of Marines, continued to arrive, taking the last miles on foot as the engineers attempted to lengthen the highway from the south.
The advance paused and a soldier near them lit up a Chesterfield. “Put it out,” snapped Bear. The soldier with the cigarette glared at him.
“What the fuck for?” the GI snarled. “You ain’t my mommy. Hell, you ain’t even in the real army. And besides, it ain’t nighttime so nobody can see the glow in the dark.”
Bear matched the soldier’s glare and the GI wilted. “Because you can smell cigarette smoke a mile away in the woods, that’s why, jerkoff, and that would alert the Japs that you’re coming so they can blow your worthless ass away.”
Farris was about to support Bear when the soldier simply nodded and put out the cigarette he’d been puffing on. “Pass it around,” Farris said, “no smoking.”
“But we’ll die,” lamented another soldier in a falsetto whine, bringing nervous laughter. Even Bear chuckled, while the GI who’d been scolded just turned away.
“The same thing with matches at night,” Farris added, “but you already know that. And keep the talking down, too.”
At Bear’s suggestion, they were formed up with two platoons in front and a third bringing up the rear. The understrength company still didn’t have enough men for a headquarters platoon. Stecher controlled a slightly overstrength squad that passed for one.
Even though there was no intelligence confirming that the main Japanese force was near, the patrol was a strong one because of a real concern that a decent number of Japanese might possibly be close by and could easily overwhelm a smaller patrol. At least that was the theory. Farris seemed to recall that Custer had more men than he at the Little Big Horn and a fat lot of good it had done him and the Seventh Cavalry. Of course, the Seventh didn’t have radios or air support, which might have proven useful.
One of the scouts emerged and gave the signal to halt. They froze. The scout had found footprints in the snow. “The Japs tried to cover their tracks,” the scout explained, “but they did a lousy job.”
Now moving with utmost caution and letting the scout and Bear lead, they followed the tracks. Both civilians estimated the Japanese force at maybe a dozen men, an augmented squad.
Again they called a halt. Bear pointed at a thicket about a hundred yards away. The dense forest and falling snow prevented them from seeing it sooner. “They’re in there and they can see us,” Bear said.
Just as Farris was about to ask what the Japanese were waiting for, rifle and machine-gun fire rippled from the thicket, crashing into trees and bushes, tearing off branches and bark. The Americans dropped to the ground. Farris grabbed his helmet and tried to melt into the earth. He got a mouthful of snow for his efforts. With macabre humor, he hoped it wasn’t yellow snow from where some Jap had pissed. He and his men started to recover from the shock of being fired on and began searching out targets. Close to seventy men soon responded with rifles, carbines, and light machine guns and BARs. Farris, almost overcome with excitement and fear, managed to remember to order the rear guard to keep facing the rear. He wanted no surprises creeping up on them.
“Are they going to retreat from there?” Stecher asked.
Bear grinned. “Retreat to where? We’re between them and safety. If anything we’re pushing them back to Gavin.”
Someone screamed and the call went out for a medic. One of Farris’s men had been hit. The Japanese fire began to slacken under the intense American shooting, and then it stopped. American soldiers crawled closer, maintaining a high rate of fire, shredding the thicket.
Farris’s radio man said that Major Baylor wanted to know if they needed artillery support. Farris said it would be nice if they knew precisely where they were, but no thank you.
More soldiers crawled to the thicket and hurled in grenades, which exploded with loud
“Now’s the hard part,” Bear said with a feral grin. “Somebody gets to go in there. Kind of like hunters in India I read about going into the jungle after a wounded tiger.”
Farris swallowed. “You coming with me?” he asked.
Bear grinned. He was openly pleased that Farris was going in himself instead of letting others take the risk. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Lieutenant.”
Cautiously, Farris led a line of soldiers the rest of the way across the small clearing and toward the thicket which now consisted of mangled trees. There was silence. Farris’s heart was pounding as he pushed his way through. He halted as he saw his first dead Jap a few yards in and a second one just a few feet farther away. They had been hit by multiple bullets and were now just bloody human wreckage.
More troops filed in and Farris was pleased to see that they kept themselves spread out and were looking for survivors instead of gawking at the first dead Japanese soldier most of them had ever seen.
They passed through the rest of the thicket. Quick shots finished off a few Japanese soldiers who might yet be alive. One of them exploded as the bullets detonated the grenade he’d been hiding, sending gore over the nearest soldiers. Tim angrily ordered his men to shoot all the corpses, no matter how badly mangled they were.
In all, they found eleven bodies, including one sergeant who’d killed himself by stuffing the barrel of his Arisaka rifle into his mouth and pulling the trigger with his toe. Farris made the cold-blooded decision to not bury them. It would take too much time and, besides, the ground was probably too frozen to dig even a mass grave for so many dead bodies. They searched the bodies for identification and info, such as anything resembling orders and some letters home. It was all chicken-scratching to Farris, but maybe someone like his uncle could decipher it.
Bear pointed at the bodies. “What do you see, Lieutenant?”
“Along with a bunch of dead Japs, I see Japs who are scrawny and in rags. Hell, they must be desperate.” Then he thought that a desperate enemy could be the worst kind.
Bob Hope and his troupe’s arrival at San Diego coincided with the astonishing news that the U.S. Army had landed in North Africa. The war to liberate Europe was on. The news was met with mixed reactions by the troops. Some were jealous that they weren’t in on the action, while others were thankful that the fighting was taking place far, far away.
All of a sudden, place names like Oran, Bizerte, and Tripoli were being used as if the speakers knew where the hell they were. And who the hell was Dwight Eisenhower, the American general in command? With a name like Eisenhower, he sounded more like a German.
Amanda and Dane sat on the ground about a third of the way back from the improvised stage, and quietly wondered how many GIs actually knew where North Africa was in the first place. Still, it was a damn good feeling to be finally striking back instead of taking it in the groin for so very long.
Tim thought Amanda looked striking in a white blouse and blue slacks. She’d worn slacks instead of a skirt so that she didn’t accidentally give some sailors a show. That apparently either didn’t occur to Grace or, more likely, she didn’t care as she sat with Merchant and happily exposed an expanse of thigh. Tim hoped he and Amanda could find a quiet place later on and become at least as intimate as they had in the surf. Since then, he was back in the monastery and she in her nunnery. And now they were part of a huge crowd of people. Damn.
Twenty thousand jubilant soldiers, sailors, and Marines were packed densely on the field in front of the large wooden stage. Hope was there along with Frances Langford who, Amanda decided, really didn’t have all that good a voice, and slapstick comedian Jerry Colonna, who Dane admitted wasn’t all that funny. A man named Les Brown led what he called “Les Brown’s Band of Renown” with okay talent.
But what the hell, the fact that, with the exception of Hope, the talent wasn’t all that talented didn’t matter. They’d made the effort to entertain the troops and the troops appreciated it with noisy enthusiasm for every poorly sung song and every bad joke. Better, it was a break from routine and everyone was having a great time listening to Hope tease all the brass who were in the front few rows and taking it with apparent good humor. Like they had a choice, Amanda whispered.
Hope pointed to the generals and admirals. “How many of you have ever seen an enlisted man before?” he said, drawing gales of hoots and laughter. “Well, you’ve struck the mother lode this time.” Hope would never go beyond gentle teasing, which was part of what made him so compelling and likeable.
Hope ragged on about the bad food, the miserable accommodations (unless you wore a star on your
