The rain didn’t stop.
The downpour actually picked up and increased with a continual drenching, drowning precipitation. On May 22, the entire Tenth Army ground to a halt. Deteriorating roads became impassable swamps. Even bulldozers ceased to be able to pull trucks out of the mud. We called the M29 cargo carrier a Weasel. On Leyte, the Weasel had been invaluable yanking any size vehicle out of the mire and getting it going again. No longer. The thick, oozing, adhesive mud impacted the wheels and stuck to the suspension system. Eventually, muck even worked into the motor and clogged everything. Even when some wheels got traction, the extreme dragging effect on the motors pushed strain to the point of destruction. Roads were lined with vehicles with steaming engines and radiators boiling over. Finally, even the M5 tractor no longer hauled heavy artillery through the mud. Nothing worked.
In order to maintain a steady supply of food, water, and ammunition, already overworked soldiers carried supplies on their aching backs. Men were sliding, slipping, sinking into the mud pits that were so ubiquitous no one could avoid them. Mud covered the men from head to toe, bending strained men to the ground.
During this ordeal, no slack was given on either side. The life-and-death struggle continued unabated. The two sides were separated by only a few yards, and the fighting never let up. The hot war had become a wet war.
By the evening of May 21, Command could see that the Japanese defenses around Shuri were crumbling. The Japanese were running out of men to man their guns. Unfortunately, our soldiers could not take advantage because of the weather. Plans for attack were drawn up and orders issued that were almost as quickly canceled. Any forward progress could be no more than inch by inch.
Two days later, the 381st made an advance on two hills southwest of Sugar and Conical Hills. Two platoons of E Company worked their way through a small village, but the constant firing from Sugar and Conical forced them to retreat. Possibly encouraged by the withdrawal, the Japanese mounted a counterattack on Sugar Hill. Around one hundred Japanese surged against F Company. Only five hundred pounds of accurate targeting repelled the assault. The war had not even missed a beat.
While this activity was unfolding, A Company of the 383rd made a repeated assault on Love Hill. Colonel Ed May, knowing the assault could be highly significant, sent Company A to see what could be accomplished. Nothing had changed, and the Japanese unleashed another torment straight from hell.
Sergeant George Smith started up the hill with his men. The terrain proved to be rough and arduous to overcome, but A Company kept creeping up the hill.
The corporal said he couldn’t see or hear any Japanese.
Smith warned, “Don’t slow down. They’re most certainly out there.”
The men kept working their way forward.
Smith called out that the enemy was just in front of them.
The soldiers stooped lower to the ground.
Smith began to make out the horizon line of the crest of the hill ahead of him. They couldn’t be that far from the top. Abruptly a machine gun opened up on them. The men hit the ground, but the explosive fire didn’t stop.
A soldier close to Smith rolled over on his back. Gravel had skinned his face, leaving streaks of blood on the ground. The man groaned that they’d got him. The words slowly stopped.
Smith screamed for a medic to get over there.
When he looked back in the soldier’s face, blank eyes were staring aimlessly into the sky. A bullet hole near the center of his body had started turning red but stopped bleeding. Smith knew the man was gone. The image burned in his mind.
The sergeant started firing in the direction that the machine-gun fire was coming from, but even though he kept shooting, nothing changed.
A mortar exploded in the midst of the platoon with a deafening roar. The sergeant realized that he no longer heard anything. A low-level buzzing filled his ears, but he wasn’t really hearing any voices.
The sound of one of the men screaming only slightly echoed in Smith’s ears. Suddenly a Japanese soldier ran out of the bushes with his bayonet fixed. Smith stared, unable to decide what to do. One of the soldiers on the ground tripped the Japanese. Before the enemy could recover, the soldier jumped up and grabbed the man’s hair. With all the strength he had, the soldier pounded the enemy’s face back and forth in the dirt. The man’s lips broke open and blood pulsated out of his nose before he turned limp. The soldier slammed a trench knife in the man’s back.
Smith watched, unable to move. His head felt stunned, empty, unresponsive.
