The Decisive Battle Toward a Brief Finale (2)

I threw the window wide that morning and looked down over the street. A clean wind rushed in — and with it, a roar of slogans that brushed against my ears.

I turned toward the sound. In the distance, the Vanguard was cutting across the city in full uniform, shaking the streets from their sleep with a vigorous cadence.

"Long live the Revolution!"

They walked as if they feared nothing in this world, every stride charged with the will to carry the spirit of revolution across the continent. The ones with the drums and the banners shouted loudest of all.

The party members roared their hurrahs on the beat, shaking flags stamped with the taegeuk and answering with red banners of their own.

They had turned out as one in matching black uniforms, a short sword at each waist, the left hand resting on an empty holster meant for a pistol on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other side, and they were pumping their right arms up and down to forehead height in hard, regular strokes.

Yes. Exactly like the Nazi SS.

God almighty.

The sight of an SS born a hundred years too early, on the opposite side of the earth, splitting the city down the middle, left me faintly dizzy. I shook my head and crawled back into bed.

I had made this. No — I had made this. I was the one who had begged Minister Foote to sell us the United States' leftover uniforms for a song after the Civil War. I was the one who had offered to import California's surplus leather duty-free for the waist belts. I was the one who had dumped ink at the dye-houses and told them to dye the lot black, on the theory that nobody would want to wash a filthy uniform.

But I had not made them rewrite the People's Marching Song to suit themselves, or parade through the city at the crack of dawn every morning. I had never ordered them to buy American six-shooters at their own expense to fill those holsters, or to wear short swords for self-defense.

"I mean, even if we opened the markets — is it normal to start by dumping weapons on us?"

I had sat still and watched American transports roll into Busan and Jemulpo in waves, most of them weapons ships in all but name, because war was a special kind of weather and a special kind of hour. But this was too much. Instead of the machines and plant we needed for industrialization, they sold us ammunition and guns, and nothing else. Honestly, if our government had not specifically asked for tools and uniforms and boots, those people would have shipped us rifles and called it a day.

At any rate — to come back to the point — the entire farce had been cooked up by Vanguard Commander Kim Gae-nam, who had worked himself into a fine lather preaching that the people must take up arms of their own will to defend the spirit of the Three Principles of the People.

The nation was in the ditch, hanging by a thread, and so Kim Gae-nam spread the doctrine that the people themselves must arm to save it. Yun Chi-ho, Director of the Public Security Committee, threw his full weight behind the idea. The Vanguard rank and file, who had been issued nothing but party uniforms and military boots, enthusiastically emptied their family coffers and armed themselves.

Most of them carried six-shooters — revolvers, the item American traders sold more of than anything else. The sons of households with a little money, or a little room to breathe, bought hunting shotguns. And yes, those were the shotguns you know from the Old West. The ones that blow a hole through a man's gut.

Surely nobody is going to call it inhumane just because we pointed a shotgun at a person?

Ahem. At any rate, the ones without money — ordinary poor farmers, most of them — wore swords. Where from? They had come out of the local government armories, bundled with the matchlock muskets that had been gathering dust in there. (The bows and arrows, of course, had all been slated for disposal, and the Foreign Ministry was deliberately selling them off — to European collectors with a taste for rarities, or to fences, as the case might be.)

The result was a spectacle so provocative by the common sense of Joseon in this age that, despite the hidebound scholar-officials who cynically dubbed the Vanguard "those little black crows," joining up remained wildly popular across sex, age, and station.

They paid you. They gave you a sharp uniform. They guaranteed advancement. They had even adopted a ten-hour workday, something no one in this era had dared to dream of — because, to be fair, you had to go home when the sun went down. Honestly, you would have to be an idiot not to join.

And what of the Confucian students who had been turned, overnight, into household taxidermy when the civil service examinations vanished? Rather than sit and wait for an exam that showed no sign of returning, they threw themselves body and soul into the new road upward: party membership, and party work.

Half the men squawking down there at this hour of the morning would be two-bit Confucian students up from the countryside, or city idlers.

"..."

Closing my eyes did not make them vanish. Stopping my ears did not make them vanish. I could only pray that the daily "Long live His Excellency the Tongnyeong!" they bellowed at the end of every morning march would arrive sooner rather than later.

I watched the pointed bulges in their caps — topknots shoving the cloth into little peaks — twitch and recede into the distance, and then I let out a low sigh.

As for those caps, that was another joke entirely. I had expected that Joseon people would not give up the topknot easily. I had not imagined the workarounds, or the mutations, would run in this direction. The end result left me seriously wondering whether Koreans and Germans shared a design sense.

"The Luftwaffe sidecap. Of all things."

What they had internalized, and bargained out with the topknot, was the sidecap of the German Luftwaffe. That one — pointed, with a fold of cloth coming down over the brow.

This was an age when even Europe had no concept of the steel helmet. The stopgap Union uniforms we had imported for the war had left a deep mark, and that influence had been decisive on the Vanguard's cap as well.

"At least they were cheap. I suppose that's something."

I tossed a cap identical to the one hanging with my uniform onto the bed and sank into thought. We had bought the things for a song — Union kit slated for scrap, or dumped in heaps from overproduction — so the price, at least, had been a blessing.

The problem was that Koreans and Americans did not merely speak different languages. They wore different worlds.

