For his part, Johnny was in good spirits as the convoy swept toward the capital. Every mile brought him one step closer to fulfilling the ardent vow he’d made as a sixteen-year-old boy.
But that was before an enemy bullet almost put the period at the end of his life story.
CHAPTER 4
MANILA, THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
– February, 1945
The city had been his one-time headquarters and Supreme Commander MacArthur would retake it at any cost. While the tanks were still rolling over the barriers around the city, the General was planning his victory parade. That proved premature by a month.
“The Nips,” as MacArthur called them, were fanatical in their defense, and the battle raged street-by-street, foot-by-foot, every advance bought in blood. The enemy gunned down as well the Filipinos who got in their line of fire—men, women and children. By the time it was over, a hundred thousand bodies lay moldering in the ruins, and the Japanese added the Massacre of Manila to the Rape of Nanking, and a sorry list of war atrocities.
In the Philippines, as in New Guinea, Johnny was a sniper. It was a job for which he’d received no training, for the simple reason that the US Army had no sniper program at the time. But Johnny grew up in a military family in which the men were hunters.
When he was seven, his father taught him to stalk rabbits with a .22 rifle. When he was twelve, he shot his first deer, an eight-point buck. At fourteen, Johnny was finally invited along on the men’s annual big game trip. At a private reserve in the California Sierra Mountains, he saw his father and grandfather each shoot a Tule Elk bull, the kind with the thick antlers.
That first year, Johnny was permitted only to observe. He was to do what he was told, and stay out of the way. Still, he was in his glory. He slept with the men in the tents and walked the pine-forested trails. He listened to the way Dad and Granddad spoke with the guides and outfitters, and he soaked up their manner of speech. He learned to sit silently for long hours in the blinds, no matter how restless he got, making no complaint.
For his fifteenth birthday, Johnny’s parents gave him what at once became his prized possession—a scope-mounted, .30-06 Remington rifle.
In the fall of 1940, the boy killed a seven hundred pound “Tulie” with a huge rack. The last time he’d seen the head, it was on the wall of his grandfather’s study in San Diego. Where it was now, he did not know. His grandmother had passed away early in the war, and in December last year, he’d got the cable that told him the retired Rear Admiral had succumbed to a heart attack. The attorney who sent the telegram told Johnny the house would be sold, and his portion of the inheritance would be held in trust, awaiting instructions. So far, Johnny had done nothing about it.
Not long after that hunting trip, Johnny’s father received new orders, and the family transferred to Hawaii. A year later, with the world as he knew it torn to shreds, and his country at war, Johnny returned to San Diego. His stay did not last long.
Contrary to his grandparents’ wishes, as soon as he turned seventeen, Johnny ran away. He turned into the nearest Army recruitment post, lied about his age and signed up. The officer was content to take his word for it. But even before he hit boot camp, the boy who barely shaved the fuzz off his lip was an expert shot.
Still, it was not until he got to New Guinea that he saw enemy infantry and killed his first man. During his initial day in battle, in fact, he killed five of them. He seemed to have a knack for it. At first it was horrific, overwhelming. But men dying, Japanese, American and Australian, quickly became the everyday norm, almost humdrum. The Army made attack after attack in the equatorial jungles, against an enemy that knew how to fight in this country. The Japanese built nearly impregnable bunkers from local materials, and in the dense foliage, the GIs often did not see them until they were on top of them. The fighting was fierce, often with pistols and knives, and the slaughter was close up and personal.
Most Sad Sacks hated New Guinea, but this was just where Johnny wanted to be. At first, he was just another GI on the front line. But early on, his marksmanship with a rifle brought him to the attention of the brass. Johnny had found his niche. He became a specialist, a shooter reserved for the long-range kill.
From one jungle battle to the next, a routine evolved. First, the regular troops went in. Field command came behind, Johnny with them. When the front line got into trouble, as it usually did, pinned down by enemy riflemen and machine guns, the young sniper was ordered to the front.
