Jungle Sniper

CHAPTER FOUR

In his bunk nearby, Philly let out an indignant snort. He’d been reading a copy of the shipboard newspaper, a slim rag called the Anchor Chain, that he now threw down in disgust.

“What got into your craw?” Deke wondered.

The thin sheets of newsprint offered a roundup of news from home and tidbits about the men and officers in the unit, such as births of children back home. Aside from a few stale military announcements, there wasn’t much actual news; it was all kind of innocuous, but it was a welcome slice of normalcy. The Anchor Chain was meant to boost morale. It was hard to see how something in it would have upset Philly.

Philly tossed the newspaper at Deke. “Look at what’s on the front page.”

There at the top of the fold was a photograph of Woodall’s Scouts, wearing their fancy matching uniforms and brandishing their sniper rifles. Colonel Woodall stood beside them, looking like their prim-and-proper scoutmaster. The last sentence of the photo caption read, “The Japanese snipers are really going to fear these boys!”

“I’ll be damned,” Deke said.

“They haven’t even fought the Japs yet,” Philly fumed. “After all that we’ve done, you’d think that we’d be the ones to get their picture in the paper.”

“Philly, it ain’t the New York Times,” Deke said, picking the name of the biggest newspaper he could think of. “It’s just that little rag that goes around the ship.”

“Yeah, but still. Credit where credit is due, you know.”

Deke was more curious about their rifles. He looked more closely at the photograph, but the fuzzy newspaper photo did not offer much detail.

“I like my Springfield just fine, but I wouldn’t mind trying one of those M1 sniper rifles,” Deke said. He wondered if the semiautomatic sniper rifles really offered an advantage. “Then again, all you really need is one good shot.”

“Our dignity is wounded, and you’re worried about their rifles.” Philly shook his head and reached out a hand as he got off his bunk. “Give that here a minute.”

“I thought that picture made you mad. You gonna put that in your scrapbook?”

“Hell, no, you dumb redneck. I’ve got to hit the head, and you know what? Now I’ve got the perfect use for that newspaper. Woodall’s Scouts are going to make a good asswipe.”

As it turned out, the business with Woodall’s Scouts wasn’t over yet. Deke and Philly were exercising on deck later that day when they ran into a couple of the scouts, recognizable by their camouflage uniforms. The uniforms looked a little ridiculous on the deck of a ship at sea, but Deke had to admit that the pattern would help the soldiers blend right into a jungle setting.

Philly promptly bumped into one of the men with such force that he nearly knocked him over.

“Hey, watch it!”

“Sorry, buddy,” Philly said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “I guess I didn’t see you with all that camouflage on.”

“Very funny, pal.” The soldier gave Philly a harder look and scowled. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you guys those snipers that the Japs shot the hell out of on Guam?”

“What do you mean, ‘shot the hell out of us’?”

“That’s what I heard,” the other man said. “That’s why Colonel Woodall organized a sniper unit, so that we’d have some actual countermeasures against the Japanese.”

Philly looked at Deke. “Do you hear that, country boy? That’s awfully fancy talk. Countermeasures.”

“You mean, like shooting Japanese snipers?” Deke asked Philly.

“That’s sure what it sounds like.” Philly turned back to the other man. “How many Japs have you shot?”

“None yet, but we’ll shoot plenty once we get ashore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Philly considered. “I tell you what. Your best man against our best man. We’ll see who’s the better shot.”

“You’re on.”

It didn’t take long for word of the shooting contest to spread across the ship. Nothing broke up the boredom like a good fight — or a grudge shooting match, at least. When Patrol Easy reconvened on the stern with Woodall’s Scouts, they were joined by at least a hundred spectators. Naval officers had come out to watch, and they didn’t even have a dog in this fight. Colonel Woodall was there, looking smug even though the match hadn’t begun, but Lieutenant Steele was nowhere to be seen. The lieutenant had made himself scarce as hen’s teeth since coming aboard the ship.

