The mission had been a success, but that success had come at a price. Deke had seen things that he wished he could unsee, such as the execution of the Filipino guerrillas who had helped them with the mission. Those poor bastards — the ones who hadn’t been killed in the raid itself — had the bad luck to be captured by the Japanese and had literally been put to the sword.
That had been hard to watch. Deke shuddered at the mental picture of their headless corpses staining the dirt red.
Actions like that made the enemy hard to fathom. Who the hell were these Japanese, anyhow? Barbarians, plain and simple. To shoot a prisoner was bad enough in Deke’s book, but to cut off his head with a sword went beyond understanding.
Then there had been that Japanese sniper. He’d been a crack shot, managing to pin down Deke and Philly on Hill 522. Deke had gone head-to-head against that sniper, who was every bit his match. If anyone thought that the Japs were bad shots, they were sadly mistaken.
They’d only just barely managed to slip away. The enemy sniper had then chased them relentlessly through the Leyte jungle as Deke and the rest of Patrol Easy made their way to the beach, where they had been picked up by a navy rescue boat.
Deke didn’t like boats or water all that much, but he’d been damn glad to see that boat.
All in all, it had been a hellacious adventure they’d been lucky to return from.
Now they were on a ship headed right back to that godawful place.
The sense of anxiety they all felt was compounded by the fact that the interior of the ship was hot and smelly from so many men in close quarters. The ventilation system, such as it was, might have been adequate for a ship in the chilly reaches of the Atlantic, where the emphasis was on staying warm. It wasn’t hard to believe that the ship had been built in Bath, Maine, where the temperature rarely exceeded eighty degrees even on the hottest July day. However, the ship’s systems were not designed for the tropical environment. In these cramped quarters, the constant heat and humidity became almost unbearable at times. The porthole was propped open, but it was at least ninety degrees and steamy.
It was hard to describe the particular hell that was being in limbo in these less-than-ideal conditions, all the while knowing that the only way out involved running toward more Japanese machine guns.
At first, despite the discomforts belowdecks, many of the GIs on the ship had reassured themselves that at least they didn’t have to sleep with one eye open, as they’d had to on Guam. That notion soon proved false. Japanese aircraft did their best to target any ships that they came across. At night, the interior of the ship was often dark as the belly of a whale due to a strict policy against any lighting that might make the ship a target for enemy night fighters or bombers. The Japanese Navy also remained a threat — especially the submarines that lurked beneath the waves.
It was probably the thought of a submarine attack that caused the most fear, given that an attack might come without warning and without a chance to fight back. Soldiers didn’t like to feel helpless.
“One minute you’re sleeping in your bunk,” Philly had philosophized. “The next minute you’re shark bait.”
“Don’t you ever shut up?” Deke groused. He couldn’t help but squirm at the thought of going down with the ship. As a mountain boy born and raised, he wasn’t fond of the sea.
USS Elmore was no battleship, but she wasn’t helpless, either, against the marauding Japanese Navy or aircraft that hunted for American ships. Every square inch of the designated attack transport ship was crowded with soldiers and equipment. The few spare inches of the ship’s deck bristled with the equipment of naval warfare, including five-inch guns, antiaircraft batteries, and antisubmarine depth charges. Of course, there wasn’t much that the ship’s crew could do to defend against a surprise attack.
For the soldiers, as if the threat of Japanese attack and the conditions aboard ship weren’t bad enough, they also had to contend with monotony. This may have been the greatest enemy of all. The boredom seemed to make everything worse. According to a few GIs who had experienced jail, life on the ship wasn’t so different in this regard.
Soldiers who had defended one another to within an inch of their lives during the fight for Guam found themselves ready to rip out each other’s throats at the slightest provocation.
It all served as a reminder that this was no pleasure cruise. They were required to stay belowdecks most of the time, in their cramped and airless living quarters, sweating in the heat. They were allowed up on deck for only a few precious hours each day for fresh air and exercise.
This policy wasn’t deliberate cruelty on the part of the officers — there were simply too many soldiers and not enough space on deck to give them free range of the ship. It wasn’t that the ship would become top-heavy and capsize — it was just that the crew needed elbow room to operate the vessel.
Even when on deck, the GIs couldn’t help but feel a little like cattle crowded into the stockyards, anxiously scanning the skies for the first appearance of an enemy plane with the dreaded “meatball” symbols on the wings.
For far too many soldiers and sailors, the sight of the dreaded Rising Sun symbol had meant impending death. There was a reason the Rising Sun was the color of blood. If enemy planes suddenly appeared and raked the deck, there would be nowhere for the soldiers to go. They were sitting ducks, and they all knew it.
So the soldiers spent their time belowdecks as best they could. The atmosphere remained stifling, with not nearly enough air flowing in through the portholes. What breeze blew in was too warm and humid to be refreshing. Many men stripped down to their boxer shorts, but the sweat still streamed off them. Destroyers had the nickname “tin cans,” but they weren’t the only ship where the crew and human cargo felt like sardines.
For Deke, this went beyond simple boredom. Deke couldn’t define it, but something in him faded when he was away from the outdoors for too long. The mountains energized him, as did the cool rush of wind in his face. Even the hushed jungle brought him to life. Being stuck in the belly of a troopship, not so much.
As a boy, he had spent nearly all his time outdoors, either working on the farm or roaming the valleys and forested peaks, often armed with a rifle or shotgun. He had known most of the country for miles around like the back of his hand. More than a few times, he had wrapped up a chunk of salt pork and maybe a couple of apples and walked deep into the mountains. Deke had welcomed losing himself among the high wooded peaks in all kinds of weather, from snow to the fall days when the clouds came right down to the peaks. There had been bear back in the deep mountains, bobcat, deer. Deke hadn’t always been there to hunt, but just to explore. There hadn’t been anyone else around, certainly no one to stare at his scars or ask questions, which suited him just fine.
“I’m afraid that one of these times you ain’t gonna come back,” Sadie had said. “You’ll build yourself an itty-bitty cabin back in them woods and become a mountain man.”
That had sounded all right to Deke back then. In the belly of the crowded troopship, it sounded even better.