by Len Levinson
Lieutenant Breckenridge lay back on the ground. He closed his eyes and let his body go slack. He’d intended to give his men only a ten-minute break, but decided to let them rest a little longer. There was no great hurry to get back. They’d accomplished their mission. All of them deserved a rest.
The other men lay down on the ground, too, following Lieutenant Breckenridge’s example, except for Bannon, who sat with his back against the thick trunk of a tree. He took two APC pills out of a tiny bottle in his pack and washed them down with water from his canteen. APC pills consisted primarily of aspirin, and Bannon had a headache. He frequently got headaches because he had a steel plate in his head, the result of a wound sustained during the charge up Kokengolo Hill on the island of New Georgia. Lieutenant Breckenridge had been wounded in the chest during that charge. Many members of the recon platoon had bought the farm on that day. It was one of the worst Bannon could remember.
Bannon was only twenty-five years old, but he felt like he’d aged twenty years during the nearly three years he’d been in the Army. Before the war he’d been a cowboy on a big ranch in west Texas. He’d also ridden Brahma bulls at rodeos. On Saturday nights he’d go to the honky-tonks with the boys, and they’d raise hell all night long, drinking tequila and chasing the girls. Bannon had a girlfriend in Texas and he’d married a native girl on Guadalcanal, although the marriage had been conducted by the village witch doctor and Bannon didn’t take it seriously anymore. During a furlough in the States, he’d gone to Nebraska to visit the family of one of his friends in the recon platoon, Homer Gladley, who’d been killed during the fighting on bloody Bougainville. While there he’d fallen in love with one of Homer’s sisters, and he’d given her an engagement ring. They were supposed to get married after the war was over, but Bannon sometimes thought he wouldn’t be alive when the war was over. He knew that a stray bullet or a big artillery shell could kill him at any moment. Death was just around the corner at all times. Sometimes he tried to think of what it was like to be dead, but it was beyond his imagination. He couldn’t conceive of a world without Charlie Bannon from Pecos, Texas.
Lieutenant Breckenridge raised his arm and looked at his watch. The fifteen minutes were nearly over.
“Okay, let’s saddle up,” he said.
The men groaned as they raised themselves off the ground. Lieutenant Breckenridge expected to hear a disparaging remark from Frankie La Barbara, but none came. He looked down the trail and saw Frankie thrusting an arm through a shoulder strap on his pack. He’s got real subdued ever since I said I’d transfer him out of the recon platoon, Lieutenant Breckenridge thought. I guess he doesn’t want to leave his buddies. Maybe I won’t have him transferred out after all.
“Let’s go!” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “We haven’t got all day.”
The men put on their packs and adjusted their helmets on their heads. They held their submachine guns in their hands and waited for Lieutenant Breckenridge to give them the order to move out. Lieutenant Breckenridge looked backward and forward on the trail to make sure everybody was ready. He raised his right hand in the air and pointed in the direction of the American lines.
“Move it out,” he said.
Private McGurk lowered his head underneath a branch and moved forward. The rest of the recon platoon followed him. The sun beat down on the jungle and the odor of rotting vegetation rose to the nostrils of the GIs as they hunched over the jungle trail. The full heat of the day was coming on them now. The jungle was like an oven. Flies buzzed around their heads. The men felt dizzy from the high temperature but they put one foot in front of the other and kept moving because the sooner they got back to their lines the sooner they could relax.
Private Yabalonka was near the end of the column. The Bible with the bullet inside was buttoned into his shirt pocket, and Yabalonka had been reflecting upon religion ever since the Bible saved his life. Now he was wondering about hell, although he really didn’t believe in it, but he figured if there was a hell, it would have to be like the jungles of New Guinea, hot and debilitating, with air so thick it was difficult to breathe.
Maybe this earth is hell, he thought, and maybe we become free from hell when we die. Maybe the priests and nuns got everything ass-backwards. Maybe we don’t go to hell when we die. Maybe we’re in hell only when we’re alive.
