Fujita had almost got to the lagoon when the air-raid sirens began to screech again. He heard them as if from very far away, but hearing them at all made him swear. The Americans wouldn’t be coming back, and they wouldn’t throw two separate waves of planes at Midway … would they? Why? What point to it?
But those were more planes coming in from the direction toward which the bombers had flown. These were much lower, and differed in shape. Fujita rubbed his eyes, not to get sand out of them but in disbelief. These airplanes had a familiar outline. On his journeys across the vast reaches of the Japanese Empire, he’d flown in more than one Showa L2D3-1a. How could he not recognize them when he spied them now? What were they doing coming up from the southeast?
Only they weren’t Showas. Somebody’d told him once that the Japanese transport was a license-built version of the U.S. DC-3. These were the American originals, with stars on wings and fuselage in place of the Rising Sun. They’d come close enough for him to spy such details now-and to give him a good look at the men parachuting out of them one after another after another. The sky was full of silk.
He didn’t hang around to admire the spectacle. Instead, he unslung his rifle and started to fight. He’d never dreamt Midway might be invaded from above. But even though he hadn’t, the Americans had.
Some Japanese soldiers were already firing at the paratroopers, and at the planes that carried them. One transport blew up in midair, showering Midway with blazing wreckage. “Banzai!” Fujita whooped.
He quickly emptied one clip, then another. He took more from a countryman’s corpse. The dead man didn’t need the rounds any more, while Fujita could still kill Americans with them.
He fired again at the men wafting down. Then a Yankee already on the ground sent a bullet that kicked up sand by his feet. He dove for cover. Standing up to fire at the parachutists wasn’t safe any more.
Everyone was running every which way, Americans and Japanese alike. The Yankees had mostly come down in the less garrisoned western part of the island, but not all their drops put them where they were supposed to go. The Japanese had trained against invasion from the sea till Fujita was sick of it. Anybody with eyes in his head could tell that the Americans would want Midway back if they could get to it.
But no one-at least no one with the authority to give orders here-had dreamt the Americans would come by air. No one had planned what to do in case that happened. Without planning, the Japanese were at a disadvantage. They never had been great improvisers.
“We will defend the barracks and the desalinization plant and the special unit!” shouted an officer-Fujita presumed the man was an officer, anyhow-with a loud, authoritative voice. “They will give us the best cover. And we’ll see how the Yankees do with only the water they brought along.”
Whether the fellow with the loud voice was on officer or not, the command made good sense to Fujita. If the Americans had to come straight at defensible positions, they’d pay a high price for every centimeter of sandy soil they seized. Maybe other Japanese forces would be able to relieve the garrison. Or maybe it would be able to dispose of all the paratroopers and go on harassing Hawaii.
An American machine gun spat funny-looking red-orange tracers not far enough above the ground. The Yankees fed their machine guns from belts, not aluminum strips, so they could fire longer continuous bursts. And for every tracer you saw, there were all the ordinary rounds you didn’t. You also had to hope none of those rounds saw you.
Japanese soldiers whom some of those rounds had seen lay sprawled in the sand. A dreadfully wounded man pulled a grenade off his belt, yanked out the pin, and rolled onto the little bomb. His body took the full force of the burst. Not the perfect form of seppuku, but it would serve. He wasn’t suffering any more, and he wouldn’t need to worry about disgracing himself and his family by being captured.
By the way the Americans kept pushing forward, they didn’t think the garrison could stop them. As the sun slid down the sky toward the western horizon, Fujita began to believe they were right. More of them had landed than he’d guessed, and transports kept flying in to drop reinforcements and supplies. They wouldn’t have to fight with just the water they’d brought.
“Sergeant!” a captain called. “Can you take a squad and drive the Yankees off that little bit of high ground there?” He pointed to show the position he meant. “It gives them too good a firing position-they can rake these trenches if they bring up machine guns.”
“Hai!” Fujita saluted. What was he going to do, tell the captain no? He didn’t think a whole company could drive the Americans off that swell of ground, but the garrison didn’t have a company to commit in the first place. He grabbed a squad’s worth of soldiers and sailors and told them what they had to do.
No one told him no, either. The men just nodded. They hefted their rifles. One attached a fresh magazine. Then they were up and scuffing over the sand toward the low but dangerous hillock.
Like autumn leaves, they began to fall. Had Fujita been a samurai, he would have used the line in his death poem. But he was only a sergeant trying to do a job. He knew he would fail, but the trying somehow mattered.
He made it farther than he thought he would-all the way up the swell. He was wounded once before he reached the top. His leg hurt, but he kept going. And he shot an American there before he caught two more rounds in the chest. He fell as if in slow motion in a film. A Yankee with three stripes on his left sleeve brought up his rifle to finish him off. Flame from the muzzle. And then, as in that film, final fadeout.
Theo Hossbach missed the radioman’s position in the old Panzer II for one very good reason. The wireless set in the obsolete little machine sat back by the fireproof-everyone hoped! — bulkhead separating the fighting compartment from the one that held the engine. It was the warmest place in the panzer to sit. Even on the worst Russian winter days, it wasn’t too bad … once you persuaded the engine to start, anyhow.
He had a much better chance of staying alive in this Panzer IV. He also felt he had a much better chance of freezing to death. Up here at the front of the chassis, he was as far from the nice, warm engine compartment as he could get. His breath smoked. His teeth chattered. The Panzer IV had a heater, but it didn’t do much.
Adi Stoss’ breath smoked, too. The driver didn’t seem to care. “How’d you like to play football in weather like this?” he said. “The pitch’d be frozen hard, and the ball would bounce like it was out of its mind.”
“No thanks!” Theo might have put more expression into his answer than he’d intended.
Adi laughed. “Yeah, it’d be even worse for a ’keeper, wouldn’t it? Us outfield players, we’re running around and banging into each other. We stay warm that way. ’Keepers, you’ve got to stand in front of your nets and turn into ice cubes. Well, everybody knows you guys are nuts.”
“Your mother,” Theo said, which made Adi laugh some more. As far as Theo was concerned-as far as any goalkeeper was concerned-the notion that their position attracted eccentrics was a slander perpetrated by ten-elevenths of the footballing world. That in itself went a long way toward proving the outfield players’ point.
Then a sharp order blared in Theo’s earphones: “The regiment is to assemble at once in the birch forest in the northwest corner of map square Green-17. All units acknowledge immediately.”
“Acknowledging,” Theo said, and gave the panzer’s number. As soon as he’d done that, he gave the news to Adi and to Hermann Witt.
“That’s not where we were going,” the panzer commander said with commendable calm. “Who’ll plug the hole we’re leaving in the line?”