Hitler’s War

After a while, snow started melting faster than it fell. More and more bare ground appeared; white no longer cloaked the pines and firs and spruces on both sides of the Ussuri. Here and there, flowers started blooming. They sprouted with what struck Fujita as frantic haste, as if they knew they wouldn't have long to do whatever they did. He wouldn't have called this spring in Japan, but it looked to be as much as the Ussuri country had to offer.

Lieutenant Hanafusa seemed delighted. "Spring comes early this year!" he exclaimed. "Even the weather kami are on our side."

No one told him he was wrong. Fujita only hoped the spirits in charge of the weather knew what they were doing. No, not only. He hoped the people in charge of the Kwantung Army knew what they were doing, too.

Whenever he got the chance, he peered across the Ussuri with field glasses. He rarely glimpsed Russians. Whatever the Red Army had over there, it was concealed. The Japanese would find out when they crossed the river-no sooner.

He kept hoping the people in charge of things would change their minds. Hope was cheap-no, free. And one of the big reasons it was free was that it was so unreliable. Men and guns kept right on moving up toward the Ussuri. Fujita presumed planes did, too, but the airstrips were farther back, so he didn't see them.

Superior Private Shinjiro Hayashi said, "Please excuse me, Sergeant-san, but do our superiors believe the Russians don't know we're preparing an attack?" His education didn't keep him from seeing what also looked all too obvious to Fujita.

"If you think our superiors tell me what they believe, Hayashi, you're dumber than I give you credit for, and that isn't easy," Fujita snapped. He quashed the university student without showing how worried he was himself. He hoped he didn't show it, anyhow. If Hayashi had suspicions, he also had the common sense to keep quiet about them.

The Japanese got a start hour-0530 on 1 April 1939. The last couple of days dragged along. Everybody got ready and did his best to make sure the Red Army went on thinking everything was normal…if that was what the Red Army thought.

"When we detach Vladivostok from the Communists, the Emperor will be proud of us," Lieutenant Hanafusa told his platoon as they waited for the barrage to begin. Sergeant Fujita imagined marching into Vladivostok. He imagined the Emperor pi

The shelling opened right on time. The noise was titanic. The Kwantung Army was firing everything it had, and firing as fast as it could-so it seemed to Fujita, anyhow.

Hanafusa's whistle shrilled. "Let's go!" he said. They raced out of the dugouts and ran for the boats waiting on the river. As soon as they got in, got over, and got out, they could start fighting a more ordinary kind of war.

Russian shells were already dropping on the Japanese side of the Ussuri. The barrage hadn't stu

He didn't want to go into the river. With the heavy pack on his back, he'd sink like a stone. And the water that splashed up onto him said it was bitterly cold even now. Russian machine guns on the far bank yammered out death. Tracers snarled past the boat. Bullets kicked up rows of splashes in the stream. One holed the boat, miraculously without hitting anybody. Water jetted in.

"Stuff something into that!" Fujita shouted to the closest soldier. The man did. Fujita didn't see what. He didn't care. As long as the leak slowed, nobody would.

Mud grated under the boat's keel. The Japanese soldiers jumped out. They ran toward the closest machine-gun nest. The sooner they knocked out those deadly toys, the longer they were likely to live. One of them exploded into red mist fifty meters from the enemy strongpoint. "Mines!" everybody else yelled. Fujita wanted to run very fast and to stand very still, both at the same time. He might have guessed the Russians would use mines to protect their positions, but he didn't have to like it.

A couple of more men went down before the Japanese chucked grenades into the dugout through the firing slit. Even that didn't do for all the Russians. One fellow staggered out all bloody, his uniform shredded. He raised his hands over his head. "Tovarishchi!" he choked out. Fujita had heard that in Mongolia. Comrades!, it meant.

He shot the Russian in the face. "You can't shoot at us and then quit, bastard," he said. From everything he'd heard, machine gu

Japanese soldiers stormed into the woods. They soon discovered their artillery hadn't done everything it might have. The Russians had more machine guns farther back from the Ussuri. They had snipers in camouflage smocks high up in the trees. They'd hidden more mines to slow and to cha

Airplanes dueled overhead. In among the trees, Fujita couldn't see how the aerial combat went. When bombs fell on the Red Army positions ahead, he felt like cheering. When explosions came too close to his own men, he swore. He thought the Russians were taking more punishment than they were giving out, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he was just rooting for his own team.

Halfway through that mad afternoon, a ru

"Huh?" he said. "What happened to Lieutenant Hanafusa?"

"He caught two in the chest," the other soldier answered. "Maybe he'll make it, but…" A shrug said the odds were bad.

Fujita sure wouldn't have wanted to catch two in the chest, or even one in the toe. But if the platoon was his-at least till another officer showed up-he had to do his best with it. They were still at least a kilometer from the day's pla

"M.oscow speaking," the radio a

Smoke from almost as many papirosi as there were Red Air Force officers in the ready room blued the air. Somebody got up and made the radio louder. When he sat down, someone else patted him on the back, as if to say Good job! Yes, they were all jumpy this early morning.

"Comrades! Soviet citizens! Our motherland has been invaded!" the news reader said solemnly. "Without provocation, without warning, the Empire of Japan has launched a multipronged attack against the Siberian districts of the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic of the peace-loving USSR. Severe fighting is reported in several areas. All drives against the Trans-Siberian Railroad have already been blunted or soon will be-so Red Army commanders in the field have assured General Secretary Stalin. Under his leadership, victory of the Soviet workers and peasants is assured."