“Let’s make this interesting,” Philly said. He held up a crisp new bill so that it fluttered in the wind. “Twenty bucks says you’ll be the first one to miss.”

Somebody whistled. That was serious money, close to what a working man earned in a week back home — or had earned. Wages had gone up since the start of the war.

The other man grinned. He introduced himself as Shaw. “It’ll be like taking money from a baby,” Shaw said.

“Oh, you’re not shooting against me,” Philly said. “I said best shot, remember? That’d be the Deacon here.”

Deke stepped forward, holding his battered Springfield rifle, which showed the wear and tear of the Guam campaign and the mission on Leyte. Shaw’s confident grin faded somewhat, but Deke’s appearance tended to do that to people. It was like encountering some backwoodsman here on the deck of USS Elmore.

“All right,” Shaw said. “I wouldn’t put that money back in your pocket just yet, if I were you. You’re about to lose it.”

They flipped a coin to see who went first. Deke called heads — and lost.

“Go on then,” Deke said. “Let’s see what you got.”

Shaw stepped up to the stern rail. It had been determined that their targets would be the seagulls trailing the ship’s wake. They were close enough to shore that the fleet had attracted flocks of sea birds eager for whatever scraps the ships jettisoned.

Hitting any target from the deck of the moving ship would have been difficult, but shooting a flying bird out of the sky was extra challenging. The gulls swooped and swerved, riding the air currents. Then again, there was no shortage of targets.

Shaw didn’t waste any time. He fired confidently, the shots almost equally spaced. Deke had to admire the new rifles, with their higher rate of fire. The Japanese didn’t have anything that compared — neither did the Germans, for that matter. The Garand M1 would be giving US troops a definite combat edge.

But in the end, sniper warfare came down to one well-placed bullet at a time. The rate of fire didn’t matter.

Looking on, Colonel Woodall held his fist high and pumped it in encouragement. “Attaboy, Shaw! Show ’em how it’s done!”

Shaw fired again. Another white bird pinwheeled out of the sky.

Deke shook his head. “Wasted meat.”

“You’d eat a pigeon?” Philly made a face.

“They’re seagulls.”

“What’s the difference? Rats with wings. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I sure hope you never invite me over for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“That bird being a seagull ain’t the point. Where I come from, you eat what you kill.”

Philly could see that Deke was in one of his moods, but he couldn’t resist. “Then see if you can shoot me a New York strip or maybe a porterhouse. Maybe even a good-size chicken. I sure would appreciate it.”

Then again, the gulls were not completely wasted. Gulls weren’t the only denizens of the sea following the ship, hoping for an easy meal. Sharks also cruised in the wake, snapping up the fallen birds. Like the birds, they welcomed whatever came their way from the ship, but it was also as if they knew that by biding their time, there might be even bigger rewards.

Here and there, the men on the stern could see the sudden swirl in the water where a bird was sucked down by a shark. The sight was more than a little disconcerting to men who might find themselves in that water if a Japanese sub got lucky with a torpedo.

Finally Shaw missed his sixth shot. The gull appeared to swoop just as he fired, unwittingly dodging the bullet. Nonetheless, a whoop rose as one from the throats of his fellow scouts. They seemed certain that Shaw’s show of marksmanship would be hard to beat — and they were probably right. Some of the squids who had gathered to watch managed to let out a cheer.

Even Deke had to admit that it was impressive shooting.

“Ain’t bad,” he said in acknowledgment to Shaw as he passed him at the stern rail.

“Yeah? Let’s see you beat that.”

After witnessing the results of the initial shooting, bets were being placed by sailors and soldiers in the crowd, the odds suddenly favoring Shaw. To the spectators, it seemed doubtful that Deke could do any better.

Even Deke wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

Shooting birds on the wing was normally done with a shotgun because the spread of pellets gave the shooter a better chance of hitting the bird — a shooter didn’t need to be exact. Hitting a flying bird with a rifle required precision — and no small amount of luck.

