Savage Sniper

CHAPTER TWELVE

Now that Patrol Easy was reunited with Father Francisco and his tough band of guerrillas, all of whom hated the Japanese fervently, they began to move through the jungle.

The ad hoc task force was not without some tensions. First and foremost was the language barrier. The guerrillas spoke either Spanish or the Filipino dialect known as Tagalog. As usual, Danilo remained cagey about how much English he knew. This left Father Francisco as the only interpreter due to his ability to move seamlessly from one language to the next.

At the same time, this kept Lieutenant Steele dependent on the priest to relay any and all orders to the guerrillas. While the lieutenant was nominally in charge of the operation, it was clear that nothing was going to happen without the priest’s cooperation, and the guerrilla force outnumbered Patrol Easy. Deke noticed that Lieutenant Steele was diplomatic enough to confer with the priest rather than issuing direct orders. However, the added step took time.

When push came to shove and the bullets started to fly, there might not be an opportunity for discussion. Who was going to be in charge? Deke hoped they didn’t find out the hard way that the lieutenant and the priest had different ideas regarding strategy.

Deke had almost forgotten how impressed he had been with the Filipino guerrillas during their mission behind enemy lines against the massive gun battery on Hill 522. He was reminded of their ability now, watching the dozen guerrillas move silently along the jungle path. They moved with a relaxed gait that challenged the Americans to keep up.

There was no talking, and each man appeared alert to the jungle surroundings, almost as if he were moving entirely on his own even though he was part of the patrol.

The Filipinos wore an odd assortment of clothing that included uniform parts scavenged from the Japanese, along with captured Japanese weapons. Most wore sandals rather than boots, enabling them to move quickly and silently down the trail.

Whenever an offending tree limb hung over the path, one of their long bolo knives flashed, its sharp blade clearing the trail. The guerrillas knew their business, that was for damn sure.

Not for the first time, Deke was glad that the guerrillas were on their side, fighting against a common enemy.

Walking near Deke, Philly expressed the same thought aloud. “I’ve got to say that I’d rather fight the Japanese than these guys,” he said. “Tough bastards, aren’t they?”

“I suppose you’d be tough, too, if you’d been living in the jungle for years,” Deke replied.

“I wouldn’t be tough,” Philly admitted. “Hell, I’d be dead!”

Deke chuckled. Philly might be on to something. Once again, it spoke to the guerrillas’ innate toughness and determination to oust the Japanese that they had endured so much.

Then again, he understood that it hadn’t always been the case that the Americans and Filipino guerrillas had been on the same side. Many years ago, the fathers or grandfathers of these same guerrillas had fought against the American “occupiers” who had taken control of the islands following victory in the Spanish-American War. Some determined Filipinos had wanted autonomy and had been willing to fight for it.

There had been a series of running battles that stretched across two decades in the early part of the century. Several thousand US troops had died — most from disease rather than combat. Interestingly, General Douglas MacArthur had been one of those combatants. However, that conflict had long ago settled into an easy peace, and the people of the Philippines were now considered to be US nationals.

The Japanese had turned out to be far more high-handed in ruling the islands, and no Filipino was ever going to be a Japanese “citizen.” They were simply chattel of the Emperor.

Some of the guerrillas’ skill had even seemed to rub off on Father Francisco, who easily kept pace with the members of his band. Unlike them, he did not carry a weapon, not even a bolo knife, but he did have a large pack that he had explained was filled with extra food, medical supplies, and even a chalice for celebrating mass.

He had brought the chalice with him when the Japanese occupiers had forced the priest to vacate the church at Palo, fleeing for his life into the forest. Since then, he had provided leadership to the guerrillas — and kept them in touch with their spiritual side as well.

Deke learned that the Filipinos had even given Father Francisco a nickname earned because the priest visited the camps where the guerrillas’ families lived to tend to basic medical care and to celebrate mass as well. He’d become known as Padre del Bosque — Priest of the Forest. Deke reckoned it was an apt name.

The going was not easy due to the oppressive heat and humidity that clung to everything. Here in the Pacific, it was constantly like the most oppressive late-summer day back home.

