A Mighty Endeavor

Chapter Thirteen REACHING AN UNDERSTANDING

This was a humiliation that Admiral Jean Decoux had never anticipated. In 1940, he had been appointed to the position of governor of Indochina with specific instructions to reverse the policy of appeasement towards the Japanese led by his predecessor, General Georges Catroux. When he had arrived in Hanoi, he had found that Catroux was far from being the appeaser Decoux had been told. Political realities forced them both to follow that road. Neither had received any support from the new government in Vichy and both had faced intense pressure from the Japanese. The Japanese wanted French Indochina as a base from which to strike at the rich resource areas further south. There was a further truth, one that Decoux had a harder job accepting. The government in Vichy may have condemned Catroux as an appeaser, but appeasement was the policy that demanded. In effect, his predecessor had been disgraced for obeying the instructions he had been given.

Decoux had taken that lesson on board and concentrated all his efforts on trying to resist the Japanese advance while not giving them the excuse to seize complete control by force. He had never expected this devastating blow from the west. His civil servants had assured him that displays of force would be entirely adequate to eliminate any threat from that quarter.

“Is it really as bad as they say?” Admiral Decoux needed the advice on the situation at the front. General Catroux was the only reliable source he could consult.

“It is a disaster. Another Sedan.” Catroux was a deeply worried and unhappy man. He was utterly disillusioned with the authorities in Vichy who had thrown him to the wolves and were now trying to do the same to Decoux.

“The forces in the Battambang pocket tried to link up with the smaller pocket to the north yesterday. but the attack was repulsed with losses on our side. It is like the fighting at home last year; it is the air forces that are determining the course of the war. We have lost twenty-two aircraft so far, and another dozen or more on the ground. Our fighters have been shot down and our bombers driven from the sky. The Siamese dive bombers can go where they want and do what they wish. And they are very good at their work.”

“How long do we have?” It was the most important piece of information Decoux wanted. It would determine everything else that he could achieve.

Catroux thought carefully. It was so easy to give in to despair and give up while there was still hope. Yet, it was also so easy to convince oneself there was hope when all chances of victory had faded. “A week; perhaps ten days. By then, the encircled troops will have had to surrender and we will have lost the one good card still in our hand. While they resist, we can negotiate a peace settlement on terms. Once they are gone, the Siamese will simply dictate what terms they will. At least we have one consolation. We have heard from the Swiss that the Siamese are treating the prisoners they have taken with great kindness. We should respond in kind, of course. We have fourteen of their aircrew as our prisoners and treating them as guests rather than prisoners would be wise.”

“Of course; that goes without saying.” Decoux was slightly annoyed at any suggestion the prisoners of war would be anything other than welltreated. The fact that the Thais had almost a thousand French prisoners of war in their hands took any decision on that point out of his hands.

The conversation was interrupted by the entry of the Thai delegation.

The fact that the French had arrived first and had to wait for the Thais to appear was itself an admission of who was winning this war. Decoux was startled to see the leader of the group was a woman. There had been rumors for some time that a previously-unknown woman had been commanding this offensive, but it was the first time he had actually seen her. She was short, stocky and her hair was cut short in the style favored by Thai women. One look at her and the deference given to her was enough to tell him she truly was in charge here. And not just of the Thai forces. It was her will that was driving the whole situation. Decoux could feel the force of that will from across the room.

“Admiral Decoux, General Catroux, I am the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Thailand. That title means that I have full authority to negotiate a settlement of the dispute between our countries. Let us do so now, and not waste more lives.”

The Ambassador’s French was smooth and fluent. To Decoux, who had heard his language butchered by faulty grammar and pronunciation so often, her perfect rendition was a pleasure to hear. He was sincerely distressed at having to disappoint her. “Madam Ambassador, your government has received the settlement terms dictated by the Japanese mediators of this dispute. These offer an acceptable resolution of the conflict and we base our position upon them.”

The Ambassador shook her head. The Japanese had tried to insist that these negotiations be held on board the cruiser Natori, currently in Kompong Som, but her government had flatly refused to consider that demand. “I regret to inform you that the position of the Government has not changed. The Japanese terms are not acceptable and will not be considered as a basis for a settlement of this dispute. Our terms are quite simple; we require the restoration of our borders as they were prior to your encroachment upon them from 1860 onwards. We also require our borders to be defensible. For that reason, we require the return of all our territories south of the Mekong River and the establishment of the border between Thailand and French Indochina as the riparian center of the Mekong.”

“What the devil is the riparian center?” Admiral Decoux whispered the question to General Catroux.

“The line representing the deepest part of the river in question. It’s the normal way of defining a boundary represented by a river.”

“We are sorry, Madam Ambassador. We have no choice other than to accept the Japanese proposal and reject any other. I mean that literally; we have no choice in the matter other than to accept the Japanese proposal. Or any Japanese proposal, for that matter.”

“As will you.” The words from the door cut across the Ambassador before she could start to speak. “The mediated settlement we have dictated will be accepted without change. That is our final word on the matter.”

The Ambassador stared at the man who had stormed into the meeting room. He was almost a caricature of a Japanese Army officer. Short and bald, but with a bristling moustache; his eyes behind circular rimless glasses, which exaggerated the folds. He was wearing a British-style Sam Browne belt over his Japanese Army uniform and a katana sword hung from it. She shook her head slightly. “And just who are you?”

“I am Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, direct representative of the Imperial Japanese Army.”

“Very well, Colonel Tsuji. If you have an intelligent remark to make, please do so. Otherwise, leave. I am not impressed by foolish men who pound on their hairy chests with closed fists.”

Decoux looked at the two facing each other with something close to awe. The space between them seemed to crackle with energy from their clash. He also realized something else; a blood feud was being born in front of his eyes. Tsuji’s fanatical hatred of the Ambassador was being met by her withering contempt for him. He also realized that Tsuji was confused. Decoux seriously doubted whether he had been openly defied in such a public and blatant manner before.

“I do not have a hairy chest.” Tsuji nearly screamed the words in response. To Decoux it seemed a very strange thing to say. He guessed he was missing a cultural reference that the Ambassador had used to flick a very raw nerve.

The Ambassador seemed slightly surprised. “How strange. I thought you would have taken after your mother.”

This time, Tsuji did scream with rage. He started to draw the sword at his waist. There was a rattle of bolts. The Ambassador’s bodyguards cocked the heavy Thompson submachine guns they were carrying. The Ambassador herself had reached underneath her jacket and drawn two semi-automatic pistols. Decoux recognized them as German P’08 Lugers, but they were obviously chambered for a much larger round than the usual 9mm. He guessed they were .45s. As far as he knew, only three Lugers in that caliber had been made. And this woman had two of them? She now stood there with one in each hand, looking at the sword with unconcealed and blistering contempt.

“How like the Japanese to bring a tooth-pick to a gunfight.”

Tsuji paused for a second, shuddering with the effort to control himself. Eventually, he slammed the sword back into its sheath and stared at the Ambassador with searing hatred. “You will die screaming for this.”

“My enemies have often said that.” The Ambassador’s voice was reflective and, to Decoux’s amazement, amused. “Instead, they all died; screaming soprano.”

Tsuji glared at her, turned around and stormed out. The Ambassador holstered her pistols and sat down at the negotiation table again. “My apologies, General, Admiral, for the interruption. Sadly, I believe that the unwarranted Japanese interference in our relations means that we are at an impasse now. Might I suggest we meet again in a week? At which time, I believe you may have a window of opportunity to reach an agreement that represents our mutual interests, not those of Japan. Our troops will, of course, be continuing their operations during that period.”

Decoux exhaled, suddenly realizing he had been holding his breath as long as Tsuji had been in the room. “Madam Ambassador, I don’t understand what you said to him, but I have never seen that man so angry or filled with hate.”

She smiled. “In Japan, there is a class of people called the burakumin, or eta. They are literally the lowest of the low, ranking even beneath whores, beggars, night-soil collectors and so on. They are regarded as being so disgusting that any other Japanese touching them, even those of the lowest and most degraded kind, has to be ritually cleansed of pollution. The burakumin are supposed to be distinguished by having hairy chests. There are rumors that the mother of Masanobu Tsuji was burakumin, but his father’s family covered it up to save them from unspeakable disgrace.”

General Catroux shuddered. “That man will come after you with every ounce of power at his disposal. He will throw the whole might of the Japanese forces in Indochina at your country.”

The Ambassador’s smile broadened into one of pure delight. “Oh, I do so hope so.”

Sergeant Mongkut Chandrapa na Ayuthya sighed gently and shook his head. He’d just received a rare treat, a letter from home, and he treasured its contents. Well, most of them, he thought. His daughter Sirisoon was in trouble again, for fighting at school. Again. Apparently, one of the boys had kept pulling her hair while she was repeating her lessons to the teacher. She turned on him and scratched him so badly he’d had to be sent home. He was actually quite proud of her for doing that. Most girls of her age would have just run away or cried. My daughter had turned and fought her tormentor. Come to think of it, I am actually doing much the same thing right now.

“Sergeant, I can hear something.”

Corporal Pon spoke very, very quietly. The observation point was right on the banks of the Mekong River, shielded from the water only by some tree-trunks and bushes. At this point on the river, the water flowed smoothly and steadily. Sound would reflect over it. That is probably what the Japanese were forgetting. The sounds of hammering and movement their side of the river was faint, but clearly audible.

“I hear it too. Stay alert and watch for any movement.” One good thing was that the moon was up. The Japanese would be visible in the reflections of the moonlight off the water. Mongkut was pleased with the way Pon was working out. He’d selected him for promotion on the advice of the other Sergeants, who had reminded him that a popular Corporal might be so because he was too slack on the men. They’d been right; the very qualities that had made Pon unpopular as a private had worked well for him as a corporal.

