1945 (28 page)

Monck tried to imagine going out to sea in such a frail craft, with waves crashing around and over it, and knowing that death was the only goal. The little boat pointed out the alienness of the Japanese way of fighting, and the desperation that made them such formidable enemies.

Parker wasn't through with his tour. He led Monck a ways down the waterfront to where a set of railroad tracks led directly into the water.

"This one's really something else, sir." They followed the tracks less than a hundred yards inland, to where a cave had been dug into a low hill. Inside, a long tubular shape rested on a flat handcar.

"General, this is one of their human torpedoes. They call it a
kaiten
. The intelligence boys were all over it since they thought all the
kaiten
were launched from ships. Now they know the Japs can send them down tracks like this, and into the water, from anyplace along the coast of Japan. Intelligence is particularly concerned that some of these bastards will be launched at us from the confines of Ariake and Kagoshima bays where the bigger ships won't have so much freedom to maneuver and escape."

"What happened to this one?"

"There were a couple of dead Japs lying around a little earlier, and one of them was probably the pilot. My guess is that a near miss from a bomb killed them. Maybe the same thing happened to the guys who were supposed to man the little boats. Who cares, just so long as they never got launched."

"Good," Monck muttered as he thought about the ships lying offshore. A number of them could be seen from where he was standing. Human torpedoes came in several types and had effective ranges that began with several thousand yards and went up to several miles. Again it was appalling to think of someone riding a torpedo as if it were a horse and sending it crashing into the hull of a ship.

Monck shook his head and thought of the men who were fighting and dying at sea, and then of his own men, who were clawing their way up each hill they confronted. Like most soldiers, he had often been jealous of the navy and that their war was relatively clean. It seemed to have just gotten a whole lot dirtier.

"Parker, just what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?"

He had no answer. Monck gestured to their guards and they began the journey back to their regiment.

Platoon Sgt. Frank Collins slithered down the steep and rain-slicked hill oblivious to the light but constant rain. His clothing and the soft flesh underneath were cut where the small, wet rocks that jutted from the volcanic soil had sliced at him. He ignored them all. His only urge was to make himself one with the hateful ground and thus not be seen by the guns on the hill above him.

The thought that some Jap was looking down at him and aiming either his cannon or machine gun at him made him whimper with fear. With every jerky motion of his arms and legs, he prayed that he would be allowed to make another. He tried desperately to stay within the folds of the hill, but he had that nightmare feeling that scores of slanty eyes were glaring at him and laughing at his slow, painful progress to shelter.

Mud-covered and exhausted, he slipped into a small ravine and felt a surge of relief. He was safe. At least for the moment. Collins sucked a few lungfuls of air and moved over to Lieutenant Morrell, who looked at him with concern.

"You okay?" Paul asked.

"Other than scared shitless, Lieutenant, I'm just fine, thank you." Morrell offered Sergeant Collins his canteen, and Collins accepted it gratefully. The water, warm and rancid, tasted undeservedly delicious. Not even the purification tablets could rob it of its taste. Collins took a dirty rag from his pocket and wiped sweat and cold mist from his face. "I want to take up another line of work, sir."

"Don't we all, Sarge. Now, what'd you see up there?"

The platoon's advance up the fairly steep hill was halted by a brief cannonade and the staccato crackle of Japanese machine guns. They'd dropped where they were, then scrambled downhill for cover and dug in as the previously unseen cannon again fired from a bunker about two-thirds of the way up the hill. At that point, they realized the Jap gunners had them pinned down. They could not advance and they couldn't retreat without exposing themselves to additional casualties.

First they'd called on artillery support, which hadn't been effective. The rain obscured their spotter's vision and the maps of the area were inaccurate. With logic firmly on their side, the regiment's artillery was reluctant to loose a heavy barrage on the Jap position when American soldiers were only a couple of hundred yards away. As a result, only a few rounds had been fired onto the hill, and none had shut down the Jap gun.

Air cover was equally unavailable because of the layer of mist that touched the top of the hill. The planes would not fly and bomb blindly either. The platoon was on its own. They'd plunked a few mortar rounds at the Jap position, but these had merely churned up some dirt.

