Upon which Colonel Aoki smiled a smile indescribably happy as if he welcomed the order and exclaimed, “It has come at last!”
That was the happiest day we had ever experienced, and I could not help going around, half in frenzy, to the officers of all the companies to carry the news to them. A mysterious kind of spiritual electricity seemed to permeate the whole garrison, composed of the flower of the “Land of the Gods.” Every one, both officers and privates, seemed ready to fight the whole of Russia single-handed. Our souls were already on the great stage of Liaotung, while our bodies still remained in our own country.
The men of the first and second Reserve were none the less anxious and quick to gather round their standard. Some of them were so poor that their wives and children seemed likely to starve without them, others came from the sick beds of old, dying parents;—all must have had cares and anxieties to detain them. But now the emergency had arisen, and the time had come for them to “offer themselves courageously for the State.”[6] What a privilege, they all thought, for a man to be permitted to give his life for the nation’s cause! When we saw them swarm together day after day, our hearts bounded with redoubled joy and strength.
Here is a sad story of this time. Nakamura, a private of the first Reserve, had an invalid wife and a baby of three. They were extremely poor, and the family would starve without the husband. Of course, however, the family trouble had no place in their minds before a national crisis. On the eve of her husband’s departure, the poor emaciated woman gathered all her scanty strength, went to the town near by and bought two _go_[7] of rice and one _sen_[8] worth of fuel. This handful of grain and bundle of firewood, are they really as insignificant as they seem to be? Nay, the two _go_ of rice and the _sen_ worth of wood were for the loving wife’s farewell banquet[9] in honor of her husband’s great opportunity. And yet at the time of separation, the wife was sick and the child starving, and the husband going to give his life to his country! In the morning, before daybreak, Nakamura bade good-by to wife and baby, and without a farewell from his neighbors hastened bravely to his post. Such was only one out of hundreds of thousands of similar heartrending instances. The kind and sympathetic people left at home at once began to relieve these unfortunate families, so that the men at the front could devote their whole attention and energy to their duties as soldiers.