STORIES FROM THE PACIFIC

The enemy gunner saw them and fired. Both were hit before they could get back to cover. One round penetrated a satchel charge the lieutenant had slung over his shoulder.

A satchel charge packs enough power to blow a tank off its tracks. Roberts brought it along in case we could not recapture the gun and had to destroy it. He fell with the charge under his body just as it exploded and blew him into small pieces of flesh and bone. Fragments of the satchel charge also tore into Frankie Arsenault, who was about ten feet behind the lieutenant. He, too, died instantly.

The tossed grenades erupted and the gun went silent. The enemy crew was dead and the gun was destroyed. Sergeant Tover tumbled into the bush beside me. He lay on his side in the fetal position holding his stomach. Blood was gushing through his fingers. He stared at me with panic in his eyes but did not speak. He reached out and held my ankle with his bloody left hand and looked at me...his look was a question mark. I had no answer. His grip suddenly relaxed as he died. I was now shaking with pure terror but my adrenaline was flowing. I knew I had to do something and I had to do it now.

We were unaware at the time but during the night a large Japanese force had moved into position along the other side of ridge. The firing of the 30 cal. was the opening shot of a massive “Banzai” charge. The bush all along the top of the hill resounded with shots. The Japanese were attacking in strength with thousands of enemy soldiers streaming over the ridge and attacking our battalion position on the Force Beachhead Line.

We had landed with but a single division. The plan was to cut a swath across the island from east to west and then we were to divide into two units, with one moving north and the other south. When both units reached the sea at the ends of the island, the campaign would be over and the island would be declared secured. Unfortunately, continuous flanking attempts by the enemy had forced us to expand the front line until it was many thousands of yards long...much too long to be defended by one division. The units on the line were now spread too thin to provide adequate defense of the terrain we had taken.

Enemy scouts had been probing the lines every night. They soon realized our extended situation and reported back to their commanders with details as to the location of weak points. A full-scale counterattack was in order in an attempt to break through the F.B.L. at the point protected by our battalion.

Jap soldiers, two or three squads, came racing down the gully. We poured fire directly into them and they slowed and took cover. We were terribly outnumbered, but I knew we had to delay them as long as possible.

I will always wonder with great puzzlement why men will take their lives in their hands and hold them out and offer them in exchange for the protection of their friends. Why not just turn and run for safety...who would blame us? We had knocked out the gun. Three men were dead. We were in imminent danger of being killed if we stayed in the ravine.

The full answer still evades me but I knew, as the other men knew, that we had to hold as long as possible so that the rest of our outfit down below would have a better chance to survive the coming onslaught. We knew the Japanese were coming, they did not. They needed time to get ready and the longer we held our ground, the more their chances improved. Although there were only four of us, we knew we had to hold.

***

I was given the obviously unenviable distinction of being chosen to move the officers’ shithouse.

Even in field sanitation, the officers have an edge in comfort. An enlisted men’s head is a small simple tent covering two 10’ long boards sitting on supports about 18 inches high and set over a six-foot deep slit trench. There are five oval holes cut in each board. Relief is obtained by dropping one’s pants and sitting on a hole until the sphincter muscles perform and the waste material falls unceremoniously into the slit trench.

An officers’ head is built with two rows of two seats, back-to-back with an upright partition between them. Four men can occupy the premises and sit comfortably, two on each side, with a backrest to support them as they casually peruse their reading material. The slit trench is square in shape to accommodate this formation. The tent is a large pyramidal style to allow for more space inside.

For my detail, I chose six men I knew would join with me in making the new officers’ head a monument to our mastery of the ridiculous. We used dynamite and dug the hole in one day. The second day, the detail built the set of four back-to-back seats. The third day, we put lye and systemic absorbants in the hole and installed the seats over the slit trench. It was when we were positioning the seats over the trench that the whole purpose of the mission came into play.

Flush with expectation, I sent Clay German to H&S to get some long, flat-headed nails, and Harold Boynton to the communications tent to steal a field telephone and some combat wire. We began to assemble what we hoped would provide real entertainment for the troops.

Pete pounded a long thin, flat-headed nail through each side of one of the toilet seats. I attached the bare end of a strand of combat wire to the nails where they projected through the bottom of the board. Inside the head, the wires were buried out of sight just below the surface. Outside we then ran the wires to a place in the tall blade grass about fifty feet away. Pete did the same thing to one of the seats in the opposite row. We then stripped the insulation from the other ends of both sets of twisted wires, fifty feet back in the blade grass.

The following day, the detail moved the tent from the old officers’ head and erected it over the new facilities. Palm tree trunks were buried like fence posts at the four corners and the tie-downs were attached to hold the tent erect and steady. The new officers’ head of Easy Company was ready for its shakedown cruise. The first officer to foul the pit was Lieutenant Clovis. However, the first occupant to sit in one of the wired toilet openings was none other than our beloved Lieutenant Armitage. Every enlisted man in the Company knew something had been planned. They knew not what, but they waited expectantly, apprehensive, ever hopeful.

Pete was fifty feet behind the head standing in the tall grass. It was a species of blade grass with tall thin stalks and tiny sharp leaves that left little slices like paper cuts on any exposed flesh. It was a perfect refuge; no one could run through it without getting badly slashed. I made sure I was out in plain sight of the company when Pete attached the two bare wires