Battle Cry (68 page)

“The goddam fool, he’s begging to get hit,” Marlin said.

“Take cover, Max!” Huxley yelled.

The men in the CP gazed in awe. Max Shapiro was moving as unconcernedly through the hailstorm of lead as if he were taking a Sunday stroll through a park. Huxley rubbed his eyes as if he thought they were betraying him. The Captain was acting like he was a holy image or something inviolable. The legend of Two Gun Shapiro was no idle slop-shute story, it was quite true. His appearance was like magic and put iron into the embattled boys he led. He walked from rock to rock and tree to tree slapping his boys on the back as if he was coaching a football game. His poor vision through the thick-lensed glasses became alive and crystal clear. Huxley couldn’t decide whether he was divine or insane. No mere human could be so utterly fearless for his life. Huxley watched him promenade across the clearing with the bullets singing around him.

“You over there,” Shapiro called. “Do you want a purple heart?”

“Hell no, Max.”

“Better move your ass then, because there’s a sniper fifteen yards from you in that tree. Aim true, son, don’t waste any shots.”

“O.K., Max.”

He strolled into the hut, wiped the sweat from his face, and took a cigarette from McQuade’s breast pocket. He pulled the smoke from McQuade’s lips and lit his own cigarette with it. “Hi, Sam,” he said.

“You may think you’re smart, Max, but if I hear of another exhibition like that I’ll….”

“Aw calm down, Sam. Them slanteyes couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle.”

“Did you see Harper?”

“Yes,” Shapiro said, wiping his glasses. “Somebody ought to give him a pack of gum. He’s been chewing the same piece for a week. If it gets any harder his teeth are going to fall out.”

His irresistible manner seemed to lighten the tension. “Well, how does it look?” Huxley said.

“Not good. We can’t get connected with George Company and they’re getting cut to pieces. They’re like flies in that brush, Sam, maybe a battalion of them, and they’re slinging lead like they have an ammo dump of it. I don’t like it…if we go on trading potshots with them they’re going to wear us down.”

“Dammit,” Huxley said. “We haven’t enough ammo to keep this up.”

“Maybe we’d better radio for fire support from the destroyer,” Marlin suggested.

“No. We are on top of each other now. One bad salvo and we’ll fix ourselves up for good, and air support would be even riskier.”

Shapiro popped his head outside the hut. “Hey, you people,” he called to the riflemen behind the trees, who were covering the CP, “can’t you tell when they’re shooting down on you? Spray those treetops to your right.” He stuck his head back in. “The way it looks to me, skipper, the brush they are in is only about fifty yards deep. If we can bust through it we can make them pull back past the next clearing. That will take the pressure off Harper and get the line connected.”

“How?” Huxley said. “We can’t rush them.”

“Sam,” Marlin said excitedly, “why not retreat till morning and let the destroyer have a go at them? Maybe we can starve them out in two or three days and bag the lot of them as prisoners.”

Huxley turned purple. He looked for a moment as though he was going to spit at his operations officer. Marlin cowered back.

“Those Nips are as beat out as we are,” Shapiro said. “Maybe we can suck them into charging us.”

“They won’t fall for anything like that.”

“They’ve been pulling it on us the whole damned war. If we quit shooting and start yelling they may whip up into a banzai try. The way we’re going now we’ll be out of ammo and men before we are able to move. We’ve got to do something and fast.”

Huxley pondered. His line was thin and his casualties were piling up. He had to beat them out of that brush before dark or suffer a night attack. They were simply trying to outlast him and held the superior position. Yes, something unorthodox had to be done…. “O.K., Max, we will give hera try.”

He cranked the phone. “Wellman, this is Sam. Have Harper hold at all costs. We are going to try to lure the Nips out in the open. If they come out, Whistler is to move his boys right past us into that brush. He is not to come to the assistance of Fox Company but to bypass us and drive forward, understand.”

“Yes, Sam. Good luck.”

“Funny,” Shapiro mused, “Ed Coleman used that same trick, Sam. I underestimated you.”

