Hunter Sniper

“Yeah, I’ll bet you miss the sheep too,” Philly said. He and Yoshio were digging nearby, their shovels loudly scraping into the dirt.

Deke snorted and threw a shovelful of dirt at him.

“Hey, you dumb cracker! Don’t go filling this hole back up, goddammit.”

It was enough to set a man’s mind whirling, to think that he had faced down death earlier in the day and lived to enjoy some minor high jinks. The sound of Philly muttering indignantly under his breath brought a grin to Deke’s face, and he realized that he must finally be feeling better.

This morning he wouldn’t have had the energy to dig a hole. Still, it had been one hell of a day, and every bone and muscle seemed to ache as the sweat oozed out of his pores. The physical labor reminded him of being a boy on the farm, where there had been no shortage of hard work.

Strictly speaking, Deke knew that there hadn’t been a family farm anymore when he had joined the army. He had been living in a rooming house in town with his sister, Sadie.

She was now in Washington, DC, working as a police officer. And here Deke was, digging holes on the far side of the world. It sounded to him as if his sister had come out ahead on that deal. Again, he grinned.

Just as quickly, the grin faded. Their family farm had been stolen away by a rich banker when the mortgage had come due. Bankers just like him had stolen a lot of farms — and people’s houses, too — all around the Appalachians. The mountains had been slow to come out of the Depression, if they ever would.

Thinking about that banker, Deke supposed it was a shame that the man wasn’t here, because the hole Deke was digging was just the right size to bury that banker in.

The sandy, volcanic soil was easy to shovel. That much was different from the farm, at least — the mountain soil was thin to the point of being stingy, except when it came to rocks. There were always rocks in abundance. It was little wonder that the mountain farmers struggled so much. He could see that the farms and fields here on Leyte were far more abundant.

For a change there were no tangled tree roots, because they were digging in what appeared to be the old parade grounds for Camp Downes. They were working by the last of the tropical daylight.

When the night arrived, it came quickly. Once again, the tropical sunset did not disappoint. The sun disappeared in a cloud of purple and orange that hugged the horizon. The last light of day vanished in a heartbeat, swallowed by the clouds. The coming night did little to alleviate the humidity, which groped at them like fingers dipped in sticky lard.

The forest canopy beyond Camp Downes fell into shadow, a tangle of vines and branches, lit by pinpricks of light from fireflies and punctuated by occasional birdcalls. For all they knew, those birdcalls might be Japanese units signaling to one another. The soldiers doubled their pace, working to finish up their foxholes.

Beyond the land, the ocean reflected light like a giant mirror, empty of any ships, friendly or otherwise. A squadron of planes flew in the distance, too far away to tell if they were American or Japanese.

The threat of a Japanese night attack was just one of the problems they were dealing with. There was also the issue of the wounded, not just from their company, but from other units who had been working to push the Japanese back from the beach and pen them in closer to Ormoc.

There were also several dead soldiers, their bodies set out in neat rows and covered in their own blankets. Almost all of them knew someone who was dead under one of those blankets, and they were haunted by the thought, Tomorrow that might be me.

Normally, the wounded would be taken to the beach, and from there to hospital ships or naval sick bays that were better equipped to treat them. However, word had come down that there was going to be a delay in evacuating the wounded.

“The Navy pulled its ships back,” Lieutenant Steele explained. “They’re afraid of Japanese aircraft in the vicinity and also of the Japanese Navy.”

“I thought they licked the Japanese Navy.”

“Not completely,” Steele said. “There are plenty of Japanese submarines around too. Anyhow, the bottom line is that the navy isn’t sending any vessels to take our wounded off Leyte.”

Nobody spoke up to accuse the US Navy of being captained by a bunch of grannies. The soldiers had been passengers aboard the ships, and so they knew better. They had seen what the squids were up against. It was different from being in a dark jungle, but constantly scanning the skies and horizons for an enemy that might appear at any moment to sink you with torpedoes or bombs was no picnic.

The Japanese Navy was no joke, and neither were their remaining aircraft — especially the new kamikaze attacks.