by Dean Hughes
As it turned out, the battle for Hill B continued for three days, and every inch of ground had to be taken the same way: the men attacking through the forest in short bursts against withering fire. More men in the platoon and company were going down each day, but Yuki was relieved that his own fire team was still untouched. Then on October 18, the battalion pushed the German troops out of their position at the top of the hill, and on the same day, other American forces took the town of Bruyères.
Yuki was hurting by the time the troops settled in on the high ground. He had finally changed his socks, but the rain had continued, off and on, all through the battles, and he never really got his spare stockings dry. His feet had begun to sting and ache, so he knew that he could be in trouble before long. Still, there was no chance to do much about it. After two nights of rest in the cold and wet, the battalion was ordered to move deeper into the Vosges Forest and take another hill, this one called Hill D.
What the Nisei faced this time was the same challenge as before: an entrenched enemy occupying higher ground, and a dense forest to penetrate. As they began to advance through the trees, they were pinned down by fire from the top of the hill. But they didn’t turn back. They slowly worked their way through the forest toward the crest of the hill until they reached the edge of a clearing. Faced with machine-gun emplacements on the high side of the clearing, they stopped. Minutes passed, and Yuki saw the difficulty. German tanks and artillery could zero in and shell them. Mortars were likely to start hitting them at any moment. He knew the platoon had to either drop back quickly or make a hard drive forward. Someone had to decide.
It was Sergeant Koba who suddenly charged into the clearing carrying a Thompson submachine gun. He concentrated his fire on one of the emplacements at the top of the clearing. The German gun fell silent, and Yuki was about to charge forward with his fire team, but in the same instant, Koba was struck by German fire and he tumbled backward down the hill. Yuki saw him fall and was about to run to him, but men who were closer were already going after him. Two of those men were hit immediately, and the others fell back.
No one moved. The men of Second Platoon had seen their platoon sergeant go down, and they had seen some of their brothers riddled with bullets while they were trying to help him. Yuki and Shig were lying flat behind a big pine tree. “We can’t just stay here,” Shig said.
Yuki knew that, but someone had moved into the clearing with a white flag, and four men with red crosses on their helmets—medics—carried litters and ran toward the sergeant and the other wounded men. One pair worked on Sergeant Koba for only a few seconds and then shifted him onto a litter, while the other medics looked after the other two men who had gone down.
As the medics lifted Sergeant Koba and began to carry him away, a sniper bullet buzzed through the air. Yuki saw Sergeant Koba hunch—shot through the body while lying on the litter. Now more rifles were firing, and one of the medics dropped to the ground.
Yuki felt a crazy rage fill his head. The Germans couldn’t do that. They couldn’t shoot medics, couldn’t shoot wounded men on litters. He knew he had to kill someone.
He jumped up, and just as he did, he saw Sergeant Oshira charge into the clearing. He had a Browning automatic rifle slung under his arm, and he was firing it on automatic, spreading bullets at the entrenched forces up above. And that was all the men of the platoon needed to see. As though by signal, they charged out of their cover and broke into the clearing, all of them shooting, the noise constant and thundering.
Yuki ran forward, firing his rifle, only one thing in mind. He would make it to the top of the hill and he would kill all the Germans he could. “Banzai!” someone shouted, and everyone picked up the old Japanese cry. Yuki bellowed the word and kept running. He felt like a samurai warrior. Nothing was going to stop him.
The charge up the hill was more chaos than precision. The air seemed full of bullets, slapping into the ground around Yuki, or flying past him. But he didn’t care. The roar from both sides was incessant, and even though men were falling, no one took cover. Every man who still had legs under him kept going, and the enemy fire slowed, then stopped. Yuki could see German soldiers jumping from foxholes and machine-gun nests, and running farther up the hill into the dense trees.
It was all over in a few minutes, and suddenly everything was quiet. But Yuki wanted more. He kept running, looked for someone to shoot. He finally saw a German soldier cowering near a tree, an easy target.
