The Last Test of Courage by Chris Glatte

Author:Chris Glatte [Glatte, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

14

Hukwang Valley, Burma

March 1944

Shawn Cooper and the rest of Operational Group Bellevue watched the Kachin Rangers stream past them. They’d just returned from a four-day patrol. They wore green U.S. Army–issued uniforms. Despite the mud and sweat stains, the unit looked sharp and deadly. Most beamed broad smiles at them, but a few had stoic faces, as though they’d seen and done grisly acts.

JoJo leaned toward Shawn and said, “I heard they had another successful ambush. Claim they killed twenty, but it’s probably more.”

Shawn raised an eyebrow. “More?” he asked.

“Yeah, they’ll give you an accurate number of kills from the initial contact, but they don’t tell you about the ones that died soon after.”

Shawn nodded his understanding. “Yeah, those punji stakes are nasty.”

“I came across a Jap body who hadn’t been dead more ‘n a couple of hours. The only wound I could find was a punctured foot. Figured it was one of them poisoned punjis. His leg had ballooned to at least triple the normal size. Looked ready to burst if I’d just touched it. The infection probably killed him.”

Shawn gulped. The thought sent shivers up his spine. Stepping on one of the sharpened stakes that the Kachin placed all around their ambush sites in shallow hidden pits would be awful. They used a deadly poison extracted from a plant, or if that option wasn’t available, they simply dipped the punji tips in their own excrement to assure infection. Like much of the Kachin fighting methods, it was brutal, but highly effective.

“I sure wouldn’t wanna step on one of those things. They give me the willies.”

JoJo agreed. “Yeah, I’d rather get blown to smithereens or shot in the head. That Jap I found—his face was frozen in sheer agony. Terrible way to go.” He shrugged it off. “But they sure earned it.”

The image of the bomber crew’s dismembered and bullet-riddled bodies flashed into his mind. He felt the old anger rising in his belly and he touched the tip of Clem’s baseball hat that he’d found at the crash site.

“I can’t wait to get back out there. We still haven’t gotten payback for what they did to Clem and the rest.”

JoJo’s mouth turned down. “By the sounds of it, Merrill’s boys are in the thick of it at Walawbum.”

Shawn had heard the same scuttlebutt. He wasn’t surprised. Since Bellevue had arrived back in the area, they’d seen sizeable forces of Japanese moving from Myitkyina, directly into the path of the two Chinese Divisions. The Chinese 22nd and 33rd Divisions had hit a wall that included thick jungle and veteran Japanese forces.

“Well, we’re doing our jobs—at least the Kachin are. Look at ’em,” he indicated the men still streaming past. “They’re happy as clams.”

JoJo said, “Yeah, they’re having a field day out there. Hitting supply lines and rear echelon troops is easy pickings for them. I suspect the Nips’ll start beefing up their supply convoys, though. They’ve been hitting them hard for almost a month now. The Nips’ll catch on soon enough.

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