"Two men will testify that he made no effort to save his own life, even if he could, and that he jumped on the grenade to save his men."
Ruger started the walk down the hill. Paul saw that he was carrying the Jap officer's sheathed samurai sword. "What're you going to do with that thing, Captain?"
Ruger paused and waved it awkwardly with one hand. The long, single-edged blade was designed to be gripped with two hands. "Keep it as a trophy for the company. If I left it here, some rear-echelon asshole would pick it up and send it home as a souvenir of his bravery. These things are individually made and may have belonged to that Jap's family for generations, maybe longer. If I can, I'll try to get it back to his relatives after the war is over. If not, I'll keep it or give it to a museum. The Jap was a brave man. Incredibly stupid, but brave."
"So was Wills, sir. Brave that is, not stupid."
"So put him in for something, Paul. How 'bout the Distinguished Service Cross?"
Paul could see Wills's mutilated body and the eternal look of surprise on his young face. Wills had been one of the good guys in the platoon, although Paul now thought of just about all of them as good guys. "No, sir, let's go all the way. Let's put Wills in for the Medal of Honor."
Ruger thought for a moment. Politicians and senior officers getting honors for just being in the vicinity of the shooting, and not for doing anything even remotely heroic. What Wills had done on a bleak hill on Kyushu definitely deserved to be remembered.
"Yeah," Ruger answered softly, "let's do it."
Paul felt better. Wills's death would have some reason for occurring. "And another thing, Captain. You'd might want to stop waving that sword around. Some Jap sniper's likely to get a little pissed at you for having it instead of the original owner."
He laughed out loud when Ruger quickly dropped the sword down to his leg and looked nervously about.
Chapter 46
Light feathers of icy snow whipped the barren hill overlooking the frosty brown waters of the Han River. A few miles to the west was the ruined city of Seoul. It could only be seen as a distant and still-smoking blur on the horizon, but it marked the only part of Korea south of the muddy and ice-swollen Han River currently occupied by Soviet forces.
To Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, commander in chief of the Red Army's Far Eastern Forces, the city of Seoul and the Han River line constituted only a temporary halt in the inexorable advance of the Soviet forces against the Japanese armies. That the halt was essential and commanded by Moscow did not affect his opinion that it was temporary.
On August 9, 1945, the same day the Americans dropped the second nuclear bomb, on Nagasaki, a million and a half Soviet soldiers and airmen had surged into Manchuria and then on into Korea and China. Organized into three army fronts- the Trans-Baikal, the First Far Eastern, and the Second Far Eastern- they consisted of eighty infantry and armored divisions, which contained five thousand armored vehicles and twenty-six thousand guns and mortars along with a fleet of five thousand planes. This overwhelming and battle-hardened force was hurled at the Japanese, who were pitifully short of manpower and modern weapons.
With few exceptions, Japanese forces confronting them had already been depleted by the need to transfer so many frontline soldiers back to Japan and had been swept aside or bypassed. Japanese airpower was nonexistent, and Japanese armor was laughably inadequate against the Soviet T-34, the finest tank in the world. The vaunted Japanese soldier had no chance to stand and fight against Soviet armor and firepower. In the face of the ferocious Soviet onslaught and far away from home, many Japanese units had crumbled and run, making the code of Bushido a joke. Within a few weeks, Manchuria, northern Korea, and northern China had been overrun with only moderate losses to the Red Army attackers.
On orders from the Stavka, the Soviet military's high command and in reality the word of Joseph Stalin, Vasilevsky had diverted forces from the drive on Korea to concentrate on the efforts in China. The Korean peninsula was an apple that could be plucked at any time, while the opportunity to take China from the Japanese, and to help the Chinese Red Army at the same time, was too great to be ignored.
It also mattered that the tenuous Soviet supply line from west of the Urals to Manchuria was overloaded and could not sustain Vasilevsky's entire army with food, fuel, and ammunition. When the Siberian winter closed down roads and rail lines, choices had to be made as to which areas would be supported by the limited resources, and sustaining operations in China was the choice.
Vasilevsky had halted his operations in Korea while focusing his efforts in China and had been pleased with the results. Beijing and Shanghai had fallen along with a number of other major cities, and the Soviets still drove southward.
But now, as he watched the columns of antlike figures cross the pontoon bridges of the Han River, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky was no longer quite so pleased with his success. That was because Lazar Kaganovich stood beside him on the frozen hill overlooking the Han. Kaganovich was the deputy premier of the Soviet Union, theoretically second only to Joseph Stalin.
The fifty-year-old Vasilevsky had originally been a czarist officer and had, before that, even studied for the priesthood. Both occurred before the Revolution, which, when it came, he endorsed with fervor. With his background, along with his tendency to be cultured rather than affect the crudeness of so many other Soviet officers, Vasilevsky had never felt comfortable in the inner circles of the Soviet hierarchy.
Even though Stalin himself had once considered taking holy orders, Vasilevsky was still concerned that his relatively elitist background might come back to haunt him. He had worked closely with Stalin and knew that he had the power of death at his whim. Vasilevsky's command at the far end of the Soviet empire pleased him because it meant he was far from the reaches of Joseph Stalin and the murderous intrigues of the Soviet empire.
However, Lazar Kaganovich's presence on the Korean hill meant that Stalin had reached out to him. To some people, the huge but cadaverous-looking Kaganovich personified evil. Years earlier, he had delivered his own teenage daughter to be seduced by Stalin, then permitted his own brother to be executed. Kaganovich had further demonstrated his loyalty to Stalin when he orchestrated the death by starvation of the millions of prosperous farmers, the kulaks, whose continuing prosperity insulted the egalitarian ideals of communism. As deputy premier to a man who kept everything to himself, Kaganovich's main role was to be Stalin's executioner.
"Does the sight please you?" Kaganovich asked.
Vasilevsky wondered how any man could permit Stalin to flick his own daughter, murder his brother, and still work for him. Kaganovich's degree of devotion to Stalin was frightening.
"Indeed it does, comrade, as does anything Comrade Stalin wishes."
"Some might say that we are letting the Japanese get away," he said, gesturing to the columns of Japanese infantry that moved across the bridges in plain sight and under scores of silent Soviet guns.
Vasilevsky recognized the clumsy probe and deflected it. "Anyone who felt that way would be disloyal. Comrade Stalin knows what he is doing and has proven that many times over."
"Good. Even though we all felt you would understand and comply, it was considered important enough that I come here to bring you the message in person."
"I understand." Vasilevsky also understood that the penalty for hesitation in complying with Stalin's order would have been a bullet to the brain from Kaganovich's pistol. It had been widely rumored that Stalin had gotten Kaganovich's daughter pregnant as a result of the seduction. Vasilevsky wondered what had happened to the unfortunate girl and her bastard child. He doubted that either still lived.