He never could have thought such a thing a week ago, but ever since he found the Bible in that machine-gun nest he’d been glancing through it from time to time, meditating upon what he read. He still didn’t believe in God, but he thought some parts of the Bible were interesting and provocative. He considered the Bible a mixture of mythology and the wisdom of the ages, and it distracted him from the dreadful realities of the war. Some men thought about women and some men thought about money, but Yabalonka tended to think about the meaning of life and what would be the best kind of society for people to live in. Some of the ideas contained within the Bible seemed to fit fairly well within his range of interests.
There will always be war, the Bible said. Yabalonka had been raised as a Catholic and recalled reading that long ago in his childhood. Why must there always be war? he asked himself. Why do human beings always have to fight with each other? What the hell’s the matter with us?
Yabalonka knew all about the origins of the Second World War, unlike most of the soldiers he met. Most American soldiers believed the basic propaganda fed them by the American news media, but Yabalonka was a self-educated half-assed working-class intellectual with a left-wing perspective, and he’d studied the news behind the news during the years that the Second World War was brewing.
He believed the whole war was basically nothing more than a power struggle over who would control the wealth of Asia. He knew the Western powers had forced Japan to accept humiliating trade agreements throughout the twenties and especially the thirties until finally an outraged patriotic right-wing military faction took over the Japanese government and went to war to defend Japan’s honor. The Japanese military command knew that the Allies were stronger than they, so they had to make a bold effort to convince the Allies to leave them alone. Pearl Harbor was that bold effort. The Japanese thought the Western Allies would pull back their fangs and enter into a reasonable trading agreement with Japan after taking a beating at Pearl Harbor, but instead the Western Allies got pissed off and vowed to wipe Japan off the face of the earth. Yabalonka saw himself as a pawn in that struggle. He figured he’d probably get killed in the competition for the wealth of Asia, a wealth he and his buddies never would share in no matter who won.
The problem was basic human greed, Yabalonka believed. He’d figured that out long ago, and now he couldn’t help thinking of when Christ threw the moneylenders out of the temple precincts, and when Christ criticized rich people for screwing poor people.
Religion is flicked up, Yabalonka thought, but it’s not always wrong. Sometimes, it makes sense. Christ hit the nail right on the head quite a few times, but he must have been crazy if he thought he was the son of God.
Like an elongated snake, the patrol from the recon platoon made its way over the twisting jungle trail. The sun rose higher in the sky and became even hotter. The temperature in the jungle was over one hundred degrees in the shade. The men got dizzy and their throats were parched. Everybody had a stomach ache. Some had headaches. Lieutenant Breckenridge had bouts of double vision. He glanced at his watch and the hands blurred in front of his eyes. He blinked and saw that it was 1215 hours. He thought he’d give his men their lunch break at 1400 hours and let them rest for an hour. He wished they could find a stream to cool off in.
On the point, Private Joshua McGurk moved through the jungle like a big gorilla. He held his submachine gun in both his hands, with his index finger on the trigger, ready to fire. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around his head but they didn’t bother him much. A man accustomed to the black flies of Maine could handle the insects of New Guinea without too much difficulty.
McGurk’s principal problem wa
s the heat. It never got that hot in Maine. Sweat flowed out of the pores of his gigantic head and dripped down his neck. His uniform looked as though he’d been thrown into the ocean.
He heard the crackle of a twig in front of him, and hit the dirt immediately. Behind him the other men dropped down on their stomachs. The sound had been fairly far away, but McGurk had sharp ears. But what had made the sound? Could it have been a wild pig stepping on that twig, or a monkey swinging from a branch too weak to hold his weight, or was a Jap out there?
McGurk took off his helmet so he could hear better, and perked up his ears. He heard only the usual sounds of the jungle. Maybe I’m hearing things, he thought. Fucking heat must be getting to me.
