Pacific Sniper

Neither of them could resist turning a nervous eye toward Private Shimizu, who had been put into the foxhole by them. Quietly, he had done his part digging. He now sat with the brim of his helmet dipped low over his eyes, a cascade of water flowing off it, looking as miserable as they felt.

Deke’s wide-brimmed hat provided some measure of protection against the downpour, keeping the rain from running down the back of his neck. He unsnapped the other side to provide more protection. The hat was a useful item in the tropics, all right.

As another tropical night approached, they all settled in, digging foxholes as deep as they could in the island soil. Remembering what they had gone through the previous night with constant Japanese attacks, no one argued about laboring to dig his foxhole. The deeper the hole, the better one’s chances of survival.

“You know, it’s funny,” Philly said.

“What is?” Deke asked.

“I would have thought that being a good soldier meant being good with a rifle. In reality, it means you’re good with a shovel.”

“Just shut up and dig.”

The only one who seemed to have trouble digging his foxhole was Private Shimizu. After a half hour of steady toil, it seemed as if he had barely scratched much more than a shallow hole into the tough, coral soil.

Philly wasn’t shy about pointing out that the hole wasn’t sufficient.

“Better dig deeper,” Philly warned him. “You might look like those Japs, but they’re going to shoot you all the same.”

Shimizu went back to shoveling. After a while, he straightened up and looked over at Deke. Philly had gone to bum cigarettes off the next squad over.

“Do you think that this is deep enough?” Shimizu asked.

Deke just shrugged.

“You don’t like me much, do you? I can tell.”

“Listen, kid, I just don’t care about you, one way or the other. The last buddy I looked out for got himself killed, and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do about it. You’re better off on your own.”

“What about Philly?”

“Philly can handle himself. It’s you I’m not so sure about. We’ll see if you even last the night.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’ll probably get killed, that’s what.”

Shimizu shook his head and went back to digging, probably wishing that he was back at HQ on the beach, interrogating enemy prisoners—although those tended to be few and far between. The enemy hadn’t shown himself to be much in favor of surrender.

The sound of distant gunfire was punctuated only by the dig and scrape of shovels nearby. Finally, the sun began to dip toward the horizon and another night of hell.

Little did the men know that the attacks of the previous night had been no more than harassment. Hidden in the lengthening shadows of the jungle, emerging from their hiding places and the tunnels where they had concealed themselves, more than six thousand Japanese soldiers were preparing to attack the thin American lines at dawn.

Despite the threat of attack, the soldiers managed to sleep fitfully during the night. They came fully awake only when one of the guard dogs attached to an adjacent company began barking madly.

“Somethin’ has got that dog riled up.”

“That dog smells Japs, that’s what,” Deke said.

As it turned out, Deke was right. The next warning of an attack came when a flare was launched into the sky, floating down and illuminating the scene before them.

“Is that one of their flares or one of ours?” Philly wanted to know.

“Don’t matter,” Cole said, jacking a shell into his rifle.

In the sudden glare of light, he looked around and took stock of their position. The sniper squad had been rolled into another company to anchor its flank. Ingram and Alphabet were to his right, then Rodeo. Lieutenant Steele had squeezed himself into the foxhole that Shimizu had dug, sharing it with him. As foxholes went, it was more like a shack than a mansion, but it would have to do.

“Here they come!” the lieutenant shouted. “Get ready!”

“Guess it’s one of theirs,” Philly said. “See? I told you so.”

The warning from Lieutenant Steele hadn’t been necessary. From the cover of the jungle vegetation, they could hear bugles blowing and shouts in the strange, guttural Japanese tongue. It had been said that German was a warlike language, but to Deke’s ears, Japanese was a close second. From the jungle, they even heard the clash of metal and what sounded like a sword slithering from a sheath. In the darkness, the sound was even more frightening.

Deke tightened his grip on the rifle, but he didn’t put it to his shoulder just yet. There were no targets to be seen.

Off to his left, a few soldiers began shooting into the dark undergrowth.

“Those boys are wasting ammo,” he grumped at Philly, who was poised in the foxhole beside him. “There ain’t nothin’ to shoot at.”

Lieutenant Steele seemed to agree. “Hold your fire!” he shouted.

The chorus of potshots slackened but did not stop altogether.

The noises from the dark jungle grew louder, like a storm rumbling on the horizon, but did not yet break.

“I wish they would get this over with.”