Deke settled in at the rail. He had to think of these birds as stationary targets, but he had to be quick about it. There could be none of the usual lingering over a target. These would be hunting shots, as he’d done as a boy back home. An animal didn’t stay in the same position for long. Once your sights were lined up, you were best off to squeeze the trigger and be quick about it.

Through the scope, he could see several birds spring closer, flitting through the crosshairs. He let the sound of the shouting men behind him fade away. The wind seemed to be at his back as the ship forged ahead toward Leyte. He hoped that the wind wouldn’t interfere too much with his bullet once it left the muzzle.

Sometimes when he was shooting, he realized that he benefited from switching off the thinking part of his mind and letting instinct take over. His eyes, the muscle memory part of his brain, even his finger on the trigger all seemed hardwired together like a light circuit.

He exhaled, picked out a bird, and waited for it to settle into riding one of the invisible air currents trailing the ship. As soon as his crosshairs hovered for an instant, he pulled the trigger.

To his relief, the bird tumbled from the sky.

Cheers arose behind him.

“One down!” someone shouted. “Four more to go!”

“Not gonna happen!” Shaw boasted.

Deke obliged by quickly shooting down those four birds in rapid succession. He needed to knock one more out of the sky to beat Shaw.

Easier said than done. After taking so many losses, the birds seemed to be wising up to what was going on. They hung back farther from the ship and grew more skittish. They weren’t offering themselves up as easy targets.

Deke had no choice but to pick out a gull that was farther out than the others. He had lined up his sights when the bird suddenly dropped, disappearing from the scope’s field of view. Dammit. Fortunately he hadn’t fired yet, but he had to spend a moment acquiring the target again. The bird appeared to have dropped farther back.

Once again he let the crosshairs float across the bird. The instant they were lined up, he fired.

At first, nothing happened. The bird kept flying.

“He missed!” somebody shouted.

“That’s it! Pay up!”

But Deke knew that his bullet had gone true. He could feel it. He kept the scope focused on the bird.

All at once, the gull’s wings folded and the bird tumbled gracelessly from the sky and hit the sea with the smack of all its deadweight.

Deke considered that it hadn’t been the first time that something he’d shot hadn’t immediately known it was dead yet. It took a moment for the body to tell the brain, All right, you’re done. Whatever consciousness that even a bird or animal possessed clawed and fought for life up until the final breath. Deke had seen that it was the same with humans in this war.

Something swirled up under the bird, and it vanished.

Six birds to Shaw’s five. Deke had shown up the other shooter. He could have gone for seven birds but didn’t want to push his luck.

Nobody came over to slap him on the back. One look at Deke was all it took to know that any such gesture would not be welcome.

Philly was the exception. He swatted Deke on the shoulder with a meaty hand.

Deke let it go.

“Ha! How about that!” Philly said. He had added a few bills to join his crisp twenty. “I guess we showed them!”

Deke gave him a look. “Who is this we you’re going on about? Last time I checked, it was just me doing the shooting.”

Shaw came over, trailed by the other men from Woodall’s Scouts. Colonel Woodall stood to one side, scowling. The rest of Patrol Easy came to stand beside Deke.

“You got lucky on that sixth bird,” Shaw said.

“Maybe,” Deke agreed.

“Gee, we hate to show up Woodall’s Scouts like that, them being so fancy and all,” Philly said. “Woodall’s Scouts. Sounds like Boy Scouts to me.”

“Yeah, keep it up,” Shaw said. “I still need to earn my merit badge for busting noses.”

The men in both squads tensed up. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a rivalry turned into a fistfight.

“Knock it off, boys,” Woodall said. “Save it for the Japs.”

Nobody could argue with that — but still. The tension eased and the two groups began to drift away.

But Shaw seemed intent on having the last word. “This isn’t over,” he said. “We’ll have ourselves a proper match sometime on dry land. Actual targets, not seagulls. You’ll see some real shooting then.”

Deke nodded. “I reckon I’ll look forward to it.”