Pacific Sniper

Chapter Sixteen

Hours after the failed Japanese attack, the soldiers of the sniper squad sat in their foxholes, smoking cigarettes and drinking rusty water.

“We showed those Japs, didn’t we?” Philly said, gazing out at the vast number of bodies strewn across the empty no-man’s-land between the foxholes and the line of jungle. In the growing heat of the day, the bodies had already begun to swell and decompose. The breeze carried the odor of rotting human flesh. Even men who didn’t ordinarily smoke lit up cigarettes.

“I reckon we did,” Deke replied. He found the sight of so many dead to be awe-inspiring. He was also saddened by it, but he pushed that thought from his mind. The Japanese had brought this on themselves. It might seem like a massacre in hindsight, but there was no forgetting that, in the predawn darkness, the Japanese had swarmed out of the jungle in a terrifying banzai attack.

Philly looked over at Yoshio. “Kind of awful to think it might be your distant cousins starting to stink out there, isn’t it?”

Yoshio shrugged. “I do not know if they are my cousins. But I do know that they are the enemy.”

Philly shook his head and took a deep drag on his cigarette. “You Japs show about as much emotion as a bowl of rice, except when you’re riled up. When you’re riled up, look out! Those banzai bastards were plenty riled up, for all the good it did them. Yoshio, your cousins are good and dead now.”

Yoshio’s only response was to move as far away from Philly as the foxhole permitted. He pushed past Deke in the process, and Deke could feel the anger radiating off Yoshio like steam off a radiator. Maybe the comment about those being his dead cousins out there had stung more than he wanted to say.

Deke gave Philly a look and a slight shake of his head, sending a signal to knock it off. As far as Deke was concerned, Yoshio might look like a Jap, but he had fought like an American.

One of their gruesome tasks upon returning to the line had been to clear out the foxholes. They had added the American bodies to the neat line of dead, while the dead Japanese had been tossed unceremoniously into the scattered bodies in the no-man’s-land.

To his surprise, Deke had found a new spare boot in the belly of the foxhole, along with other discarded gear and endless brass shell casings. He didn’t want to think too much about what had happened to the owner of the boot — or why there was just one.

The wounded, including a few Japanese who had somehow survived in spite of their best efforts to die for the Emperor, had been carried back to the beachhead, where they awaited transport to the navy ships. It was a slow process, impeded by a strong wind that had stirred up the surf crashing across the coral reef and making passage difficult for the smaller craft. Many wounded didn’t survive the wait.

The American dead had been lined up in neat rows, awaiting the graves registration and the burial detail. Victory had been won dearly. Hundreds of soldiers and marines had died defending the beachhead. The fighting had been so brutal, with casualties caused by everything from tank rounds to grenades to bayonets — up close and personal.

Yet the butcher’s bill had been far greater for the enemy. They had cleared away the dead Japanese from the immediate vicinity of the line of foxholes, pitching the bodies into the no-man’s-land where the scattered dead already lay, many of them mowed down by machine-gun fire. For long stretches, it was entirely possible to step from body to body, without ever touching the ground. The burned, scorched remains of the Japanese tanks punctuated the field.

Beyond the killing field, the jungle began. The survivors of the banzai attack had withdrawn into the jungle cover, only to be caught in the bombardment of the big navy guns. There was no telling how many enemy dead lay among the shattered trunks and torn ground. It was doubtful that anyone could have survived the shelling.

The American troops kept to their foxholes, awaiting another attack, but it seemed unlikely that there were enough enemy troops left to mount one.

“What do you think is next for us?” Philly wondered.

“For now, I reckon we sit here and bake until the brass figures out what to do with us.” It wasn’t pleasant, sitting in the foxholes without any shelter from the sun. Deke was glad of his wide-brimmed hat. Still, he could feel his skin beginning to redden and burn wherever the sun touched it. The sunburn made his scars hurt. Every now and then he felt a breeze touch his sunburned skin, and the fresh air reminded him wistfully of the mountains back home.

He wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the tropical sun. Some men had abandoned common sense by taking off their helmets, even though they remained in a combat zone. The heat and humidity hung over everything like a blanket. Again, the growing smell of the dead didn’t help.

