“Put your head down and die with dignity,” Mori said.
“Please.”
Fujiwara said something, to which Mori responded. “I told him you won’t be forced,” he told Louise. “You either put your head down willingly, or your men die in your place. All of them. Will you do it?”
“Yes,” Louise said, her voice so soft even she could barely hear it.
She was light-headed to the point of passing out. Her bowels felt hot and loose. This was no joke or test. It was her death.
You can face this.
Men had already done it by the thousands, and more died every day the war continued. Women, too. She could die to save the dozen men and the nurse who remained. Her body felt like someone else’s as she knelt and exposed her neck.
Suddenly a grunt. The sound of bodies hitting each other. Shouts of alarm from all around. She looked up as two men grappled in front of her. It was Sammy and Captain Mori.
Sammy still had one of his crutches in hand and hit his brother with it as he held him close with his free hand. Mori tried to use his sword, but it was pinned between the two men. Fujiwara drew his sidearm and shouted.
Other Japanese were yelling, Sakdals making noise, too. Bledsoe cried for Louise to get out of there. Every dog in the village erupted into barks.
All Louise could think was to stand up and try to separate the two men. Sammy was flailing about so furiously with the crutch that his brother would have no choice but to defend himself with the sword if he could get it free. And there was Fujiwara with his pistol. The man was trying to get an angle.
Louise moved toward Mori, thinking to pull him away, even as she cried out, “Sammy, no! Stop!”
Fujiwara now leveled his pistol at her. He seemed to have found his target. The look on his face held no mercy. There were cries from every direction. Dogs barking furiously.
Mori got his sword free. He lifted it above his head. Sammy began to raise the crutch to block it. Louise was just out of reach of both men and couldn’t get there in time.
Mori swung his sword. Louise didn’t know if the captain was swinging at his brother or trying to slice through the wooden crutch. It didn’t matter. Sammy didn’t get the crutch up in time, and the sword came down with great force at the point where Sammy’s shoulder blade met his neck. There was a sickening crack, like a cleaver meeting a butcher’s block. Sammy hit the ground as his brother was wrenching the sword free.
Mori staggered backward, eyes wide in horror. Blood spurted from Sammy’s wound. His eyes were blinking, looking up, and his hand went to his shoulder. He didn’t seem to feel anything yet.
A hand grabbed Louise’s arm—Fujiwara, she thought—but she twisted free with a cry and fell down next to her injured friend. She put her hand over the wound and attempted to stop the flow of blood. It was too much, a ruin of his shoulder and chest. Mori’s sword blow had severed muscle and bone and cut into chest and lungs. Blood streamed through her fingers, so much of it.
Sammy’s eyes fixed on hers. He beckoned her down. “Please,” he mouthed.
Louise put her ear at his lips.
“A narrow river with a deep channel.” Sammy drew in a ragged breath, and Louise didn’t think he would say another word. What came out next was barely whispered. “Cross it once and—”
A final, sighing hiss escaped, and then he was still. His eyes remained open, unblinking. Whatever was next, however he had finished his death poem, nobody would ever hear it. Louise pulled back with a sob. She was covered with Sammy’s blood.
Captain Mori’s face was a mask of anguish. The sword slumped in his hand until the tip dragged the dirt. Sammy’s crutch lay at his feet. Mori looked up from Sammy and fixed Louise with a terrible, vengeful look.
She rose and stood, rigid and still. He lifted his sword, and she didn’t move.
Stumpy came up while Mori was steadying his weapon. He paid the captain no attention but nuzzled at Sammy’s hand. A whimper. The half tail wagged hopefully. He nosed harder. There was something desperate in the way his half tail kept wagging harder and harder until his entire backside was shaking back and forth. This time the whimper sounded pitiful, almost a mournful cry.
“Get away from him, you filthy—” Mori’s English trailed into a single, polysyllabic string of Japanese rage. He came at the dog with his sword.
Louise was too shaken to react. Could only stand frozen as Mori swung his weapon.
