The discovery of caves and tunnels proved to be a stifling development. The more we uncovered, the more dread we felt. The Japanese had probably concluded they could hold out forever shooting from these clandestine locations. We didn’t have forever.
Sergeant Harlan Stretch and his platoon had spent the night on top of the escarpment. Strange sounds and sights had erupted that proved disconcerting. With no idea what was going on, the platoon became part of the investigation into what the Japanese had created in the caves.
The next morning Stretch talked with Captain Louis Reuter.
Stretch reported that a weird thing had happened the previous night. Reuter looked askance at him as if he knew what he was going to say. The captain asked if the Frankenstein monster had walked through his camp.
While they were sleeping, Stretch reported, they’d started hearing voices. Bizarre sounds. Goofy. He swore it sounded like Japanese gobbledygook. Then every now and then strange beams of light popped up. Just as suddenly, they disappeared.
Reuter stiffened and asked if it sounded like it was coming from underneath them.
Stretch brightened. It was exactly like it was coming up out of the ground! Was that spooky or what?
Reuter nodded and told him he was not crazy. The sergeant had heard the Japanese going back and forth in tunnels right underneath him.
Harlan Stretch swallowed hard. The Japanese were roaming around under the ground?
Reuter explained how they had discovered the facts yesterday when they explored one of the caves. The Japanese had built tunnels all over the damned escarpment. The Americans were not just fighting the enemy out there ahead of them, but those under the cliffs as well.
Stretch rubbed his mouth nervously and wondered what they were gonna do.
Reuter said they had no alternative but to find those sonofabitches and cut their friggin’ heads off. The men should pay attention to what was under them.
The sergeant shook his head and moaned that if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. He walked away shaking his head.
The captain stood there for a minute thinking about the situation. Obviously, discovering a swarm of soldiers under their feet would be unnerving to the men. Moreover, who knew what kind of gimmick the enemy might come up with that would shoot up through the ground. The entire situation was bad.
Captain Reuter reached for the walkie-talkie and called Colonel Nolan.
The gruff voice barked.
Reuter reported the big problem of tunnels running everywhere across the escarpment. “It’s like they have a subway down there. We better face it before we get bit in the ass.”
Nolan paused for a moment and asked what he was suggesting.
“We need to rustle up some barrels of crude oil and gasoline.”
* * *
Sergeant McQuiston approached me while we were waiting for orders from Command Central. “The men are ready to fire the artillery. When do we start?”
“I got word that the Japanese are dug in those caves and tunnels that line the escarpment,” I said. “We can’t blast them because they’re underground. All we’d do is knock our men off the top.”
The sergeant rubbed his chin. “We got to do something.”
“Right now, we can only wait,” I said. “I’m afraid we got to depend on the right answers coming down the pike.”
McQuiston shook his head and walked off.
* * *
While we were waiting, F Company had hunkered down on Needle Rock. They were expecting relief from another company that would allow them to climb down. While they were waiting, someone started warming up some coffee. The men sat around waiting for the next crew to come in. I had already communicated with them.
Suddenly out of nowhere, a Japanese officer stood up in plain sight and started waving a saber over his head and screaming something or the other in one of their battle cries. The enemy came flying out from behind every rock and tree. F Company had been so surprised that coffee flew everywhere as men dashed for their rifles.
Captain Bollinger began yelling commands. “Those bastards are coming in. Shoot ’em! Damn it! Shoot!”
After a couple of minutes of shooting, a sergeant crawled over to say they couldn’t stop them. As fast as they knocked one enemy down, two more popped up.
Bollinger grimaced. He could see the situation. They had no choice but to retreat from this godforsaken Needle Rock. The men should back off.
The sergeant scrambled through the maze of gunfire, shouting, “Retreat! Leave the worthless hill to those damned Japanese. Get out of here!”
Hand grenades flew like snowballs. A Japanese set up a machine gun in the middle of the hill and started blasting.
Bollinger screamed, “Shoot the guttersnipe! Get him before he gets you!”
Two soldiers fell backward with wounds in their legs. The Japanese started to adjust the sight to shoot higher, but one of our men got within a few feet and shot him dead. I could see this was a critical situation.
The sergeant yelled that they were all over them. They had to do something.
Bollinger called our artillery unit. “Shaw! You’ve got to blast the Needle. They’re killing us.”
I listened carefully. “You got the coordinates?”
Bollinger barked them over the phone.
“Hey, isn’t that where you are?”
“Yes,” the captain said factually.
“We’d be dropping bombshells on you.”
Bollinger paused. “We’re probably not going to get out of here any other way. We’ll have to take our chances. Get on with it, Major Shaw.” He hung up.
As the artillery rounds fell, PFC Lundman got trapped on a high ledge. When he realized the Japanese were prevailing, he dropped to the ground like he was dead, but he could watch the enemy overrunning the camp. They grabbed American cigarettes off dead bodies and started puffing away. A few finished off the coffee still simmering in a pot over a campfire. The private watched in agonizing silence and didn’t move.
Finally, F Company’s Sergeant Lloyd Dodd realized that Lundman had been left behind on that precarious ledge. He knew what they had to do.
They couldn’t leave Lundman. They had to go back and get him even though enemy were all over the place. Dodd knew how treacherous the return would be, but they had to kick ass big-time.
The men charged up to the crest of the outcropping of rocks and came firing like assassins from hell. Caught by surprise, the Japanese started running. This time the enemy beat a retreat.
Dodd bent down over the private and asked Lundman if he was okay.
He had a couple of shrapnel wounds from our own mortars but thought he was okay. He asked the sergeant, “How many did we get?”
Best that Dodd could see—fifteen dead Japanese.
* * *
We knew tunnels ran all over the escarpment and had to be dealt with and cleaned out. Many of the passageways broke off from single tunnels dug straight down through the cliff like endless chimneys. Trying to climb into one of those holes exposed our men to being shot on the next levels below. The best idea was the one from Captain Louis Reuter, who’d suggested we pour drums of oil and gasoline down the shafts inside the rock fortress and then set them ablaze with flamethrowers. When we got through, the Japanese ought to be running for their lives.
The men started pouring black oil in openings. You could hear the goo splash clear down to China. Tanks of gasoline were emptied last, coating the walls with stinky old Texaco brand X that would explode like a volcano. One of the men with a flamethrower stepped up to the hole and blasted the raunchy mix. Fire shot everywhere. Smoke filled your nose. The enemy’s security tunnels turned into their own private death traps. No telling how many Japanese had died in the blast.
Smoke came pouring out of even fairly remote caves some distance from the top of the cliffs. Far from going out immediately, the steam rose and the fire burned for a long time. The Japanese wouldn’t be attacking us from inside the escarpment anymore.
Job done.