Francis Dalton never forgot the rustle of the foliage on the other side of that jungle wall — or what happened next.

His senses were thrumming like a live electrical wire. He was as jittery as a cat, and as laser-focused as only a grizzled veteran who was already wounded twice in war, could be.

That rustling.

He heard it, and went stock-still. Something or somebody was in there — and when the Japanese soldier emerged, he, too, did the same.

Two young men, locked in the amber of the moment: One, hailing from Maidsville in the hills of north-central West Virginia, who had felt compelled to enlist after Pearl Harbor. The other, a conscript to the cause of imperial Japan who had been defined by a code of honor and duty that had existed for a millennium.

Perhaps the latter is why it was so

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