pineapples.... Help yourself, sir.”
Barry stuffed his pockets hastily. He kept one grenade in his hand,
with his finger through the ring.
“I’ll go first,” he said shortly.
Crouching low, he sprinted toward the Japs’ bomb hole. Before he had
quite reached throwing distance, the raiders saw him and opened fire. A
slug glanced off his helmet. He took three more strides and flung
himself flat. Behind a ten-inch-high ridge of earth he pulled the pin
of his first grenade. Then, rising on one elbow, he flung it.
Five yards away he glimpsed Fred hurling another. As the second grenade
landed six Japs boiled up out of the bomb crater. Two were still on the
edge when the grenades went off—Barry’s in the hole; Fred’s just ahead
of them.
A cheer went up from the American riflemen and machine gunners. A new
storm of gunfire broke out, aimed at three or four other bomb craters.
“Come on, Fred!” Barry yelled. “We’ll clean out the rest of the
snakeholes. The boys are shooting to keep the Japs’ heads down for us.”
“Right with you, sir!” came the sergeant’s shout.
So furious was their friends’ fire that few Jap bullets came near Barry
and Fred. Crouched within easy throw of the occupied craters, they
flung their deadly little missiles. Some of the enemy attempted a dash
for the bush, only to be cut down. Once a grenade was tossed back. It
exploded in the air dangerously close to Barry. Later he found that a
flying fragment had cut his cheek.
With their “pineapples” gone, the two Fortress men trotted back to the
trees.
“Why didn’t I bring another bag of ’em?” the red-headed engineer
wailed. “I just know there’s a few more Japs playing possum out there
on the field. Only way to get ’em is to toss a grenade into every hole
you can find—”
Just in front of them an antiaircraft battery went into action. The
white fingers of the searchlights began combing the sky again. Between
the gun reports, Barry caught the scream of a falling bomb.
“_Down!_” he yelled, pulling Fred to the ground beside him.
The ground erupted near them. Half dazed by the shock, the two friends
started crawling. Dirt rained down on their helmets. From farther up
the field came more bomb concussions.
This time the bombardment was less intense, but it lasted for half an
hour. One Jap bomber followed another at irregular intervals, flying at
a very high altitude. The light of a blasted and blazing gasoline truck
furnished a plain target, not to mention the antiaircraft gun flames
and the searchlights. Yet the Japs were so high that more bombs fell in
the jungle than struck the field.
When the raid was over, Barry Blake headed for the dressing station.
His injured head was pounding like a bass drum. He longed to lie down
and close his eyes.
There was no place for him in the hospital tent, however. The medical
officer was operating on men wounded by bomb fragments—tying off
severed arteries, sewing up torn flesh, probing for shrapnel. He was
stripped to the waist, covered with sweat and blood. The medical-corps
men were equally busy.
Barry had no intention of getting in their way. He found some aspirin
for himself, swallowed two of the pills, swabbed iodine on his cut
cheek, and left. In his crew’s shelter tent he found Curly and Fred
arguing about the raid. He sank down on a cot beside them.
“There’s something queer about those parachute troops,” Curly declared.
“The Japs didn’t drop them just by accident. They had some very
important job which only suicide squads could do. If only we knew what
it was....”
“Don’t worry, sir,” said the red-haired sergeant. “They didn’t
accomplish it. We’ve just searched the field and found only four live
Japs. They were all wounded. Two of ’em opened fire on us and were
blotted out. Number Three played dead until one of our boys tried to
turn him over. Then he set off a grenade that blew both of ’em to
pieces. Number Four struck with his teeth—just like a rattlesnake—and
bit a medical-corps man’s cheek. He’s the only one that’s still alive.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure that they didn’t accomplish anything
important,” said Curly Levitt. “A few of them may still be loose in the
jungle. I have a hunch that we’ll hear from them yet.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Curly,” Barry Blake put in. “I’m not
so much worried about the few Jap parachutists that may have escaped to
the bush. To be sure, they could do plenty of damage. But if immediate
damage had been their purpose, we’d have had two or three times as many
to fight. I have a hunch that this bombing and skirmishing on the field
was just a trick to cover up some other maneuver.”
“You mean a Jap landing on the beach, sir?” asked Fred Marmon. “That
thought hopped into my head, too—but it’s no good. Our boys have that
coastline guarded so well that wild pigs couldn’t get through without
raising an alarm. Their scouts would have brought us warning.”
