Do or Die

by Len Levinson

  Blam!

  A bullet entered the side of the Japanese soldier's neck and exited the other side, taking blood and throat tissue with it. The rifle went slack in Lieutenant Breckenridge's hands, and he pushed it away. The Japanese soldier fell on his ass, blood squirting out of his demolished jugular vein.

  A short, husky GI jumped over the dead Japanese soldier, carrying a Colt .45 in one hand and a Nambu in the other. Lieutenant Breckenridge didn't recognize him immeidately from the back; then the GI turned to the side and Lieutenant Breckenridge recognized Jimmy O'Rourke from Hollywood, California.

  Jimmy O'Rourke swaggered across the battlefield like John Wayne on location in Dodge City. Japanese soldiers swarmed all around him and O'Rourke shot them down, one after the other, firing the Colt with his right hand and the Nambu with his left.

  A Japanese sergeant with samurai sword raised in the air ran toward him, and Jimmy O'Rourke shot him in the mouth. Two Japanese soldiers with rifles and bayonets charged him and Jimmy O'Rourke gunned them down. A Japanese officer with a Nambu pistol appeared through the smoke and confusion. Both men aimed at each other, but Jimmy beat the Japanese officer to the trigger.

  Blam!

  The bullet hit the Japanese officer on the chest and spun him around, blood gushing from the hole. The Japanese officer collapsed and Jimmy felt fantastic, as if nothing could harm him. Firing the pistols, shooting down Japanese soldiers, he wished a movie camera could be focused on him, because he was giving the performance of his life. His legs spread apart and bent like a gunfighter, he shot a Japanese soldier with the Nambu, raised the barrel, blew the smoke away, and shot another Japanese soldier with the Colt, blowing the smoke from that gun also.

  I could be such a star, he thought excitedly. If only those big movie producers could see me now. I could be the next Clark Gable, or Errol Flynn, or Gary Cooper. I'd be so rich. Girls would love me.

  Blam!

  Jimmy felt a firestorm in his stomach. It lifted him up and threw him on his back. He blacked out for a few moments, and when he opened his eyes he was looking up at the bayonet on the end of an Arisaka rifle. A Japanese soldier was standing over him, about to stick it in.

  Whump!

  A rifle butt came from nowhere and clobbered the Japanese soldier on the top of his head, caving in his skull. Blood squirted out of the Japanese soldier's nose, eyes, ears, and mouth, and the force of the blow threw him to the ground.

  Jimmy narrowed his eyes and tried to focus, but the battlefield was covered with diaphanous black curtains. It was hard to see anything, and he had the worst stomachache of his life. He wished the camera could move in for a close-up of his face, which was covered with dirt, sweat, and suffering. He could win an Academy Award for his performance. He saw the big gold Oscar float before his eyes, and then it and the battlefield faded away, along with his pain.

  His savior had been Sergeant Gomez, wielding his M 1 rifle like a baseball bat. He was working in tandem with Sergeant Cameron, who carried his M 1 the same way. They hollered and rampaged across the battlefield, Gomez hitting them low and Sergeant Cameron hitting them high.

  Japanese soldiers charged toward them. The two noncoms from the recon platoon waded through them, slamming them to shit. Cameron was tall and lanky and Gomez was on the short side, a former pachuco from Los Angeles. Five Japanese soldiers ran toward them, bayonets fixed on the ends of their rifles. One Japanese soldier fired a shot that missed the two noncoms, and the rest charged, screaming “Banzai!”

  Gomez swung from the side and broke the arm of a Japanese soldier. The Japanese soldier gritted his teeth in pain. Gomez danced back, darted forward, and smashed a Japanese bayonet away from him, whacking a Japanese soldier in the face, fracturing the front of his skull. With the next swing, Gomez slugged a Japanese soldier on the shoulder, knocking him off-balance, and then slugged him on the side, fracturing three ribs.

  Meanwhile, Sergeant Cameron was clobbering Japanese soldiers left and right. His long, sinewy arms enabled him to shellac them before they came close enough to kill him. With a firm downward motion he hit a Japanese soldier on top of his head, flattening his skull and mashing his brains. Swinging upward and slightly to the side, he hit a Japanese soldier on the chin, nearly tearing the Jap's head off his shoulders. Swinging to the side, he landed the butt of his rifle on a Japanese soldier's ear, mangling eardrum, ear bones, and skull into a bloody mess.

