Hunter Sniper

CHAPTER SIX

The heat of the day was growing as the morning was force-marched toward afternoon. Around them, the jungle felt sullen as a wife whose husband had forgotten their anniversary. Sure, things were quiet now, but sooner or later, there would be hell to pay.

Sweat dripped into the men’s eyes under their helmets, which felt more and more like heavy steel buckets with each passing mile. Most of them had given up on waving away the insects that buzzed into their faces. It wasn’t worth the energy. Instantly, more bugs would appear.

“Everyone stay sharp,” Captain Merrick cautioned the soldiers in a low voice, moving along the column threading its way through the forest. “If there are going to be organized Japanese forces anywhere, we’ll find them as we get closer to Ormoc. They’ll be dug in around there and looking for a fight.”

“Is that a bad thing, sir?” asked Lieutenant Gurley. Even after several days of hit-and-run fighting in the jungle, the young lieutenant hadn’t lost his gung-ho attitude. “Aren’t we here to kick those Japanese in the teeth?”

“To be honest, Lieutenant, I’d rather dodge the Japanese and link up with the rest of the division,” Merrick said. “There’s safety in numbers. Once we get near the beach, we’ll be dealing with much larger enemy units. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re a little worse for wear. These are damn good men, but they’ve sure taken a beating.”

Lieutenant Gurley nodded, although he looked disappointed. The captain had spoken quietly, intending his words for Gurley’s ears only. However, some of the men had overheard the exchange and tended to agree with Merrick. They had done their part. Now it was time for somebody else to step in and pick up the slack — or to fight alongside them at the very least.

“I never thought I’d be looking forward to seeing a beach again,” Private Frazier said. “Then again, I wouldn’t mind having one more crack at the Japanese.”

One look at Frazier confirmed that his words weren’t intended as boasting or bravado. He was soaked through with sweat, and he must have been just as dog-tired as anyone. The big man was carrying his BAR slung over his shoulder so that the weapon hung at his waist, ready in an instant to deal with any enemy threats. He was like a one-man destruction squad, a veritable two-legged tank.

Not all the men had Frazier’s fighting spirit. As the company plodded along, Captain Merrick had seemed to sense the lethargy overtaking his men and was doing his best to prod them to maintain their situational awareness. He knew that one of the best ways to come out ahead in a fight was not to stumble into one.

The problem was that his men were just going through the motions, more like sleepwalkers than soldiers. It was understandable if his men were beat, considering that they had been operating on little sleep and lousy food. Not to mention that they had already fought two significant actions against the enemy during this jungle trek. They had lost several good men during this mission.

There was no doubt that the captain was just as exhausted as his men, but a good officer did not have the luxury of slacking off. It was his job to see the mission succeed and keep as many of his men as possible alive during its completion.

They were under constant threat of attack from the Japanese — and whatever else the jungle managed to throw at them. He knew well enough that any lapse in vigilance would leave them vulnerable.

The Japanese were not the only danger.

There was the jungle itself, which was challenging enough without the enemy lurking in it. There were roots on the trail to twist a man’s ankle, snakes, multicolored spiders so big that they caught birds in their webs and ate them, stinging centipedes, plus sharp-edged kunai grass and spiky cantala shrubs that cut bare skin like a knife.

The sweltering heat draped over them all like a soggy net. Sudden downpours left them shivering.

Given all the above, a swift death from a Japanese bullet almost seemed like a mercy.

There was also illness lurking here. The captain looked in Deke’s direction and frowned, as if aware that his most dependable set of ears and eyes was now among the walking wounded, down and out with some sort of jungle fever.

“Hang in there, boys,” Merrick said. “Keep your eyes open while you’re at it.”

Deke felt like his head was wrapped in gauze — or possibly spiderwebs. Maybe he had walked smack-dab into one of those big webs hanging across the trail and he hadn’t even noticed. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, which was the best that he could do.

As they moved up the trail with Danilo on point and Philly just behind him, they were on the lookout for the Japanese.

“Hey, Danilo, just remember to shoot first and ask questions later,” Philly said.

