Hot Lead and Cold Steel

by Len Levinson

  “Guess you are.”

  “I need somebody to throw a hand grenade around that corner there. You wanna do it?”

  “Naw, do you?”

  “Gimme a grenade. When it blows, everybody follow me.”

  The sergeant took a grenade out of one of the big side pockets of his fatigue pants and threw it to Butsko, who crawled toward the wall.

  “Cover me,” he said.

  The GIs raised their rifles over the pile of dirt, ready to shoot anybody who might aim a rifle at Butsko. Butsko stood up, placed his back against the wall, and slid toward the turn in the tunnel, the grenade in his hands, one forefinger hooked through the ring fastened to the pin, ready to pull it.

  Six inches of Arisaka rifle barrel appeared around the bend, and the GIs opened fire at it all at once, forcing it to withdraw. Butsko moved sideways, keeping his back close to the wall, where he'd be a difficult target. He came to the bend, pulled the pin of the hand grenade, and turned the lever loose. Counting to four, he hurled it around the corner and darted backward, dropping to the floor.

  Barroooom!—the hand grenade exploded, and Butsko jumped to his feet. “Follow me!”

  He ran around the corner and fired his rifle before he could take stock of what was there. Through the clouds of smoke he saw Japanese soldiers lying dead on the tunnel floor, and other Japanese soldiers running away.

  Behind Butsko the GIs shot Japanese soldiers who looked like they might still have some life in them.

  “Keep going!” Butsko said.

  He ran down the tunnel, away from the smoke, and peered into the shadows, looking for doors to rooms where Japs might be hiding. Ahead was a fork in the passageway, and Butsko slowed down. The rest of the GIs caught up with him.

  “Clancy, you take your men down the passageway to the left and I'll take mine down here.” He indicated the tunnel on the right with his chin. “Give us some hand grenades.”

  “Hey, we need them for ourselves!”

  “You've got a lot more than us. If half your men give each of us one, we'll be okay.”

  “But we need them!”

  Butsko, his eyes ablaze, pointed his M 1 at Sergeant Clancy. “I said gimme some hand grenades, you cheap son of a bitch!”

  Clancy looked at the rifle and smiled. “You wouldn't dare pull that trigger.”

  Butsko raised his M 1 a few inches and pulled the trigger. The firing pin shot forward into the bullet and its cartridge exploded, sending the bullet spinning down the barrel and through the air a few inches from Sergeant Clancy's right ear, making Sergeant Clancy flinch.

  The smile was wiped off Sergeant Clancy's face. “You're crazy, you know that?”

  “Gimme the hand grenades.”

  Sergeant Clancy told every other man in his platoon to give Butsko one grenade. The men fearfully stepped forward and laid them at Butsko's feet, retreating quickly.

  “Get going!” Butsko said.

  Sergeant Clancy scowled at Butsko, then led his men into the tunnel on the left. Butsko knelt down and fastened a grenade to his lapel.

  “Help yourselves, boys,” he said.

  The men scooped up the grenades, fastening them to the lapels of their shirts. Butsko got three and so did some of the others, but most of them ended up with two.

  “Okay,” Butsko said, standing. “Let's get going. The sooner we clean out the Japs, the sooner we'll get a rest.”

  Hunched over, carrying his M 1 in both hands, Butsko advanced into the tunnel, looking for Japs. His men followed him. Their path was fairly level for several paces, then it inclined down sharply. Butsko's head bounced up and down as he descended the incline. In the darkness ahead he saw a door.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Everybody against the wall.”

  The men moved toward the wall and pressed their shoulders or backs against it, while Butsko prepared one of his grenades, pulling the pin but not turning or letting go of the lever.

  “Cover me,” he said.

  He tiptoed forward, intending to lay the grenade in front of the door to blow it down, when suddenly the door was flung open and a bunch of Japs spilled into the passageway, firing rifles and pistols wildly, led by a lieutenant screaming “Banzai!”

