Jungle Sniper

CHAPTER EIGHT

In the boats, nobody had much to say, each man alone with his thoughts. The silence was broken only by the occasional shouts of the sergeants and officers. It was the way that men had been going into battle since the dawn of time. Although they were part of a massive army, they had to face their fears individually. Will I be brave or will I be a coward? Will I live to see tomorrow? If the Japs do get me, I just hope it’s quick.

Deke glanced over at Philly, whose broad face remained expressionless. He gave Deke a nod that seemed to say, Here we go again.

Deke nodded back, his face grim. Then again, it was usually grim. Deke never had been the happy-go-lucky sort.

He wriggled his toes inside his boots, eager for the feel of land under his feet. He was sick of boats.

The landing craft were beginning their sprint from the ships to the shoreline. There was a considerable stretch of open water to cross because the coral reefs reaching out from shore prevented the ships from entering the shallows near land.

In the invasion-planning stage, it had been determined that there would be water deep enough for most of the landing craft to get in close to the beach — emphasis on “most.” This was why the landing had been set for high tide, in hopes that the vessels could float right over the reefs. Nonetheless, it was a given that in some places the coral would be too close to the surface, and the troops would be forced to wade for shore. This was less than optimal, exposing them even longer to enemy fire while making their way through the surf.

On their run toward shore, the landing craft would be vulnerable while crossing that open water. The bombardment from the ships was intended to provide cover for the smaller vessels. For the most part, that tactic was more than effective.

Motors roaring, the flotilla of landing craft rushed toward shore. They were large, ungainly craft that wouldn’t be confused anytime soon with sleek speedboats, looking more like floating shoeboxes, yet they managed to kick up a wake.

In the twilight before dawn, the sea had begun smooth as glass, almost picture perfect as the light slowly softened in preparation for another Pacific sunrise. Now dozens of wakes churned the surface.

For many reasons, from the heat and humidity to the presence of the Japanese, this part of the world seemed inhospitable to men more used to the temperate climates of Ohio or Virginia or Massachusetts, but none of them could deny that the sunrises and sunsets were spectacular when the conditions were right.

Shells screamed overhead, sending shivers up the spines of the soldiers in the boats. Artillery was never a sound they were going to get used to, even when the guns were friendly. The truly big guns were farther out, where a handful of destroyers and even a cruiser had joined the symphony like a rhythm section of kettle drums.

Despite all the noise, Philly was an irrepressible conversationalist, as usual.

“I’m just glad they’re on our side,” he shouted above the din of the big guns and the roaring boat motor. “I wouldn’t ever want those navy boys to rain misery down on our heads.”

“Yeah, it’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the Japs,” Deke agreed. “Well, almost. The more I think about it, I’m kind of glad to see the navy boys beat the tar out of the Japs.”

On Guam, many of the men recalled being on the receiving end of Japanese mortar fire, artillery, even tanks. There was nothing so frightening, such a helpless feeling, as cowering in a foxhole as enemy shells rained down, and it was not something they’d forget anytime soon.

Given the awesome firepower from the navy ships, the return fire from the Japanese was almost nonexistent, hushed by the sheer, overwhelming force of the big US guns.

That silence did not last for long.

High up on Hill 522, that Japanese bastion that Patrol Easy knew all too well from its earlier “visit,” flashes filled the air as enemy artillery opened fire. That seemed to be a signal for other enemy artillery units, which also began to return fire.

Splashes erupted in the water all around them. From shore, there began a stream of machine-gun fire, the brilliant blue streaks stitching the air just above the water. The Nambu machine guns had an uncomfortably long range, reaching out to the incoming landing force. Streaks of red tracers answered from the American side.

The Japs were putting on quite a show, but deep in the belly of the landing craft, it was hard to see what was going on. These substantial vessels protected the men from rifle shots and even the machine guns that managed to reach out this far to sea.

They could hear the insistent ping of bullets hitting the metal sides. However harmless that fire might be as it bounced off the heavily built sides of the landing craft, it still sent shivers down Deke’s spine as a reminder of what was to come.

Of course there was always some fool who had to climb up the side of the boat to see what was going on. Sure enough, some idiot of a green bean made his way to the gunwale of the landing craft and peered over. It was as if he didn’t believe the bullets were real.

“Get down, you dumb son of a bitch!” shouted Lieutenant Steele. “Do you want to get your head blown off?”

But the warning came too late. One of the bullets found the soldier, who tumbled back into the mass of men below, dead before he landed.

“Get him off me, get him off me!” a soldier screamed as the dead man’s arms managed to wrap around him like a grasping, lifeless rag doll.

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” Steele muttered. He raised his voice. “The rest of you keep your damn heads down. No sense letting the Japs thin us out before we even get there.”

“Yeah, they’ll do plenty of that once we get to the beach,” Philly pointed out.

“Put a cork in it, Philly,” Steele grumbled. “Nobody needs to hear that.”

