World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ASIA: With My Colonel

On the India-Burma front, British soldiers searched a Jap prisoner, found an order from a Japanese colonel concluding: “It is essential to foster between officers and men a spiritual union of happy death together.”

Inspired, a British bard posted this:

Eve of Battle (Sung lugubriously by a Japanese private)

With what exquisite sorrow

I look forward to tomorrow,

To my sniffing of the cannon’s scented breath;

I think with tearful pleasure

Of our future ageless leisure, United—officers and men—in happy death.

From the heights of my despair I shall tremulously dare, Courageously to kick and squeal and

bite ;

Although we turn and run, Yet our battle will be won, Happy officers and men in death unite.

So I’ll dry my joyful tears,

Disregard my glorious fears,

Gathering courage from the thoughts of the Eternal;

And I’ll seize this happy chance,

And to certain death advance,

Ecstatically united with my Colonel.

Nor was Japanese propaganda idle. Leaflets dropped on the British carried this message:

“Home sweet home.. . . London Bridge . . . Boats float there and there and British streets dimly lit yet invitingly seen. All family except one sitting by fireside softly singing. There is no place like home. Who is singing? Could it be wife?”