  The GIs were huddled against the wall, and most of the bullets whizzed by them. Pfc. Ruehlmann from the Fourth Squad was shot in the stomach, and Private Carter from the Second stopped a bullet with his shoulder. They dropped down as the other GIs fired back at the Japs, who were in the middle of the passageway, easy targets. Butsko tossed his grenade at the Japs.

  The Japs were so excited, they didn't even see the grenade roll into their midst. Butsko dived to the ground. “Hit it!”

  The GIs dropped down and the grenade exploded, ripping Japanese arms from Japanese bodies, cracking bones and caving in heads. A Japanese torso landed in front of Butsko, and the air was filled with smoke.

  Butsko took another grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the open door. The grenade detonated, blowing the door off its hinges and sending a cloud of smoke billowing over Butsko's head.

  “Get that flamethrower in there!”

  Sergeant Cameron jumped up and ran toward the door, leaned beside it, stuck the nozzle into the room, and turned on the gas. Fire poured into the room. Then Butsko hurled himself forward, streaking toward the door.

  “Follow me!”

  Sergeant Cameron turned off the flamethrower and burst through the door, followed by the rest of his men. Butsko charged into the room, waving his M 1 from side to side, looking for Japs to shoot. Blankets burned and stank on the floor, but nobody was there. At the other end of the room was a passageway.

  “Let's go down there,” Butsko said.

  They advanced cautiously toward the passageway and entered it, noticing that the air was gradually becoming cooler and damper. Butsko wondered how far beneath the ground they were. Where does this damned thing end? he wondered.

  The tunnel twisted and turned, and then they came to another closed door. Butsko readied a hand grenade and motioned for Sergeant Cameron to get next to him. Butsko and the others got down on their stomachs, hugging the wall, and Butsko lobbed the grenade toward the door.

  The grenade exploded, blowing the door apart. Before the sound ended, Sergeant Cameron charged forward, his flame-thrower spurting lightning into the room.

  “Now!” Butsko cried.

  He ran toward the door, hearing the footsteps of his men behind him, and jumped into the room, his eyes smarting from the smoke as he searched for Japs, holding his M 1 waist-high, ready to shoot anything that moved.

  Through the clouds of smoke he perceived that he was in a large room, perhaps thirty feet by twenty feet, with crates stacked against the walls. He stepped toward the crates nearest him; they were burning, and his hair stood on end because he realized that the boxes had the markings he'd seen in the past on captured Japanese ammunition.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Butsko screamed.

  He spun around and plowed into the GIs behind him, heading toward the door. They followed him and bumped into each other, elbowing and clawing, trying to get out of the room. Butsko ran into a long winding corridor, wondered for a split second which way to go, and decided to flee in the direction from which they'd come. He veered to the left and raced up the incline, huffing and puffing, aware that the ammunition would blow at any moment. He stretched his legs out in long strides, trying to put as much distance between him and the ammunition crates as he could. He sped through the room with the burning blankets and entered the main corridor outside.

  His ears filled with a mighty and terrible roar. The floor heaved like the deck of a ship in high seas, and dirt poured onto him. He dived down and the wall beside him caved in, covering him with dirt, which clogged his nostrils and got into his mouth.

  Coughing and spitting, struggling wildly, Butsko clawed through the dirt and poked his head through the surface. Ammunition crates exploded in the storage room as the chain reaction continued
and the awful thunder went on relentlessly. Butsko thought he was in the middle of the worst earthquake in history. On his knees, buried to his neck in dirt and stones, he tried to see in the darkness, but everything was pitch-black, adding to his panic.

  His men shouted and screamed; he could make out their voices above the din. A clod of earth fell on Butsko's head and he was afraid that the entire roof would collapse, smothering him alive. Climbing frantically to the top of the pile of dirt, he pressed his hands against the ceiling, trying to hold it up there. God, he thought, if you ever get me out of this one, I'll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life.

  The shock waves traveled up the hill, and the ground shook under the feet of the soldiers milling about in the rubble of the mission station. They dropped to their stomachs, heard the explosions, and wondered what was going on. Walls off the fortress, already devastated by bombing and shelling, collapsed on soldiers. Colonel Stockton, who had set up his command post near one of the Walls, dived to the ground at the first tremor, huddling against the wall, which proceeded to topple over him.

