Then again, there hadn’t been any kettles lurking in a coral reef to drown them. Nobody had been shooting at them. The most dangerous obstacle they’d faced were local girls, who had come down to the water to watch before being shooed away by one of the officers, much to the disappointment of the men.
In that hot subtropical weather, the obstacle course was never anyone’s favorite activity. The problem for Ben was a wooden wall that they had been expected to scale, usually with rifles slung over their shoulders and rucksacks on their backs. To be sure, it hadn’t been easy. No matter how much the sergeant screamed, Ben simply hadn’t been able to propel himself over that wall.
“I just can’t do it, Deke,” Ben had said.
“Here, let me get under you.” Deke had laced his hands together like a stirrup, gotten one of Ben’s boots in his hands, and launched him upward like he was tossing a hay bale. “Grab hold!”
Ben had gotten his fingertips wedged into the space between two boards, hanging there, his feet scrabbling for a grip. Meanwhile, Deke had scaled the wall and straddled the top. He reached down, grabbed Ben’s hand, and pulled him up and over the top of the wall.
By any measure, it was a challenge, but Deke’s frame was lean and ropy from long years of farmwork, not to mention prowling endless miles through the hills back home. Each arm was like the iron handle of a barnyard water pump.
The sergeant hadn’t been happy. “I don’t ever want to see that again!” he shouted. “If a man can’t hold his own, he deserves to get left behind.”
Now Ben was getting left behind for good. Gently, he lowered Ben to the blood-soaked earth.
The battle was still going on, but Deke had tuned it out. He had managed to ignore the rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire and the crack of rifles, even the dull whump of grenades exploding. At that very moment, a whole squad of Japanese soldiers could have appeared, and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Gradually, the sounds of war reached him again. Down on the beach, Sergeant Hawley shouted his name. “Hey, Cole? You up there? What’s it look like?”
Deke ignored him. He stood up but felt as though he was in a daze. He picked up Ben’s rifle, which still had a fixed bayonet. Against orders, Deke had slipped off his bayonet as soon as no one was looking, figuring that it would just get in the way.
He walked over to the dead Japanese. He was surprised at how small the man looked. In death, he seemed to have shrunk, and his baggy uniform was loose on him. His helmet, with grass stuck into it, had fallen off, but other bits of branches and grass had been tied to his arms and even his back — no wonder Deke had almost stepped on him.
A man that size in their squad would have been called a shrimp, with a nickname to match. They’d been told that most enemy soldiers they would face were less than five feet tall, several inches shorter than the average American GI. Deke suspected that the size of the Japanese had been emphasized to give the GIs confidence against an unknown enemy. Yet this Japanese shrimp had been deadly enough.
Deke had killed him, but it hadn’t helped Ben. He felt a sudden rage jolt him into action. He lifted Ben’s rifle high and stabbed the corpse using the bayonet. Shouting now, he rammed the bayonet into the dead soldier again and again.
He was yanking the blade free when the rest of the unit entered the jungle behind him.
“Cole, what the hell are you doing?” the sergeant demanded.
Deke kept bayoneting the dead Japanese.
“Hey!”
Finally, Deke stopped and turned toward the sergeant. He had Ben’s blood on him, along with spatters of blood on his face from the dead enemy soldier. His eyes glared from the mask of blood. The sergeant took a step back.
“Private Hemphill is dead,” Deke said.
“Yeah, I can see that.” The sergeant stared at him. “Holy hell. I’m not surprised that Hemphill already bought it. I figured he wouldn’t last long.”
The sergeant turned away, shaking his head.
“He shot that Jap,” Deke lied. He couldn’t give Ben a medal, but he could give him this much. “He shot that Jap and saved my life, but the Jap got him.”
“Then what’s with the bayonet?”
“I wanted to make sure that Jap was dead.”
“You can be sure. That Nip looks like chop suey.”
Deke tossed the bloody rifle away, then reached down to pick up his own M1.
Several soldiers in the squad had gathered around Ben and then stared at the dead enemy soldier. Although they had taken a lot of fire on the beach, this was the first Japanese soldier that they had seen, dead or alive.
Egan came over with the dog, which was on a leash. “Get a good nose full of that Jap, Nelly,” the handler said. “That’s what you’re smelling for. You smell that, girl, you let us know.”
The dog sniffed at the dead enemy soldier, then looked up at his handler and wagged her tail to show that she was ready.
One of the soldiers went to the enemy’s body and began turning out the pockets. “Hey, look at this,” he said, holding up a piece of paper. “Maybe it’s some kind of orders. What do you think, Sarge?”
“Can you read Japanese?”
“No. Looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to me.”
“Then what I think is that it’s useless. Besides, it’s probably just a letter.”
“A letter?”
“Yeah. Do you have any letters in your pocket?”
“Sure I do.”
“Don’t you think the Japs might too?”
A couple of other men had gone over to help search the body, but mostly they were hoping for souvenirs. Somebody grabbed the dead Jap’s knife, and somebody else got his belt buckle. Conlon, carrying the sniper rifle, used the toe of his boot to poke at the Jap’s weed-covered helmet.
“What a bunch of goddamn buzzards,” the sergeant said. “Listen, next time be careful. You never know when one of these bodies is booby-trapped.”
“You got it, Sarge.”
The sergeant had picked up the Japanese rifle and shucked the bolt out, then tossed it into the weeds. He threw the rifle itself in another direction. Then he picked up Ben’s rifle. “We’re not leaving any weapons here for the Japs to use against us. Nothing gets left behind, and if it does, then disable that weapon. Everybody got that?”
“Yes, sir!”
He took a closer look at Ben’s rifle. “You know what? This rifle has not been fired. Cole, I thought you said Hemphill shot the Jap?”
Deke didn’t answer.
The sergeant frowned but didn’t press the issue. “I guess you got confused. What matters is that the Jap is dead and you’re not,” he said. “OK, let’s move out.”
“What about Hemphill?” somebody asked.
“Graves registration will find him,” the sergeant said. “No point dragging his sorry dead ass back down to the beach unless you want to end up just like him.”
Nobody said anything, but nobody liked the thought of leaving Hemphill’s body behind. Maybe he hadn’t been much of a soldier, but he’d been one of their own.
“Look, it was a hell of a thing getting this far, and we’ve already lost some men, but the war is just getting started for us,” the sergeant said. “You saw how that Jap was camouflaged. Keep your eyes open. Hell, they could be anywhere. Egan, get out front with that mutt. See if her nose does any good.”
The soldiers started forward into the jungle, following the sergeant. They moved around Deke like water in a creek flows around a boulder, giving him a wide berth.
“Batshit crazy,” somebody muttered.
“Knock it off,” another soldier said under his breath. “Let’s see how you do when the time comes.”