Up where the guns were shooting and men dying, the teenager crept alone into the jungle. At first he was as frightened as any boy would be, but he soon learned to do his work. After a while, he found that he looked forward to the times when he was by himself. Then he was the lone wolf, the ambush predator, the anti-sniper sniper.
Without any manual to tell them what to do, he and the other crack shots evolved their own techniques. Some dug a hole and waited under a nest of branches. Others liked to stay on the move, ghosting from one cover to the next. Johnny preferred the high ground with an eagle-eye view of the enemy.
Sometimes he looked down from a hill on a Japanese encampment, but his favorite place was up a tree. These, he learned to pick carefully. They must have sufficient foliage to conceal him, while providing a view of the target. The trunk had to be stout enough to stop a bullet, and the branches spaced for climbing.
After a few close calls, he learned to ensure as well that each perch offered an escape route. After two or three shots, the enemy guns would turn his way. Patrols came at a run. By then, Johnny needed to have slipped down the blind side of the tree. Then he’d either be picking off the Japanese from another location, or gone entirely.
The teenager became a student of enemy behavior. He preferred to shoot officers, and he’d learned the strategy early in life. Johnny recalled the day when he was six and his father took him to the woodpile with a chicken. Dad laid the protesting bird on the chopping stump. Down the axe swung: whack! There went the head. Dad set the body on its feet and Johnny was amazed to watch it run in a circle, but it only managed a few steps before it keeled over. The shock of the unexpected death made tears spring to the boy’s eyes, but that transformed into startled laughter at the corpse’s antics.
“Remember, Johnny,” his father told him, “cut off the head, and the body dies. When you take out the leader, the followers don’t know what to do.” At the time, Johnny had been in a series of fistfights at school, and he’d taken beating after beating from an older boy. Johnny had expected his father to come to his rescue, but the man would not intervene. Instead, he explained there was a pecking order, “on the schoolyard and in life,” and Johnny might as well start finding his place in it. But his Old Man did teach him how to use his fists, and his feet.
“Never show them you’re afraid, even when you’re being beaten,” his dad said. “Don’t pick fights, but never back down from one. You start running, and you’ll never stop.” The next lesson had been the one with the chicken and the axe.
“You beat the ringleader,” his father said, picking up the dead chicken, “and the others will back off. That applies to the coward at school as well. And remember this: any boy who bullies a smaller one is a coward.”
Johnny never backed down from a fistfight. He had some wins and some losses. When he was small, there were always bigger boys. He developed a reputation as a fierce fighter, and he learned to hide his hurts behind a dark scowl. His dad arranged boxing lessons with a military coach, and Johnny’s last schoolyard fight happened when he was fourteen. After that, he was on the football team, as big as many and faster than most. The gridiron gave him a place where the venting of aggression was approved.
Years later, alone in the jungle against an enemy who would kill him as soon as look at him, Johnny remembered the headless chicken. Many a Japanese officer paid the price. Of course, picking off the brass was a practice of both sides. Smart commanders quickly learned to remove evidence of their rank. Johnny taught himself
to watch body language. The Japanese had a hard time hiding their hierarchical nature. Even across the distance, he saw who took orders, and who gave them.
Johnny had a high rate of success as a hunter of men, and his reputation spread. Still, many of the GIs disdained snipers. They seemed to think there was something unmanly about shooting a man from a distance. But Johnny remembered the stories his grandfather told him about the American frontiersman with his long rifle hiding in the woods, knocking down the British redcoats.
Soon he did not even want to know the names of the new arrivals at the front. Too many of them would soon go down in the mud for good. He tended to stick to himself. Johnny got a name as a loner and a hard case.
But there were times when he did get in another man’s face. That was when the fellow did something stupid that got soldiers hurt or killed. Then Johnny couldn’t seem to help giving the guilty party a piece of his mind. Unfortunately for his career, he pursued this course of action even when that other man was his superior officer. He was a natural leader in a fight, and he’d often received a field promotion, only to have it ripped away when he shot off his mouth. Johnny didn’t care. In fact, he didn’t want to get promoted out of the fight.
