The sub., 1943-11-25

to recapture our airheld. When the laps moved up into position, they Swarmed around the platoon, cut ting 1t off from our lines.
 Two men were killed. Thirty one men, including ten wounded, got back to our main body during the night. The six who came to- day were among the thirteen previ- ously listed as missing in action" But let Private Hollinger tell the story:
 When the Japs came in around us 1t was very dark, there was lot of shooting going on, and we couldn't tell what the score was. So we decided to camoufage our- selves and lay low for the night.
 There were an awful lot of Japs. At least a battalion moved right by us and almost tripped ov- CT us a couple of times. They moved ahead with fixed bayonets. There wasn't any moon, but those bayonets were shining like fash lights.
 ! There were a lot of them who weren't armed, too. They were car rying heavy bundles on their 1 shoulders. One of them put his bundle down to take rest and the fellow behind him kicked him in the pants and made him pick 1t up again.
 We got through the night all right and when it got light we saw that the Japs had thinned out. I we decided to move. We hadn't gotten very far when a four-man patrol spotted us. We shot at least two of them"
 Dick Hollinger) is the guy that shot them," Berry inteFpoSed. "He had a Springfield and 1t sounded like a machihe-gun, he was shoot ing 1t so fast"
 Anyway, they were shot" Hol- finger continued. We wanted to get their rice rations but there were so many Japs around we didn't dare take a chance.
 Later, while we were crossing through some heavy grass, one of our planes flew right over our heads. We tried to signal the pilot with a white mosquito net, but he didn't see us.
 Then our artillery opened up. Shells fell all around us. Luckily. none of us got hit. After the she'll ing stopped, we started moving again. We went through five empty Japanese bivouacs. These had ap- parently been abandoned in a hurry, because there were helmets and rifles and food and stuff like that lying around.
 We bedded down for the second night with Japanese all around us. We could hear them talking and moving around. During the night our artillery opened up again and Bazzell was hit in the shoulder with shrapnel. The Japs must have been hit plenty, too, because they l, started screaming and yelling. It was heavy barrage and lasted a long time.
 Next morning we started along a jungle trail, when we heard a racket up ahead. We hid in the bushes to see what was coming. A minute later five Japanese, camou- fiaged with leaves sewn to their uniforms, came down the trail with a heavy machine-gun. When they had passed, eight Japs came up the same direction we had been go- ing. They must have been trailing us.
 We didn't have a compass and we were completely lost but we kept on the move all day. We had to go so cautiously that we covered only about two hundred yards be- fore nightfall.
 There were still Japs all over the place, and shortly after dark the artillery opened up as usual and poor Bazzeu got hit again. In the hand this time. Berry ban daged him up. It sure was good thing we had a corpsman with us. We were pretty well cut up by thorns by this time.
 Berry ingeniously cut up rub Der tube that he carried for a tour niquet and made slippers out of 1t (Continued on Page Slxteen) 1 Txvo 1a:,,~;o. o~o ~oo,,oL, y,ooro oaci.