The Trojan Beam

THE IRRESISTABLE FORCE

The officer dropped his hand. His crew could not see his face, for he stood on the obser­vation platform with his head in a steel turret. But the hand was enough. The twin engines roared, the great tank lurched like a huge monster just awakened and began to trundle forward.

The officer, looking left and right, had the curious vision of thickets slowly moving across the country. It was strange, he thought, that with war developed as a science so many of the old tricks remained in use. How many times in the long tale of history had an army advanced under cover of bushes and branches? It was no more than a moment's specu­lation before he turned his atten­tion to keeping his machine to its place in the forma­tion.

The weather was filthy. Sleet made it difficult to see any­thing much smaller than a house at 200 yards, and the wind which cut in through the obser­vation louvres felt like a knife sawing at his face. No doubt excellent condi­tions for an advance, in the tactical consider­ation of the author­ities, but not so good for the men who had to do the work. However, there was some conso­lation in being a tank man and not one of the infantry who would be following.

He peered ahead and swore mildly. The sleet seemed to be getting thicker. Nature was improving her screen for their attack.

In the old days, when a soldier was a warrior rather than a mechanic, generals had preferred to lose their men from wounds rather than from pneumonia. The great general,

Julius Caesar, had reasonably remarked that ‘in winter all wars cease’ and until quite recently the Chinese had very sensibly gone home in preference to fighting in the rain. He wished they still did, damn them.

But that custom, along with many others, had changed now. Some­where beyond the shroud of sleet there were thousands of Chinese sitting in trenches, pill-boxes and redoubts, ready to blow his and all the other Japanese tanks to bits if they could, despite any inclem­en­cies of weather.

The officer frowned. He was a loyal servant of his Emperor, of course; he would be willing to shoot any­one who suggested that he was not, but, all the same, there were moments when he privately and secretly wondered if the expense in men and money was worth the object.

His father had been in the expe­di­tion to Manchukuo and that was a defi­nite success, but his father had also been in the 1937 cam­paign which had looked like being a success in the beginning, but had drawn to such an undig­nified end for Japan in 1940. And now here was another gene­ra­tion fighting over the same ground twenty-four years later. And what if they won? Markets, they said, but could you really force the Chinese to buy things they didn't want from people they hated? He doubted it, for he had come to know their stubborn­ness well.

The tanks passed through their own lines and entered no-man's-land. The officer aban­doned his specu­lations and became intent on his job. The sleet was still thick. He could see only the first tanks to his right and left, though clearly enough to keep his posi­tion. There was no sign of life from the Chinese lines. He won­dered what that portended. It might mean that they were actually un­aware of the coming attack, but he doubted that. If it were so, it would be their first sur­prise for a very long time; there were too many damned spies about. More probably it meant that they had some new trick to play. They nearly always had.

Orders came through on the short wave for the whole line to incline 30° right. He acknow­ledged and passed it on. Presently they altered back again and the line was travel­ling due west once more. Still there was no sign from the oppo­sing lines. The heavy tanks lurched forward in a shrouded world at a steady ten miles an hour.

Until now it was a tank advance like any other save that the oppo­sition was long in coming. The officer was still at his look-out and in the process of forming a theory that the Chinese must be running short of ammu­nition and conse­quently with­holding what they had for effective short-range work, when the thing which disting­uished this ad­vance from any other occurred with­out warn­ing.

It seemed that his head was violently seized and jammed at the embra­sure in front of him. His steel helmet met the wall of the turret with a clash, instinc­tively, he put up both hands to push himself away from the wall. For a moment nothing happened, then the chin-strap gave and he staggered back violently.

Even in that moment he was aware that the move­ment of the machine had changed. Through the din of mecha­nism he could hear the men below cursing. He stepped down from his plat­form, furious at their disobe­dience. Ten miles an hour had been the order; it was the big tank's quietest travel­ling speed. By the present motion he judged it had speeded up to twenty or more.