Yuki aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger . . . or at least he tried. But he couldn’t do it. He dropped the rifle down, thought for a moment, then told himself he had to do it—for Sergeant Koba. He aimed again, actually strained to tighten his finger around that trigger . . . and failed again.
The German’s helmet was gone, and blood was running from his head down his neck. His face was distorted, his eyes full of confusion and despair. Yuki’s anger was seeping away. He still wanted to shoot someone, but he knew he couldn’t kill this man.
The German finally slumped to the ground, maybe dead. Yuki didn’t know what to feel about that. He wanted to run after the retreating Germans, somehow find the one who had shot Sergeant Koba, and then have his revenge. But he was still watching the wounded soldier. He started to walk toward him. He knew he couldn’t just leave him there to die. When he got to the man, he turned him over and saw that a bullet had pierced his head just above his ear and had broken away a hunk of his skull.
Shig walked up close. “He’s dead,” he said. “I hope he was the one who shot Sergeant Koba.”
“I don’t think it was this guy,” Yuki told him, but he didn’t know why he felt that way.
The two of them kept staring at the man, the gruesome damage to his head. A few months back, such a sight would have made Yuki sick. But he had seen plenty since then, and the wound itself meant nothing to him. What he was remembering was the desperate look he had seen on the man’s face. It was what had stopped him from shooting.
“I don’t understand the Krauts,” Shig said. “Who could shoot a man on a litter?”
But Yuki knew something that Shig didn’t. Yuki had come within a breath of pulling his own trigger. He could have killed a man who was down and wounded, just hoping to survive. “Most of ’em wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But war does things to people. They get crazy.”
“Shoot medics? I could never do that.”
“I know. You couldn’t.”
“You’re bleeding, Yuki.”
“I know.”
Somewhere on the hill he had felt the sharp sting of a bullet as it sliced his arm above his elbow.
“Walk back to where I left my pack. Let me look at it.”
So the two walked to the place where the Germans had been dug in. Nisei soldiers were all around now. Some were still letting out their anger, swearing, cursing the Germans. Others were sitting, breathing—utterly exhausted. And some were on their way back down the hill to help the wounded.
Shig helped Yuki take his jacket off, and then they looked at the wound. It was bleeding, but it wasn’t deep—a slice maybe two inches long. In the past Yuki would have thought how close he had come, how easily he could have been killed, but he wasn’t thinking about that now. He was thinking of the new reality for the platoon. Sergeant Koba was gone.
“You need to go down and get this bandaged,” Shig was saying.
“Just do it yourself. It’s not serious.”
“You could get an infection if it’s not cleaned up right.”
“Just slap something on there. It’s okay.”
“You’ll get a Purple Heart.”
“No. I won’t take a medal for a cut on my arm. The sergeant is the one who deserves all the medals.”
CHAPTER 13
Shig finished bandaging the cut on Yuki’s arm, and then the two tried to settle down and relax for a few minutes. After the charge up the hill—and after the rage—Yuki was feeling spent. He lay back on the wet grass and shut his eyes. His feet were burnin
g, and the cuts on his face were still sore. His arm wasn’t hurting much yet, but he was sure it would before long. What he also knew was that he would sleep in mud again that night, or at least try to. He told himself not to think about any of that—just to take whatever came—but it was all there, hanging over him.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Yuki heard a man ask.
“Lieutenant Freeman said to stay here for now,” someone else answered. Yuki still had his eyes closed.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. What do we do without Sergeant Koba?”
But no one answered. They all knew the problem. The lieutenant had the bars on his shoulders, but Sergeant Koba had always known what to do. No one else could lead them into action the way he had done.
“Have you seen Mat?” Shig asked.
Yuki was startled. He sat up. “No. Haven’t you seen him?”
“He was with us when we started up the hill, but I haven’t seen him since.”
