Alaska (145 page)

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Ruggles, as one might expect, would lead the charge up the front face, with Nate on his left flank, Ben on his right and two skilled teams speeding up the far outside flanks to drop down upon the top caves from the rear, and everything went as planned, except that when Ruggles and his central core sped over the slight rise in the middle of the slope, they were allowed to proceed about twelve yards up the hill. Then from the hidden caves pointing uphill the Japanese fired pointblank into the backs of the attackers, and from habit, most of them aimed at the obvious leader, Captain Ruggles, who fell, cut to pieces by seven fusillades. One hit Ben Krickel in the left shoulder. Three other bursts killed two of Nate's companions, and yet another sped past Nate's ear.

Four Americans survived, including the wounded Krickel and Nate Coop, and for just a moment they were lost in confusion, but then Nate saw what had to be done: 'Ben!

Back behind the mound!' And he led the remnants of the team to the down side of the mound where they could not be attacked by the men in the caves. There they regrouped, and when they saw their mutilated captain ten yards up the hill, a sullen rage overtook them, so that even Ben Krickel, seriously wounded, insisted upon being part of the next action. Accidentally it seemed, Nate assumed charge: 'Creep up, belly down, prime grenades, and we'll reach over and slam them in.'

They did just this, four determined avengers, closing in upon the caves from the rear, ignoring bullets coming at them from the ridge, and thrusting the deadly grenades into the mouths of the caves, then falling back to hear the three explosions.

That left the two caves on the outer flanks still operating, and Nate shouted: 'I have this one! Ben, take over there,' but as he cried the words he saw that Ben had fainted, so he pointed to a young lad from Nebraska: 'Clean it out!'

But now these men had no more grenades, so two of them tore their shirts into long strips, and a third man doused them with the petrol he carried for such situations, and they were lighted and stuffed boldly into the mouths of the caves, and when four Japanese struggled chit, gasping for air, they were brained with rifle butts.

The conquest of this hill represented one of the last orderly assaults by American forces on Attu, and that night, the men assumed that they had conquered the Japanese, but at midnight, with no one on watch, they heard a rustling on the side of a hill where no sensible Japanese would be, and then a patter of feet, and finally the wild shouts of men in a banzai charge, determined to kill or be killed. Now an inferno raged

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in that stretch of the undefined front. Japanese, maddened in what they knew to be their final moments, rampaged in all directions, grabbing rifles pointed at them, slashing with long knives, setting fire to whatever they could reach.

They were irresistible, overrunning positions that no ordinary human could even attack, let alone subdue. And as they came, they screamed, and it was nearly an hour before Nate and his men established some kind of defensive line. Then amazing things began to happen. One Japanese brandishing only the twig of a tree, not fifteen inches long, came directly at an American soldier armed with a gun, thrust the gun aside, struck the startled American in the face with his twig, screamed and disappeared in the darkness. Two other Japanese, with bayonets tied insecurely to the ends of sticks, rushed right at Ben Krickel, endeavoring to stab him with their flimsy weapons. They struck him, but the bayonets slid to one side, and with his good arm he killed both men with blows to the head.

A fourth Japanese was the craziest of all. Chanting a wild song and brandishing a deadly pistol, he overcame all obstacles and rushed right at Nate Coop, who was powerless to stop him. Thrusting his pistol in Nate's face, he screamed and pulled the trigger.

There was a clicking sound; Nate thought he was dead; and then nothing happened.

With a sharp thrust of his bayonet, Nate killed the Japanese, and when he studied the man's gun he found that it was a child's toy, filled with paper caps. Wresting the gun from the dead man's fingers, Nate pulled the trigger twice and sent popping echoes through the muddy dawn. The battle for Attu was over.

NOW ONLY KlSKA REMAINED, NOT NEARLY AS BIG AS

Attu but far more heavily defended: intelligence reports gave twice as many Japanese on Kiska, 5,360, ten times the defensive capability. To subdue the island, more than 35,000 American troops were ferried out the Aleutian chain in by far the biggest, heaviest armada of this front. This time no scouting team was sent in to reconnoiter, for which Nate was grateful; it wasn't necessary; the powerful Japanese installations were visible from the air.

Instead, the 11th Air Force dumped an incredible amount of high explosives on the island, some of the planes flying eastward from the newly activated field on Attu.

