“Our dignity is wounded, and you’re worried about their rifles.” Philly shook his head and reached out a hand as he got off his bunk. “Give that here a minute.”
“I thought that picture made you mad. You gonna put that in your scrapbook?”
“Hell, no, you dumb redneck. I’ve got to hit the head, and you know what? Now I’ve got the perfect use for that newspaper. Woodall’s Scouts are going to make a good asswipe.”
As it turned out, the business with Woodall’s Scouts wasn’t over yet. Deke and Philly were exercising on deck later that day when they ran into a couple of the scouts, recognizable by their camouflage uniforms. The uniforms looked a little ridiculous on the deck of a ship at sea, but Deke had to admit that the pattern would help the soldiers blend right into a jungle setting.
Philly promptly bumped into one of the men with such force that he nearly knocked him over.
“Hey, watch it!”
“Sorry, buddy,” Philly said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “I guess I didn’t see you with all that camouflage on.”
“Very funny, pal.” The soldier gave Philly a harder look and scowled. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you guys those snipers that the Japs shot the hell out of on Guam?”
“What do you mean, ‘shot the hell out of us’?”
“That’s what I heard,” the other man said. “That’s why Colonel Woodall organized a sniper unit, so that we’d have some actual countermeasures against the Japanese.”
Philly looked at Deke. “Do you hear that, country boy? That’s awfully fancy talk. Countermeasures.”
“You mean, like shooting Japanese snipers?” Deke asked Philly.
“That’s sure what it sounds like.” Philly turned back to the other man. “How many Japs have you shot?”
“None yet, but we’ll shoot plenty once we get ashore.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Philly considered. “I tell you what. Your best man against our best man. We’ll see who’s the better shot.”
“You’re on.”
It didn’t take long for word of the shooting contest to spread across the ship. Nothing broke up the boredom like a good fight — or a grudge shooting match, at least. When Patrol Easy reconvened on the stern with Woodall’s Scouts, they were joined by at least a hundred spectators. Naval officers had come out to watch, and they didn’t even have a dog in this fight. Colonel Woodall was there, looking smug even though the match hadn’t begun, but Lieutenant Steele was nowhere to be seen. The lieutenant had made himself scarce as hen’s teeth since coming aboard the ship.
“Let’s make this interesting,” Philly said. He held up a crisp new bill so that it fluttered in the wind. “Twenty bucks says you’ll be the first one to miss.”
Somebody whistled. That was serious money, close to what a working man earned in a week back home — or had earned. Wages had gone up since the start of the war.
The other man grinned. He introduced himself as Shaw. “It’ll be like taking money from a baby,” Shaw said.
“Oh, you’re not shooting against me,” Philly said. “I said best shot, remember? That’d be the Deacon here.”
Deke stepped forward, holding his battered Springfield rifle, which showed the wear and tear of the Guam campaign and the mission on Leyte. Shaw’s confident grin faded somewhat, but Deke’s appearance tended to do that to people. It was like encountering some backwoodsman here on the deck of USS Elmore.
“All right,” Shaw said. “I wouldn’t put that money back in your pocket just yet, if I were you. You’re about to lose it.”
They flipped a coin to see who went first. Deke called heads — and lost.
“Go on then,” Deke said. “Let’s see what you got.”
Shaw stepped up to the stern rail. It had been determined that their targets would be the seagulls trailing the ship’s wake. They were close enough to shore that the fleet had attracted flocks of sea birds eager for whatever scraps the ships jettisoned.
Hitting any target from the deck of the moving ship would have been difficult, but shooting a flying bird out of the sky was extra challenging. The gulls swooped and swerved, riding the air currents. Then again, there was no shortage of targets.
Shaw didn’t waste any time. He fired confidently, the shots almost equally spaced. Deke had to admire the new rifles, with their higher rate of fire. The Japanese didn’t have anything that compared — neither did the Germans, for that matter. The Garand M1 would be giving US troops a definite combat edge.
But in the end, sniper warfare came down to one well-placed bullet at a time. The rate of fire didn’t matter.
Looking on, Colonel Woodall held his fist high and pumped it in encouragement. “Attaboy, Shaw! Show ’em how it’s done!”
Shaw fired again. Another white bird pinwheeled out of the sky.
Deke shook his head. “Wasted meat.”
“You’d eat a pigeon?” Philly made a face.
“They’re seagulls.”
“What’s the difference? Rats with wings. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I sure hope you never invite me over for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“That bird being a seagull ain’t the point. Where I come from, you eat what you kill.”
Philly could see that Deke was in one of his moods, but he couldn’t resist. “Then see if you can shoot me a New York strip or maybe a porterhouse. Maybe even a good-size chicken. I sure would appreciate it.”
Then again, the gulls were not completely wasted. Gulls weren’t the only denizens of the sea following the ship, hoping for an easy meal. Sharks also cruised in the wake, snapping up the fallen birds. Like the birds, they welcomed whatever came their way from the ship, but it was also as if they knew that by biding their time, there might be even bigger rewards.
Here and there, the men on the stern could see the sudden swirl in the water where a bird was sucked down by a shark. The sight was more than a little disconcerting to men who might find themselves in that water if a Japanese sub got lucky with a torpedo.
Finally Shaw missed his sixth shot. The gull appeared to swoop just as he fired, unwittingly dodging the bullet. Nonetheless, a whoop rose as one from the throats of his fellow scouts. They seemed certain that Shaw’s show of marksmanship would be hard to beat — and they were probably right. Some of the squids who had gathered to watch managed to let out a cheer.
Even Deke had to admit that it was impressive shooting.
“Ain’t bad,” he said in acknowledgment to Shaw as he passed him at the stern rail.
“Yeah? Let’s see you beat that.”
After witnessing the results of the initial shooting, bets were being placed by sailors and soldiers in the crowd, the odds suddenly favoring Shaw. To the spectators, it seemed doubtful that Deke could do any better.
Even Deke wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.
Shooting birds on the wing was normally done with a shotgun because the spread of pellets gave the shooter a better chance of hitting the bird — a shooter didn’t need to be exact. Hitting a flying bird with a rifle required precision — and no small amount of luck.
Deke settled in at the rail. He had to think of these birds as stationary targets, but he had to be quick about it. There could be none of the usual lingering over a target. These would be hunting shots, as he’d done as a boy back home. An animal didn’t stay in the same position for long. Once your sights were lined up, you were best off to squeeze the trigger and be quick about it.
Through the scope, he could see several birds spring closer, flitting through the crosshairs. He let the sound of the shouting men behind him fade away. The wind seemed to be at his back as the ship forged ahead toward Leyte. He hoped that the wind wouldn’t interfere too much with his bullet once it left the muzzle.