“What?” Philly asked.
“Nothin’.” Deke shook his head. No point in trying to explain himself.
A sergeant came around, looking for Yoshio. That in itself was a little unusual. Having been attached to the company as scout-snipers, the three of them — along with Danilo when he was around — were officially part of the company, yet somehow were not.
Captain Merrick had seemed to realize that they knew their business and left them to it. Most of the time, their job was to lead the column down the jungle trail, on the lookout for any threats of ambush. When there was trouble, they were the first to deal with it.
“You’re that guy who speaks Japanese?” the sergeant asked.
“Hai,” said Yoshio, who was not without his own sense of humor.
The sergeant stared at him a long beat, not without a little malice. Yoshio looked Japanese, and he sounded Japanese — some GIs just couldn’t get used to the idea that he wasn’t the enemy, even if he was as American as they were.
“Yeah, well,” the sergeant finally said, “Captain Merrick’s got a prisoner. He wants you to question him.”
Yoshio grabbed his rifle and helmet, which he’d taken off hoping for respite from the morning heat, and scrambled out of the foxhole.
Deke and Philly looked at each other, then grabbed their own gear and followed Yoshio out of the hole.
Captain Merrick had made his HQ in a foxhole near the center of the line of holes that delineated the company’s position at the perimeter of the airfield. The only concession to it being the HQ seemed to be that the hole was somewhat bigger, was also occupied by a radioman and the company’s last remaining medic, and, stretched across the top, had battered camouflage netting that struggled to block the harshest rays of the sun.
Crouching in the hole was Captain Merrick, leaning over a wounded Japanese soldier. The man was propped up against the sides of the foxhole. His arms hung limply at his sides, and it was evident that he wouldn’t have had the strength to sit up on his own. The soldier who had been a terrifying enemy a few short hours ago was nothing but a pathetic dying figure now.
Merrick was crouched over the wounded man and leaning forward as if to hear what the captured Japanese had to say. The man was speaking softly, but in his own language, leaving Merrick looking frustrated. At least the man was talking. If they wanted to find out what the enemy soldier had to say, they didn’t have much time.
The Japanese soldier groaned when Merrick touched him, but refused even a drink of water with a weak shake of his head. Deke always expected the enemy to be older somehow, battle-hardened warriors, but this Japanese looked like he might be nineteen or twenty, younger than Deke.
Deke could see a large open gash in the man’s thigh, almost to the bone. Thick, dark blood had collected in puddles around the wound, despite an effort to apply bandages. The smells lingering in the bottom of the foxhole were not good ones — sweaty bodies, mud wet from the dying man’s blood, a whiff of intestines.
Captain Merrick sat back on his haunches when he saw Yoshio slide into the foxhole.
“Sir,” said Yoshio. “You wanted to see me?”
Merrick nodded at the wounded prisoner. “This one is singing like a canary, but I’ll be damned if I can understand a word of that gibberish. You’re supposed to be an interpreter, right? Maybe you can make out what he’s saying. Headquarters has been on us to gather some intelligence. Something, anything, that they can use to give us an idea of how many Japs are still out here and what sort of supplies they have. See what you can find out.”
Yoshio changed places with the captain, leaning over the prisoner. The man’s eyes were shut — for all they knew, he might already be dead.
Although it was true that Yoshio was an interpreter, there had been precious few opportunities for him to use his language skills. Not many Japanese surrendered. The ones who were captured tended to be badly wounded, like this man, too weak to take their own lives or beyond caring.
Yoshio spoke a few words to the dying man, whose eyes flicked open in surprise at the sound of his native tongue.
He responded with a few halting words spoken quietly. To Deke’s ears, Japanese was a surprisingly harsh and guttural language. It seemed to roll around in the chest and the back of the throat before the words erupted like short, angry barks.
“What’s he saying?” Captain Merrick demanded.
“He says that he grew up on a farm outside the village of Shirakawa,” Yoshio answered. “As a boy, it was his job to tend the chickens and cattle. He had hoped to return there after the war and marry the daughter of a merchant in the village.”
“I doubt that HQ wants to know any of that, Private,” Merrick said. “Ask him how many more paratroopers there are. Where is their base? Where do they intend to drop next?”
Yoshio translated the captain’s questions into Japanese, but the wounded enemy paratrooper just shook his head and uttered a few guttural words in reply.
“Well?” Merrick demanded, having appeared to hang on every word. He seemed desperate to provide HQ with something that they could use.
“Sir, he says to look around the airfield. Do you not see the bodies fallen like flower petals? There are no more paratroopers coming.”
“All right, I suppose that’s something. Ask him how many planes left their base.”
Yoshio leaned close to do as Merrick ordered. The paratrooper’s words had been faint, and his chest barely rose up and down. Yoshio said something in Japanese, but there was no response. “That is it, sir. He is gone.”
“Dammit! HQ will be glad to know that there shouldn’t be any additional drops — if we can believe this Nip.”
“For what it is worth, I believe that he was telling the truth, sir.”
Merrick snorted. “You believe him, huh? What was he, a cousin of yours or something?”
“I interviewed my share of prisoners on Guam and now on Leyte, sir. Dying men tend to tell the truth.”
“If you say so, Private. From one Jap to another, right?”
“Sir—”
“That will be all. You are dismissed, Private. The rest of you, we’ll be moving out in an hour.”
The three of them exited the makeshift company HQ and headed back to their own foxhole.
“Got to say, Merrick was kind of an asshole back there,” Philly muttered once they were out of earshot of the captain.
Deke nodded in the direction of the burial detail. “I reckon you might be, too, if you were the one who had to write all those letters home.”
“Aw, Merrick can go screw himself,” Philly said. “We all know we can trust you, Yoshio.”
Yoshio gazed out over the field of Japanese dead beginning to bloat in the heat and didn’t say anything at all.
An hour later, as promised, the order came to move out, and they left the airfield and the stinking bodies behind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Leaving the airfield, Deke took point and led the company out. Guarding the airfield perimeter had been a brief respite. It might even have been easy duty if it hadn’t been for the Japanese paratrooper attack. Nobody had planned on that one, of course.
They moved down the jungle trail. Before long, they were supposed to arrive in the vicinity of Ormoc and link up with the troops fighting the Japanese stronghold there. But first there were many long miles of jungle to traverse.
The path was easy going at first but quickly changed the deeper they went into the forest. Leaves and shrubs crowded in from both sides of the trail, creating a tunnel of green and gloom. On the forest floor, decaying leaves and half-hidden tree roots wove a tangle that made their footing unsure, trying to trip up weary feet.
The air was humid and warm, and even in the shadows far beneath the jungle overstory the heat of the sun felt like an oven directed at their heads and shoulders.