Ahead of him, the Filipino guerrilla threw up a hand to indicate that he had heard Philly. Whether or not he understood anything other than his name remained an open question. Danilo hadn’t spoken any English, but he seemed able to understand it — when he wanted to. It all added to the air of mystery that seemed to hang around their Filipino guide.

“That’s what I like about you, Danilo,” Philly continued. “You don’t say much. Hell, you talk even less than Deke.”

Normally Deke would have been the one leading the unit down the trail. Sick and feverish, he was struggling along behind the others. Every movement seemed to take extra concentration, as if Deke was trying to operate in a dreamy fog.

Yoshio was nearby whenever he needed a shoulder to lean on — which was more and more often as the day wore on.

“I can’t believe I’ve dodged all these Japanese bullets so far, only to get laid low by some jungle bug,” Deke said.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” said Yoshio with a patient smile. “You just take it one step at a time, my friend. You will be feeling better before you know it.”

“So you’re a doctor now too?”

“I am the closest thing you are going to get to a doctor anytime soon, so take my word for it.”

Deke wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t have the energy to argue. Increasingly, he appreciated Yoshio’s quiet inner strength.

The young soldier had been through so much — from seeing his family put into an internment camp to dealing with blatant prejudice against anything and anyone Japanese — an understandable response in the middle of a war against the Japanese Empire.

Having seen his own family farm lost to the bank during the Great Depression, Deke reckoned he knew a thing or two about what it was like to be uprooted and put off your land. The experience had shaken the Cole family and stolen their heritage. For a mountain person, land and family was everything.

The Japanese American offering Deke his shoulder had gone through much the same experience, thus giving Deke something in common with a person that he never would have expected.

Yoshio never griped, so neither would Deke, no matter how sick he got. He smiled to himself, thinking that maybe that loudmouth Philly ought to learn a lesson or two from Yoshio.

He took Yoshio’s advice and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other up ahead. Each step was an effort. From time to time he did allow himself to lean heavily on Yoshio, but the Nisei never complained. As far as Deke was concerned, those who thought that Japanese Americans were second-class citizens had another think coming.

He appreciated Yoshio’s sturdy shoulder and steadying hands, but what he really wanted to do was put his head down and sleep for about a week. That just wasn’t possible under the circumstances.

Gradually the trail widened somewhat to the point where the forest fell away. It was an encouraging sign that they were leaving the thickest of the jungle behind and approaching civilization near the far coast that had been their destination all along.

But they weren’t out of the woods yet — literally and figuratively.

They approached a large coconut grove to one side of the trail. Perhaps the trees had been planted with the intention of cultivating them, but now it was hard to say if that had been the intent or if this was simply some random grouping.

The years of Japanese occupation had left a manpower shortage so that many crops had become overgrown and abandoned. The Japanese occupiers had been keenly focused on food production to support their army and perhaps even for export home. In their minds, “food” was synonymous with “rice.” Their production efforts — in other words, the labor of the Filipinos — had focused on the rice fields.

Agricultural efforts other than rice took second place under the Japanese. Consequently, the Philippines were littered with abandoned fields and farms, their cultivation interrupted by the war. In the tropical climate, it did not take long for the landscape to revert to a jungle state.

Seeing the coconut grove ahead, Danilo called a halt and surveyed the grove with what looked like suspicion. The lines on his face deepened in a frown.

After all, the landscape before him seemed like a textbook position for an ambush, but there wasn’t any sound or clue that the grove contained anything but fallen coconuts and neglected trees. The Filipino stood for a long time, studying the grove.

The vegetation deeper among the coconut trunks appeared dark and impenetrable, a tangled gloom into which the sunlight didn’t reach. The stillness of the trees gave the impression that the grove was holding its breath. The only movement came from the leaves stirring in the slight breeze and the occasional flicker of a bird moving through the underbrush.

“I’m with Danilo. I don’t like the looks of this place,” Philly muttered. “There could be a million Japanese hiding in there, or just a bunch of weeds and birds.”