“Let’s try to get a little shuteye, then,” Curly Levitt yawned. “We
won’t help matters by worrying or arguing all night. ’Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.’”
At dawn the field was roused by a third bombardment. This time it was a
shelling from medium-heavy field guns. It plowed the already bombed
runways until the field looked like a map of the moon’s craters. Two
swift fighter planes tried to take off before the last smooth strip of
ground was blown up. One of them ground-looped.
The second, by clever dodging of bomb holes, managed to take the air.
Fifteen minutes later it returned, riddled with bullet holes. The pilot
nosed over trying to land on the field’s least plowed end. When they
pulled him out of his wrecked fighter he said that he had flown over
the enemy positions at less than five hundred feet and had a pretty
good look at them.
The Japs were entrenched on a grassy ridge, about 1500 feet above the
field and within easy range. There were two or three hundred of them,
with at least twenty pieces of artillery camouflaged in clumps of
trees. Evidently they had been landed by parachute from a swarm of huge
transport planes, under cover of the night attack on the air field.
“You were right about the purpose of that raid, Lieutenant Blake,” Fred
Marmon admitted, as the _Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew moved their tent farther
into the jungle. “The Japs will make our field useless as long as they
hold that ridge. The problem is how to clean them out.”
“Better heads than ours are working on that right now,” Barry told him.
“We could bomb the Jap positions with planes based at Port Moresby, for
instance. Or we could bring up troops and take the ridge by assault.
But neither job would be as easy as it sounds. We’ll just have to wait
for the brass-hats to decide.”
The American plan did not develop for forty-eight hours. During that
time a transport vessel arrived with more antiaircraft and two
companies of soldiers. They were welcome additions to the field’s
strength, but they did not solve the problem of the Japs’ shellfire.
On the third day after the Japs’ first raid, the field’s commandant
called all his officers together. These included the air as well as the
ground forces. Between the regular _whoomp_ of bursting shells, the
colonel outlined his plan of attack.
“Tomorrow,” he stated bluntly, “we shall attack the enemy position on
Grassy Ridge. I should like to have had artillery here to soften up our
objective, but we cannot wait for it to arrive. A surprise attack must
take its place. After dark the infantry will move forward as far as
possible. They will carry iron rations, and ammunition for their
weapons. The attack will be at dawn.”
“How about supplies, in case the Japs aren’t routed by the first
assault?” an infantry captain asked.
“In that case, our engineers will open a jeep road through the bush
with bulldozers,” the commandant replied. “They’ll start in the
morning, and push ahead to the steep hillside a mile and a half from
Grassy Ridge. From there on we’ll have to carry all supplies by
manpower, including mortars for close-in bombardment.”
“How about us fliers, Colonel?” the commanding officer of the Fortress
squadron spoke up. “Do we have to loaf while even the native blacks are
doing their bit? Can’t we fix up one runway while the Japs are busy
ducking our shells? My boys would love a chance to smash those
egg-heads with a few five-hundred-pounders.”
“You’ll probably have your chance, Captain,” the commandant smiled.
“Building a road to the Ridge is the engineers’ first job; after that
they’ll tackle the field. Don’t let your crews get mixed up in the
ground fighting, or some ships may be short-handed when you’re ready to
take off.... I think that is all for the time being, gentlemen.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TEN
HAND TO HAND
Curly Levitt linked an arm through Barry’s as they left the
commandant’s tent.
“That warning about crews joining the scrap doesn’t apply to us, does
it?” he asked. “We’re short-handed already—with the Old Man and
Babbitt in the hospital. Anyhow, the _Rosy O’Grady_ won’t fly for a
long time after this battle is over. We’re free to do just about what
we please, aren’t we?”
“I get your point,” Barry answered with a grim smile. “You’re
suggesting that the six of us form a sort of guerrilla squad and bag a
few Japs on our own. Not a bad idea at all—if our squadron commander
agrees. Let’s get him alone now and see what he thinks about it.”
Captain Loomis was not yet thirty years old, and next to flying a
fighting ship he loved best a fight on the ground. His sympathy was
easy to enlist.
“I can’t give you boys official permission to join the ground attack,”
he told Barry and Curly, “but I won’t confine you to the post. If you
pick up some rifles and grenades and wander off into the woods, that’s
your affair. And I certainly wish you good hunting!”
“Thanks, Captain,” Barry replied as the two turned to leave. “If we
find a Samurai sword in the bush, we’ll bring it back to you for a
souvenir.”
