A Mighty Endeavor

by Stuart Slade

  “Forward, quickly.”

  The cavalry officer gave the order. His men moved quickly against the position they had just incinerated. Mongkut quickly glanced to one side and the other. He could see terrible, feather-like bursts of flame as the engineers got to work. Then, the forest closed in around him and the men were pushing into the shadowed ground. It was blackened, seared and stained with a filthy, black glue that stuck to everything. There was a charred trunk on the ground, one where the bark was broken open and roasted by the flamethrower. Then, Mongkut saw the dark red inside. It wasn’t a tree but the remains of a man, burned until he was unrecognizable as anything human. All around him were bicycles; dozens of them were blackened by fire and their tires burned or melted. The Japanese infantry had ridden them into action, not knowing that they were cycling into an inferno.

  More bursts of machine gun fire erupted from the trees up ahead. Some cavalrymen went down. Others had taken up their positions and returned fire while a machine gun carrier edged through the trees until it could bring its Browning to bear. It would suppress the position until a flamethrower crew could get to work. Mongkut lost track of time and space. Lost in the green world under the trees, all he was aware of was moving forward until they met Japanese resistance. There the ghastly sights and sounds of the flamethrower attacks would be repeated.

  Sometime during the battle of the forest, Corporal Pon was killed. Mongkut was aware than the number of survivors from his unit was steadily shrinking. A section had a corporal and eight men; the battle had started with eight such sections in each platoon. Looking around, he guessed that the cavalry platoon and the engineers, plus his own unit, was barely equal to his own platoon’s original strength. The engineers were suffering too. When the horror of the flamethrowers had sunk in, the Japanese made the engineers their primary targets. Every so often, their rifle and machine gun fire would explode the pressurized cylinders of fuel on the back of a flamethrower man. Then he would be the one turned into a screaming, living torch.

  At some point in the battle, their axis of advance had swung from east to south. Mongkut realized they were driving the Japanese parallel to the river instead of back towards it. He had no idea where he was in the forest or why the unit was maneuvering the way it was. All he knew was that there was another Japanese position in front of him that had to be suppressed before its world would be turned into fire. He knew something else,; he hated the Japanese beyond anything he could imagine. They have lost this battle, it’s all over. Why must they make us fight like this when they must know they have lost the battle? Why are they forcing us to do these things? As the hatred seethed in his mind, he started to welcome the sight of the flamethrower crews burning the Japanese in their dugouts and foxholes and relish the sounds of screaming from their victims.

  Forward Headquarters, 5th Motorized Infantry Division, West Bank of the Mekong

  Lieutenant General Akihito Nakamura knew defeat looming when he saw it. He had left his headquarters the other side of the river so he could lead his division when they broke through the Thai defenses and headed into the heart of Indochina. That hadn’t happened. His division was being methodically destroyed, driven back on to a narrow spit of land where the Mekong and one of its tributaries joined. There was no way out of that position. That left only one option open to him and his division command staff. They were preparing for it now, loading themselves with hand grenades and picking up rifles so that they could make a last charge on the enemy. Perhaps, even now, one last charge will turn the tide of the battle. It has before.

  The Thais were closing in. Nakamura knew that from the closeness of the sound. Machinegun fire, artillery, the crash of grenades and the evil roar of the flamethrowers. The last sound infuriated him. How could his soldiers be expected to fight like warriors when they were burned alive in their defenses? The Thais hadn’t even charged like proper soldiers. Instead, they moved forwards slowly and patiently. Nakamura looked up at the setting sun. A few minutes and it would be night. A pity I don’t have that long. A night charge would have a better chance of breaking through. He led his men out to their last-hope attack.

  It was easy to find the front line. The noise and stench of petroleum identified it even without the orange streaks of rifle and machine-gun fire in the gathering gloom. Nakamura drew his sword and started to run towards the inbound fire. He sensed his men keeping up with them as they carried out their attack. The orange streaks were all around him, raking across his force, sending the soldiers tumbling down. One man was carrying a Japanese flag when he was struck by the bullets and sent sprawling into the ground. Two flags in the mud is enough for one day. Nakamura grabbed the staff and waved it defiantly.

  He felt heavy thuds in his chest. His legs seemed to turn to jelly. He used the staff of the flag to support himself. A ball of orange tire engulfed him.

  Headquarters, 11th Infantry (Queen’s Cobra) Division, Phoum Sam Ang

  “Second Regiment of the 11th Infantry has been effectively destroyed. Its casualties exceed seventy percent of its strength. Third Regiment is better off; they have taken about thirty percent casualties but they are suffering additional losses as they mop up isolated resistance. There’s no sign of that ending yet. The Cavalry have suffered about forty percent losses. On the other hand, the Japanese Fifth Motorized Division has been obliterated. All that’s left from the infantry regiments are the survivors scattered throughout the woods. We’ve chewed up the divisional base the other side of the river with dive bombers and artillery.”

  “Prisoners?”

