A Mighty Endeavor

by Stuart Slade

  “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.”

  Don Muang Airfield, Bangkok, Thailand

  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.

  Headquarters, Imperial Japanese Army, Tokyo, Japan

  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.

  Prisoner of War Camp, Ratchanaburi, Thailand

  “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 Regiment Etranger d’lnfanterie. 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.”

  Village School, Rattanburi, Thailand

  Mongkut Chandrapa na Ayutthya, to his great relie
f 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.”

  The White Horse Public House, Nottingham, United Kingdom

  “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.”

  Epilogue

  Imperial General Headquarters-Government Liaison Conference, Tokyo, Japan

  The Navy and Army delegations trooped into the conference room. The Spirit Warriors, Shingen Takeda thought contemptuously. They call themselves Samurai and claim to follow Bushido, yet they are nothing but bullying braggarts and brutes who do not understand the meaning of the words honor and bravery. Once, I would have taken the head of any such man who claimed to be a Samurai.

  There was a reason why his uniform was plain and unmarked by decorations or insignia of rank. Officially, it was because that the only thing that anybody needed to know about him was that he was a member of the Tokubetsu Koto Kempeitai. The Special Higher Military Police Corps. Privately, it was because the thought of wearing a decoration awarded by the Spirit Warriors sickened him. Nevertheless, the unmarked uniform was, in its own way, a decoration. There were 36,000 members of the Kempeitai, only 107 belonged to the Tokubetsi Koto section. Mostly their identities were unknown other than to the rest of the section. How special they were was something they kept amongst themselves.

  The Navy delegation was sitting down. Takeda looked at them. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the navy; a gambler, rash and erratic but brilliant. With him was Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the Kido Butai; a stolid, cautious, analytical man. I wonder which would have been the best way to order these men? Takeda thought. Yamamoto, the brilliant, incisive gambler to drive on the cautious, painstaking Nagumo or the careful, analytical Nagumo to restrain the headstrong, impetuous Yamamoto? Then there was Osami Nagano, Chief of the Navy General Staff; a cipher who was Yamamoto’s creature and little else. Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the aircraft carrier Hiryu. The man had a personality cult building around him for reasons that mystified Takeda Despite what the Navy thinks, drunken oafishness and mindless aggression do not equal intelligence. The man is a peasant. Then there was Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida, the experts on carrier air operations. Finally, there were the commanders of the submarines, the land-based air force, the scouting forces and finally the Navy Minister. Ten men in all.

  Accordingly, there were ten men from the Army. In Takeda’s eyes, only one of them was of any note. For him, he had respect. General Akihito Nakamura limped in, shaking aside any offer of assistance. Wounded and cut down by Thai rifle fire, then terribly burned by a Thai flamethrower, he had been written off as dead. Six Korean laborers had crossed the river late at night to bring back his body. There had been a thread of life left in it. The General had been nursed back to something approaching health, even though his injuries had left him crippled and cruelly disfigured. It took a real warrior to inspire that kind of loyalty from the lowest members of his command. In such a man, the spirit of the Samurai still lived. Takeda had ‘found evidence’ that the six Koreans weren’t really Koreans at all, but pure-blooded Japanese descendants of the troops that had fought in Korea over three hundred years earlier. As a result, they’d been reinstated as true Japanese citizens. Anybody who wished to argue would have to debate the matter with the Tokubetsu Koto Kempeitai.

  There was one other member of the Army delegation. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji. Takeda had to make a great effort not to chuckle on seeing him. Word of the insults he had received from the Thai ‘Ambassador’ had spread around the Headquarters, though none dared laugh openly. None save the members of the Tokubetsu Koto Kempeitai.

  Twenty men, plus two from the Tokubetsu Koto Kempeitai and two from the Palace
. The Emperor himself was not present, of course. The recommendations of the Conference would be taken to him for his approval by the 25th man, the chairman of the Conference, Hideki Tojo. He rapped the gavel and the meeting settled down. “We are here today to decide on whether the Navy strategic plan for a thrust against the Southern Resource Area should be expected or whether, by default, the existing operations should be continued. Admiral Yamamoto?”

  “In September of this year, the large aircraft carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku will be joining Kido Butai. At that time, the Hosho and Ryujo will be withdrawn and assigned to support the Philippines operation. The campaign will open with an attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor by all six large carriers of Kido Butai. This will eliminate the American Navy as an obstacle to our assault on the southern resources area. They will be incapable of resistance for six months and, in that period, I will run riot.

  “Following the attack, the 5th Army Air Force Division and the 11th Naval Air Fleet will attack American bases in the Philippines in support of an invasion by three Army divisions and one independent mixed brigade. These forces will then to attack Manila in a pincer attack. After this, the islands of Manila Bay will be taken. The 28th and 38th Army Divisions will attack the western islands of the Dutch East Indies, The 48th Division will assault Java in the central Dutch East Indies and the Sasebo Combined Naval Landing Force and 1st Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force will occupy the Celebes.

  Other Navy troops will occupy minor American bases such as Guam and Wake Island.

  “On land, the 18th, 31st, 33rd and 56th Infantry Division will cross northern Thailand and invade Burma …”

  Yamamoto’s flow was interrupted by a contemptuous snort from General Nakamura. The surge of agreement for the General’s reaction from the other army officers went completely over Yamamoto’s head. He continued as if it had never happened. “The 5th and 18th Divisions will land in Southern Thailand and invade Malaya, advancing on Singapore. The island has no landward defenses and its fall will be quickly accomplished. The Navy will cover these operations with the surface fleet and aircraft based in Indochina.”