by Janet Dailey
Coordinates of the enemy artillery positions were radioed to the Navy battleship lying off the coast. When its shelling proved ineffective, the Air Corps was called in to bomb the targets. By day’s end, the Japs still had them pinned down on the slopes. They’d fought to a draw. Under the cover of darkness, Wylie helped some of the wounded to a ravine in the rear area where a makeshift clinic had been set up by the battalion’s doctor. It kept his body moving and kept his mind off the numbing cold and the gnawing hunger in his stomach. Their food supply had been exhausted that morning.
The next day started off as a repeat of the previous afternoon’s fighting—no food, no rest, no warmth, and still pinned down by the Japs. Wylie heard a plane fly over, but the clouds were too thick and low for it to be seen. The captain couldn’t raise anybody on the radio, so the situation of the other assault forces was unknown. Their own was pretty dire.
That afternoon, Willoughby led an attack against the enemy ridges. Running from ice clump to ice clump with machine-gun fire kicking up snow and tundra all around him, Wylie advanced on the enemy position, shooting at anything that resembled a target. On his belly, he crawled across a stretch of ice toward an enemy machine-gun nest while Big Jim gave him cover fire. As he looped his finger through the icy cold ring of the grenade pin, he was conscious of the battle sweat that dampened his clothes and absently marveled that he could be bone-cold and perspire at the same time. He pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade at the Jap nest, then hugged the slushy ground as the explosion shook it. Then it was up and over, firing as he went into the smoking hole.
After several hours of fierce fighting, they dislodged the Japs from their high ground. By the time darkness came, they were firmly dug in. Wylie retreated into a cave that had been hollowed out of a snowdrift and crept close to the tiny fire that had been built. After warming his hands over the small flames, he pulled off his boots and changed to a dry pair of socks, aware how quickly wet things could freeze in these temperatures. If that happened, frostbite—or worse, a frozen limb—was guaranteed.
Wylie glanced up as Big Jim crawled into the snow cave, a hoary apparition with his beard, eyelashes, and eyebrows crusted with snow and ice. Wylie knew he didn’t look any better. With hands shaking from the cold, Big Jim lit a cigarette, then crumpled the empty pack and nudged it onto the small fire, fueled by empty ration boxes and anything else they could find that would burn.
From beyond the perimeters of the summit, a Japanese voice, amplified by a megaphone, taunted them in English: “American dogs! You die! Tomorrow we kill you!”
“Hell,” Big Jim muttered. “All they have to do is sit out there and wait for us to either freeze or starve to death.” He took a drag on the cigarette, then offered it to Wylie.
“Thanks.” His lips felt so numb that he could barely feel the cigarette between them as he inhaled. The smoke made him a little dizzy, and he passed the cigarette back to Big Jim. “How far do you figure we are from the mountain pass between Holtz and Massacre Valley?”
“Two miles, more or less.”
They were supposed to link up with the Northern Force at the pass. They’d been two days without food. Both their ammunition and medicine were running low. At the moment, their only hope of obtaining the needed supplies lay in reaching their own lines. But there was an obstacle in their way.
“Yankee! You die!” their Japanese tormenter shouted again.
Wylie gritted his teeth. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to argue with his prediction. He rubbed his feet, feeling the needle-sharp stings tingle through them as he tried to stimulate the flow of blood. Finally he pulled on his boots.
“Hey, the fire’s getting low. Anybody got anything they can throw on it?” Big Jim glanced at the other soldiers huddled in the snow cave taking their turn at stealing a little warmth. They dug into their pockets, but all they came up with was a chewing gum wrapper.
Wylie stared at the dwindling flames a couple of minutes longer, then unbuttoned his parka and reached inside. He pulled out the last letter that he’d received from Lisa—the one he’d read so many times that he almost had it memorized. He smoothed out the wrinkles, then laid it gently on the fire. He watched it char and curl as the flames shot around it. For a brief moment, the writing stood out clearly, then the paper blackened. He refastened his parka, wrapped his arms around his loose-slung rifle, and huddled forward, staring at the flames.
