Samurai & Snipers

CHAPTER ONE

Deacon Cole kept a wary eye on the trees, looking for any sign of the enemy. The Japanese troops that had escaped the fall of Ormoc and then Palompon had retreated into the Filipino forest, using the jungle shadows for cover as they picked off the Americans traveling the roads. It never ceased to amaze him how one enemy soldier with a rifle could harass an entire company of infantry. No wonder the enemy was proving so hard to beat.

“You see anything?” Philly whispered beside him.

“Just keep your eyes open,” Deke replied. “They’re in those trees, all right, sure as a hound has fleas.”

He felt an itching between his shoulder blades as if a target had been pinned there. The unrelenting combat was finally getting to him, the constant tension wearing on him like a millstone grinding corn, leaving him feeling thin. He pushed back the brim of the bush hat that he’d gotten from a wounded Australian back on Guam and wiped sweat off his forehead before it dripped into his eyes. A few rivulets of sweat ran like rivers through the rough landscape of scars etching one side of his face and neck.

Deke and Philly were part of Patrol Easy, scouts and snipers whose job it was to escort this convoy and do what they could to discourage Japanese snipers — and not get themselves killed in the process. Patrol Easy was made up of a motley group who never would have come together anywhere but the army, Deke thought.

Though Deke was the best shot of the bunch, they all had their own skills and talents that united their unlikely crew. Philly was a damn good spotter who always had Deke’s back. Rodeo hauled the radio for Lieutenant Steele, who might’ve been the oldest lieutenant in the Pacific. Their Filipino guide was a tough jungle fighter named Danilo. Yoshio was their Nisei interpreter and the most erudite of the bunch, always with his nose in a paperback novel. From time to time, they were joined by Private Egan and his war dog, Thor.

Patrol Easy had been fighting together since Guam and had made the landing at Red Beach, near Palo, in a hailstorm of enemy fire that greeted the American arrival in the Philippines. From there they had been grinding their way across the island of Leyte.

Over the last few weeks, one by one the Americans had cleaned out the enemy’s pillboxes and concrete batteries on Leyte. Most of these fortifications had been built using Filipino slave labor. These fortifications and their defenders gradually had been eliminated — blown up, burned out, or shot to pieces. More than a few GIs and Filipino fighters had died in the process. They had paid dearly for each fortification destroyed.

But it hadn’t been enough. It turned out that for the enemy, the green jungle was the only fortress needed. Now their convoy was making its way through this deadly jungle, the soldiers escorting supply trucks making their way from the coast to the inland towns that the GIs had wrested from the Japanese.

Under different circumstances, the forested hills and sunny open fields would have been a pleasant place to explore. But now, the country that they passed through was littered with signs of war, the worst being the bodies of innocent Filipino civilians who had been murdered by the Japanese. The bodies were mostly those of women or older men, bayoneted or shot at close range.

There was no apparent reason for the killings other than a thirst for violence. These civilians weren’t guerrilla fighters, and they certainly had nothing worth stealing. No, the murders were simply another sign of the enemy’s penchant for cruelty and revenge against the civilian population. If the average GI had been hanging on to some thread of compassion toward his enemy, the sight of those torn and bloody civilian victims had broken it. Any Japanese they captured tended to have a short life expectancy. In contrast, the Americans did everything they could to avoid harming civilians.

For now, the enemy still held the upper hand, firing from cover at the convoy. The GIs fired back, but the enemy remained frustratingly elusive.

It had been like this all morning. As the sun rose, the air grew muggy. The convoy moving from Palompon to the American outpost near Valencia crept at a snail’s pace along the winding road that ran beside a narrow, rain-swollen jungle river no more than twenty-five feet wide. If the river had a name, Deke couldn’t remember it and didn’t much care. The river cut through the countryside for many miles before eventually flowing into the sea near Palompon, which until recently had been a Japanese supply port. The port was now in American hands, and supplies were being brought inland.

Normally the river was more like a stream, rocky and shallow enough that soldiers could easily wade across. Deke had seen it in this stage, and it reminded him of the upper reaches of the Clinch River, which he was familiar with back home.

But recent rains had transformed the river into a raging torrent in places. They had even seen the drowned carcass of a cow float past in the swift brown water. The terrain on both sides of the river was rugged and hilly, covered in dense forest. The meandering road was the only practical way to cross this territory. The enemy knew this all too well.

They had lost at least a half dozen men so far to enemy snipers. The frustrated GIs had started hosing down the jungle with the machine gun mounted on one of two M8 armored cars spaced between the trucks like chunks of meat between the vegetables on a shish kebab skewer. The M4 Sherman tank at the head of the convoy used its own .30 caliber Browning machine gun to discourage the Japanese. But the bursts of machine-gun fire did little more than eat up ammo without having much effect on the enemy. The Japanese just kept their heads down, then picked off another target once the suppressing fire stopped.

Even Lieutenant Steele was started to show signs that the random Japanese attacks were getting to him. Just a minute ago, he had turned and fired several rounds from his 12-gauge combat shotgun into the underbrush, pumping out the hulls that went spinning away into the mud. The military hulls were made of brass because the typical waxed paper shotgun shells that were familiar to hunters swelled in the humidity and jammed the gun.

“What are you shooting at, Honcho?” Philly asked.

“Thought I saw something in those bushes,” the lieutenant muttered. He shoved fresh shells into his shotgun.

He preferred to be called Honcho by his men because being addressed by his rank or as “sir” was a surefire way to be targeted by the enemy. Considering that the word came from a Japanese term for a squad leader, the joke was on the enemy.

The tall, taciturn lieutenant had lost an eye on Guadalcanal and now wore an eye patch that Deke had crafted for him out of scrap leather. Honcho’s hair was touched with gray and his men figured that he had pulled some strings not only to avoid being sent home after losing an eye but also to remain a mere first lieutenant. Being a captain meant more headaches. He was more than content to command their squad of scouts and snipers.

Shotgun at the ready, Honcho moved off to check on the rest of the convoy.

“Dammit, we’re sitting ducks out here,” Philly grumbled. He walked a few paces behind Deke, his own rifle at the ready. They both knew that Deke was the better shot, but that didn’t stop Philly from needling him about his marksmanship from time to time. Because Philly was Philly, and Deke’s closest buddy in the army, maybe even in the world, Deke put up with it. “How can we fight the bastards if we can’t even see ’em, huh? This is a suicide mission.”

“I’ve got news for you, city boy. Life is a suicide mission,” Deke said. “Keep your head down and your eyes open.”

They were maintaining their “dime” — keeping a distance about ten feet apart to lessen the chances that a burst of fire from the jungle would take them both out. Deke heard the crack of a rifle. Another GI sprawled unmoving in the mud at the side of the road.

“Sniper!” someone shouted, and once again the GIs scrambled off the road like ants, taking shelter in ditches or under the trucks. They weren’t quick enough. Another shot rang out, and another man went down, wounded. A medic crawled over to help him.

Deke hid behind a truck tire and swung his rifle in the direction from where his keen hearing told him the shots had originated, but all he saw through the sniper scope was a wall of green, so dense that it looked as if a bullet wouldn’t pierce the veil. He couldn’t see anything to shoot at.

He felt a shiver along his spine, wondering again if he was in the enemy’s sights at this very moment. That imaginary target itched on his back. Dammit. He much preferred being the hunter to being the hunted.

“Did you see where that shot came from?” Philly wanted to know. “I swear, this convoy is nothing but target practice for the Japanese.”

“These snipers are crafty,” said Yoshio as he studied the brush that hid the enemy. “We need to outsmart them.”

“When you figure out how to do that, Yoshio, let me know,” Deke said.

Yoshio could move as silently as any of them when he needed to. The sight of the Japanese American in his GI uniform still brought stares of suspicion, like he might be an infiltrator rather than a soldier in the United States Army. But Deke and the rest of Patrol Easy had come to trust Yoshio with their lives because he had proved his bravery more than once.

Yoshio had been born in Washington State, which made him just as American as anybody else, even if he had grown up speaking Japanese. Although his parents and grandparents had also been born in America, their Japanese heritage meant that they were now sitting in an internment camp, behind barbed wire and under guard, designated as potential enemies of the United States. Yoshio had never expressed any bitterness about that situation, but he had opted to prove his loyalty by enlisting to fight for a country that treated his family with suspicion.

“I guess the best we can do is keep our heads down and pray,” Philly said.

“When your number is up, it’s up,” Rodeo offered.

The only member of the patrol who hadn’t spoken up was Danilo, their Filipino guide. It was always a mystery as to how much English the tough guerrilla knew.

Deke had his rifle to his shoulder, his eye to the scope, and his finger on the trigger. Now and then he spotted a trembling leaf in the breeze or a bird flitting through the branches, but nothing that looked like a Japanese sniper. He had no doubt that the Japanese were watching them.

“I can’t see these fools,” Deke muttered. Behind him, the agonized cries of a wounded GI faded as morphine began to course through his system. “It’s a regular cattywampus, I can tell you that much.”

“A catty-what?” Philly asked.

“He means it’s a hot mess,” Yoshio explained. “Lucky for you, I speak a little hillbilly.”

“You must have picked it up from all those Westerns you read,” Philly muttered.

No more shots came from the green curtain. The wounded man was loaded into the back of a truck; the dead man went into another. Once again, the convoy began to roll.

Bad as things were, the slow-moving column’s luck was about to go from bad to worse, because the Japanese had cleverly prepared a trap for them. The convoy reached a bend in the road between two bridges, one just in front of the column and one behind. The captain in charge checked the bridges and gave the all clear. But as they were to find out, the Japanese had managed to hide the surprise that they had in store for the Americans. The front half of the convoy, led by the Sherman tank, had just crossed the first bridge when the structure erupted in flames and roiling smoke. The Japanese had set off a charge to destroy the bridge, leaving the convoy suddenly cut in half.

From the rear of the convoy, there came the sound of another explosion as the Japanese destroyed the bridge that the column had just crossed. The second half of the convoy that included Patrol Easy was now stranded on the road, with the bridges gone in front of it and behind it, the river on one side and a steep bank hemming them in on the other side.

Not good, Deke thought.

Debris was still raining down when the Japanese opened fire, hitting the trapped portion of the convoy with two machine guns that strafed up and down the line of vehicles. Men dove for shelter wherever they could, crawling under the trucks or behind the thick tires. A few enemy grenades arced down from the steep banks above.

The convoy’s front half had the Sherman tank and one of the M8s to defend it, while the stranded portion of the column had the other M8. Up front, the captain was trying to organize a defense from the other side of the ruined first bridge, but he was cut down and killed by a burst of fire. Technically, that left Lieutenant Steele in charge as the highest-ranking officer still breathing.

“Damn it all to hell, but at least we can see the bastards for a change,” Steele said, nodding toward the muzzle flashes and tracer fire.

Snipers were able to hide in the greenery, but the machine guns were easy enough to spot, and they were within buckshot range. Exposing himself to the hail of lead, Steele walked out from behind a truck and began firing shotgun blasts at the machine-gun team. That gun fell silent, and two quick shots from Deke and Philly silenced the other machine gunners. The M8 accompanying their marooned portion of the convoy added its firepower.

However, the Japanese were far from done. Rifle fire continued to pepper the pinned-down convoy. The vegetation hid the enemy snipers so well that picking them off was next to impossible.

Deke decided that he’d had enough. He could shoot back all day and never hit any of the enemy who lay hidden in the jungle-covered riverbank.

“C’mon, fellas,” he said. “Follow me.”

Using the trucks for cover, Deke ran toward the rear of the column, with Philly and Danilo following him. The small bridge back here had been shattered by the blast, but the debris had fallen in such a way that a single beam remained stretched across the narrow waterway. Brown floodwater tugged and pulled at the beam, making it bob more like a bit of straw than a heavy wood stringer. It was dicey, but it was the only way across.

Here goes nothin’, Deke thought, then raced across the beam without waiting for the others. He was moving too fast to lose his balance, carried across by sheer momentum. His boots got wet where the current washed over the beam, but he managed to dash across and reach the far bank. He dove for cover as first Philly, then Danilo, followed him. Lucky for them, the Japanese were so intent on picking apart the convoy that they scarcely paid any attention to the three men, other than sending a few random shots in their direction.

“What the hell are you up to?” Philly asked, once he lay panting in the jungle underbrush.

“I’m making it up as I go along,” Deke said. “C’mon.”

The three men pushed their way up the steep riverbank. The mud and dense undergrowth made it tough going. They had no choice but to bull their way through the thick weeds and tangled branches. Something slithered past Deke’s boot and he thought, Snake. He ignored it. At the moment he had bigger worries.

At the top of the bank, they were rewarded with the discovery of a narrow dirt track that ran parallel to the river. The trail was likely used by animals, but someone else had been through here — the telltale prints left by Japanese boots were visible in the mud. The Japanese were using this trail to move parallel to the convoy and harass the Americans on the other side of the river.

Deke motioned for the others to follow him. Up ahead, it was clear from the sound of firing that the enemy was tearing up the column. There wasn’t a moment to waste.

He broke into a run, sprinting down the narrow trail. Palm fronds and pendulous tree branches sodden from the previous night’s rain tore at him from the edges of the trail, thorns and sharp leaf edges cutting deep enough to scratch out blood, but he ignored the sting. There was no point in being quiet anymore. As Deke charged, a visceral sound came from deep within him, a keening wail that was Deke’s bloodcurdling version of a rebel yell. Deke leaped a tree limb and found himself face-to-face with the enemy.

His rebel yell startled the first Japanese soldier that Deke encountered. The man turned to him, wide-eyed, and Deke threw the rifle to his shoulder and shot him down.

He kept going. Philly was shouting now, and even Danilo let loose with something that could only be described as a jungle roar.

Screaming their battle cries at the top of their lungs, they rolled up the Japanese positioned along the trail. Deke couldn’t fire the rifle fast enough, so he switched to his pistol. Behind him, Danilo used his wicked bolo knife to finish off any Japanese who still had any fight left.

It was all over in a few seconds. Their madcap attack had worked. It was hard to say how many Japanese had been part of the ambush, because the ones that they didn’t kill had scattered into the forest. The only fire now came from the American side of the river. Bullets tore through the greenery, the so-called friendly fire too close for comfort as Deke, Philly, and Danilo hugged the dirt.

“Stop shooting, dammit!” Philly shouted. “Honcho, tell them to stop!”

On the other side of the river, they heard Lieutenant Steele give the order. Once the shooting stopped, they retraced their steps along the trail to the bridge and crossed over again.

The lieutenant was waiting for them. “You crazy bastards,” he said. But he was grinning with pride. “You three saved this whole damn column — or what’s left of it, anyhow.”