Deke wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and took a deep breath, but he couldn’t seem to get any real air. He couldn’t help but find himself longing for the clear skies and crisp air of an autumn mountain morning back home. Here the sun always seemed to burn down through a tropical haze.

The comparison to his memories of home made the present conditions seem only worse. He could see the fatigue in the faces of the other GIs, perspiration dripping from their faces, their hair matted to their foreheads under the lips of their steel helmets that grew heavier with each step. Once again, he was glad that he had abandoned his helmet in favor of a broad-brimmed bush hat.

Moisture draped like a wet blanket over everything, heavy and viscous. The air was so loaded with humidity that it made it hard to breathe. Wherever you were, you were enveloped in that blanket of humidity that seemed to weigh down your motions. When a man walked through it, the humidity clung to him like a giant spiderweb.

Speaking of spiderwebs, there were plenty of those across the trail that the guerrillas on point had to break through. Some looked large enough, and the webbing looked thick enough to capture birds, let alone insects. The presence of the spiderwebs was reassuring, however, meaning that no one — in this case the Japanese — had used the trail since the spiders had busily spun their webs the night before.

The jungle seemed as thick as the air, with tangled underbrush and trees creating a latticework of greenery. The jungle canopy of leaves and branches proved so dense almost no sunlight reached the forest floor, creating ominous shadows. This canopy obscured the sky from view, although from time to time they heard aircraft passing overhead. Once or twice a plane flew so low that he could see it clearly through the trees.

To his surprise, both times he had spotted the unmistakable bright-red Japanese meatball on the underside of the wings. Clearly the enemy was still managing to put a few planes in the air. They still had plenty of fight left in them.

Philly had seen the planes too. “Japs,” he muttered as if afraid the pilots could somehow hear him. “You don’t suppose they can see us?”

Deke grunted. “If they could, you’d probably be getting some Japanese lead up your tailpipe right about now.”

Although they had spoken quietly, the exchange appeared to annoy the nearest guerrilla, who looked back over his shoulder to glare at them with the dark, accusing eyes of a jungle cat.

Deke returned the glare, but not for long. He knew that the guerrilla was just interested in staying alive, which meant moving quietly. The terrain forced Deke to watch where he was going, so he mainly kept his eyes on where he was putting his feet next. The trail cut across a jungle floor that was a tangle of vines, roots, and branches that sometimes blocked their passage. His feet felt clunky in his army boots, and he envied the light-soled shoes and sandals the guerrillas wore.

Around them the jungle was thick with the smells of damp earth, decomposing vegetation, moldering wood, and the musk of hidden forest animals — smells not so different from the deep mountain forests back home, Deke realized.

Father Francisco moved up and down the line, saying a word or two of encouragement to each man, both the guerrillas and the GIs. When he stopped by Lieutenant Steele, the two leaders even exchanged a laugh. The guerrilla gave them another stink eye.

To Deke’s surprise, when the priest fell into step beside him, he greeted Deke by name.

“Hola, Deke. I remember you from last time,” the priest said, keeping his voice low. “That business back on Hill 522. You are quite the shot.”

“I reckon that I get lucky now and then. Like my daddy used to say, you can’t hit any of the targets you don’t shoot at. In other words, you have to take your chances now and then.”

“He sounds like a wise man.”

“He wasn’t a fool,” Deke quickly agreed, surprising himself by expressing a thought aloud that he didn’t realize he’d even had. “But my pa sure did have a knack for turning a dollar into dust.”

The priest chuckled. “Wealth is not everything in the Lord’s eyes,” he said.

“Tell that to the bankers when they want their money for the mortgage,” Deke muttered. “They ain’t much interested in prayers and promises.”

For a long time he had held a grudge against his father for losing the family farm by taking out a loan from the bank that he couldn’t repay. Slowly he had been changing that view. Pa had just been doing his best, trying to keep the farm going with that loan, and the Depression hadn’t helped. Almost everyone in the mountains had suffered hard times.

