Battle Cry - Leon Uris [225]
“The worms crawl in,
The worms crawl out….”
Captain Shapiro stepped from the hut and signaled for silence. Some snipers blasted at him. He lit a cigarette, spat in the direction of the brush, and returned to the cover of the hut.
“What do you think?” Marlin asked.
“I don’t know,” Huxley said. “They act rattled, like they’re expecting to be hit from another direction and we’re stalling for time.”
Suddenly a loud jabbering came from the brush, an argument as the Japs spotted Whistler’s company moving up behind the camp. They were getting confused! The talk became louder.
“Hold fire,” the word passed down Fox Company.
Some bushes separated and a Japanese officer stepped into the clear, staggering like a drunk. He took two slow cautious steps toward the Marines.
“He’s loaded on saki,” Marlin whispered.
“Good.”
The little Oriental’s eyes glinted about like a rat’s. The deathly quiet forced him to scream to bolster his courage. “Marine die!” He shook his fist. He got no answer…. “Marine die!” he screeched louder. He whipped out his samurai sword and twirled it whistling over his head. He jumped up and down on the ground, cursing and ranting. Shapiro slung a rock at him and he sprang back into the brush. The noise from there became louder and louder. The enraged enemy were unmistakably whipping themselves into a lather.
“They’re really getting their crap hot…stand ready. Runner, get back there to Captain Whistler and have him prepare to attack.”
A violent bevy of shrieks from the brush and at last the outraged enemy poured out over the clearing, their nerves shattered by the chase, the fear, and now the waiting game. They charged behind their officers with their long rifles pointed down and their bayonets glinting, mad yells on their sweaty, hungry lips and violence in their eyes.
Shapiro was in front of Fox Company in an instant. The steps between him and the enemy narrowed. “Charge!” he screamed, firing the two famed pistols point blank into the maddened crowd.
The clamp of inevitable death, closing on them for a week, had turned the Japanese soldiers into young maniacs. With screams of their own the Marines leapt from cover, head on into the charge. The air was filled with bloodcurdling shrieks as the wild melee of men locked in mortal combat. Savage cries, hissing steel, and flesh pounding flesh.
Fox Company worked in teams with each man having a wingman to cover him. The opposing lines buckled a moment under the impact of meeting head on. Gasps, cries, and moans as bayonets found their mark. The flat thud of a rifle butt crushing a skull. Fury heightened as the fighters hurled prone bodies to get at each other.
Captain Whistler’s Easy Company raced past the savage combat into the brush. The remaining Japs there fell into wild confusion and fired not only at the Marines but their own comrades.
“Hit the deck, Sam!” Ziltch screamed.
A stray with a knife in his fist flung himself on Huxley’s back. The Colonel dived to the deck and rolled the Jap off. The little orderly was on him like a cat, scuffling wildly on the coral earth to hold off the knife point. He pinioned the Jap’s arm as Huxley whipped out his pistol and smashed it again and again into the Oriental’s face. With a bloody last gasp, the man finally became limp. Huxley flung the body from his sight and shakily helped Ziltch to his feet.
“You hurt, son?”
“I’m O.K., skipper.”
“Good lad.”
The Japanese fury of the moment before turned into a whimpering slaughter. They were no match now for Shapiro and his Foxes. The Marines waded into them systematically until they were cornered and the butchery was on. They were cut down without mercy. The ground was littered with dead and the moans of the wounded brought only a quick bullet, until the last Japanese was dead.
My squad was still by the radios, ears peeled to every word coming and going over the phone with which Major Wellman commanded the rear echelon. How Company, the reserve, was assembled near us in squads of