Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

beside him, huddled in the trench. He saw Richie’s confident nod. He felt Arnie tucking the grenade into Max’s frozen fingers because he didn’t know how to use it. Then he heard it again: the shrieking battle cry as the Japanese exploded from the water. In his mind, Max ducked beneath the orange flares of gunfire, cutting through smoke already raised by artillery explosions. Retreat! Retreat! And he fled with David and Arnie, Richie somewhere nearby, racing for the trees, for the rendezvous, then David screaming, “What do I do?” after the bullet sheared through Max’s leg. Then David had gone, and Max looked down, down, down, diving toward the bloodshot blue eyes of Richie, mutilated, paralyzed, helpless.

He opened his eyes. Molly was watching him, waiting. How was he ever going to admit to her what he’d done?

He turned to Ian. “We were never trained for battle. We never should have been there. What are you hearing?”

Ian rattled off the basics: almost two thousand Canadians vastly outnumbered by over fifty thousand hardened, veteran Japanese forces with far superior firepower and training.

Max listened, confused. Ian’s expression and tone were respectful, but what he was describing sounded so black-and-white to Max. Where was the cloying, coppery stink of blood? Where were the screams of men cut short as their throats were slit? Where was the terror of that relentless, starving, exhausting two weeks of hell in the mountains?

Ian hesitated. “There’s a story going around that the Canadian troops broke and ran during the battle.”

Max stared, aghast. “That’s a damn lie.” He hated that his voice shook, but his body vibrated with anger at the assumption. “Nobody ran. Nobody broke. We were outnumbered fifty to one, and we gave as good as we got. I can tell you without any reservation that I was proud to be a Canadian in Hong Kong. Nobody could have been more courageous than our men. Who the hell is saying that?”

Ian didn’t answer, but his pen was busy.

“That’s why your story is so important, Max,” Molly said gently. “People need to know the truth.”

Ian looked up from his notepad. “Let’s move on. Christmas Day, Stanley Village.”

Max took a deep breath. Molly was right. If someone was claiming his men were cowards, this was his chance to set the record straight, even if revisiting it killed him.

“On Christmas Day, we went in knowing we were going to die,” he started, reluctantly letting his mind drift back. “There were only one hundred and twenty of us left in D Company, and they’d told us there were only a few Japanese in the village. Fifteen, someone had said. But they’d lied. There were hundreds of them, and they had all the ammo in the world. We rushed in, making all the noise we could, and somehow we got past the initial guard. David, Arnie, and I just kept running. We couldn’t believe it. We felt invincible, euphoric, as though we might actually make it.” His smile faded. “But we should never have been so confident. When the Japanese pulled themselves together, it was more than just seeing them assemble, it was like feeling a force of nature swelling against us. The world blew up around us, shaking the ground so hard that men were knocked over. I saw some blown in half. I saw them cut apart by shrapnel and bayonets. I saw so many things that day.” He rubbed his forehead hard, pushing the memories out. “We never had a chance. We were forced to retreat, but they kept firing at us. We ran as fast as we could go.”

David’s face swam in front of his eyes, and he paused, needing to breathe. “David was running right in front of me. He turned to help me, because my leg was bad, and I couldn’t keep up. He was reaching for me, and—”

He dropped his head into both hands, feeling it all again. The helplessness. The agony in his leg. The knowledge that this, this was it.

“We can stop,” he heard Molly say from far away.

“He’s fine,” Ian said tightly. “Probably do him good to get it out.”

Max bristled at the challenge. He fished for his cigarettes then lit one, inhaling deeply as he squinted across at Ian. He visualized the smoke travelling through his trachea, flooding his lungs, then filling and burning every bronchiole. What did he care? David, Arnie, and Richie were gone. Molly wore Ian Collins’s ring.

“I can go on,” he assured them calmly, exhaling. His voice had dropped. The armour was back, hard and impenetrable. “If you want me to stop, you’ll have to tell me, because I haven’t talked about this with anyone over the past four years. I might get carried away.”

“Ian, let’s stop,” Molly said with concern.

“No,” Max snapped, louder than he’d intended, then he lowered his voice. “People need to know what happened, right? People need to understand we fought with all we had.”

He looked at them both, noting the pain in Molly’s eyes, then he braced himself and ripped through the barrier.

“They shot David in the face. He fell, and… I picked him up and tried to carry him off the field.” Even now, he could see David’s face, his open, unseeing eyes. “That’s when they shot me. I dropped, and David’s body rolled away.” He held out his hands, but if he reached out for the rest of his life, he’d never get close enough. “I couldn’t just leave him. I couldn’t. So I started crawling toward him. The next thing I knew, a Jap had his gun on my head, and I raised my hands. Because in that moment, I knew I was about to die.”

Molly’s fist was pressed against her mouth. Ian was transfixed, his pen hovering over his paper.

“What happened? Why didn’t he kill you?” she whispered.

“Turns out the Brits had already surrendered. In fact, they’d surrendered before David had been killed. Stanley Village was all done in vain.” He inhaled, letting the smoke leak through his