  “Five, Your Highness; all wounded so badly they were unable to resist. The Japanese fought until they were killed and those that could not fight any longer, killed themselves. When their position was hopeless, they would charge our lines to certain death rather than give up.” The operations officer paused for a second before continuing. “We found the bodies of about a dozen of our men taken prisoner in the initial stages of the fighting. All murdered and their bodies mutilated.”

  The Ambassador nodded, carefully keeping her feelings to herself. She would add one extra term to the agreement with the French because of that piece of information. “The 11th Division will be withdrawn and reformed as soon as the French sign. They will be the first to receive the new equipment we are making under license.”

  She breathed out, unaware that the sound of her doing so had been shaky. “We have done well today. I want full reports from everybody. Every lesson we have learned this day about fighting the Japanese must be written down and saved. And send a copy of those reports to Chulachomklao for translation into English. I know somebody who will want to read them.

  Town Hall, Phoum Dak Pay, French Indochina

  It was a week after their first meeting, to the very minute. Admiral Jean Decoux was waiting by the table, mulling the news that had spread throughout the French High Command in Hanoi. The troops surrounded at Battambang, the cream of the Indochina Army, would have to surrender in a day or two at the most. They were out of food, out of ammunition, out of water. Further east, Thai units were already on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and moving further eastwards.

  Above all, any hope that the Japanese might impose a settlement that was something short of a disaster had gone. A whole Japanese division totally destroyed. Very heavy losses on the Thai side as well. Decoux was an Admiral, not a General, but he knew the implications of that. The battle had been hard-fought, but the Thais had kept going until they had won. They were capable of achieving more than just easy victories. That had implications for the war that was now ending. Implications epitomized by the pen in his pocket. The destruction of the Japanese division left him with no real choices in the matter.

  The Thai party entered the room, led by the woman who had been in charge before. She offered her hand to Decoux. He shook it firmly, with the respect due to somebody who wore their country’s uniform. Then the two delegations sat down.

  “Admiral, the terms of the agreement that will end t
his war remain largely unchanged since our last meeting. The new frontier will be defined as the riparian center of the Mekong River, from the Chinese border to the sea. The possession of islands in the river will be determined by which side of the riparian center they are located. All hostilities will cease. All prisoners who wish to be repatriated will be returned. No reparations will be paid by either side.”

  She paused for a few seconds.

  “There is one additional term. You may expect that Japan will occupy the remainder of Indochina at some point in the near future. We have wiped out the greater portion of their strength and that will delay their plans, but you may regard that occupation as being inevitable. At this time, they have two independent mixed brigades; one around Hanoi, the other at Hue. That is not a sufficient force for their ambitions. Their need to bring in additional forces gives you a window of opportunity that may last for some weeks or months. As part of this peace agreement, my country will offer all the French population of Indochina, yourselves and your families, sanctuary from the Japanese. Those who take advantage of this provision will be our guests until they make permanent plans for their future.”

  Decoux nodded; he had heard of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China and knew that the Ambassador’s words were true. Fear of what a Japanese occupation would mean had been a specter haunting the French administration in Hanoi and a major factor in determining their policies. “A magnanimous gesture and one for which I am deeply grateful. The terms you propose are acceptable.”

  Decoux sighed, and took the pen from his pocket. It was an elegant tortoiseshell Penol Ambassador, one given to him by his father on his acceptance by the French Naval Academy. It had been his most treasured possession since he had been a young naval cadet. He consoled himself with the thought that his orders from Vichy had been to negotiate, not to continue fighting. Those orders had assumed he was dealing with the Japanese, but they applied to this situation as well. He sighed again, then carefully signed the agreement in front of him.

  As he did so, he wondered what his actions would have been had the situation been reversed. Would I have offered sanctuary to my enemies? Or handed them over to appease a greater and more dangerous foe? That left a personal gesture that he felt forced to make. Perhaps he might have made it anyway but the offer of sanctuary for the French women and children in Indochina decided him.

  “Madam Ambassador, please accept this pen as a gift. To mark this day in the hope that all the historical circumstances that led to this bloodshed will not be repeated.”

  The Ambassador gravely accepted the gift. She used it to sign the peace agreement. Her face was impassive; inside, her mind was filled with fierce joy. For with that simple signature, the mouse had become an elephant. It was a young elephant certainly, still little more than a calf, but it was a fine, healthy young elephant and it already had the ivory stubs to mark where its tusks would be.

  But, for all its youth and the maturing it still had to do, her country was definitively an elephant.

  The Ambassador’s Private Suite, Bang Phitsan Palace, Bangkok, Thailand

  Lani quietly entered the room where the Ambassador slept, carefully not noticing the man beside her. She touched Suriyothai lightly on the arm; she awoke almost instantly.

  “Highness, Igrat is here, as you requested.”

  “See she is made welcome and tell her I will be down in a few minutes.” Lani carefully withdrew.

  The Ambassador turned to her partner and woke him with equal care. “Plaek, you should go and continue your re-election campaign. The voting will be in three days time.”

  “Will I win?” Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram was joking when he asked. Under other circumstances, the election might be open to doubt; but, after the stunning military victory in Indochina, he could not imagine himself doing anything other than winning in a landslide.