The two young lieutenants found the rest of the _Rosy’s_ crew at mess,
and passed them the word to rendezvous in their tent. When the six were
all together, Barry broached the plan.
“It’s better than sitting around and swatting mosquitoes,” he
concluded. “And we know that the fight for Grassy Ridge will be tough.
Six extra men might be quite a help.”
“You don’t have to sell us the idea, Lieutenant,” Fred Marmon spoke up.
“After two days of taking Jap shellfire we’re all spoiling for a chance
to dish it out. I know where we can get some hand grenades and
side-arms tonight.”
“I know where there’s a case of tommy-guns,” said Tony Romani. “We can
‘requisition’ them, so to speak, this afternoon. And plenty of ammo, of
course.”
“I’ll collect a few tin hats,” added Cracker Jackson, “and some iron
rations and water canteens. Reckon you-all didn’t think of them.”
Danny Hale rose to his feet and spread his big fingers.
“If I get near enough to one of those yellow snakes,” he said slowly,
“I’d like to match his jiu-jitsu tricks with an Apache wrestling hold.
Anyhow, the six of us ought to have a pretty good time before the
party’s over.”
Before supper the _Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew had collected a young arsenal
in their sleeping tent. It included bayonets and three sheath knives.
Fred Marmon had brought six suits of green coveralls to replace their
flying togs, and even some burnt cork to blacken their faces.
“We’ll have to fit a tin hat over that nice, clean bandage of yours,
Lieutenant Blake,” he said. “Anything white would draw Jap bullets like
a doggone magnet.... Look. If I set it on sidewise, like this, it
doesn’t hurt your wound.”
“That’s fine, Fred,” Barry agreed. “I’d be cooler without the thing,
but it _will_ turn bullets. We’re all going to have a lot more sympathy
for the infantry after this masquerade.”
The attacking troops set out as soon as the tropic night had shut down.
Barry Blake and his friends joined a platoon that was pushing and
slashing its way through the pitch-black jungle, with the help of a few
dimmed flashlights. The vine-laced growth was so dense that at high
noon only a green twilight would have penetrated it. Bayonets and
machetes made openings through the worst tangles. Thorn bushes fought
back, raking arms and legs mercilessly. Some of the advancing units
used compasses to keep them headed toward Grassy Ridge. A few of them
had the help of native guides. Most, however, followed the trails
opened by the advance guard.
The _Rosy’s_ crew took their turns with the machetes, cutting a path.
The work, in that hot-house temperature, was exhausting. At any rate,
the advancing troops had plenty of time. They reached the hill’s steep,
rocky base at about midnight.
Here the word was passed to rest for an hour. Mosquito headnets were
donned; emergency rations were opened. Weary, and sweating at every
pore, the men stretched themselves out in such level spaces as they
could find by groping on the damp ground.
Fred Marmon complained that the mosquitoes liked his blood better than
that of any man in the Army. He declared that more of them were
gathering from all over New Guinea, as the news spread.
“If they suck me to death,” he groaned, “dig a hole and bury my carcass
quick so it won’t draw any more of them. Enough of these flying siphons
could wipe out the whole company.”
Big Danny Hale also suffered aloud. He declared that the only
difference between New Guinea mosquitoes and Zero fighting planes was
that the bugs didn’t need an airfield. In size and poison, he insisted,
they were about equal.
At the end of the hour, word was passed to start climbing the lower,
wooded sides of the hill. This was to be a far slower and more cautious
task than the first few hours of the advance. The Japs were less than a
mile above them now. Not even dimmed flashlights would be permitted,
except in the hands of platoon leaders. All movements would be as slow
as a snail’s and, if possible, as silent.
By touch, and by occasional low whispers, the men kept in contact.
There were frequent halts, to let those behind catch up. Only the
knowledge that they were nearing the enemy, and would soon be charging
his positions, kept the soldiers’ nerves from exploding.
The last and hardest wait came at the edge of the bush, where the
coarse, four-foot-high grass began. Scouts had been sent out to locate
the Jap positions, so the soldiers’ “grapevine” reported. When they
returned, the troops were to move forward. If all went well they would
pounce upon their enemies in the first gray light of dawn. The Japs,
notoriously late sleepers when they did not expect an attack, would be
caught literally napping.
“It sounds fine,” Curly Levitt muttered in Barry’s ear. “But one little
mistake of ours could give those people warning. Wouldn’t it have been
safer to surround the Nips’ positions and rush them from all sides?”
