Pacific Sniper

Chapter Two

On the beach below, Deke heard the sergeant shout, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, you damn crazy peckerwood!”

Behind him, Lieutenant Thibault barked an order, and the rest of the squad surged after him.

But Deke was already entering the deep shade at the fringes of the jungle, rifle at the ready, Ben following.

“Deke, where are we going?” Ben stammered.

“Hush now. If we kept on that beach, we’d be as good as dead. Keep your eyes open.”

A clump of grass moved in the undergrowth. Deke stared, seeing that the grass was attached to a helmet on the head of a Japanese soldier. The man was artfully camouflaged to the point that Deke had almost walked right up on him.

Deke was so startled that he froze. He felt his insides turn to ice. His first Jap. Finally. This was the enemy they had been trained to both hate and fear. Well, I’ll be danged.

The enemy soldier saw him, but he was struggling to reload his rifle. He shouted something — possibly a curse or a warning to other Japs nearby.

Then something clicked into place for the Jap, and he swung the rifle in Deke’s direction.

Instinctively, Deke crouched and fired. At the same time, the Jap’s bullet snapped over Deke’s shoulder, causing Deke to flinch.

As a result, he managed to miss the Jap, who wasn’t more than twenty feet away. Deke realized it was one thing to shoot at a paper target, and altogether different to shoot at a man.

The enemy soldier had to work his bolt-action rifle before he could fire again, but Deke carried a semiautomatic M1. All he had to do was pull the trigger again.

This time, he was more deliberate about it. He lined up the sights on the Jap and squeezed the trigger. It wasn’t textbook in terms of marksmanship but it got the job done. He’d gotten his rifle into play before the Jap could.

A look of surprise came over the Jap’s face. He stared down at the hole in his chest, then looked back at Deke. Then his eyes glazed over, and he finally slumped down. The Jap had taken all of ten seconds to die, but it felt like an eternity to Deke.

He turned to Ben, who stood just behind him. “Why didn’t you shoot at that Jap? A lot of help you were—”

Ben didn’t answer. His mouth moved helplessly up and down, like a fish that couldn’t get air. He had a red badge on his chest, right where a general would have pinned it on. But it wasn’t a badge. It was a bullet wound. The Japanese bullet meant for Deke had struck him square in the chest.

“I’m hit, Deke,” he managed to stammer. He started to fall.

Deke reached to grab him. Ben collapsed into his arms, causing Deke to drop his rifle. Gently, he laid Ben down on the sandy jungle floor.

“You’ll be all right,” Deke said. He knew it wasn’t true. The hole in Ben’s front wasn’t so bad, but the bullet had gone clean through, making a much larger exit wound. Blood pooled around Ben, flowing over the rough ground.

Deke reached for his first aid kit. They’d learned basic first aid during training, but this was far beyond any help that Deke could give.

“I can’t believe I got killed right away.”

“Don’t say that, now. I’ll get you some help.” Deke looked around, but they were still alone. Where the hell was the rest of the company? Desperately, he shouted, “Medic!”

“Write to my parents, Deke,” Ben said. “Will you do that for me?”

“I’ll let them know you did good,” Deke said. He would have lied and told Ben that he would be all right, but there was so much blood.

“I’m cold,” Ben said. He was starting to shake. The hunter in Deke knew those were death throes. He had seen it often enough in the animals that he’d shot. “It doesn’t hurt any, but I’m cold. Who would think you could get cold on a tropical island?”

“You’ll be warm in a minute,” Deke said. “It’s all right now. You can go. Go on home now.”

But Ben didn’t answer. He was already gone.

Deke remained crouched over Ben, holding him. He gave him a shake, just to be sure. But Ben wasn’t coming back.

Ben had been like a kid brother to him, always tagging along. To be sure, he had sometimes been a pain in the neck. And yet Deke realized that Ben had been the closest thing that he’d had to a friend in the military.

