"DEAD MAN'S GUARD"
"In the early hours of the 29th May, the Japs ran down and overcame our positions with weight of numbers alone, screaming and shouting ‘WE DIE, YOU DIE’.
We were surrounded and in the darkness and fog, the Japs did not realise that one of the tents was an Aid station occupied by wounded men.
The exposure case had been killed on the stretcher where a bullet had ripped into his skull. His face was bloody and brain tissue was spattered over the litter.
By a miracle, only one was dead and 12 of us were playing dead.
Capt. Bryce pulled the mutilated man halfway off the stretcher and left him sprawled face up in the doorway.
A Jap pulled back the flap of the door and peered in. He just glanced at the dead man’s head and withdrew, satifised that the destruction inside had been complete.
He will never be cited for valor, but the mutilated, dead soldier held his position against the door of the tent more valiantly and more effectively than he could have in life, and to us he was a hero.
Five times during the morning Japs pulled back the tent flap and looked in and each time they were driven back. The sight of the dead boy convinced them.
Later in the morning, one Jap stepped over the body of the dead man in the door and stood up inside the tent. He had a rifle with a bayonet fixed. He blinked in the darkness of the tent’s interior for a second.
I slowly raised my carbine and pushed off the safety realizing fully that a shot coming from inside the tent would bring the whole horde in on us. Either way it was suicide. At least I would take one of the bastards along.
The Jap was looking down at the two wounded men. They were lying face down on the grassy floor. My finger tightened on the trigger. Then suddenly, in response to a shout from outside, the Jap turned and ducked out through the doorway." - Capt. George S.Buehler C. Co, 7th Medical BN, Attu, May 29, 1943.
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