The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [92]
Men swore under their breath about how easy it would be for a bunch of Japs to ambush them in the swamp—they were goddamn sitting ducks. A Juki machine gun could wipe them out before they knew what had hit them.
When the first shot rang through the swamp, “everybody,” according to Lutjens, “flopped down and sank his face into the mud. I don’t know exactly how the rest of the guys felt, but it scared the hell out of me. Somebody whispered, ‘That’s a Jap.’”
One guy, who was out on the post, was trying to figure out where the shot had come from. When he reported that it had originated from behind a tree, Lutjens must have shaken his head. Talk about stating the obvious; the swamp was full of trees.
Though neither Lutjens nor Schultz knew it, Company E had stumbled smack into a Japanese outpost. The Japanese were guarding the bridge that spanned Entrance Creek, northwest of the Triangle. Lutjens’ men were scared, but they were not content to stay put. They crept forward. “We all wanted a peek at them [the Japanese],” Lutjens admitted. “After coming all that way, we wanted to see what they looked like.”
Despite their curiosity, Schultz and Lutjens eventually did the prudent thing—they halted the company. Men stood as still as mannequins. As dusk neared, a fog settled over the swamp. The men grew cold and uncomfortable. A few guys decided to light cigarettes to calm their nerves. It was a soldier’s prerogative—if he was going to be miserable, he might as well have a smoke. The Americans might have been short of 81 mm mortar ammunition, but they sure were not short of cigarettes.
According to Lutjens,
The Japs had automatic fire emplaced in coconut trees, and as soon as they saw the matches flare up, they let us have it—not from just in front, but from all sides. We’d walked right into the middle of them. We started to dig in, and I mean quick. Three of us dug a hole in five minutes flat, with our hands. We thought it was all over with. We couldn’t see a thing. The Japs were shooting all around us. They stopped for a while, and by the next morning we were all dug in. They couldn’t spot us too well through the jungle, but every time a man moved, they’d open up. One guy had the tip of his bayonet shot off. He didn’t move a muscle. Nobody fired. I sometimes think it took more guts not to than it would have to shoot back. Then it began to rain. It was a cold, cold rain. We had left our packs behind when we started, and all we had with us was a few rations in our pockets. Then the tide began to come up through our foxholes.
At this, soldiers left their foxholes and leaned against trees while the black water lapped at their waists. The lucky ones found high ground on the outstretched roots of mangroves, which spread over the area like giant spiderwebs. The Japanese, they knew, were fond of fighting at night, but in the belly of the swamp, it hardly mattered, day or night. The sun could not penetrate the ceiling of twisted branches.
Some of the men managed to nod off. Others, like Lutjens, waited hyper-alert, listening for the sucking sound of Japanese scouts slogging through the muck, watching the water for animals—giant long-haired rats, deadly snakes, crocodiles, and rabid, bloodthirsty bats—which they feared almost as much as the Japanese.
While Company E was stranded in the swamp to the left, Company F, led by Captain Erwin Nummer, and Company H, White Smith’s heavy weapons company, attacked up the middle. It was a scary proposition. Some of the men had fathers who had fought in World War I. From them they had heard grisly stories about attacking a trench system and the carnage that followed. A head-on assault on the Triangle, they feared, would be no different.
They were right. Captain Yasuda was waiting, eager to unleash the full fury of his firepower on anyone who blundered down the trail. Yasuda was supremely confident. He knew that whatever his men could not accomplish, the surrounding swamps would.