by Len Levinson
He yawned and let his mind drift back to Greenwich, Connecticut, where his family maintained a large home with its own tennis court, not far from the Atlantic Ocean. He recalled how he used to play tennis on that court, dressed in white shorts and shirts, with his male and female friends. He remembered sailing on the family yawl on Long Island Sound, and how comfortable and gracious his life had been before the war.
Now he was wet, smelly, and unshaven, wearing a tattered uniform, taking orders from Bannon, an ex-cowboy who was a little too quick on the trigger for Worthington’s liking. Worthington hoped Lieutenant Breckenridge would be released from the hospital and returned to the recon platoon soon, because Lieutenant Breckenridge was a gentleman at least, with a college education and a decent social background. Private Worthington could tolerate taking orders from Lieutenant Breckenridge, but he wasn’t too happy about taking orders from Sergeant Bannon.
Leaves and branches were twisted and yanked by the wind in the jungle in front of him. Peals of thunder filled his ears along with the roar of the steady downpour. It was like lying underneath a waterfall. He wiped raindrops off his nose with the back of his hand, and then noticed a Japanese soldier suddenly step into view through the churning jungle ahead of him.
Worthington froze, the back of his hand against his nose. The Japanese soldier kicked the tangled branches at his feet and moved forward. Worthington saw another Japanese soldier appear to the left of the first one, and then a third advance to his right. They’re coming, Worthington thought. This is it.
He had to warn the others, but he couldn’t crawl faster than the Japs could walk. That meant he’d have to get up and run like a motherfucker. The best thing to do would be to fire a warning shot.
The Japanese soldiers stepped closer, and they hadn’t seen him yet. Worthington raised his M 1 rifle to his shoulder and looked through the peepsight. He zeroed in on the middle Jap, squeezed the trigger, and blam!—the Japanese soldier stopped suddenly, an expression of surprise on his face, and then he sagged to his knees.
Japanese soldiers jabbered noisily. Worthington got to his feet, turned around, and ran away.
“The Japs are coming!” he hollered. “Get ready!”
He should’ve crawled away silently like a sniper instead of running like a maniac, but he was too excited. Bullets whizzed around his head and one hit him squarely in the back. Its force hurled him face first against a tree, and he lay there for a few moments, blood trickling down his back. Then he slid down the tree and fell in a clump to the ground.
The Japanese soldiers knew they’d been spotted, and the time had come to charge. Their officers raised their samurai swords in the air and screamed: “Banzai!”
“Banzai!” replied the men. “Banzai!”
They pushed through the thick foliage, kicking ferns and branches out of their way as they rampaged forward. Torrents of rain fell on them as they rushed through the jungle on their suicide charge.
“Get ready!” Bannon said. “They’re coming!”
His men got behind their weapons and flicked off the safety switches. They held their fingers on the triggers and waited for the Japs to appear. Bannon picked up his walkie-talkie and called Captain Mason. He saw Japs spill out of the jungle in front of him, baring their teeth and shaking their rifles and bayonets. Machine guns and rifles opened fire, cutting the Japs down, and finally Captain Mason got on the radio.
“We’re under attack!” Bannon said. “Japs’re coming at us across a broad front. I ain’t got time to talk anymore. Over and out.”
He dropped the walkie-talkie and picked up his M 1 rifle, lining up the sights and aiming at a Jap jumping like a wild horse through the jungle. He squeezed the trigger and blam!—the Jap tumbled asshole over teakettle to the ground.
A furious hail of fire erupted across the front of the recon platoon, but more Japs charged out of the jungle, jumping over their fallen comrades, and they were only thirty yards away. Their officers and sergeants urged them on and every Japanese soldier wanted to kill at least one American before he was killed himself.
Distance narrowed between the GIs and the Japanese soldiers. The GIs didn’t have much shooting room, and now the Japanese soldiers were almost on top of them, howling and screaming, snorting and farting. The hand-to-hand combat was only seconds away.
“Hit ‘em!” Bannon shouted. “Let’s fucking go!”
Bannon grabbed his captured samurai sword and jumped out of his foxhole. A Japanese soldier ran toward him and Bannon swung wildly at him, the blade of the samurai sword striking the barrel of the Japanese soldier’s rifle, deflecting it out of the way.
