Pacific Sniper

Chapter Eight

Everybody was glad to see daylight arrive, but the hour or so of predawn twilight proved to be the worst time of all. The soldiers felt tired and jumpy, worried that the Japanese had one more trick up their sleeves while it was still somewhat dark.

“Hey, what’s that!” someone shouted, then started firing. Several other soldiers opened fire — what they were shooting at was anybody’s guess.

“Cease firing, you dumbasses!” a sergeant shouted. “I don’t see any Japs.”

Still, the men remained jumpy. The problem was that the gray tropical dawn revealed strange shapes and forms. In the minds of the GIs, each one of these shapes had to be a Jap soldier creeping up on them, or maybe even a tank. The longer that they stared at a vague shape, the more it seemed to move. Despite the sergeants’ and officers’ best efforts, occasional bursts of fire broke out from the foxholes.

In the foxhole beside Deke, Philly said, “Everything I look at seems to be a Jap.”

“It’s just your eyes playing tricks on you,” Deke said. “It happens all the time when you’re hunting, right before it gets full daylight.”

“Where are the Japs, then? Why aren’t they attacking us?”

“I expect they’re dug in around the airfield, waiting for us. Last night they attacked us in our foxholes. Now it’s our turn to attack them.”

As the light increased, giving the threatening shapes clarity, the soldiers sheepishly realized that what they thought had been a Jap was a tree trunk, after all, or a clump of jungle ferns.

However, the morning light did reveal several dead Japanese, scattered in front of the American position. These were the men who had tried to infiltrate their lines last night, throwing grenades and launching small banzai attacks in groups of three or four men.

In terms of recapturing any lost territory, the small attacks had been a futile effort. Strategically, the attacks had been more than effective, denying the GIs any sleep and leaving them with jangled nerves.

A few American bodies also lay on the ground. One of them was a soldier who had made the mistake of getting out of his foxhole during the night to relieve himself.

Philly shook his head at the sight of the body. “Poor bastard,” he said.

Deke remembered the incident all too vividly. In the wee hours of the morning, one of the GIs had seen a shape moving in the darkness just behind the foxholes.

“Who goes there?” somebody had shouted. “What’s the password?”

Before there was an answer, somebody had opened fire with a submachine gun.

Whoever had been out there screamed. It hadn’t sounded like a Jap. Especially not after he’d started crying for his mama in plain, agonized English.

“It’s Stokes!” someone had shouted. “You shot Stokes!”

“Medic!”

“What the hell was he doing out of his foxhole?”

The medic and another man had gone to retrieve Stokes and drag him back to cover.

But it had been no use. They’d heard Stokes crying softly for his mother, the medic telling him to hang in there. Then Stokes had fallen quiet.

“He’s dead.”

“What the hell happened?”

According to his buddy, Stokes had had diarrhea but had been too embarrassed to relieve himself right there in the foxhole. Instead, he had taken his chances and slipped off into the dark. His buddy had known he was out there, but somebody else had spotted him and opened fire before Stokes could respond with the password.

“I didn’t know,” the soldier had said plaintively. “I thought he was a Jap. I didn’t know!”

From the depths of his foxhole, they’d heard sobbing.

Lieutenant Steele had spoken up. Most of the men who were more than a few feet away hadn’t been able to see him, but his voice carried to all those in the vicinity. “Listen, what happened to that kid is a damned shame. But it’s not anybody’s fault. Everybody’s jumpy, and the Japs have already attacked us several times tonight. You can’t tell who’s who in the dark. Anybody who has got to go, do it in your foxhole.”

Philly had sighed. “That fella died because he needed the latrine. It’s a hell of a thing. I hope that lieutenant doesn’t put that in his letter home to that kid’s family. That lieutenant wouldn’t do that, would he?”

Nearby, Steele said quietly, “Listen, Philly. Nobody writes the truth in those letters home. ‘He never felt a thing’ or ‘He died fighting alongside his friends.’ Lord knows, I’ve written a few of those letters myself. Keep your heads down because I’m not in any hurry to write another one.”

Once it was full daylight, the sniper squad stayed put while the rest of the unit began to move out. The Japanese strategy was to go into hiding during the day and let the Americans come to them.

“What about us, Honcho?” Philly asked the lieutenant.

“We’re headed back to the beach,” the lieutenant said. “You saw yourself how the enemy operates. If we hope to have any sort of chance against them, we need to be prepared.”