Mongkut slid backwards and made his way to the platoon command post, set well back from the river. The plan was to drop back when the Japanese attacked so that their blow would meet nothing but empty air. Then, when the Japanese were over the river and trapped on the Thai-held side, the 11th would counterattack and drive them back. There was no doubt that the Japanese would attack. Word of how the commander of the Burapha Payak Corps had insulted and publicly humiliated a very important Japanese officer had spread through the whole Army. Even better, the commander of the corps was a Princess; that had added extra spice to the story. By the time the story had finished spreading, it had been elaborated with extra details of how the Japanese officer had burst into tears at the humiliation and had been so demoralized that his men had to restrain him from committing suicide.

“Sir, we heard movement across the river. Hammering and voices speaking. I think the Japanese are assembling boats.”

Lieutenant Somchai was looking at the map spread out on his table. North of his position, the Mekong had split into a vast maze of tiny rivers, each deep and fast flowing. The combination of thousands of small islands and an ever-changing maze of waterways made launching any kind of cross-river offensive impossible. South of his position, the river split in two around a large central island. Any Japanese attack there would have to occupy the island first. They hadn’t. Further south still, the river entered another stretch dominated by rapids; a profusion of fast flowing streams and thousands of tiny, snake-infested islands. By the time the river became crossable again, it was not far north from Phnom Penh. The Thai Army hadn’t got there yet, although the fourth regiment of the 11th Infantry was advancing fast in that direction. First Regiment was on the outskirts of Siem Reap. Second and Third Regiments were here, waiting for the Japanese assault that had to hit this single, 14 kilometer stretch of the river. There was, quite simply, nowhere else the Japanese could make the crossing. Somchai knew he was only a lowly lieutenant, but he could see that this particular stretch of the Mekong was going to be strategically very important one day.

“Very well. The observation points are on full alert?”

“Yes, sir.” Mongkut noted a touch of reproof in his voice. He felt his lieutenant should have realized that would be the case; but he reminded himself that it was a lieutenant’s job to check on such things.

“Make sure they remember the orders. As soon as the Japanese start to cross they are to drop back, keeping the enemy under observation but not impeding his move forward.”

“I will remind them, sir.” Mongkut guessed what the plan was. The Japanese had shown in China that they were attack-crazy; their first reaction was always to attack an enemy in front of them. There was a long ridge a kilometer or so behind the riverbank; one that the Japanese would have to take before they could go anywhere else. Mongkut was quite sure that ridge was defended by every unit that could be brought up. The Japanese would be trapped between the defenses and the river.

The only thing that worried Mongkut was that if he, a sergeant, could see it, the Japanese officers surely could.

“We’re getting reports in from all the forward pickets. The Japanese are active all along this stretch of the Mekong. You were right, Highness.”

Suriyothai restrained herself from replying ‘of course.’ It hadn’t actually taken much effort to see that the Japanese assault had to come here. It wasn’t just that the river was crossable at this point. There was a good road network centered on this area; that would ease Japanese supply problems.

There were three airfields within a few minutes flying time. The Japanese only had one division available for the assault, so they didn’t have the manpower to do anything elaborate. Then, again, they don’t think they will need to do anything more than a simple charge. They’ve learned a lot of very bad lessons from the fighting in China. Coupled with their overweening self-confidence, they’ll destroy themselves on these defenses.

“The reinforcements are ready?” There were two regiments of the 11th Infantry spread along the ridge, dug in to bunkers and entrenchments. A regiment of the First Cavalry had arrived as well; they were the reserve in case anything went wrong. Finally, she had moved the assault engineer battalions from the Ninth, Eleventh and First Cavalry Divisions up. They had unloaded their equipment and were waiting in the dead ground just below Ridge 77. When the time came to counterattack, those assault engineers would lead the way. And may the Good Lord Buddha have mercy on the Japanese when they do.

“They are, Highness, and the artillery is in position, waiting. We have the 150mm guns on call.” General Pridi hesitated before continuing. “Highness, the combat engineers. Do we have to use them this way?”

“The Japanese are foolhardy in attack but tenacious in defense. They have shown that in China. We will break them on our defenses here but throwing them back across the river will involve hard fighting. We will have to crush their defense thoroughly. I do not intend to sacrifice one more of our soldiers than absolutely necessary. Those engineers are the key to everything.”

Suriyothai looked down on the ground that lay between the main line of the Thai defense and the river. It was invisible in the darkness but it was there. The Mekong, probably the strongest defense line in Asia. Once before, her country had held these positions; but they had been a medieval, primitive army where spears were still regarded as viable weapons. Against Europeans with breech-loading rifles, they had stood no chance. They’d had to compromise, prevaricate and appease their enemies. Now, they had tanks, artillery, machine guns, aircraft and, most important of all, the knowledge of how to use them. This, here, was the decisive battle and everything depended on it.

For a brief moment, the waterfall of colored lights filled her mind. She saw the thread of events she had first detected the previous year. It glowed strong and firm; all the threads converged here. Once this battle was won, the French would concede. Her country would have the Mekong back as its primary line of defense. Her Army would have crushed the French and the Japanese. That would provide the security and stability guarantee that would cause the Hongs to make Bangkok their base. With them would come prosperity for her people and tax income for her government. Defeating the Japanese would put her country firmly in the American camp and ensure their support. Her country’s position secured, they would become the guardian of the back door to India and thus a trusted Indian ally. And that was the opening door to a real position on the world stage. The mouse would have become an elephant.

This battle was indeed the key to everything.

They had taken off for this sweep along the Mekong just before dawn and had been patrolling the river by the time the sun came up. Flight Lieutenant Suchart Chalermkiat had taken that time to fall in love with his Mohawk IV. It was much faster than his old Hawk 75N and much more responsive on the controls. He was leading a flight of four aircraft; two more flights accompanied his. The older Hawk 75Ns had been consolidated into a single squadron and they also were patrolling the area. The briefing before take-off had been very clear. A major Japanese assault on this part of the front was expected. Their aircraft had to be cleared from the sky.

“I see them. Below, ten o’clock.”

The washed-out light gray of Ki-27 fighters stood out clearly against the dark green of the jungle that bordered the Mekong. A closer look showed the dozen Ki-32 light bombers skimming the jungle below the fighters. They’d had green mottling painted over their light gray; obviously, they’d been in Indochina longer than the fighter pilots and realized how ineffective the light gray was. It amused Suchart that he probably knew more about Japanese Army aircraft designations than most people. A few months ago, the Japanese had been trying to sell aircraft to Thailand. Several types had arrived at Thai airfields for evaluation. Suchart had taken the opportunity to look at them closely. I wonder of any of the aircraft I saw are down there.

“Take them. Suchart, lead the way.” The order from the squadron commander was terse. Suchart pushed the nose of his fighter over and started to dive. Break up and disperse the escort first, then tear the bombers apart.

The Japanese pilots were neither stupid nor ill-trained. They spotted the Mohawks early in their dive. The neat formation of three Vs scattered. When the Japanese had been trying to sell the Ki-27 to the Air Force, they’d made great play of the aircraft’s agility and its unequalled ability to turn tightly. Later, the German pilots who had been hired to train the Thai Air Force after the political climate in Germany had turned sour gave their opinions on that theory. Now, Suchart could see why they had been unimpressed.

The tight turns looked impressive, but the Ki-27s bled off energy in the process. It did not get them out of the lethal cone of fire from the Mohawks. Suchart had picked his target carefully. His six machine guns lashed out with a converging cone of tracer. The first few rounds went past the Japanese fighter’s nose. The rest walked along the fuselage. To his astonishment, the Japanese fighter blew up; disintegrating into an orange ellipse of flame as its fuel tanks erupted. The Moranes I killed never exploded like that. They took a battering before they went down.

He was through the Japanese fighter group but still in a dive, heading for the Ki-32s below. He banked right, hoping that one of the Ki-27s would see him do so and close in for the kill. Their job is, after all, to stop us getting at the bombers. To his delight, a Ki-27 took the bait and curved after him. That was why Suchart had broken right, not left. He was leading the Japanese fighter right across the nose of Suchart’s wingman. In his mirror, he saw the Japanese fighter start to fire its two nose guns. Then the stream of tracers from his wingman enveloped the little fighter. It erupted into another orange fireball. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. Their instructors had hammered it home with ruthless persistence. Wingman, cover your leader; leader, cover your wingman. That way you’ll both get home. Most of the time. Don’t make pretty maneuvers. Dive, gun, run.

The formation of Ki-32s was right in front of him. Suchart approached them from the front quarter, but that was hardly a problem. He’d been taught the art of deflection shooting against fighters; the Ki-32 was a much larger, slower target. His first few shots went past the nose again; the remainder of the fire walked along the fuselage. The effect wasn’t as dramatic as with the Ki-27s. The Ki-32 started to burn; a mix of black and gray smoke pouring from its engine. The stricken aircraft nosed over. The steepening dive only ended when it plowed into the treetops beneath. Another Ki-32 was already following it down. Suchart’s wingman had seen the opportunity and raked it with his machine guns.

A quick glance at his instrument panel showed him that the needle on his speedometer was jammed against the stop. Am I really going that fast? The Japanese formation was already well behind him, so he pulled the nose of his fighter up and started to climb. There would be time for another pass or two soon enough. The other three aircraft in his flight had already formed up around him. Suchart started the long curve that would get them back into position over the battlefield. The Japanese formation that had approached so confidently was gone, scattered to the winds. There were a dozen or more pyres of smoke from the ground. The only question was, how many of them represented a precious Mohawk lost?

Far below him, over the muddy, gray waters of the Mekong, a formation of Hawk 75Ns were strafing the Japanese boats that were pouring across the river. Suchart wondered if his old Hawk 75N was one of the aircraft attacking the boats. He dismissed the question. He had enough to worry about.

“Look at that!”

