Page 111 of The River We Remember

He was awakened by a kick to his ribs. He opened his eyes to the sight of two Japanese soldiers, their rifles pointed at his chest. They spoke harshly and gestured for him to get up. He rose, and they ushered him outside, where more soldiers waited. The villagers were gathered there, too, and didn’t seem frightened by the soldiers. Among them was the young girl who’d smiled at him and led him, he’d thought, to safety. They all stared at him now, and he understood that he’d been nothing to them but an item for barter.

He was taken on foot to a large clearing at the edge of a river where rows of bamboo huts stood surrounded by barbed wire. Inside, he passed stick-thin men in rags, who glanced up at him and then quickly back down to their labor. He was shoved into one of the larger structures and made to stand in front of a desk while one of the soldiers fetched an officer. The man who came and sat behind the desk and removed his cap was bald. He had a great, amoeba-shaped burn scar across the left side of his face. His eyes reminded Brody of the black cutworms that, back home in Minnesota, could destroy a farmer’s entire corn crop. With him was another man, not a soldier. He was, Brody would learn later, Burmese. His name was Kyaw. He did the speaking directly to Brody.

“American,” he said.

Brody said, “American.”

“We don’t see many Americans here.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Brody said. “You’re not very welcoming.”

The man spoke to the bald officer in Japanese, and the officer with the worm eyes replied.

“On the contrary,” the Burmese man said to Brody. “We are very glad to see you.”

And by that, it turned out, the bald man, whose name was Colonel Himura, meant that he believed Brody could supply important information about American intentions in the region. Himura knew about Nazira and OSS Detachment 101, but he wanted to know more. Over the course of the next weeks, he did his best to get what he could from Brody. Which was very little, because all that Brody told him under duress Himura somehow already knew. That didn’t stop the Japanese colonel from torturing Brody and continuing the questioning.

In his first few days, Brody was kept from the other prisoners in the camp, tied to a tree, beaten with clubs, burned with cigarettes, threatened with beheading. He was denied food, water. When he was finally cut down, he couldn’t walk and was dragged to a hut no larger than a doghouse and thrown inside. He was pulled out at irregular intervals and subjected to more torture, more interrogation.

Eventually, Brody was placed with the other prisoners, who turned out to be Aussie and British. The camp—it was called Shwenwa, after the nearest village—had a small prisoner population, under two hundred men. Every day, those prisoners who weren’t already deathly ill were marched out to the river, where they worked breaking and sluicing rock for gold. His new comrades told him they believed Himura wasn’t operating in the interests of his home nation but intended to enrich himself. It was grueling, brutal work, and the men, who were fed barely enough to keep them alive, suffered long hours in the humid jungle heat.

Rumors circulated widely about the Allies advancing into northern Burma soon and about orders to kill all prisoners of war before liberation could occur. Like everyone else, Brody slept with the knowledge that, one way or another, he would probably not leave Shwenwa alive.

The day came when all the fears—Brody’s and the other prisoners’—were realized. They’d noticed an agitation among the Japanese soldiers that they’d never seen before. Word spread that Chinese and American forces were sweeping down from the north and out of the west, closing in on Shwenwa. That final morning, the men weren’t marched out to the river but instead were directed to use their shovels and picks to dig a long trench outside the wire. They were told it would be used in defense of the camp, if necessary. The men bent to their labor, and as they eyed their captors closely, they saw great fear in the faces of the Japanese. When the trench was several feet deep, the men, all two hundred, were ordered to toss away their tools. To their great alarm, they watched the Japanese roll out barrels of gasoline and position them beside the trench.

And the slaughter began. At first, the Japanese soldiers didn’t waste bullets. They set upon their prisoners with bayonets. Those men who tried to flee were shot down like dogs. The POWs fought back. Amid the mayhem, the barrels were tipped and gasoline covered the bottom of the trench and was set ablaze. Before the flames reached him, Brody leapt clear of the trench. Immediately a bullet tore into his left calf, and he went down. A Japanese guard was on him in the blink of an eye, bayonet fixed. But someone grabbed the guard from behind and Brody rolled away, free. He was up and running toward the wall of jungle fifty yards away. Behind him, he could hear the screams of men as they burned and the cries of those who were still fighting back and the crackle of rifle fire and then he was in the trees and still running and he didn’t stop until he was so far away he couldn’t hear the war anymore.

They were true, the rumors. Unit Galahad—Merrill’s Marauders—out of India, and two Chinese divisions out of the north, had swept through the region on their way to capturing the important airfield at Myitkyina. Brody stumbled into them, the only piece of luck he’d had in weeks. He led a small force back to Shwenwa, but all they found was a long mound of dirt outside the camp wire. They didn’t have to dig deep to hit the charred remains.

HE’D LIED WHEN they debriefed him. Lied about Mac and lied about running from that burning trench to save his own skin. In the end, they gave him another medal.

Now, as he sat on the bridge over the small clear stream in the middle of a field he’d dreamed about in the worst moments of the war, he understood, as always, that these were terrible secrets he couldn’t share, not ever, not with anyone. He looked at his mother, smiled in a reassuring way, and said, “Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m okay.”

He heard the children running down the lane, the sound of their laughter and their voices, high and happy. Before they arrived, his mother said, “I’ll know when you’re okay. It’s a day I pray for.”

The children came up the lane, thundered over the bridge, and ran on toward a broad field of alfalfa, beyond which lay a small acreage of trees.

“We’re going on a snipe hunt,” Jack cried as he passed. “In the woods.”

Amy and Garnet came strolling behind. They joined Brody and his mother on the bridge.

“We’ve been worried about you two,” Garnet said.

“No need,” Brody’s mother said. “We were just catching up. But I guess I’m ready to go back now.” She stood up. “Are you coming?” she asked her son.

“I think I’ll stay a little longer,” he said. “It’s peaceful here.”

“Want company?” Garnet asked.

“That’d be all right,” he said.

“Come on, Amy.” Brody’s mother took her daughter’s hand. “Let’s get that strawberry shortcake ready for the kids when they come back.”

Garnet sat on the bridge, and her feet dangled alongside Brody’s. She rested her hand on his thigh. “I wish we were alone here.”

Brody’s eyes followed the creek to a place where it curved out of sight between low cornstalks. “We need to talk,” he said.

“I don’t like the sound of that.” She smiled, as if they were both only joking.