Slowly, they picked up the pieces left by the Japanese ambush. Several of the trucks had been shot to pieces. Two men had been killed and a half dozen were wounded. It was likely that the damage would have been far worse if Deke, Philly, and Danilo hadn’t been able to cross the river and blunt the attack. Oddly enough, the front half of the convoy that had made it across the first bridge had mostly been spared.

But the destruction of the bridges had left the divided convoy in a quandary. The bridges could be repaired — to a point. “There’s no way we’re getting these trucks and that M8 across,” Steele said. “We’ll have to take what we can carry, plus the wounded. We’ll have to leave the vehicles, including that armored car. Hopefully, we can get some engineers back here to make those bridges operational. We’ll have to — this is the main road between Valencia and Palompon.”

“Those Japanese knew exactly what they were doing,” Deke agreed. “They hit us right where it hurts.”

Working in the heat and humidity, a crew of GIs was able to rig a crossing using the bridge to their front. It wasn’t much — just a couple of closely spaced beams that had been wrestled into place. There would be no hope of getting any vehicles across, but it would support the weight of a few soldiers at a time. One of the beams bounced and swayed as soon as any weight was placed on it, threatening to spill the soldiers into the brown water, but they didn’t have much choice. Later, a team of engineers might be able to return and properly repair the bridge so that the road could reopen and the vehicles, with their precious supplies, could be delivered.

Having to abandon the vehicles and the supplies they carried, Patrol Easy and the rest of the soldiers from the stranded group in the convoy made their way across the mangled remains of the bridge to join the front half of the convoy. Reluctantly, the four-man crew of the M8 abandoned their vehicle, hoping that they would get it back soon enough.

The hardest part of the operation was carrying the wounded across the rickety bridge, each step threatening to send the stretchers and the stretcher-bearers into the swollen river. The task was made even more nerve-racking when a rifle cracked from the opposite bank, reminding them that the Japanese were still present. Fortunately, the enemy’s potshots didn’t cause any harm.

“Let’s move out!” Honcho shouted, once the last of the wounded had been carried across. What was left of the convoy got rolling again.

They were hardly out of sight of the smashed bridges when they began to see black smoke roiling into the sky behind them. Evidently, the Japanese had returned to the ambush site and set the abandoned vehicles on fire. So much for the plan to return and salvage the supply vehicles and the armored car.

Meanwhile, the heat increased as the sun came out again, encouraging flocks of insects that pestered the sweating troops and tortured the wounded. The heat grew until it triggered a sudden thunderstorm, bringing fresh torrents of rain that drenched the men. They slogged on through the mud and downpour.

“Just another day in paradise,” Philly muttered.

CHAPTER TWO

The convoy reached the division’s supply base near Valencia without further incident, other than a few potshots from Japanese snipers. Patrol Easy dealt with them, giving as good as they got. The town itself was comprised of neat single-story houses set close to the road, with mountains visible in the distance.

When they finally came to a halt, Deke dropped into the shade offered by a truck, glad to get out of the sun. The truck itself was shot to pieces and covered in scorch marks. Now that the truck had stopped, the steam from under the hood and its leaking fluids indicated that the truck wasn’t likely to move again. Lieutenant Steele had told Deke to stick close because he was going to want him around when he addressed what was left of the convoy, but for now Deke just wanted to get off his feet. Meanwhile, rumors were spreading that a Christmas dinner awaited them, even at this remote base. I’ll believe it when I see it, Deke thought.

Between the warmth and the jungle surroundings, it was strange to think that it was the Christmas season. This was one of the cooler months in the Philippines, but there wasn’t any hope of a white Christmas, considering that it hadn’t snowed on Leyte since maybe the Ice Age, if then. Back home, the folks who could afford it would be roasting a turkey or a ham in the oven. His nose seemed to fill with the delicious smells. The thought of home cooking made Deke’s mouth water. There had been plenty of lean times growing up, but his mother had always managed to make holiday meals special, right down to an apple pie.

As the remembered smells of Deke’s pleasant reverie dissipated, the smells that replaced them were the humid jungle, the fetid mud, and the faint odor of a Jap corpse in a ditch.

A shadow loomed over him. “Don’t think you can keep all that shade for yourself,” Philly declared.

“I’m only renting it,” Deke said.

“That’s good to know,” Philly said, then sat down so close to Deke that he was forced to move over until he was partially in the sun again.

Deke grumbled. “Now who’s keeping the shade all to himself?”

“Quit your griping, hillbilly. Skinny as you’re getting, you could sit under a blade of grass and not get sunburned.”

There was some truth to that for all of them, Deke thought. How long had it been since they had eaten a decent meal? Anyhow, the shade was a welcome relief, although both men tried to ignore the stink of burned rubber and leaking gasoline that clung to the wreckage providing the shade. The division’s hardworking mechanics did what they could to get damaged trucks back into action, but this one wasn’t going anywhere — it had been shot full of holes, its lifeblood of oil and fluids leaking into the soil.

The wrecked vehicle was a reminder that the fighting had become a war of attrition. The loss of each ship, each plane, each tank, each truck, each soldier, was felt keenly as the American forces slowly wore down the Japanese. It wasn’t easy, given a supply line that stretched clear across the Pacific, but the Americans could eventually replace what was lost, while the Japanese could not.

Even so, the enemy didn’t have the good sense to surrender, so there was no choice but to keep fighting.

The combat on Leyte had certainly taken its toll on Patrol Easy. It turned out that Patrol Easy wasn’t going to stay undermanned for long. They’d been assigned a dozen new men, some of them combat veterans who had been separated from their units for one reason or another, and others support staff who’d made the mistake of saying they wanted to get into the fight. Given the losses in the Philippines so far, division command was happy to oblige them.

Now those men were gathered around Lieutenant Steele in the shade of an immense balete tree that grew beside the road. Impatiently, Steele motioned for Deke and Philly to join them. While the Americans sat on the ground, Danilo squatted on his haunches in true Filipino fashion.

Danilo’s dark, watchful eyes studied the branches of the balete tree with trepidation, but it wasn’t enemy snipers he was looking for. Balete trees grew to be even more massive than this one, with some centuries old. There were more than a few local legends of these balete trees being inhabited by the spirits of the dead. When the breeze stirred the leaves, making them dance as if with a mind of their own, it was easy to understand why some believed the trees to be haunted.

Before speaking, Steele took a moment to look around at the men, his gaze settling briefly on each man as if taking his measure before moving on. By the time he finally spoke, he had their full attention.

“A lot of you are probably wondering what’s next,” Steele began. “Well, our strategy is straightforward, boys. When you see the enemy, shoot him.”

That comment brought a murmur of approval and even some laughter. However, the lieutenant’s face didn’t show any traces of humor.

“It’s kind of like getting rid of rats,” Philly said. “Except these rats can shoot back.”

“The more of them we kill, the fewer there are to shoot back,” Steele pointed out. “It’s that simple, boys. We go where they send us, and we shoot Japs.”

“C’mon, Lieutenant, haven’t we done enough?” Philly wanted to know. “We haven’t even had our Christmas dinner yet — unless rumors are the only thing being served up.”

“Keep talking, Philly, and the only thing you’re gonna get is some cold C rations and no can opener except your bayonet.”

That response made some of the new men snicker. Patrol Easy made up the core of the undersized platoon Steele had been put in charge of since before the ambush on the convoy. Officers were in short supply. The others clammed up when Deke glared at them. Some of them met his eyes, then quickly looked away. With his gray eyes and the deep scars on one side of his face, Deke had that effect on people.

Philly muttered something under his breath, then fell silent. With another officer, Philly would likely have earned himself a chewing-out with his smart-aleck comments, but Steele put up with him. The lieutenant was used to it, and he knew that when push came to shove, Philly was a good soldier, so he gave him some leeway.

Steele went on to confirm what the gathered men already suspected, which was that Japanese forces had scattered into the hills, but they had not given up. In some places, entire regiments were still holding out, remaining a thorn in the side of the U.S Army’s advance. However, most of the enemy had been reduced to smaller units or even handfuls of determined men. That was old news to Deke.

As long as there’s one enemy soldier out there with a sharp stick, he’ll be fighting us, Deke thought. He knew from experience that most of the Japanese were armed with far more than sharp sticks.

“One more thing,” Steele said. “I want to introduce our acting sergeant, Deacon Cole. Some of you new guys don’t know him, but he’s the hillbilly over there with the pretty face. What he says is as good as what I say.”

Deke looked up in surprise.

Philly nudged him with an elbow and muttered. “There you go, Deke. Merry freakin’ Christmas, Sergeant.”

Steele wrapped up, although Deke’s head was spinning so that he barely heard the rest. They’d be moving out again in the morning.

One of the new men approach him. “Deacon, huh? You’re not some kind of religious fella, are you?”

Philly answered for him. “He’s especially good at funerals. He’ll be glad to say a few words when we bury you, buddy.”

That shut the new guy up, and he suddenly took an intense interest in his boot laces.

Meanwhile, Steele had another surprise in addition to Deke’s promotion. It turned out that they really were having a Christmas dinner, even if it was a day late.

The decision to serve a traditional Christmas dinner on December 26, rather than on the holiday itself, had been made quite deliberately by General Bruce, commander of the 77th Infantry Division. Throughout the Pacific, similar decisions had been made to align with the time difference. Their dinner would coincide with what was actually Christmas Day in the continental United States. Across the thousands of miles of ocean, the troops would be celebrating Christmas at the same time as folks back home. It was an important real-time connection that had nothing to do with dates on a calendar.

A makeshift mess hall had been erected, and cooks were at work preparing the meal. There were no tables — each man had to sit on the ground to eat — and everyone kept his rifle within reach. That was OK, considering the wonderful smells that greeted them.

Steele explained that the supplies for their holiday meal had come from an air drop. Again, it was a testimonial to the miracle of the American supply line juggernaut that the troops on Leyte were soon eating roasted turkey, glazed ham, real mashed potatoes, stuffing, and canned string beans. Each man got a slice of apple pie made with canned apples. The boys had even been allotted one beer each to wash it all down, or all the fresh coffee they wanted. The nondrinkers did quite well trading their beer for extra pie.

“Can you believe this, fellas?” Philly asked in wonder, balancing a heavily laden plate on his knees as he settled onto the ground. “It sure as hell beats canned lima beans and ham.”

Philly was referring to the least favorite “flavor” of C ration. More than one man would return from the Pacific vowing to never allow a lima bean anywhere near his plate.

“It’s sure somethin’,” Deke agreed. His belly growled at the sight, but staring down at the plate, he felt overwhelmed. The mess crew had loaded his plate with more food than he could eat. Their stomachs had all shrunk after weeks and months of living on so little. Philly hadn’t been far wrong when he had kidded Deke about being able to find shade under a blade of grass. Deke was now as lean as a bayonet, and just as sharp and hard.

He took a mouthful of mashed potatoes swimming in butter, closing his eyes as the taste took him back home to better times, before they had lost his family’s mountain home to greedy bankers, when they had still been a family. His father had died in an accident at the sawmill where he’d been working in an attempt to keep the family farm from going under. His mother had died not long after that, most likely of a broken heart and broken dreams. Now it was just he and his sister, Sadie, who was a female police officer in Washington, DC.

He raised a forkful of mashed potatoes in a silent toast. Merry Christmas, Sadie. He hoped that his sister was enjoying her own Christmas dinner, and hopefully not eating it alone. Then again, Sadie was a loner, just like him.

He forced himself to eat another bite because it was so delicious, but he was already getting full. He ended up just looking down at his plate, feasting with his eyes, thinking, Ain’t it a wonder?

His thoughts wandered. When other men recalled the holidays, they spoke of things like presents under the Christmas tree or sled riding. He just recalled it only ever being the four of them, the sole present being an orange, its color almost glowing unnaturally in the winter drabness of the Cole family’s modest home. At other times there might not be enough to eat, but not on Christmas. Ma had cooked buckwheat pancakes and bacon on their flat-topped potbelly stove, the pancakes drizzled with molasses, and Deke had thought himself a prince.

Looking around, he could see that Philly was eating like it was his job, pausing just long enough to shoo the flies away. Nobody dwelled on the thought that these same flies might have been crawling on the Japanese dead just beyond the tree line.

The feast also drew the newspaper reporters and photographers who had been embedded with the troops, covering the war.

One of those reporters caused a stir. He was an older man — much older than the soldiers, at least — with a narrow, hangdog face and a sad smile as he listened to the GIs tell their stories. He was skinny to the point of looking unhealthy. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth.

“I’ll be damned, it’s Ernie Pyle!” Philly declared. “Hey, Ernie, put me in your story!”

Pyle was famous among the GIs and well loved for telling their side of things with his folksy, everyman style of writing. He had done just that in Europe and was now covering the Pacific, although he was something of a latecomer to the war in this part of the world.

Part of his appeal was that he was old enough to be their father, and there was something fatherly in his attitude toward the soldiers. It might be his job to write about them, but it was clear that Pyle gave a damn while he was doing it — and then some.

The reporter made his way over to where Patrol Easy sat, and they made room for him on the bench.

“Where you from, soldier?” Pyle asked, his pencil poised over his notebook.

“Philadelphia,” Philly said, clearly delighted by the thought of getting his name in the newspaper.

Carefully, Pyle wrote down their names and hometowns.

“Mr. Pyle, you want some of this?” Deke asked. “I reckon my stomach is so shrunk up that I can’t eat it all.”

Pyle noticed the scars on Deke’s face but didn’t look away. Even the journalist in him was too polite to ask where Deke had gotten them. He seemed touched by Deke’s offer to share his meal. He thanked him but shook his head. “You just do the best you can.”

One of the new guys surprised them by producing a bag of pecans. “Now you can say you’ve had everything from soup to nuts with this dinner,” the GI said with a grin. Nobody bothered to point out that there hadn’t been any soup. He shook the bag, then shared it around. “It’s hard to believe I was on the farm pruning these trees two years ago.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll be back on that farm two years from now — maybe,” Philly said.

Later, Pyle would describe that moment for his readers and add a few insights: “That’s the way conversation at the front goes all the time. The minutes hardly ever go by without some nostalgic reference to home, how long you’ve been away, how long before you get back, what you’ll do first when you hit the States, what your chances are for returning before the war is over.”

Finally, the famous reporter straightened up. “Merry Christmas, boys,” he said. “Do me a favor and keep your heads down.”

CHAPTER THREE

For the most part, the town had been cleared of the enemy and Patrol Easy got some decent sleep for once. Their full bellies helped. By the next day, they had new orders. Lieutenant Steele explained that he would be leading a squad to hunt the enemy in the jungles and hills surrounding the base. He seemed glad to have shed his duties as a platoon leader to focus on leading these scouts and snipers. The veterans of Patrol Easy didn’t bother to learn the names of the new guys. There would be time for that if the new guys made it through the first couple of days.