Philly waved in the direction of the burial detail. Several civilians carried shovels and had set to work digging graves in which to bury the American dead.

“Who are those guys? They look like Japs.”

“Not Japanese,” Yoshio said, finally speaking up. “Chamorros.”

“Who?”

“The Chamorros are the native people of Guam,” Yoshio explained. “They are Pacific islanders, not Japanese. In fact, the Japanese enslaved many of them and forced them to work building their fortifications and expanding the airfield. The Japanese were very cruel to these people. I would say it is safe to say that they hate the Japanese.”

“How the hell do you know so much?” Philly asked suspiciously.

“We were briefed before the landing.”

“If those Chamorros hated the Japanese so much, you’d think that they’d fight back,” Deke pointed out.

Yoshio nodded. “Some have tried. There have been guerrillas fighting in the jungle for many months. But you see, they have very little to fight with — maybe a few old rifles and not much ammunition.”

“Just goes to show that it never hurts to have a good rifle handy if you want to stay free.”

“That may be true,” Yoshio said. “However, it is my understanding that the Chamorros are a very peaceful people. Do not forget that they were under the protection of the United States for more than forty years until the Japanese invaded. In a way, we let them down.”

Deke looked more closely at the Chamorros laboring under the hot sun. They were built small, like the Japanese, and most of them looked underfed and exceedingly thin. Their clothes were little better than rags, except where some of them had donned cast-off pieces of American uniforms. Even then, the sleeves and pants were too long, and they had to roll them up. To Deke, who was no stranger to farm labor, the Chamorros looked tough and hardworking.

Lieutenant Steele came by. He still had a bandage over his eye, but he was struggling to keep it in place. The bandage might have started out white, but it was now smudged with mud and blackened with gunpowder and gun oil. “How are you boys holding up?” he asked, absently adjusting the bandage.

“We’ll be fine as long as the Japs keep to the jungle,” Philly said.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Steele said. “Better keep a sharp lookout. There’s no telling when they’ll be back.”

Steele moved off down the line.

Seeing the lieutenant struggle with his eye patch gave Deke an idea. He picked up the abandoned boot that he had found earlier in the foxhole.

The leather upper was still in good shape, and Deke thought that he could salvage something from it. Growing up on the farm, he always had been good at working with leather, whether it was repairing harnesses for the horses or getting a little more life out of a pair of shoes. There was something satisfying about working with leather — perhaps the durability of it.

Using his razor-sharp knife, he carefully cut an oval patch from the upper. He then used a bit of black greasepaint to finish the edges. He used the tip of the knife to punch holes at opposite ends of the oval. Finally, he threaded one of the waxed bootlaces through the holes.

When Lieutenant Steele came by a half hour later, Deke called out to him.

“Honcho, I’ve got something for you.”

“I hope it’s a Jap prisoner,” the lieutenant said. “HQ wants one bad, but the Japs aren’t cooperating. The only live ones we’ve found are mostly shot to pieces and aren’t much for talking. Speaking of which, Yoshio, you need to get down to the beach and see if you can talk to any of those Jap wounded.”

“Sorry, but it ain’t a Jap,” Deke said as the Nisei interpreter crawled out of the foxhole and hurried away. Deke held out the leather patch, and the lieutenant looked at it quizzically.

“What is it?”

“It’s an eye patch,” Deke said. “Try it on.”

“Huh,” Lieutenant Steele said. He took off his helmet and turned his face away from them to shed his bandage and put on the patch. Even so, Deke caught a glimpse of the red, puckered scar — all that remained of the eye that he had lost in that sniper battle on Guadalcanal. Having a few scars of his own, Deke understood if the lieutenant was a little self-conscious.

When he turned back, the eye patch was in place. It was a good fit and would stay securely in place. All in all, it was a vast improvement over the dirty bandage that Lieutenant Steele had been using to hide what remained of his wounded eye.

“You look like a pirate,” Philly said with a hoot, but he was grinning. “But I’ve got to say, Honcho, that eye patch makes you look kind of badass. I watched Deke make that out of a piece of boot leather. And here all I thought that old country boy could do was shoot and terrorize sheep. Next thing you know, he’ll be knitting scarves.”

Steele touched the leather eye patch. He seemed genuinely moved by Deke’s efforts. “Deke, I’ve got to say that’s a big improvement. I can’t thank you enough, son.”