Bannon stepped inside the Japanese soldier’s guard and kicked him in the balls. The Japanese soldier hollered as he dropped to his knees, and Bannon kicked him in the face, jumped over him, and swung the samurai sword downwards, connecting with the top of a Japanese soldier’s head, slicing it in two like a cantaloupe, and Bannon yanked the sword loose, swung from the side, and whacked a Japanese soldier on his right biceps muscle, busting through muscle and bone, and the Japanese soldier’s arm fell to the ground.
The Japanese soldier blinked in amazement as blood gushed out of the stump where his arm had been. He dropped his rifle and reached for his knife with his left hand, but he was losing too much blood, and the jungle undulated in front of his eyes as if the trees were made of elastic bands. The Japanese soldier blacked out and Bannon rushed past him, swinging his samurai sword sideways and chopping off a Japanese soldier’s head. The head went flying into the air like a baseball off the bat of Ted Williams, and on the backswing Bannon smashed another Japanese soldier in the ribs.
The sword went in deep and Bannon couldn’t pull it out. The Japanese soldier fell to the ground and Bannon’s sword went down with him. Bannon placed his foot on the Japanese soldier’s chest and tugged the sword loose, as violent hand-to-hand mayhem erupted all around him.
“Banzai!”
Bannon looked up and saw a Japanese officer running toward him, swinging his samurai sword in the air. He swung the samurai sword toward Bannon’s head, and Bannon leapt at him, grabbing the Japanese officer’s wrist in his hands, spinning around and throwing him over his shoulders.
The Japanese officer landed on his back with a loud thud, and was knocked senseless momentarily. Bannon dived on top of him and punched him in the mouth. The officer flailed the air wildly with his hands, and Bannon punched him again. The officer’s lights went out and his arms fell to the side.
“Banzai!”
Bannon looked up and saw two Japanese soldiers running toward him, aiming their rifles and bayonets downwards toward his heart. He saw a Nambu pistol in a holster on the belt of the Japanese officer underneath him, and he drew the pistol out, got to his feet, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened, because the safety was on. The two Japanese soldiers rumbled closer. Bannon flicked the safety off and opened fire. The Nambu pistol barked angrily and kicked in his hand. He fired five quick panic shots, and four of them landed. The Japanese soldiers collapsed at Bannon’s feet.
“Banzai!”
Bannon saw another Japanese soldier running toward him, pointing his rifle and bayonet toward Bannon’s heart. Bannon aimed his Nambu pistol at him and blam!—the bullet smacked the Jap between the eyes, blowing his head apart.
Bannon looked around. He saw Frankie La Barbara jam the bayonet on the end of his rifle into the stomach of a Japanese soldier, and the Japanese soldier shrieked horribly. The Reverend Billie Jones clobbered a Jap on top of his head with his Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), caving in the top of the Japanese soldier’s head. Other soldiers from the recon platoon and Headquarters Company were locked in close hand-to-hand combat all across that part of the jungle, as the rain poured down on them and made the ground slick as rat shit.
Bannon threw away the Nambu pistol and picked up the old samurai sword out of a puddle of rainwater stained a murky red by the blood of a dead Japanese soldier
lying nearby. He heard footsteps sloshing through the muck, and looked up to see three Japanese soldiers running toward him, screaming at the tops of their lungs.
Bannon had lost his helmet somewhere along the way, and rain pelted the plastered down sand-colored hair on top of his head. He raised the samurai sword and waited for the Japanese soldiers to come closer. “Banzai!” they cried as they closed the distance between Bannon and them.
They lunged forward with their rifles and bayonets, and Bannon dodged to the side. He swung down diagonally with the samurai sword, striking a Japanese soldier on his shoulder, the momentum of the blow pushing the blade of the samurai sword into the Japanese soldier’s chest, slicing his esophagus.
The Japanese soldier belched great gobs of blood and fell to the ground. Bannon pulled his samurai sword loose and swung it sideways at the next Japanese soldier, but the Japanese soldier caught the blow on the stock of his rifle, and banged Bannon in the mouth with his rifle butt.
Bannon was knocked senseless, and he fell to the ground. He lay still and the Japanese soldier moved quickly into position over him, preparing to deliver the death stab, when suddenly, out of the wind and rain, the Reverend Billie Jones appeared.
