“Would you look at that,” he said, nudging Deke in the ribs. “Not a bad way to dispose of the enemy’s weapons, huh?”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Deke replied, his eyes never leaving the spectacle unfolding before them. The Japanese munitions detonated in a display of dazzling pyrotechnics.
Sparks and Fuze appeared, their faces illuminated by the explosions, grinning like two schoolboys who had just pulled off an elaborate prank. It was hard for Deke not to smile along with them. After all, they had just successfully dismantled a dangerous cache of explosives without so much as a scratch. Watching it all go up with a bang felt like a just reward.
“Hey, Honcho,” Sparks called out, sauntering over to the lieutenant. “What do you think of the show?”
“Damn good job,” Honcho told them, clapping each man on the shoulder. “Maybe my country club back home can book you guys to handle the July Fourth show one of these days.”
“Wouldn’t that be great,” Sparks said, an almost dreamy sound in his voice. “Probably a lot less dangerous than what we’re doing now.”
More than one man felt a pang when Honcho mentioned home, and the Fourth of July, no less. It all sounded so normal, but would they ever get back home to that?
Another explosion lit the sky, a final blast lagging behind the others. Deke had to wonder what any Japanese must be thinking. It sure as hell sounded like the end of the world. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that one wrong step and they might have been inside that tunnel when the ammunition exploded.
Together, they stood and watched as the last of the Japanese munitions went up in a jet of flames. They could only hope that the Empire of Japan did the same — the sooner, the better.
A final echo rolled across the hills, and then darkness and quiet settled over the landscape once again. Even the night birds and insects seemed to have been stunned into silence. Deke knew all too well that the quiet wouldn’t last for long.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Deke had been right about things not staying quiet. There was some excitement during the night when Japanese infiltrators attacked the command post. At least twenty enemy soldiers appeared out of the darkness, carrying satchel-and-pole charges. Their intent was to destroy vehicles, and they did just that, rushing silently toward whatever trucks and M8 armored vehicles they could find.
The night was then interrupted by massive explosions. Soon the leaping flames from the burning vehicles illuminated Japanese troops hastening back toward the safety of the forest.
Several GIs opened fire, but it was hard for them to see what they were shooting at. It didn’t help that soldiers had come running toward the sound of the fighting, mixing with the fleeing infiltrators. “Hold your fire!” Lieutenant Steele shouted. “I said to hold your fire, dammit! You’ll hit our own guys.”
Deke obeyed orders — to a point. He spotted a lone Japanese running for the trees, put his sights between the Jap’s shoulder blades, and dropped him.
A handful of other infiltrators had been shot — along with a couple of GIs who had been unlucky enough to get in the way of the retreating Japanese. Another GI had been stabbed through the belly by a Japanese bayonet.
“Six dead Japs,” Rodeo reported.
“Good, we’ll add it to the tally,” Steele replied.
One of the Japanese must have gotten too close to his satchel charge, because the blast had left him wounded, mostly with burns. One side of his face was black and red, and bits of charred fabric clung to his torso. He was trying to crawl away when Deke found him. He pointed his rifle at the enemy soldier and shouted for him to surrender.
But the Japanese soldier had no intention of giving up. Shouting defiantly, he propped himself up on one elbow and waved a hand grenade with his other arm, clearly intending to take out a few Americans on his way to the afterlife. Deke didn’t give him the chance to yank the pin on that grenade. He pulled the trigger and put the poor bastard out of his misery.
“Make that seven dead Japanese,” he said.
Tired as they were, nobody slept much the rest of the night. The attack had left everybody on edge.
“For all we know, those Nip bastards will be back,” Philly said.
He and Deke sat back-to-back in their foxhole the rest of the night, scanning the darkness for an attack that never came.
Along with the constant threat of infiltrators, a few Japanese planes still harassed them. It was hard to say if the Zeros had taken off from Luzon or a hidden airfield that was still managing to operate on Leyte. Small, lightweight, and nimble, these planes were nothing more than a powerful Mitsubishi engine bolted to a wooden frame with canvas wings. With their lightweight construction, the Japanese Zero fighters did not require much space to take off and land, giving them a distinct advantage in a landscape filled with hidden runways.
