Any soldier loved the sight of morning. It meant that the dangers of the night had passed. Fear of the dark was a survival mechanism as old as humanity itself. There might be new terrors or challenges with the arrival of daylight, but at least he could see them coming.
He noticed that Yoshio was also awake, watching the sky.
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” Deke said quietly. He wouldn’t have said anything about the sunrise to Philly, but Yoshio had more of what Deke would have called a poetic disposition.
“Sure is,” Yoshio replied, although it went without saying. “It’s hard to believe that Japan controls everything between here and that sunrise.”
“Not for long,” Deke pointed out.
“That’s why we’re here,” Yoshio agreed.
Nearby, they heard Philly stir and groan. “Will you two shut it? I need my beauty sleep.”
“Then you might as well get up,” Deke said. “You’re gonna need more than a few minutes to sleep off that much ugly.”
“You are one mean hillbilly,” Philly said, and rolled over.
Two hours later, they were eating a breakfast made from powdered eggs that nobody wanted to taste too much, washing breakfast down along with some brownish, lukewarm water that was allegedly coffee. The lukewarm eggs made Deke miss those country breakfasts from his boyhood that much more, with fresh eggs, ham, or even white gravy and biscuits. Now that was eating. His family hadn’t had much money, but on a farm, there was usually enough to eat. Except when your Pa died, and then there wasn’t.
“Whoever figured out how to take a perfectly good egg and turn it into powder ought to be shot,” Philly said.
“I’ll give you the bullet,” Rodeo said.
“You know what I’d like right now? A big danish and a decent cup of coffee,” Philly added.
Deke had gone hungry enough times as a boy that he wasn’t about to complain about the food, bad as it was, but that didn’t stop him from saying, “You know what I’d like? A big slab of Virginia ham on a fresh biscuit. Now that’s good eatin’ right there.”
“You know what? That does sound better than a danish,” Philly agreed. He looked at the few bites of reconstituted eggs left on his plate, sighed, and shoveled them down resolutely. They had all learned that you never knew where your next meal was coming from, so you didn’t leave anything on your plate if you could help it.
They were just finishing up when Lieutenant Steele called them over to where he stood under one of the camouflage nets that had been erected to create mottled shade against the tropical sun.
“All right, everybody grab a seat. You’ll want to be sitting down when you hear what I’m about to say.”
Once again, the lieutenant’s face appeared just as grim as it had yesterday when he had returned from receiving their orders. He seemed to study them all one by one with his good eye. The right eye that he had lost on Guadalcanal was covered by the leather patch that Deke had fashioned for him out of boot leather. The wound would have been enough to send Steele home, but he had stubbornly insisted upon staying in the fight. How he had swung that was anybody’s guess. He either had friends in high places — or maybe enemies.
The look he was giving them with his one good eye this morning was enough to indicate that he clearly had some bad news to deliver.
One by one, Deke studied the others: Philly, Yoshio, Rodeo, Alphabet, and Egan. Together, they made a good team. They had already been through thick and thin on Guam as Patrol Easy. They had lost one man, killed by the Japanese marksman that Deke had nicknamed the “Samurai Sniper.” That sniper had managed to slip away with the small number of Japanese troops who had evacuated from the island. Most of the rest, thousands and thousands as a matter of fact, had perished at the hands of US forces.
They had also lost Egan’s dog, Whoa Nelly. The military had sent specially trained dogs to Guam to sniff out Japanese pillboxes and warn against infiltrators. The dogs had been so effective that they were particularly hated by the Japanese, and even targeted by enemy snipers. Sadly, at least sixty military dogs had died in the fighting, Egan’s dog among them.
Whoa Nelly had died protecting him from a Japanese soldier who had ambushed them in the ruins of a village near Yigo, in some of the last major fighting on the island. Deke wasn’t entirely sure that a dog equaled a person, but like most country people, he thought that a good dog came awfully close. Egan was still waiting to be assigned a new dog. For now, he was still attached to Patrol Easy.
They took seats on discarded jerricans and ammunition boxes. Philly plunked himself down directly on the sand like a beach bum. They watched Steele expectantly, waiting for him to drop the bomb.
“What gives, Honcho?” Philly asked.
“Hold your horses. I’m not the one who is going to be filling you in.”
As it turned out, the lieutenant was not going to be the bearer of bad news. They looked up as another officer approached. Although he was an army officer, he was accompanied by two marines who stopped well short of the shaded netting as the officer went on alone. To their surprise, the officer wasn’t anyone that they recognized. Although nobody had a pristine uniform at this point, and the tropical heat and humidity was taking its toll on everyone, it was clear that this officer hadn’t been slogging around the jungles. He must be some kind of staff officer.
They got to their feet, but the officer waved them back down.
“As you were,” he said. “I’m Major Berger, from General Bruce’s staff.” Considering that General Bruce was the division commander, this went up the food chain a lot higher than any of them had expected. Deke found himself leaning forward out of curiosity so that he wouldn’t miss a word.
The major continued, “Lieutenant Steele here will give you the details shortly, but I wanted to tell you men that you are being asked to take part in a mission of utmost importance. Before I get started with the briefing, is there anything that you want to say, Lieutenant?”
Utmost importance. They all knew what that meant, and it wasn’t anything good. Philly muttered something under his breath but clammed up when Lieutenant Steele shot him a look.
The lieutenant then took the opportunity to say a few words.
“Fellas, I should tell you that this mission would normally be something that Army Rangers would be doing, but they’ve been a little busy, like the rest of us,” Steele said. “General Bruce volunteered us, saying that his boys can do anything the Rangers can do.”
They all knew that the Rangers were typically doing unimaginable things like sneaking in ahead of everyone else or scaling cliffs just to fight a battle at the top. Famously, it was Army Rangers who had helped capture the beach at Normandy.
In other words, this was stuff that you’d have to be crazy to do. Crap. It wasn’t much of a pep talk. Lieutenant Steele turned it back over to the major.
The major continued, “Thank you, Lieutenant. You know that we are fighting our way across this big damn ocean, hopping from island to island, getting closer to Japan all the time. Mainly, it’s the airfields that we need. Each airfield that’s closer to Japan will make it that much easier for us to drop bombs on Hirohito’s head.”
“Sir, I thought that we had captured all the airfields on Guam,” Philly blurted out. He might have asked more if the lieutenant hadn’t glared at him again.
“Not Guam. Not just an airfield,” the major replied. “An island. We don’t want to give more details than you need to know at this time. Let’s just say that you can’t share any details with anyone.”
“Top secret, sir?” Philly asked.