“Jap bastard!” the Reverend Billie Jones hollered, swinging his big twenty-pound BAR from the side.
The Japanese soldier raised his rifle and bayonet to block the blow, but his strength couldn’t match the power of big Billie Jones. The BAR crashed against the Japanese soldier’s rifle and bayonet and then hit the Japanese soldier on the head. The Japanese soldier’s skull crunched under the impact of the blow, and he closed his eyes as his knees wobbled from side to side.
The Reverend Billie Jones looked ahead into the roaring thunderstorm and hunched over, waiting for more Japs to attack, but none came at him immediately. He prodded one of his combat boots into Bannon’s kidney.
“C’mon, get up!” he said.
Bannon groaned, and the Reverend Billie Jones prodded him again. Bannon opened his eyes. “Where am I?” he asked.
“You’d better get up!” the Reverend Billie Jones said.
“Banzai!”
The Reverend Billie Jones looked to his side and saw Japanese soldiers burst through the rain, heading straight for him. A shadow appeared in the corner of his eye and rushed toward the Japs. This shadow was Pfc. Frankie La Barbara from New York City, and his shirt had been torn off his body in a previous fracas with a Japanese soldier. His dogtags dangled from his neck as he charged toward the new contingent of Japanese soldiers rushing out of the jungle.
“You fucking cocksuckers!” Frankie La Barbara screamed, thrusting his upper body forward, plunging his rifle and bayonet into the stomach of a Japanese soldier. He pulled his rifle and bayonet out, bashed the next Japanese soldier in the chops, kicked the next Japanese soldier in the balls, smashed the next Japanese soldier in the mouth with his rifle butt, and slashed the last Japanese soldier diagonally from throat to hip, ripping him wide open. The Japanese soldier’s guts spilled out of his stomach as he fell in a heap onto the ground.
Frankie La Barbara looked to his right and left, and couldn’t see any more Japanese soldiers coming at him. He turned around and saw Bannon picking himself up off the ground next to the Reverend Billie Jones. Frankie snarled and spit at the ground. He reached into his shirt pocket for his package of cigarettes, but his fingernails scraped against the hair of his chest because he didn’t have his shirt anymore.
He shrugged and walked back toward Bannon and the Reverend Billie Jones. “Either of youse guys got a smoke?” he asked.
Colonel Hutchins was inspecting the Headquarters Company mess tent when the fight broke out. Japanese soldiers poured out of the jungle nearby, and Colonel Hutchins unslung his .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun. His first thought was that he shouldn’t have been caught so close to the front, since he wasn’t a kid anymore, and his second thought was go get them fucking Japs.
The old war dog in him responded, and he ran toward the mess tent’s exit. “Follow me!” he shouted to the cooks and bakers. “Get the fuckers!”
Colonel Hutchins emerged from the tent and saw Japanese and American soldiers locked in hand-to-hand combat all around him. He wanted to charge into the thick of the fray, but a little voice inside his head told him to take it easy because he wasn’t a kid anymore. I’ll just lay back and lead the fight, he said to himself. I’m not the man I used to be.
He stood beside the entrance to the tent, as the cooks and bakers came out, armed with rifles and bayonets, butcher knives, and meat cleavers.
Colonel Hutchins pointed toward the Japs. “Go get ‘em!” he hollered.
The cooks and bakers looked at him curiously. They didn’t seem particularly anxious to attack the Japs. Some looked toward their rear, as if planning avenues of escape.
Colonel Hutchins realized that the men expected him to lead them forward, and if he wasn’t going to charge, why should they? He remembered at that moment the one main principle about war that he’d learned in his nearly twenty-seven years in uniform. If you wanted men to obey you, you had to get out front and lead them.
He knew he wasn’t in particularly good physical condition, but duty was calling. He knew what he had to do and he knew how to do it. Raising his submachine gun in the air, he threw his left foot forward and ran toward the melee at the edge of the jungle.
“Let’s go!” he shouted. “Follow me!”
He rushed toward the fighting, holding the butt of his submachine gun tucked in between his elbow and his waist. The cooks and bakers followed him, brandishing their weapons, because they couldn’t lay back and let Colonel Hutchins charge all by his lonesome.
