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Authors: R.V. Burgin
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corpsman, over and over.
It took a corpsman no more than a minute and a half to get to the foxhole. But afterward Jim said it felt like ten minutes. Combat would do that to you. Hours seemed to go by in minutes. Minutes would stretch out into hours.
The farther we got from Suicide Creek, the stronger the resistance from the Japs. After we took a little knob called Hill 150, they wounded our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel David McDougal. Then they got McDougal’s executive officer, Major Joseph Skoczylas. So on January 8 we had a new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Walt.
We were fighting uphill now, advancing in a wide arc through the jungle. It was raining, always raining. Every stream was swollen and the ground was gumbo. Moving forward was like trying to walk through oatmeal. I was still carrying around that mortar base plate, but we couldn’t use it much because of the trees, so 90 percent of the time I took my place up front with the riflemen.
Colonel Walt was looking for a location identified on a document they’d taken from a dead Jap. It was called Aogiri Ridge, and it was apparently very important to the Japs, because the document warned that the ridge must be held at any cost. All evening we slogged on, dragging a .37 artillery piece that was our only heavy weapon. We’d load it with grapeshot or armor-piercing shells, depending on what we were faced with. From time to time we’d stop and fire it to clear out a machine-gun nest or a bunker. As we set up they’d fire at us and the bullets would sing off the quarter-inch steel shield on the front of the gun. We took turns, five or six of us at a time, wrestling that rascal up the hill in the mud. I pushed part of the way, slipping and sliding, vines snatching at my boots. As a reward they let me fire it. By dark we were sitting along the crest of a ridge, exhausted and facing a line of Jap bunkers. As we were digging in we could hear them in front of us, a dozen or so yards away.
After dark they started yelling at us. About ten thirty, one of them got out in front calling, “Raider! Raider! Why you no fire? Why you no fire?”
Raider was our machine-gun sergeant.
In a calm, quiet voice, Raider told his gunner, “Give him a short burst, about two hundred rounds.” And he did. That Jap was very quiet after that.
About an hour and a half past midnight, they came screaming at us through the rain, hollering “Marine, you die!” I was in a foxhole with Jim Burke. I’d had bayonet drill in boot camp along with everyone else, but I’d made up my mind that as long as I had ammunition I wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to use my bayonet. But I saw a Jap silhouetted at the edge of the foxhole. I was on my knees with my rifle pointed at him and I shoved my bayonet into his chest as hard and deep as I could, right beneath the breastbone. In one motion I leveraged him off the ground and swung him over my shoulder, pulling the trigger all the way. I don’t know how many shots I put into him—four or five anyway.
He was dead when he landed.
We fought off the charge, and then there was silence, except for the pit-pat of the rain. Then they charged again. And again. We were running low on ammo and we were holding our fire until they were almost on top of us. All the time Colonel Walt in the command post about fifty yards back was calling in long-range artillery, which was crashing almost in our faces.
It was one of those shells that got Lonnie Howard—the guy I mentioned earlier who had a premonition and asked me to keep his wrist-watch.
That night we took five banzai charges. In the half-light of morning we could see Japs sprawled everywhere. In some places you could have stepped from body to body without touching the ground. Bleary-eyed and weary, we wandered out and counted more than two hundred. The rest had slipped away in the darkness. After a nerve-wracking fight, we had Aogiri Ridge to ourselves.
Now I was glad
It took a corpsman no more than a minute and a half to get to the foxhole. But afterward Jim said it felt like ten minutes. Combat would do that to you. Hours seemed to go by in minutes. Minutes would stretch out into hours.
The farther we got from Suicide Creek, the stronger the resistance from the Japs. After we took a little knob called Hill 150, they wounded our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel David McDougal. Then they got McDougal’s executive officer, Major Joseph Skoczylas. So on January 8 we had a new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Walt.
We were fighting uphill now, advancing in a wide arc through the jungle. It was raining, always raining. Every stream was swollen and the ground was gumbo. Moving forward was like trying to walk through oatmeal. I was still carrying around that mortar base plate, but we couldn’t use it much because of the trees, so 90 percent of the time I took my place up front with the riflemen.
Colonel Walt was looking for a location identified on a document they’d taken from a dead Jap. It was called Aogiri Ridge, and it was apparently very important to the Japs, because the document warned that the ridge must be held at any cost. All evening we slogged on, dragging a .37 artillery piece that was our only heavy weapon. We’d load it with grapeshot or armor-piercing shells, depending on what we were faced with. From time to time we’d stop and fire it to clear out a machine-gun nest or a bunker. As we set up they’d fire at us and the bullets would sing off the quarter-inch steel shield on the front of the gun. We took turns, five or six of us at a time, wrestling that rascal up the hill in the mud. I pushed part of the way, slipping and sliding, vines snatching at my boots. As a reward they let me fire it. By dark we were sitting along the crest of a ridge, exhausted and facing a line of Jap bunkers. As we were digging in we could hear them in front of us, a dozen or so yards away.
After dark they started yelling at us. About ten thirty, one of them got out in front calling, “Raider! Raider! Why you no fire? Why you no fire?”
Raider was our machine-gun sergeant.
In a calm, quiet voice, Raider told his gunner, “Give him a short burst, about two hundred rounds.” And he did. That Jap was very quiet after that.
About an hour and a half past midnight, they came screaming at us through the rain, hollering “Marine, you die!” I was in a foxhole with Jim Burke. I’d had bayonet drill in boot camp along with everyone else, but I’d made up my mind that as long as I had ammunition I wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to use my bayonet. But I saw a Jap silhouetted at the edge of the foxhole. I was on my knees with my rifle pointed at him and I shoved my bayonet into his chest as hard and deep as I could, right beneath the breastbone. In one motion I leveraged him off the ground and swung him over my shoulder, pulling the trigger all the way. I don’t know how many shots I put into him—four or five anyway.
He was dead when he landed.
We fought off the charge, and then there was silence, except for the pit-pat of the rain. Then they charged again. And again. We were running low on ammo and we were holding our fire until they were almost on top of us. All the time Colonel Walt in the command post about fifty yards back was calling in long-range artillery, which was crashing almost in our faces.
It was one of those shells that got Lonnie Howard—the guy I mentioned earlier who had a premonition and asked me to keep his wrist-watch.
That night we took five banzai charges. In the half-light of morning we could see Japs sprawled everywhere. In some places you could have stepped from body to body without touching the ground. Bleary-eyed and weary, we wandered out and counted more than two hundred. The rest had slipped away in the darkness. After a nerve-wracking fight, we had Aogiri Ridge to ourselves.
Now I was glad
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