Pacific Sniper

Then came several bugle calls at once, followed by troops shouting “Banzai!” three times in rapid succession.

From the darkness, a roar of voices seemed to coalesce into one. Muzzle flashes stabbed the predawn darkness. The front seemed impossibly wide—the number of attackers looked overwhelming.

More flares were launched, adding a surreal light to the scene. Before them were hundreds, if not thousands, of Japanese troops. It was hard to pick out any single soldier. Instead, the overall effect was that of a roiling brown-and-tan mass, like an angry wave boiling over the land, coming right at them. The sea of uniforms was broken only by the occasional flash of color from an Imperial Japanese flag, white and red in the gloom. Deke was at a loss to pick out any individual target, so he held his fire.

“Holy shit, will you look at that!” Philly exclaimed. “That must be the whole damn Jap army. Shimizu, come up here and yell at them to stop.”

“I do not think that will work,” said the Nisei interpreter, who had somehow found his way into their foxhole.

“Maybe not, but this ought to send the right message,” said Philly, who began firing his M1.

Deke reached over and smacked him on the helmet. “What are you even shooting at, Philly? Knock it off. You’re just wasting ammo.”

He emptied the clip, slapped in another. “I just want to thin them out some.”

As it turned out, the machine gunners were doing a better job of that. Long streamers of fire stretched across no-man’s-land, mowing down swaths of enemy troops wherever the fire hose of flame touched the approaching brown wall.

The Japanese kept screaming, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

Deke knew that he should have been terrified. Maybe part of him was. But mainly he found himself captivated by the scene. The charge was magnificent, a grand spectacle. He reckoned that his ancestors had seen the same thing at Gettysburg. He knew how that had turned out. Did the Japs think they knew better? Bullets whistled overhead, but he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from the sight or even bring his rifle to bear.

Although the flares lit the gloom, they wouldn’t be needed for long. To the east, the sun was just beginning to rise, appearing as a red glow on the horizon of the endless sea.

Deke was brought back to his senses when a bullet snapped past his ear. He ducked deeper into the foxhole. If he wasn’t careful, this attack was going to be the last sight that he ever saw.

He raised his rifle. The front ranks of the banzai charge were crossing the ground at a run, much closer now. Deke put his sights on a Japanese officer who was running at them with a sword. Crazy bastard, he thought. He killed the man with a single shot that dropped him in his tracks.

Deke worked the bolt, settled the crosshairs on a man carrying one of those Japanese flags. Both the flag and the soldier fell into the dry coral dust of Guam and didn’t stir.

All along the American line, the soldiers’ fire was taking a similar toll, with the machine gunners proving to be the deadliest. Gaps now appeared in the Japanese line—and yet they were still coming.

“Don’t these Nip bastards get the message?” Philly wondered, putting another clip into his weapon. “Even if they don’t speak English, getting shot at is kind of a universal language.”

“Watch those bastards on the flank,” Deke warned. “They’re trying to get around us.”

Indeed, a knot of soldiers had broken free from the rest, and the attackers were trying to run for the end of the American position to get in behind the foxholes. Fortunately, Deke wasn’t the only one who had spotted them. There was a sudden burst from a machine gun, and the knot of attackers was cut down as if by a scythe. Soon enough, another group took their place. It was all too clear that the Japanese strategy involved more than a blind attack. They were trying to flank the Americans. If that happened, the defense might very well fall apart.

Lieutenant Steele suddenly appeared, running at a crouch.

“Come with me,” he said. “We’ve got to keep those Nips from getting behind us.”

Deke and Philly leaped from their foxhole and followed. Deke saw Shimizu hesitate, not sure if the order included him, and then he scrambled out after them.

Following Steele, they ran behind the American line, dodging stretchers and frantic GIs, who were starting to fall back as the Japanese attack pressed closer. It was all too clear that this was soon going to become a hand-to-hand combat situation.

Although the fire against the banzai attack had been devastating, the Japanese fire also had taken its toll. Everywhere they looked, wounded men lay on stretchers or were simply on the ground. Medics ran from one wounded man to another, trying to do what they could for them. For many, it was too late. They stared sightlessly up at the dawn sky.

“Hurry it up!” Steele urged.