truly thought he must if he wanted to live. No British-Indian forces existed in his mind then. Neither the malaria nor the shrapnel wound existed. Only the golden eyes he had witnessed lingered in his mind—again and again.
A man-eating crocodile laid somewhere in the darkness. Every other terror faded out in the face of this reality.
There was no moon or stars in the sky on this deep, dark night. Second Lieutenant Yoshihisa Sumi called out to Pondgi in the dense woods.
“Hey, where are you?” Sumi knew loud voices must be avoided there, unlike the remote hilly area.
&nbs
p; “Master Sumi, I’m here,” Pondgi replied. “I found Master Yoshitake.”
Sumi slowly took a breath upon hearing the familiar voice coming from the darkness.
Each member of the Sumi rescue party was supposed to gather in the woods after he had broken through Payadgi-Ramree Road. But it wasn’t easy for them to adjust to the complete darkness. It took more time to identify each other than he thought it would under the shadow of foliage. When they gathered, Sumi noticed Lance Corporal Yoshitake was missing. Worried, he had just dispatched Pondgi in search of Yoshitake. Pondgi had not only his good eyesight, but he could also see at night to some extent.
Shortly Pondgi emerged, pushing his way through the leaves. Sumi saw Yoshitake tailing and addressed him frankly. “Yoshitake, where on earth were you?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I got lost for a while,” Yoshitake replied.
“You said Engli were all night-blind,” Sumi laughed. “Now you’re worse.”
The soldiers snickered; Yoshitake himself also smiled, embarrassed.
The rescue party cut through the dense woods in the darkness. Sumi thought over how the plan was progressing. It was amazing that they could have crossed Payadgi-Ramree Road within a whole day and night since they had departed Taungup. He was very satisfied that they had infiltrated deep into the island, although they had paid a high price in Murakami’s life.
A hilly terrain lay between Ramree Town and the east coast, including Hill 509, where Ramree Garrison had taken up positions until February 13. In order to head for Yanthitgyi, Sumi must decide either to go over the hills or to go along the foot of the hills.
Of course, the former was the short course. But he wanted to avoid advancing into the coastal area on the very route the enemy might have taken. It was dangerous. His party might be blocked by minefields, abatis, or barbed wires installed by friends. He needed to determine the likelihood of such an ironical result since he didn’t know where the Japanese defense installations were. Now that they had called it an all-round, that position in Hill 509 should have been a fair stronghold. There was every likelihood that an enemy occupying there was utilizing it as its own. It would be a fair adventure to cut across under its nose.
Dragon of the Mangrooves Page 11