  Bricks and stones fell onto him and some of his staff members, but the wall was only six feet high and no injuries were sustained. The explosions seemed to last an eternity but actually went on for about half a minute, and then everything settled down and the rumbling deep in the ground ended.

  Colonel Stockton stood and brushed the dust off his uniform. Major Cobb arose next to him, his wire-rimmed eyeglasses crooked on his nose.

  “Sounds like their ammo just blew,” Major Cobb said, adjusting his eyeglasses. “I hope it didn't get any of our people.”

  “Find out and report to me.”

  Major Cobb walked away and Colonel Stockton rubbed his eyes. Much of his regiment was down in the tunnels, and he might have lost a large percentage of them. His victory could turn out to be a terrible defeat. Oh, shit, he thought, kicking a stone into the air.

  THIRTEEN . . .

  Butsko lowered his hands from the ceiling. The explosions had ended and no more dirt fell. An eerie stillness filled the tunnel, and the air was thick with dust.

  “Anybody alive?” Butsko asked, and then choked on the foul air.

  A chorus of coughing and spitting reverberated through the tunnel. The soldiers swore and snorted, climbing out of piles of dirt. One by one they spoke their names. After they'd all reported, Butsko realized that only Private Morehouse was missing.

  “Delane, you still got that torch?” Butsko asked.

  “I dropped it someplace.”

  “Good work.” Butsko took out his Zippo and flicked the wheel. It lit on the first try, illuminating the faces of his men clambering over piles of dirt in the tunnel. No one could stand because so much dirt had fallen.

  “Anybody got a flashlight?” Butsko asked.

  Nobody said anything. Butsko's flashlight was in his pack,’ and his pack was back at the spot where they'd bivouacked the night before. He hadn't realized that he might get buried alive before noon. Butsko held up the lighter and moved on his hands and knees up the incline toward the top of the hill.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  “I'm stuck!” shouted Private Pacillo.

  “Somebody dig him out,” Butsko replied.

  Butsko crawled upward, holding his Zippo in front of him. He looked along the walls for another torch, but couldn't see any. Turning forward again, he saw something dark and ominous in front of him. He crawled closer to it, and his heart sank when he saw that it was a solid wall of dirt. The tunnel leading to the high ground was blocked off. But maybe there really wasn't that much dirt there.

  He moved closer and shoveled dirt away with his hands, hoping the wall was thin and he could continue to move up the tunnel system toward the top of Kokengolo Hill. But the wall wasn't thin. He dug a foot and everything felt solid behind it.

  “Is it blocked, Sarge?” asked Craig Delane.

  “Yeah.”

  Butsko took his entrenching tool from its holster on his belt, adjusted the blade, and hacked the wall, but he couldn't break through. His Zippo, which he'd propped on a pile of dirt, went out, and everything was darkness again.

  “Aw, shit,” Butsko said wearily, going slack. He was on his knees, and he let his entrenching tool rest on the ground. He groped around for his lighter, closed the lid and dropped it into his pocket.

  Sergeant Cameron's voice came through the darkness. “I got a piece of wood here. Maybe I can make a torch.”

  It was a piece of timber five feet long, part of a joist that held back a wall. Sergeant Cameron dropped it in front of him, aimed the flamethrower, and turned the nozzle slightly. A thin stream of jellied gasoline shot out and fell on the dirt, where it glowed phosphorescently as it burned. Sergeant Cameron prodded the timber into a gob of burning goo, and the timber caught fire.

  “Now we're getting somewhere,” Butsko said, wiping dirt off his face with his hand. “Let's see if we can dig out of here.”

  He ordered half his men to shovel through the wall, and the rest to find lengths of timber to use as torches. Then he leaned back, tempted to light a cigarette, but stopped himself because he didn't know how much air they had.

  “No smoking,” he said. “We need to save the air.”

  Two at a time, the soldiers hacked their entrenching tools against the dirt piled up in the blocked passage, and after five minutes they'd dug a four-foot tunnel, but the dirt was still a thick wall before them.