Accompanying them was the Japanese officer who had charged them the night before. His wrists were firmly bound, and Alphabet led him using a length of rope, although the officer resisted, reminding Deke of stubborn livestock on the farm.

“Keep an eye on him,” Deke said. “He’s ornery. He’d like nothin’ better than to get that sword back and cut you open from stem to stern.”

Alphabet gulped. “You think so?”

“Look at his eyes. I know so.”

“None of us can speak a word of Japanese, so we’ll take him back to HQ and find out what he knows.”

“What, do they have Japs down there at the beach to translate?” Philly wondered.

“As a matter of fact, they do,” the lieutenant said. “They’re called Nisei. Japanese Americans.”

Philly shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust them,” he said. “They’re Japs all the same.”

The soldier’s eyes did glare at them hatefully. Being taken alive was likely the last thing that he had expected. Lieutenant Steele had wrapped the sword blade in a strip of cloth, and he took it out now and inspected it.

Using two hands, the lieutenant swung the two-foot blade a couple of times. They could all hear the way that the razor-sharp edge cut the air. The lieutenant whistled, clearly impressed. “I believe that this is called a katana. A Japanese officer’s sword, which is basically a samurai sword.”

Seeing the lieutenant with the sword seemed to enrage the officer. Shouting, he surged toward the lieutenant, straining against the ropes. Big as he was, it was all that Ingram could do to hold him back.

“What’s he saying?”

“I guess he’s saying that he wants his sword back.” Lieutenant Steele wrapped up the sword again and returned it to his pack. He grinned at the captured Japanese. “Well, you should have thought of that before you attacked us, buddy.”

Philly stepped back nervously from the Japanese officer, who was now simply snarling at them, helpless in his rage. “He’s an animal,” Philly said.

Lieutenant Steele looked thoughtful. “If you could ask him, I’ll bet that he’d say we are the animals. From the Jap point of view, we’re the barbarians — not them.”

“In that case, they’re pretty mixed up.”

They headed back to the beachhead. Deke took one last look behind him at the now-empty foxholes that they had worked so hard to dig. A few dead Japanese still lay scattered about the clearing, with the jungle starting beyond that. It didn’t look like much of anything — certainly not a place worth fighting and dying over.

“What are you thinking, Deke?” Lieutenant Steele asked, noticing that Deke had paused to look back.

“Just that this business of war is gonna take some getting used to.”

“Good luck with that. I’m still trying to get used to it myself, and I’ve been doing this since Guadal. Now keep up. I wouldn’t want the Japs to get you.”

After the lieutenant turned over the captured officer, they returned to the area on the beach where they had gathered yesterday. Waves rushed relentlessly onto the shore, and a few gulls called overhead. The surroundings almost made it possible to forget, even for a moment, that there was a war going on.

They were not entirely alone. A reporter had heard about the sniper squad and their successful capture of a Japanese officer. The reporter had tagged along, much to Lieutenant Steele’s chagrin.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Ernie Pyle,” he said.

“Say, I’ve heard of you. I’ve even read some of your stories. You’re the actual Ernie Pyle?”

The reporter shrugged his rail-thin shoulders. He had a worn-out, hangdog appearance and sad eyes that looked as if they had seen too much. “I’m not the one who matters here. You boys are the story, not me.”

“I thought you were over in Europe.”

“I was, but with Hitler on the run, this is where the story is now.”

“If you say so, Mr. Pyle.”

“Ernie is just fine, Lieutenant. Just pretend I’m not here. I’m going to take some notes and watch. Listen and learn, as it were.”

Steele nodded. “All right, gather round,” the lieutenant said. “Yesterday, we had a chance to see how everyone could shoot.”

“Some of us are better than others, Honcho. That’s for sure.”

“Marksmanship is only part of the equation,” the lieutenant said. “Sure, it’s important to be able to hit the target. But you’ve also got to be able to get close enough to the target, and then not give yourself away in the process. Meanwhile, the Japanese have their own snipers at work. That’s what we’re going to learn about today.”

“Sounds like a lot,” Philly said.

“Nobody said this was going to be easy,” the lieutenant said. “The thing is that the Japanese have a head start on us in this department. They use sniper warfare as part of their overall defensive strategy, and they train for it. We don’t do any of that, so we have some catching up to do.”

