Pacific Sniper

Seeing the lieutenant with the sword seemed to enrage the officer. Shouting, he surged toward the lieutenant, straining against the ropes. Big as he was, it was all that Ingram could do to hold him back.

“What’s he saying?”

“I guess he’s saying that he wants his sword back.” Lieutenant Steele wrapped up the sword again and returned it to his pack. He grinned at the captured Japanese. “Well, you should have thought of that before you attacked us, buddy.”

Philly stepped back nervously from the Japanese officer, who was now simply snarling at them, helpless in his rage. “He’s an animal,” Philly said.

Lieutenant Steele looked thoughtful. “If you could ask him, I’ll bet that he’d say we are the animals. From the Jap point of view, we’re the barbarians—not them.”

“In that case, they’re pretty mixed up.”

They headed back to the beachhead. Deke took one last look behind him at the now-empty foxholes that they had worked so hard to dig. A few dead Japanese still lay scattered about the clearing, with the jungle starting beyond that. It didn’t look like much of anything—certainly not a place worth fighting and dying over.

“What are you thinking, Deke?” Lieutenant Steele asked, noticing that Deke had paused to look back.

“Just that this business of war is gonna take some getting used to.”

“Good luck with that. I’m still trying to get used to it myself, and I’ve been doing this since Guadal. Now keep up. I wouldn’t want the Japs to get you.”

After the lieutenant turned over the captured officer, they returned to the area on the beach where they had gathered yesterday. Waves rushed relentlessly onto the shore, and a few gulls called overhead. The surroundings almost made it possible to forget, even for a moment, that there was a war going on.

They were not entirely alone. A reporter had heard about the sniper squad and their successful capture of a Japanese officer. The reporter had tagged along, much to Lieutenant Steele’s chagrin.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Ernie Pyle,” he said.

“Say, I’ve heard of you. I’ve even read some of your stories. You’re the actual Ernie Pyle?”

The reporter shrugged his rail-thin shoulders. He had a worn-out, hangdog appearance and sad eyes that looked as if they had seen too much. “I’m not the one who matters here. You boys are the story, not me.”

“I thought you were over in Europe.”

“I was, but with Hitler on the run, this is where the story is now.”

“If you say so, Mr. Pyle.”

“Ernie is just fine, Lieutenant. Just pretend I’m not here. I’m going to take some notes and watch. Listen and learn, as it were.”

Steele nodded. “All right, gather round,” the lieutenant said. “Yesterday, we had a chance to see how everyone could shoot.”

“Some of us are better than others, Honcho. That’s for sure.”

“Marksmanship is only part of the equation,” the lieutenant said. “Sure, it’s important to be able to hit the target. But you’ve also got to be able to get close enough to the target, and then not give yourself away in the process. Meanwhile, the Japanese have their own snipers at work. That’s what we’re going to learn about today.”

“Sounds like a lot,” Philly said.

“Nobody said this was going to be easy,” the lieutenant said. “The thing is that the Japanese have a head start on us in this department. They use sniper warfare as part of their overall defensive strategy, and they train for it. We don’t do any of that, so we have some catching up to do.”

The lieutenant proceeded to explain Japanese sniper strategies that he had encountered on Guadalcanal. The Japanese tended to favor treetops—which gave the advantage of a bird’s-eye view of the terrain—or snipers dug into “spider holes” on elevated ground.

Both had their advantages and disadvantages, from a sniper’s point of view. While the treetop position enabled long-distance shots, these snipers often tied themselves right to the tree. Once they had been located, they were sitting ducks with little protection. The snipers in the spider holes relied more on clear lanes of fire. Their positions were usually well protected, which made them difficult to root out.

“You know what my favorite position is, don’t you?” Philly wisecracked. “The missionary position.”

“Very funny, Philly. Keep it up and we’ll use you for target practice.”

But even the reporter had cracked a smile at Philly’s joke.

“Are you really turning any of this into a story, Mr. Pyle?” the lieutenant asked.

“Believe it or not, the folks back home will want to know how we’re beating the enemy at their own game.”