Yoshio, the Nisei soldier who also served as an interpreter, had rarely been called upon to translate, because there were seldom any prisoners. Then again, Japanese prisoners did not always survive being captured by troops who had seen too many of their buddies killed.
Deke shook his head to clear it. He knew that he had to stay focused if he wanted to make it out of this war alive. If your thoughts wandered too far, they might not come back, lost as a stray coonhound on a midnight hunt in the mountains.
Philly was right about another thing, although Deke refused to admit this out loud for fear it would swell the other man’s head any bigger than it already was. They all knew that they wouldn’t be on this beach for long. Snipers were in high demand — too high to be allowed to sit around for long. Part of the problem was that the Japanese themselves had so many snipers, which proved to be a highly effective technique in the jungle terrain. A single enemy sniper could easily hold up an advancing platoon or company. Patrol Easy was kept busy dealing with the enemy snipers who waited in the jungle beyond. They had become specialists in the kind of up-close-and-personal jungle warfare that the enemy preferred.
Deke looked around at the men on the beach, studying the determined faces of the other members of Patrol Easy. They had already been through a lot, and there were sure to be more tough times ahead. For the moment they looked content to take it easy.
The question was, What was next for them?
Deke’s eyes scanned the area, taking in the other scouts and snipers strewn out across the sand nearby. The tension was palpable, everyone wondering what their next mission would be, but nobody griped about it except for Philly.
They lay sprawled in the sand, glad to be off their feet, making use of whatever shade they could find. To keep out of the sun, he and Philly had rigged a ragged blanket supported by sticks. It was a rickety contraption that threatened to blow away whenever the wind did more than puff at them, but their goal had been to create the maximum amount of shade with the minimum of effort. If there was one thing a soldier knew, it was that he’d soon be moving on.
The others were taking what rest they could. Yoshio had his nose in a book again. Deke was certain that he’d seen that cover portraying an Old West gunslinger many times, but it didn’t seem to matter to Yoshio if he was reading the same book over and over again.
Deke never had been much of one for reading, but he couldn’t help but envy Yoshio’s ability to transport himself out of this time and place with the help of those pages.
Their Filipino guide, Danilo, squatted on his haunches and watched the activity on the beach with his typical impassive gaze. It looked uncomfortable to Deke, but it was how most Filipinos sat. Danilo never wasted energy when he could avoid it. The only movement he made was to wave off the flies that occasionally buzzed into his face whenever the sea breeze slackened.
Rodeo appeared to be napping. Out of everyone in the patrol, Deke had decided that Rodeo was the least skilled in terms of being a scout or sniper. However, his talents lay elsewhere. It was always Rodeo who carried their walkie-talkie handset or extra supplies. He ran errands for Lieutenant Steele. In a sense he had become the patrol’s gopher, but he was useful all the same.
If it came down to who was the best shot in Patrol Easy, that was simple. Deke grinned. All he had to do was look in the mirror — or the nearest mud puddle.
Egan and Thor sat nearby. The war dog’s tongue lolled out as he panted in the heat. Thor had saved their bacon more than once when he had sniffed out a hidden Japanese soldier or warned them of an infiltrator’s approach at night. It was a wonder that the war dog and his handler were still assigned to the patrol, but they had all become so attached to Thor that they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Two of the original patrol were missing. Most recently, Alphabet had been wounded in the fighting at Ormoc and had eventually been evacuated off the beach to the relative safety of a hospital ship. Back on Guam, they had lost one of their patrol members, Ingram, to a Japanese sniper. The memory of Ingram’s death at the hands of that sniper still nagged at them all, along with the eternal question every soldier asked himself, Why him and not me?
Lieutenant Steele had been called away for a powwow with the other officers, leaving Patrol Easy on its own. No matter — they were too tired to get into any sort of trouble. They had also picked an area beyond the prying eyes of officers or the attentions of the beach masters who were attempting to manage the chaos of the landing zone. A beach master would shanghai any stray soldiers he could and put them to work.
Deke looked around, astonished by the activity on the beach. Even over the course of a few days, the beachhead had been transformed since the initial landing under hostile fire. Since then, the enemy had been pushed back, and the nearby port city of Ormoc had been captured, along with its all-important airfield. After a slow start, due to the threat of enemy ships and planes, more and more cargo was being brought ashore.
Other support areas had been established on the beach. In addition to a command post, there were tarps set up to keep the sun off a group of clerks who labored at typewriters, keeping up with the division’s recordkeeping. This included typing up the lists of the dead and wounded, which grew ever longer thanks to the enemy. Deke was sure that one of those clerks would be Corporal Rafferty, who had been thrown into combat with other rear-echelon troops when the Japanese had threatened to overwhelm the tentative grip on the beachhead. Rafferty had shown that he could handle a rifle as well as a typewriter. When it came down to it, sometimes even a clerk or a cook had to be a fighting infantryman. They had done a damn fine job of fighting on the road to Ormoc.
There was also a tent where Doc Harmon and other medical staff were busy treating the wounded. Some were patched up and sent back out. Wounded who needed more serious treatment were ferried out to the navy vessels for treatment. There was still the threat posed by the Japanese Navy and aircraft, but that had diminished considerably since the capture of Ormoc.
A few enemy air bases still operated, but these scattered planes had been pressed farther from the coast, and the US planes were constantly hunting for them.
Despite these efforts, a Japanese Zero or two still appeared to threaten the beach from time to time, sending the soldiers scurrying like ants.
For other men wounded in the fighting around Ormoc, it was too late. They were buried in a cemetery that expanded by the day. The fresh graves were a reminder to the living that there were no guarantees in a war zone. Almost every man on that beach knew someone whose grave was now marked with a simple cross. These were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, buddies — none of whom would ever be going home again. As the losses mounted, the best that you could do was put the memories of the dead out of your mind.
Hundreds more had been hurt in the fighting. It was easy to pick out the wounded with their white bandages. The air around the medical tent was pungent with the acrid smell of iodine — and blood. Most of the men bore their wounds silently, and those in pain were dealt with using a dose of morphine.
But there were some men whose wounds were less visible. Deke and the other members of Patrol Easy had passed them coming in. These men simply sat and stared into the distance. The infamous one-thousand-yard stare. It was called combat fatigue. These men weren’t cowards — they had simply seen and done more than they could take. Every man was different. Some would be fine after a decent meal, a kind word, and the time to sit for a while with a blanket over their shoulders. Others would need additional time to come around. For a few tragic cases, their minds were permanently broken by the horrors of war. They were simply a different sort of casualty of war.