“Cole, get your ass back here,” Sergeant Hawley shouted as loudly as he dared. “Stay in sight.”
Finally, the sergeant had enough of trying to rein Deke in and put Conlon back on point.
Conlon moved forward cautiously, making a show of swinging his scoped rifle every which way with herky-jerky motions.
Deke moved back with the rest of the platoon. He fell into step beside Egan, leading his dog on a leash.
“Conlon puts on a good show. Too bad he hasn’t shot any Japs yet,” Egan said. “You do know that if you quit pissing off the sergeant that your life would be easier?”
“Easier said than done.”
“You know what your problem is, Deke? You’re stubborn. If you were a dog, I’d put a choke collar on you.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Egan just shook his head and moved a couple of paces away.
The afternoon shadows were finally getting long when a runner came with a message. Soaked in sweat, scratched, and bleeding from his dash through the underbrush, he delivered the message to the lieutenant.
The lieutenant read it and snorted. “Well, isn’t it just like the captain to forget us until he needs something.”
“Sir?” the sergeant asked.
“They want a man sent back to the beach to join an anti-sniper squad. The Japs are tearing us up everywhere, and the colonel wants to put a stop to it. Conlon has already got a sniper rifle, but I’m not sending him, dammit. We need our sniper, never mind what the colonel says.”
“Then who do we send instead?”
Both men looked around. There were a couple of ways to approach this situation. Some officers did the right thing and sent the best man for the job. Logically, that would have been their designated sniper, Conlon, but the lieutenant had already decided against that.
Many officers and sergeants saw a headquarters request such as this one as an opportunity to get rid of a soldier who was slacking off, troublesome, or generally a pain in the ass.
All things considered, it was probably no surprise when the lieutenant’s gaze settled on Deke. Since Ben’s death that morning, he’d hardly spoken to anyone and had kept to himself. Then again, he was the only soldier who had managed to kill not one, but two, Japanese soldiers.
“What about him?”
The sergeant nodded. “Good choice, sir. Good riddance, if you ask me. The last thing we need is that troublemaking hick to slow us down. We’ve got an island to capture.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Sergeant Hawley called Deke over and gave him the news.
“Congratulations, Cole. We’re sending you back to HQ. It turns out that they need some volunteers for the recon troop. We are volunteering you.”
Deke nodded but didn’t verbally acknowledge the sergeant, needling him.
Sergeant Hawley scowled. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that he was glad to be getting rid of Deke.
Hardly anyone acknowledged Deke as he left. With Ben gone, he wasn’t especially close to anybody else in the platoon. He’d always been the sort of man who kept himself to himself. Anyhow, they had already seen men die today. There hadn’t been any goodbyes for Rivers, shot through the head by that Jap sniper. The way they figured it, at least he was walking away on his own two feet.
“Good luck, Deke,” muttered Egan, the dog handler. He had taken off his helmet and poured water into it for the dog to drink. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again. Meanwhile, don’t get your ass shot off.”
Deke reached down to scratch the dog’s ears.
“See you around.”
He turned and disappeared into the jangle.
Deke didn’t know it yet, but the rest of the war was about to change for him.
Chapter Five
Deke made his way back to the beach, recrossing the territory that they had fought so hard to gain. In his mind, it seemed as if they had crossed miles and miles of the island terrain. Much to his surprise, the walk back to the beachhead took only a few minutes. The territory held by the Americans wasn’t more than a half mile wide. Was that as far as they had come? He shook his head. All of a sudden, the island that was a speck in the vastness of the Pacific seemed a whole lot bigger, considering how hard-fought every inch of it was turning out to be.
Back at the beach, Deke was amazed at how it had been transformed. Gone were the empty stretches of beach. The sand was now covered with every form of equipment and gear imaginable. He saw jeeps, crates of supplies, even tanks. Beach masters shouted orders and waved frantically as more supplies arrived. What had once been a deserted tropical beach was now a military staging area.
Nearby, a soldier gave a low whistle. “I guess if we can’t bomb the Japs off this island, then we’re just going to bury them in junk.”
“You got that right,” Deke said.
But possession of the beach had come at a price. Dozens of wounded men awaited transport to the hospital ships offshore. Shelters had been erected, but not enough. The sun beat down mercilessly on the exposed wounded, who could do little to help themselves.
Deke saw a wounded man struggling to drink from a canteen and walked over to help him.
“Thanks, buddy,” the soldier said, once he had gulped a few mouthfuls of water. He ran a tongue over cracked, sunburned lips. His torso was heavily bandaged. He explained, “Jap mortar. I was the lucky one. Most of my squad got wiped out.”
“That’s a damn shame.” Deke helped the man take another drink.
“Listen, take my hat, will you? It will just get lost on the ship.” The soldier held out a wide-brimmed hat pinned up on one side. Deke had seen Aussies wearing similar hats. It was what they called a slouch hat.
“You sure?”
“It brought me luck. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. And it keeps the sun off.”
“All right,” Deke said, accepting the hat, which seemed to please the soldier. “You take care of yourself.”
“Give those Japs hell for me,” the soldier said.
Deke moved on, swapping his helmet for the wide-brimmed hat. The soldier had been right — it was the perfect hat for the tropical sun.
Not far from the wounded men awaiting transport, he passed rows of bodies stretched out on the sand. Some of the bodies lay covered by blankets or scraps of canvas or even palm fronds, perhaps by their buddies, to give them some dignity and privacy in death. But most of the bodies were exposed, faces turned up as if the men might be napping.
Several soldiers in a graves registration detail were doing their best to identify the dead, working their way down the row. Definitely an unpleasant task. A bulldozer worked nearby, digging a long trench that would be the resting place for the dead. It was a grim fact that bodies had to be dealt with quickly in the tropical heat.
Even more distressing to Deke was the sight of a half dozen dead dogs, lined up in the sand. They, too, were awaiting burial. They were all Doberman pinschers, brought ashore to sniff out the enemy and give warning of infiltrators at night. The humans, more or less, had a choice about fighting — or a fighting chance, at least. The dogs didn’t know any better and had been put in harm’s way, which Deke found immeasurably sad. He’d always been fond of dogs.
Nobody had bothered with the Japanese dead. Then again, there didn’t seem to be nearly as many of them as there were dead Americans, Deke thought bitterly.
The Japanese were using a tactic that they had used effectively on other islands. Rather than trying to stop the Americans on the beach, which would have been impossible given the overwhelming firepower of the naval guns, they had left only a token force to “greet” the GIs and marines at the beach. The bulk of the enemy force had been withdrawn deeper into the island. One of the enemy objectives was to defend the Orote airfield on the flatter, more open part of the island. Considering that the American forces had not even pushed that far inland, a large part of the fight still awaited them.