He turned to join the fight, but to his surprise, the tank’s banzai charge had been met by a line of enemy tanks. The bigger, well-armored enemy tanks were making short work of the Japanese tanks. Behind the enemy tanks, he saw that a fresh wave of American troops had arrived. Already, the Japanese were being overwhelmed.
“Follow me,” Okubo said curtly. He began heading for the relative safety of the jungle. He knew that he could take up a position there and wreak havoc on the American troops who followed the retreating Japanese.
He ran hard and fast, carrying the rifle across his chest, Kimura running behind. In so many places, it was difficult not to step on the bodies of his dead or wounded countrymen. So many fallen, he thought. Their sheer fury had come close to defeating and overwhelming the Americans, but in the end, it had not been enough.
They reached the shelter of the jungle and kept going, pressing deeper into the shadowy interior.
As it turned out, it was a good thing that he did.
In the distance, he heard the telltale scream of incoming fire. The American navy had finally unleashed their big guns. They would not shell the field that was so close to their own troops. They must be targeting the jungle cover.
The jungle that he and Kimura were now in.
“Run!” he shouted at Kimura.
They plunged deeper into the jungle, heedless of the sharp-edged leaves that sliced at their hands and faces — or the vines that tried to trip them. He could hear the final scream of the first shells descending.
The resulting explosion picked him up off his feet and hurled him deeper into the jungle. He was thrown through the air, arms and legs flying, air ripped from his lungs. His mind flashed back to being a boy playing at the beach, when he’d been caught by a big wave that tumbled him underwater. Both then and now, he gasped for breath.
He landed among deep ferns and undergrowth. Dimly, he was aware of Kimura landing next to him.
The bombardment shook the ground. Trees shattered and splintered. Flashes of fire blinded him. Okubo saw no point in false bravado and burrowed as far as he could into the tangled logs and brush as the bombs fell.
Fortunately for Okubo and Kimura, they had been deep enough into the jungle to be spared. Any Japanese at the jungle’s edge had surely been obliterated. His ears ringing, Okubo extricated himself from his hiding place once the bombardment had ended. He inspected his rifle, pleased that it had escaped any serious damage.
“Let me see that arm,” he said gruffly to Kimura, who stood nearby, looking dazed. “If you lose too much blood or it becomes infected, you won’t be of any use.”
Deftly, he bandaged Kimura’s wound, given to him earlier by the American sniper when the private had been hidden inside the tank. When he was finished, he grunted in satisfaction, then started deeper into the jungle.
Wincing from the pain in his arm, Kimura followed.
Chapter Sixteen
Hours after the failed Japanese attack, the soldiers of the sniper squad sat in their foxholes, smoking cigarettes and drinking rusty water.
“We showed those Japs, didn’t we?” Philly said, gazing out at the vast number of bodies strewn across the empty no-man’s-land between the foxholes and the line of jungle. In the growing heat of the day, the bodies had already begun to swell and decompose. The breeze carried the odor of rotting human flesh. Even men who didn’t ordinarily smoke lit up cigarettes.
“I reckon we did,” Deke replied. He found the sight of so many dead to be awe-inspiring. He was also saddened by it, but he pushed that thought from his mind. The Japanese had brought this on themselves. It might seem like a massacre in hindsight, but there was no forgetting that, in the predawn darkness, the Japanese had swarmed out of the jungle in a terrifying banzai attack.
Philly looked over at Yoshio. “Kind of awful to think it might be your distant cousins starting to stink out there, isn’t it?”
Yoshio shrugged. “I do not know if they are my cousins. But I do know that they are the enemy.”
Philly shook his head and took a deep drag on his cigarette. “You Japs show about as much emotion as a bowl of rice, except when you’re riled up. When you’re riled up, look out! Those banzai bastards were plenty riled up, for all the good it did them. Yoshio, your cousins are good and dead now.”
Yoshio’s only response was to move as far away from Philly as the foxhole permitted. He pushed past Deke in the process, and Deke could feel the anger radiating off Yoshio like steam off a radiator. Maybe the comment about those being his dead cousins out there had stung more than he wanted to say.
Deke gave Philly a look and a slight shake of his head, sending a signal to knock it off. As far as Deke was concerned, Yoshio might look like a Jap, but he had fought like an American.
One of their gruesome tasks upon returning to the line had been to clear out the foxholes. They had added the American bodies to the neat line of dead, while the dead Japanese had been tossed unceremoniously into the scattered bodies in the no-man’s-land.
To his surprise, Deke had found a new spare boot in the belly of the foxhole, along with other discarded gear and endless brass shell casings. He didn’t want to think too much about what had happened to the owner of the boot — or why there was just one.
The wounded, including a few Japanese who had somehow survived in spite of their best efforts to die for the Emperor, had been carried back to the beachhead, where they awaited transport to the navy ships. It was a slow process, impeded by a strong wind that had stirred up the surf crashing across the coral reef and making passage difficult for the smaller craft. Many wounded didn’t survive the wait.
The American dead had been lined up in neat rows, awaiting the graves registration and the burial detail. Victory had been won dearly. Hundreds of soldiers and marines had died defending the beachhead. The fighting had been so brutal, with casualties caused by everything from tank rounds to grenades to bayonets — up close and personal.
Yet the butcher’s bill had been far greater for the enemy. They had cleared away the dead Japanese from the immediate vicinity of the line of foxholes, pitching the bodies into the no-man’s-land where the scattered dead already lay, many of them mowed down by machine-gun fire. For long stretches, it was entirely possible to step from body to body, without ever touching the ground. The burned, scorched remains of the Japanese tanks punctuated the field.
Beyond the killing field, the jungle began. The survivors of the banzai attack had withdrawn into the jungle cover, only to be caught in the bombardment of the big navy guns. There was no telling how many enemy dead lay among the shattered trunks and torn ground. It was doubtful that anyone could have survived the shelling.
The American troops kept to their foxholes, awaiting another attack, but it seemed unlikely that there were enough enemy troops left to mount one.
“What do you think is next for us?” Philly wondered.
“For now, I reckon we sit here and bake until the brass figures out what to do with us.” It wasn’t pleasant, sitting in the foxholes without any shelter from the sun. Deke was glad of his wide-brimmed hat. Still, he could feel his skin beginning to redden and burn wherever the sun touched it. The sunburn made his scars hurt. Every now and then he felt a breeze touch his sunburned skin, and the fresh air reminded him wistfully of the mountains back home.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the tropical sun. Some men had abandoned common sense by taking off their helmets, even though they remained in a combat zone. The heat and humidity hung over everything like a blanket. Again, the growing smell of the dead didn’t help.