It was better to be safe than sorry. He continued to listen but still didn’t hear anything unusual. Nothing’s there, he thought. He was about to raise himself up when he heard a faint rustle of leaves in front of him. What’s that? He got lower and angled his head to the side so he could listen with his right ear, which he thought was his best ear. The jungle filled with usual sounds again. Could it have been a bird on the ground, scratching leaves and looking for insects? McGurk didn’t know. He was starting to get worried. If it was a bird it wouldn’t have stopped scratching. What had made that noise?
McGurk turned around. Lieutenant Breckenridge looked at him, question marks all over his face. McGurk pointed to his chest and then pointed straight ahead as if to say: I’m going forward to see what’s there.
Lieutenant Breckenridge nodded. McGurk turned around and decided to leave his helmet behind because it interfered with his hearing. He pushed it to the side and crawled past it, holding his submachine gun in his hands.
Silently and smoothly he glided over the jungle floor, just like when he’d snuck up on foxes in Maine. He stopped after ten feet to listen, and heard nothing at first. He wrinkled his nose, baffled by what was going on. It was as if a Japanese soldier was ahead of him, moving forward a few feet and then stopping, just as McGurk was. McGurk licked his dry lips. He twitched his nose and sniffed the air, but only the fetid odor of the jungle rose to his nostrils.
Then he heard it again: the faintest disturbance in the air, so faint it could have been the wind. It was coming from the same direction as before, straight ahead on the trail. McGurk waited a few moments, and then the jungle became quiet again.
McGurk suspected a Jap but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t want to get the patrol riled up for nothing. Then they’d be mad at him, and he didn’t want them to be mad at him. They probably were mad at him already for wasting time. He wasn’t sure of what to do.
He decided it was best to play it safe. The guys could take a rest back there while he checked out the situation. He didn’t want to move forward himself, because then the Jap would hear him, if indeed a Jap was out there. He figured the best thing to do was stay exactly where he was and lure the Jap to him.
He lay flat on the ground and pressed his right ear against the moist earth. He heard a sound like a thump through the ground, and it wasn’t the thump of his heart. Was it the sound of somebody putting his foot down, or was it just the branch of a tree falling to the ground? A sound could mean so many things.
Then he heard a rustle again, much closer this time. Something out there was moving steadily toward him. McGurk took a deep breath and laid his submachine gun on the ground. Slowly and silently he reached down and drew his Ka-bar knife from its sheath. He gripped the knife in his fist with the blade pointing forward and up. He heard the rustle again, and it sounded like a human being creeping over the ground. McGurk narrowed his eyes and peered through the branches ahead of him. The trail was overgrown with foliage; it hadn’t been used much recently. McGurk saw movement in front of him. Something pale green was on the trail, and he knew that Japanese uniforms were made of pale green cloth.
McGurk’s heart beat faster. Now he knew for sure that a Jap was there. He could see the son of a bitch. McGurk’s body became taut, like a tiger ready to pounce. He wanted to kill the Jap before the Jap could see him or sound the alarm. The knuckles of his knife hand became white, and his lips pinched together.
The Japanese soldier stopped and angled his head from side to side, looking and listening. He couldn’t see McGurk because McGurk was low to the ground and completely still. McGurk’s eyes glowed behind the thick tangled foliage. The Japanese soldier crawled forward, and McGurk saw his wispy mustache and beard. The Japanese soldier was old, perhaps in his late thirties. He had the face of a rat and the eyes of a snake. McGurk lay motionless on the ground, ready to spring. The Japanese soldier crept forward. He appeared confused as he flicked his eyes from left to right. McGurk figured the Japanese soldier was having the same doubts that McGurk had.
The Japanese soldier was only five feet away. He looked directly at McGurk and stopped suddenly. His brow wrinkled and he raised his head a few inches to take a better look.
McGurk sprang forward, rearing his knife arm back. The Japanese soldier opened his mouth to shout an alarm, and McGurk rammed his Ka-bar knife down the Jap’s throat. The Jap gurgled, and McGurk twisted the knife, ripping apart the Jap’s vocal chords, and then McGurk pushed the knife hard. Its red-streaked point stuck out the back of the Jap’s neck.
