The others nodded. It was pretty much how they all felt.
Rodeo pointed. “Hey, look! Someone’s coming.”
A jeep had appeared, racing toward them across the beach, sticking close to the waterline, where the sand was more compacted. Every now and then the driver had to yank the wheel sharply to stay ahead of a wave.
“Ain’t it just like the cavalry to show up too late.”
“Maybe they’ll give us a ride back to HQ.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
As it turned out, the jeep wasn’t there to help them fight the Japanese or give them a ride. An officious-looking young staff officer looked them up and down.
“Are you men swimming? What the hell! Don’t you know there’s a war on? There must be a thousand Japs still hidden in the jungle.”
“Don’t worry. Now there’s a few less.”
But the officer wasn’t interested in the tale of their firefight. In fact, from the look on his face, it didn’t even seem like he believed any of it. He had come with orders for Lieutenant Steele. “The colonel wants to see you. That is, if you’re not too busy swimming and working on your tans.”
“Yes, sir. Any chance of getting a ride back?”
“Sorry, no room. You’ll have to walk.” With that, the officer nodded to the driver and the jeep lurched through the sand in a slow semicircle, giving a clear glimpse of the empty back seat, and then began racing toward HQ in the distance.
“Friendly guy,” Philly said.
“Never mind that. Let’s move out.” Lieutenant Steele started to walk away but then paused to stare at Philly. “Philly, put some clothes on. The army has a reputation to uphold, son. If any marines see that short limb of yours, we’ll never hear the end of it.”
“It’s the cold water,” Philly grumped, tugging on his trousers.
Yoshio and Egan looked around, but the tide had carried off their fatigues.
Still laughing, Steele tugged off his shirt and tossed it to Egan. “Wrap that around you, for God’s sake. Somebody give Yoshio a shirt.”
Nearby, Yoshio was starting to shiver as the sun dipped behind a cloud.
Deke sighed. “You are a sorry sight, Yoshio,” he said. Since he was the only one left with dry clothing to spare, he took off his shirt and tossed it to Yoshio. With his shirt off, the angry red scars raking down his torso were clearly visible against his pale Scotch Irish skin. They were old scars, not from something that had happened to him in the Pacific. Philly stared and opened his mouth to comment, but for once he seemed to think better of it.
“Thanks, Deke,” Yoshio said, wrapping the fatigues around his middle.
“What a bunch. Anyhow, let’s go,” Steele said, nodding in the direction of the disappearing jeep. “It sounds to me as if the war’s not over yet and somebody found a job for us to do.”
CHAPTER FIVE
More than a thousand miles away across the blue Pacific, on the island of Leyte in the Philippines, the Japanese were preparing to meet the threat of invasion.
A key aspect of the coastal defense was being constructed at Guinhangdan Hill. Rising more than five hundred feet above the coastal plain, the hill offered a commanding view of the beach and Leyte Gulf beyond. From the Y-shaped crest of the hill, the sleepy town of Palo and the slow-moving Bangon River were in plain view.
The ancient volcanic core created a natural fortress, and the Japanese forces had taken advantage of that by gradually adding to its defenses since occupying the Philippines in 1941.
“Harumph,” grunted Major Hisako Noguchi, surveying the work that had been done. On the one hand, he was amazed that they had accomplished so much. But on the other hand, there was still so much to do.
He watched with a dispassionate gaze as an officer beat a slow-moving Filipino laborer with a stick. Such cruelty did not bother him. Noguchi concerned himself only with the results.
With his engineer’s eye, Major Noguchi studied the placement of the artillery positions, some of which had been designed to accommodate “disappearing guns” that could fire and then roll back into a cave, out of sight, making them frustratingly difficult targets.
In the last few months, construction efforts had risen to a fever pitch. Every available Japanese soldier had been put to work, trading their rifles for shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. Mechanized equipment that was so familiar to US forces was virtually nonexistent here in the Philippines.
Instead, alongside the soldiers, work details of conscripted Filipino men of all ages had toiled from dawn to dusk, under constant threat of swift punishment if they appeared to slack off for even one moment under the brutal heat and torrential tropical rains.
If the Japanese troops were underfed and treated poorly, then it was far worse for the Filipinos, who were considered to be little more than slaves. Weakened men were pushed aside, and fresh conscripts took their place, although these were often boys or very old men. No matter — the desperate Japanese occupiers treated them all harshly. A mass grave near the base of the hill, not far from the nearby town of Palo, now occupied by the Japanese, was testimony to the backbreaking work and the treatment that the Filipinos received at the hands of the occupying force.
Those almost inhuman efforts had produced incredible results. Gun pits and firing positions now honeycombed the promontory. Extensive caves, complete with electric lighting and ventilation systems, ensured that not even the heaviest enemy air or naval bombardment could reach the defenders. They were well prepared for an attack that they were sure was to come.
The man in charge of this operation, Major Noguchi, was an artillery officer, one of those men who could instantly calculate a complicated firing azimuth in his head. He also had a talent for building fortifications and a sly cunning for managing to disguise them from the enemy.
The smell of freshly dug dirt and curing cement hung over the hill. Noguchi nodded in satisfaction. Let them come.
He was a squat, unimposing man — even a little chubby, and he wore thick glasses. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Noguchi on appearances alone. Within him burned the spirit of a warrior.
Noguchi walked on, huffing and puffing with exertion as he made his way up the hillside, the soldiers he passed barely acknowledging him.
It was no wonder. On more than one occasion he had been reprimanded for wearing simple work clothes rather than his officer’s uniform. He did not bother with carrying a sword, like many officers, but preferred a shovel, sometimes joining in alongside the soldiers who were busy digging and carting loads of soil.
It was grueling labor. After all, there was no heavy equipment to do all this work. They had built it all by hand, as if they were laborers from a thousand years ago. Their efforts were so different from those of their enemy, who brought along ships filled with bulldozers and even backhoes as they advanced across the Pacific, ever closer to Japan.
“Faster, faster!” he admonished a group of soldiers digging a sniper pit. “You will wish that you had already dug ten more of those once the Americans arrive.”
The soldiers looked past Noguchi to the expanse of empty ocean beyond. There was a cloud or two on the horizon, but no sign of enemy ships. They didn’t dig any faster. One or two stopped digging to wipe their brows or take a drink of water.
Another soldier approached. He was younger than Noguchi, and not any taller, but he was far more graceful, moving like a fabled Tsushima leopard cat through the construction zone. He was not an officer, but a gunsō, or sergeant.
“You heard him,” the sergeant said. His voice was no more than a purr, but there was menace in it. “Dig faster. My men and I are the ones who will be in these pits, while you are safe underground. Make it deep, and then dig another.”