Corporal Pon was awed by the sight. The river was covered by a huge fleet of small boats, all of which were heading for the Thai-held bank. A group of Thai aircraft had swept over them, their guns firing into the swarm. It had all the effect of trying to wipe out an ant’s nest by stabbing them individually with a needle. Overhead, the rumbling roar of artillery shells dominated the scene. The vast flock of boats was pock-marked with great white towers as shells plowed into the water. Every so often, a shell would bite home. A boat would be thrown into the air; men spiralled from it as the wooden craft broke up. Yet, despite the shelling, the approach of the assault boats seemed unstoppable.

“The great fish will eat well tonight.”

The grim words were all too true, as anybody who lived near the Mekong was aware. The river was populated by giant catfish; scavengers who would eat anything. Literally anything. That was why the bodies of those who drowned in the Mekong were seldom found. Sergeant Mongkut saw something unusual in the midst of the swarm of small craft, larger vessels carrying a tank each. One of them exploded in a ball of orange flame; a 150mm shell made a direct hit on it. The rest continued their apparently inexorable advance.

“They’re bringing tanks over. We’d better get out of here.”

It was as if the Japanese heard him and decided to encourage him on his way. The sound of inbound artillery fire was quite distinct from outbound. Japanese shells hit all along the banks of the river. The shells burst in the trees and sprayed wooden fragments across the patches of clear ground.

That was all the pickets needed. Their job had been to warn the troops holding the high ground off to their left and the lower ridge that marked their center and right of any Japanese assault. That work was done. Now they needed to get back to join the main line of resistance, two kilometers to their rear. An early start, Mongkut thought, would be a good idea at this point.

He led his troops away from the river, slipping through the trees before the Japanese could arrive. To his relief, the Japanese bombardment was limited to the riverbank and treeline. He guessed that the Japanese guns were mostly 75mm weapons, firing on a flat trajectory across the river. That kind of fire was of limited value; the thick groups of trees along the bank stopped the guns firing further inland.

Once his men were away from the bank, they picked up speed as the trees thinned out. Two hundred meters away from the bank, there was a wide belt of open ground; an old farm that had been abandoned too recently for the jungle to reclaim. Mongkut saw another sergeant leading a batch of pickets back from the bank. The sight gave him a distinct feeling of relief. At least I didn’t abandon our positions too early The scattered infantry picked up speed as they jog-trotted back to the main line of resistance along Ridge 70. The last thing any of them wanted was to be caught in the open by the Japanese.

The problem was that everything had to go right.

There were no reserves for this operation. Japanese forces in Indochina were thin on the ground to start with, and this operation had already changed into a full-scale assault. Lieutenant General Akihito Nakamura knew his 5th Motorized Infantry Division was one of the most powerful in the Japanese Army. He had more than 500 trucks to move his supplies and artillery and every man in his unit had a bicycle. That gave them unprecedented mobility, especially where the density of forest precluded the use of trucks to carry his men. He also had a tank battalion, in place of the horse cavalry battalion used by less-favored divisions. That gave him twelve Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks and twenty-four Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tanks. He had enough artillery as well: 12 105mm howitzers and 24 75mm guns. With four infantry regiments organized in two brigades, the 5th Motorized was a powerful formation indeed.

There was nothing else. Apart from the 5th Motorized Division, there were two Independent Mixed Brigades in Indochina. The 21st Independent Mixed Brigade was stationed around Hanoi, while the 14th was tasked with consolidating Japanese interests in the South. The latter was technically his reserve formation for this assault, yet it was more than 150 kilometers away. Given the poor road network and virtual absence of railways to the area his division was operating in, he couldn’t expect any support from them. To make matters worse, his promised air support hadn’t shown up either. He had been told that a formation of twelve Ki-32 light bombers escorted by nine Ki-27 fighters had been sent to assist in the assault on the Thai positions, but they hadn’t arrived. It wasn’t good when things like that happened before battle was even properly joined.

He also knew what he was up against. His information was that he was attacking the Thai 11th Infantry Division. That was, according to his intelligence data, a division remarkably similar to his own. It was a square division, with four regiments; the difference was that the Thais didn’t use the intermediate brigade command level. It had trucks to tow its guns and a divisional tank battalion; although that battalion had fewer, weaker tanks than Nakamura could call upon. If both units were Japanese, this would be an even fight. Such fights rarely went well for the attacker. However, Nakamura knew he had the Japanese fighting spirit of his men to rely on. That is worth more than abstract mathematical arguments of numbers and force levels.

“Situation?” he snapped the word out to the divisional intelligence officer. “And where are those aircraft?”

“Sir, 9th Brigade is landing on the other side of the river now. They report little resistance on the riverbank, but both 11th and 41st regiments are taking casualties from enemy artillery fire and air attacks. They report no friendly aircraft over the crossing and say the Siamese are bombing and strafing them without interference.”

“Where are those aircraft?” Nakamura repeated the question with growing impatience.

The reluctance with which the liaison officer with the air units spoke filled Nakamura with apprehension. “Sir, the attack formation we launched was intercepted by at least thirty Hawk 75 fighters. They shot down six Ki-27s and seven Ki-32s and then scattered the rest. Our fighters claim twenty enemy fighters shot down.”

Well, that will be a miracle from the gods themselves, since it’s twice as many Hawk 75s as the Thais have. “Get aircraft up to support our units now.”

“Sir, we have no fighters left operational at this time. The 77th Sentai is bringing its remaining 24 Ki-27s up from Haiphong. They’ll have to land at Pakse to refuel so they won’t be operational for three or four hours at the earliest. Until then, we have only Ki-51 light bombers and a handful of Ki-48 mediums. Without fighter escort, they will be shot down.”

There are no reserves. Once again, the thought passed through Nakamura’s mind. It had the echoes of a temple bell tolling for the souls of the dead. The Thais have air superiority over the battlefield, for a few critical hours at least. But until then, we will have to do without. The Thais have already made one bad mistake. They have refused to fight us at the water’s edge. Instead they have allowed us ashore and let our units establish themselves. They will pay for that.

“Who are you?”

Lieutenant Somchai was expecting many things at this time. One of them was for Japanese tanks to appear out of the woods and advance upon him. Another was to have Japanese infantry to do the same while Japanese artillery rained shells down on his head. What he had not expected was for a farang loaded with cameras to appear in his rear.

“Robert Capa. Photographer for Life magazine. I’ve been told to stay with you and cover the action.”

The man handed over an order from the regimental commander. Somchai smiled politely, while mentally cursing the gods for lumbering him with a civilian just before a major battle. “You are most welcome, Khun Robert. You will be leaving before the fighting starts?”

Capa had a local interpreter with him, a member of Life’s local bureau, who translated the question and relayed the photographer’s response. “I could hardly cover the action if I did that, could I? Do not worry, Lieutenant. I covered the Spanish Civil War and the fighting in the Desert. I’ll stay out of your way.”

Somchai looked at him doubtfully, but orders were orders. “Then please take cover. Japanese tanks are coming.”

It was an odd fact. Perhaps the direction of the wind or the way sound reflected from the ground, but the squeal of metal as the tanks edged through the woods below was clearly audible, even through the howl of shells overhead and the rumble of explosions from the artillery bombardment of the Japanese landing force. The fluke sound effect lasted for only a minute or two. It was drowned out by another formation of dive bombers appearing.

Somchai watched them peel over and dive on the Japanese positions. Even at this distance, the sound of their dives and the wailing of the sirens fitted to their undercarriages drowned out everything else. They were concentrating on the artillery batteries, trying to eliminate them before the fighting really got started. For that, Somchai was profoundly grateful. This was going to be bad enough without the Japanese having their artillery operational as well.

He was so intent on seeing the dive bombers at work that he missed his forward pickets breaking out of the treeline, running for the ridge. They were half way towards the defenses dug along Ridge 70 when spurts of dirt started to erupt around them. The leading edge of the Japanese infantry had to be close. How did they close up so fast?

It was a hard thing holding fire while his pickets were brought under fire, but the cost of revealing his positions this early would be worse. In any case, the range was a little too long for the Japanese rifle fire to be really effective. A few men were hit, but the others picked them up and helped them to cover. Somchai breathed a little more easily; then suddenly realized that he was impatient for the Japanese assault to start. Waiting for the blow to fall was sapping at his nerves.

“Sir, the Japanese are right behind us. They’re riding bicycles through the forest.” Somchai turned slightly to face Sergeant Mongkut. The man was out of breath from the run back to the main formation and he was trying to compose himself.”

“Did you see the tanks?”

“No, sir. We heard them though.”

“Very good, Sergeant. Rejoin your men and make ready. It is time the Japanese were taught that they are not the only men in Asia who know how to fight.” Somchai thought for a second. That sounded suitably inspiring.

That was when something very strange happened. The whole world seemed to go completely silent. The artillery fire directed at the Japanese positions on the far bank, the buzz of aircraft overhead, everything seemed to pause for a second. In one of the slit trenches, Capa took a look and dived for cover. Somchai guessed that, after covering all the wars he had, Capa probably knew what was happening. Somchai followed his example. His men saw him taking cover, assumed he knew what he was doing and followed his example. The silence only lasted a few seconds.

There was an intense howl of inbound artillery as the concentrated artillery of the 5th Motorized Infantry Division opened up on the positions along Ridge 70. It was followed a split second later by the crash and howl of the Thai artillery opening on the unmasked Japanese batteries.

Somchai curled up in the bottom of his slit trench. He had dug it in absolute conformity with the instructions he had been given. It was as narrow as possible, so that fragments from shells exploding around him would have as small a window for entry as possible. He’d hollowed out the bottom so there was an overhang to protect him from shells that exploded overhead. For all that, he knew that if one of the 105mm howitzer shells scored a direct hit, all the careful digging in the world wouldn’t save him from the blast. He knew that his trench still gave him an excellent chance of survival against any reasonable kind of bombardment. It just didn’t seem that way, now that the shells were actually arriving.

