It was a job nobody envied. Dodging enemy bullets and machine-gun fire was a dangerous game. Here in Ormoc’s streets, it was also a game of cat and mouse.
“All right, looks like he’s gonna make it. We need to send word back about that bunker up yonder,” Deke said. “Can’t have the boys walk right into that.”
“Cover fire,” Philly said.
Patrol Easy began firing at the bunker, but the Japanese defenders were so ensconced behind their sandbags that they made difficult targets.
They watched the runner make the final dash toward the wall that Patrol Easy sheltered behind.
He almost made it.
At the instant before he reached cover, he was caught by a burst of machine-gun fire. The soldier spun around and collapsed in the street.
What unfolded next was difficult to watch. Badly wounded, the soldier managed to drag himself by his elbows toward the shelter of the wall.
Yoshio started to go over the wall to help the wounded man, but even in his fevered state, Deke grabbed the back of his belt and tugged him down. “No, you don’t. You’ll end up just like him.”
Watching a wounded man without being able to help him was one of the most heart-wrenching situations that a soldier faced. In rushing to help him, a soldier tended to be operating on sheer emotion rather than thinking things through. More often than not, that would get him killed. The Japanese machine gunners and snipers liked nothing more than to use a wounded man as bait, luring others into their sights.
Rodeo shouted at the man, “C’mon, buddy. You can make it. Keep going!”
Slowly and desperately, the soldier crawled closer to the safety of the wall.
Evidently the Japanese decided that their trap wasn’t going to work and lost patience. A single shot rang out, and the wounded man went limp.
“Son of a bitch!” Philly said through gritted teeth. “A sniper finished him off.”
“We need to get word to Captain Merrick,” Deke said. “Maybe he can get a tank up here to clear them out. Otherwise, the whole damn company is gonna walk right into this mess. They’re gonna get the same as that poor bastard.”
“What are we supposed to do about it?”
“I’ll go,” Deke said. “Hell, I’m half-dead anyhow.”
Deke started to get up, staggering a little, but Philly pulled him back down. “Hold it right there, Corn Pone. You wouldn’t let Yoshio go, so how would you do any better? You’re sick. You shouldn’t even be on the front lines at all.”
“I said I’d do it, didn’t I?”
“You want to play hero, do it another day when you’re not running a fever,” Philly said. He took a good look at Deke’s face and shook his head. “Look at you. I swear to God that even your eyeballs are sweating. I’ll bet you can’t even see straight.”
Philly hadn’t let go of him, and Deke found that he didn’t have the strength to shrug him off. In his current state, he was reduced to glaring and muttering a few choice words. Normally he wouldn’t have let anyone put hands on him like that, not even Philly.
To their surprise, the clerk spoke up, offering to make a run for it, but he was ignored. The snipers still didn’t consider rear-echelon men like this clerk to be real soldiers — not yet.
Alphabet spoke up. “I’ll go.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve always been quick on my feet. Just ask the girls at the USO dances.”
“I think they’d say you were quick with your hands.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, just make those Nip snipers keep their heads down, will ya? I don’t want to end up like that guy.”
Feverish though he was, Deke heard himself saying, “Don’t you worry about that sniper. I’ll take care of him.”
He didn’t know if Alphabet had heard him or not. He was busy stripping off his gear to the bare essentials, removing even his utility belt with its spare ammo and canteen. It was clear that he didn’t want to carry anything that would slow him down.
He crouched behind the stone wall, getting in position like a runner at the start of a race.
“Go!” he shouted, as much to himself as to the men around him. Immediately, the men behind the wall poured fire at the bunker area.
Alphabet vaulted the stone wall. He didn’t get more than a few paces before he went down, shot through the legs — not by the machine gunners, but by an unseen Japanese sniper. It literally looked as if the rug had been yanked out from under him — if that rug had been a dusty street.
“I’m hit, I’m hit!” he screamed.
To everyone’s amazement, it was the skinny clerk who was the first over the wall. He moved so fast that he must have caught even the enemy sniper by surprise, because the next shot went wide, ricocheting off one of the stones in the wall.
“Where the hell is he?” Deke shouted, desperately scanning the rooftops and windows for the Japanese sniper. Each open window looked dark and menacing, but empty.
He had no idea where the enemy sniper was hiding.
Nonetheless, he fired at an open window. With any luck, the sniper wouldn’t know that the bullet hadn’t been headed in his direction. He might just keep his head down long enough to get Alphabet to the wall.
He fumbled with the bolt, struggling to get another round in the chamber. Damn, this fever had left him weak as a kitten.
The clerk was struggling to drag Alphabet to safety. Alphabet was trying to help him, but his legs were almost useless. He was just so much deadweight.
Another bullet struck the ground near them, closer this time.
They needed to get moving, because the sniper wouldn’t miss again.
Deke heard the shot but still had no idea where the enemy sniper was lurking. Frantically, he used the scope to scan the windows up and down the street, but he came up empty.
Yoshio went over the wall to help retrieve Alphabet. Like the clerk, he was small and spry, and the two of them working together managed to get Alphabet to the wall.
A bullet bounced off a rock and careened away with a spine-shivering twang. It was clear that the enemy sniper was about to zero them in.
Philly helped drag Alphabet over. All four men sprawled in the shelter of the wall, breathing heavily. By some miracle, they had just escaped with their lives. Maybe Deke had rattled the other sniper just enough to keep him from getting a clear shot.
But Alphabet was not out of the woods. He was bleeding heavily, blood running everywhere. This wasn’t like the previous bullet that had only grazed his neck.
“Dammit, it’s just my luck to get shot again,” Alphabet said.
“He’s hit bad,” Philly said. Automatically, he shouted, “Medic!”
But out here at the knife’s edge of the advance, there were no medics to be found.
“Forget it,” Rodeo said. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding ourselves. Yoshio, you’re the closest thing we’ve got to a doc. What should we do?”
It was clear that Alphabet had been shot through the legs, one bullet passing right through both thighs. The copious amount of blood now staining the ground could only mean that the bullet had struck an artery.
They had seen it all before. A wound that a soldier might have hobbled away was a different story when the bullet had opened up an artery.
A man had only so much precious blood inside him. They were in a race against time if they hoped to save Alphabet.
“We need a tourniquet,” Yoshio said.
“Here, use this,” said Deke, who had stripped the sling off his rifle. He tossed it to Yoshio, who quickly wrapped the sling around the upper part of the leg that was bleeding the most. He used a stick to twist the sling tight — then tighter still.
Alphabet yelped in pain.
“I am sorry,” Yoshio said, grunting with the effort of tightening the tourniquet. “The bleeding must be stopped.”