“Can you believe it?” Philly managed to say, barely able to talk. His laughter faded into a few chuckles, then weary silence. “I can’t believe it. We’re still alive.”
“For now,” Deke muttered.
Just a few weeks later, Deke stared into a different darkness, the one in the cramped sleeping quarters of a troopship. Guam and even the raid on Hill 522 were now behind him. He was lying in his narrow bunk aboard the ship waiting to take them back to Leyte. He felt the ship rolling in the ocean swell. That wasn’t something he’d ever get used to, and he’d be glad to get back on land.
Then again, more Japanese would be waiting for them when they returned to Leyte. There might be more nights like the one on Guam.
He couldn’t help but wonder if they’d be as lucky when they faced the Japanese this time around. Deke tended to think of luck being a limited commodity, like moonshine in a mason jar. Sip by sip, sooner or later, that ’shine ran out.
Deke just hoped that his own jar stayed full for as long as possible.
CHAPTER TWO
Aboard USS Elmore, Deke wasn’t the only one tossing and turning in his bunk. An air of anxious anticipation permeated the ship, so thick that you could cut it with a combat knife.
“How long do you think we’ll be on this damn ship?” Philly asked for about the hundredth time.
“I ain’t the captain — or the admiral, or whoever is in charge of this tub,” Deke replied, for what felt like the hundredth time. “And I sure as hell ain’t General MacArthur. Why don’t you go ask him?”
It wasn’t the answer Philly wanted. “Aw, stuff a sock in it, you ugly redneck.”
Philly rolled over and stared at the bulkhead, where he had entertained himself by scratching profane words into the paint. He could shout them all he wanted, but etching the words into the side of the ship was so much more satisfying.
Deke wouldn’t have let anyone else talk to him the way Philly did. Being called “ugly” had a bite to it, considering that Deke really was ugly, thanks to the scars raking one side of his face. He had gotten into fights over a lot less. But an insult from Philly ran off him like rain off a rock.
Besides, he had learned to listen to Philly in the same way that some folks listened to the radio. When you got tired of what you were hearing, you just tuned it out.
To be honest, Deke didn’t blame Philly for being in a bad mood. Who wasn’t? They all felt miserable aboard this ship. They had been extracted from Leyte just a few days ago and had welcomed being on the ship — for about five minutes, until the boredom set in.
They had been picked up by the ship after the patrol had been sent to Leyte ahead of the invasion to neutralize the massive Japanese battery on Hill 522. Those guns would have played hell with the US fleet that would soon arrive in Leyte Gulf. The successful mission had not given them any kind of free pass. Patrol Easy would be taking part in the invasion of the Philippines.
As bad as Patrol Easy’s behind-the-lines mission had been on Leyte, they were just about ready to go back if it meant a chance for fresh air and activity. Maybe that was what the army was trying to do, Deke decided — drive them all up the wall until they were begging to fight the Japs again.
As if by unspoken agreement, nobody had talked much about what had happened on that Philippine island. In fact, they had been ordered not to talk about it. Maybe it hadn’t quite been a secret mission, but the higher-ups didn’t want word to get out about how well fortified the Japs had been on that island. They didn’t want the troops to get discouraged before they even landed on the beach.
There had been a price to pay for their silence, however. Another squad of snipers had somehow managed to get the credit for the mission. You could thank the rumor mill for that. Maybe it was because those other guys looked the part. They had been adopted as a pet project by a colonel named Woodall who had managed to get them outfitted with the army’s new camouflage uniforms, M1 rifles with scoped sights, and even their own special badge. They had even picked up a name — Woodall’s Scouts. In comparison, Patrol Easy had the appearance of a motley crew of rejects from other units — which they basically were.
The scuttlebutt on the ship had it that Woodall’s Scouts had done the dirty work on Leyte — at least, that was the story going around whenever men from different units found themselves trading rumors.
“I hate those idiots,” Philly said, watching Woodall’s Scouts doing target practice from the stern one day, using the seagulls that trailed in the ship’s wake as targets.
The marksmanship practice had drawn a crowd of bored sailors and soldiers, who had quickly been impressed by the crack shooting with the semiautomatic sniper rifles. In comparison, Patrol Easy was equipped with battered Springfield rifles that Lieutenant Steele had managed to obtain by begging, borrowing, and at least a bit of threatening. Though accurate, the bolt-action rifles did not have the higher rate of fire of the M1 weapons.
All in all, US forces approached sniper warfare in a haphazard manner compared to the Japanese, who viewed the use of snipers as an important tactic against the enemy. Likewise, the Krauts gave special attention to training snipers.
“You’d think Lieutenant Steele would say something and set the record straight that it wasn’t Woodall’s Scouts who took out that battery,” Philly griped. “It was us, dammit.”
“If Steele doesn’t care, why should we?” Deke pointed out. “Just so long as the job got done.”
Philly scoffed. “You know what? You sound just like him. I know I shouldn’t care about what the latrine mayors have to say, but dammit, I do.”
Deke grinned. A latrine mayor was slang for the gossips who liked to stand around jawing and spreading rumors, often in the long lines to use the heads on the crowded ship.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head,” Deke said. “Woodall’s Scouts will get their nice uniforms dirty soon enough. We both know that shooting Japs ain’t the same as shooting seagulls from the back of a ship.”
Deke thought back again to the mission. Patrol Easy’s job had been to make sure that the island stronghold was a lot less well fortified. Similar missions had been carried out by Army Rangers on several of the small islands ringing Leyte Gulf in an effort to knock out the outlying Japanese defenses.
The Rangers had their hands full elsewhere, so the snipers of Patrol Easy had been sent ashore to take out the enemy battery located on Hill 522. Named for the hill’s height — exactly 522 feet tall — the hill had been turned into a heavily fortified position by the Japanese.
This hadn’t been just any gun battery. The guns were twins to the massive batteries aboard the Yamato, Japan’s most formidable battleship. It seemed that the Japanese had made a few spare versions of these guns and didn’t want them to go to waste. They might have been short on massive battleships, but they had plenty of islands that needed defending. The range of the guns enabled them to reach far out to sea, and special shells made them highly effective antiaircraft weapons.
Fortunately Patrol Easy had knocked out those formidable guns. They couldn’t take all the credit, having been joined by a couple of demolition experts on loan from the marines and a band of Filipino freedom fighters. If they hadn’t been successful, USS Elmore and any other ship in the invasion fleet would have been sitting ducks for those big guns.
For Deke, it had put his skill with a rifle into perspective. Sure, he could hit just about anything he could see, but those Japanese artillery boys had apparently been able to hit even what they couldn’t see. They had possessed the ability to sink targets out of sight beyond the horizon. One of the navy gunners had explained how such feats involved lots of mathematical calculations and figuring the azimuth. Deke could figure fast as lightning in his head what others needed a pencil and paper to do, but he’d never had any real formal schooling. He had decided right then and there to leave the azimuths to the navy boys.