He knew something else. As an officer, he had to be aware of what was going on and make ready to receive the impending assault. He sneaked a look out at the ground in front of him. The shells threw up clouds of muddy fragments that looked like leaves falling in a windstorm. Combined with the smoke from the explosions, he could hardly see anything. The noise was so deafening, it was impossible to make sense of anything else. Then, the hail of shells seemed to slacken. Visibility cleared. Across the couple of hundred meters that separated him from the treeline, formations of Japanese infantry were running towards him. Between the infantry groups were Japanese tanks.

Somchai knew his voice would still not carry well enough to alert his men. There was an answer to that. The shrill blast of his whistle penetrated the bedlam around him. He heard the sound taken up by his NCOs as they led the men out of their foxholes and took up positions to beat back the assault.

The heavy artillery fire had lifted. Now the shells were landing in the gap between Ridge 70 and Ridge 77 a kilometer to the rear. That didn’t mean that the forward positions weren’t getting hit; merely that they were now under direct fire from the Japanese 70mm infantry guns, not indirect fire from the 105mm howitzers on the other side of the river. Sergeant Mongkut wasn’t actually sure than was an improvement. The shells were still arriving. Now they were being deliberately aimed at points of resistance. He sighted down his rifle, looking through the showers of mud and debris and the clouds of smoke. Japanese troops were pouring out of the treeline. They were already starting to cross the open space that separated the trees from the Thai positions. His squad had a pair of Lewis guns, one for each of the two nineman sections. The gunners were waiting for the whistle blast that would tell them to begin their work.

The Maxim guns fired first. Mongkut could hear their long tattoo of fire. The guns swept backwards and forwards across the Japanese troops. There were two Maxim guns per platoon, a total of 24 for the battalion. Mongkut knew the officers had spent most of their time making sure they had been properly placed and well protected. They were they key. As long as they remained firing, the Japanese could not survive an attempt to cross the open ground. The Japanese knew that as well.

Watching the groups of Japanese advance, Mongkut saw them being tumbled down by the machine guns. He also saw something else; small groups of Japanese taking cover. He knew from the information that had been passed down the line that each Japanese platoon had three 50mm mortars. They were more grenade throwers than mortars; sacrificing shell weight and range to lighten the weapon so that it could be carried around by the infantrymen and taken into battle. Their specific job was to take down the heavy machine guns. That was just what they were starting to do. That made them a priority target.

The explosions were small, but the Japanese crews had spotted the Maxim guns. The mortarmen were very good. Their shells were on target. The steady rhythm that was cutting down the assault infantry wavered. Now the Lewis guns would come into their own. Mongkut smacked Corporal Pon’s helmet and shouted into his ear. The battlefield noise was so intense Pon could barely understand what was being said. But he saw where Mongkut was pointing. He was where he belonged, right alongside his Lewis gun. The light machine gun started stabbing out short bursts. That took fine judgement. The bursts had to be long enough to be effective, short enough to conceal the fact another machine gun had joined the battle. The bursts silenced the mortar. Fire from the nearest Maxim steadied as the harassment of the mortar fire ended.

Now it was the turn of Mongkut’s platoon to be on the receiving end of the galling mortar fire. The small shells weren’t really big enough to be a serious threat, but they were a nuisance. There was a big difference between a threat not being serious and not existing. He was being splattered with mud from the little shells. It was only a question of time before one of the splats was from a fragment of shell casing. To make matters worse, the burst of fire from his Lewis gun attracted the attention of the infantry guns. Their larger, much more lethal, shells had started to impact around his positions. The shriek of their shells was almost as terrifying as the bursts, but Mongkut knew that the sounds of shells arriving had never killed anybody. Blast and steel fragments were different. They were all around him. Where is our artillery? Where are our infantry guns? Why aren’t they silencing the enemy guns? Have they run away?

In front of him, barely 50 meters out, the Japanese emerged from the clouds of debris-laden smoke. Not the ordered waves that had left the treeline, but groups of men who ducked and weaved as they ran towards the Thai positions. Another whistle blast pierced the roar of the artillery fire and the hammering of the machine guns. Mongkut sighted on a Japanese infantryman. He squeezed off a round, cursing the useless dustcover that encumbered the action of his rifle as he worked the bolt. The man went down, but Mongkut believed he had simply gone to ground.

The deafening roar of the fighting was supplemented by high-pitched metal squeals and the growl of an engine. A Japanese Chi-ha tank approached. Its green and orange-red paint seemed to blend in with the smoke and explosions around it. The tank fired its short-barrelled 57mm gun at the positions in front of it; the hull machine gun sprayed the area in general.

This was what tanks are supposed to do. Mongkut knew that. They brought their gun up to close range so that they could combine a heavy shell with pinpoint accuracy. That helped the infantry cover the open ground and chew a hole through the defenses. He didn’t see where the first two or three shells went. He did see the one that exploded in the pit used by one of his Lewis guns. He saw something circling up through the air. For a moment, he thought it was part of the stricken Lewis gun. It landed not far from him. He saw it was a foot, still inside its regulation Thai Army boot.

The Chi-ha lurched and started to move towards the entrenchments. Mongkut saw brilliant flashes as rifle and machine gun rounds bounced off its armor. The tank seemed to ignore them. An explosion on the front of the tank seemed to push it backwards. One of the battalion’s 75mm infantry guns had waited for just the right moment to hit the tank from just the right angle. The Chi-ha stopped dead; burning furiously from the devastating shell hit that had torn its front open. Mongkut felt bitterly ashamed of what he had thought about the artillerymen just a few seconds earlier.

The Japanese infantry were still coming; still moving towards Mongkut and his men. He aimed again. This time, his bullet struck his target squarely in the chest. He could even see the little puff of dust from the front of the man’s jacket and the spray of blood behind him as it left his body. Incredibly, the man was still coming. Mongkut worked the bolt on his rifle and fired again. This time his target went down.

There was hardly any time or space left. A Japanese officer came straight at him, swinging his sword back in preparation for a deadly blow. Mongkut fired his rifle. He hit the Japanese officer in the shoulder for all the good that seemed to do. Then, he blocked the swing of the sword. The katana sheered deep into the wooden furniture of his rifle; he felt the shock as the blade bit home. Having blocked the swing, he thrust with his bayonet. Mongkut saw his victim run right onto the point. His arm was flung back. The katana flew through the air, and his hat was hurled high above his head. Mongkut saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. He had much more important things to worry about. The officer had doubled up around the point, fouling the bayonet and dragging it down. By then, Mongkut had another round in the chamber. The recoil as he fired it pulled the bayonet clear of the officer’s body.

The trench line was a primeval bloodbath. Japanese leaped into rifle pits and trenches. The fight was a brutal match of men in blood-splattered green or khaki gouging, clubbing and tearing at each other. One Japanese soldier had Corporal Pon down and was pounding at his face with his fist. Mongkut grabbed the Japanese by the neck and pulled him backwards, dragging him off the corporal. Another figure in jungle green swung at the Japanese with a meat cleaver and ripped open the man’s chest. Even through the dirt and blood, Mongkut recognized the battalion cook. There was no time to ask questions. The Japanese were everywhere. Every man was needed. The meat cleaver was designed for this kind of butchery.

Mongkut moved along the trench line, stabbing and battering anything not dark green. In this confined area, his rifle was useless. He had drawn his entrenching tool. Its weight and carefully sharpened edges provided a much better weapon. It crushed heads or sunk deep into chests. He swung blow after blow. It was now literally dripping with blood and things that Mongkut dared not name. By then, he had lost track of time and space. He didn’t know where he was or how long the fight in the trenches had been going on. All he knew was whether there was a khaki-clad target in front of him or whether it was time to go and find another one. He wasn’t even aware that his men had formed up behind him and were methodically sweeping their sector of the trenches clear.

General Nakamura took another long look at the map in his command tent. It wasn’t supposed to be happening like this. Japanese willpower and fighting spirit always carried all before it. The map was starting to show otherwise.

It wasn’t that the casualties had been much heavier than he had expected. The ground in front of the Thai positions was carpeted with Japanese dead, but the soldiers were expendable. They could be replaced by conscripts for the cost of a postage stamp. It was that the Thais hadn’t fled when the assault had reached their positions. This hadn’t happened before. A few bombs from some aircraft, a few rounds of artillery and a determined charge supported by a light tank or two would send the Chinese Army reeling backwards.

This time, his men were locked in battle in the defense lines against an enemy that would not give up. Several times, in several places, his infantry had broken through the defenses, only to find a Thai officer had grabbed a few men and assembled a blocking force. Cooks, clerks, truck drivers, messengers, anybody who could hold a weapon, had been thrown into the battle. That small group of men would hold back the breakthrough until a reserve force could arrive on the scene and drive his men back into the bloody swirling chaos of the trench-fighting.

“Sir, we need to commit the 21st Brigade right away.”

Major General Masao Watanabe, commander of the 21st Brigade, could envisage what was happening in the maelstrom that was engulfing Ridge 70 without being told the details. The whole of 9th Brigade was committed to the battle there. He doubted very much if anything was left of the 11th Regiment. That unit had spearheaded the assault and it had probably been cut to pieces. The survivors had probably made it to the Thai lines and died there, but they would have disabled the defenses long enough for 41st Regiment to get across no-man’s land with far less loss. It was probably 41st Regiment that was engaged in the bloody battle of attrition taking place up there now. Watanabe believed that if he could bring both the regiments of his 21st Brigade in a coordinated blow at the same sector of the line, they could smash right through.

“One more good, hard push will do it.”

Nakamura looked at the maps. He could see the same thing that Watanabe could. The Thai defenses on the ridge were bending under the ferocity of the Japanese assault, yet not yielding enough to allow the breakthrough he needed. On those grounds alone, hurling 21st Brigade into the battle on the ridge was a road to victory.