“Wylie.” Big Jim spoke hesitantly, his voice pitched low. “I’ve got a favor to ask you.”
“Ask.” Wylie watched the ash from his letter crumble and break off. “Steve and I are getting married”—the words seemed burned into his brain.
“Do you remember me mentioning that I had this woman who cooked and kept house for me up at my cabin outside of Circle?”
“Yeah. What about her?” Wylie grunted.
“If … if anything happens to me, Wylie, would you kinda look out for her? You know, make sure she’s all right.”
Roused from his own private reverie by the unexpected request, Wylie lifted his head. “What are you talking about? Nothing’s going to happen to you or me—unless you count freezing your balls off. You’re talking crazy and you know it, Dawson.”
“I know. But just the same, if anything happens, will you go see her?” Big Jim persisted. “Her name’s Anita Lock-wood. She’s staying at my cabin on the Yukon. I told her she could till I came back.”
“Damn it, will you stop it, Dawson?” Wylie was angry with him for talking like this.
“Will you check on her?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
In the brief silence that followed, two of the soldiers inside the cave traded places with two from outside the snow shelter. They hovered next to the fire, their teeth chattering. Reverently one added torn pieces of a ration box to the greedy flames.
“Wylie.” Again Big Jim hesitantly claimed his attention. “She’s … a breed—part Athabascan Indian.”
For an instant Wylie was motionless, recalling the number of times he’d seen signs stating no natives allowed. There were many business establishments Matty wasn’t allowed to enter, which meant his grandmother had to do most of the shopping for the boardinghouse. Nearly all public places, such as movie houses, had separate sections for the natives. Eskimos, Aleuts, and Athabascans weren’t allowed in the USO’s. Now Wylie understood why Big Jim hadn’t talked very much about this woman before and why he thought it might make a difference to Wylie.
He glanced at his friend. “So?”
Gratitude flashed across Big Jim’s expression before he averted his face and mumbled, “I just wanted you to know that.”
“You’ve told me, so let’s just drop it. There isn’t going to be any reason for me to go see her anyway.” He paused and stared at the fire. “And for your information, my ancestors were Aleuts, Tlingits, and Russians.” The captain ducked inside the snow cave. “While you’re all sitting there warm and toasty by the fire, make an ammunition count.”
“Hey, Joe!” The Japanese shouted from the darkness. “Tomorrow morning you die!”
“I wish somebody would shoot that fucking bastard,” Wylie growled.
On the fourth day of battle, their fifth on the island, exhaustion, hunger, and killing cold claimed more victims than the enemy did. Men hobbled on frozen feet and vomited in the snow. Yet they successfully fought off a Japanese counterattack, but the last of the mortar ammunition was used doing it. Wylie knew it was desperation that drove all of them forward, even if it meant they had to crawl because they were in no shape to walk. They couldn’t retreat; there was no place to go. Their only salvation lay in reaching the American lines.
When the sun went down that night, enemy bullets, illness, or frostbite had incapacitated half the battalion. From the radio reports Willoughby received, neither of the other two forces of the three-pronged invasion were faring much better. The Southern Force at Massacre Bay, the main assault group, hadn’t advanced ten yards from their first p
osition. The enemy held the pass and the high ridges overlooking the valley, and the Southern Force was suffering heavy losses from its repeated assaults on the pass. Massacre Valley was living up to its name. And the Northern Force had advanced a little more than a mile.
Willoughby ordered a continual harassment of the enemy that night, determined not to give them a chance to rest or to move reinforcements to face the Northern Force. Wylie spent the night in a cold ravine, sheltered from the wind, stamping his feet and flaying his arms to keep warm and stay awake. Periodically, he’d crawl to the crest of the ravine and fire at the Jap positions.
Early the next morning, the Japs stopped returning their fire. By radio, Captain Willoughby informed the commander of the Northern Force that the battalion was moving out. As they advanced—walking, hobbling, and crawling—it quickly became apparent that sometime in the night the Japanese had pulled back. The way was clear.
