His strategy worked almost too well. The Jap officer leading the retreat took Barry for a lone gunner, and decided to wipe him out at once. Firing in short spurts, he led his thirty-odd men straight at the outcropping of rocks.
Bullets pounded the stone behind which Barry lay. They glanced off with wicked little screams. Once rock-dust got in Barry’s eye, half-blinding him.
“Make it snappy, fellows!” he warned through clenched teeth. “Our game will be up in half a minute.”
“I beg to differ with you, Lieutenant,” Curly Levitt’s voice sounded at his shoulder. “Just watch this!”
His tommy-gun spoke, just as the thirty Japs started their rush. Barry’s weapon chimed in briefly, slamming its last bullet into the officer’s midriff. The charging Japs flung themselves flat.
Barry rolled aside to make room behind his rock for Fred Marmon. Sergeants Jackson and Romani had now finished reloading. They were firing from the highest point of the rocks, raking the enemy mercilessly. Quickly the Japs realized that to stay where they were meant sure death. Behind them the Americans were mopping up the last trenches.
Barry had just joined Danny Hale in the shelter of a half-sunken boulder. The big sergeant was trying to puzzle out the workings of a captured Jap rifle. Suddenly he glanced up.
“Here they come, Lieutenant!” Danny Hale whooped. “No time to reload now.”
Dropping his tommy-gun, Barry whipped out his bayonet. At Danny’s heels he vaulted the boulder. The Japs who dived through the hail of sub-machine gun bullets must be met with cold steel.
The shooting fizzled out. Now all the fighting was hand-to-hand. Barry bayoneted a monkey-like figure who had leaped upon Fred Marmon’s back. Turning, he glimpsed Danny Hale wielding his Jap rifle like a pitchfork. Just in time, he leaped aside to dodge an enemy bayonet thrust and grapple with the man.