Also, from a printing press in Anchorage came a hundred thousand leaflets imploring the Japanese to surrender, but these had even less effect than the bombs, which accomplished nothing. Once again, for the last time in the Aleutians, the Japanese 882

were dug in, and digging them out was going to be the brutal climax of this brutal campaign.

Ten weeks after the fall of Attu, the massive assault force was ready, and once again General Shafter flew to the Aleutians with Leroy Flatch as pilot to participate in the final planning. This time when LeRoy asked for his brother-in-law he found Nate morose and edgy: 'If the Japs start anything, I'm sure it'll be me and Ben to check them out if his arm's okay.'

'Where is Ben?'

'Field hospital. Mendin' his arm.' LeRoy was worried by Nate's listlessness, and asked: 'Anything wrong?' and Nate snapped: 'No! Why?' and LeRoy said: 'Well, all these battles . .. and Ben getting wounded,' and Nate said: 'It's a job.'

'Stay with it. Now I got to see Ben,' and they found the tired old fox farmer at a dressing station where final touches were being applied to his wound, and he looked much older than his fifty-one years, for, like Nate, he was bone-weary. But he showed surprise as LeRoy assumed an erect military posture, saluted, and said in formal voice: 'Mr. Krickel, I've flown all the way to this summer resort to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.'

Years fell from Ben's battle-scarred face and pain from his wounded arm. Staring at young Flatch, he asked in a quiet voice: 'Where is”Sandy?'

'In Anchorage. With a good job. I used General Shafter's pull and got her sprung from the concentration camp, and we're getting married . . . with your permission.'

When both Ben and Nate began pummeling him in their joy, he stopped them: 'Sandy said she'd never get married without your consent. Said you were her father and mother both.' He looked the old islander in the eye: 'So have I your permission?' and gravely Ben said: 'You have, son. Now let's get stinkin”drunk.'

They were not able to do this, because when a messenger came from the meeting of the generals, both Nate and Ben could guess what it meant. Yes, if Ben was up to it, they were to make one last sortie behind enemy lines: 'The Japs are behaving strangely. We've got to know how tough those Kiska beaches are going to be. You men have never failed us before.' The general in command jabbed at Ben's arm: 'Mended well enough for you to make the try?' and both Ben and Nate knew that even a moment's hesitation would excuse him from this perilous assignment, but the fox farmer said: 'It's ready,' and before dawn these two loyal frontiersmen, these prototypical Alaskans, were back in their rubber boat heading quietly for the waiting PBY that rose and fell on the

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dark Aleutian waves. With Captain Ruggles dead, they would be commanded by an enthusiastic young army lieutenant, Gray, who told them as they approached the beach: 'You'll get no rank from me. You know far more about this than I do.' Then, as if to reassure them, he added: 'But when you move out, I'll be there. You can count on it.'

As they rowed in darkness toward what might prove to be a blazing confrontation, Gray whispered: 'Wow! Landing on a little island occupied by a whole Japanese army!'

and Ben, realizing that the young fellow was trying to maintain his courage, said quietly: 'Kiska's more'n a hundred square miles. Might be hard to find the Japs even if we wanted to.' Then, to ease the tension further, he added: 'Were you on Attu, Lieutenant?' and when Gray replied that he had led one of the clean-up assaults on Holtz Bay, Ben said with great warmth: 'You got nothin' to prove.'

And Ben was right, for in those first perilous moments when the three leaped upon the beach and started running, in those fateful seconds when hidden machine guns might have cut them literally in half, it was Gray who was in the lead, now a man without fear, and kept going until they found themselves well inland. But when they had traversed the beach in miraculous safety, a fearful thing happened. Gray, exulted by the fact that he had done well, turned to ask his adviser: 'What do we do now, Ben?' only to see that the fox farmer who had been so composed in the boat stood trembling not nervously twitching, but shaking as if some fearful blizzard were engulfing him and it was clear to both Gray and Nate that he was so emotionally exhausted he could no longer function as a member of their team.

For just a moment the young lieutenant was bewildered, for he realized that his group was in a hazardous position with one-third of its component immobilized, but Nate hid Ben behind a rock and said in a consoling whisper: 'It's all right. You wait.

We'll be back.”Then he sought Gray and said: 'We split, very quiet, circle out and head for that big thing over there, whatever it is.'

With no sense of having had his position of leadership usurped, Gray said: 'Solid idea,' and he was off like a rabbit.

