The Flowers of War (10 page)

Li was on the outside edge of the group. Just a couple of feet away, he saw a long bayonet. He followed the bayonet upwards until he got to a blank, expressionless face. The Japanese soldier was eighteen or nineteen years old.

‘Water? Is there any water?’ Li asked him.

The Japanese soldier looked at him as if he were a beast of burden.

Li made a drinking gesture again. Not even a stick of furniture could look more wooden than this Japanese, he thought to himself.

‘Water …!’ another Chinese prisoner chimed in, gesticulating and enunciating the syllables slowly and carefully, as if that way he could make the Japanese understand.

But the Japanese did not make a sound or twitch a muscle.

The cry was taken up by a number of the prisoners: ‘Water! Water! Water! …’

‘Why’s he being such a bastard? He must know what we’re saying! Even if there’s no food, just give us a little water!’

‘Water! Water!’ More and more prisoners were demanding water.

The Japanese officer shouted an order and his men cocked their rifles.

The Chinese soldiers began to mutter things like:

‘I knew we shouldn’t have come into this ruin. We can’t take them on, there’s no room to move!’

‘If we were going to take them on, we should have done it this morning, before we got so hungry!’

‘We could have taken them on last night – there are so many of us and we all had guns!’

‘If we’d known how few Japanese there were, we wouldn’t have taken any notice of the leaflets. We would have taken them on for sure!’

‘Well, we didn’t. There’s no fucking point in regretting it now,’ said Sergeant Major Li.

At this point, the interpreter appeared again. ‘Chinese officers and men, there are logistical problems with supplies, and we have to ask you to be patient for a little longer. Once you get to the island, there’ll be food.’

‘Is that for sure?’

‘The lieutenant colonel has guaranteed it! He’s arranged for the cooks on the island to have steamed bread for all five thousand of you!’

‘Steamed bread for all five thousand!’ A discussion rumbled among the Chinese prisoners. A definite figure seemed to give the information added credibility.

‘How many each?’

‘Will there be enough to fill us up?’

‘How long is the boat trip?’

‘The boats are already waiting for you on the river,’ the interpreter went on. ‘Please form up in orderly lines ready to march off …’

The prisoners summoned every last ounce of strength
and got unsteadily to their feet, a giddy darkness momentarily swirling before their eyes. There was a sheen of sweat on the foreheads and backs of many of them. As they made their way out of the gate of the ruined factory, the intepreter announced in a relaxed voice: ‘Please cooperate with your captors and hold out your wrists to be tied. we’re sorry for the inconvenience but this is to maintain order on the boats!’

In the twilight, all the prisoners could see was a forest of bayonets and the wavering light from a few dozen torches in their faces. ‘Please don’t get the wrong impression,’ the collaborator went on. ‘This is simply to ensure the operation proceeds without mishap.’

Sergeant Major Li had the impression that the severity of the Japanese and the collaborator’s friendliness were at odds with one another but he was too weak to give it much thought after a day of hunger, thirst, anxiety and fear.

After an hour of marching, they could hear the river ahead of them and the moon emerged from behind the clouds. They dropped into single file as they neared the riverbank. By the time the last of the prisoners arrived, the moon hung in the sky, illuminating the scene brightly.

One by one, the prisoners had their hands tied behind their backs. As they stood on the riverbank, they soon began
to ask each other: ‘Where are the boats? How come we can’t see a single one?’

The interpreter was nowhere to be seen so they could only ask and answer each other. ‘I expect they’ll be here … this isn’t the pier, they can’t dock here … the boats must be moored somewhere nearby …’

A fine spray blew into the faces of five thousand prisoners of war.

‘So what are we doing here?’ asked one.

‘Waiting for the boats?’ said another.

‘Didn’t they say the boats would be waiting for us?’

‘Who said that?’

‘That collaborator who does the interpreting.’

‘He’s an asshole! There’s no pier here, so how can the boats dock? They must be moored nearby and they’ll come over when we’re ready to board.’

‘But why don’t they let us walk to the pier and get on the boats?’

