Jungle Sniper

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For once the snipers had been chosen because someone up the chain of command realized that Hill 522 would be familiar territory for them, considering that they had been involved in the raid to eliminate the battery just a short time ago.

Their assignment to the assault was a rare example of common sense, extraordinary as a blue moon, but the way that Deke and the rest of Patrol Easy saw it, it wasn’t a decision that worked in their favor.

They had barely made it off that hill alive last time after accomplishing their mission by knocking out those powerful guns. It was anybody’s guess if they could survive that hill a second time.

“That hill is damn well defended,” Philly said. “The Japs have been up there this whole time, digging in. Waiting for us.”

“Mmm,” Deke murmured.

“We’re just lucky, I guess,” Philly continued. “First, we help take the beach. Then we get to lead the assault up that hill. Next thing you know, they’ll be sending us to be the first guys to knock on Hirohito’s palace door.”

“Mmm,” Deke murmured again. He was only half listening. As usual, Philly talked too much. He was like some radio program that droned in your ear like background noise.

But Deke was willing to cut him some slack long after he would have told another man to stop flapping his gums. He recognized that talking was Philly’s way of letting off steam, of dealing with the nervousness, the fear of what was to come.

Deke preferred to keep busy. He was once again honing his bowie knife, which was already sharp as a razor, but the simple act of scraping blade against stone was enough to occupy his mind. It was a soothing sound, but one with a deadly purpose. Better than talking, that was for sure.

Philly went on: “Why can’t the army give us a nice, easy job, like sitting up in a tree and picking off Japs from a safe distance? Isn’t that what us snipers are supposed to do?”

“Maybe that’s because they know you can’t actually hit anything unless you’re close enough to poke it with a stick.”

“Aww, listen to you. You’re not the only one who knows how to shoot. I told you that story about how I won my girl a stuffed bear at that shooting gallery on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.”

Deke couldn’t help but smile. “A stuffed bear?”

Philly waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, you mountain people want trophy bucks or whatever, but I tell you what, that stuffed bear was enough to get me laid that night. I gave her that bear, and she had her panties off like there were ants in them. Then there was the time—”

Deke tuned him out, returning to his own thoughts. Besides, Philly wanted everybody to believe that he had considerable experience with women, which Deke took with a grain of salt.

He didn’t need to jabber about things like Philly did, but the truth was that Deke dreaded the return to the hill. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but something he’d rather not do, like put up hay on a ninety-degree day in July.

Deke knew that he, Philly, and Yoshio had indeed barely escaped just ahead of the Japanese during that raid, and it was a good thing, too, or the Japs might have cut off their heads as they’d done to the Filipino guerrillas they’d captured.

It was on that hill that he had encountered the Japanese sniper who had nearly taken him out with a lucky shot or two. Deke wasn’t afraid of the Japanese sniper, no more than he was afraid of any man, but he had a healthy respect for the man after that encounter. Would the Japanese still be on that hill? It seemed to be where he was stationed. Deke reckoned they would find out soon enough.

“All right, boys, let’s go,” said Lieutenant Steele, leading the way as they trudged inland.

“You taking us to the USO, Honcho? Cold beer, steaks, and broads?”

Steele shook his head, suppressing a smile. “Shut up, Philly. And keep your eyes open. There are still plenty of Japanese around. You know as well as I do that we’re headed back to that hill. Last time we stopped by for a visit. This time we’re going to plant the flag on that son of a bitch.”

Hill 522 was located roughly a mile from the beaches that were rapidly filling with more American troops and supplies. Despite the incursion, the Japanese were far from defeated. From the heights of Hill 522, Japanese artillery still fired, harassing the troops coming ashore.

General MacArthur was already on the beach, fulfilling his promise to return to Filipino soil. For all the sensation that the images of his landing would cause back home, scarcely any of the troops had actually witnessed the landing. They had heard about it only through rumors and excited whispers.

“Hey, you better look out,” soldiers warned one another. “MacArthur is somewhere here on the beach. General MacArthur himself, fellas. Goddamn!”