Stumpy leaped out of the way. The sword whooshed past his ear. Stumpy barked defiantly.
Still yelling in Japanese, Mori came after the dog. He swung again and, when Stumpy came under the sword to force another miss, lashed out with his boot. He caught the dog on the haunch. Stumpy yelped but came up growling and snarling.
The dog darted in and under before Mori could ready his sword again. He clamped his teeth on the back of the man’s leg. Mori cried out in pain. He twisted around, trying to hook the attacking animal with his sword. Once again, Stumpy danced clear. He retreated a few paces, barking furiously.
Fujiwara aimed his pistol at the dog. He was next to Louise, and she lowered her shoulder and jostled him. The gun went off. She was so close the sound was like hands slapped hard over her ears. But the shot went wild.
Two more shots chased Stumpy off. Bullets tossed up dirt around him but didn’t hit. Then the dog was in the midst of the Sakdals, who kicked at him and swung their rifle butts, jeering and laughing as they tried to kill him. The other dogs were barking crazily, like rioting inmates in an asylum, and tore off after Stumpy toward the village as he fled.
Moments later the commotion was over. The dogs had vanished, uninjured. Sammy lay dead in a pool of blood at Louise’s feet. The American prisoners remained pinned against the hospital at bayonet point. Mori still held his sword. He stared at Louise.
A long moment stretched even longer. At last Mori reached slowly into his shirt pocket and removed a faded handkerchief. Moving deliberately, he stroked it along the blade to clean it of blood, then sheathed the sword, folded the bloody handkerchief, and returned it to his pocket.
“Warn your patients, nurse,” Mori said as he took a step back, favoring the leg Stumpy had bit. “The first man to step out of line loses his head. We leave now.”
Chapter Thirty-One
FEBRUARY 3, 1945—SANTO TOMÁS INTERNMENT CAMP, MANILA
Louise tucked herself on the floor with her hands behind her head as explosions rocked the compound. Planes rolled overhead, and the sound of bombs rumbled from elsewhere in the city. The women in the dorm-style room had turned over beds and formed makeshift bomb shelters.
She held two Dutch children, eight and six, who had come trembling into her arms when the excitement started. Like many children in the internment camp, they had lost parents, and after three years, probably remembered little of their life before Santo Tomás. Sometimes, Louise envied them.
Five minutes earlier, she had been watching Manila burning through the windows of a hallway in the converted university, but when the electricity went out and the bombs started to fall, she retreated to the room she shared with thirty other women and children.
Japanese voices sounded in the corridor, high and excited. The camp guards. The sound of breaking glass. Rifle fire. Was this it? Had the Americans come?
Then it was quiet. For several long minutes the sounds of war retreated except for the distant rumble of artillery and bombs. Heavy breathing in the dark, whimpers, and whispered conversation. The silence was broken at last by an excited conversation in mixed French and English from the hallway outside. A fist pounded on the door.
“They’re here!” came a muffled voice through the door.
Louise joined the others in pushing into the corridor, down the stairway, and into the warm night air outside. It smelled of burning fuel. Flares lit up the front gate.
Her heart pounding, she joined the mob of refugees waiting. The gates gave a terrific screech and collapsed inward. A hulking metal tank clanked through on i
ts treads. A searchlight swept over their faces. Soldiers jumped down from the tank.
And a voice called out in English. “Hello, folks!”
American soldiers stepped in front of the searchlight. Louise shouted in joy and relief, her voice joined with dozens of others. Those who’d remained fearfully inside the building came spilling out now, crying and weeping. People clasped their hands and prayed while couples embraced. Wounded American soldiers who’d been tortured and then interned with the civilians dropped to the dirt.
Others crowded the newcomers, Louise included. She hugged the soldiers, one after another. So strong and muscular—it was a shock after these three years of steadily reducing rations to see and feel men so healthy. Some of the soldiers stared at her in shock and outrage as they saw what she looked like. What all the internees looked like.