February of ‘45 found him still a Private, still practicing his solitary craft, but this time, in an urban jungle. The sniper trailed the line through Manila, Springfield in hand, pockets bulging with rations and shells. Often he was away from base for days at a time, eating his meals cold, sleeping in the ruins. His high ground became the roofs and windows of shattered buildings. From here he picked off the enemy: every shot a kill. When the front moved, Johnny drifted behind it like an avenging spirit.
In his three weeks in Manila, he added sixty-three kills to his private count. Only two of those were confirmed. It was rare for other soldiers to witness his marksmanship. But the official tally meant nothing to Johnny. His score was personal.
Eventually, the Americans drove the enemy back into “Intramuros,” the ancient walled city-within-a-city. It had been constructed during the five centuries the islands belonged to Spain. Their very name was for King Felipe, the Spanish monarch. Intramuros was their priceless colonial legacy.
When “the Nips” took refuge in Intramuros, General MacArthur had them trapped. Their backs literally to the wall, he knew they would fight to extinction. Unwilling to expend any more of his men against their desperation, MacArthur made the difficult decision to shell them where they stood.
By the time Johnny got there, edifices that had survived the centuries lay strewn about in blocks. Ahead along a rubble-choked street, he saw the GIs were holed up in one building, exchanging fire with the enemy across the way. Worn steps took him up a splinter of wall. He lay on the sun-warmed top and watched. Soon he had pinpointed two enemy snipers in the blown-out windows.
Johnny tugged out a square of velvet, folded it, then again, and laid it on the wall’s edge. He rested the barrel of his rifle on it and slid a nickel-clad shell into the chamber. He found his first target in the crosshairs, drew a breath, smoothly released, and fired.
The shot was just one more in the melee. The enemy crumpled. Johnny panned to the second man as his fingers reloaded. He found him kneeling near the edge of broken flooring, his rifle aimed down at the unseen GIs. As Johnny watched, the man fired again and he felt the cold anger rise. He increased slightly the pressure on his right index finger.
This time, the enemy made the long dive to the cobblestones, rifle clattering beside him. Johnny reloaded and continued to watch.
An American tank rumbled into the street, clanked over the bodies and broken stone. As Japanese bullets clanged off the turret, the big gun turned their way. The cannon boomed and walls exploded. Johnny picked off three more defenders when they attempted to escape through a side door.
Fifteen minutes later, the building was another smoking hulk, and the GIs were on the move again. Johnny descended and went after them, hugging the walls. Often he paused to scan ahead, searching for enemy practitioners of his own dark trade.
He heard them before he saw them. In a sunken doorway, two small children stood sobbing. A small boy and girl were beside another Filipina who Johnny guessed was eleven or twelve. She sat silently, legs splayed, staring at him with huge eyes. Her hands clutched her thin stomach, and Johnny noticed the crimson stain spreading across her sundress.
Gut shot—going to die, the soldier commented. Johnny went into a crouch and ran across the road. He spoke quiet words to the little ones and slung his rifle over his shoulder. I’ll find her a medic.
He bent to pick the girl up, and that’s when he was shot.
It was several days before he discovered what had happened. The bullet smashed a rib as it entered his upper left chest, clipped the lung on the way through, broke two more ribs and shattered his scapula on exit. Johnny came to his senses in a hospital bed, swaddled in bandages.
One of the first things he saw was his Springfield standing in the corner. He was relieved. The rifle had been with him so long, it was about as important as one of his own limbs. The scope, he’d brought from home. He’d unscrewed it from his elk rifle the night he ran away to join up.
The middle-aged nurse told him the rifle came in with him. He’d babbled about it in his delirium, and his American doctors decided to leave it with him. The nurse opened the drawer of the bedside table and showed him the Zippo lighter and folding knife that had been in his pockets. Johnny thanked her. These had belonged to his dad and were the only personal things he had left.