Inside there was a state of confu­sion. The driver was still in his seat, though helmet­less. The others, also helmet­less, were at the front, tugging at something and swearing.

He put his head close to the driver's.

“Ten miles an hour!” he yelled, through the din.

His voice was loud enough for the others to hear and they turned. He had a glimpse of a confused pile beyond them. Steel helmets, bayonets, rifles and all loose things had been thrust forward into the nose as far as they would go.

“Get that stuff back,” he roared.

The men looked at him stupidly and shook their heads.

He thrust past them and seized a sub-machine gun on the top of the pile. It did not move. He tugged, but it stayed as though it had been welded to the rest. The men looked on, wide-eyed. The officer dropped his hand to his holster, but it was empty. He became aware that the driver had not obeyed, the machine was still travel­ling too fast. Catching a hold, he dragged him­self back. The driver's speedo­meter read 25 miles an hour. He cursed the man.

“It's no good,” yelled the other, “she won't stop.”

“Reverse!” bawled his commander.

The twin engines roared and then began to slow. There was an appre­ciable check in the tank's speed. The place began to fill with blue smoke and a smell of singe­ing. Suddenly the noise of the engines rose as they raced furiously and the tank lurched for­ward again. The driver throttled down; the roar of the engines dwindled and died.

“Clutches burnt out,” shouted the driver as he switched off.

The tank went on. He and his officer stared incre­du­lously at the meter showing over twenty miles an hour, and then at each other.

The officer swung back to his plat­form. He picked up the ear­pieces of his short-wave commu­ni­cator and spoke rapidly. There was no reply, the instru­ment was quite dead. He looked at the com­pass. For a moment he thought they had turned through a right angle and were going north, then he realized that it had jammed.

Through the obser­vation louvres he saw that the tanks to right and left were still more or less abreast of him; one had its turret open and a man was signal­ling with his arms. He thrust his own cover upward and stood up in the sting­ing sleet. From the other's signs and the fact that he also was bare­headed he gathered that his machine was in a similar plight. He dropped down again and wiped the sweat and snow from his face.

The tank trundled on uncontrollably towards the enemy lines.

The tank officer watched with a frown. He could do nothing but observe, and it seemed to him that by the distance they had gone they should be close upon the lines, or else they had turned while he was below. It was impossible to tell.

Suddenly he became aware of some­thing coming up on his right. As it drew nearer he could make out one of their own Japanese light tanks over­taking him at a speed eight or ten miles more than his own. The two men in it had got rid of their top shield and were hang­ing on grimly to the sides. He could see their scared and puzzled express­ions as they passed.

While they pulled ahead he noticed that the sleet was thinner and visi­bility a little better. He could see a road crossing their path, then the yellow-brown earth of a ploughed field and then some­thing which might be water. He looked harder. Soon there was no doubt. It was a river and he could disting­uish some kind of build­ing on the opposite bank. There was no doubt that they had been pulled well off their course.

The men in the light tank had seen it, too. When they were half­way across the ploughed field he saw them jump out and roll over in the loam. They picked them­selves up quickly to dodge the follow­ing heavy tanks. Their machine dashed on and disappeared over the river bank.

The officer bent down. He gave rapid orders to his men to open the doors and abandon the machine. They lost no time in obeying. Look­ing back, he could see the string of muddy figures picking them­selves up and gazing after him.

He himself waited; it was still possible that the machine might stop, but he opened the obser­vation cover and made ready. Half­way across the ploughed field he pressed the button of the emer­gency fuse, and jumped.

He staggered up, plastered with mud and heed­less of the other run­away tanks, to watch his own. He hoped despe­rately that he had judged the time well enough to save it from falling into enemy hands. He watched it reach the built-up river bank and begin to climb. Then as it topped the rise and tilted, pre­para­tory to diving into the water, it seemed to fly apart from a flame which abruptly shot up amid­ships. The sound of the ex­plo­sion came back to him with a rum­bling boom.

He sighed relievedly, and then turned to meet the Chinese soldiers who were advancing from cover, grinning and holding short swords.