Huxley sluffed off the compliment. “Runner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get out there and pass the word to cease firing except at visible targets. They are to just sit there and start yelling, and tell them to make it loud, clear, and nasty. If the Japs charge, stay put till they reach our position and then use bayonets.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The runner grabbed his helmet and shot out from the hut. From lip to lip the word soon passed over the field. Behind rocks and trees the men of Fox Company slowly fixed bayonets and their rifles became silent. They grasped their weapons tightly and glued their eyes on the green mass of brush before them. Suddenly, the Japanese rifles stopped firing. The switch had caught them off balance; they feared a trick. A faint jabbering was heard. Max Shapiro stepped from the hut and cupped his hands to his lips.

“Hey Tojo!” he shouted. “You bastards sure are lousy shots. Looks like the vultures will be having a meal of Jap meat tonight!”

“Show your faces, you yellow-bellied bastards!”

“Hey, maggot bait!”

“Have a drink, Jap.” A coconut was hurled into the brush, followed by a barrage of them.

“Take a shot, Tojo.” A Marine stuck his head from behind a rock. A shot whistled by. “Hey Tojo, three for a quarter.”

Huxley watched anxiously as the barrage of words was hurled out. Then, it became very silent. Only the drifting smoke of a cigarette could be seen. A wind rippled through the camp. For ten minutes the eerie quiet continued. Then a weird song arose down the line of Marines:

“Did you ever think

When a hearse goes by,

That you might be the next to die….”

There was no sound of joy in the voices that blended in the chorus that cut the hot afternoon stickiness. It was trembly, sweaty singing from the lips of men crouched low and coiled like rattlers.

“The worms crawl in,

The worms crawl out….”

Captain Shapiro stepped from the hut and signaled for silence. Some snipers blasted at him. He lit a cigarette, spat in the direction of the brush, and returned to the cover of the hut.

“What do you think?” Marlin asked.

“I don’t know,” Huxley said. “They act rattled, like they’re expecting to be hit from another direction and we’re stalling for time.”

Suddenly a loud jabbering came from the brush, an argument as the Japs spotted Whistler’s company moving up behind the camp. They were getting confused! The talk became louder.

“Hold fire,” the word passed down Fox Company.

Some bushes separated and a Japanese officer stepped into the clear, staggering like a drunk. He took two slow cautious steps toward the Marines.

“He’s loaded on saki,” Marlin whispered.

“Good.”

The little Oriental’s eyes glinted about like a rat’s. The deathly quiet forced him to scream to bolster his courage. “Marine die!” He shook his fist. He got no answer…. “Marine die!” he screeched louder. He whipped out his samurai sword and twirled it whistling over his head. He jumped up and down on the ground, cursing and ranting. Shapiro slung a rock at him and he sprang back into the brush. The noise from there became louder and louder. The enraged enemy were unmistakably whipping themselves into a lather.

“They’re really getting their crap hot…stand ready. Runner, get back there to Captain Whistler and have him prepare to attack.”

A violent bevy of shrieks from the brush and at last the outraged enemy poured out over the clearing, their nerves shattered by the chase, the fear, and now the waiting game. They charged behind their officers with their long rifles pointed down and their bayonets glinting, mad yells on their sweaty, hungry lips and violence in their eyes.

Shapiro was in front of Fox Company in an instant. The steps between him and the enemy narrowed. “Charge!” he screamed, firing the two famed pistols point blank into the maddened crowd.

The clamp of inevitable death, closing on them for a week, had turned the Japanese soldiers into young maniacs. With screams of their own the Marines leapt from cover, head on into the charge. The air was filled with bloodcurdling shrieks as the wild melee of men locked in mortal combat. Savage cries, hissing steel, and flesh pounding flesh.

Fox Company worked in teams with each man having a wingman to cover him. The opposing lines buckled a moment under the impact of meeting head on. Gasps, cries, and moans as bayonets found their mark. The flat thud of a rifle butt crushing a skull. Fury heightened as the fighters hurled prone bodies to get at each other.

Captain Whistler’s Easy Company raced past the savage combat into the brush. The remaining Japs there fell into wild confusion and fired not only at the Marines but their own comrades.

“Hit the deck, Sam!” Ziltch screamed.