Yet, there were things worrying him about this battle. They didn’t end with the lack of any reserves. Most of the Thai artillery had stopped pounding the crossing areas and moved to supporting the infantry defenses. They still had heavy artillery that was concentrating on the Japanese batteries. Nakamura had heard the shells and seen the blast; they were 150mm guns at least. The Thais also had control of the air over the battlefield. Their aircraft were arriving in relays. As soon as one group had finished bombing and strafing, they would withdraw and another group take over. Their fighters had driven off the Japanese defenses and it would still be hours before reinforcements arrived.

There was another reason Nakamura hesitated to release 21st Brigade. The Thai position along Ridge 70 was anchored on the Mekong at one end and on a mass of high ground at the other. Much of the galling artillery fire slowly destroying the Japanese batteries was coming from that high ground. That implied more Thai troops up there. Nakamura had elected to ignore those hills when he launched his assault. The hills didn’t go anywhere; if he’d taken them, they’d simply expose a further stretch of the Mekong. He would have sacrificed much of his division simply to widen his hold on the river bank, leaving no reserves to exploit the crossing. To get anywhere, he had to take Ridge 70. But the Thais could use those hills to launch an attack on his right flank. If he committed 21st Brigade to the assault on Ridge 70 and that happened, they would roll up his entire division.

That was a prospect he could not accept.

Nakamura was in an agony of indecision. His only chance of breaking through was to throw 21st Brigade at the ridgeline; doing so left him wide open to the flanking attack he feared. Holding 21st Brigade against that flanking attack would mean that the chance of a breakthrough on the ridge was seriously in doubt. His thought train was stopped in its tracks by a dreadful screaming wail. Nakamura knew what it was from the films he had seen of the fighting in Poland and France. There were dive bombers overhead. They were already in their near-vertical dives on his headquarters. Their engines and sirens howled as they dropped on their target. One thing the films had never made clear was just how devastating the sound of the dive bombers was to those about to be on the receiving end of their attack.

“They’re down there.”

Wing Commander Fuen’s gunner/radio operator shouted the words through the speaking tube to his pilot. The snarl of the engine and the whistle of the wind through the struts and wires separating the wings of the biplane made communication between the crewmembers difficult. Fuen hadn’t thought of that when he had evolved the air-ground coordination now winning this war.

Fuen wasn’t quite sure what was down there; only that it was important in the eyes of the forward observer sitting on Hill 223. That was the key to the whole system. The ground observer was the final word on what targets should be attacked. The pilots did as they were told. That was why a Wing Commander was taking orders from a Flying Officer. That had been one of the hardest battles Fuen had fought, making pilots understand that for ground support to be effective, it had to be controlled from the ground.

Fuen speculated quickly on why the forward air controller had selected this particular target. The man was perfectly placed; if Fuen had designed this battlefield, he would have put Hill 223 exactly where it was. It commanded the stretch of the Mekong that was suitable for crossing and a wide swathe of the country to the north. Probably he had seen people going to and fro to mark a headquarters, or an artillery battery making practice on the Thai positions. Whatever the target was, it wouldn’t be that much longer.

It was time. He flipped his sirens on, then pulled the stick back and rolled in the classic wingover into a vertical dive that was already becoming the trademark of the dive bomber. Behind him, each of the aircraft in his flight followed suit. They formed a long chain aimed at the target below. As it grew larger, Fuen saw that it wasn’t an artillery battery, even though nearly all the missions flown this day had been aimed at taking out the Japanese artillery. This one was just a collection of tents and vehicles.

A headquarters? Perhaps even THE headquarters? Fuen had high hopes. The Japanese had been spoiled by China. Only now were they learning what it was like to fight under a sky dominated by hostile aircraft. They concealed their headquarters and other vital targets well against observation from ground but were careless about being seen from above. Every army should fight at least one battle under hostile air attack.

The target was swelling fast. Fuen selected the largest group of tents. His bombsight was centered perfectly on them. A gentle press on the bomb release sent his six 50-kilogram bombs into the complex. By the time they hit, he was already hauling back on the control column, pulling out of the wild dive. He was skimming the jungle when he did so, moving fast from the pyre of smoke that marked the target.

There had been a loud bang during the dive; he thought his aircraft had been hit by gunfire. One of the wing struts had broken. The fabric around it was torn and flapping. Not so good. Still, we have to overfly the target on our way back to Nakhorn Phanom. His flight around him, Fuen led the way back to the target. The four V93s swept over the base; their four forwardmounted machine guns raked the area. Fuen saw the great rising sun flag and another he couldn’t recognize still standing. That has to change. His machine guns riddled the flags and chopped down the pole they flew from. As they roared over the toppling pole, his rear gunner added another long burst to the mayhem below.

An hour later he was standing with a maintenance sergeant, looking at the damaged wing. The wing strut had broken up further and the fabric was a mess. “Must have caught a bullet.”

“Possibly. There might be another explanation.” The Sergeant spoke carefully, but damage like this was becoming more common each day. He believed his Wing Commander had to know that. “I think the structure of the wing failed first and that broke the wing strut. Not the other way around. The strain of all these dive bombing attacks is more than they were designed for.”

Fuen nodded. The V93 had never actually been designed as a dive bomber. They would have to serve that way though, until the promised American dive bombers arrived. “You may well be right. Fix it, Sergeant. The Army still needs us.”

General Nakamura hauled himself out of the slit trench he had occupied and watched the biplanes vanishing on their way back to base. The warrior within him had to admire the attack and the way it had been carried out. The man within him had to wish they’d carried it out on somebody else. His headquarters had been devastated by the bombing and strafing. The tents were all down. Some were just shredded; others burning. The vehicles had been hit hard. The last two dive bombers released their loads directly into the park. The whole area was burning from the contents of ruptured fuel tanks.

“General Nakamura, sir.” General Watanabe was nearly in tears. “Our flags sir; our flags.”

Nakamura suddenly realized that the two flags that had dominated his headquarters area were gone. Then he saw the shattered wreckage of the flagpole and the tattered rags that surrounded it. The flags, our colors; given to the division by the Emperor himself. Lying in the mud like discarded rags. What would the Emperor say should he hear of such disrespect?

The sight of his division’s colors lying in the mud settled Nakamura’s mind. Japanese officers were indoctrinated with a maxim that dominated every other. ‘When in doubt, attack. Even an extemporized attack will seize the initiative and then the fighting spirit of the Japanese soldier will bring victory.’ That made the way clear and he wondered how he could ever have forgotten it.

“Watanabe, lead 21st Brigade in an attack on the enemy positions along Ridge 70.”

“Here they come again.”

The shout along the trenches filled Sergeant Mongkut with despair. The trenchline was a mass of bodies. Thai jungle green mixed with Japanese khaki in a chaotic tangle. Most of the bodies were hideously mutilated as a testament to the ferocity of the fighting. The use of clubs, spades, knives and swords at body-contact range was never likely to produce a pretty or attractive scene. Mongkut thought that his trench looked like a slaughterhouse after a bomb had gone off in it. That was, after all, a fair description of what it was.

One of the Japanese figures in front of the trench was moving, wounded but still alive. The platoon medic, still miraculously alive despite the carnage in the trench, started to climb up to go out to him. Robert Capa grabbed his foot.

“Don’t do it. I saw the Japs try that in China.”

The medic was confused, unable to understand English or why he was being stopped from aiding the wounded. Capa realized the problem. He picked up a rifle from one of the dead. He worked the bolt, took careful aim and fired a single shot that hit the wounded man in the head. As he died, his hand relaxed. The hidden hand grenade rolled clear and exploded.

“The Jap just wanted to take you with him. Don’t ever go near a wounded Jap. Just shoot them in the head from a safe distance.”

Mongkut didn’t quite understand the words. He spoke a little German from their instructors and a little French; English was unknown to him. But, the message was quite clear and it appalled him. Up to then, the French and Thai troops had tended to each others’ wounded as if they were their own and gone out of their way to respect the sanctity of the Red Cross. We’d treated prisoners and the wounded with respect. Why were the Japanese so different?

His train of thought was interrupted by sounds from a road behind him. He glanced sideways and saw an armored vehicle moving into position. A small one, but it had a water-cooled machine gun mounted on its front; one that could be fired from behind armor. Mongkut recognized it, a CardenLloyd machine gun carrier. Men were riding on it; men clad in Thai jungle green but distinguished by the bright yellow scarves of cavalrymen. They quickly spread out along the trench, reinforcing the savagely depleted ranks of the 11th. Behind them, in the area shielded by the ridge, more trucks were pulling up. Men debussed and formed up. They had the brown scarves of combat engineers. At least a battalion of them.

The sound of bugles from in front of his position focussed his attention on the Japanese again. More were pouring out of the treeline below, their flags flying and bugles sounding. Mongkut couldn’t help feel that the cavalry had arrived in the nick of time. Perhaps the Hollywood westerns were right after all?

The numbers pouring out of the forested slope below were impressive. Mongkut believed there was at least a full regiment already moving up the slopes and more were continuing to pour out. It was obvious to him that, without the cavalry reinforcements, the new attack would have overwhelmed the remains of his own regiment.

The Second Regiment of the 11th Infantry had lost most of its heavy machine guns in the first Japanese assaults. First of First Cavalry more than made up for the loss. Their Browning guns, mounted behind armor, methodically swept across the Japanese lines, cutting down the men as they crossed the open ground. Once again, the Japanese mortar squads started to fire their bombs at the machine gun positions. Tthis time, they had little success. As they started to get the range, the machine gun carrier would back clear and move to another position. The little 50mm mortars used by the Japanese were effective against normal machine gun nests, but lacked the power to take down an armored vehicle.

Faced with unrelenting machine gun fire and the concentrated artillery of two infantry and a cavalry regiment, the attack bogged down. The Japanese troops were half way across no man’s land, the area between their bounce off positions in the treeline and their objective. They could get no further. The fire from the cavalry regiment, supported by what was left of the infantry, was too intense. The divisional artillery that should have supported them had been decimated by counter-battery fire and air attacks. They were securing positions in dips and hollows and trying to move forward in short bursts, covered by fire from the rest of the attacking force. That took time. There was no doubt, the momentum of the Japanese charge had been broken.