Someone propped the dead man to one side, where his body rolled back and forth as the boat went up and down in the waves.

While the men in the boats were relatively protected from the random rifle fire and machine-gun bursts that managed to reach out from shore, the same was not true of the artillery rounds that struck all around with increasing frequency, sending up geysers of spray.

A few men around Deke started to pray out loud. Who the hell could blame them? A couple more bent over and vomited, either from seasickness or out of sheer fright. Normally, during a training exercise, this would’ve brought curses and rebukes from the other men, but this morning, they barely even seemed to notice.

The stink of vomit drifted up and mixed with the smell of diesel exhaust, salt spray, and sweat as the landing craft continued rushing to shore and whatever was awaiting them on the beach.

Not more than two hundred yards away, one of the Japanese shells struck true and hit one of the landing craft. The initial blast blew a hole in the bottom, letting in the sea. Flames raced across the craft as the fuel caught fire. As it started to sink swiftly into the waters of Leyte Gulf, the men aboard who had survived the artillery explosion and the flames had no choice but to leap overboard and swim for shore.

Many didn’t get far. It was no easy task to swim when you were encumbered by a pack, a rifle, and so much other equipment. Other men found themselves in the water before they had time to shed their gear. More than one man sank like a stone and disappeared. You could hear their final screams for help, sharp and frantic, cutting through the sounds of boat engines and artillery.

No help came. The pilot at the wheel of their own landing craft had made no effort to slow down or circle back to pick up any survivors. They struggled to swim in the wakes kicked out by the passing landing craft.

“We ought to stop the boat and help those poor bastards,” Philly said, giving voice to what every man was thinking.

“We’re under orders not to stop,” Steele said. “We’d be sitting ducks out here. It would only be a matter of time before we’d end up just like them.”

As if to prove the lieutenant’s point, another splash threw spray into the open boat as a shell dove into the sea nearby.

Philly swore. “I get the picture, Honcho. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Listen, if we get hit, the best thing to do is swim away from the boat,” Steele said. “It’s nothing but a big metal tub. If the Japs put a hole in this tub, it’s going straight to the bottom and taking everybody inside with it. Get some distance from the boat and then swim for shore.”

Those words swim for shore were not reassuring to Deke. The lieutenant might as well have said fly to the moon. He tightened his grip on his rifle, then decided to sling it crosswise over his chest. If he went in the water, his arms would be freed up so that he could at least try to swim. He’d cut his pack loose. As long as he had his rifle and his knife, he’d have a fighting chance once he got to shore.

From the glimpses that he’d had, Deke could see that it was still a long way to shore. A lot farther than he wanted to swim, considering how much he disliked the water to begin with.

He would much rather run across a mile of open ground under heavy fire than be forced to swim half that distance on a calm sunny day with nothing more awaiting him on shore but a soft towel and a cool drink. But as the mountain people said back home, you made soup with what was in the pot.

For now the landing craft carrying Patrol Easy and the rest of the company seemed to be leading a charmed life. The driver had started to zig and zag as much as possible to create a more elusive target for the Japanese gunners. The problem was that the other landing craft were all doing the same thing. Considering that they were not spread far apart, colliding with another vessel became a real hazard.

Some of the men shouted a warning as another landing craft came within spitting distance, then veered away. A geyser appeared in the space that had suddenly opened up between the two vessels. A few seconds earlier and the Japanese gunner would have gotten the two-for-one special.

“I guess we should have done a better job taking out that Japanese fort,” Philly said, referring to the raid on Hill 522.

“Just be glad we knocked out those really big guns,” Deke replied. “Otherwise I reckon they’d be doing to the cruisers and the rest of the ships what they’re doing to us right now.”

Those ships hadn’t fallen silent and were still pouring fire down upon the beach and hillsides, wherever a Japanese gun revealed itself with a bright stab of flame. The morning light was growing so that the ships and the landing craft were becoming easier targets for the enemy.

At the same time, as the details of the shoreline became more visible, the heavy vegetation gave nothing away about the Japanese positions, but only delineated the jungle, mountains, and the well-defended obstacles, such as Hill 522, that the soldiers would face once ashore.

As their landing craft motored closer, the rate of fire increased. The Japs were throwing everything they had against the boats. More bullets rang against the metal sides. A few feet off to Deke’s left was the ladder leading up to the helm. He looked up to see how the helmsman was faring in the angry maelstrom of fire.

It wasn’t a job Deke envied. The helm sat up high enough to enable the pilot to steer a path through the waves. At the same time, that higher position made the helm a target. Each pilot did have partial metal shielding that provided at least some protection. But the man needed nerves of steel, because he was exposed almost directly to the enemy fire. As they came in range of the beach itself, the small-arms fire became more worrisome. Individual bullets began to ping like deadly hail off the pilot’s metal shield. Say what you wanted about the Japs, Deke thought, but there was nothing wrong with their marksmanship.