The soldiers kept firing at the Japanese rushing out of the bushes, but soldiers were still falling before the rampaging enemy. Sergeant Smith’s head seemed to swirl around and around. He could no longer think or respond. Smith began to count the men lying around him. At least a dozen were on the ground not moving.
Nothing any longer made sense. Smith knew the men for whom he had responsibility were being annihilated. He couldn’t stand the thought that he was responsible for at least a dozen men dead on the ground. The entire unit was being wiped out. Smith wasn’t about to crawl away from the deaths of his buddies, but his thoughts blurred. Nothing made any sense.
Sergeant Smith finally grabbed his rifle and stood up recklessly, exposing himself in the exchange. He took one step before a machine gun cut him virtually in two. The remaining men began running back over the hill. They knew the assault had been another disaster.
As night fell, Lieutenant Harold Weingartner quickly recognized that the Japanese were beginning another assault on his men. Some Japanese set up a machine gun only fifteen yards away. The sudden blast blew the top off PFC Jim Duncan’s foxhole.
The machine gun stopped, and Duncan reasoned they must be changing clips. Grabbing a portable flamethrower, Duncan rushed the enemy nest.
The astonished Japanese looked up from the machine gun just as Duncan pulled the trigger on the flamethrower. Three Japanese screamed as fire engulfed them. Flames leapt up from their uniforms and their hair became human torches.
“You bastards kept us up all night!” Duncan kept swinging the flamethrower back and forth, yelling that those bastards wouldn’t keep them up all night again.
G Company kept firing and at least forty-two enemy fell dead. One soldier was so exhausted that after pulling the safety pin on a grenade, he dropped off into sleep. Only the pressure of his grip kept the grenade from exploding in his hand.
* * *
All through the night, the Japanese kept coming. Shortly after midnight, the enemy rushed Company C once more and grabbed three key foxholes. By 3:30 a.m., a full company of enemy were attacking through a gap between C and L Companies while another two platoons assaulted A Company. PFC Donald Schiever had stayed in the foxhole next to where the Japanese had settled in. Even though he was wounded, Schiever kept firing at the three occupied foxholes. He had held ground single-handedly and kept the Japanese from moving forward.
By five thirty, C Company had taken back the three foxholes. At dawn, supplies started coming in again. The challenge of getting across completely impassable roads had nearly brought the relief drive to a halt. However, an even larger problem threatened to wipe out the entire company. An air strike that was supposed to be canceled came flying in with a five-hundred-pound bomb. The blockbuster went off on the other side of the hill but was only twenty-five yards from our soldiers. Swooping planes strafed the Japanese and took a heavy toll.
C Company sat there with their rifles ready and their teeth chattering.
The following day, General Bradley sent the Third Battalion of the 383rd to hold the east end of Oboe Hill. Whoever screwed up on the orders caused naval gunfire to fall short and killed fifteen of our men. As far as the First Battalion was concerned, they were down to such a small number of men that antitank platoons were sent in as reinforcements. The usual three rifle companies had been so depleted that there were only enough men left to make one platoon. Colonel Johnson could rustle up barely 188 men, the normal number for one company. The situation began to look grim.
On May 26, Command recognized that the men who had sustained this struggle had to be relieved. Heavy machine gunners were moved into the line as riflemen. Even drivers parked their vehicles and shouldered rifles. We were throwing everything we had into the conflict. By five thirty that evening, the struggling infantrymen got the first signs of hope.
One of the scouting planes observed that a thousand Japanese were going south from Shuri. This was the first sign that the Japanese were abandoning the Shuri line and might be in full retreat. The enormous sacrifice and struggle appeared to be paying off. The First Battalion had lost 410 men fighting for Oboe, Zebra, and Dick Hills. Only by the most persistent heroism had they been able to hang on, and now the struggle appeared to be over. The soldiers endured, hoping against hope that such was a fact.
A couple of days later, the sun came out for the first time in ten days. Maybe, just maybe, that was our rainbow.