One of the men handed her a chocolate bar. She turned it over in trembling hands.
“Well, lady, ain’t you gonna eat it?” the man asked cheerfully. He had a wide, pleasant face and a Texas twang.
She broke off a tiny piece and popped it in her mouth. An ordinary chocolate bar, but the taste of it was enough to make her swoon.
“Go on, then,” he said, grinning. “You can eat it all.”
“I would like to, but I’m afraid it will make me ill.”
Several men entered the building in front of them to ensure that the Japanese had truly fled and were not waiting to spring an ambush, and now a familiar figure emerged from the midst of the soldiers still warily entering the camp. It was Lieutenant Kozlowski.
Louise stared at him, stunned, unable to move. His face was older, more settled, his eyes carrying the hard expression of a warrior who had survived battle and killing and the death of both friends and enemies. But then he spotted her, and a smile broke on his face, sweeping the years away.
“Louise!”
She embraced him, laughing. He joined her in laughter, sweeping her up, but that died as soon as he set her down. His expression turned grim.
“My God, you weigh nothing.”
She turned away, ashamed. She felt bony, starving. Her dress felt like a sheet draped over a collection of sticks. These days, she could press her hand against her aching belly and feel her backbone through it. She felt old—she was old. Only twenty-six, but her body was aching, suffering beriberi, her joints in constant pain, her hair falling out.
“Those damn Japs,” Kozlowski muttered. “Starving you to death.”
“They fed us early on,” she said. “But they don’t have much to eat themselves anymore.”
“You’re too easy on them. Cowards and thieves.”
There was some truth in his words. Japanese had stolen vegetables when the internees planted gardens on the campgrounds. They’d stuck their bayonets into cans of food delivered by the Red Cross. They’d prohibited Filipinos from passing in food to help the starving inmates. But she wouldn’t dwell on that now.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you some good army chow.”
“Only a little,” she said. “My body can’t take anything rich.”
Nevertheless, by the time morning dawned, she’d eaten too much for her own good and was rushing to the bathroom. There, she joined dozens of others fighting cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. Some didn’t make it in time and soiled themselves.
When she felt better a couple of days later, she sought out Kozlowski to arrange for medical supplies to be brought in. He’d been promoted to captain and was organizing the relief of the camp even while the battle for Manila still raged elsewhere in the city. She found him in a makeshift office with a Japanese war calendar still hanging on the wall, though most everything else had been torn down. The mats had been tossed out, the floor swept, and an American-style desk and chair brought in. Kozlowski led her outside while she gave him her list of needed goods.
“You’ll want penicillin, too.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned. “There have been some developments, Miss Louise. Miracle drug—wait until you see how it works.”
Food was the biggest medicine the army had brought, but they continued to lose internees. The next two weeks would be critical. She shared her thoughts for how to safely distribute food as shrunken stomachs became accustomed to the new rations.
Kozlowski glanced up at the sky at a pair of American fighter planes rumbling just above the tree line, then turned back to her. “I saw some other nurses—evacuees from Corregidor and Bataan. Didn’t see Frankie. I guess she didn’t make it, huh?”
“She’s still alive,” Louise said grimly. “But you won’t find her working the medical detail.”
Kozlowski shook his head. “Imagine that. So many good men and women dead, and that poisonous snake manages to survive.”
“I said she’s alive,” Louise said. “I didn’t say she survived.”
“Is there a difference?”
Just then, Frankie came walking out. She was muttering to herself, rubbing her hands together. Louise’s hair may have thinned, but Frankie’s was almost gone, only tufts here and there like clumps of dying weeds. She had no friends in the camp, and though Louise had gently told her to take better care of herself, she had ignored this and it showed. Most of her teeth were gone, leaving lips sucked around shrunken gums. She wore no shoes, not even bakya, and her feet had the leathered, horny look of an old Filipina peasant.
“Louise?” Kozlowski said. “You were saying about Miss Frankie? Where is she now?”
