The Police Sergeant grasped that situation immediately. “Take seven men, get out through the cellar and run for the airbase. Warn them; tell them the Japanese are coming. We'll hold here.” Not for long he thought grimly. They had six rifles, two Lee-Enfields, from a batch the Army had purchased for next-to-nothing from the British Army after WW1, the rest were the old Type 45s. A quick glance added a shotgun and that left the rest of the police with their revolvers. Not much to fight an army with. Still, the six riflemen were at the windows trying to return fire. No point in firing revolvers yet, anyway the volume of incoming fire made the defense seem puny. Over his shoulder, the Sergeant saw Songwon and six others scrambling down through the hatch in the floor. The cellar was long and thin, it surfaced some way away from the station. They should make it, the Sergeant thought, just as long as the ones left behind could buy some time.
To the slight surprise of the Sergeant, he and the twelve men left in the police station bought twenty minutes. That's how long it took for the firefight to reach the point where the Japanese had worked close enough to throw hand grenades into the building. As Songwon and his group eased out through the jungle, they heard the explosions that silencing the defenders' firing. They didn't see the invaders enter the building, but they did hear the screams as the Japanese took their time finishing off the wounded policemen with their knives and bayonets.
Cookhouse, Laum Mwuak Airfield, Thai/Japanese Indochina Border
If there was a plum assignment when pulling a night alert, this had to be it. Guarding the cookhouse while a friendly cook prepared breakfast for the base. Chief Cook was a friendly, motherly woman who saw it as her duty to ensure “the boys'' guarding her cookhouse were properly fed. Breakfast in an hour or so time would be noodle soup with meatballs and “Her boys” had already had a bowl each, filled with tasty vegetables and meatballs fresh from the oven.
There was history behind Chief Cook's concern for the Air Force guards. She'd been born Thai and free but when she'd been a young girl, the French had stolen the province she came from and they'd treated the occupants like they'd treated the rest of their Indochinese subjects - as serfs. Then, in 1941, the Royal Thai Army had come and liberated them. Chief Cook remembered her first sight of the young men in jungle green uniforms with their strangely-shaped helmets who'd made her Thai again. Assistant Cook was young, Cambodian and couldn't remember a time before the French. Not the brightest of girls, all she knew was that life had become much better since the French had gone.
Airman Ronna Phakasad didn't know the history; all he did know was that the cook had looked after them almost unnervingly well. There was an advantage to being part of the guard unit on an air base; machine guns were hardly in short supply. There were so many that there was a joke in the guard company that the only soldiers who didn't have thirty-caliber Browning machine guns were the ones who had the fifty-calibers. They were aircraft guns, true, and their mountings were improvised but they were still there and they could pour out lead. They'd need to,
Ronna's little command had eight men, two two-man machinegun crews with a .30 Browning each and four men with the MP40 machine pistols Lopburi made under license. He reckoned that if everything dropped in the pot, he'd need them. This building was designated as a strongpoint that covered the entry to the base and a line of trees that offered quick access to the flight line beside the east-west 1,000 meter runway. That meant he was guarding the Corsair dive-bombers that needed the longer runway to get off. Over the other side of the base, the Hawk Ills were parked beside the 800 meter north-south runway. They were somebody else's responsibility.
The eastern sky was just beginning to redden with the dawn when Ronna saw a pair of headlights coming up the road towards the main gates. Erratic, unsteadily driven, as if the driver was drunk - or something worse. Ronna patted the gunner for the Browning covering the gate and pointed at the approaching vehicle. The gunner said nothing but heaved the cocking handle of the machine gun back. The vehicle continued to approach until it was under the lights by the entrance barrier. Ronna took his binoculars and looked hard. “Doirt shoot, they're our policemen!”
“How do you know boss?”
“Some of them are still wearing their pajamas.”
That, the machine-gunner thought, was unsettling on so many levels
Main Gate, Laum Mwuak Airfield, Thai/Japanese Indochina Border
“Sir, you got to help us! The rest of the men are in the police station, the Japanese are slaughtering everybody”. Private Songwon was distraught, barely intelligible, thought Sergeant Nikorn Phwuangphairoch, who commanded the 20-men detachment in charge of holding the gates, the guardhouse and the rest of the approach to the accommodation areas. He'd placed his men inside the guardhouse itself and in foxholes along the side of the road.
Nikorn had already called in the arrival of the policemen and asked to mount a rescue mission to the police station. The request had been curtly refused; it was obviously far too late to save anybody down there. The base doctor had arrived almost immediately and tried to treat the men by the truck. They'd pushed him away, telling him they were unhurt. Then they'd told him their commander, Police Lieutenant Sangob Pornmanonth, was in the back of the truck.
“He was living at his house sir, with his family. It was oil the way here we'd stolen this truck you see, so we stopped to pick him and his family up. But the Japanese had got there first. Our Lieutenant was in the garden by the door and his family were, it was dreadful, horrible, they were all dead even the children. The Lieutenant's alive just, please help him Sir. The telegraph station's gone, the town hall as well. We heard firing from the railway station. All over. The Japanese are on foot, they're a few minutes behind us.”
Nikorn tried to descramble the valuable information from the man. The town was gone, captured, no doubt about that. And the Japanese were coming up the road, fast. Nobody should ever underestimate just how fast the Japanese infantry could move on Toot. A few minutes was the best they could hope for. As he turned to send a message to the operations center the doctor jumped down from the truck, his face frozen, his eyes sick. “Regret to tell you Sergeant; Police Lieutenant Sangob has died from the wounds inflicted on him by the Japanese at his home. Nothing anybody could do, wounds like that.”
Nikorn nodded. “Suggest you get back to the Operations Center. “ He dropped his voice “and tell the Wing Commander what you saw here. We must get the families out. Rest of you, get ready, they're coming. You, the policeman who drove that truck. Get it out of the way. Burn it if that's the only way to stop the Japs using it.”
Operations Center, Laum Mwuak Airfield, Thai/Japanese Indochina Border
“You were right Sir, we're coming under attack. The Japanese are in Laum Mwuak already. They've taken the police station, we know that, and we think they've taken the town hall and the railway. The telegraph also.”
“Get a message out to Phnom Penh and Bangkok.”
“Telegraph's down Sir, that's why we think the Japanese got there. Radio, its atmospherics, we can't get through.”
“Right. If the Japanese are coming through the town, they'll hit us from that side. That means the Hawks are the nearest aircraft to their attack. Get them up and out now. Get them to the Kong Bin Noi Thi Saam base at Phnom Penh. They've got Ostrichs there. We're going to need some help.”
He stopped as the sound firing erupted from the perimeter by the residential area. The rapid hammering noise of the Brownings, the duller crack of the Mausers and a lighter crackle. Japanese Arisakas.