Pacific Sniper

Deke spun around, rifle raised, looking for a target. Those shots were close, practically right on top of them. He was scanning the broken remains of the treetops, expecting to spot the sniper overhead, but to no avail. He heard more shots. Another soldier went down.

Philly had gone to one knee, waving his rifle in all directions. “Where the hell is he?”

Then Deke spotted the sniper’s nest. A Jap had crawled into a hole and waited for the squad to go by before opening fire. They were so close that he could readily see the head and shoulders of the sniper, half out of the hole, blazing away at them with his deadly Arisaka rifle.

He didn’t even bother to use the scope, but just pointed the Springfield and pulled the trigger. The sniper fell back. Deke worked the bolt and fired again, taking his time and aiming carefully at the sniper’s head. He fired and the sniper didn’t move again.

“Dammit, I hate these sneaky bastards,” Lieutenant Steele said. The sniper had killed two GIs and wounded a third, whom the medic was now working over. It didn’t look promising. “Son of a bitch. That’s three of our guys. Still, that was good shooting, Deke.”

“You got it, Honcho. I just wish I’d gotten him before he’d gotten us.”

“Then you’d better grow some eyes in the back of your head.” He looked around at the squad. “Maybe we’d all better do that.”

“Don’t you mean eye, Honcho?” Philly asked.

“Keep it up, Philly. I’m sure they could use some help stacking boxes on the beach.”

“Right now, that sounds pretty good.”

“What’s that?”

“Uh, nothing—” Philly managed to stop just short of adding sir, which would have been a death warrant if there were any Japanese within listening range. Given the terrain, that was entirely possible.

They had eliminated the Japanese sniper, but the Japanese weren’t done.

Up ahead, they heard a burst of fire from a concrete pillbox. But this was no solitary sniper with a rifle. This was definitely a machine-gun emplacement. The Japanese Nambu machine guns always had the telltale sound of a woodpecker, albeit a deadly one.

“Everybody down!” Lieutenant Steele shouted.

Bullets tore up the ground all around them. Yoshio seemed frozen in place, not sure what he should do. Deke grabbed Yoshio by the shoulder and dragged the interpreter down beside him.

It was soon clear what Yoshio’s fate would have been. Caught in the open, one soldier was unfortunate enough to take a round through the head and died instantly.

“Anybody see him?” Philly asked. “Hey, Yoshio. Why don’t you go on up there and ask him to surrender?”

“Is he serious?” Yoshio started to push himself up from the ground.

“Stay put,” Deke growled.

A fresh burst of fire snapped overhead, proving what a bad idea it would be to approach the pillbox.

Deke squinted at the structure. All that he could see was a narrow, dark slit into the interior of the pillbox. But the view wasn’t clear. Broken trees and brush obscured much of the pillbox. He put his rifle on the slit, hoping that a muzzle flash might give him a target. Meanwhile, the Nambu kept hammering away, chewing them to pieces. The entire squad was pinned down until this pillbox could be eliminated. Deke wasn’t looking forward to the task.

But this time, it was going to be somebody else’s job. As the soldiers scattered ahead of it, the tank came rolling forward. Deke had almost forgotten all about it.

Bullets ricocheted off the tank, raising sparks. The tank commander swore and dropped down inside the hatch. The tank rolled to a stop, brought its big gun to bear, and fired an earsplitting round directly at the pillbox.

Smoke and dust roiled across the ground and chunks of concrete rained down. It was hard to say whether or not the tank round had hit the slit in the pillbox directly, but it had been close enough. The concrete face of the pillbox looked charred and blackened. The Nambu had fallen silent.

“Show’s over!” a sergeant shouted. “Let’s move out!”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I sure do like having a tank around,” Philly said.

Chapter Fifteen

General Takashina could see that his attack had failed. His troops had no choice now but to retreat into the jungle itself, where defenses had been prepared to hold off the enemy as long as possible.

“We will wear down the enemy’s resolve until they are forced to withdraw,” he announced to his staff. He would not call it a retreat. “They will wish that they had never set foot on this island!”

“We will fight to the end!” Colonel Iwasaki, Takashina’s second-in-command, agreed enthusiastically.

What both Iwasaki and Takashina knew, but would not say, was that the cream of their troops had been lost in the desperate banzai attacks against the American beachhead. If it had not been for the appearance of the US tanks, perhaps the tide of battle would have turned in their favor. As it stood, thousands of their best troops now lay dead.