“If you say so,” Philly said. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Have you got a better idea?”
Philly didn’t.
Lieutenant Steele put it more bluntly. “You are a crazy bastard. If I thought there was another way, I’d tell you to forget it.”
A few minutes later, Deke and Yoshio slipped into the river. On shore, several GIs opened fire along with Patrol Easy. As expected, the Japanese shot back from the cover of the vegetation on the other side.
The two swimmers started out at a point somewhat above where they wanted to end up on the far shore, hoping that the current would carry them in that direction. From shore the distance hadn’t seemed that great, but once Deke was actually in the water, the muddy waterway looked as wide across as the Pacific.
Deke slipped beneath the surface, and Yoshio followed suit. Despite the weight of the grenades, the swimming was fairly easy. Deke used a scissor kick and a sort of breaststroke to carry him across. He swam awkwardly at best, but it was good enough to keep him moving.
Once or twice his legs bumped against something solid that bounced away. He hoped to hell that had been a submerged log and not a fish — or worse yet, a crocodile.
I’ve already been chewed on by a bear, so I reckon it can’t get much worse, he thought.
What he hadn’t counted on was how difficult it was to see anything underwater. From time to time, he had to lift out his head to get his bearings.
The snorkel itself worked well, as long as Deke didn’t dip too far below the surface. He made that mistake once or twice and nearly got a lungful of water as a result.
It also didn’t help that the gas mask was not watertight. Deke had cinched the straps until they nearly cut into his face, but water still leaked in. Before long, it was sloshing around his nose and eyes, but he kept going. He was already more than halfway across, too close to the opposite shore to surface undetected. Dealing with a little water was far better than getting a bullet in the head.
After what seemed like an hour, but what he knew couldn’t have been more than the five minutes needed to swim ninety feet, he reached the opposite bank and hunkered down at the waterline. He felt confident that he couldn’t be seen by the Japanese higher up on the bank. He was more worried about the gunfire coming from the American side of the river. Someone must have spotted him and had the same thought, because the fire slackened.
Now where the hell was Yoshio?
He got his answer a few seconds later when Yoshio surfaced, looking very much like some kind of frogman. They both removed their masks, glad to be breathing freely again.
“Ready?” Deke asked.
Yoshio nodded.
They crawled stealthily up the bank. At a nod from Deke, they pulled the pins. Deke’s hand curled around the cold metal of a grenade, palming it; then his fingers tightened for fear of losing his grip, what with the sweat and the river water still clinging to the grenades. He hoped to hell this worked — he didn’t much like the idea of having to fight the Japanese with nothing more than his bowie knife once the grenades ran out.
He threw the grenade as far as he could up the bank.
There was a sharp blast, then another. A tornado of grass, mud, and debris swirled across the riverbank. Deke kept his head down. Shrapnel sang overhead, punctuated by the dying enemy’s screams. By the time that the last grenade had been thrown, the shooting from the Japanese side had stopped.
For the bridge repair crew, it was now or never.
Out on the river, the GIs launched their small boat again and got to work repairing the bridge. Deke and Yoshio had bought the repair team the time they needed. It turned out that there was at least one more mask that could be rigged for going underwater, so Deke and Yoshio didn’t need to swim back to return their masks.
That was just fine with Deke, who preferred not to brave the muddy water again. They stayed under cover on the far bank, hoping that the regiment managed to cross before any Japanese returned.
It was a difficult process. First, one of the soldiers lengthened the tubing and used the mask to work underwater, securing ropes to the submerged beams.
They watched as the soldiers rigged a tackle system for the rope and, teetering in the unsteady boat, managed to raise the stubborn beams into place. As soon as the beams were in position, more soldiers raced out and lashed them into place.
The entire operation took no more than half an hour. The river had been bridged once again. The repaired bridge wouldn’t hold a tank, but it was solid enough for men on foot to cross. Once the area was secure, a team of engineers would be able to build a proper bridge or even a pontoon crossing. For now, this was enough.
Patrol Easy was among the first to cross.
“What took you so long?” Deke asked as Philly gave him back his rifle.
Philly just shook his head. “I tell you what, Corn Pone. You are one crazy son of a bitch. You and Yoshio both. I’ve never seen anyone pull a stunt like that.”
Deke was glad to feel his rifle back in his hands. “Stick around, City Slicker,” he said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Deke returned the masks to their grinning inventor. “Thanks for that,” he said.
“You’ve got guts,” the GI said. “I had no idea if that mask would keep out the water long enough to get to the other side of the river.”
“I’m glad you didn’t tell me that beforehand,” Deke said. “Anyhow, I won’t be in any hurry to do that again. But you better keep those masks handy. I understand that there are several more rivers to cross between here and Palompon.”
As it turned out, Patrol Easy was never going to see Palompon, the destination at the end of Highway 2.
“We just got a message by radio,” Lieutenant Steele said. “We’re being recalled to division HQ.”
“All the way back at the beach? That’s an awfully long walk.”
“Then we’d better get started.”
CHAPTER SIX
It had been a long walk, after all. Thankfully they hadn’t run into any enemy patrols. It was still a mystery why they had been pulled back to the beachhead in the midst of the operation to seize Palompon. More than likely their orders would involve heading back out into the jungle and hills to deal with the Japanese who remained entrenched elsewhere.
For now the war could wait. Judging by the appearance of the tired men lounging on the sand, they weren’t in any hurry to get back to the fighting. The push across the rice paddies and then Highway 2 toward Palompon had left them exhausted.
“The Nips are beat, all right,” Philly announced to no one in particular. “The trouble is that they don’t know they’re beat.”
“They don’t seem like they’re beat to me,” Deke responded. “But they will be.”
“You wait and see. They’ll send us right back out again. No rest for the weary.”
“I reckon somebody has to actually fight the Japanese instead of unloading more gear on the beach. Maybe the plan is to bury them alive with packing crates. Do you think there’s even anything left back in the States? If nothing else, we’ll have to take back some ground from the Japs just so we have somewhere to put all this stuff.”
“You might just be right about that.”
Deke spent a moment watching the laboring men, then said, “I hate to say it, but I’d rather be on patrol than humping crates up the beach.”
Philly shook his head. “Honestly, I might not mind if the Japanese weren’t so damn determined to kill us — or kill themselves in the process. A normal enemy ought to know when to give up.”
It was a familiar refrain among many soldiers. Truth be told, Deke couldn’t have agreed more with Philly. The Japanese soldiers were bent on destruction — preferably the destruction of American forces, but self-destruction also seemed fine with them. They would fight until their last breath. Time and again they had proved that determination to the bitter end, taking more than a few GIs with them in the process. It was a mindset that Americans still struggled to understand. When faced with defeat, the enemy seemed to think that the only option was death.