Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

And then Satariano rose up, firing — he’d only been out of ammo, and reloading! — and once again the enemy was toppling like dominoes, the choppy roar of the tommy gun echoing through the clearing, drowning out cries of war and pain.

Wermuth picked off a few with the M-1, but it was his corporal who continued to rain death on the horde. When the second drum was empty, the boy calmly drew his .45 automatic — by this time only half a dozen enemy remained — and when that was spent, he unsheathed the Filipino sword from his webbing belt, and met a Samurai-wielding foe blade for blade.

The would-be Samurai, however, did not know his way around the sword and missed Satariano in the most clumsy fashion. When the American swung around with the bolo, the blade met the enemy’s neck, and the soldier’s head went flying like a coconut shook from a tree.

The corpse stood there for a moment, a geyser of blood rising to the gods; the dead man weaved, as if trying to decide what to do next, and then made the obvious choice by toppling.

The remaining three fled toward the trees, but Wermuth got one of them with the rifle.

The sight of the boy standing in the midst of the corpse-strewn battlefield, Wermuth would not soon forget — unless, of course, the captain died right there in the foxhole. Corporal Satariano made a slow circle, while his machine-gun barrel traced a smoky question mark in the air, and — as casual and methodical as a merchant auditing his inventory — he again threaded through looking for fakers.

Then the corporal trotted over to his captain’s position, checked the wound, said, “You’ll live,” and hoisted the bigger man up onto his shoulders and hauled him into the thickness of jungle.

“I’ll... I’ll put you up for the Medal of Honor for this, lad,” Wermuth said.

“Let’s get back alive, first,” the boy said.

Wermuth passed out shortly thereafter, but he learned from his Scouts that un Demonio Angelico had refused to let any of them relieve him, personally carrying his captain to the aid station.

The next morning — a blistering, muggy replica of the day before — Major General Jonathan Wainwright, commander of the US Army Forces on Bataan, paid a visit to the recuperating Captain Arthur Wermuth at Base Hospital #2.

A tall, lanky fifty-nine (his friends called him “Skinny”), the general ought to have cut an unprepossessing figure — weak-chinned, beady-eyed, jug-eared, long-necked, stoop-shouldered, cueball-bald. His khaki uniform had long since faded and shrunk, the pants of the high-water variety, his knobby knees bulging. An old knee injury from falling off a horse prompted the use of a cane — in Bataan, a carved bamboo stick.

And yet the impression this man gave his troops was one of cool strength — strength of character, and even physical power.

An old-school cavalryman, Major General Wainwright of Walla Walla, Washington, never ordered his men to do anything he would not himself attempt. His near-daily trips to the front had made him beloved among the troops (though stationed on nearby Corregidor, General MacArthur had set foot on Bataan exactly once, and was widely known among the men as “Dugout Doug”). Wainwright fought side by side with the enlisted men, and he and Marco, his trusty Filipino driver, had once rushed and knocked out a Japanese rifle position.

But the soft-spoken general did not consider himself in any way a hero. He had the same job as his men: to fight.

Wainwright’s field headquarters were concentrated in Little Baguio, a flat area in the hills bordered by otherworldly trees with enormous trunks and vines extending from their tops to the earth. From Little Baguio, supplies, munitions, clothes, and food (such as there was) were distributed to the front line. The nearby small town of Cabcaben consisted of two palm-lined dusty streets leading to a bay-front stone jetty frequented by supply barges; this was the southeastern tip of Bataan, the beach smooth and low, barbed wire stretching out into the shallow water like nasty seaweed.

The laying of this barbed wire Wainwright had personally supervised; for all his apparent reserve, the general within himself was a restless, anxious commander who felt the need to check on every detail of his defensive position. He preferred to be at the front with his men, not weighed down under reports and memos behind the lines.

The general made the short trip — the hospital was just behind Cabcaben — in his command car driven by a temporary driver, a Filipino who drove so timidly, so slowly, Wainwright thought he would go mad.

The hospital was a mammoth open-air ward of some three thousand beds under a tin roof; foxholes had been dug under most of the beds, a practical notion Wainwright applauded — on two occasions, bombs had fallen nearby. The patients ranged from the badly wounded — arms and legs missing, one man with half his face gone — to sufferers of malaria and malnutrition... though many a man with either (or both) of those maladies remained at the front.

A hatchet-faced fortyish nurse in regular army khaki shirt and pants led the general to the captain’s bedside; the scent of disinfectant in the open-air ward made Wainwright’s nostrils twitch. The general took his time, acknowledging every solider he passed with a smile and a comment. Finally, midward, he was deposited at Captain Wermuth’s bedside.

His chest heavily bandaged, the gauze spotted scarlet, Wermuth was prone — the beds did not allow a sitting position, nor for that matter did the captain’s wound; but the dapperly mustached patient managed a chipper salute just the same.

“I hear you’re a lucky man,” Wainwright said, pulling up a metal chair, taking off his cap to reveal the brown egg of his skull. “If you have an extra rabbit’s foot, I’ll take it.”

“Skinny,” Wermuth said to his old friend, “if there was one spare rabbit’s foot in this hellhole, it’d be eaten.”

Wainwright smiled slightly, then said, “What’s the prognosis?”

“Well, as I guess you know, slug missed my lung and went out the back, clean as a whistle. Should be getting my boys in mischief again in a week, maybe less.”

“That your opinion or the medic’s?”

“We’re still... haggling.”

Wainwright let out air in what was part laugh, part sigh. “Quite a story going around, you and your corporal in that clearing. Never thought you fellas would top your antisniper-detail score.”

Last month Wermuth and his Scouts had cleaned out three hundred Nips who’d infiltrated the lines.

“Afraid we only got fifty-eight this time, Skinny. Personally, I only got eight. But my corporal bagged an even fifty his own self.”

“Fifty? Who is this boy — Jack the Giant Killer?”

“Michael the avenging angel’s more like it,” Wermuth said, and told the tale, which required no embellishment.

Wainwright whistled long and low. “He deserves a DSC.”

“Distinguished service doesn’t cover it, Skinny. I want to put the lad in for a Medal of Honor.”

Wainwright’s eyes tightened. “Perhaps we should, at that. That might well prove the first of this war, if it goes through.”

Wermuth smiled, savoring the favorable response. “Can I ask another favor, sir?”

“I get nervous when you don’t call me ‘Skinny’... but, of course. Ask away.”

“Don’t send the boy out without me. I’ll only be a few days. Find something for him to do, till then.”

Wainwright chuckled. “Arthur, this boy sounds like he can take of himself.”

“I know. Better than two old gravel crunchers like us. Just that... kid and me’ve been together through this whole damn campaign. We’re kind of each other’s rabbit foots. Feet.”