Airplane engines droned overhead. Fujita could see only bits of sky through the tall pines and firs and spruces and other trees he had trouble naming. He couldn't make out what was going on up there. Japanese planes had an engine note different from that of their Russian foes: a little higher, a little thinner. Everybody said so. Fujita believed it, but he had trouble hearing it himself.

When bombs started bursting on top of Hill 391 and on the west-facing slope, he felt like cheering. That would give the Russians something to think about! Airplanes full of bombs could counteract their superiority in cannon.

His excitement didn't last long. Once the planes got done pounding the Russian position, what would happen next? Infantry would go forward and try to clean it out-that was what. And then all the Red Army men the bombs hadn't killed would grab their rifles and wait at their machine guns and slaughter as many Japanese as they could.

Sure enough, Lieutenant Hanafusa's whistle squealed. "Come on!" the platoon leader shouted. "Time to dig them out! We can do it! May the Emperor live ten thousand years!" He trotted forward.

"Banzai!" Fujita echoed as he scrambled out of his hole. He didn't care about living 10,000 years himself, though he certainly hoped the Emperor would. He did hope he would last another thirty or forty. Going up against another one of these hills made that a lot less likely.

But he couldn't hang back. It wasn't just that his own superiors would do worse to him than anything the Russians could dream up. They would, yes, but that wasn't what got him moving. You couldn't seem a slacker in front of your men. You were brave because they watched you being brave. And they were brave because you had your eye on them-and because they didn't want to let their buddies down.

Ahead, machine guns started hammering. Fujita shook his head as he dodged around trees. No, the bombers hadn't cleared out everybody on the ground. They never did. By the nature of things, they couldn't. That was up to the infantry.