SEPTEMBER 1944
Somehow or the other, the rumor had leaked out that the entire division was going to Yap.
“Yap?” I said. “Where in God’s name is Yap?”
The soldier with the Intelligence unit whispered so softly I almost couldn’t understand him. “Major Shaw, Yap is on an island called Leyte about a thousand miles east of the Philippines.”
“You’re kidding!” I know my voice sounded somewhat indignant.
“I don’t know for sure, Major Shaw. Hell, Yap may be an island by itself. Can’t tell. Never heard of any of these places.”
I looked at him skeptically. “Could we end up on Leyte?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Who can say? This I know for sure. Keep your helmet fastened tight, soldier, ’cause we’re all headed for a big-time showdown.”
And you’re wondering where Yap is. Well, I never got there. Turned out we ended up on Leyte, which had become the center of the struggle as the war was winding down and the Japanese sun began fading into the darkness of a night of defeat. The island of Yap was bypassed. We soon found out that Leyte had good beaches for landing, but our vehicles plunged into the ominous swamps that were everywhere just beyond the beaches. The thick, sticky mud could stop a truck in its tracks. A musty, tropical smell hung in the air along with the muggy humidity. Anyone without vaccinations might well have ended up in the hospital with malaria. Tall grass standing six to eight feet high covered the interior of the island. You could get lost in that turf before you even knew what happened to you. Careful attention was essential. Most of the soldiers had never seen anything like this isthmus, but we knew the Japanese were certainly out there somewhere.
After we landed, I didn’t think much about Yap or Leyte or anywhere else. I was hunkered down in a foxhole while Japanese Kawasaki Ki-102s and Ki-61 Heins strafed Leyte and made any previous conversations seem like they’d happened decades ago. The command told the boys not to shoot at the Japanese fighter planes when they flew over, but no one in this war was going to pay attention to that nonsense. After all, the Japanese were trying to kill us!
A thunderous explosion sprayed dirt in my face. The smell of gunpowder and smoke filled my nose. One of those Zeros had caught it from our boys. An airplane had crashed close to the beach, causing the ground to shake.
How do you handle a catastrophe like that? Many of us had only been farm boys before the war. A few had been merchants, clerks, or schoolteachers. Our families barely survived the Great Depression. After Pearl Harbor, we had marched off to make the Empire of the Sun pay for their cowardly attack on our unsuspecting ships. Most of us were just kids trying to do our patriotic duty without any idea of how devastating, deadly, and dastardly the war really would turn out to be. But we were finding out fast.
I grabbed my helmet and pushed it down tight. Machine-gun fire had opened up somewhere out there. Maybe it wasn’t aimed my way. Maybe it was. I ducked.
“Major!” A voice yelled from out of the dense tropical forest. “Major Shaw! Need a medic. Got a man down.”
I started crawling across the open space toward the bushes. Gunfire sent me rolling over on my back. “Medic!” I hollered. “Somebody get me a medic!”
“I’m one!” a soldier hollered back from somewhere in the thick jungle bush.
“Get the hell over there in the trees. North of you. Got a soldier down.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on my way.”
An explosion made the ground shake again. Scare me? Are you kidding? Frightened me to death! But by the time we landed on Leyte and settled into the bloody conflict, I already expected to be terrified when I went to sleep at night and to wake up mortified in the morning. Just the nature of war.
My outfit, the 361st Field Artillery Battalion, could pump 105-millimeter howitzer shells at high and low angles so fast that the Japanese thought we had automatic weapons. The cannon had a good compromise between range and destructive power. A single caliber simplified logistics. Most of the time we were no more than a thousand yards behind the infantry, firing over them like crazy. The battles raged with a ferocity that could leave you deaf or delirious.
Sometimes we called them Japanese, but mostly we labeled them imperial forces, enemy, and a couple hundred obscenities. By the time we landed on Leyte, we knew the enemy’s tactics well enough. They lived off the land. The war roared on somewhere far on the other side of grotesque and obscene. Most of the enemy troops didn’t survive. Their live troops were so scarce that our higher-ups offered a bottle of whiskey for any Japanese soldiers brought in alive. The few that were found usually looked like a truck had run over them several times.
The abrupt roar of a Japanese fighter plane caused me to hit the foxhole again. Rapid machine-gun fire sent everybody plunging back into the ditches. Some of the men stood up and fired rifles as well as machine guns at the airplane circling overhead. Once again, the acid smell of gun smoke filled my nose.
A captain named William Carpenter jumped in my foxhole. “Major Shaw, the report that we got says that the Japanese Navy is going to circle the island with their big guns aimed right at us. If they get through and open up, we could all be hamburger. Get the picture?”