The rank-and-file soldiers had mixed emotions about MacArthur. Sure, Mac was known as a capable general. But he had a reputation for being aloof. He wasn’t one to mix and mingle with the troops. It was hard to love him the way the men in Europe cheered for General Patton or the navy boys loved Admiral “Bull” Halsey. Those two had made plenty of mistakes, but a little charisma went a long way in the public eye and in the hearts of the men.

Still, it heartened the men to know that their general was willing to take risks in securing the beach alongside them. But that was MacArthur for you. Everyone knew how much he loved the Philippines. He’d made a promise to return, and he had kept it. Any GI had to respect that.

MacArthur had also put the word out that he wanted any American POWs to be liberated as quickly as possible. Small squads and patrols were being sent into the countryside for that purpose. Of course, the Japs tried to keep the camps secret. There were even dark rumors that they had killed all the POWs in some camps rather than see them given back their freedom.

One more reason to hate the Japanese, Deke supposed.

Some of the patrols to find the POW camps were led by Filipino guides who had only a rough idea of where the camps were hidden. There had been rumors that Patrol Easy would be sent out to help liberate these camps, but that wasn’t going to be the focus of Patrol Easy today. No, not with the enemy still in command of most of the island. Everybody knew that the Japs had to go first before the mopping up began, and that mopping up included liberating POWs.

Along the way from the beachhead to the base of the hill, Deke passed familiar territory. He could see the town of Palo in the distance, straddling the muddy Bangon River, the waters silently flowing, oblivious to all the human drama on its banks. Now and then a corpse floated past. They crossed an ancient stone bridge across the Bangon that the Japanese had not managed to blow up, although it showed damage from the naval bombardment. The bridge was still sturdy enough for tanks to get across, and a couple passed the patrol, racing ahead toward the hill.

“Go get ’em, boys!” Philly shouted after them. “The more Japs you kill, the fewer that we’ve got to worry about.”

“Shut up, Philly,” the lieutenant said wearily. Unlike Deke, Lieutenant Steele couldn’t seem to tune Philly out.

Beyond the town, jungle growth encroached between the river and the base of the hill, but the trees and other vegetation had been badly tattered by the bombardment that had so effectively carpeted the beach area and then reached inland.

They passed among shattered trunks and trees that stood barren as poles, having been stripped of their branches and foliage. If only the bombardment had managed to wipe out the Japanese. They heard shots and firing in the distance, a reminder that the barrage had done little to soften the Japanese defenses deeper in the hills or deep underground. Unfortunately, the job was going to take boots on the ground.

“I sure wish we had that priest and his Filipino buddies to help us out,” Philly said, referring to Father Francisco and the guerrilla fighters who had assisted them during their earlier mission on Leyte. “It would make the job that much easier.”

“We know where we’re going,” Deke said. “We also know what waits for us up there, and it ain’t good. You know the drill, same as I do. Just keep your eyes open and keep your head down.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Philly said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll even let you take point. Somehow I think you have a better chance of keeping us from getting killed.”

Deke didn’t disagree, although he didn’t welcome being the first one who would encounter any surprises that the Japanese had in store for them. Then again, it was the lieutenant’s call. He caught the lieutenant’s eyes, and Honcho gave him a nod.

“Deke, you take point. Everybody else look sharp,” Lieutenant Steele said in a harsh whisper. “There could be Japs anywhere — hidden pillboxes, spider holes, you name it. Anything that moves, shoot first and ask questions later.”

“You got it, Honcho,” Philly said.

Lieutenant Steele turned to one of the sergeants from the company being sent to the hill. “Make sure everybody spreads out. Don’t bunch up and make the job any easier for the Japs.”

The sergeant nodded and passed the order so that the men behind him fanned out in both directions, watching for anything that could be a sign of the Japanese.

“Where the hell are those other snipers?” Philly wondered. “You know, Woodall’s Scouts. It seems like they managed to disappear just when we could use them.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Deke said. “You just worry about yourself. I reckon they’re off on another part of the island doing the same thing we are. There’s an airfield to secure and another hill not much different from this one that needs to be eliminated.”

Philly snorted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all on the beach, guarding some general’s personal supply of booze.”

“I fought with those boys this morning. They weren’t so bad.”

