The Girl Who Played Go

90

Clouds of flies hover in the air.

On the plain the shells have carved deep craters, the fields have been ravaged and bodies are everywhere. Those that still have their waxy faces lie with their mouths open. Others are just piles of mangled flesh hard to make out from the soil.

As our unit slowly crosses this vast cemetery, I realize that some of our soldiers, having fallen into an enemy trap, fought to the last man. In the sun I feel nauseated, and at that moment I understand that our fight against the terrorists in Manchuria was just a game of hide-and-seek. Only now does the enormity and horror of eagerly anticipated war make itself plain.

In the middle of a deserted village we are caught in a storm of explosions. I throw myself to the ground as the bullets rain down onto earth whitened by weeks of drought. After a brief exchange of fire, we conclude that the unit attacking us consists of just a few diehards who have stayed behind to hamper our progress. The bugle sounds the attack, and the Chinese scatter like rabbits in a shooting match. I aim at the fastest man, just as he is about to reach the edge of the woods. He crumples at the foot of a tree.

At midday a second violent attack; the Chinese are so drunk with despair that they have become ferocious. I lie full-length on a slope with the burning sun on my back, and I catch a waft of a sweet smell that reminds me of the girl who played go. In front of me a soldier hit in the back rolls on the ground screaming. I recognize him as one of my men-we have just celebrated his nineteenth birthday.

I wanted to bury the boy after the battle, but the order to march on is given and I must leave him to the attentions of the next regiment. Inequality continues beyond the grave. The luckiest are burned on the battlefield, while others are thrown into a ditch. But the most unfortunate are gathered up by the Chinese, who cut off their heads and parade them on stakes.

This first day of warfare feels like a long dream. Nothing touches me, neither the atrocities of the fighting, nor the exhausting march, nor the deaths of my soldiers. I wander through a padded world where life and death are equally meaningless. For the first time the military adventure has failed to inspire me: we go to our fates just as salmon struggle back upstream-there is no beauty or grandeur in it.

That evening the medical officer notices that I am sullen and withdrawn and he diagnoses sunstroke. I let my men wrap my head in a cool, damp towel and lie down on a bale of straw, staring at the dark ceiling of the cottage appropriated as my quarters for the night. I am disgusted with myself.

We are woken by whistling and explosions in the early morning. We respond with grenades, before both sides man the machine guns. In this cacophony we suddenly recognize the bugle sounding the attack.

The division attacking us is Japanese, a mistake that costs us several lives.