Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific
dropping shells to the enemy’s rear, then lobbing the projectile steadily closer to our own lines, so that the unfortunate foe was forced to abandon cover after cover, being drawn inexorably toward our front, where he was at last flushed and destroyed.
    We could see them flitting from tree to tree. The Gentleman’s gun was in excellent position to enfilade. He did. He fired long bursts at them. Some of us fired our rifles. But we were out of the fight, now; way off on the extreme right flank. We could add nothing to a situation so obviously under control.
    “Hold your fire,” someone from G Company shouted at the Gentleman. “First Battalion coming through.”
    Infantry had crossed the Tenaru at the bridge to our right and were fanning out in the coconut grove. They would sweep toward the ocean.
    Light tanks were crossing the sandspit far to the left, leading a counterattack.
    The Japanese were being nailed into a coffin.
    Everyone had forgotten the fight and was watching the carnage, when shouting swept up the line. A group of Japanese dashed along the opposite river edge, racing in our direction. Their appearance so surprised everyone that there were no shots.
    We dived for our holes and gun positions. I jumped to the gun which the Chuckler and I had left standing on the bank. I unclamped the gun and fired, spraying my shots as though I were handling a hose.
    All but one fell. The first fell as though his underpart had been cut from him by a scythe, and the others fell tumbling, screaming.
    Once again our gun collapsed and I grabbed a rifle—I remember it had no sling—which had been left near the gun. The Jap who had survived was deep into the coconuts by the time I found him in the rifle sights. There was his back, bobbing large, and he seemed to be throwing his pack away. Then I had fired and he wasn’t there anymore.
    Perhaps it was not I who shot him, for everyone had found their senses and their weapons by then. But I boasted that I had. Perhaps, too, it was a merciful bullet that pounded him between the shoulder blades; for he was fleeing to a certain and horrible end: black nights, hunger and slow dissolution in the rain forest. But I had not thought of mercy then.
    Modern war went forward in the jungle.
    Men of the First Battalion were cleaning up. Sometimes they drove a Japanese toward us. He would cower on the river bank, hiding; unaware that opposite him were we, already the victors, numerous, heavily armed, lusting for more blood. We killed a few more this way. The Fever was on us.
    Down on the sandspit the last nail was being driven into the coffin.
    Some of the Japanese threw themselves into the channel and swam away from that grove of horror. They were like lemmings. They could not come back. Their heads bobbed like corks on the horizon. The marines killed them from the prone position; the marines lay on their bellies in the sand and shot them through the head.
    The battle was over.
    Beneath a bright moon that night, the V reappeared in the river. The green lights gleamed malevolently. Someone shot at it. Rifle fire crackled along the line. The V vanished. We waited, tense. No one came.
    Lieutenant Ivy-League strode up to our pits in the morning. He sat on a coconut log and told us what had happened. He smoked desperately and stared into the river as he talked. The skin around his eyes was drawn tight with strain and with shock. His eyes had already taken on that aspect peculiar to Guadalcanal, that constant stare of pupils that seemed darker, larger, rounder, more absolute. It was particularly noticeable in the brown-eyed men. Their eyes seemed to get auburn, like the color of an Irish setter.
    “They tried to come over the sandspit,” the lieutenant said. “There must have been a thousand of them. We had only that one strand of wire and the guns. You should see them stacked up in front of Bitenail’s gun. Must be three deep. They were crazy. They didn’t even fire their rifles.” He looked at

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