  “Sarge,” said Private Snead, the torch making shadows flicker on his dirty face, “I don't think we're gonna be able to dig through this. Maybe the whole tunnel has collapsed up ahead.”

  “Keep trying,” Butsko said.

  The men continued to dig, and Butsko became more worried. If the tunnel had truly collapsed, there was a strong possibility that he and his men were buried alive. He wondered if the Corps of Engineers would be able to dig them out.

  Ten minutes later the dirt was still solid in front of the GIs. Butsko weighed the possibilities and decided it might be easier to search for another way out than dig through that wall. If they were blocked somewhere else, they could return there and keep digging. But how long would the air hold out?

  “That's enough,” Butsko said. “Let's try the other way.”

  “The other way only goes deeper,” Sergeant Cameron said.

  “Maybe there's a connection with a tunnel that goes up.

  Give the torch to Delane and keep your flamethrower ready, because there might be Japs down here.”

  They crawled on their hands and knees, because so little space was between the ceiling and piles of dirt on the floor. The men peered ahead at the shadows cast by the torch, fearful that they'd find a new wall of dirt, but the tunnel kept going downward.

  The tunnel twisted like a snake, but Butsko tried to figure out where he was relative to the ammunition storage room. It was possible that it was near the tunnel that had caved in on them, because of all the turns they'd made. He hoped they'd soon reach a tunnel going up.

  They passed the door of the room that had burning blankets on the floor, but now the blankets were piles of ash, and half the room was filled with dirt from floor to ceiling. That way led back to the ammunition storage room, but a section of the tunnel continued down past the outer door.

  “Look—atorch!” shouted Private Ivey, pointing to the wall.

  “Get it down,” said Butsko. “Light it up. And you can smoke if you want to. It looks like we got enough air for that.”

  He took out a cigarette and flicked the wheel of his Zippo, but only sparks shot into the air because he was out of fluid.3

  “Hold still,” he said to Delane.

  Butsko puffed his cigarette to life against Delane's torch, took a deep drag, and felt better immediately. He tried not to think that they all might be doomed underneath Kokengolo Hill.

  “Let's go.”

  Holding their rifles ready, they walked down the corridor. Two soldiers lit the way with flaming torche
s, and shadows jiggled everywhere. They came to a bend; Butsko looked around it and couldn't see anything ahead. He moved into the open, turned the corner, and continued to walk, hoping that the tunnel would start inclining or that they'd come to another passage-way.

  A BAR opened fire beside him, and Butsko dropped to the ground, pulling his rifle to his shoulder. All the other soldiers hit the dirt too. Nobody fired back at them. Butsko peered ahead and couldn't see anything.

  “Who fired that BAR?” Butsko asked.

  “I did,” replied Private Briscoe, a tremor in his voice.

  “What'd you fire at?”

  “I saw something move.”

  “Go out there and see if you hit it.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  Briscoe gulped and crawled forward, cradling his BAR in his arms. He was afraid Japs might be waiting for him in the shadows. He came to the place where his bullets had struck dirt, but no one was there.

  “I can't see anything,” he said.

  “Keep going.”

  “All my myself!”

  “We'll be right behind you.” Butsko turned his head to the side. “Let's go,” he said to the others.

  They followed Briscoe as he crawled over the dirty floor. Slowly he covered another ten feet, then stopped again. “There's nothing here.”

  “Everybody up!” Butsko said.

  They got to their feet and walked toward Briscoe, who was afraid mat Butsko was going to punch him out—or worse.

  Butsko walked up to him and slapped the back of his hand lightly against Briscoe's stomach. “Relax.”

  Butsko motioned with his head toward the tunnel ahead. Craig Delane joined him, carrying the torch high in the air, and the others followed, their footsteps echoing from the walls and ceiling.

  “Hey, Sarge,” said Private Ivey, “you think we're gonna get out of here?”

  “How should I know?” Butsko replied, because that was how he felt, but then he thought he ought to give his men some encouragement. It was better to have false hope than no hope at all. “Sooner or later we should come to a tunnel that'll get us out of here,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”