“Sergeant, get your men together and follow us.” A cavalry officer snapped out the order. The machine gun carriers started to move forward. They drew fire as they did so. The Japanese soldiers made targets of themselves in the process. The machine gun carriers brought under fire started to squeeze out long bursts at the Japanese positions, suppressing the incoming fire.

Mongkut watched the cavalrymen working with their machine gun carriers with envy. In the battles he had fought with the French, support from even lightly-armored vehicles would have made things so much easier. Each machine gun carrier would pin down the Japanese while the cavalrymen worked close enough to throw hand grenades into their positions. Slowly and methodically, the Japanese were crowded back from their advanced positions into their original lines.

“The Japanese have committed their second brigade to the assault on Ridge 70. Sending in our reserves there has meant that their attack has bogged down. The latest report is that the Cavalry are pushing them back. Now is the time, Your Highness.”

The Ambassador nodded. She looked at the map spread out before her. The Japanese were too skilled, too experienced to leave their flank hanging completely open. There had to be some troops covering the approaches from the high ground currently occupied by 3rd Regiment, 11th Infantry. She guessed it would be no more than a company; probably one from the divisional headquarters troops. All the regular infantry were either dead or committed to the battle on Ridge 70.

“Order the third regiment to advance on the flank of the Japanese positions along Ridge 73. One infantry battalion to detach and capture Hill 151, supported by a battalion of the engineers.”

She looked again at the map. Ridge 73 met Ridge 70 at a right angle. Hill 151 formed the pivot between the two. It was an odd position. Hill 151 was a critical piece of terrain, but only if both Ridge 70 and Ridge 73 were also held in strength. If those conditions were met, the Japanese would be trapped in a bowl; their rear blocked by the Mekong, their left flank anchored against another, smaller river that fed into the main waterway.

A further advance from Ridge 73 on their right flank would roll them up.

Japanese resistance was stiffening as the Thai troops approached the woodline north of Ridge 70. It wasn’t that the individual troops were fighting with greater determination. As far as Sergeant Mongkut could see, that wasn’t possible. To the best of his knowledge, not one Japanese soldier had surrendered. They’d stayed in their defensive positions and held their ground until they were killed.

He honestly couldn’t understand it. The instructors had taught their Thai students that positions should only be held until they were untenable. It was much more effective to abandon such positions and retake them later than to lose men in a hopeless defense. The Japanese obviously did not believe in that doctrine. Even their most hopeless positions had been held until every man in it was dead. There was no such thing as bypassing positions or maneuvering them out. The Japanese had to be dug out and killed, one by one.

“Sergeant, the engineers are moving in. We must cover them.” The cavalry lieutenant obviously knew what he was doing. Mongkut recognized that, but he wasn’t his lieutenant and he glanced around looking for some guidance.

“Lieutenant Somchai is gone, Sergeant. He never made it out of the trenches.” Corporal Pon was wounded, his face swollen and battered with one eye closed and his front teeth missing. Blood stained his jaws and the front of his uniform and his voice was hard to understand.

Mongkut nodded, acknowledging both the news of Somchai’s death and the orders he had been given from the cavalry officer. The sacrifice of the troops that had been trapped in the open had bought the Japanese time to build defenses in the woods. Tracer fire streamed out from a defense position, ricocheting off the Carden Lloyd carrier. The vehicle responded with a long burst from its Browning. A pair of engineers started to move forward. They kept perilously close to the tracer fire and used its suppression to get close enough to the source of the Japanese gunfire.

What happened next horrified Mongkut in a day already been filled with nightmares worse than he could ever have imagined. A long stream of orange fire erupted from the engineer team and arched into the Japanese defenses. The flamethrower operator was well-trained. He started squeezing bursts out in quick succession. Balls of red-orange rolled into the woods. The roar of the flamethrower was bad enough. Worse were the hideous screams from the Japanese positions. The occupants of their position ran out of the woods, living torches soaked in fire from their heads to their feet. They could hardly be seen in the inferno that consumed them. All Mongkut could see was the black outlines of the men as they writhed and burned. All he could smell was the ghastly stench of burning flesh and the petroleum fuel of the flamethrower.

“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.

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 fire engulfed him.

“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.

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 this 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.

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 wellexecuted 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.”

“God, this chicken is good. Makes the wait worthwhile.”

Sergeant Dirk Klaas looked at the African woman running the roadside food stand. “Look, we really are sorry about that kid. We’d have stopped if we could, but a big truck like that, towing a gun….”

It had been a simple road accident, almost mundane. The column of South African trucks had been heading south, on their way to an embarkation port, when a young child had run right out in front of the convoy. The lead vehicle had absolutely no chance to stop. It had run him over. The vehicle behind had done the same and so had the one behind that. By the time the convoy had stopped, the child was very obviously very, very dead. The local police had arrived and started to take statements, but Klaas had noted nobody seemed to care very much. One woman was weeping quietly, but that was all. From her age, she was probably the child’s mother.

“Don’t you distress yourself, Sergeant.”

Klaas noted she had his rank right and spoke good English. Missiontaught, no doubt. “Nobody liked that little monster. Uppity child, always telling everybody what to do. More chicken? I can do you a special price if all your men buy from me.”

The South Africans were milling around the market place while the accident report was finished. The chicken stand was, in Klaas’s opinion, by far the best food there. “I’ll tell you what, Mother. You give us a right price, and we’ll buy enough to eat now and also for our meal this evening.”

The woman beamed at the polite address and named a price. Klaas called his men over. She had a plate of samples waiting. They were enough to convince the platoon that this was indeed a deal that should not be missed. A few minutes later, the stand was the scene of frenzied activity as her family got to work making up the biggest order for cooked chicken her business had ever seen.

“Sergeant?” A painfully young South African officer was calling him. “The police have finished interviewing the truck drivers. They are reporting this as a sad accident caused by a child not being taught to respect traffic properly. Between you and me, most of the village does not seem too sympathetic to the family and the child was very unpopular with the others

here. Anyway, the division has made a compensation payment to the mother and that has closed the affair. You organized all this chicken for your men? Good move; spending money like this will soothe any hurt feelings in the village.”

“It’s really good chicken, sir. Try a piece.”

The officer did so. a look of sheer delight spread across his face. “My God, man; you’re not joking. Mother, when this order is done, can you make up another for me? The divisional headquarters will have a feast tonight.”

“It will be done, sir.” The woman watched her children redouble their efforts to increase grilled chicken production while making sure they didn’t take short cuts that would affect the quality of her product.

Around the back of the hut, the execution of chickens was reaching holocaust proportions. The family head was ecstatic at the sheer volume of business. He was already working out how to build his family a new home on the profits. He suddenly realized this could be the start of something big. He called out to his wife, “Nyarai, look after our guests well and they will bring many more back. And give the sergeant and his officer some free bottles of beer. You see, that horrible little boy was of some use to the village after all.”

Lieutenant Piet van der Haan was careful to hide his smile. As divisional intelligence officer, he spoke Kikuyu perfectly.

“And so, Madam Ambassador, I would like to formally welcome you to the new headquarters of Jardine Matheson. We’re up and running as the formal headquarters of the Princely Hong as of today. All our key staff and all our records are here. Our agents and clients know that this is where the decisions are made. All the other Hongs are either already here or following. By the end of the year, there’ll be nothing left in Hong Kong except empty buildings.” Simon Keswick hesitated; leaving anything behind for the Japanese upset him. “I wish we could bring them over too.”

“Have you somewhere comfortable to live?” Suriyothai well understood how valuable this alliance would be and it had to work. As much depended on this as it had on the war in Indochina.

“A very fine household, rented on a 99-year lease. And the accommodations you have found for our Chinese staff are more than acceptable. You have worked hard for us, Madam, and your efforts are appreciated. As are those of your army.” Keswick spoke the latter with a dry sense of humor.

The Japanese Fifth Division wouldn’t be capable of doing anything other than rebuild itself. Another division would have to be moved to Indochina to replace it. That meant the planned operation against Hong Kong would be delayed for months. The time so bought had been invaluable in making an orderly move. “I am sure Swire, Hutchinson-Whampoa, HSBC and all the other Hongs will be equally appreciative. It is a pity Lloyds of London have chosen to center their international operations on Bombay, but they were already established there…”

The Ambassador looked out the window at Thanom Witthayu and the construction work going on. The canal down the center had been filled in and the road turned into a modern, hard-surfaced, divided highway to join the city’s administrative center with the explosively growing international business area here. Across the street, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank had its ‘headquarters’ in a dilapidated wooden house. They had gone to great lengths to be the second Hong to make Bangkok its home. Next to that existing building, foundations for their new office block were already being poured.

Less than a year into the great revolution she had planned and already her city was being fundamentally changed. The buildings going up were a symbol of that. Once, at six stories, this office building had been the largest in the city. It would be dwarfed by the new ones going up along Thanom Witthayu and Thanom Sukhumvit. Already, Jardine Matheson were planning a new and much larger headquarters. Phillip is right; we are going to need a lot of cement.

There was a copy of the latest issue of Life magazine on the conference room table. The cover picture had been taken by Robert Capa. It showed a Thai infantry sergeant bayoneting a Japanese officer. Capa had caught the moment perfectly. The sergeant was in a classically perfect bayonet thrust. The long blade transfixed the officer; its end clearly visible beyond the man’s back. The officer was arching backwards from the force of the thrust; his cap hurled from his head and his sword flying through the air. The caption ‘Japan Meets Its Match’ was, in the Ambassador’s opinion, premature. But, Life hadn’t had access to the long casualty lists from the 11th Infantry to temper its judgement when the front page had been set.

“You kept your promise, Highness.” Keswick looked at the picture also. “All your promises. Your Army fought better than anybody expected. But, I do not think that sergeant will sleep well for many nights to come.”

