Chapter 93 life-or-death chase

The hard battle is not only during the day, but also at night.Night raids and counter-night raids are still daily repertoires. The Japanese troops who quietly crawled out of the caves will secretly infiltrate the U.S. defense lines, attacking and harassing them all night long. One night, when an officer of the Division Headquarters of the First Marine Division was reading letters under the lamp, he suddenly heard a "bang" gunshot, which shocked him a lot. The gunshots came from a cave that the US military believed had already been occupied. Gaining the cave and losing it again means that the hard work of the day was wasted, and the next day you have to spend a lot of money to attack again.That's why Major Buckley of the 7th Regiment wanted to capture "Souvenir Hunter" to help him guard the cave.

During the confrontation with the enemy at Five Sisters Mountain, the entire K company was exposed to the wild, so it was naturally the key target of the sneak attack. One night, many Japanese soldiers came to K Company's position. They wore foot-sack boots, quietly climbed over the uneven rocks with overgrown plants, and then launched a surprise attack with bayonets or sabers while screaming strangely. Company K took this for granted. They fired first, and once the Japanese dodged the bullets and scurried into foxholes or bunkers, they used hand-to-hand combat to kill their teammates so as not to accidentally injure their teammates.

During the battle, Sledge's friend, the imprudent private Jay, suffered from diarrhea, so it was convenient to walk out of the bunker.When stepping over a log, his foot stepped on the back of a Japanese soldier. The Japanese soldier hid there, ready to carry out a sneak attack, and stood up immediately after being stepped on.Jay was a veteran of the Battle of Gloucester, and his reaction was very quick. Before it was too late, he had pointed the carbine at the Japanese soldier's chest and pulled the trigger. With a "click", the firing pin broke, and the carbine did not fire.

Death, death, Jay threw the carbine at the Japanese soldier, turned and ran, shouting as he ran, "Kill him!" The Japanese soldier pulled the safety bolt of the grenade, threw it at Jay, and landed on Jay's back.But like an impromptu carbine, it didn't go off, a dud. The Japanese soldiers drew out their bayonets and chased after them. Before that, a captain and staff officer of the division headquarters was also attacked by Japanese soldiers in the dark, and was slashed in the back. Fortunately, there was an American combat soldier next to him. Killed.Jay didn't have such good luck, and his shout couldn't immediately attract the help of his teammates, so he could only run wildly for his life.

After so many battles, "I lost my courage early, and my legs hung up sooner rather than later", but this kind of life-or-death chase is still suffocating.Finally, Jay saw a teammate with a Browning automatic rifle, so he quickly shouted and ran towards him. Teammates saw Jay and stood up too, but did not shoot immediately. Jay ran, screaming at the top of his lungs.After a while, the teammate finally opened fire. If he didn’t shoot, he would have done nothing. With one shot, all 20 bullets in the magazine were emptied. Most of the bullets hit the Japanese soldier’s body. body in two halves.

Jay, who had narrowly escaped death, asked the teammate why it took so long to shoot, and the other party laughed: "Let the Japanese run closer and see if the Browning rifle can shoot him in half. " In the battle that night, Company K eliminated all the raiders at the cost of Jay being frightened and soiling a pair of pants. This doesn't make it easy for everyone.The Marines came to the terrible conclusion that the caves were endless, and that if they wanted to leave the island, they had to kill all the Japanese on the island, or they themselves would be wiped out. In the joint offensive, both the Seventh Regiment and the Fifth Regiment had captured the target hill, but they had to give up because they couldn't hold on to it. surge.Colonel Hankins, the guard battalion commander of the first division, died in this joint offensive. He became the highest-ranking officer of the US Marine Corps killed in Peleliu.

On October 5, the loss of the Seventh Marine Regiment almost caught up with the previous First Marine Regiment, which indicated that the mission of the Seventh Marine Regiment to launch a regiment-level attack was coming to an end. On October 6, the Fifth Regiment and the Seventh Regiment switched defenses, and the Fifth Regiment fully took over the attack mission of the Seventh Regiment.As of this day, the Seventh Regiment had suffered a total of 1,497 casualties, and the size of each battalion under its jurisdiction had been reduced to close to the company level. The change of defense between the fifth and seventh regiments was just a tired unit with serious attrition, which was replaced by another unit that was in relatively better condition, but was actually tired and suffered a lot of attrition.Correspondingly, the person who was replaced was unkempt and out of shape, and the person who was replaced also walked heavily and had hollow eyes.

The lengthy battle, the enormous pressure, and the scorching heat exhausted the marines, and they fell into extreme fatigue both physically and mentally.This situation was also grasped by the Japanese army. On the same day, the Fifth Regiment seized a Japanese army document, which stated that the US military was showing signs of fatigue and that the offensive was no longer aggressive.