The Japanese soldier went limp on the ground. McGurk pulled his knife out and slashed the Japanese soldier’s throat from ear to ear to make sure he was dead. Then McGurk turned around and crawled away.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Breckenridge looked at his watch. McGurk had been gone for ten minutes. What the hell’s going on? Lieutenant Breckenridge wondered. He wondered if something had happened to McGurk. What had McGurk seen out there?
Bushes moved in front of him on the trail, and McGurk appeared, crawling forward rapidly.
“Japs!” he said.
“Where?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked.
McGurk pointed behind him. “There.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know, but I killed their point man.”
“Where did you leave him?”
“Back there on the trail.”
Lieutenant Breckenridge widened his eyes. “Right on the trail?”
“Yes sir.”
“You should’ve hid him.”
“The Japs would’ve heard me if I did. They’re pretty close.”
Lieutenant Breckenridge had to make a decision. He didn’t want to attack the Japs because there might be too many of them for his patrol to handle, but he didn’t want to retreat either because he didn’t want to waste time if it wasn’t necessary. Only a few Japs might be in front of him and there was no point running away from them if he didn’t have to.
He looked around. There really wasn’t anyplace to go. He wished McGurk hadn’t killed that Jap, because now the other Japs would know Americans were in the area. Lieutenant Breckenridge clicked his teeth together. If he attacked the Japs first he’d have the element of surprise on his side. He could attack and then retreat if there were too many Japs for his men to handle.
He didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to debate the matter with himself. He had to take action immediately.
“Let’s get ‘em,” he said to his men. “I’ll go first. If there are too many of them, we’ll pull back. Pay attention to my commands. Get ready and be quiet.”
The men checked their submachine guns to make sure they were loaded and ready to fire. They made sure nothing loose was hanging from their packs or cartridge belts. The sounds of men moving over the trail came to them from their front. They heard the rapid-fire babble of Japanese soldiers, and Lieutenant Breckenridge figured they’d found their dead comrade.
“Follow me,” he said.
He held his submachine gun tight against his hip and jumped up, charging over the trail. Leaves and branches scratched his face and arms, and his men followed him in a long file. He heard Japanese soldiers shouting hysterically and then saw their uniforms behind the vines and leaves.
“Spread out!” he shouted.
He opened fire before the words were out of his mouth. His men spread out to his left and right, shooting streams of bullets at the Japanese soldiers. Bursts of automatic-weapons fire and screams of pain filled the jungle. Lieutenant Breckenridge saw bodies lurching and twisting behind the foliage. A terrible tumult and commotion was taking place in there. A bullet flew past Lieutenant Breckenridge’s ear. Another bullet hit Private Bisbee in the stomach and knocked him on his ass. Bullets flew wildly back and forth.
“Banzai!” screamed a Japanese officer, wielding a samurai sword. Bleeding from his left arm, he held the samurai sword high in his right hand and lunged toward Lieutenant Breckenridge, who aimed at him and pulled the trigger of his submachine gun. The weapon bucked and stuttered in his arm, and the Japanese officer’s head blew apart, blood and brains flying in all directions. The Japanese officer’s knees gave out underneath him and he collapsed onto the ground.
Lieutenant Breckenridge jumped over his body and landed on a Japanese soldier who was wounded. The Japanese soldier moaned and rolled to his side, causing Lieutenant Breckenridge to lose his balance. Lieutenant Breckenridge fell onto his right elbow just as a Japanese bullet flew through the air where his chest had been.
The submachine-gun fire from the men in the recon platoon cut through the Japanese soldiers. Most of the Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded in the initial barrage, and the rest ran away. Lieutenant Breckenridge drew himself to his knees, but couldn’t see any more Japanese soldiers standing.
“Hold your fire!” he hollared.
The men eased their fingers off their triggers, and the area was thick with gunsmoke. Lieutenant Breckenridge jumped to his feet and looked around. The Japanese soldier near his feet tried to raise his Arisaka rifle and Lieutenant Breckenridge shot his chest into sausage meat. The Japanese soldier’s face smacked against the ground and he didn’t move anymore.