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By Root 1167 0

night in late November, in bright moonlight Sgt. Marvin Raabe of 7th Division led thirty men in three successive bayonet charges to dispossess Japanese of vital ground, a feat for which he received a field commission. Dug in once more, some men were exasperated by the noisiness of Japanese wounded in front of their positions. “One enemy soldier, about thirty-five yards360 in front of the platoon position…had delivered a regular little ritual,” wrote an infantryman. “First he would moan and wail for a few minutes, then sing in Japanese, then string out a long line of epithets, decidedly uncomplimentary, at the defenders.” An NCO, George Parked, endured the racket as long as he could, but finally climbed out of his foxhole, marched down the hillside and fired three shots. “Now sing, you bastard,” he said, returning to his post.

At night on the coast, fireflies swarmed around the coconut palms, “giving them the appearance361 of Christmas trees,” in the words of a Marine officer. In the hills, Japanese sustained intense activity through the hours of darkness, probing and raiding Sixth Army positions. Little damage was done, but such “jitter parties” kept tired men from sleeping, precipitated barrages of illuminant flares and often promiscuous American shooting. There were many “friendly fire” casualties on Leyte, but these were never quantified. It was thought kindest to relatives to report all fatalities simply as “killed in action,” and so it probably was. Krueger’s artillery sustained harassing fire, shooting occasional blind rounds at likely-seeming places on Japanese-held ground. The enemy responded by creeping close to the American lines, sometimes within twenty-five yards, to gain safety from shelling. Private Jack Norman became so exhausted that he once fell asleep during a barrage. In the morning, his companions in the foxhole announced that at one point he had woken, declared angrily, “If they don’t quit this shooting362, I’ll get up and go home,” then gone smartly back to sleep. He recollected nothing of this.

Norman got his ticket out one morning shortly afterwards, during an advance to clear a canyon of Japanese. They moved cautiously, shooting into each rock opening, following up with flamethrowers and grenades. “We thought we’d cleaned out363 those caves—but we hadn’t.” Shots suddenly echoed across the canyon, one of them hitting Norman in the shoulder, holing his collarbone and puncturing his lung. He remained coherent enough to point to his companions where the gunfire had come from, to watch a flamethrower team address the cave mouth, and hear the screams which followed. Then an unknown Samaritan helped him over a log bridge across a creek, and onto a jeep ambulance. After that, he remembered only a succession of operating tables until he glimpsed the Golden Gate Bridge.

Airmen based on Leyte found compensations immeasurably remote from the experience of the fighting soldiers: “It was pleasant to have houseboys364 around quarters and laundry services, even if the native women did pound garments destructively upon rocks in muddy streams to ‘clean’ them,” in the words of the air force historians. “Barter with the natives produced wooden sandals, mats, knives and other trinkets for souvenirs, while cockfights, a national Filipino institution, became a fad.” When Eric Diller was posted from a rifle company on Leyte to a motor pool, “for the first time365 in my army career, I enjoyed every moment of it…No one was shooting at me. I was fed three hot meals daily in a mess hall. We lived in tents with wooden floors. Showers were available. Movies were shown on a regular basis. The working hours were reasonable and enough time was left to play volleyball daily…It absolutely reconfirmed my opinion that infantry does not receive nearly adequate recognition.”

It was a common delusion among MacArthur’s riflemen that they were the principal victims of the Leyte experience. Yet for the Japanese, matters were infinitely worse. On 26 November, a battalion commander of the 77th Infantry Regiment gave a bleak briefing to