CaptHaggard
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Joined: 3/8/2016
From: Sonoma, CA
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**Special Communique**
Siangtan, China
October, 27, 1943
Hengyang lies behind us, back down the sinewy highway that winds through the China of popular imagination, of terraced rice fields and ruined shrines and rustic villages nestled along narrow streams. At the roadblock on the outskirts of Siangtan, the Chinese guards seem to expect us. At least they ogle Bella with familiarity—she wears her combat jacket over a saucy black evening dress, a garment that she borrowed from an old acquaintance named “Marco” in Hengyang.
“The Baedeker man?” I ask.
“Not even close, green person,” she laughs.
We follow directions down to the river, a gap of gravel between a twisting shoreline of seamless lengths of three- and four-story ramshackle residences. The bottom floors consist of exposed stacks of ballast—sandbags and boulders—that disappear into the river and prevent, I imagine, the entire neighborhood from washing away.
When the boat arrives—an insane top-heavy contraption with porcelain gunnels, it already holds ten passengers, all dressed as swank as Bella. A blonde woman from Macao wears a striking gown of black silk and leopard skin with matching wrap. Her partner, a Frenchman from Indochina attired—as all the males present—in immaculate tuxedo, operates the tiller. He wears a leather mask over one side of his face, which doesn’t fully hide his wounds.
We wedge ourselves in with held breaths. Bella sits on my lap and fills me in: “You’ll adore the Tianxin Pavilion... it’s walls actually encase a steep little hill and the buildings and gardens form a tall maze... you’re up, you’re down, you’re inside and then you’re outside and you can’t really tell where you are, except those occasions when you can glimpse stars through the Milky Way trees, and when you try to reverse your course there are so many tiny lanterns illuminating different paths, you can never be sure which way you’ve come...
“This night of Harmony Quest no couples can begin together, it’s forbidden... they’ll split us up of course... relocate you with the other men in the lower gardens to start... you’ll have to search for me... and all through your search you’ll be accosted by men desperate to find their wives and girlfriends—while the women you come across frequently do everything they can not to be found by their men—including pulling you into the shadows to hide! It’s fun!”
As she twists excitedly toward me, the older Chinese man across from us presses her long leg between his knees—a leg exposed by the risque slit in her evening dress.
“Jambes jolies,” he says to her with a purr.
“Merci,” she laughs, making no attempt to cover-up, despite the growing chill.
I confess: All these days in the rear have made me apprehensive of the van. I can’t help myself. “Uh, Bella my love—you say this pavilion is in Changsha? I hate to be a party-pooper, but last I heard Changsha is still in the hands of the Japs, no?”
She paws in her evening bag for her Chesterfields. “What of it? Harmony Quest only happens once a year. No one who is invited would think to skip it just because a few armies face-off.”
“There’ll be Japanese at this party?”
Bella glances at the Chinese gentleman as if embarrassed for my concern: “I’m afraid you’ll find the presence of Japanese isn’t as unique to us as it is to you—”
“Understood, but I’m the one in uniform—”
“Oh, I’m sure many of them will be, too,” she states, accepting her admirer’s light, then patting my chest, “and you look fine at any rate.”
The slit parting her dress now exceeds the upper limits of her black stockings. The Chinese admirer, leaning forward, massages his fingertip on the strip of exposed white upper-thigh. “Bas gui,” he purrs with a wink.
“Au contrare,” Bella laughs, folding his finger back, “vous devez monter haut, mon cherie.”
“Oo-la-la!” laughs the admirer, showing a mouthful of immaculate gold.
The river has panned out and there ahead Changsha looms in gentle evening pastels. As we putter under the long bridge, low enough that one instinctively hunches, I sense movement in the shadows directly above us—
Sure enough, amid the underside joists of the bridge, dangles a Japanese soldier. Steadying himself and lowering his hands from the wires that connect the explosive package, he looks like a concerned schoolboy as he studies me; he waves.
Bella slinks her arm around mine and nestles close: “My advice to you, dear Tiger Hunter, is to appear spectacularly brazen tonight!” She giggles breathlessly in my ear, and with a little flick of her tongue, says, “Move fast and sure—the Japanese guests will think you’re one of those crazy PT-Boat boys and give you wide berth—”
Submitted,
F.W. Bloomquist-Rose, LT USNR
SPECOP Haggard Group
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RE: THE WAR COLLEGE-Rio Bravo (A) v. El Lobo (J) - 
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