Louise blinked. “That’s her.”
“Where?” He looked around at the internees walking across the grounds, and his eyes swept over Frankie without seeming to see her.
“Right there!”
“I see two young girls, that mixed-race fellow smoking over there, and an old woman.”
“The old woman is a thirty-five-year-old nurse. That’s Frankie.”
“My God.”
He gave a violent shake of the head and looked away from Frankie, who had reached the open front gate and turned to follow the inside of the fence, as if the grounds were still closed and she were forbidden to leave them.
Again, “My God.”
“Yes, well.” Louise paused. “I hope she gets better.” Another pause. “The war has been unusually hard on her.”
“It has been hard on all of us. You’re probably curious about the others.”
“Very. Can we take a walk outside? Is it safe?”
“Not safe at all,” he said cheerfully. “Can’t you hear the shells?”
She listened. “They sound far away.”
“For now. They’ll be pounding us here soon enough.”
But Louise couldn’t stand being cooped up any longer, and the compound didn’t seem safer than anywhere else in the city, so she told him she wanted to risk it. That was, if he felt he could leave for a few minutes to escort her on a walk.
“I don’t see why not. Come on.”
They left through the open gates, where troops were digging foxholes lined with sandbags and armed with machine guns. More soldiers had arrived on Jeeps. As they walked into the city, Kozlowski told her how he’d survived the last three years.
After escaping the hospital in Cascadas, Kozlowski and the others holed up in a small valley about a mile from the village, staying still and hidden for three days until they thought they were safe to move. Two of the patients died, in spite of Maria Elena’s best efforts. Later, after they’d made contact with Fárez and the mixed band of American and Filipino partisans, Dr. Claypool had died of malaria.
“Maria Elena did everything she could,” Kozlowski said, “but it wasn’t enough. The jungle, the humidity, and the miles of walking were too much for the doc.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Is Maria Elena okay? Did she make it?”
“Last I saw her, yeah. Stuck with us all this time—I can’t believe we were going to leave her in Manila during that initial evacuation. Just because she was a local. She only got better at h
er job. Miss Clarice grew up a lot working with her. Getting away from Frankie helped.”
“So Clarice made it, too.”
“She did.”
It warmed Louise’s heart to hear about the two nurses, and she urged Kozlowski to go on. He and Fárez had stuck with the partisans for three years, occasionally losing men to disease or Japanese bullets. They gained others after the fall of Bataan, and Filipinos joined them as the enemy starved out their villages or introduced oppressive measures.
At one point Kozlowski counted more than a hundred men in his band. It wasn’t enough to launch an uprising, but they kept up a regular harassment of the Japanese and punished Sakdals and other collaborators. They pinned down a good number of enemy troops that might have been used elsewhere.
Kozlowski established contact with the Americans after MacArthur’s return and was ordered to report for duty. They slapped a fresh uniform on him, awarded him a brevet promotion to captain, and gave him a key role in the liberation of Manila.
“What about Corporal Fárez?”
“He’s fine. Walks with a limp—you can’t regrow your butt, it turns out—but it doesn’t hold him back.”
“Where is he?”
“Still running with the partisans, but soon enough he’ll be back in uniform for the duration. That fellow deserves whatever promotion he gets.” Kozlowski glanced at her. “You, too. You know army nurses have rank now?”
“I heard that.”
“No more Miss Louise for you. It’s going to be Lieutenant Louise Harrison. Unless they send you back to the States. You’ve suffered enough for one person.”
“I’ll stay until the war is over unless they kick me out.”
Kozlowski’s face turned grim. “That may be years.”
“It sounds like Hitler is about to fold,” she said. “That’s something. The Russians and Americans are going to overrun Germany. Once that’s over, we can turn all our attention to Japan. That should bring about the end of the war.”
“Maybe,” he said dubiously. “These Japs fight like the devil himself. They won’t surrender. We’re fighting island by island out here, and we haven’t come close to Japan yet.”
The Year of Counting Souls Page 30