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Nobody could argue with that, so they settled down to eat their rations cold. Some men were so desperate for tobacco that they simply sucked on an unlit cigarette. Not for the first time, Deke was glad that he hadn’t gotten in the habit of smoking. Some men couldn’t go more than an hour without their nicotine fix. Deke didn’t like the idea of being beholden to anything in that way. Also, he was convinced that too many cigarettes made you get winded too easily.

Despite all their precautions, it had probably been too much to expect that they would get through the night without any encounters with the Japanese. But when trouble did arrive, it came in a surprising way.

Toward midnight, a truck came rumbling up the road. The night was just bright enough with moonlight reflected off the surrounding flooded fields that they could see the dim outline of the vehicle and a few details. It clearly wasn’t American. The markings were Japanese, and the truck lacked the familiar silhouette of the GMC trucks, although it had a canvas cover across the back. Finally, the engine sounded different, pitched higher than the US truck motors.

“Who the hell is that?” Lieutenant Steele wondered.

“Not one of our guys, that’s for damn sure. But what the hell is he up to?”

The truck lumbered into the village, came to a stop, then reversed as if looking for a good spot to turn around. It didn’t seem like an attack, and the truck wasn’t in any particular hurry. Instead, the truck driver seemed to be expecting to find other Japanese in the village. You could almost hear the driver thinking, Where the hell is everybody?

Ominously, they could hear a few shouts from within the canvas covering. The truck must be carrying Japanese troops.

Nobody was interested in taking prisoners.

Several rifles were already trained on the truck. A machine gun was also brought up.

Lieutenant Steele raised his shotgun. “Pour it into ’em, boys!”

As the first shots rang out, the driver must have realized his mistake. The truck hurtled forward, returning the way it had come, but it didn’t get far. The windshield shattered in a shower of glass. The machine gun stitched holes down the canvas. A single enemy soldier managed to tumble out the back, but he was immediately riddled with bullets. Driverless, the truck came to a stop only when it crashed into a hut and lost its forward momentum. Smoke and steam leaked from the engine, but the motor was still running. Finally, a sergeant approached, reached through the shattered window, and shut down the engine.

Despite the sobering sight of the wrecked truck, a few soldiers cheered. It had been deeply satisfying to pour out their frustrations on the truck.

“Everybody shut the hell up!” Steele shouted. The cheering died away.

Deke and Philly had been among those firing at the truck.

“If the Japanese didn’t know we were here, they sure as hell do now,” Philly said.

“You got that right,” Deke agreed.

Steele headed off in the direction of the sentries posted on the road.

“I wouldn’t want to be those fellas,” Philly said. “I believe Honcho is about to tear them a new asshole.”

“What the hell were they thinking?” Deke wondered.

The truck should have been stopped by sentries who had been posted on the road, but the explanation that they stammered out to an angry Lieutenant Steele was that the driver had waved at them, and they had momentarily thought that the truck might actually have been commandeered by American forces, similar to trucks that had been captured earlier near Camp Downes. In the confusion of nighttime, the Japanese driver must have mistaken the sentries for troops from his own side. It was just another one of those wartime incidents that defied explanation.

The rest of the night passed uneasily. Nobody slept well, expecting an attack in force from the Japanese. Deke and the others moved far up the road, closer to Highway 2, which was surely the direction that an attack would come from.

However, nothing materialized. As the sky brightened on the horizon to reveal another tropical dawn, the GIs were relieved to see that the road ahead and the surrounding rice paddies were empty. Either the truck hadn’t been missed all that much, or the noise of the attack on the truck had been swallowed up in the night.

The sun was barely up when they reached the supply highway. Although this section of the highway was well traveled, it was not defended. This meant that the soldiers quickly moved across it and set up a defensive position. They had created a roadblock, cutting the enemy’s ability to move supplies and men to and from the last open port that the Japanese held.

Up and down the highway, other units from the division were also moving into position. Judging by the sound of distant gunfire, those other units were not having such an easy time of it.