  To his surprise, the Ambassador was shaking her head.

  “It will be desperately close; but, in the end, your National Party will lose by a handful of votes to Pridi Banomyong’s Democratic Party. You will not contest the result, even though many will suggest that you should, and there will be a peaceful transfer of power. Pridi will respond by appointing you to his government.”

  “As Defense Minister?” Plaek sounded hopeful. Again, the Ambassador shook her head.

  “As Education Minister. As Defense Minister, you would be seen as the power behind the scenes and that is politically undesirable. Anyway, you’ve always had a fondness for education. Don’t worry; you’ll win the election after this one.”

  “Pridi is a socialist.” Plaek sounded doubtful.

  “He is, but I have already taken the necessary measures to keep him under control. He will speak the words, but the policies will not happen. And he will learn that his ideas do not work in the real world. He is an intelligent, honorable man and he will see what is before him. Experience will be a better teacher than any books could be.”

  Plaek Pibulsonggram nodded. The last words had been a painfully truthful reminder. The army that had been created since the 1932 coup had been blooded and learned that lessons from instructors were one thing, putting them into practice was quite another. Anyway, being the Education Minister appealed to him.

  Once he’d been in a village where the schoolteacher had been obviously incompetent. He hadn’t just been teaching the wrong things; he’d been doing them in a way that bored the children and made them unwilling to learn anything. He’d seized the teacher by the scruff of his neck and literally thrown him out of the classroom. That afternoon, the affairs of state had been put to one side while the children were taught their arithmetic by the Prime Minister himself. Suddenly his mind snapped at his own thoughts. The words ‘taught the right things’ echoed strongly.

  Suriyothai watched her lover’s face light up and was content. He’s got the message.

  An hour later, she entered the room where Igrat was reading a fashion magazine. She’d done so as quietly as she could, but Igrat had still heard her and risen to her feet.

  “Snake, words from my father. Congratulations are in order. A well-executed war.”

  “Thank you. Iggie, please, sit down. You and I have never stood on formality. Yes, the war went well, although taking down the Japanese unit was much more costly than we thought. Phillip should know that we lost 214 killed and 374 wounded fighting the French but twenty times that number fighting a much smaller number of Japanese. We killed 499 Frenchmen and wounded over two thousand, but took twelve thousand prisoner. By the time the fighting was over, we had killed over eleven thousand Japanese and took five prisoners. We were still running into resistance on the battlefield three days after the main bulk of the fighting was over. There is much to think upon there.”

  Igrat nodded while the courier part of her brain memorized the numbers. An unspoken part of her work was to keep her eyes and ears open. A street girl saw things and heard words that the diplomats and professional agents overlooked. Igrat had sensed wide acclaim among the Thai people; they looked on the victory of their Army over the French as something of a national rebirth. For the first time, Thailand had been able to extract concessions from a European power by force of arms.

  She had also sensed shock and fear as realization of the terrible casualties suffered fighting the Japanese had sunk in. She had seen the huddles of men and women gathered around the news stands looking at the lists of dead and missing. When fighting the French, the lists had been barely a column long; usually less than that. The same lists for the battles against the Japanese had gone on for pages. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank had just moved its headquarters to Bangkok. To introduce themselves, the bank had paid the Thai Rath newspaper to produce a special supplement with the names of the dead and wounded, then to distribute it free of charge. Igrat had noted that she hadn’t seen a single copy of that supplement dropped on the street or thrown away.

  Suriyothai looked at her and knew what she was thinking. “I have some documents
for you to take back to Phillip. Reports on the operations here. The originals are going via the American consulate here to the War Office but I want him to have his own copy. It is essential that your military authorities know what fighting the Japanese will be like. I’ve had them microfilmed so the weight won’t break your arm.”

  Igrat relaxed slightly. “Thanks, Snake. I’ve got some paperwork for you as well. My father wants to set up a business here, a cement company. We’re in partnership with an Australian, Essington Lewis. He’s one of us, by the way, although he doesn’t know it yet. We’re putting up the money; he’s supplying the expertise. He wants to set up a steel company as well. Between the two, we’ll be well placed to support rebuilding the city. We supply the cement; his company, the rebars.”

  “We already have a Siam Cement Company. Phillip can buy that. We’ll sell him 70 percent of the shares, with the Crown retaining the rest. I’ll have the documents prepared for you to take back. You are going straight back to the USA?”

  “Sure. Then out to Britain to see some of our friends there.” Despite the friendly conversation, Igrat was careful not to say whom. “Going to Britain needs caution these days. Every time I go there, the number of Auxiliary Police increases and they get more aggressive. Always good to take care when visiting countries where the number of people’s police exceeds the number of people’s people.”

  Suriyothai snorted slightly. “It’s not taking long, is it? Phillip always said that the first steps to tyranny are the hardest and going downhill from there is easy. By the way, that reminds me. Did you get the stuff I asked for?”

  “I did.” Igrat pushed a box over. “A dozen bottles. Excuse my asking, but what do you want it for? It’s not a problem you have.”

  The Ambassador produced a very conspiratorial smile. “It’s just a gift for somebody.”