He recalled how during training down on the Chesapeake Bay that Ben had had a tough time on the obstacle course. The weather there was always humid and steamy in the summer, which was good practice for what was to come in the Pacific islands, as it turned out. Splashing through the lukewarm waters of the Chesapeake during landing exercises had been a welcome relief. Even Deke, who had grown up in the mountains far from anything like salt water, didn’t mind splashing around on a hot day.

Then again, there hadn’t been any kettles lurking in a coral reef to drown them. Nobody had been shooting at them. The most dangerous obstacle they’d faced were local girls, who had come down to the water to watch before being shooed away by one of the officers, much to the disappointment of the men.

In that hot subtropical weather, the obstacle course was never anyone’s favorite activity. The problem for Ben was a wooden wall that they had been expected to scale, usually with rifles slung over their shoulders and rucksacks on their backs. To be sure, it hadn’t been easy. No matter how much the sergeant screamed, Ben simply hadn’t been able to propel himself over that wall.

“I just can’t do it, Deke,” Ben had said.

“Here, let me get under you.” Deke had laced his hands together like a stirrup, gotten one of Ben’s boots in his hands, and launched him upward like he was tossing a hay bale. “Grab hold!”

Ben had gotten his fingertips wedged into the space between two boards, hanging there, his feet scrabbling for a grip. Meanwhile, Deke had scaled the wall and straddled the top. He reached down, grabbed Ben’s hand, and pulled him up and over the top of the wall.

By any measure, it was a challenge, but Deke’s frame was lean and ropy from long years of farmwork, not to mention prowling endless miles through the hills back home. Each arm was like the iron handle of a barnyard water pump.

The sergeant hadn’t been happy. “I don’t ever want to see that again!” he shouted. “If a man can’t hold his own, he deserves to get left behind.”

Now Ben was getting left behind for good. Gently, he lowered Ben to the blood-soaked earth.

The battle was still going on, but Deke had tuned it out. He had managed to ignore the rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire and the crack of rifles, even the dull whump of grenades exploding. At that very moment, a whole squad of Japanese soldiers could have appeared, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

Gradually, the sounds of war reached him again. Down on the beach, Sergeant Hawley shouted his name. “Hey, Cole? You up there? What’s it look like?”

Deke ignored him. He stood up but felt as though he was in a daze. He picked up Ben’s rifle, which still had a fixed bayonet. Against orders, Deke had slipped off his bayonet as soon as no one was looking, figuring that it would just get in the way.

He walked over to the dead Japanese. He was surprised at how small the man looked. In death, he seemed to have shrunk, and his baggy uniform was loose on him. His helmet, with grass stuck into it, had fallen off, but other bits of branches and grass had been tied to his arms and even his back — no wonder Deke had almost stepped on him.

A man that size in their squad would have been called a shrimp, with a nickname to match. They’d been told that most enemy soldiers they would face were less than five feet tall, several inches shorter than the average American GI. Deke suspected that the size of the Japanese had been emphasized to give the GIs confidence against an unknown enemy. Yet this Japanese shrimp had been deadly enough.

Deke had killed him, but it hadn’t helped Ben. He felt a sudden rage jolt him into action. He lifted Ben’s rifle high and stabbed the corpse using the bayonet. Shouting now, he rammed the bayonet into the dead soldier again and again.

He was yanking the blade free when the rest of the unit entered the jungle behind him.

“Cole, what the hell are you doing?” the sergeant demanded.

Deke kept bayoneting the dead Japanese.

“Hey!”

Finally, Deke stopped and turned toward the sergeant. He had Ben’s blood on him, along with spatters of blood on his face from the dead enemy soldier. His eyes glared from the mask of blood. The sergeant took a step back.

“Private Hemphill is dead,” Deke said.

“Yeah, I can see that.” The sergeant stared at him. “Holy hell. I’m not surprised that Hemphill already bought it. I figured he wouldn’t last long.”

The sergeant turned away, shaking his head.

