Description: This is The Corporal, age twenty-one, a paratrooper, who is secure in his own mortality, held together only by the thin thread of his memories. But in a few moments a Japanese sniper's bullet will hit him in the wrist and knee, bringing him into a reality that he's been trying to escape from since leaving Cayuga Lake. He'll be brought back to face an enemy he's never met, nor ever wanted to. His small-town upbringing and loving family will work against him. He can recall in detail a simpler, easier existence, which his wounds will erase from his life as if it never existed. The Corporal, demolitions expert, who in the next seconds will move into the Twilight Zone-in a desperate search for survival. It was fast approaching night when the oppressive heat of the day would be replaced by the oppressive humidity. The only good thing about the darkness was that the tracer rounds could be seen walking toward their positions. And the Japanese were proving to be an even tougher, more accurate, and certainly more tenacious foe than MacArthur had warned they would be. This was Leyte Island, in the Philippines, a place that The Corporal and the others in the 11th Airborne Division's 5llth Parachute Regiment had come to hate and fear after only the first few days of the fierce battle that would never end-except for the ones who bought it, and there were a lot of those. Too many of them. A heavy mortar round struck about twenty feet from where The Corporal and a half-dozen other paratroopers were hunkered down behind a jumble of boulders that looked as if they'd been dropped into the middle of the jungle. After the initial concussion, a rain of black dirt, chewed-up vegetation, and something else that smelled strongly of copper and something sweet and horribly sour at the same time fell down on them, peppering their helmets. A young man, even younger than The Corporal, and slighter and shorter than The Corporal's slender five-four, suddenly leaped up and tried to run. His helmet, face, and shoulders were covered in blood, and a long, twisted rope of intestine that had fallen from the sky was plastered down one arm from his shoulder to his elbow. He was screaming, his words not recognizable in the almost constant din of battle because the noises coming from his throat were not human. Only the desperate sounds of a frantically frightened man. "Down!" The Corporal shouted. "Get down!" But the private didn't or couldn't hear; it was as if he had turned to run for home and nothing in the world could make him look back, nothing would stop him, until a Japanese Type 92 7.7-mm machine-gun round slammed into the back of his head, exiting out the front of his helmet, and he was thrown forward onto his face, dead before he hit the ground. The Corporal, his mouth slightly open, knew that he shouldn't be affected by this-just the latest death in the dozens, probably hundreds, that he had personally witnessed since New Guinea in June-but he had a vivid imagination. Ernie Pyle or someone like that, he thought, had written something to the effect that a moron died only once but a bright guy died a thousand deaths because he could think out ahead and figure the odds, figure his chances. Probably had something to do with cowardice versus heroism, but right at this moment The Corporal wanted to be anywhere but here, because he'd been figuring the odds for a long time. He hunkered down a little lower into the jungle mud and gore, into his own sweat and the foul body odors of the other grunts packed around him like untidy sardines in a can, and allowed his mind to drift into a fantasy world. Like the war and Leyte, the errant thought intruded in The Corporal's head, the intense noises of the heavy machine-gun fire and mortar rounds they were taking from the Japanese who were steadily sending in reinforcements from Luzon, inescapable. He could see a man aboard a train hurtling down a track somewhere back in the States. He was an ordinary man, maybe in some business that he'd grown tired of; a job and very likely a place from which he wanted to escape. The man was looking up at the conductor who'd come around to collect tickets, and it was clear from the expression on his face that he wasn't happy. That he might have wanted to take off into a dream world. That he would be hurtling down some other track, for someplace else, for a place where he could be happy, could be at peace with himself. Maybe it would happen in his dreams. The Corporal opened his eyes, and he could see pretty much the entire scene. The man was wishing for a better life, not in terms of money but in terms of no stress, and he would fall asleep during his daily commute and dream of such a place. Small-town USA. Only on this day, he gets up in the middle of his dream and sleepwalks to the end of the passenger car, opens the door to the connecting platform, and then without hesitation, with a smile on his face, opens the outer door and, still sleepwalking, steps off the speeding train to his death. Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in the hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps for this man it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Someone was calling his name, but for a moment it didn't register. When his time came, he wouldn't jump up and try to run away, nor would he sleepwalk off a speeding train. It would be different for him. He knew it, could feel it in his gut. There was more for him, more life, more dreams, more everything. "Corporal, for Christ's sake, get your head out!" The Corporal looked to the left, into the eyes of Tom Hafner, his squad sergeant, not two feet away. "What?" he said. But then he had to shout to be heard over the din. "What?" "That Jap pillbox is chewing us up. I'll try to find some defilade around the mound at two eighty, come in from his blind side. I need covering fire." The Corporal looked out and saw the low mound of a hillock to the left. If the Sarge could reach that far, he'd be blocked from view by the Japanese gunners from their heavily fortified position. The others had looked up and were listening to the sergeant, and nodding uncertainly. Fear was on their faces, but determination, too. The only way this war was ever going to end was for them to take orders and to fight as hard as humanly possible. But the fog seemed to be everywhere. Surrounding a man. Making any future less than certain, even improbable. Their platoon of two squads, eight guys and one sergeant in each, plus Lieutenant Henderson from Minnesota, was down to one undermanned squad, one sergeant, and no officer, with no replacements expected anytime soon. "Let's do it." The Sarge motioned toward the hillock about twenty-five yards out. He hesitated a moment, then shouted: "Now!" The Corporal popped up and began firing his M3 Grease Gun on full automatic, short bursts as they'd been taught. The other four grunts did the same, laying down a heavy screen of fire out ahead, walking the line up toward the machine-gun slits in the Japanese position of palm logs and sandbags. The Sarge, a heavyset man ten years older than everyone else in the combined squad, had a potbelly, a fact everyone marveled at because all they'd been eating for the past two weeks were C-rats, and looking at him no one would ever guess he could get to his feet from behind a boulder, let alone do a broken field run, in full kit, faster than any of the kids. But then incoming rounds, which had the right-of-way, were definite motivators. The Sarge, hunched behind the end of the mound of boulders, suddenly leaped forward, making a diagonal path toward the hill. He moved very fast, bent over at the waist, zigzagging through the sometimes thick jungle growth. Almost immediately the Japs spotted him and moved their fire to the left, trying to cut him off. They knew what he was trying to do. The Corporal increased his rate of fire, almost immediately running dry, but it took him only a couple of seconds to reload with a fresh thirty-round box magazine of .45 ammo, slam the bolt back, then pop up again to fire. It was the same thing that everyone else was doing. Larry Pechstein pulled out a grenade, yanked the pin, and tossed it overhand to hit the ground within ten or fifteen yards of the pillbox, and it went off with an impressive bang. It hadn't caused any damage, yet the pop must have impressed the Japs, because their fire diminished, just as the Sarge flopped down behind the hummock, putting it between him and the pillbox. He gave the squad a thumbs-up, and The Corporal and the others hunkered back down behind the boulders, and the Japan-ese machine guns opened up again on their position. From somewhere off to the right were a mortar launcher and crew, and they began to lob round after round over the trees again, bracketing the squad's position. The Corporal looked over at Pechstein, who was from somewhere near Jacksonville, he thought, and at the others, Yablonski from Hackensack, Lamb from Waterloo, and Horvak from Cleveland, who'd claimed at one time or another to have owned just about every model Detroit had ever made before the war, and himself, of course from Syracuse. Five young men, soldiers all. Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, Ohio, and New York, with the usual backgrounds, all stuck in a situation beyond their making or understanding. There is no logic here, just a seemingly endless night

Please Wait