Onime No Kyo
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Dec. 17, 1941
A single rifle shot rang crisp and clear in the pre-dawn darkness.
"Bloody fools" muttered Lt. Maxwell to himself in the murk of the dugout, barely lifting his eyes from the maps he was studying by the dim light of the oil lamp. It wasnt the cultural differences between the lieutenant and his Punjabis. In fact, he rather liked their food and the sing-song quality of their language. It wasnt even the way his soldiers tried to shirk the least pleasant duties and details by feigning an inability to understand their orders. To be perfectly honest, the lieutenant had to admit to himself, I would do the same in their place. What really drove Lt. Maxwell to distraction about his Indians was the way they good-naturedely but consistently ignored the most basic of military lessons, such as sound and light discipline, and the fact that crawling out of your foxhole at night, for whatever reason, was an extremely bad idea, regardless of how many times those basics were repeated to them. "Another dead bloody fool", thought the lieutenant again with a pang of guilt and regret as the limp body of a young soldier was carried into the dugout on a tarp by two others. The man who was now the corpse had probably crawled out to take a leak. Who shot him, an alert Japanese sniper or one of his jumpy buddies, was as unimportant as the reason he crawled out of his hole in the first place. Either way he was just as dead.
Nor was he the first, and will certainly not be the last. Maxwell and his unit was located towards the western end of the thin line of troops defending Alor Star. To his left were the Leicestershires, obviously being trusted most to secure a flank. To his right stretched out the rest of the 15th Indian Brigade.
Despite the fact that in civilian terms they had been in their positions quite long enough to have improved their positions, the military reality was quite different. From the first day of the war, Alor Star had been bombed on a daily basis. After the first few days, a new threat appeared. Advance elements of the Japanese column had arrived on the outskirts of town. While the enemy had not yet made any effort to advance, enemy sharpshooters occupied hidden positions in the dense undergrowth abutting the town. All movement in the open had become perilous, of which the young man whose body now lay in the corner of the dugout was, perhaps, another reminder. It became impossible to improve the existing trenchworks. Some rudimentary digging was still going on further back, in the reserve area, but any rational being realized that once the Japanese penetrated the main line of defense, there would be nothing to stop them.
Maxwell sighed and folded his map as the distant rumble of the day's first air raid reached his hearing. It wouldnt be long now, he mused. Recon patrols, brave and desperate souls who risked their lives to crawl through the enemy-held jungle, had confirmed that the main body of the Japanese column was at most within a day's march. He straightened his uniform tunic and ducked out of the dugout to give the usual pats on the back and kind words to his anxious soldiers before the bombs, and perhaps even the first enemy charge was upon them.
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