The Japanese soldiers saw the silver bird on Colonel Hutchins’s lapel, and knew he was a high-ranking American officer. Shouting gleefully, they lunged toward him with smiles on their faces, anxious to win glory for themselves by killing him.
Colonel Hutchins saw them coming and squeezed the trigger of his submachine gun. Fat hot bullets spat out the barrel and mowed the Japanese soldiers down. More Japanese soldiers arose behind them, and Colonel Hutchins shot them in their faces, chests, and stomachs. He shot a few of them in their balls, and put bullets in a substantial number of Japanese legs.
The Japanese soldiers fell like wheat before a scythe, but more poured out of the jungle behind them. They advanced steadily through the clerks, truckdrivers, cooks, and bakers, and Colonel Hutchins stuffed a fresh clip of ammunition into his Thompson submachine gun.
He ran forward and fired point-blank at the head of a Japanese soldier, blowing it to smithereens. Pivoting, he leveled a stream of bullets at the chest of another Japanese soldier, and mangled his heart, lungs, and aorta. Spinning around, he shot another soldier in the face, fired a burst into a Japanese soldier’s belly, parried the bayonet thrust from the next Japanese soldier, and bashed that Japanese soldier in the face with the butt of his submachine gun.
More Japanese soldiers charged out of the jungle. One came at him with bloodlust in his eyes, and Colonel Hutchins aimed his submachine gun at him, pulling the trigger.
Click!
The gun was empty, and the click sounded like a tank being dropped onto a rocky road from the height of five hundred yards. Colonel Hutchins let go the submachine gun and dived onto the rifle and bayonet streaking toward his heart. His hands closed around it and the tip of the blade came to a halt a half inch in front of his stomach.
Colonel Hutchins snarled and pulled the rifle and bayonet, but the Japanese soldier wouldn’t let go. The Japanese soldier tugged with all his strength, and Colonel Hutchins purposefully turned it loose. The Japanese soldier fell onto his ass, and something gleamed in the corner of Colonel Hutchins's eye. It was a meat cleaver near the hand of a butcher who’d been bayoneted by a Japanese soldier, and Colonel Hutchins bent over, picking up the meat cleaver.
Blood stained its blade; the cleaver had drunk Japanese blood already that afternoon. The Japanese soldier who�
��d fallen to the ground struggled to get up, and Colonel Hutchins attacked him, swinging the meat cleaver sideways, connecting with the Japanese soldier’s right temple, chopping off the top of the Japanese soldier’s head, and it flew into the air like an upside-down saucer, with blood and bits of brains scattering in all directions.
The Japanese soldier dropped at Colonel Hutchins’s feet, and Colonel Hutchins looked up to see two Japanese soldiers running toward him. He threw the meat cleaver and hit one Japanese soldier in the face, the blade cracking open the Japanese soldier’s skull, but the other Japanese soldier maintained his forward momentum.
Colonel Hutchins was weaponless again, and didn’t have time to pick anything up from the ground. All he could do was whip out his Ka-bar knife and look for an opening. The Japanese soldier pushed his rifle and bayonet forward, and Colonel Hutchins banged it to the side with a sweep of his forearm. He stepped inside the Japanese soldier’s guard and punched up with the Ka-bar knife, burying it to the hilt in the Japanese soldier’s stomach.
The Japanese soldier sighed and fell to the ground. Colonel Hutchins pulled the knife out, and his hand was soaked with blood. He looked around and saw his cooks, bakers, truck-drivers, and clerks standing toe to toe with the Japs and cutting them down. Colonel Hutchins could see that not many Japs had participated in the attack, but they weren’t retreating. Evidently they were going to stand their ground and die fighting.
Colonel Hutchins thought he’d oblige them. He saw his Thompson submachine gun lying on the ground nearby, and picked it up. He loaded in a fresh clip of .45 caliber bullets and stood up, looking around for a Jap to shoot.
Meanwhile the recon platoon and Headquarters Company fell back to the village of Afua, which had been ravaged badly during the past weeks of fighting. Every hut in the village was damaged, and debris lay all over the ground. Soldiers tried to kill each other among the huts as rain poured on the village and filled firepits with water.