Chapter 18
"I'm walking along and all of a sudden I come
mug to mug with two of the sons of bitches.
They turn and then start running away, like scared rats
and I take a grenade and throw it after them.
They're just a little too far out of my range,
but the explosion seems to make them groggy and confused
because they turn right around and run straight toward me,
and all I have to do is stand and shoot."
"My, my, what a hero you are. Why, I'll bet
that girl of yours will be mighty proud of you
when she marches down the church aisle with that 4-F!"
". . .So this stinking Jap comes out of his hole
and lays there rolling in the dirt begging for water,
One of our guys thinks he's got himself a prisoner
and strolls over with his canteen to toast the occasion.
As soon as he gets near enough, the little Nip
pulls the pin from a grenade stuck up his ass
and blows himself clean to hell-and-gone, water boy and all."
"God yes, them Japs are tricky. We surrounded a dugout
and one of them came out carrying a white flag
and looking back and waving as though more were following.
Scottie and Chisholm got up from hiding to receive him
and then were shot down by his partners in waiting.
Kill him? Why, we tore him up in little bits. . ."
"Those Jap snipers are mighty smooth operators. They build nests
in several trees tied together, so that when they're spotted
all they have to do is cut the trees loose
and sit back and laugh while we try to decide
which one of the trees they are actually up in."
"Hell, you ain't seen nothing. The one us boys got
had a long vine tied to a clump of grass
on one end and to a bush on the other.
The little muffdiver located himself in a tree in between
and took the middle of the vine up with him.
Then when we started shooting he pulled on the vine
as though there were men behind the bush and grass.
We sure wasted plenty of lead before we found him. . ."
"You should have been with us. Ours had a mortar
with its mount lashed to the limb of a tree.
He kept lobbing shells at us from about 500 yards
and even had a special telephone up there with him
so he could tell his friends how he was doing."
". . .You know, when I was training back in the States,
I just barely qualified on the range with the M-1.
I guess I just didn't give a damn about shooting —
those positions they made me fire from were too uncomfortable.
But out here I shot the way I wanted to,
without using the sling or holding my breath before squeezing,
or worrying about where my elbows, wrists and legs were. . .
And boy, I got six Japs out of nine shots."
"Don't kid yourself. Those guys are plenty hard to hit.
Sometimes they'll lay out there and snap bamboo sticks together
or pull their bolts back just to draw your shots.
And they keep digging in all the time under fire
and if they get three shovelfuls loose, they're not targets."
". . .I found an abandoned machine gun in pretty good shape
so I turned it to the enemy and started shooting.
That barrel got so damn hot it blistered my hands
but I wouldn't leave it go for love or money.
"You see, it made a singing noise like mother's teakettle!"