“Hush now,” Deke managed to say. Sick as he was, he could also sense that something wasn’t right, but they would have to leave it in Danilo’s hands for now.

Lieutenant Gurley came up. Whether it was intentional or not, the young officer tended to project an air of importance by being noisier than he needed to be — he tended to puff when he walked, his footsteps heavy, there being no effort at stealth. “Captain Merrick wants to know what’s going on.”

“Danilo is trying to sniff out any Japanese in those trees, that’s what,” Philly replied.

“Tell him to get a move on. The captain doesn’t want us waiting around.”

“You’d better tell him yourself, sir.”

The use of “sir” was a small transgression, but the GIs knew that Gurley was one of those officers who would rather get shot at than let military decorum go by the wayside.

With a grunt of annoyance, the lieutenant moved up beside Danilo, pointed down the trail, and said, “Let’s go.”

The lieutenant turned and made his way back along the column, noisy as ever.

Slowly and cautiously, Danilo moved forward again. Philly was right behind him with his own rifle at the ready. The column began to pass the overgrown grove. It seemed as if everything was going to be all right — until it wasn’t.

Just when the center of the company was passing the trees, flames of gunfire erupted from among the trunks. The flashes indicated rifle fire, but there was also a Nambu machine gun in there somewhere.

The bursts of machine-gun fire raked the center of the column and cut down a handful of men before the others could hit the ground.

“Everybody down!” Captain Merrick shouted, his voice managing to cut through the sound of gunfire. It was a good quality in an officer to be able to be heard on the battlefield — maybe even the most important one. “I want return fire on those bastards right now.”

The men did as ordered, operating almost by instinct at this point. For a few moments they were too stunned to move, overwhelmed with shock and fear. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, their training kicked in, and they began to return fire. Though exhausted, they were all battle-hardened veterans who didn’t need to be told how to fight back against the Japanese.

While the enemy had taken them by surprise, it didn’t take long for the GIs to begin their own withering return fire. They shot back at the muzzle flashes in the gloom. Leaves and twigs rained down, but the Japanese kept firing.

Bullets tore through the foliage, and leaves and twigs rained down from the trees. The Japanese kept firing, and the GIs kept shooting back, the staccato burst of bullets joined by the sound of shouting and the occasional scream.

It was an intense and chaotic fight, the air thick with smoke, the tropical day suddenly filled with fire and thunder.

“Here I come, boys!” cried Private Frazier, firing his BAR from the hip as he advanced toward the grove. There were now so many falling leaves that it looked as if a whirlwind had taken hold among the trees.

But his magazine was soon spent, and in the face of heavy fire, he was forced to throw himself to the jungle floor. He rolled among the leaves, fumbling to get another magazine into the ammunition-hungry BAR.

The problem was that the column was now pinned down effectively by the ambush. There was no way to go except forward on the trail. Certainly there was no going back.

Deke found himself on the ground but had no recollection of getting there. He had been in something of a daze when the ambush broke out, and it was Yoshio who’d saved his bacon by grabbing hold of Deke’s shoulder and pulling him down just before the machine gun swept the line.

Several men behind them were felled or scattered by the burst of fire. Deke struggled to get up and reached for his rifle, but it wasn’t there. He suffered a moment of panic, realizing that Yoshio was still carrying the weapon over his own shoulder.

“Get down, you fool!” Yoshio cried out in a rare show of exasperation. “Just keep your head down and try not to get shot. Let someone else fight this war for a change.”

Deke realized that he didn’t have the energy to argue, much less fight back against the enemy onslaught. He simply pressed his face into the muddy trail, hoping this wouldn’t last forever. The smell of the earth and even the cool dirt against his face felt soothing. Ashes to ashes, he thought. Dust to dust.

It was a hell of a thing to be in a war and be too sick to fight.

Seeing that they were pinned down, Lieutenant Gurley decided that he’d had enough. Wielding a submachine gun, the lieutenant sprinted forward with it toward the coconut grove, screaming a mad battle cry and peppering leaves and trunks with a hail of automatic fire. It was brave, if foolish.

