A Mighty Endeavor (73 page)

Headquarters, 5th Motorized Infantry Division, Ban Dan Ky, French Indochina

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.”

Main Line of Resistance, 11th Infantry (Queen’s Cobra) Division, Ridge 70, Phoum Sam Ang

“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 Carden-Lloyd 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.

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

“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.

Second Regiment, 11th Infantry (Queen’s Cobra) Division, East of Ridge 70, Phoum Sam Ang

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.