Deke slipped off the trail, every sense alert to danger. He had a pretty good idea about where the smoke was coming from. He’d always had a nose like a hound dog, and a good sense of smell was yet another way to stay alive out here — it was one more reason to avoid cigarettes, which dulled your sense of smell.
Easing his way noiselessly through the grass, he headed toward a clump of trees where he thought that, just maybe, he had seen a wisp of smoke rising. He kept his eyes riveted on the spot straight ahead, which was the best way to detect any motion. Some guys might be worried about stepping on a snake or into a booby trap, but Deke reckoned a real, live Japanese soldier was a bigger concern. He knew that the rest of the patrol on the road was covering him, so he wasn’t all that worried about any Japs sneaking in around behind him.
Silently, he reached the clump of trees. Sure enough, he could see the remains of a tiny, smoldering fire. Someone had started a fire here that was just big enough to boil water or cook rice. Bordering the ashes were two flat stones that would have been useful for balancing a pot. Dirt had been kicked onto the fire, but not enough to put it out completely.
Around the fire itself, a small area of grass had been trampled where several men had sat or even spread their blankets. It reminded Deke of hunting back home and coming across the place in a remote meadow where the deer had bedded down.
Deke couldn’t feel the back of his neck itching, so he felt confident that the Japanese were, in fact, long gone.
Carefully, he made his way back to the trail.
“Well?” Steele asked.
“There were Japs here, all right. No more than half a dozen.”
“The question is, Where are they now?”
Deke shook his head. “That’s anybody’s guess, but I don’t think they’re gonna bother us none. We must have surprised them, and they scattered instead of fighting. If they’d had a little more time, they might have tried to ambush us.”
“You went pretty far off the trail. How the hell did you even know about that camp?”
“I smelled the smoke from their campfire.” In Deke’s country accent, the word came out as camp-far.
Steele gave him a look, then just shook his head. “All right, we’ll keep going. You stay at the rear. I need your eyes and ears back there — and your nose.”
Deke slipped back to the end of the column. They kept going. He relaxed somewhat when they left the clearing behind and the trail climbed even more steeply toward the jungle-covered hilltop.
The heat of the day seemed to increase the higher that they climbed. The uniforms that had been soaked by the wet foliage now seemed to weigh extra. Sweat rolled into their eyes, the salt in it stinging and blurring their vision. Even their helmets began to feel too heavy and made their necks ache.
Against regulations, instead of a helmet, Deke had opted for his Australian-style bush hat, with its broad brim pinned up on the right side so that it wouldn’t get in the way of his rifle and telescope. The hat had been given to him by a wounded soldier, in gratitude for Deke stopping to give him a drink of water. The broad-brimmed hat kept the sun off and helped against the insects that pestered them in the stillness of the forest canopy.
“How come Deke gets to wear whatever he wants and I have to wear a helmet?” Philly had complained at the outset of the march.
“You get to be as good of a shot as Deke and I won’t care if you wear pajamas and a fedora,” Steele said. “Until then, keep your damn helmet on.”
As silently as possible, the short column continued up the train until they reached the summit, where the jungle had been cleared away for the Japanese batteries. The enemy’s shattered artillery now lay scattered in the open space, the heavy pieces tossed about by naval and aerial bombardments as if they had been toys.
From up here, they had a good view of the beaches beyond. It was out of rifle range, but from an artilleryman’s point of view, soldiers on the beach would be like sitting ducks. Looking down, Deke had to admit that it made his stomach clench to think of the easy job the Japanese must have had in picking them off from this commanding height.
“There’s a reason why I brought you up here, not just for some exercise,” Steele said. “I wanted some of our mission and what we are being asked to do to sink in. If the navy and the flyboys hadn’t knocked out the Jap guns up here, we would’ve had an even worse time coming ashore, and I’ve got to say, it was bad enough.
“Now think about the same situation on Leyte coming up, with the Japanese having even bigger guns in place, and us not being able to knock them out.”
Philly gave a low whistle. “Not good, Honcho.”
“Exactly. That’s where we come in.”
That was all the explanation that Honcho needed to give. He left the men to their rations, to the canteens of water that they’d brought along, and to their lone thoughts.
The tall marine was the first to break the silence.
“Hey, Deke,” he said. “I’ve got to say, way to go back there. If those Japs had still been around, we’d never have known what hit us.”
“Ain’t no big thing, Bat,” Deke said.
The marine looked puzzled. “Bat?”
“Yeah, you’re the tall one. Your buddy here is ‘Ball.’ Maybe not a baseball, but definitely a bowling ball.”
“Or a cannonball!” Philly chimed in.
The two marines looked at each other, then shrugged. Like it or not, they now had nicknames. “I’ve been called worse. Anyhow, I guess we’re in the army now,” Bat said.
CHAPTER TEN
As it turned out, Lieutenant Steele’s plans for another day of training were cut short when the timeline for shipping out was moved up. In fact, the whole division had received orders to ship out in a few days, sending the beach into a flurry of activity. Already, some transports were beginning the process of taking on men, where they would likely sit at anchor for several days before embarking for wherever the army decided to send them.
Patrol Easy would be leaving even sooner. Looking around at the troops who were busy with preparations for the long sea voyage, it became apparent that if Patrol Easy wasn’t successful in its mission, then these other poor bastards would pay the price.
After the grueling hike, it didn’t exactly break the men’s hearts that they would be spared whatever other field trips the lieutenant had in mind for them. But probably even more than Steele had expected, the hike through the jungle, even the near miss with the Japanese holdouts, had done its intended job of helping the soldiers get to know the marines, and the other way around.
They had taken each other’s measure, and they were satisfied that the other guys were solid. If they weren’t exactly peanut butter and jelly yet, then at least the soldiers and marines were not completely oil and water.
The logistically tedious process of moving the bulk of troops off Guam was just beginning, but as it turned out, Patrol Easy was getting a special ride. While the rest of the massive convoy was still being loaded and organized, they were soon on a destroyer bound for Leyte, more than thirteen hundred miles away.
Chosen for its relatively swift speed, the ship was the USS Ingersoll, a Fletcher-class destroyer. Deke had to admit that the destroyer was an impressive sight. Built in Bath, Maine, the ship approached four hundred feet in length and was outfitted with both five-inch guns and forty-millimeter antiaircraft guns, not to mention racks of depth charges to deal with any Japanese submarines. The vessel had been named in honor of the Ingersoll family, who had served in the US Navy and lost a son at the recent Battle of Midway.