The lieutenant proceeded to explain Japanese sniper strategies that he had encountered on Guadalcanal. The Japanese tended to favor treetops — which gave the advantage of a bird’s-eye view of the terrain — or snipers dug into “spider holes” on elevated ground.

Both had their advantages and disadvantages, from a sniper’s point of view. While the treetop position enabled long-distance shots, these snipers often tied themselves right to the tree. Once they had been located, they were sitting ducks with little protection. The snipers in the spider holes relied more on clear lanes of fire. Their positions were usually well protected, which made them difficult to root out.

“You know what my favorite position is, don’t you?” Philly wisecracked. “The missionary position.”

“Very funny, Philly. Keep it up and we’ll use you for target practice.”

But even the reporter had cracked a smile at Philly’s joke.

“Are you really turning any of this into a story, Mr. Pyle?” the lieutenant asked.

“Believe it or not, the folks back home will want to know how we’re beating the enemy at their own game.”

“If you say so,” the lieutenant said, then continued with his lesson. “The Japanese are shortsighted, and I don’t mean eyeglasses. It’s their philosophy that I’m talking about. I saw it myself on Guadal. They see all this glory and honor in dying for their Emperor. I think it’s a whole lot better to make the enemy die, and you go on living so that you can kill more of the enemy. It’s also a waste of trained personnel and resources. It’s also terrifying to be going up against some bastard who doesn’t really care if he lives or dies. He’s just interested in killing you.”

Deke spoke up. “Honcho, the way you tell it, each one of these Japs is making his own last stand.”

The lieutenant nodded. “You will find that the Japanese overall have a different mindset that you may not have encountered before. Their goal is not survival. Once they have themselves set up, they don’t really have an exit plan. Their intent is to keep shooting until either we’re dead, or they are.”

“Sounds about right,” someone said. The other men nodded. Some of them thought about the fight the night before and the fanatical way that the enemy had attacked. The enemy must have known that what they were doing was nothing short of suicide, but that hadn’t stopped them from throwing themselves at the dug-in soldiers.

“Also, the Japanese sniper is a master of camouflage,” the lieutenant continued. “He’s very good at affixing leaves and branches to his helmet or to his uniform so that he looks more like a shrub than a soldier. It wouldn’t be all that unusual to walk right past a Jap sniper and not even know he’s there — until he shoots you in the back.”

Deke recalled the first soldier that he had shot yesterday. The lieutenant was right about that — sharp-eyed as Deke was, he hadn’t spotted him in time. The Jap had been cleverly concealed.

“Does that mean we have to cover ourselves with leaves, Honcho?”

“It does if you want to stay alive.”

“I guess I do, so somebody pass me some leaves.”

The lieutenant smiled wryly. “Here’s how he does it. Most Japanese are small — smaller than us, anyway — which gives them an advantage as a sniper. Look at Ingram here. Where the hell are we going to hide him? He’d be more useful if we get into a football game.

“Let me tell you something else. The Nips are damn good at camouflage. Never forget that we are on their turf. The jungle comes naturally to them. We’re more used to snow and pine forests and trees that lose their leaves. That is not their world. Imagine a Jap fighting in the Ardennes Forest — some of them did, more Nisei — your mind finds it hard to picture, right? Now think of that same Jap in the jungle. He fits right in. You’ve got to fit right in.”

They spent some time putting into practice what the lieutenant had described. Netting was affixed to helmets. Strips of cloth were wrapped around arms so that they had a place to stuff branches and twigs to help break out their profiles. The lieutenant produced green and black grease paint to cover their faces and even the backs of their hands. The whole idea was to fade into their surroundings as needed.

“You want us to paint our faces?” Philly asked in disbelief.

“The Japs do it. Ask those dead marines on Guadalcanal about that.”

This was a different mindset. The US Army thought only in terms of advancing. Concealment wasn’t part of the strategy. However, the lieutenant explained that, as snipers, they might be fighting ahead of the advancing front — or even behind enemy lines. In that case, concealment and stealth meant survival.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to win. We’ll climb trees or dig our own spider holes if we have to. But one way that we’re going to fight different from the Japs is that we fight to survive and fight some more.”

“I’m all in favor of that,” Philly said. For once, he sounded serious.

As it turned out, learning about camouflage was just part of their training. The lieutenant also lectured them about Japanese weapons.

“The Japs are using the Arisaka rifle. The sniper rifles are a fairly small caliber and not nearly as loud as our M1 or Springfield rifles, which makes them hard to locate.”