“The plan is to bring the fight to the enemy before they get organized enough to hit the base,” Steele explained. “You might say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

“More like an ounce of lead,” Philly muttered.

By now the veterans of Patrol Easy knew all too well what bringing the fight to the enemy meant. It involved creeping down the jungle trails and across the low hills, stalking the enemy. Deke and Danilo took point, leading the way into the forest. Philly trailed behind them.

For this patrol, they would be heading deep into the hilly terrain. The trees thickened, and the ground grew steeper. Soon they were all panting and sweating with the effort of climbing the hill. Clouds of gnats appeared, sticking to their skin and flying into their eyes.

“Do you think this hill has got a name?” Philly wondered.

“To hell if I know,” Deke replied. “I could think of a couple ideas.”

“How about this? We’ll name the hill after the first guy that gets killed.”

“That’s a hell of a way to be remembered,” Deke replied. “Believe me, I’m in no hurry to have a hill named after me, if that’s what it takes.”

Philly’s suggestion came from the fact that it was common practice to name geographic locations after the men who had died fighting on them. Across the Pacific there were places that soldiers had given names to, such as Anton’s Gulch, Sergeant Darby Hill, or Lefty’s Mountain. These unofficial names couldn’t be found on a map, but they were written in the hearts of the soldiers. Whether it was the 25th Infantry Division or the 77th, they all had similar landmarks named for men who had lost their lives in these places.

Deke decided it wasn’t all that different from back home, where the mountains and gaps — a low crossing point in the hills — usually took the name of some man or event that would have otherwise been forgotten, such as Dead Indian Creek or Frenchman’s Gap. Attached to those names was usually some legend that had been passed down through the years. Those names had staying power, but he wasn’t sure that would be the case once the US Army packed up and left this part of the world.

They continued climbing, coming to a dirt road that led to higher ground. The road was so steep and slick with mud that a group of soldiers struggled to get vehicles up the hill. This was a problem for the supply trucks and jeeps being used to carry away the wounded. Deke could hear mortars and small-arms fire in the distance, indicating that there were still plenty of Japanese soldiers around. Each footstep carried them closer to the fighting.

They saw that the soldiers had rigged a system to get the vehicles up the hill by lashing a gasoline-powered winch to a thick tree near the top. A heavy rope was tied to the bumper of whatever vehicle was trying to ascend the road. The winch kicked in, snorting and belching smoke as soldiers strained at the corners of the vehicle, adding their muscle power to get the vehicle up the incline.

The winch was a large, hulking machine, its metal body caked with mud and grease. It must have been a bear to get it into place at the top of the steep incline. As it kicked in, its gears turned and smoke poured from its exhaust pipes, adding to the already thick air of the jungle.

Meanwhile, soldiers tugged on the ropes, their muscles bulging and sweat dripping down their faces as they strained to guide a heavy truck up the steep incline. Foot by foot, tires spinning, the vehicle climbed the hill.

“Should we help?” one of the new members of Patrol Easy asked.

“Nope. Looks to me like they got it just fine on their own,” Philly said.

After all, a smart soldier knew better than to volunteer for any form of physical work that he could avoid.

They kept going up the hill, passing the crew struggling with the vehicle, and found that the road ended. Soon after that, it was clear the Japanese had been there before them. Instead of a dirt trail leading higher, there were steps cut into the sides of the hill and lined with logs to keep the dirt from washing away. The steps were rough and shot through with roots and rocks, but it made the going a lot easier.

“And one thing’s for sure, we’re going to get plenty of exercise this morning,” Philly said.

They kept climbing as the sound of the winch behind them faded and the sounds of fighting grew more intense.

“We are not joining in that fight,” Steele clarified. “Our job is to go around the edges and catch any Japs trying to sneak in behind us. So keep your eyes open.”

“In other words, shoot first and ask questions later,” Philly said.

Deke ignored Philly’s banter. To say that Philly shared his thoughts half baked was an understatement. Most of the time, Philly’s thoughts didn’t even make it into the oven.

All Deke’s attention was now focused on the surrounding forest. The Japanese could be anywhere. The trees pressed in close, creating a dense green wall of vegetation. There could be an entire company of Japanese not more than fifty feet away in all that greenery, and they would never see them until the enemy opened fire and it was too late. It had happened to more than one patrol, and the division’s losses were mounting.

Deke used every sense he had to try to detect the enemy. His ears strained to hear anything that wasn’t a bird or a droning insect. Some rustle of leaves or crack of branches would give the enemy away. His eyes searched for any flicker of movement, which was the best way of determining whether there was anyone in these woods.

He even pressed his nose into service, sniffing the humid air. The Japanese smelled different, just as he was sure they could smell the Americans. Some said the Japanese had a kind of fishy scent because of their diet, but Deke wasn’t so sure about that. He would’ve been at a loss for words to describe the smell, other than to say it was different.

A sniper rifle wasn’t much use here in this dense forest, with its limited sight lines. Instead, they would’ve been better off with a submachine gun. That was all right. He would get off at least one shot with the Springfield before unloading the .45 that hung in a holster on his utility belt. It was also reassuring that Lieutenant Steele was behind him with his 12-gauge shotgun at the ready.

Deke had seen that one-eyed bastard do a lot of damage with that shotgun.

“I don’t like this one bit,” Philly muttered, watching their surroundings nervously.

“Shut up, Philly,” the lieutenant said quietly. “Less talking and more looking. Keep your eyes open.”

All of Deke’s senses vibrated on high alert, expecting at any moment for the enemy to come swarming at them out of the brush. Bugs buzzed in his ears, but he scarcely noticed. He was a lot more worried about the buzzing of bullets that might come at any moment.

They came to a small clearing, and Deke went into a tense crouch, weapon at the ready. When he saw two forms lying prone in the middle of the clearing behind a log, half hidden by the dappled shade, he automatically raised the rifle to his shoulder, getting ready to fire.

But as the target sprang closer through the telescopic sight, he could see that something wasn’t right. The two figures were tangled together like lovers. When he looked closer, he saw the staring eyes and bloated skin of corpses that had been dead for at least a day.

These were Japanese, all right, probably killed in the shelling that had been done to soften up the area. Their comrades had either left them behind or the two men had simply been forgotten. Flies covered the dead like they always did, giving the soldiers the unsettling appearance that they were moving. Deke just hoped to hell that if he got killed, somebody would bury him before he got covered in flies like that. The ants, too, had gone to work on the bodies. Nature was relentless here, offering the dead no dignity. The dead simply provided a feast for all the creepy-crawlies of these hilly jungles.

“What is it?” Honcho asked, coming up beside him.

“I damn near shot them just for good measure. Just dead Japs,” Deke said.

Honcho touched his shoulder reassuringly. “All right, let’s keep going,” he said.

Deke skirted the clearing, keeping an eye out for any trip wires or booby traps. One of the new guys approached the bodies as if to look them over for souvenirs, which was always a popular pastime.

“Don’t even think about it,” the lieutenant warned. “For all we know, those dead Nips are lying on top of a couple of grenades.”

The GI had gotten close enough to disturb the flies, which swarmed up around the Americans.

“Damn it,” Philly said, wiping at his face. “These flies were just licking dead Japs a second ago. Now they’re licking me. I hope to hell they don’t think I taste better.” He picked up the pace to follow Deke away from the clearing and back into the forest trail. The smell of death subsided behind them. “Do you think somebody already counted these dead guys?”

All the men knew that emphasis had been placed on counting the number of dead. HQ constantly demanded updates.

“Yeah, we’ll add them to the total. You know how the brass is about these reports,” Deke replied.

Toward the top of the hill, the crest was honeycombed with trenches and small caves. Lucky for them, the ground had been plowed by the artillery bombardment, clearing out the enemy. A few more dead Japanese sprawled in the trenches. One of them had been impaled on the shattered trunk of a sapling, his limbs now hanging stiffly down. It was a gruesome sight, but at least it seemed to indicate that the area was cleared of Japanese.

Suddenly a shot rang out, and one of the new guys dropped as if he’d been felled by an ax. He was dead as soon as he hit the ground. Everybody else dove for cover in the bottoms of the muddy trenches.

“Sniper!” one of the new guys yelled.

The warning was understandable but unnecessary. The problem was that every damn Japanese was a sniper, and every damn GI was a target. Another shot whipped overhead, and then another.

“Where the hell are they?” Philly shouted.

“Who’s got eyes on these damn Nips?” Deke said.

He had eased his rifle over the lip of the trench, resting it on a log. Movement caught his eye, and he saw the outline of a Japanese helmet. When he looked closer, he could also see that the Japanese soldier held a rifle. Deke lined up his sights on the enemy soldier and squeezed the trigger. The firing fell silent.

“Nice shot, hillbilly. That’s one down,” Philly said.

When there were no other shots, the soldiers slowly emerged from the trenches. Philly looked down at the dead guy. “Anybody know his name?”

“I think that was Carlson,” Yoshio offered.

“Anybody know his first name?”

Nobody did.

“Doesn’t matter,” Philly said. “Now it’s Carlson’s Ridge.”

The thought didn’t cheer anyone up. Then came another flurry of shots. This wasn’t a lone sniper this time, but a squad of Japanese who had come into sight, retreating down a long ditch that had been cut into the hillside. Every soldier in Patrol Easy brought his weapon into play, firing at the enemy. Several Japanese dropped immediately, but the reminder were still shooting at Patrol Easy as they ran.

Honcho surprised them by jumping out of the ditch and running straight at the Japanese, screaming like a madman and firing his shotgun as he went. The Japanese scattered before his onslaught like leaves before a windstorm. A couple of men stood their ground and were promptly cut down by shotgun blasts. Deke fired and took out a third soldier.

While the lieutenant was busy reloading the shotgun, the rest of Patrol Easy followed, shouting as they ran.

They kept running, firing wildly as they followed Honcho’s lead, racing after the fleeing Japanese. Not all the Japanese were intent on escaping. Some turned to fire at the Americans. Behind him, Deke heard another man cry out as he was hit, but there was no time to stop. The men shouted with a mad rage, amplified by the knowledge that the Japanese had drawn blood.

Deke dropped to one knee and fired at a Japanese soldier who had turned to make a stand. The man promptly fell, and Deke raced ahead. Somehow Honcho was already far in front, leaping across a trench and firing down at a Japanese soldier cowering at the bottom.

The rest of the men caught up, and now it was just a turkey shoot. Deke thought they were all like hounds chasing rabbits as they raced down the trench, firing as they went. Finally, whatever Japanese remained were either killed or had hidden themselves in the small caves that dotted the hilltop.

Deke caught up to Honcho, both men panting for breath.

“Damn,” Deke muttered.

“Yeah,” the lieutenant said, racking another shell into his shotgun, then nodded at the dead enemy soldiers. “Count ’em up.”

“Twenty-seven,” Philly announced with a smack of satisfaction. “If you count the dead ones we found. Somebody has to get credit for them. Not so bad for a day’s work, right?”

“Day’s not over yet,” Honcho corrected. The men had reached the point where the dead were just numbers, not husbands, fathers, sons, or brothers who would never return home. The faces of the newly dead looked almost peaceful, at least the ones not contorted in pain from their dying throes.

Deke didn’t dwell on such thoughts for long. He reloaded his rifle and pistol.

“All right, let’s keep going,” Honcho said. “We’re here to hunt the enemy, not sit around.”

“Yeah,” Philly added. “Besides, it’s starting to stink around here.”

In the heat and humidity under the trees, flies were already buzzing around the faces of the dead and the blood-drenched soil of the trench.

“Stay sharp,” Honcho warned. “No telling if these Nips had any friends around. Deke, you take point.”

Deke moved past the others to lead the way. There was a kind of trail through the forest that the Japanese had clearly been using for moving troops and supplies. Soon the trees began to thin out, and they reached the top of a ridge. The ridge was ringed with forest but covered with tall grass, almost like the tonsure of an old-fashioned monk. The grasslands were covered in knobs, and Deke worried that many Japanese could be hiding in the waving grass. A man could easily remain unseen until you were right on top of him.

“Watch your spacing,” Philly muttered, reminding the newcomers to keep alert and stay spread out to be more difficult targets if a Nambu machine gun suddenly opened fire.

Deke’s fears about hidden enemy troops proved true when a single rifle shot split the air, and another man was hit by a Japanese sniper.

Another new guy started running toward the man. There was another shot, and the soldier went down.

“Son of a bitch! Somebody get that sniper!”

The other soldiers had all gone into a crouch, using the grass for cover. The problem was that the sniper was up on one of the grassy knobs, giving him a view of the soldiers below. He fired again, and a bullet whistled past them.

By now Deke had a good idea of the sniper’s location, but he would only be firing blindly. He took a grenade off his belt, pulled the pin, and threw it with everything he had toward the grassy knoll. The shattering blast fell short, but it was enough to rattle the sniper, who jumped up and started running away. He was crouched over, barely visible above the swaying tops of the taller clumps of grass.

That was the only target Deke needed. He swung the rifle to a point just ahead of the fleeing sniper and squeezed the trigger. The man ran directly into the bullet and fell headlong.

“He won’t be bothering us anymore,” Deke said.

“All right, nice work,” Honcho said. “Everybody, keep your eyes peeled. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. This place is too damn quiet and too damn wide open.”

They kept going, crossing more of the rolling grassland, on the lookout for more hidden Japanese. They waited for the crack of a sniper rifle. The very thought made every man itchy between the shoulder blades. Deke kept his eyes high.

Out of nowhere, they heard the roar of an approaching engine. It was not a plane. The sound came from the landscape ahead rather than from the sky. To their surprise, they saw an expensive Lincoln sedan racing through the grass, bouncing its way over the rugged spots.

“What in the world?” Philly said. “Get a load of this guy. What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

“One thing for sure, he’s not out for a Sunday drive,” Deke said.

“Who the hell is driving that thing?”

Although it was an American car, the fact that someone began shooting at them out the window settled the question about whether it was friend or foe at the wheel. The Philippines had once been filled with American cars before the war, and it was clear that the Japanese had commandeered this one.

It was time for another grenade. This one was thrown by Rodeo, who probably had the best arm in the unit.

It was a great throw. The grenade went right through the open window and exploded. The car kept going until the gas tank ignited. Even then it kept rolling, setting the dry grass on fire as it went, but the shooting had stopped. The car was no longer a threat, but there were still plenty of Japanese to deal with.

They climbed a bit farther and reached an observation post in a house that was elevated on stilts with a thatched roof.

“I don’t like the looks of that place,” Philly warned.

Sure enough, they heard the crack of a rifle, and they all ducked as the noise echoed and rolled across the knobby peaks. But it wasn’t just a rifle that was situated in that hut, because moments later there was the dreaded sound of a machine gun opening fire with the steady tap, tap, tap, tap of the deadly Nambu machine gun.

