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,...