He never did meet the medics who brought him in. Nor could he discover what had happened to the children, no matter how many times he asked. In the scope of the devastation of Manila, three more lives hardly seemed to matter.
Johnny’s bullet almost killed him, but he had youth on his side and began to heal. But then tropical bacteria invaded. Day by day, the boy grew sicker. Somehow, he clung to life, but he was not improving. March became April, and still he lay suffering.
The papers were full of the action in Europe as American, Russian and British forces raced for Berlin. Late in the month, the newspapers trumpeted shocking news. The bodies of Adolph Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, had been found, burned in their Berlin bunker. The Nazi leader’s vision of a thousand-year Reich had ended with him eating a bullet from his pistol.
With the architect of their misbegotten dream gone, the whole Nazi house of cards caved in. On May 8th, much of the world went wild, Manila included, with the news that Germany had signed the unconditional surrender.
Johnny Willman was too gravely ill to enjoy the victory party. His physicians decided that the boy needed to be sent Stateside, urgently, on the next available ship.
“It’s the end of the war for you,” they told the young man. “Back home they’ve got the newest equipment and latest drugs. You’ll do better out of this heat. They’ll get you well and give you your old life back. Son, you’ve done your part.”
Problem was, Johnny didn’t want his old life back, and unlike many of the men, he wasn’t looking for a way out. He hadn’t fought from ’42 to ’45 only to miss out on the invasion of Japan! He did his best to explain this to every doc who came by. They smiled and humored him, and kept his name high on the evacuation list.
It was only the young New Zealand doctor who really seemed to hear him. Johnny latched onto him as his last, best hope. Every chance he got, he told the doc he did not want to be sent Stateside. The Kiwi heard him out, but Johnny sensed he hadn’t quite convinced him. He was forced to play his last ace. He told the doc what had happened to his parents.
In all his years of war, Johnny had never recounted this. When other guys asked about his folks, he just said they had passed on and clammed up. He got a few curious looks, but others could tell by his clenched jaw he didn’t want to talk. The truth was, this was Johnny’s deepest wound, and he did not know how to cope with it, except by doing his job.
But dire circumstances called for desper
ate measures. This time when the Kiwi doc came by, Johnny asked him to close the door. Then, in blunt phrases, voice raw with emotion, he told him what happened. As the doctor listened, he found he had a lump in his throat. His patient finished up by saying, “That’s why I have to keep fighting the Japs until they’re finished. Understand? I made a promise.” The young American stared into the other man’s eyes and knew he’d made an ally.
“I’ll help if I can,” the Kiwi said, “but whatever we do, you need to stay under medical care. Otherwise you’ll die. That’s a fact.”
“I hear you, doc,” Johnny said. Every heartbeat still pulsed in the wound, and he saw the way the physicians’ faces looked when they peeled back the bandages.
The newspapers said tens of thousands of American troops were now on the ships, on their way back from Europe. For once, General MacArthur would have all the able-bodied soldiers he needed.
“If they send me Stateside, I’m never coming back. If I could end up in Australia, on the other hand, once I’m better, they’ll send me to my unit—right here with the General in the Philippines. You see?”
The Kiwi, Dr. Cowell was his name, did see, but Johnny’s scheme was a very long shot. Then, in early July, it looked like he was sunk. In a week’s time, a ship would take thousands of Americans to Los Angeles. His doctors had determined John Willman would be on it.
Gloomily, Johnny almost accepted defeat. But then, only two days before he was due to ship out, Doc Cowell came by. A British hospital vessel had just put into Manila harbor with a load of Aussie POWs from the camps in Asia. Some two thousand men, sick and near starvation, were being ferried home. The ship had stopped to take on the Aussies liberated during the Battle of Manila. A few were at this hospital, and they would be transferred aboard this very night. The Kiwi and the Yank put their heads together.
TEETH - The Epic Novel With Bite (The South Pacific Trilogy) Page 4
