Savage Sniper

To his surprise, there was no breakfast to speak of aside from more water. Faraday encouraged him to drink his fill. “It’s best to have something in your belly, even if it’s water.”

“I didn’t expect fried eggs, hash browns, and scrapple,” Deke said. “But I’d settle for a scrap of bread.”

“The Nips only feed us once a day,” Faraday explained. “Don’t expect much — we usually get a broth with just enough vegetables in it to turn the water a little green. A handful of rice now and then.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I’ve seen men fight over it. It’s not enough to keep a child alive, let alone a grown man.”

It was fair to say that to the average American male who believed that nearly every meal should involve meat and potatoes of some kind, a Japanese diet would have seemed to be lacking even under normal circumstances. Most Japanese ate rice, vegetables, and fish. When they did have meat, it was only a small portion. After a traditional Japanese meal, most Americans would have been left wondering where they could find the nearest hamburger.

The men assembled in the prison yard, lining up for inspection. It was time for the morning head count. Bleary eyed and aching, Deke had no choice but to join them. The mood was not improved by the fact that the stink of the prison latrines clung to the humid morning air.

A couple of men were too weak to report for the roll call. For these men, under these conditions, Deke realized that there was little hope of recovery. There would be no medicine or nourishing food. Their next stop would likely be the boneyard out back. Escape from the prison camp seemed more urgent than ever.

Mr. Suey entered the prisoners’ barracks to check on the weakened men, which involved kicking and punching them to ascertain that the men were not fit to work. Deke could hear the sergeant’s blows landing from where he stood in the prison yard. He was starting to hate the Japanese sergeant even more, if that was possible.

By the time that the sun was poking through the treetops, the men were marching out of a smaller side gate to begin the day’s labor. First, they had to retrieve the yokes with the empty buckets that were being used to haul rocks from the riverbed near the prison camp. A few men also picked up shovels. Deke eased one of the yokes across his shoulders, sucking in his breath at the pain that the touch of the wood prompted in his sore body.

He saw Mr. Suey watching him, a sadistic smile playing across the Japanese sergeant’s lips, and tried not to let his own face betray any emotion. He kept Faraday’s warning in mind about provoking the Japanese. He reminded himself that he had to get through only one day of this, while many others had been here for what must have felt like an eternity.

The day promised to be yet another hot and muggy one. Already the insects were waking up, adding their singsong racket to the vocalizations of the jungle birds. In contrast, the prisoners and even their guards were mostly silent, except for the shuffle of feet along the muddy trail.

The men made their way down the well-worn jungle path. They walked about a half mile, most of it downhill — which meant they would be moving uphill coming back. Finally, they reached the riverbank. The bank seemed to consist of a tangled mat of tree roots holding the soil in place. It was darker at this lower elevation, where the sun hadn’t reached yet. The gurgle of running water threaded through the silence.

The so-called river was more of a stream, barely ten feet across, but the water ran over a bed of stones, each one about the size of a hefty potato. They set to work filling their buckets with the stones, then balancing the load across their shoulders for the trip back up the hill.

There was no talking allowed, so there was only the noise of stones clanging into the empty buckets and then clicking against each other. It was cooler along the stream and still shady, so it was not unpleasant.

The heat of the day promised to build, along with the swarms of insects. So far the only bugs that bothered the men were large, slow-moving mosquitoes. They were so fat with blood that when Deke slapped one, it left a crimson smear on his arm. Other men didn’t have the energy to resist and simply let the mosquitoes feed.

According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war could not be expected to work on any projects that served the war effort directly. This rule was open to interpretation and had some gray areas. For example, German prisoners of war held in the United States usually labored on farms. In fact, most seemed glad to be out of the fight and enjoyed the work.

The local communities were often welcoming or at least accepting of the German POWs, knowing that they were usually ordinary men caught between a rock and a hard place when their nation went to war. Many of the prisoners were quite young. After the war, more than a few would even opt to stay.