Deke hadn’t been wounded, and he was relieved to see that none of the other snipers had been either. But at the same time, the air attack made him feel defenseless. After all, how could anyone defend against such fast-moving planes? A lone man with a rifle couldn’t do much. Deke shook his head, reminded once again that modern warfare was a whole lot bigger than a man with a rifle and a bowie knife.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
As it turned out, the Japanese fighters hadn’t been the only planes in the sky.
Philly pointed. “Look, it’s one of ours. He’s been up there this whole time!”
The lone American reconnaissance plane was still airborne over the beach. The pilot had evidently decided that the plane was too slow to make a run for it. Instead, he had dropped even lower, apparently hoping that the two Japanese Zeros would be too busy to notice him.
That strategy had worked — to a point. However, the reconnaissance aircraft was far from being out of danger. The storm of flak was intended for the enemy planes, but the airbursts were indiscriminate.
From the uneven flight path, it was clear that the pilot was struggling for control of his plane and trying to dodge whatever ground fire he could. Lucky for him, the ground troops seemed to be doing their best not to shoot down one of their own.
But the sturdy plane wasn’t out of danger yet. At any moment, one of the fast-moving Zeros could wipe out the recon plane like a bird snapping its beak on an insect, without so much as a second thought.
The pilot’s flight path carried him directly over the spot where one of the Japanese bombs was detonating. At that instant an explosive geyser clawed its way upward in a tornado of high explosives, ripping off the entire tail of the small reconnaissance plane. One moment the tail had been there, and the next moment it was gone. The front section of the plane and the wings were untouched.
Fighter pilots got all the glory, but it spoke to the pilot’s skill that he was able to wrestle with the controls as the plane plunged toward the beach. It wasn’t going to be a controlled landing, but it looked like the pilot was going to avoid crashing altogether — just barely.
Soldiers ran out of the way as the plane came down, swinging wildly from side to side and dipping up and down like a paper airplane caught in a whirlwind. The wheels touched down, and the plane skidded across the sand before coming to a halt. Soldiers ran to help the pilot and copilot get out. By some miracle, the plane had not caught on fire.
Allowing himself to be led away, the pilot looked back at what was left of his plane and stared at the missing tail section.
Technically, he had not been shot down, but it was hard to find a term that explained that the tail of a reconnaissance plane in flight had been blown off by a Japanese bomb on the ground. Some clerk down the line would likely put it down as mechanical failure and leave it at that.
“How about that,” he said. “I thought something was wrong.”
“I’ll say, buddy,” a soldier replied. “It looks like the whole back half of your plane is gone!”
Then the pilot shook off the helping hands and walked nonchalantly away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Once the excitement of the attack by the Japanese Zeros had died down, the men prepared to move out.
“That was just two lousy Japanese,” Honcho pointed out. “There’s a lot more where those came from, and we’re gonna go find them.”
“I think they already found us,” Philly pointed out.
Whether or not the lieutenant heard, he chose to ignore Philly. “Patrol Easy, you’re on point. I want my snipers out front. Keep an eye out for the Japanese. I’m sure they have more than a few surprises waiting for us up ahead.”
Leaving Camp Downes behind, they moved out through the ruins of the Japanese defenses that they had cleared out during the previous day’s fight. The bunkers still smoldered, stinking of burned gasoline from the flamethrowers. There were other smells, too, and not even the most desperate souvenir hunters wanted to find out what was in those bunkers.
No soldiers were left to hold Camp Downes — the hard-fought position was simply abandoned as the troops rolled on. While it might have been better to hold the ground, there simply weren’t enough troops. The invasion force was spread that thin.
The division commander, General Bruce, had made it clear that he “wanted to pull our tail in behind us.” In other words, his strategy was to keep his men moving forward and not concern himself with holding the territory that they moved through. The exception was the beachhead itself, where a rear-echelon support area included mechanics, clerks, supply staff, and even cooks to feed them all. Although essential in their own way, these men were not considered frontline combat troops.
The overall strategy meant that between the beachhead and the units converging on Ormoc, there were only splintered trees, empty foxholes, and enemy corpses.
The advance was far from easy. Snipers hid in spider holes, harassing the soldiers, then disappearing from view before popping up again once the infantry had passed to shoot them in the back.
One effective method to deal with the spider holes was to run a tank ahead of the advancing infantry, with a few soldiers clinging to the exterior of the tank. Although the attack by the Zeros had wiped out one of the Sherman tanks, leaving it a burning hulk on the perimeter of Camp Downes, two more of the so-called Satan tanks had been brought up from the beachhead.
Their flamethrowers were not much use against the Japanese hiding in the spider holes, many of which had makeshift covers made of woven mats covered with earth or moss. The covers not only disguised the hiding places, but were rather effective at blocking the flames.
What proved more effective was having a tank run right over any spider holes they spotted, forcing the enemy soldiers within to duck down. At the back end of the tank, soldiers fired down into the spider holes as soon as the tank cleared them. At that moment the Japanese often threw back the covers over their holes, ready to hurl hand grenades at the tank.
The soldiers had to be quick, firing at the first opportunity. Submachine guns proved especially useful. A Japanese soldier with a bolt-action Arisaka rifle was no match for an M3 “grease gun” spitting .45 slugs literally into his face.
It was gruesome work at such close range, when you were just a few feet away from the man you were shooting and could clearly see his face. But without it being done, the Japanese would pop up again to shoot the advancing soldiers in the back.
“I don’t like this, not one bit,” one soldier said.
The soldier beside him slapped home another thirty-round magazine into his M3. “Aw, quit your griping,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another day at the office.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Hey, it’s them or us, buddy. Them or us. Don’t you go forgetting that.”
The tank rolled on, and the soldiers opened fire in its wake.
In addition to the network of cleverly hidden spider holes, individual units of Japanese troops had dug defensive positions into the forest and fields, waiting to throw themselves at the first American troops that appeared. These units varied in size from a handful of men who had survived the previous day’s onslaught and chosen to make their last stand, to entire companies.
There wasn’t really any strategic objective here other than to delay the American advance. None of the Japanese planned to survive, and they would take as many American soldiers with them as possible.
Deke and the others led the rest of Captain Merrick’s men forward, wary of walking into one of these ambush attacks.
“We ought to get Egan’s dog up here,” Philly said quietly as he pressed forward with Deke and Danilo. “That mutt can sniff out the Japanese for us.”