Schofield Barracks lay not far ahead. Bombers had largely leveled the barracks halls. The Japanese didn’t seem to care. They were as ready to defend rubble to the death as they would have been to save Hirohito’s crown jewels.
A machine gun fired several quick bursts from the direction of the barracks-a reminder to Les to keep his head down, as if he needed one. The Japs were even tougher than he’d figured they would be. Logically, they didn’t have a prayer. They had no air cover left. They had next to no armor, and what they did have wasn’t good enough. If he were their CO, he would have dickered a surrender on the best terms he could get.
They didn’t think that way. They didn’t surrender, period. The only Japs who’d been captured were men either knocked cold or too badly hurt to get away or to kill themselves. They also took no prisoners.
God help you if you tried to surrender to them. Sometimes their wild counterattacks would overrun U.S. forward positions. Les had helped recapture one or two of those. The American corpses he’d seen made him hate the enemy instead of just being professionally interested in getting rid of him, the way he had been with the Germans in 1918. After that, he wouldn’t have let any Japs give up even if they’d tried.
One of the green young Marines in his platoon, an open-faced Oklahoma kid named Randy Casteel, hunkered down near him and asked, “Sarge, how come the Japs do shit like that? Don’t they know it just makes us want to fight ’em even harder?” His drawl only made him sound more horrified and more bewildered than he would have without it.
Les Dillon was bewildered, too, and he’d seen a lot more nasty things over a lot more years than Private Casteel had. “Damned if I can tell you,” he answered. “Maybe they think they’re scaring us when they do that kind of stuff to a body.”
“They got another think comin’!” Casteel said hotly.
“Yeah, I know.” Les also knew the Japs hadn’t done everything to bodies. Some of those poor men-most of them, probably-were alive when the enemy got to work on them. He could only hope they’d died pretty soon. “We just have to keep pushin’ and keep poundin’. They won’t do anything like that once they’re all dead.”
“Sooner the better,” Casteel said.
“Oh, hell, yes.” Les felt fatherly-almost grandfatherly-as he went on, “But you got to remember not to do anything dumb, though. Killing Japs is the name of the game. Don’t let them kill you. You do something stupid, they’ll make you pay for it before you can even blink. Take bayonets.”
Randy Casteel nodded eagerly. “Oh, yeah, Sarge. I know about that.”
“Make sure you remember, dammit. The Nips have more evil tricks than you can shake a stick at,” Les said. Normal bayonet drill meant keeping the cutting edge toward the ground. But the Japanese bayonet had a hooked hand guard. The Japs used it to grab on to a U.S. bayonet. A twist, and the Marine’s rifle went flying. “Keep the left side of the blade toward the deck and you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, Sarge,” Casteel repeated. Several men had died before somebody was sharp enough to figure out a counter. To look at your average Japanese soldier, you wouldn’t think he was big enough or strong enough to win a bayonet fight-but he was. Oh, brother, was he.
“Other thing to remember is, don’t use the bayonet till it’s your last choice,” Les added. “Blow the little fucker’s head off instead. Let’s see him get sneaky trying to dodge a bullet.”
In training, everybody fussed about the bayonet. In the field, it made a tolerable can opener or barbed-wire cutter. It wasn’t a great combat knife; like almost all Marines, Les preferred the Kabar on his belt.
“Over here! C’mon! This way!” The call from ahead came in perfect English. Randy Casteel glanced at Les.
The platoon sergeant shook his head. “Sit tight,” he said. “Another goddamn decoy.” Some of the enemy soldiers knew the language, and some of the locals still worked with them and for them. The locals had grown up speaking English, so of course they had no telltale accent to give them away. If you paid attention to shouts from people you didn’t know, you’d charge right into an ambush.
Les stuck his head up-just for an instant, and not in a place from which he’d looked before. Somebody in khaki was moving out there. He snapped off a shot and ducked down again. Not even the scream that followed made him take another look. The Japs should have gone in for amateur theatricals. Look at the soldier you thought you’d just killed and it was even money he’d be waiting to plant one right between your eyes.
The sun dropped down toward the Waianae Range. Les muttered under his breath. “More goddamn infiltrators after dark, sure as shit.”
“Yeah, Sarge.” Randy Casteel nodded. In the daytime, American firepower and airplanes dominated. At night, it was the Japs’ turn. They’d sneak into the American lines by ones and twos. They’d roll grenades into foxholes or jump in with a knife. The rule now was two men in a hole, one of them awake all the time. It made war even more exhausting than it would have been otherwise, but it saved lives.
At least one American had been shot by somebody on his own side for not coming out with the password fast enough to suit a trigger-happy Marine. Les felt sorry that had happened, but not very. Anybody dumb enough to move around at night when he didn’t have to and dumb enough to draw a blank on the password was probably dumb enough to get himself killed some other way if he hadn’t found that one.
“You know the word for tonight?” Les asked Casteel.
“Lizard lips,” the kid answered. Les nodded. Most of the passwords had l’s and r’s in them: those were the English sounds that gave the Japs trouble.
Darkness fell fast here. Twilight didn’t linger the way it did in more northerly climes. And when it was dark, it was dark. The electricity was out. There was no background glow, the way there would have been if lights shone not far away. A few fires burned, but with the rice paddies wet there weren’t many of those, either.
“You gonna sack out on me if I give you first watch?” Les asked. “Tell me straight. If you’re beat, sleep now, and I’ll get you up at midnight. I can last, and I don’t want both of us screwed because you couldn’t.”
“If you don’t mind, Sarge, I better sleep now. I’m pretty beat,” Casteel said.
“Okay. Go ahead,” Les told him. The kid curled up, twisted a couple of times like a dog making a nest, and was dead to the world inside of two minutes. Les knew unconsciousness would sap him just as fast and just as hard when his turn came. Bare ground? Damp ground? Rain? He’d sleep on a bed of nails like an Indian fakir.
For now, though, he had to stay awake. He stuck his head up to look out of the hole. That was all he did; anyone walking around at night was presumed to be a Jap. He peered south, his rifle close by him. Most of the fires down around Schofield Barracks seemed to be out. He muttered something foul. He might have spotted Japs sneaking forward against a background of flame. Now he’d have to do it the hard way.
He wished for the moon. It wasn’t a childish wish for something he couldn’t possibly get. He just wished it were in the sky. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t come up till Randy Casteel went on watch. He shrugged. Odds were the kid needed more help than he did. So he told himself, anyway.
A few strands of barbed wire looped in front of the American position. Les didn’t think they would slow the Japs down. But the Marines who’d set out the wire had also hung K-ration cans partly filled with pebbles from it. With luck, a noise from those would give some warning.
Off to his left, a rifle cracked-an Arisaka. A burst from an American machine gun answered it. Les wondered if a night firefight would break out. That would be the last thing anybody needed. But the firing died away. As far as Les could tell, all it had done was scare everybody who was awake. Casteel’s breathing never even changed.