“Possibly—in full daylight,” Barry whispered back. “But at dawn
there’s danger of shooting down our own troops by mistake. Our jungle
uniforms are enough like the Japs’ to fool you where the visibility is
low. You’ve given me an idea, though, Curly. If the rest of our crew
agree, we six might circle around to the enemy’s rear. We’re not under
orders, and we’d be taking our own risk.”
“Wait a minute while I crawl around and ask them,” the _Rosy’s_
navigator replied eagerly. “I think they’ll eat it up!”
Curly was right in his guess. The extra risks involved meant little to
the four Air Force sergeants. They would go where Barry Blake led, even
if it meant charging the whole Jap force with hand grenades.
Fortunately for their plan, the six “guerillas” were on the far right
wing of the attacking line. In the darkness their silent departure
would not be noticed. Keeping contact by touch alone, they crawled away
along the edge of the jungle.
The moon was now well up in the sky, silvering the long grass of the
hill-crest. Thus Barry could watch the lay of the land, while keeping
in the black shadow of the bush. On reaching the height of land, he
stopped.
“There’s a rocky outcropping twenty yards from here,” he whispered to
Curly Levitt. “I’m going to crawl out to it and try to spot the Jap gun
positions.... They might give us a clue to the trenches our scout plane
reported the first day.”
Without waiting for Curly’s answer, Barry Blake wormed his way toward
the exposed outcrop. Reaching it, he inched his way to the highest
part. Now he had no protection except the dirty color of his jungle
suit. If a Jap sentry should catch his least movement, it would be just
too bad.
From the rocks he looked down on a sea of grass, broken by little
islands of brush and trees. No trenches appeared. They were either
cleverly camouflaged with grass, or else there were none near by. One
of the tree clumps, however, drew Barry’s especial interest. From where
he lay, a vaguely pagoda-like shape could be glimpsed protruding from
the shadows.
A Jap tent, draped with camouflage netting? It would be worth a risk to
discover the truth, Barry believed. Cautiously he crawled back to his
friends.
“We’ll proceed in single file, on hands and knees,” he told them.
“Stick a lot of grass in your helmet nets before you start. It’s nearly
dawn now, so we won’t have long to wait for the big fight to open.
Better take a good drink from your water canteens while you have a
chance.”
A foot at a time they advanced, with little pauses. A sentry, had he
glimpsed the movement of their grass trimmed hats, might have taken it
for a passing breeze.
The light grew stronger. The clump of trees took more definite shape.
Now the guerillas could see clearly the angle of a large tent with its
protective netting. From within came snores in three or four different
keys.
“Officers’ tent!” Curly whispered. “Sentry must be asleep, too—if
there is one. What’ll we do now?”
“Get a little nearer; wait for the first shot of the main attack, and
then toss a couple of grenades apiece. That ought to put us into the
scrap with a bang.”
“Twelve bangs!” chuckled Curly. “Even one small bomb would do a better
job, though.”
Barry moved off in a different direction, to bring the open door of the
tent into full view. Five yards further on he stopped with a gasp. His
hand had slipped into a hole, beneath the grass roots.
Laying down his tommy-gun, Barry grasped the edge of the hole and
lifted. A whole section of the “ground” tilted up. Beneath it yawned
black emptiness.
“Here’s a trench!” he whispered over his shoulder to Curly. “It’s
covered with grass sods, laid on matting. Tell the boys to come on in.”
Feet first, he let himself down into the hole. It was only four feet
deep and very narrow. Evidently the Japs had dug it as a protection
against air attacks, but it could also be used for ground fighting. For
the guerillas’ purpose it was ideal.
At Barry’s orders, only three mats were removed—no more than could be
quickly replaced. In the opening all six men stood, waiting for
daylight and the first gun. Each held a grenade, as he faced the door
of the Jap Officers’ tent.
[Illustration: _“Here’s a Trench!” He Whispered Over His Shoulder_]
Their wait was not long, though to their tensed nerves it seemed hours.
From behind them a Jap sentry’s rifle shot was blanketed by the heavier
voices of American sub-machine guns. Shrill yells arose. The sharper
clatter of Jap .25-caliber machine guns joined the din.
Barry’s party needed no command to toss their deadly little
“pineapples.” Two apiece, they lobbed them right into the tent. Then
they ducked, pulling the grass mats over them.