Some of the soldiers envied the pilot because he wouldn’t be going ashore. But there was no denying that the pilot was in the line of fire. The pilot ducked down but kept the vessel on track, brave son of a bitch that he was.

Suddenly the pilot slumped. He’d been hit. Deke stared in amazement. In his opinion, that bullet had been too precise to have been a lucky shot. One in a million. His mind went to the Japanese sniper they’d run into on Leyte. It was just the kind of shot that a sniper like that might make.

After all, it was exactly what Deke would have done in an enemy sniper’s shoes — target the incoming boat pilots. It made him uncomfortable to consider that he and the Japanese snipers shared similarly devious minds.

For a few moments the boat forged ahead into the waves, but its path to shore could not continue for long without someone at the helm. The course of the vessel began to veer wildly into an arc, cutting across the paths of other incoming landing craft. Soon the boat bucked like a riderless horse as they turned sideways into the waves. The men in the craft lost their footing and stumbled against one another.

The deck had gone all si goggly, which was the mountain people’s word for something off kilter and unbalanced. He and Philly fell together, doing an awkward dance as they struggled to keep their balance. Adding to the pandemonium was the fact that more and more men around them were becoming seasick. All that food they had eaten at breakfast was making its return — and not in a good way.

The nauseating smell seemed to make seasickness contagious. Deke wrinkled his nose and felt the bile rising in his own belly, but he tried to ignore it. He focused on the situation at the helm. Somebody needed to steer this boat.

Above them, another sailor grabbed for the helm, but he was also shot down — helping to confirm Deke’s theory that a Japanese sniper was responsible. For a fleeting moment, he considered getting into position so that he could shoot back, but the prospect of hitting anything from the wildly bucking vessel wasn’t promising.

He looked around, wondering what the hell else he could do.

It just so happened that Deke was one of the soldiers closest to the ladder that led up to the platform that the helmsman had occupied. Nobody else seemed to be paying attention to what was going on at the helm, because they were too busy being thrown around the boat.

“Who the hell is driving this thing?” Philly demanded as he tugged and pulled at Deke, who was doing the same back to him. “It’s like the pilot had a few drinks this morning. Either that or he’s got it in for us dogfaces.”

“There’s nobody at the helm,” Deke tried to explain, but he doubted Philly even heard him.

Together he and Philly somehow had an equilibrium that kept them on their feet while other men were tossed willy-nilly around the boat. Some men were getting bruised up pretty good when slamming against the metal interior.

Deke kept hoping that someone else — anybody but him — would go up that ladder to the helm, but everyone else seemed preoccupied with staying on their feet despite the wild motions of the pilotless craft. Lieutenant Steele was busy shouting at everyone, trying to keep order while struggling to stay on his feet.

“Dammit all to hell,” Deke said. He turned to Philly. “Watch my gear, will you?”

“Watch your — where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Deke didn’t have time to explain. He reached for the ladder leading to the deserted helm. Before starting up, he shrugged out of his pack. The boat pitched wildly, but he managed to climb the rungs, even when his feet kept slipping off.

Deke knew less about boats than the average soldier, and he didn’t want to know any more, but he reckoned that he could steer the thing. Somebody had to do it.

A shell plunged into the sea not more than fifty feet away. If the Japanese gunner’s aim had been a little better, Deke’s efforts would have been for naught. They’d have been a smear of burning flotsam and jetsam on the surface of the sea.

He reached the helm, but there wasn’t a lot of space, and he had to shift one of the bodies out of the way. Easier said than done — the dead man was heavy as a sack of feed corn. In Deke’s experience, there was nothing heavier than a dead man.

The body of the dead helmsman finally slid out of the way. Sorry about that, fella.

Deke barely had time to feel bad about it, though. Keeping his head down — just in case that Japanese sniper still had them in his sights — Deke reached for the controls and straightened out the vessel’s course. He soon had the vessel running right for shore instead of sideways to the beach and foundering in the waves. Deke didn’t know what he was steering for, but he figured that as long as he could run the landing craft up on the beach, hopefully not tearing the bottom out on the coral reef in the process, then they would be doing just fine.

It was a big beach, after all, and an even bigger island. Pretty hard to miss.

Then again, the helmsman had understood how to zigzag so that the landing craft made a more difficult target. Deke supposed that the best he could do was run straight for shore. As far as he was concerned, the sooner they were off the water, the better. The Japs were tearing them up out there.

Lieutenant Steele spotted Deke at the helm and gave him the “OK” symbol. Philly spotted him and shook his head in disbelief. No matter — the boat was now heading in the right direction. So far, so good. Deke was actually managing to drive this boat.

Deke realized that he had been holding his breath. With a sigh of relief, he let it out.

But Deke’s relief was premature.

Deke had no way of knowing it, but up on Hill 522, the Japanese gunner was adjusting his sights. The gunners were skilled and had practiced on floating targets on this very stretch of sea. The previous round had fallen short by a few dozen feet. The artilleryman wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

The next shot hurtled from the Japanese position.

The landing craft took a direct hit.