Robert Conroy - Rising Sun

“Banzai!”

“Either attack or shut the fuck up,” someone yelled and Farris agreed. Do something!

They got their wish. “Oh Jesus, here they come!”

Shapes became dimly visible in the whipping snow. The enemy had gotten to within a hundred yards of them thanks to the crummy weather. Now they were so close he could see expressions on their faces. All hell broke loose as every American soldier opened fire with everything he had. There were a dozen men in Farris’s bunker, and along with their rifles, they had a pair of BARs and a .30-caliber Browning machine gun. They all opened up and chopped into the onrushing Japanese.

Farris worked his rifle as rapidly as he could. Aim, fire, work the bolt, aim, fire, work the bolt, and every five bullets, change the clip. He saw Japanese soldiers tumble and fall. Some got up and tried to continue and were shot again and again until they finally fell and stopped moving. Some ran past his little fortress, while others, many others, were headed straight toward him.

“Jesus, they got tanks!” someone yelled, and Farris thought it was Stecher in an adjacent bunker. Two awkward and ugly metal shapes noisily clambered into view. Their machine guns belched fire and their cannon boomed. Shells from the tanks hit near his bunker and raised clods of mud and debris. Somehow, Farris recalled that Japanese tanks were supposed to be miserable, but these looked like monsters to him.

One of his men started hurling grenades and the first wave of Japanese faltered. Still more grenades filled the air. The man who’d thrown the first grenade grabbed his face and fell backward, screaming. An American artillery shell landed in front of one of the tanks, showering it with dirt and making Farris fall back from the shock. Machine-gun bullets raked the tank, but did no harm. An American jumped out and ran through shocked Japanese and up to the tank. Jesus, Farris realized, it was Stecher. The sergeant pried open the driver’s hatch and dropped in a grenade. A moment later, the tank exploded, blowing Stecher aside like a leaf.

The second tank hit a rock and threw a tread. Instead of staying safe in their iron hull, the crew jumped out and began running insanely toward Farris.

An officer with a glistening curved sword waved it and urged his men on. Farris aimed and shot him in the chest.

“Good one, Lieutenant,” one of his men said.

But here were just too many Japanese. They swarmed on to Farris’s position. Some continued past, while others howled and attempted to jab and stab at the men in the trench. A couple of Farris’s men panicked and clambered out of the bunker and began running to the second line of defenses. Farris too thought it was time to leave but he couldn’t. A dying Japanese soldier had fallen on him and he was stuck under the body. Other Japanese jumped or fell among Farris and the remaining Americans and it became a killing fest, as men on both sides used fists, knives, and teeth. Farris grabbed one Japanese soldier by the throat and strangled him until something hit him on the top of his head and he fell to the muddy bottom of the trench. More bodies piled on him and he tried to claw his way up. There was an explosion and something slammed into his shoulder. He blacked out as excruciating pain overwhelmed him.

Gavin’s second defense line consisted of any soldier who could fire a weapon, along with the Alaskan Volunteers and a number of other local people who’d signed up for the duration. He watched in horror as the human wave of enemy soldiers ignored brutal casualties that would have stopped a normal army and overwhelmed much of the first line. Of course they would ignore their own casualties, he thought angrily. They came here to die.

Many of the forward bunkers held out, but others could not. Fleeing American soldiers ran toward him, comingled with charging Japanese.

Gavin’s people began firing as quickly as they could, even though they were aware that some of their shots might hit their own men. It was that or die themselves, he thought bitterly.

His artillery, mainly 105mm pack howitzers that had been carried to Fairbanks by mule the last few miles, fired as rapidly as they could, shooting over sights that were set as low as the gunners could make them. “Open sights” was the next order he heard and never thought he would hear in his lifetime. It meant the enemy was almost too close to shoot at.

Gavin was in an open bunker with Bear and Ruby, among others, and they kept shooting, mowing down the Japanese who wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop charging. Bodies piled up in front of them in a writhing mass. Ruby was beside him, blazing away. Gavin recalled telling her that women shouldn’t be on the firing line, and her telling him to go screw himself.

A screaming Japanese soldier stood directly in front of him, a grenade in his hand. Ruby shot him and he fell backward. The grenade exploded, shredding the Japanese soldier.

Both Americans and Japanese hurled grenades as if they were snowballs in a schoolyard fight. Yet another Japanese soldier appeared a few feet away and someone cut him down with a burst from a BAR.

“This can’t go on forever,” Bear said, gasping in pain. There was blood on his leg and he was having a hard time standing.

A Japanese soldier jumped the sandbags and stumbled forward. Gavin fired, but he clicked on an empty chamber. He was out of ammo. “Down,” Ruby ordered, and shot the Japanese in the head as Gavin ducked.

Gavin reloaded, wheeled, and looked for a new target. There weren’t any. The ground in front of the bunker was piled sometimes three deep with Japanese dead and dying. He looked at the other positions in the second line and saw much the same thing. The firing was dying out and all around an unnatural silence was beginning to fall. Two tanks were burning in front of his first line, and another had been destroyed to his right. The Japanese armored threat was over, but what about their infantry?

Gavin clambered to the top of the sandbags and looked farther. The few Japanese soldiers left were still screaming their fury, but running aimlessly and were cut down as he watched.

Bear climbed up and stood beside him despite the wound in his leg. “Fuck me, colonel, if we haven’t just run out of Japs.”

Gavin grunted and gave the order for his men to move out. It was time to retake what they had lost.

A thin wave of men and a handful of women moved slowly across the battlefield. A grenade exploded and a man screamed. A Japanese soldier had just killed himself and taken an American with him.

“Make sure they’re dead,” someone yelled. “Kill them. Kill the fuckers!”

Gavin wanted to stop it, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His men had a right to protect themselves from Japanese lunacy.

As they moved to the original defense line, their walk was punctuated with sporadic gunfire as guaranteed death was delivered to the Japanese. Their wounded were put out of their misery before they could kill more Americans. Japanese prisoners, Gavin thought ruefully, would be few and far between. It might not be what the Geneva Convention said was correct, but blame belonged with the Japanese.

As they reached the outer line of bunkers, American bodies began to be found among the Japanese. Some had tried to retreat and been shot and hacked for their efforts, while others were clearly facing toward the enemy. Gavin seethed. He wondered what else he could have done to save his men. He had little artillery, no armor, and the weather had stripped him of any air cover, or even the ability to shoot the Japs at long range. The sight of so many American dead would haunt him for the rest of his days.

A number of bunkers had been bypassed by the Japanese human wave, and the Americans inside them were too shocked to do anything but wave feebly in relief.