The explosions came almost together—like a string of giant
firecrackers. A patter of debris sounded on the grass matting just over
their heads. Jap voices broke out, shrill with excitement, drawing
rapidly nearer.
Suddenly light showed, farther down the trench.
“They’re coming in!” Barry snapped. “Wait till they fill the trench,
and then rake ’em with the tommy-guns. Curly and I will lie down; the
rest of you kneel or stand and fire over us. Toss off the end mat at
the last minute.”
“Okay, Lieutenant—we’ll sure clean them out that way!” muttered Fred
Marmon. “That is, if nobody lobs a hand grenade into _this_ end of the
ditch!”
Evidently the Japs had no idea that the grenades that had wrecked the
tent might have come from the trench. They proceeded to take the
camouflage mats off methodically, moving up from the other end.
Barry lay on the very bottom, with Curly’s elbow digging him in the
ribs as he aimed his weapon. It was lighter now in their end of the
trench.
Taking a long breath, Barry pressed the trigger. The trench erupted
with fire and sound. He saw the Japs nearest him crumple like rag
dolls, one after another, down the trench. They never knew what hit
them.
At the further end, however, the doomed men saw the licking gun-flames.
Some of them tried to return the fire—only to be riddled in the act.
The remainder started scrambling out of the death trap. Cracker Jackson
and big Danny Hale caught most of these, but not before one Jap had
lobbed a hand grenade.
The missile, hastily thrown, landed outside the trench, six feet from
Hale and Jackson. Without a split second’s hesitation, big Danny flung
himself upon the thing. In one motion he grabbed and flung it. The
grenade burst harmlessly, fifty feet away.
Now, however, bullets were humming over the slit trench. The Japs were
all outside.
“Down, men!” Barry Blake shouted at Danny and Cracker Jackson. “We’ve
got to hold this trench if we want to live.”
All of the shooting now came from the direction of the American
advance. The Japs between the attacking force and Barry’s trench were
keeping their heads down and their gun barrels hot. Their camouflaged
helmets offered difficult targets.
“Hold your fire until our boys blast them out of those trenches,” Barry
told his friends. “It won’t be long now. Then we can see what we’re
shooting at. Curly, suppose you face the other way and see that nobody
snipes—”
PING!
Barry broke off as a .25-caliber slug glanced off his helmet. The shock
of it hurt his old head-wound like a knife stab.
“I see the beggar!” yelped Curly. “He’s in that tree above the wrecked
tent....”
The raving of his tommy-gun drowned out Levitt’s words. Tony Romani’s
weapon joined it, firing short bursts. Suddenly the shooting stopped.
“One more honorable sniper bites honorable dust,” chanted _Rosy
O’Grady’s_ navigator. “So solly!”
From concealment in patches of brush and trees the Jap field guns
started to fire. They were lobbing shells just over their trenches,
feeling for the Americans down the slope. Apparently some of the shells
landed close. Their result was simply to speed up the attack.
In a series of short rushes the two companies closed in on the
entrenched Japs. While some of them advanced the rest poured a hot fire
into the Jap positions. Then the foremost Americans started hurling
grenades. In a few minutes much of the fighting was hand to hand.
Howling like wolves, the boys from Montana, Ohio, and New York leaped
into the Jap front-line defenses and cleaned them out.
Fred Marmon and Cracker Jackson wanted to charge down the slope and
join that fight, but Barry forbade it.
“You’d probably be shot for Japs,” he told them. “And, anyhow, you’ll
be more useful here when the enemy starts to scatter.... Look there!
Isn’t that a bunch of ’em crawling out of a communication trench? Once
they reach the bush they’ll all turn into snipers. We’ll have to head
them off.”
The Fortress crew needed no urging. A fight in the open was more to
their taste than crouching in a trench, any day. This time, with big
Danny Hale in the lead, they ran, stooping, through the grass toward
the outcropping of rock.
They were within twenty feet of the enemy when the Japs realized that
they were Americans. The little men tried to shoot, but the Yanks were
too close. Swinging his tommy-gun like a war-club, big Danny Hale
closed the distance. He took a bullet through his thigh without feeling
it, and mowed down two Japs with one blow. His gun came to pieces, so
he dropped it and fought bare-handed.
Cracker Jackson was using his bayonet like a short sword—inside his
opponent’s guard. Fred Marmon was swaying in a knife duel with a third
enemy. Tony Romani, his sub-machine gun empty, was coolly picking his
shots with an automatic pistol.