"DEAD MAN'S GUARD" PART 1/2 "In the early hours of the 29th May they ran down to try to overcome U.S. positions with weight of numbers alone, screaming and shouting ‘WE DIE, YOU DIE’. It became a vicious battle that went on most of the day.
One of the rear area position was overrun and the tents surrounded. In the darkness and fog the Japanese did not realise that one of the tents was an Aid station occupied by wounded men.
Of the 13 men in the tent, 4 were still able to move about. The exposure case, who had been stripped and was sleeping near the stove, had been killed on the stretcher. The top of his head was a mess where a bullet had ripped into his skull, his face was bloody and brain tissue was spattered over the litter.
Captain Bryce crawled to the dead man on the litter. Cautiously he moved him toward the door. The tactics were simple – the aid station had escaped complete annihilation by a miracle. By a miracle twelve men were still living, only one was dead. And twelve were playing dead.
Bryce pulled the mutilated man halfway off the stretcher and left him sprawled face up in the doorway so that curious Japs who peered inside would see this first and perhaps only this, and accept the grisly testimony at its dead face value. Bryce had just completed setting the precarious stage and had crawled back from the doorway when the effectiveness of his work proved itself. 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 the twelve live men in the tent 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."