His appreciation of his father had grown deeper in other ways. Pa had fought in the Great War, and now as a soldier himself, Deke understood that his father may have been broken in some way by that war. He certainly never talked about it. He’d just wanted to be left alone on his farm.

But he had not gotten that chance. The Great Depression had taken a toll of a different kind.

“You know that God says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven,” the priest said.

“That sounds about right,” Deke agreed. “There’s nothing so close to a devil on earth as a rich man. Anyhow, you are always asking after everybody else. How have you been, Padre?”

The priest took a long moment to consider Deke’s question. “Do you have faith, Private Cole?”

“I never was much of a churchgoer growing up,” Deke replied, just as thoughtfully. “But I believe in the Lord above. You need to give the Lord his due. If there’s nobody up there, and there’s no heaven and no hell, no right and wrong, no Golden Rule, then what’s it all for?”

“You still believe that, even with the war?”

“Padre, I believe it even more because of the war.”

For the first time, the priest nodded and gave Deke a wistful smile. “I must admit that the war has made me doubt my faith at times. The things I have seen… the things we have done. I have asked myself, How can God allow that?”

“I’m no expert, Padre, but I’d say God is like the big boss man. He doesn’t get his hands dirty much. I think he leaves the right and wrong of it up to us, to make our own choices. You know how when you work for the big boss man, you have to line up with everybody to collect your pay at the end of the week? Just like that, we’ll have to answer one way or another on Judgment Day.”

The priest nodded. “Thank you, Deacon Cole. I think you have an eye that sees more than targets. You have given me much to consider.”

For the next two days, the patrol moved deeper into the interior of Leyte. They could still hear artillery in the distance, one side giving the other a pounding, but the sound grew fainter. The sheer oppressive density of the jungle closed in around them and seemed to swallow up any attempt at conversation, devouring words and sound like a great green anaconda.

On that second afternoon, the sky darkened and the wind picked up, churning the trees overhead. While showers and downpours were a frequent occurrence, the wind indicated that this was a stronger storm. They could hear the gale build force and head for them, howling through the lower depths of the forest. The roar of the approaching wind and thunder was more than a little unnerving. A few heavy droplets began to fall, creating mini explosions as they pummeled the bare soil of the trail.

“Here it comes, boys,” Lieutenant Steele said glumly. “Batten down the hatches.”

When the wind struck, it was like a bowling ball rolling through a forest of tenpins. Around them, branches cracked and trees fell. It was the worst kind of tropical storm, almost like a tornado. Deke worried that the storm was leaving them blind and deaf, vulnerable to attack, but then realized that the Japanese would not have been faring any better in these conditions.

They had been traveling too light to bother bringing ponchos. The soldiers had no choice but to tuck in their chins and bear it as the rain swept in, plastering their clothing to their bodies, leaving them soaked through. The sheer force of the water drummed on their helmets, rain sluicing off them. The guerrillas didn’t fare any better, but they didn’t complain.

Forward motion through the storm became impossible. In the blowing wind and rain, it would be too easy to simply lose the track and wander off into the jungle.

Without any hope of shelter, they hunkered down right there on the narrow trail. All around them, leaves and branches danced in the storm’s hurricane winds. Off to the right, a tree suddenly gave way and crashed to the jungle floor with such force that it shook the ground. If it had fallen a few feet closer to the trail, the massive trunk might have wiped out half of the patrol.

Through the fresh gap in the canopy, they could see lightning stitch the darkened sky in a blazing quilt. Nearby, a bolt struck with all the sound and fury of an artillery round. Deke and the others hit the ground just in case there was another electrical blast in store for them.

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Or so it seemed.

Up ahead, Danilo was shouting something and pointing. Then he was beckoning them forward.

Deke got to his feet. Although he trusted Danilo implicitly, he couldn’t help wondering, Where the hell does he think he’s going?

Blindly, they followed the Filipino guide, squinting through the rain and even losing sight of him for several seconds at a time. The trail climbed upward, which was disconcerting, considering that each step seemed to carry them infinitesimally closer to the lightning-laced sky. But then Danilo reappeared, motioning them toward a structure that rose out of the forest.