Then Sergeant Collins had made his solitary patrol.

"Sir, it's a standard Jap bunker setup. There's one main fortification and at least three machine-gun nests connected to it by zigzagging trenches. There may be a fourth on the other side of the hill, but I kinda doubt it. For once artillery did help out, at least a little. They nailed the nest directly in front of the main bunker. Ain't nothin' left but smoke and dead Japs. However, the big bunker and the two light machine guns flanking it are operating just fine, thank you."

Paul nodded. The Jap complex had been well hidden, and had the enemy gunners showed any fire discipline at all, the platoon would have walked right up to it and been slaughtered. As it was, they'd still been hurt. Jap light machine guns had thirty-shot clips, and he considered them the equivalent of an American Browning automatic rifle, or BAR, and not a true machine gun, which was belt-fed. Even so, they could be quite lethal and were helping to keep the platoon pinned down.

"How're my guys?" Collins asked.

"Holcomb took a bullet through the hand that ripped off at least three fingers," Paul answered, thinking of the grisly mess of tendons and flesh that was Holcomb's hand. "He's okay, but in shock. Keye was shot in the thigh and lost a lot of blood before someone got a tourniquet on him. Unless we can get them to the rear sometime soon, they may not make it."

Both men understood. The healthy could wait in wet misery for darkness and then make their escape, but the wounded needed help immediately.

Paul sighed. "What's in the bunker?"

"Jap tank."

"A what?" said Paul, astonished. Since landing on Kyushu, no one had seen a Jap tank. For that matter, they'd seen precious few American ones.

Collins grinned through his fatigue. "Yessir, it's a real live Jap tank, and she's dug in hull-down in the bunker and covered with dirt and logs. Nothing but a direct hit is going to knock her out, and there's damn little of her poking out from the bunker besides her big gun."

It was commonly accepted that Jap tanks were small, thinly armored, and carried a small-caliber cannon. Thus, they were no match for American M4 Shermans, or even the lighter M24 Chaffees. But even a small-caliber cannon was more than Paul's platoon had.

However, that was not his main problem. He had two men who might die if he didn't get them some help, and he might lose still more men if he tried to move them back. There was only one answer. He would not sacrifice additional men for his wounded. They would have to wait until darkness or until help came.

"Sir," Collins asked, "you get through to the captain?"

"Yeah. He's got his own problems but said he'd try to get us out of this mess." The rest of the company was one hill over and had their own problems with Japanese guns. The irregular folds of ground had separated their platoon from the rest of the company. For that matter, Paul thought, they were pretty well separated from the rest of the army. He had the damnedest feeling that he and his platoon were all alone on Kyushu.

Collins risked a quick look at the top of the hill, where the mist now seemed even thicker. "Too bad we can't get a napalm strike on them. Armor or no, that'd cook their goose, literally, and settle things real fast. It's a shame the flyboys don't like to run into mountains when they bomb in the rain."

They gave no thought to sending a man up with a flamethrower. They had one, but he'd be an easy target for the Japs.

With that, they settled down to wait for help or night, whichever came first. As time ground on, they dug in deeper and were able to put substantial mounds of earth between themselves and the machine guns, while the Jap cannon remained ominously silent. It occurred to Paul that the entire platoon had been stopped by fewer than a dozen Japanese.

At first Paul didn't notice the grinding, whining, growling sound in the distance, but as it grew louder, he realized that something big was getting close. Then he and the others grinned hugely as an M4 Sherman tank breasted the hill behind them and descended gracelessly, sliding the last few feet into the ravine where they were hidden. The tank commander positioned the Sherman between them and the Jap guns, and Paul cautiously moved over to the driver's hatch, which opened a crack.

"You guys call for a tank?" came a voice from inside the dull brown armored vehicle.

Paul grinned. "Damned right."

The hatch opened wider and a man with dark, curly hair stuck his upper body out. There was grease on his face. "I'm Staff Sergeant Joey Orlando and this is my tank. How can I help?"

