Overhead three Jap planes appeared. There came a roar from the hills. American planes went swooping down. A short, sharp fight, and the Jap planes vanished.
And the procession moved steadily forward. After the tanks came guns, and after these an endless procession of trucks loaded with men and equipment. After these, most impressive of all, came marching men, thousands of them. Rifles and Tommy-guns over shoulders, pack on backs, they tramped steadily forward.
Isabelle swallowed hard as she whispered, “God, this is too much. Why must all this happen?”
But Than Shwe was dancing. “The people of Burma, my people, are starving. The Japs have taken all the rice. But now they shall be set free. They shall eat again. See, Isabelle, tanks, guns, men and Tommy-guns! The colonel fetched out a Tommy-gun on his shoulder. Now we have thousands of Tommy-guns. It is beautiful and wonderful!”
“And terrible,” Isabelle murmured. For all that, she was thrilled as never before. It was strange.
With Isabelle’s rose tightly gripped in his teeth Pete rode on into the dawn.
They came at last to enemy territory. Here the road was old and quite rough. But still they rumbled on.
They went several miles without a shot being fired.
“I don’t like this.” Pete took the rose from between his lips to consult the captain of his tank. “It’s sort of ominous.”
“Like moving pictures of them frontier days,” Bud Rankin, the tank’s boss, agreed. “Indians lyin’ for you on the edge of some river bank, an’ all that.”