“He shot that Jap,” Deke lied. He couldn’t give Ben a medal, but he could give him this much. “He shot that Jap and saved my life, but the Jap got him.”

“Then what’s with the bayonet?”

“I wanted to make sure that Jap was dead.”

“You can be sure. That Nip looks like chop suey.”

Deke tossed the bloody rifle away, then reached down to pick up his own M1.

Several soldiers in the squad had gathered around Ben and then stared at the dead enemy soldier. Although they had taken a lot of fire on the beach, this was the first Japanese soldier that they had seen, dead or alive.

Egan came over with the dog, which was on a leash. “Get a good nose full of that Jap, Nelly,” the handler said. “That’s what you’re smelling for. You smell that, girl, you let us know.”

The dog sniffed at the dead enemy soldier, then looked up at his handler and wagged her tail to show that she was ready.

One of the soldiers went to the enemy’s body and began turning out the pockets. “Hey, look at this,” he said, holding up a piece of paper. “Maybe it’s some kind of orders. What do you think, Sarge?”

“Can you read Japanese?”

“No. Looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to me.”

“Then what I think is that it’s useless. Besides, it’s probably just a letter.”

“A letter?”

“Yeah. Do you have any letters in your pocket?”

“Sure I do.”

“Don’t you think the Japs might too?”

A couple of other men had gone over to help search the body, but mostly they were hoping for souvenirs. Somebody grabbed the dead Jap’s knife, and somebody else got his belt buckle. Conlon, carrying the sniper rifle, used the toe of his boot to poke at the Jap’s weed-covered helmet.

“What a bunch of goddamn buzzards,” the sergeant said. “Listen, next time be careful. You never know when one of these bodies is booby-trapped.”

“You got it, Sarge.”

The sergeant had picked up the Japanese rifle and shucked the bolt out, then tossed it into the weeds. He threw the rifle itself in another direction. Then he picked up Ben’s rifle. “We’re not leaving any weapons here for the Japs to use against us. Nothing gets left behind, and if it does, then disable that weapon. Everybody got that?”

“Yes, sir!”

He took a closer look at Ben’s rifle. “You know what? This rifle has not been fired. Cole, I thought you said Hemphill shot the Jap?”

Deke didn’t answer.

The sergeant frowned but didn’t press the issue. “I guess you got confused. What matters is that the Jap is dead and you’re not,” he said. “OK, let’s move out.”

“What about Hemphill?” somebody asked.

“Graves registration will find him,” the sergeant said. “No point dragging his sorry dead ass back down to the beach unless you want to end up just like him.”

Nobody said anything, but nobody liked the thought of leaving Hemphill’s body behind. Maybe he hadn’t been much of a soldier, but he’d been one of their own.

“Look, it was a hell of a thing getting this far, and we’ve already lost some men, but the war is just getting started for us,” the sergeant said. “You saw how that Jap was camouflaged. Keep your eyes open. Hell, they could be anywhere. Egan, get out front with that mutt. See if her nose does any good.”

The soldiers started forward into the jungle, following the sergeant. They moved around Deke like water in a creek flows around a boulder, giving him a wide berth.

“Batshit crazy,” somebody muttered.

“Knock it off,” another soldier said under his breath. “Let’s see how you do when the time comes.”

Deke didn’t care what the others thought. Maybe they were right, that he had gone crazy, at least for a minute, but he felt calm now. He took one last look at Ben’s body, small and lifeless on the sand. Just a short time ago, Ben had still been living and breathing. Deke was no stranger to death, having seen his share of tragedy in a hard childhood, but that didn’t mean he would ever really get used to it.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Deke muttered. “I’m sorry that I let you down.”

Looking into the green, tangled wall of vegetation in front of him, he realized that he wasn’t afraid.

He was angry.

Finally, Deke reached for his rifle, picking it out of the sand. He gave Ben’s body one last look, then started into the jungle after the others.