“Everybody down!” Honcho shouted. Although the warning wasn’t necessary, because the men were already hugging the ground, as the bullets flashed and flared overhead, the tracers visible even in the daylight.

“Deke!” somebody shouted.

He already had the rifle lined up on the muzzle flash in the shack. He fired, worked the bolt, and fired again. For his trouble, a bullet snapped past his head. Deke had damn near forgotten about the sniper in there too. Off to his left, a rifle fired, and the sniper in the shack fell silent.

“That’s one for me,” Philly said with a grin.

CHAPTER FOUR

Understanding the situation in the Philippines required going all the way back to December 8, 1941. Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces had begun their invasion of the US territory. The enemy had quickly overwhelmed the defenders, ending with the capture of more than seventy-five thousand troops and the cruel Bataan Death March that had resulted in so many deaths.

The commander of the defeated forces, General Douglas MacArthur, had left only on the direct orders of the president, vowing that “I shall return.”

Nearly three years later, on October 17, 1944, with the landing on Leyte, MacArthur had made good on his promise. Since then, the fighting had continued unabated.

The fierce fighting was a result of the Japanese decision to make a stand in the Philippines. The Japanese poured more men and supplies into the fight for Leyte, intent on hurling the Americans back into the sea.

However, the situation did not go as planned for General Tomoyuki Yamashita, hailed as the “Tiger of Malaya” for his defeat of British forces early in the war. The Americans and Australian forces had proved to be a tough nut to crack. As it turned out, it was the Japanese themselves who were cracking. For the men fighting on the beaches and hills and forests, that wasn’t happening fast enough.

The Philippines and Okinawa weren’t the only military operations taking place. As Patrol Easy made their way through the jungle, the US Navy and Marines were steaming toward Iwo Jima. There, the Japanese had turned the entire island into a fortress. More than twenty thousand Japanese troops were waiting for the Americans to arrive. Nobody expected it to be an easy fight.

All that anyone had to do was look at a map to be reminded of the vast arena that was the Pacific theater, spreading across more than 20 percent of the earth’s surface. To be able to fight a war in two spheres of the world, and supply men and materials to remote islands across thousands of miles of ocean, demonstrated the growing power of the United States.

In the Pacific, everything now seemed to be happening quickly and on a grand scale, even if each day passed much too slowly for the average soldier, sailor, marine, nurse, WAC, or WAVE. Those last two were the acronyms for Women’s Army Corps and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. For these men and women, home seemed far away and long ago.

Even after months of fighting, there was still plenty of mopping up to do on Leyte, which was just what Patrol Easy and the rest of the 77th Infantry Division were finding out. After all, an enemy ambush had just made mincemeat out of one of their supply convoys. The back of the Japanese defense had been broken, but the arms and legs and fingers and toes were still engaged in fighting. It didn’t help that the rugged terrain favored defensive fighting.

Once Leyte and its airfields were taken from the Japanese, the US plan of attack was to move on to Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines and the location of the capital city of Manila. General MacArthur wanted this crown jewel of the Philippines, and the Japanese were not eager to give it up.

By early 1945 the Japanese had more than one hundred thousand troops on Luzon, nearly a thousand artillery units, plus aircraft and ships at sea — although the Japanese Navy had taken a beating and was no longer the power that it had been. Even so, the combined Japanese forces seemed to be more than enough to meet the invasion.

Or so they thought.

Aboard the light cruiser USS Boise, General Douglas MacArthur managed the whole operation. There was still so much fighting going on that he had not transferred his base of operations to shore since landing and making his famous “I have returned” statement. The formidable “light” cruiser, named for the capital city of Idaho, was six hundred feet in length and carried an armament of fifteen six-inch guns that could spit a shell more than a dozen miles, along with antiaircraft guns and machine guns that could make short work of anything from a Zero to a Betty bomber. No ship was immune to a kamikaze attack, but so far USS Boise had not been targeted.

In addition to the security provided by the light cruiser, coordination with land forces and the US Navy was much easier from the ship. The living conditions weren’t so bad, either — at least compared to living on land. For starters, there were the three squares a day served up by the navy cooks — also plenty of hot coffee. There weren’t any mosquitoes to deal with at sea like there were on land. They did have to contend with flies that swarmed in through the portholes that had been opened to capture the ocean breezes and provide fresh air. Then again, this was no luxury cruise. No part of the ship was air-conditioned and not even the general had a fan.

MacArthur’s heart ached as he pondered the potential devastation that would befall the Philippines in the midst of war. His love for the islands and its people ran deep, rooted in their rich history that intertwined the culture of the Filipino people with that of the Europeans who had settled there. From the Spanish arrival in the sixteenth century to the American influence since 1898, Manila had become a charming blend of old-world charm and modern flair.

But now, the forces of Imperial Japan sought to leave destruction in their wake. MacArthur feared for the future of Manila and all its beauty. The city’s lovely avenues and historic buildings could soon be reduced to rubble and ruin by the cruel hands of war.

As much as he longed for victory, MacArthur knew that there was always a price to pay in times of conflict. Lives would be lost, farmland burned, towns and villages left in ruins, perhaps Manila itself would be destroyed. It was a harsh reality that the general never forgot, even in his moments of hope for a better tomorrow.

Captain Jim Oatmire had gotten a taste of conditions on shore, and he wasn’t eager to return. As one of General MacArthur’s junior staff members, he was more than happy to remain on the ship, with its regular hot meals and relative comforts compared to sleeping in a foxhole.

He had moved with the general’s staff to the new ship from USS Nashville, which had been hit by a kamikaze attack in December that had killed nearly two hundred sailors. All too well, Oatmire remembered that terrifying attack. Despite the Nashville’s many guns, it was hard to bring down a single Japanese Zero flying hundreds of miles per hour, with no other intent than to crash into the ship.

There had been no real warning. One moment was quiet, and the next moment the gun crews had been banging away. Two planes had been targeting the ship and the antiaircraft fire brought one of them down. However, the second plane had somehow run the gauntlet of flack and machine-gun fire. In the blink of an eye, the diving plane had struck the ship, erupting in a fireball.

Oatmire recalled how a tremendous shudder had run through the ship after the plane impacted on a five-inch gun battery, the explosion killing every sailor in the vicinity. Fire had quickly spread from the blast and the burning aviation fuel, but the skilled crew had brought it under control.

The crazed determination of the Japanese to destroy the ship using a suicide pilot was hard to fathom. Had the Japanese known that MacArthur was on the ship, they would surely have sent even more of the dreaded kamikaze planes.

At that moment Oatmire was sitting in the mess hall, enjoying his dinner as he read a tattered paperback novel, trying to ignore the flies. He had seen the flies swarming on the Japanese dead ashore, and he had the thought that maybe, or rather more than likely, a batch of the same flies had made their way to the ship, carried on an offshore breeze.

With that thought in mind, he finally surrendered the last few bites of meat loaf and mashed potatoes to the winged pests, pushing his plate away to focus on lighting a cigarette and sipping a mug of coffee. The flies seemed to have the good sense to steer clear of the thick navy coffee, even if Oatmire himself didn’t. In fact, he had come to rather like it.

He looked up and saw Major Lundholm across the mess hall. Lundholm ruled the staff with an iron fist and occupied a space just a step down from MacArthur’s inner circle. As his buddy Andy Tatum liked to say, “From Lundholm’s lips to God’s ears.” Of course, in this case Major Lundholm had the ear of General MacArthur and not the Almighty, but that was close enough.

Lundholm seemed to be looking for someone. Oatmire’s heart fell when Lundholm’s gaze found him and the major began making a beeline for the table where he was sitting.

“There you are,” Lundholm said, a note of annoyance in his voice, clearly not happy about having to track him down. “It seems like every time I try to find you, you’re either in the mess hall or out on a smoke break.”

“Yes, sir,” Oatmire said, hoping it didn’t sound as if he was agreeing with the major. He started to stand up, scattering the flies and spilling some of his coffee in the process.

Looking annoyed all over again, Lundholm waved him back down. Oatmire knew that he wasn’t Lundholm’s favorite person, but he wasn’t going to cry any tears over it. He didn’t much care for Lundholm either. Lundholm had formed some kind of judgment about him and seemed to think that he didn’t fit the mold of the rest of the headquarters staff. The major likely would have been happy if Oatmire had not returned from the Leyte invasion, but he had managed to do just that despite the best efforts of the Japanese.

Oatmire should have known better, but something about Lundholm brought out the smart-ass in him. He asked, “Did you come to find out how I liked the meat loaf, sir?”

“Did I—” Lundholm scowled. “No, that’s not the reason, Oatmire. You’ve always got to be the wiseacre, don’t you? I came to tell you that you’d better get packing. The Old Man wants a liaison on Luzon, and I couldn’t think of a better candidate to march around through the mud and swat at flies.”

“Thank you, sir.” Oatmire dared to ask, “Luzon?”

“That’s where the next big show is going to be, now that things are wrapping up on Leyte,” the major said. “I’d have expected that you’d know that, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your launch leaves in thirty minutes,” Lundholm said. “Make sure you’re on it. It’s an awful long swim otherwise.”

“Yes, sir. But, sir, may I ask what I’m supposed to be doing once I’m back on shore?”

The major looked around, and then, to Oatmire’s surprise, dropped into the empty chair across from him. The major suddenly appeared much older and more tired than he had a moment ago. His shoulders sagged so that he resembled a turtle about to withdraw into its shell. Oatmire felt a pang of conscience, realizing that the major probably had more responsibilities on his mind than the younger officer could ever know. The major frowned at the plate, where a fly was trapped in a pool of the ketchup that Oatmire had added earlier to improve the flavor of the meat loaf. “Here’s the thing, Oatmire. The Japanese have taken many hostages in Manila, maybe thousands of hostages by some accounts, most of them American civilians, but a few British and Australians, too. We need someone to negotiate with the Japanese when the time comes.”

Oatmire couldn’t help but open his eyes wide in amazement. “Why me, sir?”

“It should be obvious by now that you are a man of many talents, Oatmire.”

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t know anything about hostage negotiation.”

“None of us do, Oatmire. It’s not a position that the United States Army usually finds itself in. Don’t worry, the worst that can happen is that all the hostages end up dead.”

The major got up and left Oatmire stewing in his own juices.

His head was spinning. Negotiating with the Japanese? What could possibly go wrong? The answer was everything, which was likely why he’d been given the job. If things didn’t work out, they’d need somebody to blame.

He glanced down at his plate, suddenly feeling more than a little sympathy for that fly trapped in the ketchup.

Over on Leyte, Ernie Pyle was continuing to chronicle what the troops were going through. Rail-thin and much older than the troops he wrote about, Pyle stood out and was easily recognized by the soldiers wherever he went. His folksy piece about Christmas dinner with the boys of the 77th Infantry Division had been read by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, back home. He didn’t sugarcoat things, a fact that had made him beloved by the troops in Europe. He had left Europe to cover the Pacific conflict and found an entirely different situation, despite it being the same war. His reporting painted a truthful picture of “island hopping,” a term that sounded breezy compared to the grim reality of it all.

He’d discovered some interesting things around the Pacific, such as the fact that one enemy encountered by the troops was the sheer boredom they faced when they weren’t being shot at. This wasn’t Europe with its friendly and grateful villagers. There were no adventures in the countryside involving wine and joyrides in jeeps, or the occasional local French girl willing to help a GI feel less lonely. In the Pacific, men might be stationed on a quiet stretch of island where there was no danger of attack, but also precious little to do and nothing to look at but the sea, sky, beach, and coconut trees. Some poor bastards were driven nearly mad by the unrelenting sameness of it all.

Then there was the enemy. Germans were easy enough to understand. They were a lot like Americans except for the fact that they had fallen under the spell of a Fascist madman. You could sit down and share a cigarette or a joke with a former German soldier. But the Japanese were an altogether different enemy.

Pyle wrote, “I’ve begun to get over that creepy feeling that fighting Japs is like fighting snakes or ghosts.” Like most, he also had the feeling that the fight would get even harder the closer that the battle came to Japan itself.

“As far as I can see, our men are no more afraid of the Japs than they are of the Germans,” he wrote in one dispatch from the front. “They are afraid of them as a modern soldier is afraid of his foe, but not because they are slippery or ratlike, but simply because they have weapons and fire them like good, tough soldiers.”

He also wrote of observing Japanese prisoners, describing the unsettled feeling they gave him even while watching them talk among themselves, even laugh. What the hell were they laughing about? Nobody knew.

Then there was that samurai mindset. In one often-reshared account, Pyle had described how a Japanese officer and six men had been surrounded by marines on a beach. Rather than surrender, the officer had shouted orders to his men. All six had bent down and waited patiently as the officer drew his sword and beheaded each man. The marines then shot him dead.

Germans didn’t do that. All in all, the enemy in the Pacific remained full of puzzling surprises.

“The Japs are dangerous people, and they aren’t funny when they’ve got guns in their hands,” Pyle wrote. “It would be tragic for us to underestimate their power to do us damage, or their will to do it.”

In the Pacific in early 1945, nobody could argue with that.

CHAPTER FIVE

When it came to exploring the abandoned fortifications that the Japanese had left behind, you never knew what you were going to find. Patrol Easy came across items that ranged from abandoned rifles to household goods that had been looted from the wealthier Filipino homes during the occupation, finding everything from random silver spoons to teapots.

The GIs also discovered boxes of tinned crabmeat and fish, identified by the labels that Yoshio translated for them, along with bags of rice. Scattered around were a few odd pieces from Japanese mess kits, which Yoshio explained were called han-gou.

“One thing for sure, the Nips who left all this stuff behind are either dead, or they’re not planning on coming back,” Philly said.

Philly inspected one of the crabmeat tins, then held it up to show Lieutenant Steele.

“Honcho, do you think maybe the Japs poisoned these and left them behind for us?” Philly wondered.

“These are sealed cans, Philly. Do you really think the Japs went to all the trouble to can poisoned food to leave for us? No, the Japs ran out in a hurry, is all. Load up, boys, if you have a hankering for seafood.”

“How many cans do you want?” Philly asked Deke.

Deke just shook his head. If it didn’t have four legs or feathers, he didn’t consider it to be food. “If you find any canned ham, just let me know.”

“Suit yourself.” He held up another can for Yoshio’s inspection. “What does this one say?”

“Tako. Octopus.”

Philly tossed the can away as though it had burned him. “Who the hell eats octopus? I wish they’d left behind something good, like a samurai sword,” he said.

“Haven’t you got enough of those?”

Philly shrugged. “All right, then how about a Jap pistol?”

Deke shook his head. Many of the men were mad for souvenirs, Philly included. “Just don’t set off any damn booby traps.”

Deke was referring to the fact that gathering souvenirs could be dangerous. The Japanese seemed to be aware of the American thirst for trophies of war, and more than one GI had fallen victim to a “surprise” left behind by the enemy. Sometimes it was a cleverly hidden trip wire that triggered a mine. Other times it was simply a grenade hidden under a Japanese body, rigged to detonate when the body was moved.