At this question, they all fell silent. The speaker was a twenty-one-year-old platoon commander of Li’s; he had a bit of an education and a good head on his shoulders. Li saw fear in the young man’s eyes: he had sized up the situation as soon as he arrived at the riverbank. They were on
a horseshoe-shaped beach which opened towards the Yangtze River and was protected by high ground on the other three sides. The track leading down to the beach was very narrow, which was why the Japanese had made them switch from marching two abreast to single file. There was no way that boats capable of carrying so many men could dock here. It was impossible.

The young man pointed out to Li that, up above them, the high ground was densely packed with Japanese soldiers. The moon shone down on their weapons and on the heavy machine guns which had been set up at intervals.

‘What’s all this about? What are we waiting for?’

No one could answer this question. Some of the prisoners were too weak to stand and sat down. Hunger and thirst had knocked the fight out of them, and they were resigned to their fate.

And there they waited, till the moon had completed its journey from one side of the sky to the other. Still the boats did not come. Their feet were painfully cold, then went completely numb. Their bound wrists also hurt and eventually they could not feel them any more either.

‘Hell, I knew we shouldn’t have let them tie our wrists!’

‘Right, then we could have fought back!’

‘Wasn’t their commanding officer’s name on the leaflet?’

‘How much longer have we got to wait? If we don’t freeze to death, we’ll starve to death!’

Sergeant Major Li kept looking up at the Japanese soldiers massed on the skyline on all three sides. They seemed to be expecting something, and every machine gun seemed to stand in readiness too. Judging by the position of the moon and the stars, it must be around midnight.

Another couple of hours passed and the prisoners were sick of waiting around, with some becoming quite frantic. The wounded sat leaning against each other, some sharing a padded coat or a quilt between them, moaning and groaning. The cold at that time of night was bone-chilling even for those who had survived unscathed, let alone those with gaping wounds. Only one of the wounded was sound asleep – the boy Wang Pusheng. He, like the other injured men, had gained by not having his wrists tied.

There were half a dozen other men, just then, between Sergeant Major Li and the boy.

Li looked around once more at the Japanese lining the high ground and saw that the sky behind them was beginning to lighten, turning the mass of steel helmets from black to grey. He had just looked back towards the river when he
heard a slight sound, so faint he was not sure if he had heard it at all. Something like the sound made by the Japanese officer as he signalled his orders, bringing his sabre down, slicing it cleanly and smoothly through the air.

Li was an intelligent and seasoned old soldier. He knew how to fight and kill, and how to make good his escape and hide. It was the last two skills in particular which had ensured he was still alive and kicking after all these years as a soldier.

So when his ears caught this faint sound, he understood in a flash what it meant and was the first to fling himself to the ground. In the depths of his cynical old soldier’s heart, with its distrust of everyone, in particular the enemy, he was aware that he and his five thousand fellow soldiers had walked right into a trap set by the Japanese. Just why they had set that trap he could only guess, but he knew that it had snapped shut on them and no good could come of it.

As soon as he heard the sound he instantly scanned the ground around him. The water’s edge was thirty or forty feet away so he could not hope for salvation there. To his right, he saw a slight depression in the ground.

Just then, all the prisoners heard the sound of metal rubbing on metal. ‘What’s going on?’ someone asked.

The simultaneous firing of a dozen machine guns was their answer.

Li dived straight into the depression which his eyes had just alighted on.

A body thudded down on top of him and twitched, the head dangling over him and soaking him in blood and brain matter. Another body rolled first one way then the other, finally landing in the same depression. Li felt as if his abdomen was being crushed. It was incredible how the dying fought to survive. The bodies pressing down on him kept rearing upwards, pain forcing their backs into the sort of arc that only the most skilled acrobat could perform. But with every spasm, the arc grew less pronounced, until the bodies flattened out and the rippling movements ceased. Li learned that people’s innards could protest too – the innards of the arcing bodies were emitting brutal and appalling sounds.