Philly just shrugged. Deke slipped past Philly into the point position, leading the way through the shattered landscape toward the base of Hill 522. He was soon a good fifty feet ahead of the rest of Patrol Easy. Behind them came the company that had been assigned to the task. Egan was there with his war dog, the two of them covering the flank. If there were any Japs out there, Thor would sniff them out.

Each one of Deke’s senses was on high alert. He might not be around in the next minute if he got unlucky, but there was something about pressing alone into the landscape, rifle at the ready, that made him feel incredibly alive. In some ways he’d been born for this moment.

He realized that he felt no fear. He was right at home, wandering through the jungle, eyes peeled, senses alert to any sound or motion that seemed out of place.

It wasn’t much different from hunting back home, and yet there was a world of difference because it was anybody’s guess who was the hunter and who was the hunted. In some perverse way, he found that even more thrilling.

However, he knew better than to share that sentiment with anyone else and the patrol. They would have thought that he’d lost his mind if he admitted that some part of him actually liked being out here in the jungle. The only one who might understand how he felt was Lieutenant Steele. He glanced back and saw the lieutenant moving with equal stealth through the jungle.

The lieutenant had only one good eye, so his head scanned slowly back and forth across the jungle undergrowth, his twelve-gauge shotgun held at the ready. At close range here in the underbrush, the twelve-gauge with its load of buckshot would do more than its share of damage to any of the enemy dumb enough to show themselves.

On the ground ahead, something didn’t look right. Deke used the muzzle of the rifle to push aside a pile of leaves to reveal a hole that went down into the ground about four feet. The leaves had been meant to disguise it, but he couldn’t see any wires or other signs of a booby trap. The hole was so narrow that Deke, lean as he was, would have had trouble fitting into it. He studied the hole for a moment as Philly caught up.

“What do you suppose that is?” Philly asked quietly. “Are the Japs expecting us to step in there and break a leg?”

“No, I’ve seen a few others out here. That’s what the Japs call a spider hole. It’s just big enough for them to hide in and pop out to shoot you in the back.”

“That’s just great,” Philly said, looking around. “I’ll bet this whole place is covered with them. I guess it’s a good thing for us that the bombardment scared them off.”

“Ain’t likely,” Deke said. Deep down, he didn’t think that the Japs had run off. He supposed that the Japanese had elected to defend certain fortified locations, such as the hill.

The enemy would be dug in deep. Waiting.

They were now moving toward the base of the hill and whatever awaited them there. The ground rose steeply, and they were forced to climb.

He lowered his rifle and looked around cautiously. He recalled that the Japanese had not bothered to clear the undergrowth around the steepest part of the base, cleverly leaving it as part of the hill’s natural defenses. It was tough enough for a man on foot to traverse the hill. There was no way that a tank was getting up here.

Deke slung his rifle over his shoulder, then began to ascend the hill, hand over hand, using bits of stump, vines, and even rocks for handholds. Glumly he realized that the Japs could roll rocks down on the GIs, and it might be enough to stop the advance.

Apparently Philly had the same thought. He caught up to Deke, who had been slowed by the steep slope. “I don’t like this, Deke. We’re sitting ducks if they so much as roll rocks down at us.”

“Yeah,” Deke admitted. “How about if you go up there and ask them real nice not to do that?”

Philly just snorted and kept climbing.

Deke slipped, and his boot came down hard, going out from under him so that his ankle crunched on a sharp rock. He winced, first at the noise and then at the pain, looking down to see if he’d cut himself, but he didn’t find any blood.

He wasn’t the only one struggling up the hill. Off to his right, Yoshio’s boots slipped on the slick dirt, and he fell heavily with a grunt.

Somebody muttered, “Quiet, goddammit!”

Yoshio glanced in Deke’s direction, looking stricken. Deke shrugged. They all knew that they’d be better off if the Japs didn’t hear them coming up the hill, but it was easier said than done.

Deke held on to a tree root and stopped climbing, listening for any clue that the Japanese had heard them. They could hear small-arms fire in the distance and even the crump, crump sound of artillery, but nothing from the hill itself.

Quiet, Deke thought. Maybe too quiet.

They had no choice but to continue. Deke started climbing again.

