Islands of the Damned (8 page)

Jim took three steps straight back and turned to me and grinned.

“I don’t think I’m that thirsty,” he said.

We knew whoever had fired at us was above our heads, somewhere in the trees, most likely tied in, as we’d learned from the Guadalcanal veterans. We crouched there for a while scanning the branches but all we could see was a green wall of foliage.

I went off to find K Company’s .30-cal machine gunner.

“There’s a Jap sniper up there somewhere, Norman,” I told him. “He’s well camouflaged, but we know he’s there.”

Norman set up his tripod and swiveled his gun upward and cut loose, raking the trees back and forth. Bits of leaf and falling branches showered down. There was a sudden crack and a body dropped out of the canopy and jerked to a stop about twenty feet above the ground. When we left he was swinging there upside down with his rifle dangling beneath him.

Farther down the line the Seventh Marines were still hung up at Suicide Creek. The Japs were invisible, dug in behind earth-and-log bunkers or behind the roots that fanned out like walls from the base of the tallest trees. Bazooka shells would bounce off the bunkers without detonating, and we couldn’t use our mortars because of the forest canopy. The stream was about forty feet wide with steep banks. In the afternoon three Sherman tanks showed up, crashing through the underbrush, and stopped at the near edge of the stream. But the embankment was too steep, so a bulldozer was called forward to carve a ramp down to creek level. We heard later that a sniper shot the bulldozer driver out of his seat. Another Marine climbed up to take his place and he was shot, too. A third Marine ducked down behind the dozer and, somehow working the controls with a shovel and an ax handle, managed to finish the job. Next morning, January 4, the tanks churned across Suicide Creek and the Japs fell back and we all started moving forward again.

Those were the tactics the Japs would use over and over. They would set up and let us come to them. Then they’d retreat through the jungle and set up again farther on. We couldn’t see them until we were right on top of them and they opened fire. Sometimes the undergrowth was so thick you couldn’t see even three feet in front of you. You knew there was a Marine somewhere on your right and another on your left. But you couldn’t see either one. That’s a weird feeling when you’re moving forward. I thought many times, Hell, I’m the only man out here. I’m fighting this war all by myself.

What the Guadalcanal veterans had said stuck in my mind. Watch your back. Watch your sides. Watch everywhere.

About this time we had our one and only problem on New Britain with Japanese aircraft. It was a small single-engine plane. We actually never saw him, but we heard him. We called him “Piss-call Charley” because he’d come over every night around one o’clock or two o’clock and drop a single bomb wherever he thought we were. It wasn’t a very big bomb, about a hundred pounds. Just harassment, that’s all. We could hear them firing at him over by the airfield with those twin 40s, but I don’t think they ever hit him because the next night he was back again, right on schedule.

Then one night he came over and dropped his bomb and it went off real close, wounding several of our guys. One of them was in a foxhole with Jim Burke. Jim couldn’t see in the darkness, but he knew the guy was badly wounded—he died later—and right away Burke yelled for a corpsman. Seconds later he yelled “Corpsman!” again. I could hear him every few seconds hollering for a corpsman, over and over.

It took a corpsman no more than a minute and a half to get to the foxhole. But afterward Jim said it felt like ten minutes. Combat would do that to you. Hours seemed to go by in minutes. Minutes would stretch out into hours.

The farther we got from Suicide Creek, the stronger the resistance from the Japs. After we took a little knob called Hill 150, they wounded our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel David McDougal. Then they got McDougal’s executive officer, Major Joseph Skoczylas. So on January 8 we had a new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Walt.

We were fighting uphill now, advancing in a wide arc through the jungle. It was raining, always raining. Every stream was swollen and the ground was gumbo. Moving forward was like trying to walk through oatmeal. I was still carrying around that mortar base plate, but we couldn’t use it much because of the trees, so 90 percent of the time I took my place up front with the riflemen.

Colonel Walt was looking for a location identified on a document they’d taken from a dead Jap. It was called Aogiri Ridge, and it was apparently very important to the Japs, because the document warned that the ridge must be held at any cost. All evening we slogged on, dragging a .37 artillery piece that was our only heavy weapon. We’d load it with grapeshot or armor-piercing shells, depending on what we were faced with. From time to time we’d stop and fire it to clear out a machine-gun nest or a bunker. As we set up they’d fire at us and the bullets would sing off the quarter-inch steel shield on the front of the gun. We took turns, five or six of us at a time, wrestling that rascal up the hill in the mud. I pushed part of the way, slipping and sliding, vines snatching at my boots. As a reward they let me fire it. By dark we were sitting along the crest of a ridge, exhausted and facing a line of Jap bunkers. As we were digging in we could hear them in front of us, a dozen or so yards away.

After dark they started yelling at us. About ten thirty, one of them got out in front calling, “Raider! Raider! Why you no fire? Why you no fire?”

Raider was our machine-gun sergeant.

In a calm, quiet voice, Raider told his gunner, “Give him a short burst, about two hundred rounds.” And he did. That Jap was very quiet after that.