Yuki got up quickly and looked around. Men were smoking cigarettes or lying down, mostly quiet now. But he didn’t see Mat. “Has anyone seen Sergeant Matsumoto?” he asked.
Sergeant Oshira was sitting on the ground nearby. “No,” he said. “But a lot of guys didn’t make it up the hill.”
Yuki and Shig started walking, not saying a word to each other.
“There’s no reason to go looking for him,” Oshira said. “The medics will . . .”
But they kept going. They walked straight to a medic about halfway down the hill. He was removing one of the dog tags from the chain around a soldier’s neck. Yuki recognized the dead man. Private Saito. The new kid.
Yuki didn’t want to do this—didn’t want to grieve, didn’t want to feel.
“Oh, man,” Shig said. “He didn’t even have time to get his uniform dirty.” And then, after a few seconds: “He ought to be driving a hot rod, chasing girls. He should have had a life.”
The medic looked up, nodded, his face grim. He wasn’t all that much older himself. Yuki could only think that all of them, all the soldiers strewn across the hill, alive or dead, shouldn’t be there, should be home, still being boys. But he didn’t say anything, couldn’t.
“Did you work on a guy named Matsumoto?” Shig asked the medic.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“He didn’t make it up the hill. So where would he be?”
“Probably at the aid station back toward Bruyères—or at least on his way there. But you’re not allowed to go back that far.”
Again, Yuki and Shig didn’t say anything. They simply continued down the hill. They asked a few people—mostly medics—where the aid station was, and all of them told them the same thing: They shouldn’t go there. But they kept going anyway, walked at least a mile, and when they found the station, they asked a staff sergeant—a husky white guy who seemed to be in charge—whether a soldier named Matsumoto was there.
He was walking past them, moving fast. “I don’t know. But that’s not your concern. Just head back to the line.”
Yuki ran after him and grabbed his arm. “We need to know.”
The sergeant pulled his arm loose and shouted, “I said, go back to the line!”
“He’s our buddy,” Shig said.
The sergeant spun around. “Do you think I don’t know that? We can’t have all you guys hiking down here to see where your friends are. We’re trying to patch them up the best we can, but we don’t have visiting hours.”
Yuki stepped closer. “Tell us where to look,” he said.
“Watch yourself, Corporal. You’re about to get yourself into very big trouble.”
Yuki stepped back a little, dropped his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But please, tell us where we can look for him.”
The sergeant pointed. “Over there,” he said. “Have your look, and then get out of here.”
Yuki and Shig walked in the direction the sergeant had pointed. Yuki could see body bags on the ground, lined up in a row, and he saw some men who were not yet bagged, lying on their backs.
One of them was Mat.
“No,” Shig said. He walked closer and then dropped to his knees. “This can’t happen.”
Yuki wanted to scream, wanted to lie down on the ground and cry, but instead, a kind of disconnection came over him, as though he were floating above himself, only viewing all of this from a distance. He looked down at his friend. He forced himself to draw in air, but he still couldn’t make words out of his thoughts, couldn’t process what this was going to mean.
There was no sign of a wound. Wherever Mat had been hit, it didn’t show. And yet, he didn’t look like the same person. His face had flattened like a lump of clay, and his skin looked gray.
Yuki and Shig didn’t speak. Yuki knelt down next to Shig, but he didn’t touch the body, only stared, tried to find the actual Mat in the thing he was looking at. By then, a reaction was taking shape. What Yuki felt was lost, as though he were no more than clay himself. He knew he couldn’t take much more of this.
Shig said, “He never should have come back to the platoon.”
“I know.” But Yuki remembered what Mat had said. “He came back to look after me.”
“It’s not your fault, Yuki. He just felt wrong about going home.”
The sergeant was back at their side, and Yuki expected him to command them to leave. But the man stood for a time without speaking and then said, “I heard an officer tell one of our medics that your friend carried a soldier off the hill. He got shot in the back but kept going. The soldier he was carrying is still alive. The officer said he was going to write your friend up for a medal.”