When they staggered down to Holtz Bay, Wylie knew they were a pathetic-looking sight. Out of the three hundred and twenty men who reached Holtz Bay, he and Big Jim were among the forty who could walk without pain. The battalion had lost eleven men, and counted twenty wounded. All the rest were suffering from severe exposure, mainly to their feet. Gangrene had already set in for some. The hospital cases were evacuated, leaving behind a force of a hundred and sixty-five men out of the original four hundred and twenty.
As they sat down to taste their first food in nearly six days, in a heated tent no less, Wylie clamped a hand on Big Jim’s shoulder. “I told you, you son of a bitch, nothing was going to happen to us.”
Big Jim grinned tiredly, then glanced toward the distant sound of battle and sobered. “The Japs aren’t off the island yet, Wylie.”
The previous day, the Navy ships lying off the coast of Attu had used up all their bombardment ammunition. They could no longer shell the enemy positions. If a Japanese task force should appear, they were helpless to defend even themselves. The ground troops had to rely on air support from the carrier planes and the land-based bombers on Amchitka. Most of the time, heavy fog and solid clouds kept them grounded. But the battle raged on. The Southern Force remained trapped in Massacre Valley, uselessly flinging its men at the impregnable Japanese lines, but the Northern Force attacked the enemy-held ridges above Holtz Bay, gaining the crests in savage hand-to-hand combat. Wylie slept through most of it, too exhausted to care.
Shortly after midnight on the morning of the eighteenth, Wylie and Big Jim emerged from their tent and joined the remnants of the Scout Battalion assembling outside. With two days of rest and a full stomach, he felt fit and revived. The captain had called for volunteers to go out on a patrol to scout the pass leading to Massacre Valley. It was a job Wylie had been trained to do. Everyone knew the hell the Japs had been giving the guys on the other side of the pass. If there was a chance of breaking through the enemy lines, Wylie wanted to be part of it.
Wylie and Big Jim were assigned to the advance platoon. They set out ahead of the main patrol to scout the northern approach to the mountain pass. Before they reached the top, they heard the muffled crunch of footsteps in the snow and the muted clatter of equipment. Assuming it was an enemy patrol, they fanned out and took cover. As the figures emerged out of the fog, Wylie curled his finger against the trigger of his automatic. Then he caught the murmur of voices talking in American.
“Halt! Who goes there?” the platoon leader demanded.
The oncoming squad stopped and quickly identified themselves as a detachment from Colonel Zimmerman’s outfit in Massacre Valley. The Japs had pulled their troops out of the pass. After a week of bloody fighting, the American forces had finally achieved their objective and linked up at the mountain pass between Holtz Bay and Massacre Valley.
CHAPTER LIX
Attu
May 26, 1943
Inch by bloody inch, they had driven the Japs backward, taking the mountaintop of Point Able, then Sarana Nose, steadily pushing the enemy toward the sea and their main camp at Chichagof Harbor. The long Chichagof Valley lay open before the American forces, but that avenue was an invitation to death. The tenacious Japanese were dug in along the ridge that overlooked the length of the valley. There was no alternative. They had to root the enemy soldiers out of Fish Hook Ridge.
Three days before, the order had come down through the chain of command to take the ridge. For three days they’d been trying. But the snow- and ice-encrusted hogback presented the soldiers with some of the wildest terrain they’d had to face. And the remaining Japanese were concentrated all along the steep, ragged heights of the ridge’s back.
Yesterday it had snowed. And the Japs had used the snow to camouflage their positions by lying motionless under the white stuff, holding their fire while an American squad advanced, then unleashing it with devastating effect or else rolling grenades down on them.
The morning dawned cold and relatively clear. Wylie sat in a foxhole, his rifle comfortably cradled in his arms, almost a permanent extension of his body. The blade of the fixed bayonet gleamed coldly in the morning light. Big Jim was next to him, huddling deep inside his parka for warmth, his breath vaporizing into a thin white cloud as he peered at the jagged summits of the razorbacked ridge. They were some two hundred feet from the top—not far, but they all knew they’d have to fight every inch of the rest of the way.
