The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [606]
Matsushita had grown thin as they made their way through the jungle, though none was more adept at killing snakes and swallowing their livers than he, gulping them one after another like oysters and leaving their disembowelled remains to be sucked and gnawed by his men as best they could for cooking-fires must not be lit lest the smoke give away their position. As he grew thinner, Matsushita’s eyes grew larger and burned more fiercely than ever. Now he would be part of the glorious capture of the Perak River Bridge! And he had whipped his men forward to reach it and snip those glistening wires before the British engineers had time to press down the plunger. It would be done! For the Emperor!
Matsushita had asked for volunteers for this rash assignment. The men had all volunteered, of course. Even if any of them had not felt like doing so it would never have done to let Lieutenant Matsushita get it into his head that you were a coward … ‘Well then, I must pick the men for this patrol myself,’ he had said, his eyes piercing each man in turn. And he had done so, while the troops waited in silence to hear their fate. Presently Kikuchi heard his name spoken.
At about midnight on 22 December while they had been camped some distance from the Perak River Bridge in a jungle of wild rubber, a tremendous boom had reverberated from the south. So astonishing was this noise that for several moments afterwards all the night-sounds of the jungle ceased, a dreadful silence prevailed: even small insects hesitated before eating each other and snakes paused as they squirmed in and out of their slimy homes. Kikuchi and his comrades had gazed at each other in consternation: this noise could only have come from one source. The British had demolished the bridge which they had been hoping to capture intact. White with shock at this lost opportunity Matsushita nevertheless had insisted on examining his maps to see whether the map reference of the bridge tallied with the direction from which the sound had appeared to come. It did. Matsushita uttered a groan and bowed his head to the earth. Later, he took Kikuchi aside and said in a low voice: ‘Thoughts of self-condemnation overwhelm my heart, Kikuchi. Our lives will have to compensate for our error.’ Kikuchi had nodded soothingly, though it had occurred to him that there seemed to be no particular reason why troops who had merely obeyed orders should have to take a share in the Lieutenant’s error.
In front of them now Nakamura’s tank had come to rest, bringing the column behind it to a halt. A whispered consultation was taking place: it was thought that they must now be very near the first position defended by the British. Matsushita had slipped off the tail of the lorry like a panther, invisible in the darkness. Kikuchi stood up carefully and managed to get a glimpse back down the road. Behind them stretched a column of some two dozen twenty-ton tanks, the moonlight glinting on their turrets; infantry lorries were interspersed with the more distant tanks. He knew that a detachment of lighter ‘whippet’ tanks came behind the medium tanks but he could not see them for a bend in the road.
Kikuchi sank back, a little reassured by this impressive sight. Each of the medium tanks, he knew, carried a four-pounder anti-tank gun and two heavy .303 machine-guns. But, in addition, a mortar had been fitted to each tank; although it was fixed so that it could only cover one side of the road, the tanks had been arranged so that the mortars alternated, now on one side, now on the other. There would certainly be a heavy enough fire from the tanks. Perhaps he might have a chance, after all. But even if he survived this battle