I nodded. “What are we up against?”
The captain’s voice lowered. “We think there’s at least twenty-five thousand Japanese in the area with a hundred seventy-five fighter planes and thirty bombers. If they get their navy turned around the tip of the island, we’re looking at big trouble.”
“I got the picture.”
“We’ve got several other batteries firing heavy artillery at them. I understand that Admiral Halsey is deeply concerned.” The captain peeked over the top. “I know one of our fighters was shot down. The pilot killed.” He shook his head, jumped out, and took off running back into the trees. “Keep firing!”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, men!” I shrieked, “Get back to firing the big guns. Make this battery spit fire!”
Men crawled out from under cover and assumed their positions to fire the 105-millimeter shells at the Japanese. The roar of the cannons again shook the ground.
“Come on, boys!” I shouted when the first wave of firing paused. “Let’s blow those enemy guns off the map!”
The artillery started up again with a roar that could leave a man deaf. The war was back on.
* * *
When morning broke, Intelligence told us that we had turned the forest in front of us into toothpicks. They weren’t sure, but the enemy appeared to be in retreat. The scuttlebutt said they were getting pushed off the island. No one knew for sure.
A colonel came by. “Looks like the Japanese really are running. We are aiming our artillery down the island to focus entirely on their ships. If we can break the back of their navy, this war could be close to finishing. Our boys got to keep hitting them hard.”
“We’re already at it,” I said. “We’re firing toward the high cliffs.” We swung into action once more. The artillery roared like a volcano exploding.
As the afternoon began to fade, we had a little slack time. We didn’t have a sophisticated radio, but we did have a crystal receiver that if we twitched just right could pick up broadcast messages. We almost always tuned in Tokyo Rose whether we wanted to or not. The Japanese woman sounded like your next-door neighbor in Peoria, Illinois, and worked diligently to needle our troops. No one could figure out where she got her information, but she had an uncanny ability to say things like, “Lieutenant George Smith in the 361st Field Artillery unit, are you aware that your wife is about to have a baby with the cook down there at the country club?” We knew she was a piece of the Japanese propaganda efforts, but to hear her calling your name over the radio was unnerving.
We were scratching on the crystal and had picked up a radio broadcast when the battalion medical officer joined us. Sergeant Robert Raleigh had been with our unit for some time. We were talking about whether the enemy really was on the run when we were interrupted.
“Major, could I have a moment of your time?”
I looked up. The sergeant before me appeared to be like any other soldier. “Sure. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Jesus Christ,” he said slowly but with certainty. “You don’t have to worry. I’m going to take care of you.”
He was as serious as a hand grenade. I studied his face. His eyes were blank.
“What about me?” the medical officer asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” the sergeant said. “I haven’t given you any thought, but I’ll consider the matter.” He turned back to me. “Thank you, Major Shaw. Don’t worry.” The sergeant walked off. “You’ll be fine.”
“He’s gone psychotic,” Raleigh said with a gasp. “The guy’s stark raving nuts!”
“I’ll report him to the division psychiatrist,” I said. “They’ll have him shipped out of here immediately. Sometimes that’s what happens after a couple of beach landings. Men just fall apart. Their minds explode.”
* * *
By morning, it was clear that the imperial forces truly were retreating. The rumor circulating through the division was that their navy really had turned around and beat a hasty retreat back up the way they had come. Of course, everyone wanted to know why the Japanese were running.
The captain who had jumped in my foxhole earlier came trotting by. “Hey!” I hollered. “Captain Carpenter! Please come over here.”
Carpenter stopped and looked at me for a second before it clicked who I was. “Oh, yeah. Major Shaw!”
“Captain, can you tell us what the hell is really going on? Is it true the Japanese are on their way out?”
The captain grinned from ear to ear. “You won’t believe what developed. Admiral Halsey sent a message north to Guam saying that we needed help and they should send the fleet down. The admiral up there fired back a message, ‘I’ll be there in a few hours.’ They put that exchange out where the Japanese would intercept the communiqué. Scared the pants off the enemy! They started pulling out immediately.” The captain broke into laughter. “It was all a sham. It would have taken days to get that fleet down here anyway.” He kept laughing. “While the imperial soldiers were retreating, we blew their ships apart. Our fire has crippled their fleet. The Japanese are on their last leg.”
“Then we’ll be going home?”
“Oh, no,” Captain Carpenter said. “We’re going to Tokyo! We’re going to beat them bastards like a drum just like they did us at Pearl Harbor. The train is pulling out. Our next stop is Okinawa!”