Three miles into the countryside we stopped on a deserted road. I remember the battlefield under the silent sky and the burnt-out village near a derelict canal. The chauffeurs opened the doors, and we stepped onto a roadway covered with pieces of gold. Hundreds of spent rifle cartridges lay at our feet. Abandoned trenchworks ran between the burial mounds, from which open coffins protruded like drawers in a ransacked wardrobe. Scattered around us were remnants of torn webbing, empty ammunition boxes, boots and helmets, rusting bayonets and signal flares. Beyond rifle pits filled with water was an earth redoubt, pulverised by the Japanese artillery. The carcase of a horse lay by its gun emplacement, legs raised stiffly in the sunlight.

Together we gazed at this scene, the ladies fanning away the flies, their husbands murmuring to each other, like a group of investors visiting the stage set of an uncompleted war film. Led by my father and Mr. Hunter, we strolled towards the canal and stared at the Chinese soldiers floating in the shallow water. Dead infantrymen lay everywhere in the drowned trenches, covered to their waists by the earth, as if asleep in a derelict dormitory.

Beside me, David was tittering to himself. He was impatient to go home, and I could see his jarred eyes hidden behind his fringe. He turned his back on his mother, but the dead battlefield surrounded him on every side. Deliberately scuffing his polished shoes, he kicked the cartridge cases at the sleeping soldiers.

I cupped my hands over my ears, trying to catch the sound that would wake them.

Escape Attempts

2

ESCAPE ATTEMPTS

All day rumours had swept Lunghua that there would soon be an escape from the camp. Shivering on the steps of the children’s hut, I waited for Sergeant Nagata to complete the third of the day’s emergency roll calls. Usually at the first hint of an escape attempt, the Japanese sentries would close the gates with a set of heavy padlocks—a symbolic gesture, as David Hunter’s father remarked, since anyone planning to escape from Lunghua hardly intended to walk through the front gates. It was far easier to step through the perimeter wire, as I and the older children did every day, hunting for a lost tennis ball or setting useless bird traps for the American sailors.

Symbolic or not, the gesture served a practical purpose, like so much of Japanese ceremony. Closing the gates was a sign to any Chinese collaborators in the surrounding countryside that a security alert was under way and told the few informers within the camp—always the last to know what was going on—to keep their eyes open.