  A Japanese bayonet ripped across Sergeant Cameron's shoulder, but that didn't stop him; it only made him madder. He glared at the Japanese soldier, who reversed the position of his rifle and punched the butt toward Sergeant Cameron's face. Sergeant Cameron ducked, swung his elbow up, and buried it in the Japanese soldier's groin. The Japanese soldier bellowed, dropped his rifle, and grasped his family jewels in both his hands. Sergeant Cameron swung his rifle and smashed the Jap on the side of his head, giving him a concussion and making him fall to the ground.

  Meanwhile, behind the Twenty-third Regiment's main line, Nutsy Gafooley was digging a new latrine for Colonel Hutchins. He heard the sound of fighting in the distance but had no idea the Japs had breached the line in several places. No one told him to stop digging the latrine, so he kept digging it. In the heat of the battle, everyone had forgotten about Nutsy Gafooley.

  Nutsy had been a hobo in civilian life, riding the rails during the Depression, sleeping in flophouses and on park benches, begging for handouts on street corners. He hadn't been able to find a job, and now that he had one, he tried to do everything well. Colonel Hutchins wanted his latrine deep, wide, and airy. He didn't want to use the same latrine Colonel Stockton had used, because it was getting filled up. Colonel Hutchins didn't mind smelling his own shit, but he didn't want to smell Colonel Stockton's shit.

  As Nutsy dug the hole he thought about a certain mission house in Atlanta, Georgia, where he'd listened to a sermon from a sexy woman preacher before they'd let him eat the watery, stenchy beef stew. He was snapped out of his reverie by shouts nearby. Nutsy was hidden by bushes, because Colonel Hutchins wanted his latrine to be completely private. Parting the leaves with his fingers, Nutsy saw Japs running through the headquarters area, chasing American soldiers!

  Nutsy thought he was having a nightmare. He pinched himself but he didn't wake up. How did the Japs get all the way back here? Why didn't somebody stop them? Nutsy wondered what to do.

  His hair stood on end when he realized that a Japanese soldier was pointing at him. The Japanese soldier alerted three others and they ran in Nutsy's direction. One of them fired a wild shot that flew high over Nutsy's head, making him flinch.

  Where's my fucking rifle? Nutsy thought. He dashed back to the hole he was digging and saw his rifle leaning against a tree. As he was reaching for it the four Japanese soldiers burst into the clearing. They looked at Nutsy, paused for a moment, and then charged him all at once.

  Nutsy picked up his rifle but he knew he didn't have a chance against the four Japanese soldiers. He threw his rifle at them and ran away, but his rifle was knocked to the ground by their rifles and they chased him. Something told him he wasn't going to get away, and then he saw the pitchfork.

  He picked it up and turned to face them. The pitchfork was much longer than their rifles and bayonets, and that helped even everything out. But one of the Japs thought he'd be cute. Licking his chops, the Jap lowered his rifle and aimed it at Nutsy, working the bolt.

  Nutsy threw the pitchfork like a harpoon, and two of the tines went all the way through the Japanese soldier's neck, rocking him back on his heels. Nutsy picked up his shovel, swung to the side, and slammed a Japanese soldier on the ear. He lunged forward and thrust the blade of the shovel into the throat of the next Japanese soldier, severing his windpipe, and then tried to do the same with the last standing Japanese soldier, but the Japanese soldier parried the shovel to the side and brought his rifle butt around, zooming it toward Nutsy's head.

  Nutsy leaned backward and the Japanese soldier's rifle butt whizzed p
ast his nose. Nutsy swung the shovel sideways and its blade clipped the Japanese soldier on the cheek, opening a cut three inches long but not enough to stop him.

  Bleeding from the wound, the Japanese soldier turned to face Nutsy Gafooley. Nutsy held the shovel tightly in his hands. Both men looked into each other's eyes. The Japanese soldier held his rifle and bayonet at chest level. Each man wanted to run away but couldn't, because he knew the other one would cut him down from behind. They couldn't talk the whole thing over because they didn't speak each other's language. They had to fight it out.

  The Japanese soldier stomped his left foot on the ground, hoping to fake Nutsy out, but Nutsy was an old faker from way back, and you can't fake a faker. Nutsy twisted his shovel around swiftly and poked the Japanese soldier on the cheek with the handle. This sudden move took the Japanese soldier by surprise, and Nutsy poked again, this time harder.

