A couple of days after that, the regiment got pulled out of the line. The first place they went was to a delousing station. Like any Japanese, Fujita was glad to soak in almost unbearably hot water. He was even gladder the Russian bombers had missed the bathhouse. If the soap smelled powerfully of medicine, so what? Getting his clothes baked to kill lice and nits was less delightful, but he could put up with it.
Some of the soldiers thought they were going home. Some people could smell pig shit and think of pork cutlets. Fujita was willing-even eager-to be surprised, which didn't mean he expected it.
The men marched off to the west, toward the Ussuri River and the border with Manchukuo. The officers said nothing about where they were headed, or why. Maybe they didn't know, either. More likely, they didn't want the troops to find out till they couldn't do anything about it but complain.
A small flotilla of river steamers waited by the riverbank. They'd all seen better decades. Some of them looked as if they'd seen a better century. Sergeant Fujita's company and another filed aboard one of the river-boats. They filled it to overflowing. It waddled out into the stream and headed south. Fujita feared he knew what that meant… which, in the grand scheme of things, mattered not at all.
Spatters of snow chased the steamers. The clouds overhead remained thick and dark. For that, the sergeant thanked whatever weather kami ruled in these parts. Clear skies would have let Russian airplanes spot the steamers and shoot them up at their leisure. Each boat mounted a machine gun at the bow and another at the stern. From everything Fujita had seen, they wouldn't do a sen's worth of good in case of a real attack.
He said as much to Hayashi. The conscripted student looked back at him. "What difference does it make? If the Russians don't shoot us from the air now, they'll shoot us on the ground pretty soon."
"Maybe they won't," Fujita answered. You had to look on the bright side of things. That was about as far on the bright side as he could make himself look, though.
"Hai. Honto. Maybe they won't. Maybe our own machine gunners will do it for them, the way they did in my father's day." Hayashi had his share of cynicism, or maybe more than his share.
"Your father made it. So did my uncles," Fujita said. Again, just surviving seemed like optimism. The steamers lumbered south through the snow flurries. PERONNE WAS A NORTHERN TOWN that had kept some of its brick-and-stone walls. German bombs and French artillery-or maybe it was the other way around-had done horrible things to them. Big chunks were bitten out of the church of St. Jean. Despite the chill of crisp fall days, the stench of death fouled the air.
In the French drive to the east, Luc Harcourt had seen-and smelled-a lot of towns and villages like this one. He smelled bad himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bathed. Joinville and Villehardouin were just as grimy and unshaven and odorous as he was. So were all the other poilus pushing the Fritzes back.
Joinville pointed to a parade of sorts going through the streets of Peronne. "By Jesus, there's something you don't see every day!"
"Too bad," Tiny Villehardouin added in his bad Breton-flavored French.
Luc Harcourt thought it was too bad, too. The locals were forcing a dozen or so young women to march along bare to the waist, their breasts bouncing at every step. Some had had their heads shaved. Others, more humiliatingly still, wore scalps half bare. One was very visibly pregnant.
People yelled at them as they went: "Whores!" "Cunts!" "Scumbags of the Boches!" Rotten vegetables flew through the air. No one seemed ready to cast the first stone, though.
"I bet this happened after we chased the Germans out the last time, too," Joinville said. The Gascon had his eye on one of the girls in particular. His chances were probably pretty good, too. If she'd sleep with a German, or a bunch of Germans, why wouldn't she sleep with a Frenchman?
"Not with the same broads, I bet," Luc said. Joinville laughed so hard, the Hotchkiss gun on his back almost fell off. Villehardouin, who was burdened with the tripod, fixed his crewmate's straps.
The rumble of aircraft engines swelling out of the east made Luc's head rise like that of a dog scenting danger. If those were Stukas, he wanted to find somewhere else to be, and in a hurry. Another country, by choice.
But this flight wasn't full of vulture-winged dive bombers. In fact, the flying machines looked like something left over from his father's war. They were biplanes with open cockpits. Antiaircraft guns opened up on them. Black puffs of smoke marked shell bursts. Some came quite close to the planes, but the old-fashioned, ungainly machines buzzed on.
Luc had trouble taking them seriously even when they swooped down on Peronne. But then, all of a sudden, it sounded as if God were firing giant machine guns up in the sky. The townsfolk suddenly lost interest in tormenting their wayward women. They ran, screaming. Luc wanted to do the same thing. Only the fear of losing his men's respect forever held him in place. "Hit the dirt!" he yelled, and suited action to word.
Both machine gun and tripod clanked as Joinville and Villehardouin followed suit. That fearsome ratatat-tat grew louder yet as the German biplanes neared. They're doing it with their engines, Luc realized. It was the same kind of trick as the sirens in a Stuka's landing gear. It was designed to make people afraid. And, as with most things German, it did what it was designed for. Did it ever!
The biplanes carried real machine guns: Luc saw them spitting fire. And bombs fell from under their wings: not the monsters Stukas could haul, the ones that pierced reinforced concrete and wrecked fortresses, but even so… Luc rolled himself into a ball like a hedgehog. He only wished he had real spines.
Bullets sparked off brickwork and cobblestones. Bombs bounced him as if he were a basketball. A round clanged off metal somewhere much too close. And then the biplanes were gone-he hoped.
He needed a moment to take stock of himself. Both arms work? Check. Both legs? Check again. No holes? No blood? No pain? No and no and no. "Fuck me," he said. "I'm all right."
Then he looked around to see how his buddies were doing. Villehardouin seemed to be going through a checklist like the one he'd just used himself. The big Breton nodded and gave a thumbs-up. Joinville had taken off the Hotchkiss gun and was looking it over. "Look!" he said, pointing to a dent and a lead splash on one of the iron cooling fins at the base of the barrel. "It hit here and ricocheted. If it hadn't ricocheted, it would have gone into my back."
"Sometimes you'd rather be lucky than good." Luc took his water bottle off his belt. "Here. Have some of this."
"Pinard?" Joinville asked, taking the flask.
"Better-applejack," Luc said.
"Ah. Merci, mon ami." The Gascon's throat worked. After a couple of swallows, he handed Villehardouin the bottle. The big man also took a knock. Then he gave the water bottle back to Luc. Luc drank, too, before he stowed it on his belt. He needed a little distilled courage, or at least an anesthetic.
Luc looked around again, this time for the soldiers who'd been hauling the Hotchkiss gun's ammunition. None of the bullets from the biplanes had hit the aluminum strips of cartridges, which was also lucky. They might have started going off like ammo inside a burning tank, which wouldn't have been healthy for anyone within a few hundred meters.