A stray with a knife in his fist flung himself on Huxley’s back. The Colonel dived to the deck and rolled the Jap off. The little orderly was on him like a cat, scuffling wildly on the coral earth to hold off the knife point. He pinioned the Jap’s arm as Huxley whipped out his pistol and smashed it again and again into the Oriental’s face. With a bloody last gasp, the man finally became limp. Huxley flung the body from his sight and shakily helped Ziltch to his feet.

“You hurt, son?”

“I’m O.K., skipper.”

“Good lad.”

The Japanese fury of the moment before turned into a whimpering slaughter. They were no match now for Shapiro and his Foxes. The Marines waded into them systematically until they were cornered and the butchery was on. They were cut down without mercy. The ground was littered with dead and the moans of the wounded brought only a quick bullet, until the last Japanese was dead.

My squad was still by the radios, ears peeled to every word coming and going over the phone with which Major Wellman commanded the rear echelon. How Company, the reserve, was assembled near us in squads of riflemen. As a tattered runner dashed down the road from the lines and called for reinforcements a squad of How would move up.

“We broke through!” Wellman shouted from the phone. “Move the CP to the abandoned camp.”

“Break down the TBX on the double,” the Gunner shouted.

Before the words had left his lips a telephone man had cut the lines and moved up. We threw our sets into their clumsy cases and were besieged by native volunteers anxious to carry them.

“Sorry,” Keats said, “you can’t go up. Too close…bang, bang! You stay and get water and wounded, yes?”

We trotted up the road, panting under our loads, and cut into the camp where Fox Company had made its fight just a few moments before. Stumbling over the bodies, we struggled to the former Fox CP hut and set up the battalion command post. There wasn’t a single Marine lying in the open, only Japs. Our wounded had all been removed. All around us there was a constant crackle of gunfire and grenades as Easy and George Companies worked through the jungle flushing out the die-hards.

“Get that radio in with Sarah and the alligator!” the Gunner yelled.

A set was hooked up in less than two minutes and I signaled the Injun to spin the generator.

“Dammit,” Lighttower cried, “the generator conked!”

“Set up another one, quick.”

“Burnside,” I shouted, “rip the other two radios apart. We’ll have to try to piece one together that will work.”

“Hurry, dammit, hurry!”

“Lighttower, Levin, Andy, Danny…get out there and keep those snipers off our ass. Mary, lend a hand here.”

Burnside, Marion and I knocked the cases open and switched tubes, batteries and wiring desperately, trying to find a combination that would work out of the three radios. The Gunner raced from message center to the switchboard and back to us in a crazy circle, prodding us on. At last I signaled for a test and donned the earphones. I said a short prayer as Burnside cranked the generator furiously and beat out a test call to Seabags.

I moved the dials trying to catch something through the static hissing through the earphones. Then a faint flat set of sounds came through. I couldn’t read it but I could tell from the spacing that it was Seabags’ fist.

“I got them, spin her over again.” I repeated the message and asked for a long test call. I could barely make out the call letters.

“Gunner, I only read them one and one. I don’t know if we are getting through.”

“Hit the deck!”

I knocked the radio flat and threw my body over it just in time to get rocked by the splitting smash of a grenade.

“Get that radio out of here!” Huxley roared.

“We’re hitting for the lagoon,” I shouted, picking up the battery case. “I’ll send a runner back here when we are in contact. Come on men—shag ass.” The squad ripped the set from its moorings and packing it under their arms dashed after me through the sniper fire toward the rear of George Company.

At the water’s edge we slapped the radio together and made a test to the alligator. It was fairly close and we could read each other clearly. Doc Kyser ran up to me frantically.

“Mac, how close is the alligator?”

“I don’t know yet, Doc…we can’t see them.”

“If I don’t get the plasma here quick I won’t have a boy alive back there. We have nearly two hundred wounded.”

“We’re doing what we can,” I said.

“My hands are tied! I can’t just let them die!”

“Quiet, dammit!” I commanded. Levin, at the radio, had caught a call from Seabags.

“They want our position,” Levin shouted. “They’re only a couple miles south.”