After a few minutes of hard going, he reached the top of the sharp incline, to the point where the hill began a gentler slope across open ground. Oddly, there was still no sign of the Japs. Where the hell were they?

There was no firing, yelling, or movement of any kind. He’d had some idea of what to expect, but this wasn’t it. Deke gestured to Philly to stay down, keeping to the brush that clung to the forest’s edge.

Once at the top, Deke found that he could go no farther without exposing himself. He had reached the open part of the hillside, where all the trees had been cleared away to give the defenders open fields of fire. From their raid, Deke and the others knew that the hillside was laced with trenches, some of them cleverly interconnected. Other than the batteries near the summit, still raining shells on the beaches and even reaching out to the ships offshore, there didn’t appear to be any Japanese activity.

Philly crept closer and knelt beside him, both of them taking advantage of the natural cover. “See what I mean?” Philly asked. “I’m telling you that the Japs pulled out.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Just trust me for once.”

Deke studied the empty ground, which didn’t look right. He knew that the Japs must be out there, unseen. Unless they were deaf, dumb, and blind, they would have had plenty of warning that the Americans were on their way up here.

He remembered once, as a boy, there had been a mean old bull that ruled over Old Man McGlothlin’s pasture. The pasture had been a shortcut to the one-room schoolhouse that Deke sometimes attended when farm chores permitted. When he and Sadie crossed that field, the bull snorted and pawed the ground, but he didn’t charge.

Some part of Deke had been disappointed. Running from the bull would have helped to liven up the otherwise routine walk to something as boring as school.

“For all that noise, that bull don’t amount to no more than a fart in the wind,” Deke had said.

“That’s probably just what that bull thinks about you,” Sadie had said. “He reckons that such a skinny beanpole ain’t worth chasin’. Now if you wanted to stir that bull up, what you’d have to do is wave a red flag at him.”

“Go on now,” Deke had said. “That ain’t true.”

“Try it and see. Wave something red at that bull just once and you’d better run.”

Deke hadn’t had anything red that day, but the next time they’d crossed that pasture on the way to school, he’d surprised Sadie by pulling out a red bandanna. “You know what you said the other day about that bull?”

“Deke, don’t you dare!”

But Deke hadn’t been able to resist. There was the bull, snorting and pawing the ground as always from halfway across the pasture. Deke had waved the red handkerchief at it.

At first nothing had happened. But then the old bull had begun to trot toward them, huge slabs of meat and muscle vibrating powerfully down his sides. Deke had begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his actions, but it had been too late for that. The bull had lowered his horns, bellowed with rage, and charged.

“Run, Sadie!”

“Run, Deke!”

Barefoot, they’d flown across the pasture, the bull snorting and bellowing right behind them. It had been a near thing, but they’d gotten across that field and over the fence ahead of the bull, who’d pulled up short at the fence and stood snorting in frustration. Deke and Sadie had jumped off the fence and tumbled into the deep grass on the other side, laughing their fool heads off.

He reckoned that now the Japanese were the bull, and Deke was the handkerchief.

“Here we go, boys,” he muttered. “I sure hope you’re ready.”

Light as smoke, Deke stepped out of the underbrush and into the clearing.

At first nothing happened. Deke held his breath, imagining that some Japanese was using the time to line up his sights on him.

Then again, that was the whole idea. He gave the hidden Japs what was known back home as a “hillbilly wave,” the big arm swing of a mountain howdy. In the old days, it had been meant to show that you had only one hand on your rifle and weren’t planning on shooting anyone.

The enemy wasn’t so welcoming. Almost immediately, the firing began.

The Japanese were there, all right, but they’d just been waiting for that red flag. Deke had sprung the Japanese trap.

As he looked up the hill, a muzzle flashed from within a hidden pit. The bullet whizzed past him, and he ducked behind a rock. He was so close that he heard the click of the Japanese soldier working his rifle bolt, giving Deke a target for his own rifle. He fired without thinking, acting out of pure instinct and adrenaline, then looked to see that he’d hit the Japanese soldier. The man was slumped over the barrel of his rifle, a look of surprise frozen on his face.