Killing a single soldier with a booby trap wouldn’t change the outcome of the war. In Deke’s mind, a booby trap was an expression of hatred for an enemy, a last chance to take someone out.

The officers ordered the men to steer clear of the Japanese dead, but the orders were to no avail when there was an Arisaka rifle, Nambu pistol, or especially a sword in plain sight. These weapons were more than the average GI could resist, and some paid dearly when they were lured right into a Japanese trap.

“I remember how I got caught in a booby trap one summer when I was seventeen,” Philly said. “There was this girl named Maria Vinceza, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I mean, I would walk right into traffic. Once I walked straight into a lamppost when she went by. It got so bad that my mother thought I needed glasses. Finally getting to second base with that girl made me pretty damn happy, I can tell you.”

“Sounds like another tall tale to me,” Deke said.

“Believe me when I say her booby trap was as advertised.”

Deke snorted. Philly always bragged about what a lover boy he was, but Deke didn’t believe half of it.

“That is a different booby trap,” Yoshio said, launching into an explanation. That came as no surprise — when other men were playing cards or jawing, their Nisei interpreter could usually be found with his nose in a book, even if it was often a Western novel. “The word comes from sailors who used to catch large birds called boobies in order to eat them. A booby is also an old word for fool. So it is a trap for fools.”

“Thanks for that, Yoshio. I think I prefer my definition of booby trap.”

Mostly, Deke had not given in to the same temptations as his comrades when it came to collecting souvenirs. However, he wasn’t entirely immune, because he did have a thing for knives. One of his prized finds was a beautiful Japanese dagger, more than a foot long, the hilt shiny with gold leaf, the ivory grip decorated with a tiny gold chrysanthemum.

“That is an Imperial Army tantō,” Yoshio had told him, his eyes showing admiration for the ornately crafted weapon. “It certainly belonged to an officer, and a wealthy one at that.”

“I’ll be damned,” Deke said. Only half kidding, he added, “And here I was about to use it to open cans of rations.”

“Please don’t do that with such a beautiful knife!” Yoshio blurted, clearly alarmed.

“All right, have it your way,” Deke said, and returned the knife to his pack, wrapping it first in a scrap of oiled cloth. He had kept it there ever since. After all, he had his own custom-made bowie knife to handle just about anything that came his way, from opening cans to chopping brush to defending his foxhole.

But what they found this morning went beyond mere souvenirs.

It had been Deke who’d made the discovery when the damp earth beneath his boots had seemed to shift and give way, revealing a hidden entrance to a dark cave. The rest of Patrol Easy had halted their advance and used their entrenching tools to clear away more dirt until they realized that the cave entrance was big enough to stand up in. Beyond, there seemed to be a network of caves and tunnels. But the cave mouth was as far as any of them were willing to go.

The grim expressions on their faces conveyed a sense of dread as they stared into the abyss. The air that drifted out was foul and tainted with the odor of death and decay, almost tomb-like. Nobody wanted to go down there, but it was clearly something more extensive than the dugout caves they were used to coming across.

“Looks like we found ourselves a jackpot,” Philly whispered nervously. “What do you think, Deke? Are these caves just another trap waiting to be sprung? You know how the Japs are.”

Deke eyed the dark entryway. “I’m not in any hurry to find out, I can tell you that much.”

Lieutenant Steele studied the entrance, then turned to address his men. “All right, listen up. We’re going in. We can’t just leave a cave like this behind our lines without clearing it first. For all we know, it might be full of Japanese. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks like a booby trap. In other words, don’t touch a damn thing.”

To Steele’s credit, he was the first one into the cave entrance. As they ventured deeper into the tunnels, using their flashlights, the air grew cooler and the walls closed in around them, heightening their unease. Their dim lights seemed to make hardly a dent in the darkness. Rounding a corner, they stumbled upon an underground hospital, with sixteen bunks lined up neatly against the walls, eight on each side, where the tunnel passage had been widened. The bunks had been nailed together out of rough lumber, then lined with thin mattresses that could not have been very comfortable. The mattresses were dirty from use and spotted with brown bloodstains.

Deke shuddered. It was hard to think of a worse place to be lying wounded, in a dark cave in the ground, without much hope of decent medical attention. But his mind stopped short of sympathy. As far as Deke was concerned, the Nips deserved to be miserable. They had killed his friend from basic training on Guam, and they had killed and wounded other good men that Deke had fought beside. He looked over the grim surroundings once more and thought, To hell with ’em.

Another area had been dug out of the wall and rigged with electric lights and what looked like an operating table. A few bloody rags covered the dirt floor surrounding it.

“Look at that,” muttered Rodeo, taking in the sight of used bandages and medical supplies strewn about the narrow room. “This place has seen some use.”

“One thing for sure, the Japs cleared out in a hurry,” Steele said. “Looks to me like they forgot to take a couple of their guys with them.”

Deke surveyed the bunks, his gaze lingering on the lifeless bodies of two Japanese soldiers sprawled across their beds. The sorry bastards had evidently killed themselves rather than face capture. However, at second glance, there were no weapons evident in the dead men’s hands. A more chilling thought was that their comrades had simply killed the wounded that they weren’t able to take with them.

Philly noticed the same thing. “I almost feel sorry for those guys,” Philly said. “Imagine being killed by your own side. I’ve got to say, the Japanese mind is hard to fathom.”

“Good thing for us that it’s not your job to fathom it,” Steele said. “Now stay focused, boys. We’ve got a job to do here and there may be enemy soldiers in this place who are far from dead. Now let’s see if there’s anything useful in this mess.”

As they prepared to leave the hospital wing, Deke couldn’t help but glance back one last time at the two lifeless soldiers, their faces far from peaceful in death, but twisted in pain and despair. Perhaps it was no surprise that, for once, nobody seemed all that interested in searching the bodies for souvenirs.

Danilo made his opinion of the dead Japanese clear by spitting in their direction.

They spread out, making their way through the cave and tunnel system. They found more ration tins, these empty ones that had been tossed along the tunnel walls. They even came across a pinup calendar of Japanese women in skimpy kimonos and swimsuits, apparently starlets of film and stage.

Philly gave a low whistle of appreciation. “She’s not bad,” he announced, studying that month’s girl. “But she’s no Veronica Lake.”

This was no time to debate the qualities of pinup girls. “Never mind that. Just keep your eyes open,” Deke said. He hadn’t asked to be made second-in-command, but more than ever, he now felt the pressure of making certain that the patrol advanced — and that they didn’t all get killed in the process.

Just when it felt as if the tunnel could go no farther, they rounded a bend and the shadowy passageway stretched even deeper into the hillside. Deke looked back and saw the lieutenant giving him a nod. Tightening his grip on the rifle, a flashlight held to the stock, he edged farther down the tunnel. He felt reassured that Danilo was two steps behind him. The Filipino guerrilla had shouldered his rifle and had drawn his wickedly sharp bolo knife — basically a machete. It was clear how he planned to deal with any Japanese they encountered in the dark.

Once again, the tunnel widened. This time there were no hospital bunks, but evidently a makeshift command center. Cubbyholes had been dug on either side of the main tunnel, the cramped spaces filled with rough tables and boxes for chairs, scraps of paper scattered about.

“Hey, Honcho,” Deke called out. “I think I found something.”

“What is it?” Steele asked, joining him at a small table littered with papers. A pile of ashes on the ground nearby indicated that the Japanese must have destroyed the documents they felt were important and left the rest. Still, there might be something to be gleaned from what the enemy had left behind. The lieutenant called for Yoshio and asked him to take a look.

“This appears to be intel on enemy positions,” Yoshio said, having inspected the documents. “I don’t know how useful it is, considering that we have already captured some of this territory I’m seeing on the maps. It looks as if they burned anything really useful.”

“We’ll let the boys back at HQ take a look, just to be sure,” Steele said. “Maybe they can make more sense of it than we can. Gather everything up. The Japanese may have overlooked something if they were in a hurry.”

“So we turn around?” Philly asked hopefully.

“Hell no,” the lieutenant replied forcefully. “We’re gonna follow this damn tunnel all the way to Tokyo if we need to.”

“Dammit, Honcho. I was afraid you’d say that.”

Once again, Deke led the way further into the Japanese fortifications. Given a choice, he would much rather have been forging a path through the green jungle above, even if it meant cutting his way through with his bowie knife.

Deke stared down the narrow, dark tunnel that lay before them. He felt a draft on his face, indicating that there was a fresh-air vent somewhere in the vicinity. However, the air remained stale and heavy with the scent of damp earth.

“Listen up, fellas,” he said, his voice firm despite the unease in his gut. “We need to be extra careful going forward. Watch for trip wires.”

“Got it, Deke,” Philly replied, his own eyes scanning their surroundings with a mix of curiosity and caution, this being the largest enemy fortification that they had explored.

Where had all the Japanese gone? It was possible that they had been sent to defend Ormoc and Palompon, but hadn’t survived. Whoever was left had likely taken to the hills.

“Yoshio,” Steele called out. “Keep an eye on our rear. We don’t want any surprises sneaking up on us.”

“Understood,” Yoshio responded, his voice betraying a double helping of nervousness.

Who could blame him? Deke thought.

As they moved farther into the tunnels, Deke imagined that the walls were closing in around him, like being inside a boa constrictor. He shook off the sensation, focusing instead on the task at hand. The Japanese seemed to have fled, but there was no way to be certain who — or what — lay hidden in the dark.

The beam of his flashlight reflected off something metallic near the ground.

“Hold it!” Deke shouted, signaling for the others to stop. “Look at that.”

Philly squinted in the dim light, noticing a thin wire stretched across the tunnel just inches from his foot. “Good catch, Deke,” he breathed, relief washing over him. “That could’ve been bad.”

“Looks like the Japanese left a surprise for us, after all,” Deke muttered, carefully stepping over the trip wire. He followed the wire to where it connected to a grenade that had been jammed into the dirt wall of the tunnel. He wasn’t eager to mess with it, but if they left the wire in place, it was only a matter of time before someone set it off by accident. “Everybody back.”

They retreated along the tunnel. Once they came to a bend that offered some protection, the soldiers hugged the walls beyond the bend while Deke set down his flashlight to illuminate the wire from a safe distance, then lined up his rifle sights on the wire.

“No way he can hit that,” one of the new guys said.

“Ten bucks says your wrong,” Philly replied.

“Keep your head down,” Deke said, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet cut the wire and the tunnel ahead was filled with a flash and echoing bang. Clouds of dust and dirt rolled through the tunnel, leaving several men coughing and dusty, but it was a lot better than being shredded by shrapnel. Their ears rang. The blast wasn’t enough to collapse any tunnel walls, but the grenade would have played hell with flesh and bone.

“All right, the excitement is over,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s keep going.”

Deke moved forward, twice as cautious as before. He had gotten lucky and spotted the wire. He just hoped that the Japanese hadn’t had time to rig too many other surprises for them.

He halted when they heard a strangled cry behind them. Yoshio. He had been bringing up the rear. In the dark, he must have wandered down one of the side tunnels they had passed. “Where’d everybody go! I’m lost!” they heard Yoshio shout, his voice edging on terror. “I lost my damn flashlight and I can’t find my way back!”

“Stay calm, Yoshio!” Steele yelled in reply. “Keep shouting. We’ll come get you. Just stay put!”

“Please, hurry!” Yoshio pleaded.

“You two, go get him and be quick about it,” Steele said.

Deke and Philly retraced their steps, finally locating Yoshio in a small alcove down a fork in the tunnel. In the flashlight beam, his face looked pale and sweat drenched. “Thank God,” he muttered. “I swear, once we get out of this place, I’ll never set foot underground again, even if it means a court-martial.”

Philly appeared amused. “What’s the matter? You afraid of the dark?”

“It’s not the dark, it’s the ghosts,” he said. “This place is filled with them.”

Philly’s eyes widened. The look of amusement had vanished. Like Yoshio, he had also gone pale. “Ghosts?”

“Spirits of the dead,” Yoshio said. “Japanese spirits. Yōkai. They cling to this place. They do not want us here.”

Deke didn’t spook easily, but he still felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. “Dammit, you two, that’s enough hogwash for one day,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here and get back to the others.”

Quickly, they made their way to the main tunnel, where they found the others waiting tensely.

“Dammit, Yoshio. You gave us a scare. Everybody stick together,” Steele said. “Don’t lose sight of the man in front of you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

They continued, with Deke once more leading the way, Danilo and Philly right on his heels. They came to another wide place in the tunnel, this one crammed with wooden crates and boxes.

“End of the road,” Deke said. “This is as far as the tunnel goes.”

“Good to know,” Philly said. “I was starting to think Honcho was serious about this tunnel going all the way to Tokyo.”

By now they were deep within the hill, and it was evident that the Japanese had decided this was a safe place for an ammo dump. Crates filled with munitions stretched in every direction when they played their flashlights over the storage area. There were several barrels of what appeared to be fuel stacked neatly next to the ammo.

“What have we here?” Deke wondered.

“Nobody light a match, that’s for damn sure,” Philly said. “This whole place is a giant powder keg.”

Coming up behind them, Lieutenant Steele let out a low whistle. He couldn’t help himself. By far, this was the largest enemy ammo dump that they had come across. “Nice work, boys,” he said. “We need to get back and report this. Now let’s get the hell out of here before anything goes boom.”

CHAPTER SIX

They carefully retraced their steps, with Deke hoping that they hadn’t missed any traps that had been set for them. Back at the surface, free of the dark and stifling tunnel, Deke and everyone else were glad to see sunshine and breathe fresh air, even if it was humid and smelled vaguely of the enemy dead decomposing in the ditches and undergrowth. By now they were used to that.

Orders soon came back from headquarters that the tunnel had to be cleared of munitions.

“Why can’t we just seal it off?” Philly wanted to know. “We could just pretend we never found it.”

“That’s too much ordnance to leave there,” Steele explained. “If it ever blows, the whole top of this hill will turn into a volcano. There’s a village right near here and people will be moving back in now that the Japanese are on their way out.”

“Honcho, I’ve just got to say that clearing out a tunnel doesn’t sound like the right job for us,” Philly said. “We’re supposed to be scouts and snipers.”

“But we’re the lucky bastards who happen to be here,” Steele said.

As it turned out, the job wouldn’t be Patrol Easy’s to do alone. Word came down that soldiers from the 92nd Bomb Disposal Squad would be called in, with Patrol Easy assigned to help out. What help they were supposed to give a bomb squad was anybody’s guess.

It turned out that the “bomb squad” consisted of just two men. The 92nd was stretched thin from being called upon to deal with weapons stockpiles that had been left behind by the Japanese.

