Battle Cry - Leon Uris [190]
“On the contrary, he’s a lousy shot. Has very bad eyes. The story goes that he sneaked up on a Jap at point-blank range and fired two clips of forty-fives and missed every time.”
Wellman shrugged. “I don’t get it.”
Huxley gazed at the ceiling. His mind wandered back. “The first time I heard of him was…oh, let’s see…must have been ten years ago. His father was a ward heeler in Chicago and got him into West Point. He was low man in his class. One summer he followed a girl to Europe and married her. Her parents had it annulled but he was kicked out of the Academy. The next day he joined the Corps as a private. His career’s hardly been illustrious. For six years he went up and down in the ranks from Private to Pfc. and back. Brig time, bread and water, readings off—they never had much effect on such a free soul. He wasn’t much with his fists but he wasn’t afraid to stick out his jaw in a brawl. In Shanghai in 1937 when Smedley Butler sent the Sixth to defend the International Settlement, Shapiro showed his mettle against the Japs.”
Huxley paused.
“The turning point in his cruise came two years later. He had drawn guard duty at a general’s home at Camp Quantico. The general’s eldest daughter became infatuated with the headstrong little Pfc. who was indeed a change from the big, tanned, well-mannered peacetime Marines she had been in contact with all her life. Well, the inevitable happened. Shortly after, she took the news to her father that she was to become the mother of Shapiro’s child. He had performed a feat no other Marine had been able to accomplish. The old general was frantic, of course, but did the only sensible thing. They were married secretly and Max Shapiro was shipped to Officers’ Training School to obtain a rank befitting the father of the general’s daughter’s child. Two years later they were divorced. After that Shapiro was bandied about from post to post and hidden behind obscure desks or put in command of remote details. He’s always in debt to his men. They call him Max.”
“Sounds like a character, all right,” said Wellman. By this time he was deep in study of the fantastic record book.
Huxley turned about seriously. “I’m gambling on him. If I can control him, he’ll give me a company of infantrymen second to none.”
“From the looks of this, you’re chewing off quite a bit, Sam.”
“I’ll get the drop on him. If I don’t, I’ll be in for trouble.”
“I see here,” Wellman said, “he just received a second Navy Cross for a patrol on Guadalcanal.”
“It was more than a patrol. It saved the Guadalcanal operation.”
Wellman relit his pipe and listened.
“The Japs were putting tremendous pressure on the Teneru River line. Thousands of reinforcements landed. Our beachhead seemed ready to collapse. Coleman’s Raiders landed at Aola Bay, some forty miles east of the beachhead. They set up a regular reign of terror behind the enemy lines. Broke their communications, razed their supplies, and butchered the Japs till they were half insane with fear.”
“I remember it well,” the exec said. “It gave everyone in the beachhead a chance to breathe. But go on, where does Shapiro fit in?”
“The Raiders spotted a fresh column of Japs heading for the lines. Ed Coleman sent Shapiro and twenty men up to engage the Jap rear guard while he moved his main forces parallel with their column through the jungle. It was a famous tactic of Coleman’s to lull them into thinking that the Raiders were behind them. Actually only a few were behind, Shapiro’s group and the rest were right alongside, separated by a few yards of jungle. Coleman caught them during a rest period and inside fifteen minutes killed six hundred. At any rate, Shapiro’s unit lost contact with the battalion. They voted to stay out and maraud instead of returning to our lines. They stayed out for almost ninety days, using Jap weapons and eating Jap food. God knows how many times they hit and how many supplies they destroyed. They are credited with killing almost five hundred Japs. Twenty-one Raiders, mind you.”
The story sounded fantastic indeed.