When the men met at what turned out to be a discarded generator, neither was bold enough to voice what was in his mind, but after poking about, Nate had to speak: 'I think nobody's here.'

Very quietly, Gray said: 'Me too,' but then echoes of his training surfaced. 'Men,'

a gruff veteran of the first days of fighting on Guadalcanal had warned when he visited Gray's camp in Texas, 'the Jap soldier is the trickiest bastard on 884

earth. He'll fool you in a dozen different ways. Booby traps, sharpshooters tied in trees, buildings left to make you think they're abandoned. You bite on his traps just once, you're dead . . . dead . . . dead.'

Ominous and lethal, the silent buildings ahead seemed a perfect example of Japanese perfidy, and Gray's knees grew weak. 'You think it's a trap?' he whispered to Nate, who replied: 'We better find out,' and then Gray resumed command.

'Cover me,' and with a bravery few men could have shown, he dashed right at a cluster of buildings that must have been a combined mess hall and laundry, and when he reached it, he jumped in the air, waved his arms, and cried: 'It's empty!'

Before Nate could overtake him he began running about, making a disgraceful amount of noise as he sped from one abandoned building to the next, finding each one vacant.

Then, remembering that he was in command, but so excited that he could barely issue an order, he cried: 'Let's try that one, and if she's empty too, we flash our signal.'

So the two men crept toward what must have served as command headquarters, and when in darkness they found it cavernous and empty, Gray grasped Nate by the arm and asked: 'Dare we tell them?' and Nate said: 'Send the word,' and Gray activated his radio and shouted: 'They're all gone! There's no one here!'

'Repeat!' came the stern voice from the flotilla commander.

”There are no enemy here. Repeat. Nobody here.'

'Verify. Report back in ten minutes. Then return to ship.'

It was a strange ten minutes, there in the Aleutian night with the winds whipping in from Siberia and two bewildered Americans trying to figure out how an entire Japanese army could have slipped off this island while American boats patrolled the seas and American planes the skies. 'They couldn't all escape,' Gray cried petulantly. 'But they did,' and he ran about, savoring this great discovery, but when Nate Coop returned to the beach to sit with Ben Krickel and saw the pitiful condition he was in, he, too, began to shake. Then Lieutenant Gray ran down snouting: 'Ten minutes up! We can verify,' Nate said: 'Go ahead,' but he took no joy in the dramatic news, and during the row back to the PBY he pulled mechanically, not fully aware of where he was.

So a fully equipped American-Canadian army of thirty-five thousand marched ashore against no opposition, but on the first afternoon an American bomber from Amchitka, having failed to get the news, continued his ordained run, saw what 885

he supposed to be Japanese troops operating without cover below, bombed them. Two dead.

The generals, unwilling to believe that the Japanese had been able to evacuate an entire island while bombers were overhead on inspection flights, sent out heavily armed patrols to ensure that no remote pockets of Japanese hidden in caves were waiting to attack. This caution was advisable and it was carried out with proper care, but the men who had come so far to fight were so eager to do so that when one group heard suspicious sounds coming from another group on the other side of a slight rise, gunfire was begun by a nervous American corporal and returned by an equally nervous Canadian sergeant, and in the wild engagement that followed, twenty-five allies were killed by Allied bullets, and more than thirty were wounded.

That was the final battle of the Aleutian campaign. Japan's attempt to conquer America from the north had failed.

NO SOONER HAD PEACE IN THE PACIFIC BEEN OBTAINED

than a war of equal importance to Alaska erupted. To appreciate its significance, one must follow what was happening to the two young married couples in the Flatch family in the months following the explosions of the two atomic bombs over Japan, and the subsequent collapse of the Japanese war effort.

Nate Coop, strengthened and deepened by his war experiences, now astonished everyone by announcing: 'I'm going to take my GI benefits and go to the university in Fairbanks.'

When the entire family seemed to ask at once 'What for?' he said: 'To study wildlife management,' and when they chorused: 'Where'd you get that crazy idea?' he explained cryptically: 'Corporal named Dash Hammett told me: ”When the war's over, get off your ass and learn something.”' He would say no more, but after the first shock, he was supported by his wife, who remembered Missy Peckham's counsel: 'If you can tame a moose, you can civilize Nate,' and she accompanied him to Fairbanks.