“You are not concerned about our new Prime Minister?” The change in government had been politically essential, but she was worried about the effects it might have on the business community.

“Khun Pridi? Not at all. He is a good and honest man, an excellent Prime Minister. And one who knows his duty.”

The Ambassador and the Taipan smiled at each other. As always, they understood each other perfectly.

“I know Pridi. A good man, he studied law at the Sorbonne.”

Cordell Hull was ready to acknowledge the merits of a fellow-lawyer. The result of the elections and the ensuing peaceful transfer of power from the National to the Democratic Party had surprised him. He had honestly expected the National Party to win a massive majority, even without rigging the results. That it had not done so forced him to admit that he had seen everything he could have wished, a democratic government, the Japanese defeated and their allies driven back. The situation in the region had been stabilized; temporarily, at least. Even more importantly, with its back door protected, the Indians had felt secure enough to turn a blind eye to the supplies being shipped into Rangoon and then sent to China via the Ledo Road.

“Very progressive in economic matters.” Henry Morgenthau echoed Hull’s feelings. “I have their initial list of proposed purchases from the line of credit we are extending to them. Almost all civilian-sector industrial development. New power stations figure prominently. They want an asphalt plant for road construction and a new University. The University of Chicago has been approached to partner with them and set up their courses. They are also asking us for funding to set up an institute to research and develop snakebite antitoxins.”

“No military equipment?” Stimson was curious.

“Some. Biggest item is 24 DB-7C torpedo bombers for a new naval air arm. They’re the same as the ones the Dutch ordered for the East Indies. Otherwise, they are ordering some more tanks in addition to the M2 lights.”

“Which ones?” Stimson was worried about that. The U.S. Army was desperately short of tanks itself. Even losing a hundred of the obsolete M2s had been a painful blow to an army that was frantically trying to mechanize.

“They want enough M3 medium tanks to equip a battalion.”

Stimson sucked his teeth. He didn’t think much of the M3 design; it was an interim product until a better vehicle was designed, but it was the only medium in prospect for a while. “We’ll have to take that under advisement. The DB-7Cs won’t be a problem. Anything else?”

“Artillery. They want our 105s.”

“So do we. We can ship them surplus French 75s instead. That it?”

“They want more fighters in the longer term; they’re asking about Republic P-44s or Bell P-39s. But they say that can wait, since they have problems absorbing the new aircraft they have. There’s another thing coming up. We’re picking up rumors that the Dutch East Indies, Australia and India are all being approached by Japan for supplies. Oil, rice, food, iron ore and so on. And those countries are responding. Viewed objectively, they don’t have much choice of course. They can’t sell to anybody else and Japan can’t buy from anybody else. Good question whether it’s a buyer’s or seller’s market. But, Cordell, we’re going to have to admit that any trade embargo we mount against Japan is going to be very leaky.”

“Have you read the reports we got from that battle on the Mekong?”

Stimson shook his head in disbelief at what he had read. He had a copy of Life magazine in his briefcase. The article on the battle, illustrated by Capa’s stark pictures, had shocked him. “We’ve had a lot of reports back from China, but nothing like this. This is the first time we’ve seen the Japanese defending against a counterattack from a modern army. The Japanese simply didn’t retreat and they didn’t give up. They had to be killed in their foxholes, one by one. We haven’t seen that in China, probably because the Japanese haven’t faced a defeat of this scale there, but the reports are chilling. They took no prisoners; they just killed anybody who tried to surrender, including their own people. Not that they had much occasion to do the latter. Their infantry just didn’t surrender. No quarter given or taken, even when they faced flamethrowers. Towards the end, they’d been driven back on to a spit of land with no way out. The survivors just kept charging the Thai positions until they were gunned down. We’re going to have to accept that if we go to war with them, it will be bloody.”

There was a moment of silence in the room that was broken by a thoughtful Cordell Hull. “Well, that brings us to you, Phillip. How’s the study of the German synthetic fuel business going?”

“It looks like we’ve made it home.”

Squadron Leader Alleyne was making his final approach to the flying boat landing area. He realized just how homesick he was. The twelve Sunderlands of his squadron were strung out in a long line and he could sense the urgency of the crews. The flight from Aden had been a long one, punctuated only by refuelling stops.

“Any idea what we’ll be doin’ next?” Andy Walker sounded as if he badly needed some sleep. He did; so did everybody else in 10 Squadron.

“Word is, we’ll be based in Queensland. We’ve got quite a maritime empire formin’ and we’ll need ta patrol it somehow. I dunno if we’ll keep these old sheilas, but I doubt if that’ll be possible. Where we goin’ to get the spares from? We may end up flyin’ Catalinas instead.” Alleyne swung the Sunderland on to its landing run and felt the bottom of the hull kiss the water. The aircraft lurched and bounded a couple of times with the chop on the water, then settled down into a smooth glide through the landing area.

“You really think we’ll be flyin’ Catalinas?” Walker didn’t sound impressed by the idea.

“11 Squadron already has them. They were supposed to be gettin’ Sunderlands. We’d better make the most of these while we have them.”

“The Italians are keeping their side of the agreement.” General Henry ‘Jumbo’ Maitland Wilson sounded relieved. The great fear across Middle East Command had been that the peace agreement with the Italians would break the momentum of Operation Compass and allow the Italians to regroup. If that happened, they still outnumbered and outgunned the Desert Rats. Maitland Wilson was quite sure that, had the war resumed, it would not have been so easy a second time. But, the news from Libya was quite unequivocal. The Italians were withdrawing all the troops not needed for the security of their colony.

“And we ours.” General Archibald Percival Wavell was very firm on that point. It was essential that either this peace agreement held or that breaking it was seen to be the work of the Italians. With the second possibility eliminated, the first was guaranteed. “With the Canal and Egypt secure, we can address the problem of Iraq. There are rumblings from that country and I fear the situation there is coming to a head.”

“The latest intelligence is that a group of four Iraqi nationalist army generals, known as “the Golden Square,” are planning a revolt. The Golden Square intend to overthrow the regime of Regent ‘Abd al-Ilah and install Rashid Ali as Prime Minister. Their objective is to press for full Iraqi independence following the limited independence granted in 1932. To that end, they are working with German intelligence and are accepting military assistance from Germany.”

“The Noth Plan.” Major-General Noel Beresford-Peirse sounded almost incredulous. “They actually mean to go through with it.”

“It defies logic, but I must agree with you.” Wavell thought for a few seconds. “Have your Fourth Indians ready to move to Iraq. They can join 20th Indian Brigade there.”

“I’ll need to get my Government’s approval for that, Archie.”

Wavell nodded. “Of course. My apologies; it’s so easy to forget how much things have changed in a year. Please, consult Calcutta, Noel, and ask their approval to move your division. Perhaps we can shift some air power to Iraq. Moving aircraft doesn’t have the political implications of ground forces.”

“My New Zealanders are well-placed, Archie,” Major-General Bernard Freyberg spoke. “We could move a column into Iraq damn fast, if you give the word. I’m not sure how long we’ll be a viable force, though, the way things are going back home. The Government’s bankrupt and the boy’s pay is months in arrears. As far as you’re concerned, if you don’t use us, you could lose us.”

“Thank you, Bernie. I’ll bear that in mind. So far though, we’ll just have to let the situation mature.” Wavell looked around. “If there is no other business, I suggest we adjourn for the day.”

“So this is the famous Marijke?”

The sixteen Tomahawks were lined up in the parking area after the flight in from Kenya. They were only one of the squadrons that had arrived. A Desert Rat Maryland squadron was also trying to make itself comfortable in its new home. One of their pilots was admiring Marijke and the line of kill marks painted under her cockpit. Flight Lieutenant Pim Bosede had almost two dozen confirmed kills by the time the fighting had ended. His fame was spreading as one of the first Commonwealth aces. The Tomahawks, their noses painted with the garish shark’s mouth, had become as symbolic of the Middle East fighting as the Matilda tank and the Bren Gun carrier.

“She is, and a fine aircraft. A good partner. I’m Bosede; Pim to my friends.”

“Sean Mannix, 47 Squadron. That’s my Maryland over there. GGeorge. We got pulled out of Egypt a few days ago and ordered here. No idea why.”

“Iraq’s a nice, quiet area. Guess the powers that be decided we needed a rest.”

“Might be, Pim; might be. Why don’t you come over and I’ll introduce you to my crew?”

“According to the note of protest, two Ju-90 reconnaissance aircraft were damaged in the attack.” Sir Arnold Robins looked at the copy of the report again. “The damage is really quite minor; amounts to no more than a few bullet holes really. Nobody was hurt, although one of our regular policemen twisted his ankle while searching for the shooters.”

“It sounds more like vandalism, or even just youthful high spirits, than an organized attack.” Lord Halifax was very reluctant to admit there was anything more to the incident than a few farmers, probably very drunk, taking pot-shots at parked aircraft. He wasn’t even certain whether who owned the aircraft would have made much difference.

“The German note says as much, Prime Minister. They make light of the situation and imply that, taken by itself, it is of little account. However, they do suggest it points to a risk that a more organized and effective attack may take place one day and that an ounce of prevention now would be better than a pound of cure later.”

“And just what would that ounce of prevention be?” R. A. B. Butler sounded slightly suspicious.

“The note draws our attention to the fact that the police guarding the gate at Tangmere airfield were unarmed. In this case, it would have made no real difference to the situation, but they suggest that the replacement of unarmed British regular police by armed personnel would reassure the authorities in Germany.”

“Sounds like a job for the Auxiliaries. When we set them up, defending airfields and factories was explicitly included in their remit.”

“My thoughts exactly, Foreign Secretary. The Germans also suggest that improving liaison between the Auxiliaries and the German reconnaissance detachments would be worthwhile. They suggest a corporal’s guard of Luftwaffe police be allowed to reside at the bases. Purely to maintain order amongst the German personnel and liaise with the Auxiliaries.”