“According to those two Jap prisoners they captured yesterday, there’s less than a thousand Jap soldiers on that ridge.” Big Jim turned his head to look at Wylie, the wolverine-lined hood of his non-regulation parka covering half of the near side of his face. “We must have fourteen thousand troops on the island now. Don’t those fucking bastards know they can’t win?”
“Somebody must have forgotten to tell them.” Wylie kept his chin tucked deep inside his collar and the encircling hood of his parka, letting the fur warm his cold mouth. “Just like somebody forgot to tell those Jap prisoners not to talk. I hear they never figure on being taken alive, so they aren’t instructed against revealing the strength and position of their troops.”
“But less than a thousand.” Big Jim shook his head.
Wylie glanced at the other GI’s huddled in the foxhole with them—haggard, cold, and hungry, waiting for the dreaded order that would send them up that ridge in a coordinated assault on the enemy positions. They were wrapped in Japanese blankets. Most of them wore caps, hoods, or waterproof boots they had scavenged off the bodies of dead Japanese to replace or supplement their inadequate Army issue, even though it could mean they would be mistaken for the enemy and shot by their own troops.
“I don’t think they feel any better knowing they’re facing less than a thousand Japs.” Wylie nodded in the direction of the teeth-chattering soldiers.
Big Jim studied them for a moment. “Yeah, I guess we’re all gettin’ tired of the fightin’ and the killin’.”
“Just don’t get so tired you let your guard down, because I guarantee you, the Japs aren’t going to give you any breaks.” Snow crunched under a set of scurrying footsteps as someone approached the foxhole. Wylie’s attention was already shifting toward the sound as he added, “And I’m not particularly interested in looking after your woman.”
A sergeant appeared, running in a low crouch, and slid quickly into the protection of the foxhole. “All right, boys, we’re gonna be movin’ out. An’ I wanta hear your guns chatter instead of your teeth. All set?” At their affirmative nods, he swung his attention back to the other soldiers as they reluctantly unwrapped their blankets and draped them around their shoulders Indian-style. “And remember—any dead Japs you find, if they don’t stink, stick ’em.”
“Yeah, Sarge. We hear ya,” one grumbled at the oft-repeated order.
“Let’s find out where they are today.” With a pump of his arm, the sergeant gave the signal to attack.
Wylie and Big Jim charged out of the foxhole together, firing up at the last known enemy position as the three-sided assault on the head of the ridge began. Wy
lie had barely taken three steps when machine-gun bullets began marching downhill through the snow, seeking his range. He flung himself the opposite way and rolled behind a snowdrift barely a yard in advance of the foxhole. All along the line, the deadly Jap barrage forced the attacking soldiers to seek cover, reducing the charge to a yard-by-yard advance.
“Looks like they’ve got a nest in that snowdrift on the right!” Big Jim shouted.
Wylie wiggled into position for a look, then studied the limited approaches to it. “I’ll try to make that crease on the left. Cover me.” He squatted behind the drift, then nodded to Big Jim that he was ready to make his try.
The crease in the steep slope was little more than a shallow depression, but any cover was better than none. As Big Jim opened fire, Wylie sprinted from the dubious protection of the snow hump, darting and weaving on a line to the crease, firing as he went. Bullets whined and chewed up the snow all around him. One tugged at the sleeve of his parka. But he made it and flattened himself into the hollow, listening to the splat of bullets in the snow searching for the place he went to ground. He was breathing hard and his heart felt as if it were pumping like a steam engine.
Careful not to show himself, Wylie looked over the shallow gully. Partway up, it made a jog to the right. From there it looked like he might be able to work his way around and come up on the Jap position on their blind side. He started crawling on his belly.
The rattle of machine guns and rifles exchanging fire was all around him, punctuated by the explosions of grenades. In the distance, heavy bombers thundered through the sky, dropping their payloads on the enemy headquarters at Chichagof Village. The low rumble of their exploding bombs reverberated over the island. The air reeked with the acrid odor of powder smoke.