Hunter Sniper

The two Satan tanks opened fire on the slope covered with Japanese forces. Their main guns punched new holes in the rocky slope.

A few soldiers even cheered.

A brave Japanese soldier ran right at the tanks, brandishing hand grenades in both hands as if he single-handedly intended to take them out with nothing more than his frenzy and the grenades. He was mowed down by a machine gun before he’d gotten nearly close enough to hurl the grenades.

Once the tanks were within range, they unleashed the fury of their flamethrowers. The flames licked at clumps of grass and brush that had provided concealment for the Japanese. Enemy soldiers were forced to run, some of them on fire as the jellied gasoline clung to them. The ones who had escaped the flames were cut down by machine guns and rifle fire.

It was all too clear that the back of the Japanese assault had been broken. The remaining troops began to withdraw back up the slope, at first in groups of two or three, and then by entire patrols.

Captain Merrick gave the order to advance, and men began racing up the slope, herding the Japanese before them like a pack of frightened sheep chased by demented shepherds. The loudest and wildest of the pursuers turned out to be some of the rear-echelon troops, shouting like banshees and waving their rifles like clubs as they went after the enemy.

The retreating Japanese forces ran past the body of their fallen officer without a second glance, then crossed over the ridge and disappeared.

The battle had finally been won. The beachhead was safe for now. In a sense, the fight had been an important turning point in that it was now unlikely that the Japanese would mount another meaningful offensive. Their tactics now would be purely defensive.

Exhausted and bloodied though they were, the soldiers would push on past the ridge to bring the fight to the Japanese dug in at Ormoc. The airfield there still needed to be captured.

Patrol Easy, Deke included, had not joined in the chase. They were content to hang back and save their energy for the next fight, which wouldn’t be long in coming. Deke looked around and saw Honcho and Yoshio in the distance, along with Rodeo, Alphabet, and Philly.

Only Private Egan and Thor weren’t there — they had joined the hunt for Japanese who had opted not to run, but who were trying to hide on the hillside. Thor’s sharp nose rooted them out, and the crack of a rifle announced the quarry’s end. No prisoners were being taken.

As was increasingly becoming the case in the Pacific, the fighting felt personal. Killing any Japanese they found was more about revenge than it was about military necessity. Such were the vicissitudes of war.

After all, there were a handful of bodies scattered around the American line. Good American boys who wouldn’t be going home. Their buddies were taking out their anger on the Japanese survivors. Neither Captain Merrick nor Honcho made any effort to put an end to the killing.

Deke took note of the skinny clerk still hovering nearby. He nodded at him and said, “That was some good shooting, kid.”

Private Rafferty grinned a bit sheepishly, but with evident pride. He hadn’t come through the fight completely unscathed, however. Sure enough, he had managed to mash his thumb in the action of the M1, the painful M1 thumb, but had kept fighting. From the looks of it, he had managed to get his thumb caught in the slamming action more than once. The thumb was swollen and bloody.

Deke noticed and said, “Let me see that hand a minute.” He used a scrap of cloth to bind it up. “Good as new.”

“Aw, why are you even bothering with him, Deke?” Philly wanted to know. “He’s just a clerk. How’s he gonna type with his thumb wrapped up like that?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. We might just make a soldier out of him yet.”

His face was now grimy with dirt and blackened by gun smoke. The uniform that had been relatively clean that morning as he’d performed his clerical duties beneath a tarp erected on the beach was now muddy, torn at the knee, and soaked through with sweat.

Deke’s words had summed it up perfectly. You could almost see the man swelling up with the kind of pride that was hard earned. It didn’t matter how big he was or what his job in the army had been or what he would go back to once the Japanese were contained, for above all things, army clerk Rafferty was now a combat veteran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The aftermath of that combat was evident on the hillside. It wasn’t pretty. In places the earth was stained red, so savage had the fighting been. Already a few soldiers were calling it the Battle of Bloody Ridge. The name quickly caught on.

Teams of GIs had retrieved their own dead and wounded, but no one was going to clear away the enemy dead.

And there were a lot of them.