In the flickering light, Deke could see that it was a bunker of some kind, apparently abandoned by the Japanese — or so he hoped. How Danilo had known it was here was anybody’s guess, but the man seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to navigating the forest.

This deep into the interior, the Japanese had been unable to use concrete. Instead, the walls were built of rammed earth, stone, and heavy timbers. Deke was sure that like many of the enemy fortifications, it had been built using slave labor. One weak point was the roof, which seemed to be constructed of the same heavy material to defend against shrapnel and mortar bursts, but which leaked water like a rusty bucket.

For whatever reason, the Japanese must have decided to abandon this position. If nothing else, it would provide some shelter against the storm.

The patrol piled inside. The space was cramped yet able to accommodate everyone, although some of Father Francisco’s guerrillas preferred seeking shelter in the forest nearby.

As the soldiers crowded inside, the space immediately felt claustrophobic, and the roof was too low — perhaps it was adequate for Japanese soldiers, but the taller Americans, especially Lieutenant Steele, were barely able to stand up. Still, it was a relief to be out of the thrashing wind and rain.

Flashlights provided some light. A couple of bunks had been built against one wall, and there was a rough table lashed together out of sticks and branches. Otherwise, the interior was rudimentary at best. Deke wrinkled his nose against the smell of musty earth and that fishy odor he had come to associate with the Japanese, although he was half-convinced that smell was only in his imagination.

Deke looked through the firing slits. In a flash of lightning, he got a glimpse of wet leaves and driving rain as the storm continued unabated. However, they were now sheltered from the wind and relatively dry. His opinion of the Japanese bunker suddenly improved considerably.

“Make yourselves at home,” Lieutenant Steele said. “We’ll wait out the storm here. Good work, Danilo.”

Danilo nodded at the mention of his name, but his face remained impassive. As always, it remained a mystery as to just how much English he understood.

“I hope to hell the Nips don’t suddenly decide to come back,” Philly said. He looked wet as a drowned rat and was starting to shiver. “I’m not sure this place is worth fighting over.”

“Nobody has been here in a while,” Deke pointed out.

The lieutenant had noticed that Philly was shivering, and he wasn’t the only one. Their cotton uniforms did nothing to retain body heat. It was hard to believe, considering that they usually suffered in the heat, but the rain and the sudden drop in temperature brought by the storm had left them all chilled to the bone.

“Everybody, get out of those wet clothes,” he said. “Your body heat isn’t enough to dry them. You’ll only get colder.”

The men shed their clothes and hung them from the rafters to drip dry. For simple ease of movement and function, they all went commando in the field rather than deal with an added layer of baggy and soggy boxer shorts. Consequently, the interior of the bunker soon resembled a locker room, and the soldiers were more like young men after the big game than warriors.

Philly looked Deke up and down, then laughed. Deke reddened at first, feeling his temper flare, thinking that Philly was ridiculing the deep scars that raked his torso.

As it turned out, that wasn’t what Philly found funny. “You know what, Corn Pone? If the flashlights go out, that lily-white cracker ass of yours will be enough to light this whole place up.”

“You’re one to talk, Philly. The last full moon wasn’t as bright as your backside.”

Philly laughed again. The truth was, they all had serious farmer’s tans, with hands, necks, and faces burnished to a deep brown by the tropical sun. The rest of their bodies typically remained a pale white. There were only rare occasions when they had shed their shirts to sun themselves on a beach or on a ship. Notably, none of the soldiers had tattoos — that was a tradition for the boys in the navy and marines, usually acquired during a drunken shore leave.

Despite the damp conditions, Deke quickly built a fire — he always had been good at that. The smoke gathered around the rafters, but it was a small price to pay for the warmth of the flames. Naked as jaybirds, the lieutenant included, they gathered around and heated up their rations. Gradually the raging storm began to subside. Night was coming on, so they posted a guard and got ready to sleep.

They had escaped the storm. They had dodged the Japanese who had built this place. However, the men of Patrol Easy might not have slept so soundly if they’d known that those enemy soldiers were waiting just around the corner.