Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

384 Pacifica Military History
over the low saddle and through the tree-choked gully. American hand
grenades rained down on them from the heights, as did American 60mm
and 81mm mortar rounds. The high-strung chirping of Nambu light
machine guns sounded through the throaty bursts of the mortars, and
streams of bright tracer reached toward O’Brien Hill through the solid,
black wall of the night.
The initial assault was launched by about one platoon. It was stopped
cold by methodical riflemen and grimy-faced gunners manning the
battalion’s air-cooled and water-cooled. 30-caliber Brownings. Two more
frontal assaults of about platoon strength collapsed as soon as they lapped
upward from the gully and sad-dle. Then the Japanese withdrew. They
knew what they had come to learn; Katsarsky’s battalion had been
probed. Joe Katsarsky knew, by 0800 hours, on July 28, that his battalion
had been cut off. Litter teams attempting to reach the regi-mental aid
station were fired on along the trail to the rear of O’Brien Hill; several
litter bearers and previously wounded sol-diers were killed. Jeeps
bringing urgently needed ammunition from the regimental supply depot
were fired on as they approached O’Brien Hill; several drivers were
killed, and four disabled jeeps blocked the vital link. All Katsarsky could
do was draw some of his troops off the line and send them back over the
trail to clear out the bushwhackers along the way.
The heavily armed combat patrol moved cautiously up the nar-row
track and the fringe of trees at its edge for two solid hours. For two solid
hours, these sleepless soldiers killed. By 1000 hours, it seemed that the
road had been cleared. The patrol filed up the re-verse slope of O’Brien
Hill and broke up to move back to the line.
While the track was being cleared, the Japanese somehow sensed
that the American battle line had been weakened, so they pre-pared an
assault. The first file of Japanese stepped out of the forest just as the
patrol was breaking up to return to the lines.
The outposts took it first. With bullets from the main line pass-ing
inches over their heads, and with Japanese bullets coming in a bit lower,
the soldiers manning the posts withdrew. Pink and white tracer stitched
the air back and forth, and Japanese explosive bul-lets popped loudly as
they plowed into earth, wood, and flesh. Shelter halves the Americans
had stretched above their fighting holes to ward off the sun were shredded