Speed was the name of the game, each bullet meaning one less Nip who was going to reach his foxhole. On either side of him, soldiers were doing the exact same thing. At this range, nobody was about to miss. He could hear the deep boom of Honcho’s shotgun adding to the hell storm of lead being thrown at the Japanese.
Deke realized that he was too busy to be scared, although anyone in their right mind should have been frightened by the sight of the banzai charge. A few soldiers fumbled their clips when they went to reload their M1s, but Deke’s hands remained steady. Work the bolt, aim, squeeze the trigger, feel the jolt of recoil against his shoulder, fire, repeat. Again and again. It felt as if he had already been doing this his whole life, and might be doing it until the end of time — or at least until a Jap bayoneted him.
“Enemy behind us!” Yoshio shouted.
Deke whipped his rifle around in time to see a small group of Japanese who were almost on top of them. They were all so intent on the charging Japanese that they might have been completely taken by surprise without Yoshio’s warning. He fired at the nearest man. Beside him, Honcho’s shotgun boomed again, followed by the crack of Danilo’s rifle, and then Philly’s. The threat from the rear was neutralized.
There were still plenty of Japs coming up the slope, although the blazing machine guns had done a number on them. But it hadn’t been enough. Now the enemy soldiers were thirty feet away, then ten, then right on top of them.
“Dammit!” Philly shouted.
Deke fired point blank at a screaming Jap racing at them with a bayonet. He went down. There were more right behind him. Deke put down his rifle and reached for the .45 in the belt holster. The weight of the pistol felt good in his hand as he unloaded the fat slugs into enemy soldiers no more than an arm’s length away. When the pistol ran dry, he tossed it aside and reached for his bowie knife just as a Japanese soldier tripped and fell headlong into the foxhole. Deke made short work of him with the knife. Danilo was doing the same with his long-bladed bolo knife, chopping at the Japanese like he was harvesting sugarcane.
In the foxholes all around Deke, similar battles were taking place, each fight a primitive struggle for survival that was as old and familiar as warfare itself. It was blade against bayonet, fist against boot. Worst of all were the sounds as the firing died away, replaced by the noise of close-quarters combat. Grunts and curses filled the night. The very air seemed to crackle with the grating of rifles being used like fighting sticks and clubs. There was the dull ringing of heavy blows against helmets. They heard the horrible wet sounds of a long blade sliding into flesh, followed by the final sigh of air escaping from a lung or rib cage. Screams of rage mixed with the death cries of those who were being stabbed or clubbed.
Mercifully, the Japanese tide broke and receded. What was left of the enemy retreated down the slope. A few madmen refused to retreat, throwing themselves into foxholes, stabbing wildly with bayonets. A few hurled grenades before dying in a burst of gunfire. One enemy officer flailed around him with a sword, shouting wildly, before he was gunned down, hit by two or three shots almost instantaneously. He spun like a top and fell.
And then the terrible banzai charge was over, what was left of its broken wave draining back down the slope. The rest of the night passed quietly, except for the moans of the wounded enemy scattered across the slope. A few of the GIs had been stabbed or shot, with medics and other soldiers tending to them as best as they could. Not a single GI had been killed outright. The destruction of the banzai charge had been a stunningly lopsided victory.
Deke unscrewed the cap of his canteen and took a drink. Only then did he notice that his hands were shaking. They had been rock steady during the fight, working the bolt action of his rifle smoothly. So much for nerves of steel, he thought.
By the time he put the canteen back, the shaking had stopped. With so much adrenaline running through their veins, the reactions of the other men ran the gamut, from blank stares to uncontrollable giggling. Nobody judged or thought much of it — they were all just glad to be alive.
They reloaded and prepared for another attack, but the enemy did not return.
The morning light only verified the destruction. Lieutenant Steele gave orders to make a count of the dead.
“One hundred and sixty-two,” Rodeo reported back.
Steele shook his head and found Deke’s gaze. “That worked a little too well,” he said. “Sure, we got the Japanese to attack us, but they almost killed us all in the process. Somebody remind me not to listen to Deke and Philly next time.”
