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.
At some point in the battle, their axis of advance had swung from east to south. Mongkut realized they were driving the Japanese parallel to the river instead of back towards it. He had no idea where he was in the forest or why the unit was maneuvering the way it was. All he knew was that there was another Japanese position in front of him that had to be suppressed before its world would be turned into fire. He knew something else: he hated the Japanese beyond anything he could imagine. They have lost this battle, it’s all over. Why must they make us fight like this when they must know they have lost the battle? Why are they forcing us to do these things? As the hatred seethed in his mind, he started to welcome the sight of the flamethrower crews burning the Japanese in their dugouts and foxholes and relish the sounds of screaming from their victims.
Lieutenant General Akihito Nakamura knew defeat looming when he saw it. He had left his headquarters the other side of the river so he could lead his division when they broke through the Thai defenses and headed into the heart of Indochina. That hadn’t happened. His division was being methodically destroyed, driven back on to a narrow spit of land where the Mekong and one of its tributaries joined. There was no way out of that position. That left only one option open to him and his division command staff. They were preparing for it now, loading themselves with hand grenades and picking up rifles so that they could make a last charge on the enemy. Perhaps, even now, one last charge will turn the tide of the battle. It has before.
The Thais were closing in. Nakamura knew that from the closeness of the sound. Machinegun fire, artillery, the crash of grenades and the evil roar of the flamethrowers. The last sound infuriated him. How could his soldiers be expected to fight like warriors when they were burned alive in their defenses? The Thais hadn’t even charged like proper soldiers. Instead, they moved forwards slowly and patiently. Nakamura looked up at the setting sun. A few minutes and it would be night. A pity I don’t have that long. A night charge would have a better chance of breaking through. He led his men out to their last-hope attack.
It was easy to find the front line. The noise and stench of petroleum identified it even without the orange streaks of rifle and machine-gun fire in the gathering gloom. Nakamura drew his sword and started to run towards the inbound fire. He sensed his men keeping up with them as they carried out their attack. The orange streaks were all around him, raking across his force, sending the soldiers tumbling down. One man was carrying a Japanese flag when he was struck by the bullets and sent sprawling into the ground. Two flags in the mud is enough for one day. Nakamura grabbed the staff and waved it defiantly.
He felt heavy thuds in his chest. His legs seemed to turn to jelly. He used the staff of the flag to support himself. A ball of orange fire engulfed him.
“Second Regiment of the 11th Infantry has been effectively destroyed. Its casualties exceed seventy percent of its strength. Third Regiment is better off; they have taken about thirty percent casualties but they are suffering additional losses as they mop up isolated resistance. There’s no sign of that ending yet. The Cavalry have suffered about forty percent losses. On the other hand, the Japanese Fifth Motorized Division has been obliterated. All that’s left from the infantry regiments are the survivors scattered throughout the woods. We’ve chewed up the divisional base the other side of the river with dive bombers and artillery.”
“Prisoners?”
“Five, Your Highness; all wounded so badly they were unable to resist. The Japanese fought until they were killed and those that could not fight any longer, killed themselves. When their position was hopeless, they would charge our lines to certain death rather than give up.” The operations officer paused for a second before continuing. “We found the bodies of about a dozen of our men taken prisoner in the initial stages of the fighting. All murdered and their bodies mutilated.”
The Ambassador nodded, carefully keeping her feelings to herself. She would add one extra term to the agreement with the French because of that piece of information. “The 11th Division will be withdrawn and reformed as soon as the French sign. They will be the first to receive the new equipment we are making under license.”