“Swell! We’ll both rush ’em,” Fred Marmon responded. “Here’s the bag of pineapples.... Help yourself, sir.”
Barry stuffed his pockets hastily. He kept one grenade in his hand, with his finger through the ring.
“I’ll go first,” he said shortly.
Crouching low, he sprinted toward the Japs’ bomb hole. Before he had quite reached throwing distance, the raiders saw him and opened fire. A slug glanced off his helmet. He took three more strides and flung himself flat. Behind a ten-inch-high ridge of earth he pulled the pin of his first grenade. Then, rising on one elbow, he flung it.
Five yards away he glimpsed Fred hurling another. As the second grenade landed six Japs boiled up out of the bomb crater. Two were still on the edge when the grenades went off—Barry’s in the hole; Fred’s just ahead of them.
A cheer went up from the American riflemen and machine gunners. A new storm of gunfire broke out, aimed at three or four other bomb craters.
“Come on, Fred!” Barry yelled. “We’ll clean out the rest of the snakeholes. The boys are shooting to keep the Japs’ heads down for us.”
“Right with you, sir!” came the sergeant’s shout.
So furious was their friends’ fire that few Jap bullets came near Barry and Fred. Crouched within easy throw of the occupied craters, they flung their deadly little missiles. Some of the enemy attempted a dash for the bush, only to be cut down. Once a grenade was tossed back. It exploded in the air dangerously close to Barry. Later he found that a flying fragment had cut his cheek.
With their “pineapples” gone, the two Fortress men trotted back to the trees.