If only all the Japs would die that easily. Back home there seemed to be this idea that the Japs were all near-sighted, buck-toothed, terrible shots, and no match for a real American. That was all propaganda to reassure Americans that there was no doubt they could win the war. By now Deke knew there was nothing further from the truth about this terrible enemy.

“Get into those trenches!” Steele shouted. “I want fire on those positions on the hill.”

Deke bent low and ran forward into the storm of lead as he might run into a hurricane wind. A couple of men went down. The only reason there weren’t more casualties was because the Japanese were shooting downhill, resulting in a natural tendency to shoot high.

It worked both ways. Firing up the hill, many of the GIs were shooting too low.

“Aim lower!” Steele shouted.

While the nearest trenches did offer cover, the trouble was that they were still occupied by Japanese. Deke tumbled into a trench, finding himself face-to-face with two enemy soldiers. They were screaming at him in Japanese. He wasn’t sure what they were yelling other than that it probably wasn’t, “How do you do?”

Deke fired from the hip, the .30–06 slug taking out the nearest Japanese. The soldier behind the one that Deke had just shot opened fire. Deke felt the bullet give a hard tug at his hip. Was he hit? No time to think about that. He worked the bolt and fired at point-blank range, hitting the Japanese in the chest. Powder burns from Deke’s muzzle flash smoldered on the brown tunic. The man collapsed like a rag doll.

Behind Deke, the other members of Patrol Easy were dealing with enemy troops in the trench in similar fashion. It was a bloody, desperate fight as enemy soldiers sprang from hidden alcoves carved into the walls of the trench. The attacks were savage, and no quarter was given on either side. For the Japanese, this wasn’t a nameless dirt trench at all, but the very doorstep of Japan. They would die defending it.

Philly was screaming bloody murder and blasting away with his rifle. When the empty clip spun away, Philly dropped his rifle and pulled his knife. He slashed wildly, the blade knocking aside a Japanese muzzle that was pointed at him. The enemy soldier let go of the rifle and turned to run, but he didn’t get far before Deke’s bullet cut him down.

Over and over again he heard the deep boom of Honcho’s shotgun. Thor barked madly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Deke caught a glimpse of Yoshio using his rifle butt to smash a Japanese soldier in the face. Damn, didn’t know the kid had it in him.

He heard curses in English, enraged shouts in Japanese, and gunshots, then an uneasy silence in the trench itself, even as the enemy higher on the hill kept firing. Most of the Americans were now under cover, so the shots were wasted.

Deke reached for his hip, which felt wet. Blood? Something had struck him there, but he didn’t feel any pain. He glanced down and saw with relief that his canteen was leaking water thanks to a bullet hole that went right through it.

“Don’t that beat all,” Deke muttered, feeling a sense of relief.

“I must have shot three of those yellow bastards,” Philly said. He sounded pumped up, full of adrenaline from the fight. “They just don’t know when to quit.”

Deke thought about his father, who had fought in the trenches in the Great War. Had it been like that for him? No wonder his father had been content to return to his mountain farm and never speak of what he’d seen and done.

Deke looked around and took stock. He spotted Yoshio, Lieutenant Steele, and the rest of the squad. Egan had hold of his dog, still straining at his leash as if ready to run after the Japs, so they had both made it through.

The local mosquito population began to swarm as darkness approached, buzzing in Deke’s ears. They had hatched by the thousands in the water festering in the bottom of the trench. The soldiers’ arrival only stirred them up.

“Damn, but I swear these skeeters are as bad as Japanese dive bombers,” Deke said.

“Huh, I haven’t even seen a mosquito,” Philly lied, scratching his fresh bites. “You country boys must taste sweet to them.”

After a while, Deke gave up even trying to slap the mosquitoes away. On his exposed neck and arms, it soon felt as though even his bug bites were getting bites. It just added to the misery of holding this trench.

Deke’s eyes went to a prone body, one of the GIs from B Company who hadn’t been lucky enough to survive the attack. Deke dug through the fallen soldier’s gear for spare ammunition and then took the dead man’s canteen. Deke figured he would need the items more than the dead soldier.

They had managed to take the trench, gaining a foothold on Hill 522. However, taking the rest of the hill promised to be an even tougher, more miserable fight.