Days of Infamy

“We tried our best,” Shimizu said. “Maybe a tank could take that house. Infantry can’t, not by itself.” Murakami only shrugged. He didn’t dare contradict a corporal, but he didn’t believe him, either. Shimizu went on, “Besides, what can they do to us that the Yankees’ machine guns wouldn’t have?” That got home. The young soldier shivered and nodded.

No one ever said a word about the retreat. An hour and a half later, Aichi dive bombers screamed down out of the sky. They pulverized the position the luckless company hadn’t been able to overrun. The order to advance went out again. With the defenses shattered, the Japanese had no trouble pushing forward toward Wahiawa.

Why didn’t they send in the bombers before the Americans chewed us up? Shimizu wondered. But he had no one he could ask that question. It stayed unspoken. The fight went on.

HAVING GOT WHAT he’d asked for, Lieutenant Jim Peterson quickly discovered it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Since he was still a young man, he fondly imagined this discovery to be unique to himself. Everyone around him was too busy trying to stay alive to tell him any different.

The Navy might have been willing to slap a tin hat on his head, toss him a rifle, and send him off to the front. Once he got there, the Army showed itself less than delighted to have him. A sergeant looked at him and said, “Sir, you’re going to have to shed those captain’s badges before you get a bunch of people killed.”

“Captain’s…? Oh.” A Navy captain-which had been Peterson’s first thought-was the equivalent of a bird colonel in the Army. But the two silver bars of a Navy lieutenant matched an Army captain’s rank emblem. Peterson said, “I didn’t come here to command a company.”

“Damn good thing,” the sergeant said. Put him in Navy blue and he’d have made a good CPO. He paused to light a King Sano, then went on, “Up here, your rank don’t mean shit-pardon my French-on account of you don’t know anything. If you were a Marine… But you’re not. Tell you the truth, what’s likely go

“If I can take out a couple of Japs first, it won’t be for nothing,” Peterson said savagely. “I’m no infantry officer, but I can shoot. I know how to take orders, too.”

For the first time, the sergeant looked at him as if he were something more than a fly in the soup. Peterson realized he’d said the right thing, even if it was at least half by accident. After blowing a meditative smoke ring, the sergeant said, “Okay, sir. That’s fair enough. As of now, you’re Private, uh”-he looked down to check the paperwork in front of him-“Private Peterson. That suit you?”

“You bet!” Peterson said. The sergeant looked at him. He realized something more was expected. “Uh, yes, Sergeant!” This man was suddenly his superior.

“Okay.” The noncom nodded. “Now, then, like I told you, get rid of those silly-ass silver bars.”

That was an order. He’d claimed he knew how to take them. “Yes, Sergeant,” he said again, and removed them. He felt younger with them in his pocket, as if nothing that had happened since A

“Tell you what I’m going to do,” the sergeant said meditatively. “I’m going to send you to the garrison guarding Kolekole Pass, off to the west of Schofield Barracks. That’ll help me peel some trained soldiers out of there and put ’em in a part of the line where there’s more going on.”

Peterson realized he’d just been handed the Army equivalent of the coast defense of South Dakota. He started to say that he’d come up here to fight, not to make it easier for somebody else to. The words didn’t pass his lips. Privates didn’t get to make protests like that. The sergeant undoubtedly knew more about how things were going than he did. He managed a nod. “All right, Sergeant.”

“There you go,” the noncom said. “That’s almost always the right answer. Truck full of beans and stuff heading over there pretty soon. You hustle, you can scrounge a lift. And you better hope you don’t see too many Japs there. You do, we’re in deep shit. Go on, scram. I got more things to worry about besides you.”

Off Peterson went. He did catch the truck, and rode in the cab with the driver. The kid behind the wheel was named Billy Joe McKe

“How do you know they won’t try somewhere else?” Peterson asked.

McKe

The truck rumbled through Schofield Barracks. The east-west road that cut the immense base in half remained intact. The barracks, and all the other buildings around the facility, had taken a hell of a beating. Burned-out cars and trucks had been hastily dragged off the road. They sprawled alongside it, a terrible tangle of twisted metal. Peterson didn’t like to think about the men who’d been inside them when they were hit.

West of the base, the land began climbing toward the mountains. The closer Peterson got to them, the more he started to think Billy Joe McKe

Halfway through Kolekole Pass, the road stopped. The mountains loomed up on either side. The American detachment faced west. It boasted some field guns, several nicely sited machine guns, and a couple of command cars-soldiers called them peeps-with pintle-mounted machine guns of their own for mobile firepower.

Peterson helped McKe

“We give away a dozen and we get one back,” grumbled the major in charge of the garrison. By the disgusted look on his face, this wasn’t the first time that had happened. “Pretty soon we’ll have all the guns in the world and not a soul to shoot ’em.”

He stood in no serious danger of having all the guns in the world. Whether he’d run out of men was a different question. The question related to it was whether he ought to have any men there at all. The more Peterson looked at those mountains, the more he suspected the garrison was what the Army did instead of snapping its fingers to keep the elephants away.

“Sir, I don’t think Tarzan of the Apes could come at us through country like this,” he said.

The major blinked. Then he gri

If Peterson was any judge, Burroughs came to a place like this to escape his fans. There probably was no escape, though. No escape for me, that’s for sure, Peterson thought unhappily. The major didn’t seem to want to run dry.