Paul quickly explained the situation with the Jap tank and the machine guns. As if on cue, the Jap tank fired a round that landed farther down the ravine, and one of the machine guns fired a burst that did nothing but make everyone wince. The Japs had seen the American tank and weren't happy.

Orlando grunted. "I make that a thirty-seven-millimeter gun, which tells me that it's a Jap Model 95. She's got two machine guns in her as well, but they're probably useless with them dug in like that. The Model 95 is a dinky piece of shit with thin armor. I've got her outgunned with my seventy-six millimeter. If I can get a clear shot at her, one of my rounds'll go through her like shit through a goose."

"Be my guest," Paul offered. "You going straight up the hill?"

"Naw, and I can't afford to get in a shooting match with that pig. I've only got twenty rounds left. I wanna flank her, and I want some infantry to protect me from any little yellow assholes coming out of holes with grenades or Molotov cocktails. This might be a better tank than the Jap, but she will burn real fast under the right conditions, and I don't want to lose a tread to that thirty-seven of theirs, either. That happens and I gotta sit there and wait for nightfall just like you were. No, I wanna take her in the side or rear. That'll also give me a chance to find a safe way up that hill where my tank won't get stuck or slide back. Who's gonna lead the troops going with me?"

Paul shrugged. "I guess I am."

Sergeant Orlando smiled openly. "Good. I know too damn many officers who would volunteer their mother rather than go up that hill."

"Sergeant Orlando, I am not thrilled at the thought."

"Lieutenant, I'm not either. Y'know there were four tanks in my platoon yesterday? One blew an engine and is being fixed, while another got blown up by a crazy Jap with a bottle full of gas and all five guys in it got burned to death. Then the fourth rolled down one of these hills and rolled over. Nobody got killed in that one, but everybody has broken bones and a couple of my friends may never walk again. So, if you don't mind, I'm a little leery of this place and am gonna take it as cautious as I can."

Paul nodded. "We'll take good care of you, Sergeant."

"Then let's go." Orlando closed the hatch. A moment later, the Sherman rumbled out of the ravine and moved toward the platoon's left flank. Paul, a half dozen riflemen, and one man with the flamethrower scrambled alongside and struggled to keep the tank between themselves and the Japanese on the hill.

Paul had ordered Collins and the rest of the platoon to move up around the right flank and keep the second machine gun occupied. He presumed the cannon in the bunker would concentrate its fire on Sergeant Orlando's hulking tank when it was visible.

They got to where the Jap tank couldn't see the infantry well and started up the hill. The wet ground made the climb difficult for the tank, and a couple of times Paul thought that Sergeant Orlando would say he couldn't make it. But Orlando was both skilled and persistent and they kept inching upward. The flanking Japanese machine gun opened up and bullets rattled harmlessly off the Sherman's turret, while the Jap tank's cannon fired sporadically to no effect. Sergeant Orlando's tank returned fire with the machine gun in her hull, hitting nothing but keeping the Jap gunners' heads down.

The infantrymen stayed in the shadow of the tank and kept an eye out for anything that looked like a camouflaged hole from where a Jap might emerge. Nothing stirred and the men gained confidence as they climbed farther up the hill.

The Americans drew closer until they could see the tip of the barrel of the machine gun as it spewed out its hate. Paul tried not to think of what might be going through the gunners' minds as they saw the American tank approaching. They had to know they were doomed. Why didn't they retreat? What the hell was wrong with these people?

Just as Paul was beginning to wonder when Orlando would use his main gun, he was rocked back by the sound and concussion of the Sherman's 76mm cannon firing. An instant later, the Japanese machine gun disappeared in a cloud of smoke and a shower of rocks.

Safer now, but still moving carefully, the men spread out and advanced on the smoking nest. When they looked in, they saw the shredded remains of what might have been four or five Japs. With all the pieces of smoking flesh lying about, it was hard to be exact.

The Sherman's hatch opened and Orlando looked down on his handiwork. "Not bad," he reasoned. "One shot is all it took."

"Yeah," said Paul. "Now all we got to do is get that buried tank."