“Honcho, the bomb squad guys are here,” Philly announced, leading them to where the lieutenant sat Indian style on the ground, studying a map and smoking a cigarette.

“Just two of you?” Lieutenant Steele asked in surprise.

“Our guys are in demand, sir. What can we say?” replied one of the soldiers, a taller man who informed them that he went by his nickname, which was Sparks. His partner was a guy nicknamed Fuze. The men of Patrol Easy looked at one another, not sure that humor was the best quality in a bomb squad technician.

“Don’t you worry, sir,” Sparks said. “We’ll do a bang-up job.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t put it that way,” Steele muttered. “Sparks and Fuze, huh? You guys are a regular couple of comedians. All right, let’s get to it. Tell us what to do.”

“You got it, sir.”

“Listen, there are still a lot of Japs around, so do me a favor and call me Honcho.”

“Honcho, huh? I like that, sir. Keeps any nosy Japs from figuring out you’re the man in charge. I hear snipers like to target officers.”

“You heard right. So don’t call me sir again. And you sure as hell better not salute me.”

Sparks got the message loud and clear. “You got it, Honcho.”

Despite his joking manner, the man seemed to know his job, announcing that the first order of business was to check for any booby traps hidden within the stockpile itself and then take inventory. The stockpile discovered by Patrol Easy was one of the biggest yet, although it was expected that by the time the army got to Manila, there would be even larger ammunition dumps — if the Japanese didn’t destroy them first. It could only be supposed that the Japanese had simply run out of time to blow up this underground depot.

The Japanese had evidently planned on letting the advancing soldiers do that job for them. Patrol Easy reentered the tunnel to escort the bomb squad experts. Close to the ammunition stockpile, Sparks and Fuze found several trip wires attached to mines. If Patrol Easy had gone poking around, Sparks informed them, setting off a mine might have been enough to trigger the entire ammunition dump.

“You did good getting out of here alive, fellas,” Sparks announced. “One wrong step and you would’ve been blown so high that you all would’ve been dancing on the moon.”

“Good thing, because I forgot my dancing shoes,” Philly said.

“All right, I’d suggest that everybody clear out of the tunnel for now,” Sparks said. He held up a pair of pliers and snapped them open and shut. “Fuze and I need to decommission these booby traps before we can start to haul this out of here.”

“You sure about this?” Steele asked.

Despite all his wisecracks, Sparks seemed serious and competent when it came to his job. “As sure as I’m going to be, Honcho. When it comes to the bomb squad, we like to say that you only make a mistake once in your career.”

“I don’t like leaving you boys alone,” the lieutenant said. “If nothing else, someone ought to stay down here to watch your back in case there are any Japanese lurking around. They could take you guys out and blow up this whole damn hill.”

“We won’t say no to that if you can spare a couple of guys,” Sparks said. “As long as they’re volunteers.”

“That’s easy, because one of them will be me,” Steele said. He turned to his men. “Anybody else?”

Deke found himself stepping forward. Maybe he was a fool, but he wasn’t about to leave the lieutenant alone on guard duty. “I reckon I’ll hang back with you, Honcho.”

“All right, Deke. I appreciate it, but it’s your funeral. The rest of you, get the hell out of here until you get the all clear from us.”

Not much rattled Deke, but as he watched the two wisecracking soldiers of the demolitions team prepare to deactivate the devices that the enemy had left behind, he discovered that his heart was pounding. In fact, he was a bit surprised that the lieutenant couldn’t hear it a few feet away.

The two bomb squad guys had grown serious, emphasizing the fact that the stakes were high, and one wrong move could be the end for all of them. They worked meticulously, sweat beading on their foreheads as they carefully maneuvered around the Japanese munitions, using their flashlights to catch a glimpse of any trip wires glittering in the flashlight beam.

Meanwhile, Deke pulled his eyes away to join the lieutenant in keeping an eye on the darkness beyond. They were confident that they had swept the tunnel clean earlier, but all it would take was one leftover enemy soldier with suicide on his mind to blow them all sky high. He and Honcho kept their own flashlights off so that they wouldn’t be targeted easily if there were any Japanese around.

Deke’s heart raced faster with each motion of the demolitions team, the weight of impending danger bearing down on him as if the walls of the tunnel were constricting. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something could still go wrong, that their lives hung in the balance. As Sparks and Fuze edged their way through the darkness, Deke silently prayed that they’d make it through this unscathed. He cursed himself for volunteering to stay behind, but there was no way that he was going to leave the lieutenant down here.

“Almost there,” Sparks muttered, his voice barely audible. Fuze nodded, his breaths coming shallow and rapid. There was no wisecracking now. In the pale flashlight beam, sweat beaded both men’s faces.

“Got it,” Sparks whispered triumphantly, holding up the last piece of wire. Fuze let out a slow, shaky breath before breaking into a wide grin.

“Piece of cake,” he said, winking at Sparks.

“Let’s not celebrate just yet,” Sparks cautioned, gesturing toward the tunnel’s exit. “We still need to get these babies out of here.”

“Right,” Sparks agreed, straightening up and making his way back to Deke and Honcho. He addressed the lieutenant. “With your permission, could we get the rest of your patrol down here to help us figure out what we’ve got in this tunnel?”

“All right. Deke, go fetch the boys.”

Under the capable eyes of Sparks and Fuze, Patrol Easy reentered the tunnel to help with the inventory so that they knew what was being dealt with. But first Sparks offered some instruction.

“Unless you want to meet Saint Peter ahead of schedule, don’t touch anything that doesn’t look right,” Sparks said. “You’ve all got two eyes, so use ’em.”

It turned out that there was quite a lot to lay eyes on, not all of it ammunition, but explosive just the same. Fuze wrote it all down as the men called it out to him. They counted eight hundred drums of aviation fuel, nearly five hundred massive five-hundred-pound bombs, assorted mines and smaller bombs intended to be dropped from observation planes, and one hundred bomb fuses, each with enough juice to take off a man’s hand — or trigger a massive blast. The larger bombs had been intended for planes flying out of the nearby Japanese airstrip.

The question was, What to do with it all? As the lieutenant had stated before, they couldn’t simply leave it. Steele got on the radio and contacted HQ. He was told to salvage the fuel — and blow up the rest. The fuel could be used in American planes in a pinch, but Japanese ammunition wasn’t any good in US guns.

Of course, there was no good way for the handful of soldiers in Patrol Easy to roll eight hundred barrels up the sloping tunnel to the surface. They would need some help for that. Quickly, nearly thirty civilian men were rounded up and put to work. It was hot and sweaty laboring inside the tunnel, but the Filipinos were eager to help. They hadn’t been able to take part in the fighting, but this much they were glad to do. In fact, a couple of the local men took over and organized the entire effort. Within a few hours, the drums of fuel had been moved to the surface, surrounded by barbed wire to discourage any Japanese infiltrators, and put under guard by Filipino volunteers.

That left the matter of the ammunition stockpile. Orders were to destroy it. Grinning, Sparks announced that he had a plan for that. He and Fuze disappeared deeper into the tunnel carrying detonators and a roll of wire. They emerged half an hour later, just as the sun was starting to go down. The sky was fading to hues of pink and purple. Bats began to flit through the air.

“Well?” the lieutenant asked.

“For maximum effect, I’d suggest waiting until full dark,” Sparks said. “Also, I’d recommend getting everyone off this hill.”

They took up positions on the next hilltop, soldiers and civilians alike, gathering around as if preparing to watch July Fourth fireworks. A few guards kept watch for any Japanese who might still be on a night patrol. Sparks and Fuze were positioned closer to the tunnel in order to set off the detonator.

Suddenly the night sky exploded in a brilliant cascade of reds, blues, and greens, each fiery burst echoing across the expanse above. Deke watched in awe, and although he had seen his share of so-called fireworks in this war so far, this was something special. For a change, nobody was being blown up in the process. The very ground shook, even this far away. Beside him, Philly let out a low whistle.

“Would you look at that,” he said, nudging Deke in the ribs. “Not a bad way to dispose of the enemy’s weapons, huh?”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Deke replied, his eyes never leaving the spectacle unfolding before them. The Japanese munitions detonated in a display of dazzling pyrotechnics.

Sparks and Fuze appeared, their faces illuminated by the explosions, grinning like two schoolboys who had just pulled off an elaborate prank. It was hard for Deke not to smile along with them. After all, they had just successfully dismantled a dangerous cache of explosives without so much as a scratch. Watching it all go up with a bang felt like a just reward.

“Hey, Honcho,” Sparks called out, sauntering over to the lieutenant. “What do you think of the show?”

“Damn good job,” Honcho told them, clapping each man on the shoulder. “Maybe my country club back home can book you guys to handle the July Fourth show one of these days.”

“Wouldn’t that be great,” Sparks said, an almost dreamy sound in his voice. “Probably a lot less dangerous than what we’re doing now.”

More than one man felt a pang when Honcho mentioned home, and the Fourth of July, no less. It all sounded so normal, but would they ever get back home to that?

Another explosion lit the sky, a final blast lagging behind the others. Deke had to wonder what any Japanese must be thinking. It sure as hell sounded like the end of the world. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that one wrong step and they might have been inside that tunnel when the ammunition exploded.

Together, they stood and watched as the last of the Japanese munitions went up in a jet of flames. They could only hope that the Empire of Japan did the same — the sooner, the better.

A final echo rolled across the hills, and then darkness and quiet settled over the landscape once again. Even the night birds and insects seemed to have been stunned into silence. Deke knew all too well that the quiet wouldn’t last for long.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Deke had been right about things not staying quiet. There was some excitement during the night when Japanese infiltrators attacked the command post. At least twenty enemy soldiers appeared out of the darkness, carrying satchel-and-pole charges. Their intent was to destroy vehicles, and they did just that, rushing silently toward whatever trucks and M8 armored vehicles they could find.

The night was then interrupted by massive explosions. Soon the leaping flames from the burning vehicles illuminated Japanese troops hastening back toward the safety of the forest.

Several GIs opened fire, but it was hard for them to see what they were shooting at. It didn’t help that soldiers had come running toward the sound of the fighting, mixing with the fleeing infiltrators. “Hold your fire!” Lieutenant Steele shouted. “I said to hold your fire, dammit! You’ll hit our own guys.”

Deke obeyed orders — to a point. He spotted a lone Japanese running for the trees, put his sights between the Jap’s shoulder blades, and dropped him.

A handful of other infiltrators had been shot — along with a couple of GIs who had been unlucky enough to get in the way of the retreating Japanese. Another GI had been stabbed through the belly by a Japanese bayonet.

“Six dead Japs,” Rodeo reported.

“Good, we’ll add it to the tally,” Steele replied.

One of the Japanese must have gotten too close to his satchel charge, because the blast had left him wounded, mostly with burns. One side of his face was black and red, and bits of charred fabric clung to his torso. He was trying to crawl away when Deke found him. He pointed his rifle at the enemy soldier and shouted for him to surrender.

But the Japanese soldier had no intention of giving up. Shouting defiantly, he propped himself up on one elbow and waved a hand grenade with his other arm, clearly intending to take out a few Americans on his way to the afterlife. Deke didn’t give him the chance to yank the pin on that grenade. He pulled the trigger and put the poor bastard out of his misery.

“Make that seven dead Japanese,” he said.

Tired as they were, nobody slept much the rest of the night. The attack had left everybody on edge.

“For all we know, those Nip bastards will be back,” Philly said.

He and Deke sat back-to-back in their foxhole the rest of the night, scanning the darkness for an attack that never came.

Along with the constant threat of infiltrators, a few Japanese planes still harassed them. It was hard to say if the Zeros had taken off from Luzon or a hidden airfield that was still managing to operate on Leyte. Small, lightweight, and nimble, these planes were nothing more than a powerful Mitsubishi engine bolted to a wooden frame with canvas wings. With their lightweight construction, the Japanese Zero fighters did not require much space to take off and land, giving them a distinct advantage in a landscape filled with hidden runways.

One plane strafed a convoy that was evacuating wounded toward the beach, killing several and leaving two trucks in flames before it turned on a dime and roared away at what seemed like an impossible speed to the stunned soldiers on the ground. Two US fighters arrived soon after, but they were too late to catch the marauding Japanese fighter plane.

Another time, a Japanese fighter plane swooped down and strafed the troops at Palompon before being driven off by antiaircraft fire. But it wasn’t done. Turning away from the town, the plane hunted down a convoy carrying troops and supplies. The Zero machine-gunned the road and even dropped a bomb, once again leaving trucks in flames and more men dead. Then the plane disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. The soldiers might have thought the Zero was a figment of their imaginations if it hadn’t been for the destruction left behind.

The troops on the ground welcomed the sight of their own planes on patrol because it meant that the dreaded Zeros wouldn’t dare to show themselves. Also, the US planes fired on Japanese ground troops and vehicles whenever they spotted them.

Against Japanese positions deep in the hills, another tactic was being applied from the air. Instead of regular bombing, the planes were dropping a flaming substance that set everything on the ground ablaze — trees, abandoned Filipino villages and crops, and hopefully the Japanese hiding in the remote hills.

From a safe vantage point on another hilltop, Patrol Easy watched as the planes worked over an enemy position. They looked on as the ugly, orange fireballs rolled across the forest, flames enveloping anything the fireball touched.

“What the hell is that stuff?” Philly wondered. “It looks like the devil himself threw up.”

“Jellied gasoline,” Lieutenant Steele said. “They say it’s sticky stuff and clings to the trees — and the Japs. They call it napalm.”

Steele’s description fell short in this case, but he was simply sharing what he knew. Napalm was a mix of molten synthetic rubber, phosphorus, and gasoline, a nightmare dreamed up by the enlightened folks at Harvard University. It had also been used on German civilians during the firebombing on their cities.

“Whatever they call it, I’m glad we’re not on the receiving end,” Deke said.

War was never pretty, Deke had decided, but there was something about the vast spreading flames that made warfare seem industrial and inhumane. Unlike a bullet or a knife, this kind of mass destruction was something that he just couldn’t understand.

“I don’t like it,” he found himself saying. “It doesn’t seem right somehow, killing people that way.”

“One thing humans are awfully good at is coming up with new ways to kill each other,” the lieutenant pointed out. He sighed. “Imagine if we put half that energy into developing a cure for cancer or the common cold. I know that’s wishful thinking. I suppose it’s just human nature to fight and kill each other, and it has been since the days when all we had were sticks and stones. But the way things are going with these new weapons, I wouldn’t be surprised if we destroy ourselves in the end.”

Deke didn’t know what to say to that, other than to think that Honcho was probably right. That napalm was nasty stuff. He couldn’t fathom what might be worse.

Danilo was one of the coolest customers that any of them had met, but he made a kind of groaning sound while witnessing his beloved countryside being burned up.