Looking out at so many enemy dead, Deke had to agree. It had been a close thing. “I wouldn’t listen to me either,” he said quietly.
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
If the battle was being slowly won in the mountain ridges and jungle-covered valleys on Leyte, the fight for the Philippines itself was just about to reach its most difficult stage, and Patrol Easy was being thrust into the middle of it.
The Japanese were firmly dug in throughout the capital city of Manila. The troops here were fanatical, including elements of the elite Teishin Shudan, the Japanese special forces. Those tough bastards were the equivalent of airborne troops, and they had seen a lot of action across the Pacific and China. The thought of crossing bayonets with the Americans just made them smile. The Japanese defenders planned to fight for every paving stone of the city streets and make the Americans pay a high price in blood for every block. As defenders, every advantage was theirs.
“When they come, we will be ready,” Major Wataru Tanigawa announced with satisfaction, surveying the grounds of the University of Santo Tomas. Although the university was now filled with civilian prisoners deemed a threat to the Japanese occupiers, care had been taken for its outward defense in addition to keeping the prisoners contained. During the last few months, Tanigawa had seen to it that machine-gun nests were placed at strategic locations, fortified with sandbags. Barbed wire surrounded most of the university grounds. Spider holes and hideouts had been prepared for individual snipers. Of course, he knew that the arrival of US tanks and artillery might make short work of these defenses.
Tanigawa did not share it with Sergeant Inaba, but he was less interested in dying than he was in living — or living long enough to put up a good fight. Although he saw himself as a modern samurai warrior, he was also a pragmatist, his attitude being, Why die for the Emperor when you can make the enemy die instead? It wasn’t a unique attitude; none other than General Patton had expressed something similar in a recent speech to troops in Europe.
To that end, Tanigawa had a trick up his sleeve that he would play when the Americans broke through their defenses at Santo Tomas. After all, he felt that prisoners would serve as better shields than sandbags when the time came. But for now his troops would put up a savage fight.
“Hai. We will fight to the last man, sir,” said Sergeant Atsunori Inaba. Inaba served as the major’s aide-de-camp and had seen to it that the major’s plans for the defensive work around the university had been carried out. Some of the work had been done by Japanese troops, but they had relied heavily on Filipino forced labor. Even the prisoners had been put to work, although Tanigawa considered them too lazy to be of real use.
Tanigawa nodded with satisfaction. It would have been easy to mistake Inaba’s words for those of a sycophant, but the grim set of his face and his eyes like stone chips indicated that he meant every word.
In many ways, the two men were represented by their weapons of choice. Major Tanigawa rarely went anywhere without his elegant sword, which was also a badge of office for a Japanese officer, while Sergeant Inaba relied on the cudgel at his belt to keep their Filipino slave laborers and American prisoners in line. Both weapons were efficient in their own way, much like the men who wielded them. And both men seemed to understand one another.
“You have done well, Inaba,” the major said.
Inaba nodded and bowed, replying with a gruff, “Arigatō, Shōsa.”
When Inaba stood as if awaiting his next orders, the major asked, “Is there anything else?”
“The prisoners, sir. They wish to speak with you. They have organized a delegation.”
The major grunted. “Very well. Make them wait for an hour, then send them to my office.”
Tanigawa spent the hour doing paperwork. It had been a long and circuitous path that had brought Major Tanigawa to his current position. The Japanese officer corps was highly political and favored those from distinguished or aristocratic families — they were fighting for an emperor, after all, not an elected president. Tanigawa hailed from an ancient family with its roots in the samurai class. Although the samurai rank had been abolished during the Meiji Restoration that ushered in the modern, unified Japan, family heritage still loomed large and had created a social class system.
That pedigree had won him a place in the hallowed halls of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, where he had graduated in 1904, emerging as a young soldier forged in the crucible of discipline and honor. For these young men, the legend of the samurai was still very much alive.
By August of 1937, his destiny beckoned, and he was assigned to the storied Imperial Japanese Army’s 7th Division. His unit arrived too late to do more than mop up at the Battle of Lake Khasan against the Chinese in July 1938. The late arrival added a whiff of incompetence. However, fate had other battles in store for Tanigawa.