Danny Hale rose to his feet and spread his big fingers.
“If I get near enough to one of those yellow snakes,” he said slowly, “I’d like to match his jiu-jitsu tricks with an Apache wrestling hold. Anyhow, the six of us ought to have a pretty good time before the party’s over.”
Before supper the Rosy O’Grady’s crew had collected a young arsenal in their sleeping tent. It included bayonets and three sheath knives. Fred Marmon had brought six suits of green coveralls to replace their flying togs, and even some burnt cork to blacken their faces.
“We’ll have to fit a tin hat over that nice, clean bandage of yours, Lieutenant Blake,” he said. “Anything white would draw Jap bullets like a doggone magnet.... Look. If I set it on sidewise, like this, it doesn’t hurt your wound.”
“That’s fine, Fred,” Barry agreed. “I’d be cooler without the thing, but it will turn bullets. We’re all going to have a lot more sympathy for the infantry after this masquerade.”
The attacking troops set out as soon as the tropic night had shut down. Barry Blake and his friends joined a platoon that was pushing and slashing its way through the pitch-black jungle, with the help of a few dimmed flashlights. The vine-laced growth was so dense that at high noon only a green twilight would have penetrated it. Bayonets and machetes made openings through the worst tangles. Thorn bushes fought back, raking arms and legs mercilessly. Some of the advancing units used compasses to keep them headed toward Grassy Ridge. A few of them had the help of native guides. Most, however, followed the trails opened by the advance guard.
The Rosy’s crew took their turns with the machetes, cutting a path. The work, in that hot-house temperature, was exhausting. At any rate, the advancing troops had plenty of time. They reached the hill’s steep, rocky base at about midnight.
Here the word was passed to rest for an hour. Mosquito headnets were donned; emergency rations were opened. Weary, and sweating at every pore, the men stretched themselves out in such level spaces as they could find by groping on the damp ground.
Fred Marmon complained that the mosquitoes liked his blood better than that of any man in the Army. He declared that more of them were gathering from all over New Guinea, as the news spread.
“If they suck me to death,” he groaned, “dig a hole and bury my carcass quick so it won’t draw any more of them. Enough of these flying siphons could wipe out the whole company.”