  It was a lucky poke, because the handle of the shovel hit the Japanese soldier in the eye, pushing his eyeball an inch into his head. The Japanese soldier screamed in pain, and Nutsy kicked upward, burying the front of his combat boot into the Japanese soldier's balls, flattening them like two little pancakes.

  The Japanese soldier shrieked and was lifted six inches off the ground by the force of Nutsy's kick. Nutsy swung the shovel downward diagonally and its blade severed the Jap's neck and shoulder muscles. The Jap staggered, blinking his eyes in pain, trying to hold his rifle and bayonet up to protect himself, when he really wanted to reach down and hold his poor aching balls.

  Nutsy smashed the handle of the shovel into the Japanese soldier's mouth, knocking out the Japanese's front teeth and sending him reeling. The Jap leaned to one side and then to another. He rocked forward and then fell backward. Nutsy jumped onto his face with both combat boots and stomped him to death.

  Sergeant Major Ramsay ran into Colonel Hutchins's office. “Sir, Japs have broken into the Headquarters Company area!”

  Colonel Hutchins looked up from his map. He'd heard the sounds of fighting but hadn't thought the Japs were that close. He couldn't believe they were in the Headquarters Company area. “Are you sure?”

  A Japanese bullet zipped through a wall of the tent, passed between Sergeant Major Ramsay and Colonel Hutchins, and exited through the opposite wall. The sergeant major and the colonel looked at each other for a long, pregnant moment, the awareness of looming catastrophe confronting them. Colonel Hutchins drew his Colt .45 and rammed a round into the chamber.

  “Let's go, Sergeant!”

  Colonel Hutchins was half drunk, but that didn't make him stupid. He stormed out of the tent and saw Japs running through the Headquarters Company area, shooting and bayoneting American soldiers, ripping down tents, outnumbering and overwhelming Colonel Hutchins's men.

  Some Japs noticed Colonel Hutchins and veered toward him. Colonel Hutchins dropped to one knee, held his Colt .45 in both hands, and squeezed off the rounds one after another. He couldn't miss at such close range, and Japanese soldiers were knocked off their feet by the big .45-caliber bullets.

  “Stop the bastards!” Colonel Hutchins yelled. “We can do it!”

  Sergeant Major Ramsay, carrying a carbine, joined Colonel Hutchins and raised the butt of the carbine to his shoulder, aiming at a Japanese soldier.

  Blam!

  The Japanese soldier fell backward. Other Japanese soldiers in the area saw the two Americans and veered toward them. Colonel Hutchins and Sergeant Major Ramsay became surrounded by charging Japanese soldiers, and knew they couldn't hold out much longer. One of the more intelligent Japanese soldiers stopped charging and fired a shot at Colonel Hutchins. The bullet smacked into the ground near Colonel Hutchins's knee, but the colonel didn't change position and barely flinched. Calmly and coolly, he leveled his .45 at the Japanese soldier and shot him down, then moved the pistol an inch to the right and fired at another Japanese soldier.

  Click!

  His pistol was empty. He unsnapped his cartridge pouch, took out another clip of bullets, ejected the empty clip, and slapped the new clip in. The Japs came closer and he fired point-blank at one only ten feet away. The Jap's knees buckled and Colonel Hutchins thought he'd be dead within the next minute.

  Moving his pistol to the left, he shot another Japanese soldier and then a third. Japs swarmed around and drew closer. One was an officer with a Nambu pistol; he fired at Colonel Hutchins, hitting him in the shoulder. Colonel Hutchins's torso was rocked back three inches, but he was so drunk and excited, he felt no pain. Sergeant Ramsay was shot in the chest by another Japanese soldier, into whose face Colonel Hutchins's steady hand fired a bullet from only six feet away. Ramsay collapsed onto the ground, and Colonel Hutchins got to his feet, blood oozing out of a hole in his shoulder. He fired his Colt .45 as fast as he could pull the trigger, spinning and ducking through the Japs all around him. So intense was the action that he didn't hear the truck coming.

  Butsko and the men in the battered duece-and-a-half truck heard the fighting when they were halfway up Hill 700.

  “Step on the gas!” Butsko said to Shilansky.

  Butsko looked at the speedometer: The truck was traveling at only thirty miles an hour. Steam spewed out of the radiator and the engine kept missing. A trail of black oil drops followed the vehicle.