About an hour and a half past midnight, they came screaming at us through the rain, hollering “Marine, you die!” I was in a foxhole with Jim Burke. I’d had bayonet drill in boot camp along with everyone else, but I’d made up my mind that as long as I had ammunition I wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to use my bayonet. But I saw a Jap silhouetted at the edge of the foxhole. I was on my knees with my rifle pointed at him and I shoved my bayonet into his chest as hard and deep as I could, right beneath the breastbone. In one motion I leveraged him off the ground and swung him over my shoulder, pulling the trigger all the way. I don’t know how many shots I put into him—four or five anyway.

He was dead when he landed.

We fought off the charge, and then there was silence, except for the
pit-pat
of the rain. Then they charged again. And again. We were running low on ammo and we were holding our fire until they were almost on top of us. All the time Colonel Walt in the command post about fifty yards back was calling in long-range artillery, which was crashing almost in our faces.

It was one of those shells that got Lonnie Howard—the guy I mentioned earlier who had a premonition and asked me to keep his wrist-watch.

That night we took five banzai charges. In the half-light of morning we could see Japs sprawled everywhere. In some places you could have stepped from body to body without touching the ground. Bleary-eyed and weary, we wandered out and counted more than two hundred. The rest had slipped away in the darkness. After a nerve-wracking fight, we had Aogiri Ridge to ourselves.

Now I was glad that I was carrying an M1. Most mortarmen carried the lighter carbines, but a carbine couldn’t stop a charging Jap.

After that night of banzai attacks, Jim and I were moved down to the extreme right end of the line. There wasn’t anybody beyond us. It’s a funny feeling when you know you don’t have any support on your flank. If you ever needed a guy who was calm and knew what the hell he was doing in a situation like that, it was Jim Burke. Whether you were with Jim in a foxhole or out in the open you knew he had your back covered.

The next night I spotted a Jap a few yards off trying to sneak around behind us. All I could see was a dark shape moving through the trees. I grabbed my M1 and shot him. He must have been a scout because he was alone.

I also almost shot a Marine.

We were digging a foxhole. I was standing guard and Jim was digging—one man always stands guard while the other digs. You always throw the dirt out in front of you to build up a little rampart. I could see somebody crawling toward us through the underbrush. I reached over and pushed Jim’s helmet down and laid my .45 up on top of that mound of fresh dirt. I didn’t know if it was a Jap or a Marine coming, but I knew I had him either way. When he got about two feet from me, I could see the silhouette of a Marine helmet.

“Pssst, Burgin,” he said. “You got any water?”

I recognized the voice.

“Yeah, Oswalt. I’ve got some water.”

I handed him the canteen and he took a long drink.

I waited until he was finished.

“Oswalt,” I said, “what the hell are you doing out of that foxhole? Do you know I almost shot you right between the eyes?”

He stared at me.

“Let me tell you something,” I said. “You get out of that damn foxhole again tonight, I
will
shoot you just on general principles.”

Later they renamed the ridge we were on Walt’s Ridge. And we found out why it was so important to the Japs. Their main supply trail up from Borgen Bay lay just beyond, and that trail led straight west through the jungle to their main headquarters. It was the key to their whole operation.

We were left to mop up the ridge and the Seventh Marines’ Third Battalion fought its way up another high point, Hill 660. After that they gave us all a rest. We’d been at it for two weeks.

From that point on the Japs were finished on New Britain. There was no place for them to go except east through the jungle, back to their big naval base at Rabaul—and our planes had bombed that into uselessness.

We had plenty of fighting ahead of us. But for now, we came out of the jungle down to the edge of the airfield, which was in our hands, and went into reserve. It scarcely seemed possible, but the rains started coming harder, thirty-six inches in one twenty-four-hour period. I’d never seen so much rain. We stayed wet so long my little toenails rotted off. Our clothes mildewed and stank.
We
stank. The only time we could bathe or wash our clothes was if we crossed a stream or found ourselves near the ocean.

The Marine Corps had discovered the convenience of hammocks. You’d tie them between two trees and they’d keep you out of the mud—if the rain hadn’t rotted the strings. Sometimes at night you’d hear a
rip
and a
splat
and a lot of cussing. If it was raining you could drape a rubber tarp over you to keep dry, and you’d have a net to keep off the mosquitoes. You had to zip it open to get in and out.

Sometimes the zipper didn’t work fast enough.

New Britain was crawling with land crabs. After the first few weeks we had a new man join us on the island, George Sarrett. George was from Dennison, Texas, and I don’t believe George was afraid of anybody or anything. Not the Japs, not the Devil himself. But a land crab could run him off the face of the earth. George was sound asleep in his hammock one day. The land crabs were scrabbling around and I picked one up and slipped it into George’s hammock. He had his trousers on but no shirt. It wasn’t long before that land crab had skittered up his trousers and out across his chest.

Sarrett came out of there with his KA-BAR knife, slashing that mosquito net from one end to the other. Just—
whoosh
—and he was out of that hammock. Didn’t make a sound.

I never did tell him who put that land crab in his hammock.

I thought the mosquitoes were worse than the land crabs. We joked that the big ones would hold you down while the little ones sucked you dry. We had a mosquito repellant but it was absolutely pungent. You’d pour a little bit out of a bottle into the palm of your hands and spread it around. It would keep the mosquitoes off, but you could hardly live with yourself. It was hard to tell what was worse, the mosquitoes or the smell.