Clutching the rifle in his left hand, Deke grabbed for the bowie knife that he had stuck in the wall of the trench. His hand closed around the bone handle, and he pulled it free. Again, he had to dodge away as the Japanese soldier swung the tantō at him. As the momentum of the enemy soldier’s swing carried his arm away, Deke jabbed with the knife. The razor-sharp blade sank into the soldier’s belly. Deke shoved it the rest of the way in and buried the knife to the hilt.
At that moment, Yoshio hit the Japanese soldier over the head with his rifle barrel. Deke yanked the knife free, and the enemy soldier sank to his knees, several inches of mountain-forged steel having carved a hole in his belly. Yoshio hit the enemy soldier on the head again, and he finally went down.
No more soldiers rushed at them out of the darkness. It had been a desperate fight, lasting no more than a few minutes, but it had felt like an eternity. Deke found himself gasping for breath. That Jap was crazy as a mad dog. He stuck the knife back in the wall of the trench and got both hands on the rifle again, ready for whatever came next.
Up and down the trench, similar scenes were playing out. Sometimes the GIs got the Japanese before they threw their grenades into the trench; sometimes they didn’t. It was a brutal game of luck and timing, with life or death being the stakes. Finally the Japanese seemed to exhaust themselves. Those attackers who had survived slipped back into the enemy defenses to lick their wounds and regroup.
“That’s it, that’s it. Cease fire! We got them all!” Lieutenant Steele shouted. Up and down the trench, other officers and sergeants called out the same orders. Those shouts were soon followed by others.
“Medic!” someone called desperately. “Oh, for the love of God, where’s the doc? Hurry it up!”
Deke kept his eyes trained on the darkness, but asked, “Philly? Yoshio? You fellas all right?”
“Yes,” Yoshio said quietly.
“I dunno,” Philly replied after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s too soon to tell. Ask me in the morning.”
Deke knew just what he meant. There would likely be more attacks by the Japanese, each one increasingly desperate. It was going to be a long night.
With the coming of night, Ikeda and his snipers welcomed a chance to join the attacks taking place against the American position. They had been killing from a distance, but this would be an opportunity to make the fight up close and personal. The stalemate must end, he thought. The Americans must be pushed off this hill.
A young officer organized the attack, leading a group of about fifty men against the enemy. All around the hill, similar attacks were being organized, but this seemed to be the largest group. Ikeda saw that the strategy was to overwhelm the Americans by attacking from several points at once.
And then what? Before darkness descended, he had seen the numbers of troops still arriving on the beach. If they pushed these soldiers off the hill, the Americans would only send more.
Due to attrition, the junior officers seemed to be getting younger and younger. The young officer was armed with a sword and a pistol. He appeared almost gleeful, as if he could not wait to die for the Emperor and for Japan. Ikeda was not much older than the lieutenant, but he couldn’t help thinking, You young fool.
“It is easy enough to die,” Ikeda muttered. “Let’s try killing a few of the enemy first.”
“Sir?” asked one of his sogekihei snipers who crouched nearby.
“Never mind.”
Many of the Japanese soldiers had forgone their rifles or carbines and had laden themselves with hand grenades to maximize the damage against the enemy. The strategy was to get in among the Americans and kill as many as possible with the grenades. Several soldiers expressed their eagerness to die in the process. Others simply accepted their fate grimly and silently. They might not want to die, but they had little choice.
“Hang back and let the men with the grenades do their work,” Ikeda quietly told his handful of men. He did not want to be overheard by the fanatical young lieutenant, who might think of them as cowards. But Ikeda did not see the point of dying needlessly. If all the soldiers were killed, there would be no one left to fight. A broken knife does not cut. “Use your rifles to pick off any enemy soldiers that you see; then we will withdraw. We will live to fight another day.”
As expected, the lieutenant drew his sword and led the attack. In the darkness, Ikeda could see the glint of the officer’s blade going down the hill. The group moved slowly at first, as quietly as possible. They picked up speed as they crossed the final few yards in front of the American position. It was hard to make out anything in the darkness, and the attackers spread out and became disorganized. Were they even going in the right direction? Once again, Ikeda caught a glimpse of the sword bobbing up and down as the officer ran.
“Follow me,” he whispered, and led his squad that way.
At first it seemed as if the Japanese might fall upon the unsuspecting Americans in total surprise. However, something gave them away — perhaps the scuff of a boot on a rock, or the metallic clink of a string of grenades as the Japanese ran.
The Americans opened fire into the darkness, one of their machine guns blazing in the night. Rapid muzzle flashes from rifles followed, the Americans having the advantage of the rapid-firing M1 rifles and their BAR weapons. A flare was launched, bathing the scene in ghostly shades of white. The hillside that had been cloaked in darkness was now revealed, including the running figures of Japanese soldiers.
“Get down!” Ikeda ordered his men. There was no hope of reaching the trench without being cut down. “Fire! Choose your targets!”
He got to one knee, put his rifle to his shoulder, and fired at one of the enemy machine gunners illuminated by the muzzle flashes. The gun fell silent.
Ikeda had made sure to be in the attack that hit the American position roughly where the enemy sniper was located. But in the confusion, it was impossible to tell whom he was shooting at.
He saw their lieutenant, screaming a battle cry now, slashing with his sword as he leaped down into the trench. There were two quick muzzle flashes, and the lieutenant went down.
All along the line came the sound of explosions as the attackers set off their grenades. Even from this distance, he felt the concussion in his bones. He soon heard the screams of the wounded and the Americans shouting for medics.
Medics made good targets. When he spotted one of the medics with his white armband in the flashes of light, he shot him.
The attack had been savage. There was no doubt about that. But the Americans had clearly been expecting it, and their overwhelming firepower soon brought it to an end. There was no one left to order a retreat and no one to follow such an order, anyhow. Of the assault force, Ikeda and his men were the only ones who returned. This was no way to win a war, Ikeda thought.
During the night, orders came to withdraw into the deep caves and tunnels that honeycombed the hillside.
“The Americans will have to dig us out!” an officer said gleefully. It sounded like Major Noguchi. “They will never take this hill!”
Perhaps it was a sound strategy, perhaps not. The hillside definitely offered deep defenses. However, Ikeda had no desire to fight from underground, trapped like a rat. Perhaps that strategy suited Major Noguchi, who had dressed for his own funeral today, but Ikeda had other plans.
Before first light, when the American planes would begin to fly again, Ikeda led his men into the jungle.