40 Thieves on Saipan by Joseph Tachovsky

Author:Joseph Tachovsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

At 1000, Riseley began to fortify a shell hole near the water’s edge of Red Two. Dozens of Japanese infiltrated from the north just as entrenching tools began digging his temporary headquarters. The enemy sliced through a staging area for the wounded, with Riseley’s command post directly in their path.

“Any word from Ski?” Riseley asked his XO, McLeod.

“No, Jim.”

“Ski!” Riseley hollered.

A young boot named Albert Hauske, near Riseley’s shell hole, heard the call and jumped in.

“Yes sir!” Hauske reported.

“Who in the hell are you?” Riseley questioned. “And don’t call me sir! How green are you?”

“As green as they come, si…” Hauske stopped himself short.

“I’m not looking for you, I need Ski.”

“I am Ski, Albert Hauske, junior language offi…”

“Alright, then,” Riseley interrupted. “You’re Ski Two. I want Ski One.”

Just then Ski strode into the shell hole. “Yes, Jim.”

“What’s your status?”

“One man down. Lewis.”

“Japs are coming from the north.” Riseley said. Ski needed no instructions. He left running, yelling out “Moore! Mullins! Old dead dog!”

“Who was that, um, Jim?” Hauske asked. “He walked right through those bullets like he was walking in a park.”

“He’s the leader of my Scout-Snipers… I take it this is your first combat?”

Hauske nodded in the affirmative.

“At first it’s a natural reaction to duck,” Riseley handed an entrenching tool to Hauske. “But when the bullets are zinging all around you, there’s no point in ducking.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re never going to hear the one that gets you. With that bit of sage advice, get to work and start digging, Ski Two.”

Moore’s Browning Automatic Rifle and Mullins’s Unertl-scoped Springfield swiftly eliminated the infiltration from the north. At 1045 Riseley ordered the command post to be moved two hundred yards inland.

“Old dead dog!” Ski gave the word and led his 40 Thieves over the log wall toward the Japanese. Lewis purposely lagged behind, pretending to fiddle with his Reising submachine gun, acting as though the bolt had seized up.

“It’s jammed. Rusted,” he said to Strombo as he passed by.

“Here’s mine,” Strombo replied, knowing there was nothing wrong with the Reising. “I’ll take yours. You can’t stay here. Now c’mon, follow me.” The swap was made.

Lewis followed reluctantly, leaving the corpse-strewn beach and running inland. Compelled to look back, he stopped and turned. His feet were planted on Saipan, but his mind returned to Tarawa and images of thousands of bodies baked, blackened, and bloated in the sun.

Tarawa was where he had learned what happens to a man after he’s shot and killed in the Pacific. Lewis had watched the process: within a few short hours in the searing tropical heat, a man’s body turned completely black because all the oxygen had left his blood; after eight hours, flies crawled inside the body, breeding; slowly the body would swell, completely filling with maggots. Bellies heaved as though alive. Clothes burst at the seams.

“C’mon!” Strombo yelled again. Lewis shook his head, trying to clear his mind, and followed.

The platoon pushed into a coconut grove, a few hundred yards inland.

“Secure the area!” Ski ordered.

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