They couldn’t help but keep watching, mesmerized by the fire falling from the sky, until the planes ended their mission.

Sometimes the planes flying these daredevil missions needed their help. One night the division got an emergency call from several planes that had found themselves arriving in the middle of a naval raid on their base on the island of Mindoro. Unable to land, they had fled toward friendly forces on Leyte. But by the time they reached Leyte, the six planes were running short on fuel. They either had to land or take their chances trying to reach one of the aircraft carriers for a tricky nighttime landing that none of them had been trained to do. The thought of leaving land behind and heading out again over the dark ocean couldn’t have been all that appealing.

A makeshift landing field was surrounded by several trucks and jeeps, which shined their headlights on the dirt strip. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best they could do.

One by one the planes made their landing approach. A single stream of enemy tracer fire coming from the hills showed that the Japanese had spotted the planes. A P-51 broke away and strafed the hill until the enemy gun fell silent. It was the last plane to land, joining the group of five P-51s and one B-25 that dropped down and made a bumpy landing on the runway — although to call it that was a stretch of the imagination.

“Boy, are we glad you guys could help us out,” one of the pilots said. Maybe it was the harsh lighting from the trucks, but he looked pale and shaken. It was a reminder that, in the end, the planes were flown by guys just like the ones on the ground. Even the most routine day might quickly become a struggle for survival, whether you were in the air or in the lush jungle.

At times the enemy emerged from hiding to make an organized attack. When this took place, it served as a reminder that the Japanese were far from defeated.

“I sure do prefer when they show themselves and attack us rather than sneaking around,” Deke remarked.

“Yeah, it makes it easier to mow them down,” Philly said.

Patrol Easy was accompanying the 305th Field Artillery Battalion near Villaba, helping to serve as their eyes and ears while the artillerymen wrestled their heavy guns down the muddy roads. Rain came and went, often in heavy downpours, so that Patrol Easy and most of the artillerymen wore their drab green ponchos. Rain sluiced off their helmets and made a constant din, reminding Deke of rain falling on an old tin roof back home.

There had been rumors that the Japanese were dug in along the ridges, ready with their own artillery. The 305th was being sent to fight fire with fire.

The artillery unit troops still got wet despite their ponchos, sweating through their shirts in the heat and humidity from the physical effort of coaxing their guns through the muddy places. There were an awful lot of those.

The 105-millimeter howitzers were mounted on rubber tires, now so liberally coated in mud that it was hard to tell where the gun began and the road ended. An erudite gunner could have pointed out that the word howitzer originated with the Prussian artillery and referred to the mobility of a gun. These guns were not all that mobile at the moment, being bogged down in Schlamm — to borrow another Prussian word, this one for mud.

While the artillerymen labored, Deke and the others dealt with the occasional Japanese snipers taking potshots at the column.

“Got ’em, I think,” said Deke, firing at a spot where he suspected a sniper was holed up. At least, the sniper had gone quiet.

Danilo waded into the brush to verify that the sniper was dead, somewhat like a retriever going after a downed pheasant. Deke covered him until he disappeared into the greenery. Danilo soon emerged, dragging a corpse behind him and displaying a rare grin. He deposited the body at Deke’s feet.

“One,” Danilo said, revealing that he could at least count that high in English. It was a reminder of the emphasis that had been placed on tallying the number of Japanese killed. Even Danilo had gotten in on the act.

“Hell, I don’t want him,” Deke said.

Nonetheless, Deke couldn’t help but study the body with some interest. The dead sniper was a small and compact man, likely around Deke’s own age. The ragged state of his uniform and a patchy beard indicated that the man had been living rough. Considering that the Japanese had fled into the hills, the man’s appearance made sense.

Philly bent down and quickly went through the man’s pockets. There was nothing of interest there, other than what appeared to be a letter with the black-and-white photograph of a young woman folded inside.

Yoshio scanned the letter. “It’s from his wife,” he announced. “She says everything is fine at home and that he should be careful.”

“He ought to have listened to her,” Philly said. He glanced at the photograph. “She’s not bad looking. Maybe I’ll look her up when I get to Japan.”

He dropped the letter and photo into the mud, and they walked on.

Their destination was a distant ridge where Japanese troops had been spotted. One of the landmarks that stood out was Bugabuga Hill, a rocky outcropping that rose higher than the neighboring hills, resembling a crooked thumb rather than a middle finger. Raising binoculars to his eyes, Deke could just make out the distant sight of a Japanese battle flag on that peak. Something about it made his blood boil, and he would have liked nothing better than to sprout wings, fly over there, and rip that flag down. As it stood, it was going to be a long slog to get there.

Intelligence reports indicated that these enemy troops were under the direct order of General Suzuki, one of Yamashita’s minions. Along with his superior officer, Suzuki had played a role in the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore during 1942 — with help from the Imperial Japanese Army’s Kempeitai, or secret police, employing thousands of civilian males to intimidate the population and quell any resistance. The GIs didn’t know it, but they were up against a war criminal.

Along the muddy road, they began to meet refugees from the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. First, the refugees came in a trickle, and eventually there was a flood involving hundreds of civilians. Many had taken to the hills to escape the fighting during the US invasion, but now that the Japanese had themselves taken to the hills where the refugees were hiding, they were once again fleeing.

Deke watched as crowds of men, women, and children flowed against the advancing troops. They were ragged and haggard from living in the hills without enough to eat or proper shelter. Many were sick, struggling to carry young children or a few meager possessions. Some rode skinny cows or ponies. He could tell from their clothes that these people came from all walks of life, because under the mud and dirt some wore dress shoes or the remnants of a suit. They had all been thrown together by this great calamity that had upended society.

The sight would have been heartbreaking, except for the fact that there was no air of sorrow surrounding the Filipinos. Sure, they were exhausted, but they looked overjoyed to see the Americans. A few waved tattered US flags that they had hidden away and held on to all through the Japanese occupation in hopes of this very moment. An end to their suffering at the hands of the Japanese had arrived. They were flowing back now toward the areas that had been liberated by US forces.

“God bless you! God bless you!” cried one elderly grandmother in English. She looked as if she barely had the strength to stand. Deke gave her a chocolate bar, which she accepted but promptly handed over to a knot of small children nearby.

Deke shrugged and gave her another. “For you,” he said.

The old woman broke off a piece for herself and once again gave the rest away.

One older man paused to confer with Lieutenant Steele and one of the artillery officers, pointing out exactly where Japanese troops were dug in on the ridges ahead. It turned out that he had even made a rough map that would have gotten him killed if the Japanese had caught him with it. The officers thanked him, and the man shook his fist at the distant hills before moving on.

The road passed through open spaces covered in thick green cogon grass with a few binayuyo trees growing at the roadside. The binayuyo trees with their magnolia-like leaves sometimes had small clusters of fruit that resembled grapes. Danilo picked a handful and prompted Deke to have a taste. The dark-purple fruit was rather sweet and pulpy, almost like a prune or frost-ripened persimmon. The starving refugees were so hungry that they didn’t stop at devouring the ripe fruits but also ate the sour green binayuyo fruit out of desperation. Meanwhile, the GIs shared whatever rations they could spare, and then some, with the hungry hordes.

It became more apparent what the refugees had gone through at the hands of the Japanese marauders in the area. The survivors on the road were the lucky ones. As the troops advanced deeper into the territory into which the enemy had fled, they began to pass bodies that had been stabbed to death with bayonets or even partially beheaded. Some of the dead women showed signs of having been raped, their bodies left partially naked. Dead children lay near some of these bodies, indicating that mother and child had been cruelly killed by the Japanese. Clouds of flies and swarms of ants lost no time in descending upon the dead. Though battle-hardened, seeing the dead women and children was too much for some of the GIs, who stumbled out of the formation to vomit.

Deke felt his earlier fury grow. What the hell was wrong with the enemy to do this to civilians who were just trying to get out of harm’s way? It made no sense to him.

The intelligence provided by the Filipino who had drawn the rough map simply verified what the officers already knew, which was that the enemy was dug into those hills. It was Deke who spotted them, his eyes being some of the sharpest.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “That hill is covered in Japs.”

He was pointing toward a ridge to the left of the landmark Bugabuga Hill. Sure enough, large numbers of Japanese could be seen scrambling into fortified positions. It was the most enemy troops that they had seen in one place for some time. They could handle infantry. What was more worrisome was that the Japanese appeared to have several artillery pieces that they were preparing to fire. Clearly, they planned to bombard the advancing American column.

Seeing the threat, officers from the 305th began shouting orders to get their own guns into play. The problem was that unhitching the guns from the trucks pulling them and getting the howitzers into position wasn’t a quick task. But to the credit of the drivers and crews, some swung their trucks around so that their guns at least pointed in the right general direction. The GIs on the road scattered to get out of their way.

Deke decided to do what he could to buy them some time.

“How far away do you reckon those Nips are up on that hill?” he wondered.

“A thousand yards, at least,” Philly said.

Lieutenant Steele squinted with his one good eye. “More like twelve hundred,” he said.

“Yeah, I’d say about that,” Deke replied.

He took off his pack and put it on the hood of a truck, then set his rifle on the pack. The Weaver scope mounted on his Springfield was relatively low power — good enough for the closer ranges of jungle fighting, but next to useless at this distance. But you had to work with what you had.

However, he also had something of a secret weapon. The Springfield normally fired a 150-grain round, but he had managed to obtain a few rounds of 180-grain ammunition that was technically a hunting round. The rounds had come from a grizzled master sergeant who had heard of Deke’s reputation and pressed them into his hand with the admonition “Use ’em well, son.” Deke planned to. Considering that there were four hundred grains to an ounce, the difference in weight seemed minuscule. However, the heavier bullet could shoot farther and more accurately. And hit harder. He still had a few in his pocket, saved up for a special occasion. This seemed like as good a time as any.

Philly was suddenly beside him, glassing the ridge with binoculars far more powerful than Deke’s scope. “See that Jap gun about two o’clock from us?”

“I see it,” Deke said after a moment, spotting it through the scope. “I’m gonna reach out and give them a poke.”

He breathed in and held it. He reminded himself that he was shooting uphill and at a considerable distance. In theory, his bullet could reach that target. In reality, you had to be able to see your target. It wasn’t like one of the big naval guns where you could fire beyond the horizon. He made the mental calculations, raised his aim a bit, and squeezed the trigger.

At this distance, it took a few heartbeats for the bullet to reach the Japanese target.

“Got him,” Philly said beside him.

Deke worked the bolt and fired again.

“A little high and to the right.”

“Yeah,” Deke said. He worked the bolt, adjusted his aim, then fired again.

“Hit,” Philly reported.

Deke kept it up, firing more quickly now that he had the range figured out, targeting first one gun crew and then another. He was dimly aware of the gunners around him hurrying to get into position. Finally, there came the satisfying boom of a howitzer sending a round toward the Japanese. A burst of flying dirt on the ridge showed that the gunners were off target, so they worked to adjust their aim.

One of the Japanese guns got into play, sending a round screeching over their heads. The civilians who were still on the road dashed for cover.

“Get in the ditches!” Steele shouted to his men. “We’ll let the big boys duke it out for now.”

But Deke was reluctant to leave his position. With more shells beginning to land on the ridge, it was proving harder to spot targets through the flying dirt and smoke. Enemy shells began to land uncomfortably close. One hit a truck nearby and the vehicle exploded. A fearless gun crew — those who had survived the close round, anyhow — worked to get their howitzer unhitched from the burning truck.

“Dammit, Deke, take cover!” Steele was shouting.

Something held Deke in place, however. A moment later, he understood why. The rising sun battle flag that had taunted them earlier from the peak still flew. A knot of Japanese officers had appeared under it and stood watching the fight unfold. For all Deke knew, it might even be General Suzuki or even General Yamashita up there.

The targets on the ridge had been far, but the officers were even farther. At this distance, it was impossible to target one man, but the Japanese had helped him out by standing close together. They probably weren’t concerned about a sniper at this range, but Deke had a little surprise for them involving the heavier rifle bullet.

He made some adjustments, raising the rifle slightly, and then squeezed the trigger. To his satisfaction, one of the distant enemy officers toppled to the ground. The others hurried for cover. It wasn’t much payback for what the Japanese had done to these poor civilians, but Deke figured it was a decent down payment.

Finally, Deke ran for the ditch and dove in next to Philly just as another shell exploded nearby. The bottom of the roadside ditch had a foot of water in it from the recent rains, but that didn’t stop him from crouching down and getting soaked in the process. The body of a Filipino lay half in and half out of the ditch, killed either by shrapnel or having been a victim of Japanese bayonets. Deke didn’t investigate too closely.

“I was watching through the binoculars,” Philly said. “You got him, all right. That was some shooting.”

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then,” Deke replied.

Philly shook his head. “You and your damn hillbilly sayings. Did you see how those Japs were standing up there like they ruled the roost? These Japs all think they’re a bunch of samurai.”

“I’m no samurai, I’m just a sniper,” Deke said, nodding toward the distant hill where the Japanese officer lay dead. “Then again, which would you rather be?”

The 305th’s gunners were giving as good as they got, and maybe even better. The roar was deafening as the crews worked frantically to load a shell, do a quick check of their aim, yank the lanyard, eject the shell, and then do it all over again. They had done this so many times that their motions looked smooth and easy. A cheer went up when they scored a direct hit on one of the enemy’s gun crew.

Deke grinned. “Well now, it’s good to know I’m not the only one around here who can hit something.”

But the Japanese were far from beaten. A Jap artillery round landed in the road, toppling a howitzer and showering the soldiers with dirt and shrapnel.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Shells tore through the air and great geysers of muddy earth erupted all around Patrol Easy as the American and Japanese gunners duked it out. Deke huddled in a ditch, shoulder to shoulder with Philly and Honcho, feeling the ground quake. Overhead, hot shrapnel hissed through the air. The sound sent a shiver down Deke’s spine, and he pressed himself deeper into the ditch. There was a time to fight back and there was a time to take cover — which was now. He thought of the unlucky bastards manning the guns, exposed to all that flying metal.

Mercifully, the firing began to slow. The duel finally ended when the guns of the 305th had scattered the Japanese troops on the ridge and wrecked most of their artillery.

“Cease fire!” an officer shouted. Slowly, the howitzers fired their last shots and fell silent. The only sound now was the ringing in everyone’s ears.

Through binoculars, the artillery officers studied the damage. Deke borrowed the binoculars from Philly and did the same.

Many of the Japanese guns had been destroyed in the exchange. The American gunners had clearly gotten the upper hand, with more accuracy and a higher rate of fire. Smashed and broken equipment littered the slope.

The Japanese infantry that they had seen earlier was now under cover or had withdrawn into the forest lower down on the ridges. This meant that the Americans would only have to fight them later. It was a bit unnerving that the size of the Japanese force they had seen earlier outnumbered their own. The Japanese might be hidden for now, but all those enemy troops were still out there.