His attack suppressed the ambush just enough that it enabled the soldiers to pick themselves up out of the dirt and get into better positions.

Their rate of fire increased against the Japanese in the grove. It was impossible to say just how many enemy soldiers were hidden in there. They certainly did not outnumber the Americans, but there must have been at least a couple of dozen Japanese pouring fire at them. Also, the enemy had the advantage of cover, while the GIs were caught out in the open.

Lieutenant Gurley hadn’t slowed down, but was still charging at the enemy position. The lieutenant’s plan seemed to be to run all the way into the coconut grove and get in among the trees to scatter the Japanese.

“Look at that bastard go!” Philly shouted in amazement.

For the briefest of moments, it looked as if the lieutenant might succeed and turn the tide to put the Japanese on the run.

But in battle tides are treacherous. The fortunes of war swirled and ebbed at the whims of fate and chance. For the young lieutenant, the tide suddenly turned against him.

He had just reached the perimeter of the trees when a bullet caught him and spun him around. Gurley stumbled but kept going. Then he was hit again, finally collapsing with his submachine gun underneath him, the weapon’s hot barrel still smoking.

His death hadn’t been for naught. The sight of the fallen lieutenant enraged the soldiers, filling them with new resolve. Two more men followed Gurley’s example, leaping up and sprinting for the coconut trees. One man named Simmons went down almost immediately, caught by Japanese fire.

The other soldier got close enough to hurl a grenade that reached deep into the grove and detonated with an ear-shattering blast. Shredded greenery and shards of wood whirled out from the center of the blast. Then that soldier also went down.

“Goddammit!” yelled Captain Merrick. “I don’t want any more heroes. First Platoon, I want you to move around and flank that coconut grove. You boys in Second Platoon, see if you can get around there and hit them from the rear. These Japanese have got to go.”

“Yes, sir!”

The two platoons moved off, leaving the rest of the company to slug it out with the Japanese in the coconut grove.

His orders given, Merrick hunkered down with the rest of the men and returned fire. However, the Japanese were far from beaten. They kept up a steady fire of such intensity that bits of leaves directly above the GIs fell like green snow.

All that Deke could do was keep his head down and hope that it all ended soon.

He did not have to wait for long. Clearly there were not that many Japanese in the coconut grove. They had to spread out to meet the new threat on their flank. No sooner had they done that than they found themselves attacked from the rear.

“Move up! Move up!” Captain Merrick shouted.

Private Frazier led the way, blasting the Japanese with his BAR. It was an impressive display of firepower, bullets chipping chunks from the trees and knocking down Japanese defenders.

Hit from all sides, the return fire from the Japanese began to slacken. The GIs were close enough by now to use their hand grenades effectively.

Thump! Thump!

There was no hiding from the blasts, which were followed by screams of pain from within the grove.

Finally, the last few shots were fired as the enemy guns fell silent.

Philly was among those men who waded into the grove to make sure the job was done. There was a shot or two, and he emerged a few minutes later.

Deke raised himself up from the dirt long enough to watch Philly come out. In fact, there seemed to be not one, but two, versions of Philly. Deke blinked his eyes to clear his feverish imagination.

“I counted a dozen dead Japanese,” he reported. “They put up one hell of a fight.”

The battle of the coconut grove was over. They had lost Lieutenant Gurley, and four men had been killed, plus another handful of walking wounded. It was a heavy price to pay for passage past a coconut grove that none of them would ever see again. Yet there had been little choice but to fight. Even if the GIs had managed to bypass the grove, it would only have meant that the Japanese would have been free to attack them from the rear.

The American dead were quickly buried near where they had fallen. The enemy dead were left strewn on the ground.

“Let’s move out,” Captain Merrick said. “I want to link up with the rest of the division before nightfall, if we can. Let’s see if we can find the beach. I’ve had just about enough of these woods.”

Once again, Danilo and Philly took point. Yoshio helped Deke to his feet, and the diminished column made its way up the jungle path toward the smell of salt air.