Some trade, Yuki thought. His life for a ribbon and a little hunk of metal.
“I see this every day,” the sergeant said. “We drag these boys down here, shot up or dead. We do what we can for the living, and we process the paperwork for the KIAs. I shouldn’t have gotten on you men like that, but you need to understand, I don’t want to know who the dead ones are, and I don’t want to know their friends. It’s better for us down here not to feel too much. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Yuki said, but then he told the sergeant about Mat anyway. “His name was Matsumoto. He was half Japanese, half white. He had a college degree. He could have been an engineer if anyone in the States had been willing to hire him. But half white or not, he was a Jap in America, so no one wanted to work with him.”
It was not the kind of thing Yuki usually said to white people. But he was tired. He didn’t care. He didn’t want this sergeant to “process” Mat without knowing the price he had paid.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” the sergeant said. “I had the same attitude at one time. I’d never been around Japanese people, and I didn’t want to be. I don’t know what I thought you were like, but I just figured—you know, especially after Pearl Harbor—that you had no business coming over here to fight. As far as I was concerned, the government could keep you in those camps and never let you out.”
Yuki looked at the sergeant, actually saw him for the first time. He was older than most of the soldiers. There was a forlorn quality about him—in his eyes and in the sag of his cheeks—as though all this death and mutilation was sinking deeper into him every day.
“But I’ll tell you what,” the sergeant continued. “No one in this army fights the way you men do. We’ve all witnessed it. I’ve seen regular units get thrown back, and then the Japanese troops go in and get the job done.”
“That’s why you see so many of us down here at your aid station,” Shig said.
“I know. But you’re respected by those who know what really goes on over here.”
“Maybe the Germans get a lot of us, but we get more of them,” Yuki said. He was surprised by his own words, but he didn’t want the Nisei to be seen only as the soldiers who got shot to pieces. He wanted people to know that the Four-Four-Two was helping to win the war. He wanted this sergeant to say that to people, and not m
ake AJA soldiers out to be fools or fanatics.
“I know that’s true too,” the sergeant said softly. “And you’re not just good soldiers; you’re good men.” He hesitated a moment, and then added, “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that’s how I feel. I see lots of you coming down the way you two did. It’s because you look out for each other. I respect that, even if I wish you’d stay away.”
“Thank you.” Yuki reached out his hand. “My name’s Yuki Nakahara. This is Shig Omura.”
“Nick Brown,” the sergeant said as he shook hands with them.
“We’ll go back now,” Yuki said. “Take care of him, okay?”
“Yeah. I will.”
“Where will he be buried?” Shig asked. “Will they send his body home, or will he be over here somewhere?”
“I can’t say for sure. But most likely here.”
“And his family will never see him again.”
“In all likelihood, they won’t.”
Yuki had known that, but it had never seemed so important before. Mat’s parents were in Hawaii, waiting and hoping, and this son they were so proud of was gone now—just gone. All those pretty sisters he’d talked about would miss their brother for the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t even have a chance to bury him.
Yuki turned hard and walked away, and Shig hurried after him. They headed to the hill, back up toward their platoon. “What will the lieutenant do to us?” Shig asked. “You know, for leaving the platoon?”
“I don’t care,” Yuki said. “If he wants to put me in jail, that would suit me just fine.”
“Are you okay, Yuki?”
Yuki didn’t answer. He stopped walking, turned around and looked back in the direction of the aid station and Bruyères. The sun was angling across the mountains. The deep green trees were still wet enough to glow in the sunlight. Yuki took long breaths, tried to let some of that beauty and life come into him. But he was feeling nothing. He couldn’t even cry. He had never heard of Bruyères until a week ago. He didn’t know who lived there. However crucial the site was to military leaders, he had to wonder whether it was worth the terrible cost to take it. He hoped the townspeople felt liberated, not devastated.