Spot. Me in the War - Part 3, The Journey Beings...

The next day started as I felt, cold with torrential rain thundering down on us. There were huge puddles everywhere. Mud and dirt everywhere.

“Great” I thought.

We each lifted our rucksacks onto out backs, clutched our Smith and Wessons rifles and headed due eat into the soaking wet jungle.

The rain continued most of the day, with Spot about three yards in front of me, and me about ten yards in front of the rest. This was the way we were trained. It was Spot’s job to keep us aware of enemy booby traps and trip wires that could send you to heaven before you wanted to go. So Spot was, what you might say, expendable - because if anyone was going to get blown to bits it was him. That was his job.

Spot was trained, as I have said, to lay down whenever he sensed something suspicious. Therefore letting us know, so we could take cover and maybe ambush the enemy. As I say, that’s the way he was trained and he did this - but he did something else when he laid down - he growled. I tried to stop him doing it, but it was useless.

Anyway, we have covered about thirteen miles of dense jungle, hacking our way through most of it. We didn’t talk much. Not that we went much for conversation but because talking made noise and noise we did not want. I signaled to the men that we should make camp for the night. Camp was bivowaks, which to you civilians is waterproof sleepingbags with no cover over you. We had a restless nigh, taking it in turns to stand guard but we mainly relied on Spot to let us know if anything moved that shouldn’t.

Breakfast consisted of dry biscuits and water. “Nice”. Told you we were on field rations. But the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Not that we could feel it. The canopy overhead stopped most of it, leaving us with an eerie light, like twilight all day long.

We set off with usual formation - Spot, me then the rest. We had gone about another five miles or so and we were feelings pretty good. We were now dry and hadn’t seen any enemy.

Spot was in front of me when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. He stopped, I stopped, held up my hand and the rest stopped. It seemed like an eternity when he finally laid down.

”Down everyone” I signaled with my outstretched arm. It was then that the bloody dog started to growl.

”Shhhh” I said “You stupid mutt. Be quiet”. He seemed to understand and stopped growling. I crawled over to Spot and covered him in case he started to growl again. It was then you could hear the rustling coming from the foliage in front of us. There suddenly appeared about ten Japs. All armed to the teeth, and they were scouting ahead, much as we were. We all kept as still as we could. Me trying to stifle Spot’s growling with my hand holding his mouth together. A foot of one Jap soldier came about twelve inches from my face and still they did not see us. When they passed, I signaled to Jinga the Gurkha and Stepelos the Greek, passing my hand across my throat I signaled to the last two Jap soldiers. They both nodded and so quietly you could not hear them, grabbed the two unfortunate rear soldiers and cut their throats. With that, the twins opened fire; firing from the hip with their Tommy-guns which they had stolen from the armory depot when we left.

When the smoke cleared, there was nothing but bodies everywhere. We pushed the bodies into the undergrowth without even trying to bury them. We had no time. Such is the horrors of war!

The usual formation again, Spot - me - rest. You know the score by now. The rest of the day went quite well. We did not see any other Japs, but it worried me that the ones we killed would have had to contact their H.Q by now. They would have been missing which meant that a lot more will be looking for them and some more will be looking for us once they’re found.

Ginger had cut his leg on a branch earlier in the day. Not a problem if it was at home in the U.K. but here an open wound can go poisonous within hours if you are not careful. We could not afford to wash the cut with water. It was too precious - so they used the last of my whisky to wash it - the rotten so-and-sos. Ginger did not say much but you could see it was playing him up. The continued walking for the rest of the day did it no good whatsoever - but that’s the way it was.

Written By: Gamestar
Edited By: mageman
Coded By: Gamestar