1945

"Flare," Paul ordered, and again the lights came on. Still no Japs.

Then, just as the light faded, Japanese soldiers spilled out of the cave like ants erupting from a disturbed colony. In an instant of shocking clarity, Paul could see that only a couple of the dozen or so Japanese running at them had rifles. Most carried grenades and ran toward them with their mouths wide-open and screaming incoherently. In front of them, one man, obviously their leader, waved a sword and exhorted them on.

"Fire!" Paul screamed. "More flares!"

Rifle and BAR fire rippled down the American line. Japs were hit, tumbled, and jerked about. Within seconds, a half dozen were down and writhing on the ground, but another handful had made it through. More gunfire erupted and additional enemy soldiers thrashed and twitched and rolled downhill. They were dead, but their momentum carried them forward.

A couple of them were still unhit. The officer with the sword was nowhere to be seen, but two men with grenades in each hand were almost on them. Then there was one. He stopped a few yards in front of them and hurled both grenades just as his body was ripped to bloody pieces by a score of bullets.

One grenade exploded harmlessly in front of them, but Paul watched in horror as the second grenade arced through the air toward the soldiers to his left. First, he heard screams of panic, then a loud PHUMP! and finally a call for a medic.

While the rest of the platoon continued to shoot the fallen Japanese to make sure they were dead, Paul raced to where the cry for a medic continued with rising intensity. He leaped into a ditch where two previously wounded men looked on in shock at the body of their medic, Corporal Wills. Wills lay facedown with his arms stretched out. Blood and gore saturated the ground on all sides around his abdomen. Sickened by what he knew he would find, Paul turned the man over.

Wills's body from the chest cavity to the hips had been hollowed out as if a giant scoop had spooned out his body organs. Paul could see his heart along with his spinal cord and hip bones. The heart twitched a couple of times and stopped. Wills's face bore a look of surprise.

Paul turned away and vomited while the two wounded men began to whimper. He returned Wills to his facedown position and the whimpering stopped.

When he could finally speak, Paul asked the two wounded men what had happened. One spoke while the other nodded agreement. "Sir, the grenade rolled in and Wills jumped on it. Maybe he thought he could throw it out, but there wasn't time. He jumped on it and it blew him all to shit."

A second medic arrived, and a shaken Paul Morrell left the site to find Captain Ruger. Collins told him Ruger had arrived and was at the Jap cave. Paul climbed the darkened, body-cluttered ground to the cave mouth. He flinched as someone emerged from the cave and into the night. It was Ruger.

"Try not to shoot me, Mr. Morrell."

Paul's left hand had started shaking. "Sorry, sir."

"The cave is empty. A couple of dead bodies, but nothing else." Ruger ignored Paul's nervous reaction to the fight. "The place wasn't booby-trapped and they left nothing useful. Just some ammo cases and a few bottles of what looks like home-brewed whiskey. The filthy swine drank everything before they attacked and didn't leave a damn thing for us. Good job stopping them, Paul. That was a helluva fight."

Paul disagreed. "One of them got through and killed Wills. I had thirty men on line and they couldn't stop a dozen Nips who were at point-blank range."

"Couldn't be helped, and you're being too hard on yourself and them. The Japs were running downhill and had only a little ways to go. Your men didn't have time to choose targets, so I'll bet most of your men, those who fired, all hit the same targets. Hell, that officer with the sword probably got shot a hundred times. I'll bet everybody wanted a chunk of his skinny yellow ass."

Paul recalled how only a few had gone down in the first fusillade. "Yeah. But what do you mean 'those who fired'? Everybody shot, didn't they?"

Ruger laughed. "In a situation like that I'll bet half your boys were so shocked shitless by the sight of real live Japs running down their throats that they couldn't shoot at all. Either that or they fired so wildly they stood a better chance of hitting the moon than they did the bad guys. Tell me, how many of them did you kill with that popgun of yours?"

Paul thought for a second, and the answer stunned him. "I was so scared of the Japs, and so busy yelling for someone to shoot them along with calling for more flares, that I never did a thing with my carbine. I might as well have left it at home."

"That's what I mean, Paul. And your boys probably did better than most would've. After all, we're veterans now."

There was no sarcasm in Ruger's comments. Once again, hours of boredom had been followed by seconds of sheer terror. Some soldiers had done well, others poorly. All had behaved normally.