The firing went on for a long time, and the corpses covering Sergeant Major Li were shot, quite gratuitously, over and over again. Every time a bullet scored a hit, life would return to a corpse which was growing cold and it would be shaken by a great tremor which went right through Li’s body and into his soul. The bullets seemed to be scoring a hit on him too.

When silence had fallen around them and the blood and other fluids from the comrades whose bodies lay on top of him had congealed and gone icy cold, the Japanese came down from the skyline. They tried to clear a path through the corpses which littered the ground but it was not easy so they simply trod roughshod over them. They were grumbling about something, perhaps that the mixture of blood and mud was ruining their boots. As they walked they used their bayonets and the tips of their boots to shove the bodies aside, those bodies who as recently as yesterday thought they were coming here to eat steamed bread and tinned food! These honest Chinese peasants were easily fooled. They had walked right into the trap. The Japanese soldiers yawned and chatted and jabbed their bayonets into any of the bodies which showed any sign of life. Li listened to them chatting and jabbing, making their way in his direction.

Li felt a clammy breeze from the river brush his leg. He hoped the Japanese would ignore it and take it for a dead leg. A few minutes later, his exposed leg was spotted by a Japanese soldier and a bayonet was thrust deep into the sturdy muscles of his thigh. The natural reaction of the flesh was to retract, making it hard to pull the bayonet out. Li bit down ferociously on his lip and willed his leg to seem as
insensitive as that of a lifeless corpse. The slightest movement would invite a second shooting and ruin all his efforts to survive. The second stab came, a little below the first. The steel blade pierced the skin and flesh and Li heard it scrape the bone. It was as if his whole body was a sound box, amplifying the sound of the stab in his own ears. He heard the sound of steel grating against flesh as a loud swish. At that instant, every part of his consciousness was erased, and his head was consumed in white light. At the fourth blow of the bayonet, Li felt something snap at the back of his knee, something which ricocheted down to his calf and up to his thigh. At this, the white light in his head enveloped his whole body.

It was the absolute silence which awoke him. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but he knew he was still alive. His hunger and thirst had gone, and his body was filled with a white-hot energy, as if it had been reborn.

He waited and waited. Finally, when it started to grow dark, he slowly shifted his position under the pile of corpses and tried to turn over. It should have been impossible. Not even the best military training could have taught any soldier to perform that movement. His hands were tied behind his back and one leg was useless. His other leg had to take his entire weight as he turned.

It must have taken him an hour to move from his prone position to lying on his side. Now it was easier, as he could use one shoulder and one leg together to get into a crawling position. He was very careful to keep his movements to the minimum, as he was not sure that all the Japanese had left the killing grounds. It was getting darker and darker and the pain as he inched forward grew worse. He kept stopping to wipe the sweat from his eyes. By nightfall he had progressed five or six metres, a kind of forced march which left him soaked in sweat, even though he was dehydrated after two days without water. He thought he would crawl towards the river. He had to slake his thirst at all costs. Then he could plan his next movements.

Just then he stopped, the sweat chilling on his skin, because he had heard a faint noise. Could the Japanese have left someone to guard the corpses? He dared not pant, and muffled his gasps by pressing his open mouth against his shoulder. He listened again. The voice spoke Chinese. ‘Wounded soldier … name of Wang Pusheng …’

Li kept looking around but could see no one that looked as if they were alive. He held his breath and froze. The voice came again. ‘… Help me …’

He could hear it was a boy. Many young boys had been
snatched by press gangs recently. The boy must have thought his wheezing cry was a loud call for help which could be heard for miles around.

When Li found him, Wang Pusheng was buried under a pile of corpses, as he himself had been. He had been bayoneted in the belly but had been partly shielded by a corpse whose lower leg lay across him. Otherwise the wound would have been much bigger. The corners of Wang Pusheng’s mouth pulled at the bandage which covered most of his face. Li could tell that the boy was in terrible pain and wanted to cry but had no tears left. ‘No crying!’ he threatened him. ‘If you cry I won’t take you with me! Just remember how incredibly lucky you are to have survived!’