Looking up, Deke saw that Shimizu was still standing above the foxhole. He had his rifle pointed toward the enemy and was blazing away, but he was making himself a target.
Cursing, Deke reached up and grabbed a handful of the fabric on Shimizu’s trousers and pulled him down. “What the hell are you doing? Get down.”
Shimizu tumbled into the foxhole just as something exploded nearby. The Japs were close enough now to throw grenades.
Deke shoved Shimizu off him and got back on the rifle. The Japs were practically on top of them by now. The Springfield didn’t have a bayonet, so he fired one last shot and drew his knife.
Lieutenant Steele was still mowing down the enemy using the shotgun. Each blast from the pump-action gun had a devastating effect but wasn’t enough to stop the enemy attack.
That was when the grenade bounced into the foxhole. Deke stared at it for a moment, figuring This is it.
Quick as lightning, Shimizu grabbed the grenade and threw it back at the Japanese. It detonated while it was still in the air, but they heard the screams as the grenade did its deadly work.
“Son of a bitch,” Deke muttered. “That was close.”
Then the Japanese were upon them. He saw a bayonet jabbing down at him and grabbed the rifle, his powerful farm boy’s muscles dragging the weapon out of the enemy’s grasp. Beside him, Steele leveled the shotgun and fired, taking the soldier out.
Another soldier fell into the foxhole, screaming bloody murder. Deke stabbed him in the belly, but the soldier kept fighting, too frenzied to realize that he had several inches of steel buried in his guts. To his relief, Philly clobbered the Jap in the head with the butt of his rifle, and the man went down for good.
The fight for control of the flank was over almost as quickly as it started. The flank remained anchored for now.
Meanwhile, the banzai charge had broken upon the Americans like a wave crashing against a sandcastle. Some places held, but others dissolved in the onslaught of the enemy as thousands of screaming Japanese soldiers struck, their bayonets flashing in the first light from the rising sun. All up and down the line, countless small fights for life and death broke out.
In places, the Japanese had so much momentum that they literally tumbled into the foxholes. Terrified GIs stabbed with their own bayonets or hacked with their knives as the Japanese fell upon them. Rifles fired on both sides. It was 1944, but it might have been a medieval battlefield where both sides hacked each other bloody.
A few of the Japanese didn’t even stop for the foxholes but leaped over them, dropping grenades as they went. The grenades exploded, leaving shattered GIs in their wake, while the Japanese soldiers charged on toward the beach itself, seemingly unstoppable.
As Deke watched, a Japanese officer rushed toward a machine-gun crew, his sword held high in one hand and a pistol in the other. A soldier rose to meet him, and the officer impaled him with the sword. He shot the other man with his pistol. With an effort, the officer tugged his sword free of the dying man and waved the bloody blade high, exhorting the Japanese troops to follow him.
Deke raised his rifle and shot the officer through the heart.
“We are supposed to capture a few officers to question them,” the Nisei interpreter protested, having seen Deke shoot the sword-wielding officer.
“You go on and capture all the officers you want,” Deke said, glaring at him. “Maybe if you had asked him real nice, he would have given up.”
“I’m just saying that if we get the chance, we should capture an officer.”
“You go on and capture all the Japs you want,” Deke said. “Me, I’m gonna try to keep them from killing us.”
All around them, the scene was one of utter confusion as the melee continued. GIs were fighting back with the butts of their rifles or even their trenching shovels. Incredibly, even more Japanese troops poured out of the woods.
The platoon leader was dead, stabbed to death with a bayonet, so Lieutenant Steele took charge of their section of the line — as much as anyone could take charge of chaos. He grabbed a couple of soldiers and shoved them toward the machine gun. “You two, get that machine gun back in action. I want a field of fire directly in front of us. Don’t let any more Japs reach this line.”
But no sooner had the machine-gun tracer fire begun spitting forth again than the gun fell silent. Both men slumped over the weapon, shot dead. Despite the chaos, no enemy had been nearby, so who had shot them?
“We’ve got us a sniper someplace out there,” Steele said, scanning the field before them in the growing daylight. “Deke, Philly, see what you can do about that.”
“You got it, Honcho.”
Chapter Twelve
Deke ran to a foxhole that was closer to where he thought the enemy sniper must be hiding. Philly followed. If they were going to take on a sniper, they needed cover. The foxhole was empty in the sense that a GI lay dead in the bottom of it, along with a dead Japanese soldier. The two lay entwined, almost like brothers, their faces serene.
Before he jumped into the foxhole, he noticed that Private Shimizu stood nearby, frozen in place, not seeming to know what to do. That dumb kid doesn’t even have a rifle, Deke thought. Don’t he know that he’s in the middle of a battle? He’s a sitting duck.
More troubling was the fact that aside from the uniform, Private Shimizu’s features were distinctly Japanese. How long would it be before a confused GI mistook Shimizu for one of the enemy? That was if a Japanese soldier didn’t find him first. Private Shimizu was in a double-jeopardy situation.
Deke grabbed the Nisei interpreter by the shoulder and shoved him toward the foxhole. “Get in!”
“What?”
“You heard me. Go on and get in there unless you want somebody to mistake you for one of these Nip bastards and shove a bayonet in your guts.”
That was all the explanation that Shimizu needed. He jumped into the foxhole just ahead of Deke but recoiled at the sight of the dead bodies.
“Keep your head down unless you want to join ’em,” Philly said. “We’ve got a sniper working us over.”
Deke pressed a pair of binoculars into Shimizu’s shaking hands. “Here, make yourself useful. See if you can spot where he’s shooting from.”
Shimizu nodded and started to stand up, binoculars pressed to his eyes. Philly grabbed him by the back of the belt and dragged him down. “What the hell? Stay down!”
“Sorry.”
“You are one dumb green bean, you know that? Besides, if you get nailed by that sniper and these binoculars get shot up, they’re gonna be hard to replace.”
Deke peered above the rim of the foxhole and scanned the landscape before them. The daylight was growing stronger now, dispelling the shadows and giving detail to the strewn boulders, shrubs, and even the jungle beyond. Truth be told, a sniper could be hidden anywhere. Japanese troops had finally stopped storming out of the jungle. A great many bodies lay scattered as far as Deke could see — perhaps hundreds of dead Japanese, cut down by the relentless machine-gun fire. He was a little awed by the sight. So many dead. But not all the prone bodies belonged to the dead. A few wounded enemy soldiers crawled through the grass on their hands and knees.
There weren’t any medics to treat these injured men — to be wounded was to be left behind and abandoned. Deke didn’t know the language, but it was clear that some cried out in agony, while many of the wounded still crawled forward, unwilling to abandon the attack. He noticed that there were no stragglers or even any wounded soldiers who had turned back. The Japanese seemed single-minded in their purpose of destroying the American position. For them, there was no retreat. The only way was forward to victory — or eternity.