After a while, you can’t miss how men deal with their fear of death. Personally, I shut my emotions off and cram the gruesome specter to the bottom. I got a job to do and that’s what I concentrate on. I can’t afford to let dread run through my head. The men around me had different approaches. Sergeant McQuiston hopped around like a toad. He’d pace back and forth from cannon to cannon as if inspecting, when all he was doing was marking time. Hans Goins made wisecracks. When he was really nervous, Hans offended everybody in the unit with his deprecating humor before he got through. I suppose that was his way of turning his anxiety outward and onto others—by being a jackass. Whatever.
On the other hand, Corporal Bill Arnold kept getting quieter and quieter. If you looked closely, you could almost see him shrinking inside himself. Of course, I had unexpectedly dropped in on him earlier in the fighting and knew about the horrendous images floating around in his head. When Swinging Bill got completely silent, I knew the fire must really be roaring in his head. Pour a little booze on the bonfire and the man could possibly become dangerous or at least a wild man.
I suppose nobody talks about it, I told myself, ’cause we’re all out here to win the war and we just suck it up and go. Ain’t easy, though.
Once our second major assault began, every man knew the Japanese had the capacity to drop one of their flying boxcars on us, and that added to our concern. No matter how we did our thing, the issues were tough.
* * *
The sun came up on the second day of response, sending the First and Third Platoons pushing off to conquer the top of the ridge. As soon as they started down the back side, all hell broke loose. From their superior observation positions, the Japanese easily followed our movements and could see the soldiers coming down the far side of the hill. Machine-gun fire never stopped. Grenades flew through the air like softballs. Mortars rained down on all sides. The men were bombarded into the dirt.
The night before, Captain Harold Butler had been in charge of Company K when they got hit. While Butler was briefing the men on what to expect, he was killed. Lieutenant Stan Smith took his place and was quickly wounded. Lieutenant Albert Strand filled in the loss. The battle never let up. Like a returning bad dream, Kakazu exploded with intense fire.
No matter how heavy the artillery fire, the men in I Company worked their way to the top, but three men were killed almost simultaneously when they tried to come down the back side. The company commander Captain Sam Hughes got hit. The enemy didn’t let up a fraction.
Finally, the company had to withdraw or get wiped out. Using Sherman tanks for protection, they began evacuating the wounded. With tanks providing ground cover, the retreat began. From out of the bushes, a swarm of Japanese rushed one of the Shermans. Our men kept firing, but the Japanese were all over the tank, hitting it with satchel charges. Satchel charges stick to any surface and when manually detonated cause massive explosive damage to anything nearby. Satchel charges can be thrown from a distance and set off through the use of a detonator. Charging like a pack of rabid wild monkeys, the Japanese lost men but completely destroyed the tank. With only four tanks left, the unit tried to work their way through the gap between Kakazu and Nishabaru Ridge.
The First Battalion pushed forward, losing men left and right. They finally got positioned and hunkered down on a hill. C Company had been cut off and couldn’t hook up with them until the next day.
As night fell, Major Sanford Fencil gathered the men for a briefing.
The major admitted they were in a tough place. The imperial forces were all around them and they had to be extremely careful. The major warned, “They wouldn’t hesitate to hit us in the dark if they can get away with it. Got to stay prepared and at the top of our game.”
One of the men held up his hand and asked if the major thought C Company could advance toward them tomorrow.
Fencil nodded and said that’s the instructions he had received and he would take them at their word. They had to have a coordination to have a solid front. Nishabaru Ridge remained in enemy hands. Kakazu was behind enemy lines and spitting death with constant artillery fire.
One of the soldiers commented that the enemy were really hitting them hard.
The major agreed but tomorrow would be another day and their turn.
Somebody laughed and said, “You bet!”
The shrill whistle of a falling missile stopped the conversation. Men dived for cover. The ground shook when the bombs smashed into their midst. Dirt and rock flew across the camp. Debris fell on men barely in their foxholes. No one moved. The soldiers waited for the possible sound of Japanese rushing in, but none came.
Somebody ask where Major Fencil was.
A soldier shouted for the major.
Silence.
One of the men inched toward the crater left by the artillery hit. The men stood dumbfounded, staring at their dead leader.
* * *
War correspondents had descended on us and were covering this day’s action more than they had any of our actions in the past. When the Ninety-Sixth jumped off, at least twenty newspaper people were watching with binoculars. Their stories of watching our men struggle from pillbox to pillbox while advancing only a few yards made good newspaper material and painful memories for us.
Everyone knew the Japanese were fighting with everything they had and hurling their troops into the fray regardless of how many men they lost. Even the reporters could recognize that the Japanese were fighting from concrete bunkers and pillboxes that were well hidden and strategically placed.
We were probably fighting against the sturdiest Japanese defenses that we had faced in the entire war. On the other side of the front line, the Japanese had built a network of tunnels that gave them shelter and made us an easy target. Their defenses extended back for four or five miles and we were only able to take that ground yards at a time.
No one needed to tell us that no breakthrough was imminent. We were stuck.
* * *
The Ninety-Sixth lost more men on April 19 than any other single day. The entire 381st had one particularly brutal struggle. Casualties were high everywhere.
The sun was almost down when Sergeant McQuiston came up to me.
“Major, we’ve been firing those howitzers all day. They’re so hot the barrels are about to melt.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“Think tomorrow’s gonna be the same?”
“The Japanese aren’t passing out train tickets back to Tokyo,” I said. “I expect we’ll do it all over again.”
“Sure takes a toll on the men.”
I shook my head. “We got no choice. We’ll fire up again tomorrow.”
McQuiston looked at me with those empty eyes that he always got when anguish settled in. We could all smell it. The scent of death was in the air.