“A smaller caliber, but I reckon they’ll kill you all the same,” Deke said.

The lieutenant nodded. “However, I’m not going to suggest that we all start shooting Jap rifles. Deke, why don’t you go ahead and open that box now?”

Deke did as he was told. To his surprise, he saw three Springfield rifles inside, each mounted with a telescopic sight. He whistled. “Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.”

“All right, listen up. Deke, Ingram, Alphabet, each of you gets a sniper rifle. It’s a Springfield, a single-shot bolt action. You won’t find a more accurate rifle in the Pacific. I had to pull some strings to get those, believe me. Deke, hand them out.”

“What about the rest of us?” Philly wondered.

“You’ve got your M1, and like I said, there’s no finer rifle for all-around combat. Don’t forget that the Springfield is a single-shot weapon — good for sniping, but not so much for throwing a lot of lead at the enemy.”

Deke handed out the rifles, saving the last one in the box for himself. They spent the rest of the day making sure that the scopes were zeroed in to their satisfaction. Then the lieutenant decided to have them do some shooting again.

“All right, let’s see how you do,” he said.

Once again, they used the coconuts scattered across the sand as targets. With the telescopic sights, these targets were much easier to hit.

Finally, the lieutenant pointed out the farthest coconut on the beach. Nobody else could hit it, but when Deke’s turn came, he set the crosshairs on the target and blasted the coconut high into the air.

“Not bad,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s see how you do with a moving target.”

At that, the lieutenant took a coconut and tossed it high into the air.

Deke didn’t bother with the rifle. Instead, he drew his pistol and fired a single shot that shattered the coconut.

The lieutenant stared at him. “I swear to God, Deke. You are some kind of goddamn prodigy. Do me a favor and try not to get killed right away.”

“Roger that, Honcho.”

With the lesson over, the reporter got their names and asked where they were from. He’d been so quiet that they had almost forgotten that he was even there. He produced a small camera from his rucksack.

“All right, I’m just going to take a picture of you fellas, if you don’t mind.”

Lieutenant Steele stepped away. “You don’t need me in there. Just get the men.”

Standing with the others, facing forward as the journalist fiddled with the camera, Deke suddenly felt self-conscious about his scars. “You don’t need me either,” he said. “I reckon I might break the camera.”

“Hold it right there, Deke,” the lieutenant said. He took hold of Deke’s chin and turned his face so that his good side faced the camera. “Is that what you were worried about? Handsome as ever. How’s that, Ernie?”

The camera clicked a few times, with Pyle winding the film between exposures. “All right, I’m all done with you good-looking sons of bitches,” he announced with a laugh. A sad smile crossed his face. “It was good meeting you boys. Take care of yourselves, will you?”

They were just wrapping up when they saw a jeep approaching down the beach. “That can’t be good,” the lieutenant muttered.

The jeep rolled to a stop, and a single soldier got out. Pyle took the opportunity for a ride back and got in before the jeep sped away, leaving the newcomer behind.

“It’s a Jap!” Philly shouted in alarm, leveling his rifle at the soldier.

“Hey, watch where you point that thing!” the soldier said anxiously, staring into the muzzle.

Slowly, Philly lowered the rifle. It was easy to see why he had been alarmed, even if the newcomer wore a GI uniform — Who knew what sort of tricks the Nips might be up to? Without doubt, the soldier had distinctly Asian features.

“All right, what’s this about?” the lieutenant wanted to know.

The soldier looked over the lieutenant and the other soldiers with what appeared to be skepticism. Then he sighed deeply. “Private Shimizu reporting for duty, sir.”

“You’re a Jap.”

“I am an interpreter.”

All that the men could do was stare. They had all heard about the Nisei interpreters, men with Japanese heritage who could speak the language of the enemy, but they had yet to set eyes on one. Until now, apparently.

“What am I supposed to do with an interpreter?”

“Apparently, headquarters was impressed that you captured a Japanese officer, and they’re hoping that you’ll capture more of them. If you do, I’m supposed to help you question the prisoner.”

The lieutenant stared at the interpreter as if waiting for the punch line. Then he laughed. “Well, boys, it just goes to show you that no good deed goes unpunished. Maybe Deke here was right. Maybe we should have shot that Jap prisoner and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Anyhow, welcome to the squad, Private Shimizu.”