Most of the yangban who had cut their topknots were young officials who had studied abroad, or who kept their names on the books in the treaty-port settlements. In the Republic at large, the topknot was still the fashion. There had never been a Hair-Cutting Edict, in the countryside or the cities, so the greater part of the Republic's people took the topknot as a matter of course, and the government had shown no interest in stamping it out.

The officials who had come up through the Enlightenment Party, though, wanted it banned on sanitary grounds, and the army, for its own reasons, had agreed that old conical war-hats and brimless felt caps were hopelessly outdated as military dress. The swelling ranks of men who looked sideways at the topknot were, in their way, an encouraging sign.

But the Republic had been given almost no time for dress reform, or for the improvement of civilian clothes. The war with the Qing had broken out a bare half year after the revolution succeeded. That was why.

So the early Republican army and the Vanguard had worn, in large numbers, the flat-crowned, short-brimmed forage caps of the Union — and the complaints had been immense. The things caught on a topknot the moment you put them on and went sailing into the air, leaving the wearer stranded; more men simply stuffed the cap in a pocket and went without.

Most of the yangban, instead, paid extra and wore Confederate officers' caps as they were, or sewed on a patch of cloth to cover only the protruding topknot. The final design that came out of that compromise was almost identical to a Luftwaffe sidecap. Uncannily, completely identical.

I pulled off my nightclothes, shrugged into the uniform tailored to my frame, and muttered to myself.

"...There isn't actually a Nazi in the party, is there?"

Truly — standing there with that uniform in my hands, I could not help wondering whether, just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as I had been reborn in the last years of Joseon, some Nazi Party man I did not know had been reborn inside our Alliance Association.

The one genuine mercy was that the popular verdict on the uniform was simply that it looked magnificent. Even our ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠army generals, busy as they were with the war, had gotten heated enough over the Alliance Association's adoption of such a handsome kit that they were now taking an enormous interest in the design of the next service dress.

Of course, the younger officers' argument had left a strong impression too — that the look, and the talk around it, would tell on voluntary enlistment among the young. Still.

Dressed like the Vanguard in the same black uniform, a specially ordered crusher cap pulled down on my head, I stepped out of the room.

The still-unfamiliar cityscape rushed in and filled my eyes, scattering my gaze.

This was the navel of the Liaodong Peninsula. This was Yingkou.

"His Excellency is entering! All hands, attention!"

Han Seong-geun, commander of the 3rd Division, made such a production of receiving me on a battlefield that I waved both hands in something like desperation and urged the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠generals back into their seats.

It was not as if I had come here to be waited on. And still, the moment I stepped through the flap, every man in the tent was killing himself to observe the courtesies. I had never so much as given them a look.

This is exactly why I wanted to stay quietly in the rear.

The silks in their brilliant colors said as much. So did the Arab-style carpets and rugs, from God knew where. What kind of field tent was this lavish in a war zone?

Lose the war, and none of it would be worth a thing.

There was no small amount to correct — authoritarian habits still lingering in every corner of society — and I had resolved to be the first to kill them, by my own example. So I ignored the gestures inviting me to sit, kept my back straight, and gave the taut, waiting generals a firm order.

"At ease, all of you. At ease. What is all this empty ceremony doing on a battlefield?"

"Not at all, Your Excellency!"

"We never dreamed Your Excellency would take personal command of the volunteer army, and so we—"

"Sit down first. My neck hurts if you all keep standing there."

Only when I put it that bluntly did they begin, one by one, to take their seats, each man glancing at Han Seong-geun and at Yang Heon-su, the Minister of Military Affairs, who stood behind me.

When the air had settled a little, Seo Jae-pil, who sat with us, spoke first. A welcome, of course.

"By His Excellency the Tongnyeong's most exalted decision, some twenty thousand peerlessly loyal Vanguard party members can now be committed to the assault on Shenyang. The eyes of every nation are upon us."

The generals nodded hard, falling in behind the words.

Yes. I was in Yingkou, in Liaodong — the port city of Yingkou. Just beyond it, right on the doorstep, lay Shenyang, the heart of both Liaoxi and Liaodong, and the army of the Republic had already pushed to the very threshold of that prize.

"Don't get your hopes too high. The Vanguard party members are provincial militia who know how to dress. They are not trained soldiers."

"Not so, Your Excellency. The replacement regiments and the mobilized provincial Hyangbogun divisions can barely keep formation on the march, let alone claim to be trained. But watching the Vanguard stride through the city this morning, even officers like ourselves could feel that this war is drawing to a close."

"Hah."

Yun Ung-ryeol — Yun Chi-ho's father — rattled off the sweet talk without even pausing to wet his lips, and I did not know where to put myself.

Well. In their eyes, a Vanguard turned out in uniform, boots, and weapons looked exactly like the Tongnyeong's own praetorian guard. And the rumor was already abroad that some two hundred thousand troops were piled up around Shenyang between the two armies.

On top of that I had come to the front in person, leading twenty thousand Vanguard who looked every inch the elite. Enemy morale would sag of its own accord.

And what would the foreign war correspondents posted to Liaodong put in their papers after today's spectacle?

Thinking through all of that, I found myself a little eager to see how the Alliance Association, and the spirit of our Three Principles, would become known to every nation on earth through the Vanguard.