The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [90]
As they crept and slithered through the swamp, bullets ripped through the trees and over their heads. The men knew that the Japanese were firing indiscriminately. If the machine gunners actually spotted them, however, it would be like a carnival shoot. The Japanese could wipe them out in a matter of seconds.
When the patrol got within thirty feet of the machine gun nests, the men decided not to push their luck. They rose and tossed their grenades. The barrage stopped.
Seeing their opening, Keast and Shirley drove their men through the Japanese line. When the Japanese retreated, the two captains agreed to rest the troops. They had gained another six hundred yards. In the jungle, where success was measured in double-digit increments, it was a tremendous accomplishment.
Late in the afternoon, as a gray mist settled over the jungle and fruit bats gathered in the darkening sky, Shirley’s scouts located an enemy bivouac off the main Soputa-Sanananda track. Shirley and Keast realized that if they hoped to make a move on the enemy stronghold, they would have to do it before nightfall.
“Fix your bayonets and let’s cut the guts out of them,” Shirley said.
If his men, who had been locked in battle for almost the entire day, were surprised by the order, they should not have been. Shirley’s ferocity was well known. Do or die, he was determined to get the bastards.
Shirley and Keast divided their companies into three platoons and then they led the charge through the jungle.
“Keep moving,” someone yelled out. Giant ferns and vines ripped at their legs. Branches gashed their faces. They did not know where the Japs were until they saw the muzzle flashes, then they hit a solid mass of enemy soldiers. Men fired at each other at point-blank range and slashed and lunged with their bayonets. Blood splattered everywhere. Shirley had hold of a man’s neck, and he could feel the Japanese soldier thrashing under his hands.
When the Japanese defenders scattered, Shirley and Keast wasted no time securing the track. They dug in and placed rifle squads in all directions around the new position. The men were wet with sweat and covered in muck. Their hands were sticky with blood. But they had succeeded, beating the Japanese at their own game. They had established a perimeter three hundred yards to the rear of the Japanese position on the track, and had isolated the enemy’s forward units. But as dusk fell, they realized the precariousness of their own position. Surrounded by Japanese snipers and machine gunners, they were cut off from the main body of the Americans by more than a mile of thick jungle.
Shirley knew he had to get word back to battalion headquarters. “Where the hell is the phone?” he wanted to know. When one of the signalmen confessed that he had left it a hundred yards back in a kunai patch, Shirley ordered him to get it.
News of Shirley’s and Keast’s attack electrified battalion headquarters. But the victory had come at a price. On the way back to the command post, Medendorp saw the graves of the men lost that day. “There were more,” he wrote, “but they were out there between the lines where they could not be gotten.” He heard wounded men crying out and saw corpses already bloated by the heat. That night, a breeze came in off the coast, cooling the jungle. Then, Medendorp said of the unrecovered bodies, “We could smell them.”
East of the Girua River, as Colonel Smith began moving on the Triangle, he was heartened by the arrival of Major Stutterin’ Smith’s 2nd Battalion.
Smith, too, was happy to be back among familiar faces. The 128th had been his home for more than twenty years. One of the first people he saw was Lieutenant Mack Fradette, an old friend. Fradette was stunned by the condition of Smith and his men. Smith, who had always had problems keeping weight on, was as thin as a cornstalk. He had also just recovered from a bout of malaria. His men all wore long beards and in Fradette’s opinion looked like “walking skeletons.”
As the battalion got settled, Colonel Smith gave Stutterin’ Smith a quick tour of the area. However,