  In the back, Bannon and the others heard the fighting on top of the hill. They gripped their Thompson submachine guns and looked around the cab, trying to see what was going on.

  The truck neared the top of the hill and leveled off. The GIs saw tents but no soldiers. They passed a field kitchen, but no cooks were there. The sound of rifle shots came closer. The truck burst into a clearing and the GIs saw Japs running wild near Colonel Hutchins's tent.

  “Head right for the middle of them!” Butsko yelled, then opened the door. He stepped out onto the running board, hooked his arm around the mirror, and fired his submachine gun into the thick of Japs.

  Behind him, Bannon and Frankie La Barbara perched on the roof of the cab and fired down at the Japs. In back, on both sides of the bed, the other GIs fired their Thompson submachine guns at the Japs.

  Eight GIs with automatic weapons had tremendous firepower, and a hail of bullets flew into the Japanese soldiers. Behind the wheel of the deuce-and-a-half, biting his lower lip, Shilansky steered toward them. The Japs ran to get out of the way. The GIs on the truck chopped them down with machine-gun bullets.

  Shilansky saw a crowd of Japs near Colonel Hutchins's tent and yanked the wheel around, stomping the gas pedal and heading for them. As he drew closer he could see they were converging on two Americans. One of the Americans was prostrate and motionless on the ground.

  Shilansky recognized Colonel Hutchins bobbing and weaving, firing his Colt .45 at the Japs. Butsko saw him, too, and aimed his Thompson submachine gun into the sea of Japanese soldiers. So did the men in back of the track. Shilansky drove directly at Colonel Hutchins, and the Japs who still were alive fled for their lives, but many of them weren't fast enough and joined their fallen comrades on the ground. The GIs on the truck mowed down huge bunches of Japs running to get away, and those killed or wounded were mashed beneath the big wheels of the two-and-a-half-ton truck.

  Colonel Hutchins saw the Japanese soldiers running away from him. He turned and saw the deuce and a half bearing down on him. Two men stood on the roof of the cab, firing submachine guns; Butsko was on the running board; and more were in back. They'd blanketed the clearing with dead Japs, and the truck screeched to a stop beside Colonel Hutchins.

  Butsko jumped down from the running board. “You all right, sir?”

  Colonel Hutchins tried to get a grip on reality. He had been ready to die, and now he was alive, talking to Sergeant Butsko, his old drinking buddy from his days in Manila. “Where've you come from?”

  “The beach. What the hell are all these Japs doing back here?”

  “They've broken through.”

  “Where's everybody?”

  “Dead or wounded or run ou
t.”

  “Where's the recon platoon?”

  Colonel Hutchins pointed toward the front. “That way, last thing I heard.”

  “I'll send a medic back here.”

  Butsko jumped up on the running board of the truck and pointed in the direction Colonel Hutchins had indicated. “That way!”

  Shilansky kicked the gas pedal and the truck lumbered away. Colonel Hutchins looked at his left shoulder; it was covered with blood, which dripped down his arm.

  “Good God,” he muttered. “I think I need a drink.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out his flask, unscrewing the top and raising it to his lips. Leaning back, he let the burning liquid trickle down his throat. While in that position, he passed out from loss of blood and the shock of the alcohol entering his system. He collapsed onto his back and the flask fell out of his hand, landing on the ground beside him, its contents spilling onto the ground.

  Private Shilansky drove away from the headquarters area and into the jungle. The road twisted and turned; then he came to another clearing where GIs and Japanese soldiers were locked in hand-to-hand combat. Shilansky drove his truck straight toward them, blowing the horn and shouting at the top of his lungs. The GIs and Japanese soldiers stopped what they were doing for a few seconds to see what was happening as the truck bore down on them. Shilansky hit the brakes and the truck skidded to a stop.

  The men from the recon platoon jumped down from the truck and ran toward the melee. The Japs turned toward them and charged. Butsko and the others ran into the middle of the fight, firing their submachine guns at close range so that they wouldn't hit any Americans. The Japanese soldiers wilted before the shower of submachine-gun bullets, and those who tried to flee were shot in the back. The air was filled with the roar of submachine-gun fire; the sound was so loud that it made everybody's ears ring.

  In a few minutes all the Japs were dead or wounded. Lieutenant Atkins of Charlie Company looked at Butsko in amazement.