One plane strafed a convoy that was evacuating wounded toward the beach, killing several and leaving two trucks in flames before it turned on a dime and roared away at what seemed like an impossible speed to the stunned soldiers on the ground. Two US fighters arrived soon after, but they were too late to catch the marauding Japanese fighter plane.
Another time, a Japanese fighter plane swooped down and strafed the troops at Palompon before being driven off by antiaircraft fire. But it wasn’t done. Turning away from the town, the plane hunted down a convoy carrying troops and supplies. The Zero machine-gunned the road and even dropped a bomb, once again leaving trucks in flames and more men dead. Then the plane disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. The soldiers might have thought the Zero was a figment of their imaginations if it hadn’t been for the destruction left behind.
The troops on the ground welcomed the sight of their own planes on patrol because it meant that the dreaded Zeros wouldn’t dare to show themselves. Also, the US planes fired on Japanese ground troops and vehicles whenever they spotted them.
Against Japanese positions deep in the hills, another tactic was being applied from the air. Instead of regular bombing, the planes were dropping a flaming substance that set everything on the ground ablaze — trees, abandoned Filipino villages and crops, and hopefully the Japanese hiding in the remote hills.
From a safe vantage point on another hilltop, Patrol Easy watched as the planes worked over an enemy position. They looked on as the ugly, orange fireballs rolled across the forest, flames enveloping anything the fireball touched.
“What the hell is that stuff?” Philly wondered. “It looks like the devil himself threw up.”
“Jellied gasoline,” Lieutenant Steele said. “They say it’s sticky stuff and clings to the trees — and the Japs. They call it napalm.”
Steele’s description fell short in this case, but he was simply sharing what he knew. Napalm was a mix of molten synthetic rubber, phosphorus, and gasoline, a nightmare dreamed up by the enlightened folks at Harvard University. It had also been used on German civilians during the firebombing on their cities.
“Whatever they call it, I’m glad we’re not on the receiving end,” Deke said.
War was never pretty, Deke had decided, but there was something about the vast spreading flames that made warfare seem industrial and inhumane. Unlike a bullet or a knife, this kind of mass destruction was something that he just couldn’t understand.
“I don’t like it,” he found himself saying. “It doesn’t seem right somehow, killing people that way.”
“One thing humans are awfully good at is coming up with new ways to kill each other,” the lieutenant pointed out. He sighed. “Imagine if we put half that energy into developing a cure for cancer or the common cold. I know that’s wishful thinking. I suppose it’s just human nature to fight and kill each other, and it has been since the days when all we had were sticks and stones. But the way things are going with these new weapons, I wouldn’t be surprised if we destroy ourselves in the end.”
Deke didn’t know what to say to that, other than to think that Honcho was probably right. That napalm was nasty stuff. He couldn’t fathom what might be worse.
Danilo was one of the coolest customers that any of them had met, but he made a kind of groaning sound while witnessing his beloved countryside being burned up.
They couldn’t help but keep watching, mesmerized by the fire falling from the sky, until the planes ended their mission.
Sometimes the planes flying these daredevil missions needed their help. One night the division got an emergency call from several planes that had found themselves arriving in the middle of a naval raid on their base on the island of Mindoro. Unable to land, they had fled toward friendly forces on Leyte. But by the time they reached Leyte, the six planes were running short on fuel. They either had to land or take their chances trying to reach one of the aircraft carriers for a tricky nighttime landing that none of them had been trained to do. The thought of leaving land behind and heading out again over the dark ocean couldn’t have been all that appealing.
A makeshift landing field was surrounded by several trucks and jeeps, which shined their headlights on the dirt strip. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best they could do.
One by one the planes made their landing approach. A single stream of enemy tracer fire coming from the hills showed that the Japanese had spotted the planes. A P-51 broke away and strafed the hill until the enemy gun fell silent. It was the last plane to land, joining the group of five P-51s and one B-25 that dropped down and made a bumpy landing on the runway — although to call it that was a stretch of the imagination.