Pacific Sniper

Soon, they reached the flank. Sure enough, here came another group of Japanese attackers, bayonets fixed, howling like savages. The handful of surviving soldiers looked ready to run, but Steele wouldn’t let them.

“Pour it into them!” he shouted. “Don’t let those Nips get any closer!”

The fire from the foxholes increased as the enemy attack grew even closer. The lieutenant leveled his shotgun, and the big boom of the twelve-gauge joined in. At this range, one-eyed or not, he really couldn’t miss. A soldier who had outpaced the others was flung back by the buckshot.

Deke jumped into a foxhole, picked a target, and fired. Another enemy soldier fell. He worked the bolt, fired again. The Japanese were so close now that he could make out individual faces—although they seemed contorted by rage, all screaming at the top of their lungs.

He put his sights on another soldier and dropped him. He fired again, then reached for another clip.

Looking up, Deke saw that Shimizu was still standing above the foxhole. He had his rifle pointed toward the enemy and was blazing away, but he was making himself a target.

Cursing, Deke reached up and grabbed a handful of the fabric on Shimizu’s trousers and pulled him down. “What the hell are you doing? Get down.”

Shimizu tumbled into the foxhole just as something exploded nearby. The Japs were close enough now to throw grenades.

Deke shoved Shimizu off him and got back on the rifle. The Japs were practically on top of them by now. The Springfield didn’t have a bayonet, so he fired one last shot and drew his knife.

Lieutenant Steele was still mowing down the enemy using the shotgun. Each blast from the pump-action gun had a devastating effect but wasn’t enough to stop the enemy attack.

That was when the grenade bounced into the foxhole. Deke stared at it for a moment, figuring This is it.

Quick as lightning, Shimizu grabbed the grenade and threw it back at the Japanese. It detonated while it was still in the air, but they heard the screams as the grenade did its deadly work.

“Son of a bitch,” Deke muttered. “That was close.”

Then the Japanese were upon them. He saw a bayonet jabbing down at him and grabbed the rifle, his powerful farm boy’s muscles dragging the weapon out of the enemy’s grasp. Beside him, Steele leveled the shotgun and fired, taking the soldier out.

Another soldier fell into the foxhole, screaming bloody murder. Deke stabbed him in the belly, but the soldier kept fighting, too frenzied to realize that he had several inches of steel buried in his guts. To his relief, Philly clobbered the Jap in the head with the butt of his rifle, and the man went down for good.

The fight for control of the flank was over almost as quickly as it started. The flank remained anchored for now.

Meanwhile, the banzai charge had broken upon the Americans like a wave crashing against a sandcastle. Some places held, but others dissolved in the onslaught of the enemy as thousands of screaming Japanese soldiers struck, their bayonets flashing in the first light from the rising sun. All up and down the line, countless small fights for life and death broke out.

In places, the Japanese had so much momentum that they literally tumbled into the foxholes. Terrified GIs stabbed with their own bayonets or hacked with their knives as the Japanese fell upon them. Rifles fired on both sides. It was 1944, but it might have been a medieval battlefield where both sides hacked each other bloody.

A few of the Japanese didn’t even stop for the foxholes but leaped over them, dropping grenades as they went. The grenades exploded, leaving shattered GIs in their wake, while the Japanese soldiers charged on toward the beach itself, seemingly unstoppable.

As Deke watched, a Japanese officer rushed toward a machine-gun crew, his sword held high in one hand and a pistol in the other. A soldier rose to meet him, and the officer impaled him with the sword. He shot the other man with his pistol. With an effort, the officer tugged his sword free of the dying man and waved the bloody blade high, exhorting the Japanese troops to follow him.

Deke raised his rifle and shot the officer through the heart.

“We are supposed to capture a few officers to question them,” the Nisei interpreter protested, having seen Deke shoot the sword-wielding officer.

“You go on and capture all the officers you want,” Deke said, glaring at him. “Maybe if you had asked him real nice, he would have given up.”

“I’m just saying that if we get the chance, we should capture an officer.”

“You go on and capture all the Japs you want,” Deke said. “Me, I’m gonna try to keep them from killing us.”

All around them, the scene was one of utter confusion as the melee continued. GIs were fighting back with the butts of their rifles or even their trenching shovels. Incredibly, even more Japanese troops poured out of the woods.