“Aw, it was nothin’,” he said.

Lieutenant Steele reached out and gave his shoulder a quick squeeze, then moved on. Deke gulped hard and turned his face away from the others, suddenly overcome by emotion. His own father used to squeeze Deke’s shoulder that same way.

“Keep that up and you’ll get yourself promoted,” Philly said. “They’ll have to come up with some kind of exalted rank for you, I guess.”

“If you say so.”

Deke hadn’t made the eye patch to get promoted. He realized that the approval he had received from Lieutenant Steele was all the thanks that he needed. He hadn’t even known what a void his own father’s death had left in his life. He had known Lieutenant Steele for only a few short days, but he was already the closest thing to a father figure that he had known for years.

“You know what, Deke?” Philly said, interrupting his thoughts. The city boy was giving him a lopsided grin that signaled one of his wisecracks was brewing. “I’ve got a hole in the seat of my pants, and my ass is sticking out something terrible. Think you could fix it for me?”

“Philly, the only thing I’m gonna do with the seat of your pants is kick you in it,” Deke said. “Now keep an eye on that jungle. Like Honcho said, you never know when the Japs might be back.”

As if the heat wasn’t enough to contend with, by late afternoon thunderclouds had built on the horizon. They could see the gray line of rain approaching like a curtain. Spikes of lightning shot through the brooding clouds.

“Here it comes,” Philly said. “I don’t know which is worse around here, the Japs or the weather.”

Deke snorted. “That ain’t no contest, Philly. A little rain won’t kill you, but a little Jap will.”

A few minutes later, Deke reflected that maybe he’d been wrong about that. The storm approached ominously. Nearby, Whoa Nelly started to whine as the sound of thunder picked up. Funny that gunfire didn’t seem to bother her. The thunder was a different story.

“It’s all right, girl,” Egan reassured her. “Just a little thunder is all.”

The sun vanished, but there was no sense of relief in the respite from the heat, because the sun was replaced by deep gloom and thunder. The storm hit them with a squall; then the rain came down in buckets, quickly turning the foxholes into soupy quagmires. Deke’s broad-brimmed hat kept the worst of the rain from running down the back of his neck, but there was nothing that he could do about the rainwater bubbling up around his knees and thighs as he crouched in the foxhole, looking out at the jungle. It might have been his imagination, but he thought that the broad foliage of the jungle plants and even the tall palms that hadn’t been shattered by the bombardment lifted their leaves to welcome the rain.

Maybe the Japs would welcome it, too, because the rain grounded the US planes that had been patrolling the island. Now that the Americans had captured the airfield, there was little worry about Japanese planes.

They had hoped that the squall would blow on through, but the mass of clouds seemed to drop anchor over the island. Rain fell and wind blew. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. Deke was worried about the rain getting into his telescopic sight, so he stuck his rifle under his poncho and jabbed his knife into the mud nearby, within easy reach. Earlier, he had given his pistol to Yoshio, who had soon returned from his mission to interview wounded prisoners.

Yoshio huddled miserably nearby, rain sluicing off his helmet and down the back of his collar. He had stuck Deke’s pistol in his pocket.

The interpreter noticed him looking. “Deke, do you want your pistol back?”

“Nah, you hang on to it. But Yoshio, we’re gonna have to find you a rifle later,” Deke said. “That way, you’ll be more like an actual soldier.”

“If you do not think I am a soldier, then what do you think I am?”

“Hell, Yoshio, you’re more like a mascot,” Philly said. “You know, like a Japanese lapdog.”

Yoshio glared.

Deke ignored Philly and asked Yoshio, “How did it go at the beach? Did you talk to any prisoners?”

“I am afraid not. The only wounded prisoners still alive were too bad off to talk or addled with morphine. All the others had taken their own lives in some way.” He shook his head. “They simply refuse to surrender.”

Deke thought about that. What kind of enemy were they up against, anyhow? He recalled the fearless way the Japanese sniper had stood up from the shelter of the rocks during the battle, challenging him. The man must really have thought that he was a samurai. Yoshio was right — soldiers like that would never surrender.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Deke finally said, hoping he wouldn’t encounter the Samurai Sniper again.