New orders arrived from headquarters, and while the orders were not unexpected, they were not what the soldiers wanted to hear.

“We’re being told to pursue the enemy,” Lieutenant Steele announced. “And that’s what we are going to do.”

The column moved out. As the road climbed deeper into the hills, it became clear that the field artillery would not be able to continue. The road became more like a muddy track as it rose steeply. The forest pressed in closer, and in places tree limbs reached out and waved in the breeze as if to snatch at the soldiers. Although the ridge where they had seen the enemy was still some distance away, it was hard to shake the feeling that they were walking into an ambush.

“I don’t like this one bit,” Philly muttered.

“We can agree on that,” Deke replied. “I don’t like the looks of this place at all.”

He kept his eyes on the path ahead, seeing with some trepidation that it continued into the hills. The whole area might be crawling with Japanese troops bent on revenge after the shelling they had taken. Deke had assumed that the Japanese troops had retreated, but he had the disturbing thought that maybe they had advanced instead. A few steps behind him, Danilo also scanned the forest, but the Filipino didn’t seem any more alarmed than usual, just cautious.

Finally, the time came to leave the field artillery behind. The bulk of the 305th would turn around and make its way back to the road, where it could fire on the enemy again if the Japanese made an appearance. Patrol Easy would have to forge ahead with a platoon of supporting infantry, meaning that there would be no more than fifty men under Lieutenant Steele’s command.

It soon became apparent that the Japanese had chosen a perfect natural fortress. What had been the road became little more than a rocky, washed-out trail. It was also perfect for walking into an ambush. However, Danilo seemed to have other ideas about how to reach the area where they had last seen the Japanese.

“This way,” he said, offering no further explanation.

Deke and Philly looked at each other, shrugged, and followed in Danilo’s wake as he began to cut through the woods, going downhill. The rest of the soldiers followed. At the rear of the column, Lieutenant Steele didn’t so much as question the change in direction. Danilo had been with them so long that there was nothing to do but follow him.

At the bottom of the hill, they reached a massive ravine. Sheer rock walls rose up one hundred feet on either side of them, the stone faces wet with the runoff of springs. High above, there was enough flow from a spring or stream to create a small waterfall, the sound of its rushing water echoing off the ravine’s walls. The rock face was interrupted by a few plants and shrubs clinging to the rock in clumps, like the badly shaved face of an old man. Deke found the place strangely beautiful in its mixture of rock and lush growth, as if God had swiped a shovel through the hills and then let the greenery slowly return.

Between the rock walls, in a clear space no more than forty feet wide, thick vegetation grew in the bottom of the ravine, so lush and brilliantly green that it didn’t even look real. The ravine stretched for nearly half a mile, and beyond that the ground sloped as if rising to meet the tops of the ravine’s walls. They could see trees and open sky beyond.

There didn’t seem to be any trail, but Danilo plunged ahead without hesitation. The greenery grew to about shoulder height but was free of any large trees or shrubs, as if the space had been clear cut at some point but had since filled in with vegetation. Deke stopped for a moment, taking it all in. This was unlike anything he had seen before on Leyte.

“Where the hell are we going?” Philly wondered.

“To hell if I know. There’s no trail to speak of. Looks like a good place to get snakebit,” Deke answered. “Then again, Danilo hasn’t steered us wrong yet. Keep up.”

Deke waded into the sea of green. He found himself holding the rifle above his head like he might do when wading through water, but in this case he was trying to keep it from getting snagged on the ferns and leaves the size of dinner plates. Up ahead, Danilo moved quickly, as if unconcerned about any Japanese ambush.

They passed through the belly of the ravine and began to climb. Soon the walls weren’t as high because the ground sloped upward. It became brighter as they left the deep shade of the ravine. They emerged on a ridge that appeared to run all the way to Bugabuga Hill, which looked much closer. Danilo’s shortcut had worked.

Danilo didn’t wait for them but kept going. There was a good reason for that, which was the fact that they were now exposed. Any Japanese lookouts would spot them quickly. If any enemy artillery had survived the duel with the 305th, then the patrol might be in yet more trouble. Lucky for them, there was still no sight or sound of the enemy. Steadily, they moved closer to Bugabuga Hill. The clouds had not thinned out, and the dark day was already growing darker.

After another hour, they reached the ridgeline where the Japanese artillery had been dug in. The destruction was impressive, almost as if the ground had been plowed, with empty brass casings scattered across the plowed land like metallic seeds. A few smashed guns were evident, but the Japanese had removed any artillery that was still operational.

What the Japanese had not removed was their dead. Bodies lay sprawled in the holes and ditches where they had fallen, killed by artillery fire. Steele called for a count, and the men came up with fifty-two enemy dead.

“Some of the bodies were in pieces, so we decided to round up,” Philly explained.

“Good enough for me,” Steele said. He called Rodeo over so that he could contact HQ and make his report. When he got off the radio, he said, “That made somebody happy. They’re collecting numbers down there like stamps.”

From the ridge they could clearly see the road they had been on earlier in the day. The Japanese had certainly occupied a commanding position. Higher yet was Bugabuga Hill itself, and Deke, Danilo, and Philly made the climb to the summit. They didn’t find any Japanese dead; evidently, whoever Deke had shot up there had been deemed important enough to carry away.

“You can see for miles,” Deke said. “No wonder the Japanese were up here.”

“The question is, Where did they go?” Philly asked. “We sure as hell didn’t kill them all.”

“I don’t think they went far,” Deke said.

Danilo didn’t seem to have an opinion, but he also seemed to be watching the forests and hills below them warily.

They climbed back down to rejoin the rest of the unit on the ridge. They were still roughly spread out as a column, but Steele hadn’t given any orders to move out.

“Come here a minute, Deke,” Steele ordered.

He hurried toward the rear of the column. “Honcho?”

“We’re losing daylight,” Steele said. “I don’t want to go any farther and get caught in the dark, and I don’t want us to be sitting ducks on this ridge. You know how the Japs love their night attacks. We’ll need to dig in before dark.”

The men got to work with their entrenching tools, turning the deeper shell holes into defenses for the night. The men kept throwing glances at the forest beyond the clearing at the top of the ridge, half expecting the Japanese to emerge from the trees. The fact that no enemy troops appeared was not reassuring because they knew it was more likely that the Japanese would attack at night, when the darkness gave them cover.

Deke had an idea, which he brought up with Honcho. “What if we get the Japs to attack us?”

“Deke, what the hell are you talking about? I’m damn sure they do plan to attack us.” The lieutenant showed a rare flash of irritation, a reminder that the weight of the patrol was on his shoulders.

“Honcho, what I mean is, What if we make them come to us in a banzai charge? When we’re in our foxholes, waiting for them?”

The lieutenant thought about that. “Now you’re making sense. If the Japs come at us in small groups, it’s going to be one hell of a night. Death by a thousand cuts. But if they decide to wipe us all out at once⁠—”

“We can mow them down,” Deke said, finishing the lieutenant’s thought.

Steele nodded. “All right, that’s not a bad plan. Here’s what we’re going to do. Set up our machine guns and a couple of mortars facing down the slope. It’s a damn good field of fire, and it’s steeper than it looks, which will slow them down if they’re trying to run up it. We’ve got that hill at our backs and it’s rugged terrain, so I doubt a large force can come at us from that direction.”

The arrangements were made, and the men soon understood their role. Now all they needed to do was encourage the Japanese to attack. It was Philly who came up with a good idea for that.

“Why don’t we throw a party and invite the Nips?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Philly?”

Quickly, he outlined his idea. “You know I’m from Philadelphia, right? Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, all that Revolutionary War stuff. Plus, George Washington crossing the Delaware. Remember that Washington and his boys swooped down on the Hessians so easily because it was Christmas Eve and all the Germans were drinking and partying. What if we can convince the Japanese that we’re like the Hessians? Let’s make them think we’re having us a good ol’ time and that we’ll be easy pickings.”

“It’s not Christmas Eve.”

“Do you think the Japanese know that? It was a couple of nights ago, so close enough.”

Slowly, Honcho nodded. “All right, let’s give it a try. We’ve got nothing to lose.”

The men built a large bonfire, throwing caution to the wind. The fire would be big enough to get the attention of any Japanese in the vicinity, if by some miracle they weren’t already aware of the American presence. Once the flames were leaping and the sparks were flying, the men joked in loud voices, shouted “Merry Christmas!” to one another, even sang a few Christmas carols. They did their best to seem like they were also drinking, joking with one another about how good the whiskey was. In reality, they weren’t drinking anything stronger than some metallic-tasting canteen water.

Although the celebration was phony, it was easy enough for the men to get into the spirit of it. A few men quietly served as lookouts, having crept out from the defenses in order to spot any Japanese activity right away. Deke wasn’t much interested in being part of the fake holiday foolishness, but he was glad to be out in the dark, his rifle and knife at the ready.

After midnight, the plan finally seemed to be working. He thought he heard hushed Japanese voices, and even the sound of branches snapping as if a number of enemy troops were positioning themselves in the woods. He hurried back to report what he’d heard to the lieutenant.

“They’re coming, Honcho. No doubt about it.”

“You guys stay near the bonfire and whoop it up,” Honcho said quietly. He also gave an order to bring in the rest of the scouts. “The rest of you get into your foxholes. Hold your fire until I give the order.”

Another hour passed without incident, to the point where Deke wondered if his ears had been playing tricks on him earlier. But then came the sound of the shrill whistles that the Japanese used to signal an attack. They heard shouts and moonlight flashed off a sword blade waved by an officer. It was soon apparent that Philly’s plan had worked all too well. They could hear the Japanese running toward them up the slope, even if they couldn’t see them clearly.

In the blinding darkness, the sound of so many enemy troops rushing toward them, unseen, was terrifying. That all changed when the mortar squad fired a flare that hung above the slope, illuminating the mass of Japanese headed for their position. In the strange, bright, flickering light, the enemy faces looked contorted and enraged, the eyes and screaming mouths nothing more than dark holes under the rim of their helmets. But now, at the very least, they could see the enemy.

“Here they come,” Philly muttered.

“Pick your targets, boys,” Deke said. “One shot, one Jap.”

Fingers on their triggers, they didn’t have to wait long for the order.

“Open fire!” Lieutenant Steele shouted.

The machine guns opened up, tracers racing across the open ground. Swaths of enemy soldiers went down as if they had been yanked on by a rope. The mortar squad added to the havoc, exploding shells knocking holes in the Japanese advance. Thinned out, the enemy kept advancing.

Deke aimed and fired, aimed and fired, each shot taking out another enemy soldier. Nobody shouted orders — there wasn’t any need. Each soldier’s duty was as obvious as the menacing figures rushing toward them. It was kill or be killed.

Speed was the name of the game, each bullet meaning one less Nip who was going to reach his foxhole. On either side of him, soldiers were doing the exact same thing. At this range, nobody was about to miss. He could hear the deep boom of Honcho’s shotgun adding to the hell storm of lead being thrown at the Japanese.

Deke realized that he was too busy to be scared, although anyone in their right mind should have been frightened by the sight of the banzai charge. A few soldiers fumbled their clips when they went to reload their M1s, but Deke’s hands remained steady. Work the bolt, aim, squeeze the trigger, feel the jolt of recoil against his shoulder, fire, repeat. Again and again. It felt as if he had already been doing this his whole life, and might be doing it until the end of time — or at least until a Jap bayoneted him.

“Enemy behind us!” Yoshio shouted.

Deke whipped his rifle around in time to see a small group of Japanese who were almost on top of them. They were all so intent on the charging Japanese that they might have been completely taken by surprise without Yoshio’s warning. He fired at the nearest man. Beside him, Honcho’s shotgun boomed again, followed by the crack of Danilo’s rifle, and then Philly’s. The threat from the rear was neutralized.

There were still plenty of Japs coming up the slope, although the blazing machine guns had done a number on them. But it hadn’t been enough. Now the enemy soldiers were thirty feet away, then ten, then right on top of them.

“Dammit!” Philly shouted.

Deke fired point blank at a screaming Jap racing at them with a bayonet. He went down. There were more right behind him. Deke put down his rifle and reached for the .45 in the belt holster. The weight of the pistol felt good in his hand as he unloaded the fat slugs into enemy soldiers no more than an arm’s length away. When the pistol ran dry, he tossed it aside and reached for his bowie knife just as a Japanese soldier tripped and fell headlong into the foxhole. Deke made short work of him with the knife. Danilo was doing the same with his long-bladed bolo knife, chopping at the Japanese like he was harvesting sugarcane.

In the foxholes all around Deke, similar battles were taking place, each fight a primitive struggle for survival that was as old and familiar as warfare itself. It was blade against bayonet, fist against boot. Worst of all were the sounds as the firing died away, replaced by the noise of close-quarters combat. Grunts and curses filled the night. The very air seemed to crackle with the grating of rifles being used like fighting sticks and clubs. There was the dull ringing of heavy blows against helmets. They heard the horrible wet sounds of a long blade sliding into flesh, followed by the final sigh of air escaping from a lung or rib cage. Screams of rage mixed with the death cries of those who were being stabbed or clubbed.

Mercifully, the Japanese tide broke and receded. What was left of the enemy retreated down the slope. A few madmen refused to retreat, throwing themselves into foxholes, stabbing wildly with bayonets. A few hurled grenades before dying in a burst of gunfire. One enemy officer flailed around him with a sword, shouting wildly, before he was gunned down, hit by two or three shots almost instantaneously. He spun like a top and fell.

And then the terrible banzai charge was over, what was left of its broken wave draining back down the slope. The rest of the night passed quietly, except for the moans of the wounded enemy scattered across the slope. A few of the GIs had been stabbed or shot, with medics and other soldiers tending to them as best as they could. Not a single GI had been killed outright. The destruction of the banzai charge had been a stunningly lopsided victory.

Deke unscrewed the cap of his canteen and took a drink. Only then did he notice that his hands were shaking. They had been rock steady during the fight, working the bolt action of his rifle smoothly. So much for nerves of steel, he thought.

By the time he put the canteen back, the shaking had stopped. With so much adrenaline running through their veins, the reactions of the other men ran the gamut, from blank stares to uncontrollable giggling. Nobody judged or thought much of it — they were all just glad to be alive.

They reloaded and prepared for another attack, but the enemy did not return.

The morning light only verified the destruction. Lieutenant Steele gave orders to make a count of the dead.

“One hundred and sixty-two,” Rodeo reported back.

Steele shook his head and found Deke’s gaze. “That worked a little too well,” he said. “Sure, we got the Japanese to attack us, but they almost killed us all in the process. Somebody remind me not to listen to Deke and Philly next time.”

Looking out at so many enemy dead, Deke had to agree. It had been a close thing. “I wouldn’t listen to me either,” he said quietly.