“German troops on British soil. I do not think so.” Halifax didn’t like the way this was going at all.

“Luftwaffe police, Prime Minister, not troops.” Butler was at his oiliest, positively oozing reassurance. “A corporal and eight privates, at most armed with a pistol for the corporal and truncheons for the rest. They would not be allowed off the base and their responsibilities would be restricted to dealing with the German Luftwaffe personnel. I believe, even in Germany, the Luftwaffe police do not even have the power to arrest civilians but must summon the ordinary police to make an arrest. I do not see any great problem here.”

“Perhaps not.” Halifax read the complaint from the German Embassy again. “I just wish this hadn’t happened; that’s all. We have no idea who fired those shots?”

“None, Prime Minister. An investigation revealed nothing.”

“Pity. Some stern punishment of the offenders might have been more useful than these measures. Very well, Richard, I will approve these measures. Replace the regular police with Auxiliaries and tell the Germans that they may send assign a corporal’s guard of Luftwaffe police to each of the bases they use. For deployment on the base. It must be clearly understood they may not set one foot outside the airfield perimeter. See to the arrangements, Sir Arnold.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

Bangkok had proper fighter protection at last. A whole squadron of Tomahawks lined up alongside the runways. They lacked the garish shark’s tooth markings sported by the Commonwealth Tomahawks. Instead, they had a leaping tiger painted on to their tails. The Thai Tigers. Squadron Leader Suchart rolled the name around in his head. It had a ring to it.

The airfield was the staging point for the new aircraft. There were some of the new American dive bombers being readied for transfer to an attack squadron and a number of DB-7 bombers had been flown in from India. Suchart looked around for his friend Pappy, but the American was nowhere to be seen. Left to his own devices, he wandered over to the DB-7s. They were different from any he had seen before. The nose was solid instead of glazed. It had the barrels of eight .50-caliber machine guns sticking out of it. They were also painted a dark blue-gray.

“Looking at your new aircraft Khun Suchart?” The voice from behind him was hearty and encouraging. Suchart turned to see Group Captain Fuen standing behind him.

“These are mine? But, Sir, I am a fighter pilot…” Suchart was deeply distressed. The words ‘fighter pilots and lesser men’ echoed in his mind. What will Pappy say when he finds out I have been transferred to bombers?

Group Captain Fuen slapped him on the back. “And these are fighters. Night fighters. You are the only fighter pilot in the Air Force with a kill scored at night. In fact, there are very few men in the world today with that distinction. So you will command our new squadron of night-fighters; the only such squadron in the whole region. They are more than just that though. These are intruders. Your job will not just be to defend our capital at night but also to take the battle to the enemy, hunt him down on his bases and destroy him there. With our bombers in the day and your intruders at night, those who threaten us will get no sleep.”

He paused for a second and suddenly the joviality had gone. “Suchart, these aircraft are probably the most important of all the ones that have been delivered to us. Our greatest vulnerability is our wooden cities. If they are set on fire, the results will be a national catastrophe. We could see tens of thousands of our wives and daughters dying in the flames. Our enemies know this well and already they talk of exploiting it. Even the threat of firebombing is something we must take very seriously. So, every defense we can mount against the threat of bombing is vital to us. You understand now? We must learn to fight at night and you are the only one who has done so successfully. Suchart, I do not exaggerate when I say that every person in our capital is relying on you. Don’t let them down.”

Fuen went off to inspect another group of new aircraft, leaving Suchart to look at the DB-7 with new eyes. He still wasn’t entirely convinced it was a fighter. He looked underneath and saw the bomb bay. That increased his doubts on the point a bit further. Then he looked at the battery of machine guns in the nose and remembered his hunt for the Farman bombers over the city. That made him content.

The package arrived on Colonel Masanobu Tsuji’s desk. It had been posted from abroad, Singapore, to be precise, and was very carefully wrapped. It slightly mystified him, since he had no idea what was in it. However, he had gone to great lengths to establish a chain of correspondents all over the Far East. All he could think of was that one of them had found something very important indeed. It also meant that the person responsible had been astute enough to work out who he was and discover how to contact him.

The package was a welcome introduction to what was otherwise a frustrating day. With the collapse of his Indochina plan, he was trying to work out how to get at the wealth of resources that lay in South East Asia. It was by no means as easy as he had hoped. Strategic options were closing in fast and the age-old rivalry between the Army and the navy didn’t help matters. He sincerely hoped that this package would contain the answers. Something had to. Japan’s imperial destiny had been thrown into doubt. He used a knife on his desk to cut the string and brown paper that wrapped the box. Inside that was another cardboard box, also carefully secured. Inside that was a brown paper bag. Tsuji spilled the contents of the bag on to his desk. A dozen bottles. It took a few seconds for the significance of the words “hair removing lotion” to sink in. When it did, his scream of anger could be heard all over the building.

“You have heard we are to go home?” Major Belloc didn’t sound too pleased at the prospect.

“I have, sir.” Lieutenant Jordain Roul wasn’t that happy with the idea either. The options were to resign from the Army and go back to a France that was very close to being German-occupied, or stay in the Army and go back to a French Indochina that was very close to being Japanese-occupied. Neither really appealed that much. “A lot of the men are saying they would rather stay here.”

“And that surprises you?” Belloc sounded almost broken. “We are the Legion; the Fifth Régiment Etranger d’Infanterie. We have no home other than the Legion and the men have no place in France until their enlistment is concluded. Worse, we have not just been defeated; we have surrendered. I doubt we have a place in the Legion after this. With no place to go, staying here has its merits.”

Roul looked around. The truth was that staying on did look attractive. The prisoner of war camp was clean and well-built. The food wasn’t to French taste, but it was fresh and there was plenty of it. There were doctors from the Swiss Red Cross to look after the wounded and they had received everything they asked for. If this is a sample of what waits for us here, then I can see how the men might find it welcoming. “I hear the Thais are asking the Germans in the unit if they want to serve as advisors to the new units they are forming.”

Belloc laughed. “I heard the same. And that some men were accepting. Although, it seems that those are well-disposed to the present government in Germany will not be welcome here.”

“There is General de Gaulle of course. And his Free French movement.”

“Yes, there is always General de Gaulle.”

Mongkut Chandrapa na Ayutthya, to his great relief no longer a Sergeant, stopped at the door of the school. The teacher had a big map of the new Thailand pinned to the wall. The areas occupied in the war were marked “The Recovered Provinces.” She was teaching the children the names of those provinces and explaining how they had been returned to their rightful owners. She was young herself and very earnest; one of many who had volunteered to leave the cities and come to these country villages to teach the children.

“And so, Our Heroes defeated the French who had taken our land from us and freed all our people. The Japanese didn’t like this and they sent a great army to force us back, but Our Heroes met that army and defeated it as well. And so, peace was agreed and Our Heroes are coming home.” She looked up and saw Mongkut standing at the door, his army rifle slung over his shoulder. The 11th was receiving a new rifle, the Kar-98k, that was shorter, lighter and more powerful than the old Type 52 he had carried. So the demobilized soldiers had been told they could take their old-model rifles home with them if they wished.

“Look children, a great honor has been granted to us. One of Our Heroes has come to visit our school.”

“Daddy!” Mongkut heard his daughter squeal with delight. The teacher had arrived after he had left for the Army, so she hadn’t known he was Sirisoon’s father. She did now. Mongkut didn’t care. He was looking at his daughter who had grown so much since he had left. And she was looking at him with her eyes shining.

“Honored Sir, please, could you tell the children about what the war was like?”

For a moment Mongkut smelled the stench of the flamethrowers and roasting flesh. Above all, he remembered the searing hate that had filled him when the beaten Japanese refused to surrender and how he had started to relish their screams as they were burned in their foxholes. The teacher is young and a girl, she has no idea what she is asking. If she did, she would want me to cut out my tongue before telling them the truth.

Mongkut entered the schoolroom, making a respectful wai to the portrait of the King on the wall. He sat on the table at the front of the class and told the children about what he had seen of the provinces, how poor the people were and how they needed so much help to recover from the years of occupation. Some of the boys were disappointed. They had wanted to hear about the fighting, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to describe it. He showed them where he had been but of the battles themselves he said nothing. In the end, he just said, “the French and Japanese were skilled and fought very hard. But we fought better and we won in the end. Never forget; it is never wrong for us to defend ourselves."And the children had smiled. Only the teacher heard what he added so softly afterwards.

“Even when it has torn out my soul.”

“We know you did it.” The man spoke to David Newton very quietly indeed.

“Don’t know what you are talking about.” The reply was equally quiet.

“Good. But, be aware that there are other people who think like you. And who are ready to do the same when the time comes.”

“Drink a good beer, you mean?”

“That’s right.” Calvert looked at the student with appreciation. He really was an excellent recruit and would go far. Until he got careless and was killed. That was inevitable, of course; it was what happened to all resistance fighters. Eight months from becoming active to becoming dead was the average. “Just don’t drink any more beer until we show you the good brands. And how to appreciate them.”

“What if I run up a thirst before then? I still owe… the bar… some debts.”

“You’ll have to be patient.” Calvert looked at the student in front of him with much more sympathy than his expression revealed. “You think you came up short, don’t you?”

“I… did nothing. Nothing. And she… ”

“You froze up. Most people do… when having their first beer. I did. It was in Norway. The beer started to flow and I froze up. But, I was in a party and the others kept it running until I was back in the game. You were drinking on your own and everything went to Hell so fast you had no time to recover. Now, you do. Now you can learn to enjoy your beer properly.

“How many people… like their beer?”

“That’s something you’ll never know. You’ll know only me. And I won’t know the people who drink with you. You won’t know their drinking friends either. Think about it.”

Newton nodded. “I’ll have another beer. You’re buying?”

“Of course. If you’re drinking.”