Chapter Four - Evans

Evans had been with adkins, jackson, and pollard since guadalcanal, they were as close to family as someone could be. He was a tall caucasian with short black hair and a stubbly beard speckled with gray with green eyes and bags below them like he never slept. he had wide square shoulders and was a beast of a man having grown up on a farm in kansas. Always joking and making light of things even in the worst situations, evans had been reprimanded too many times to count for playing jokes on leadership but he always laughed and shrugged it off when the yelling was done. He carried a big BAR that had killed many japs. They had fought against thousands of enemy as a squad and killed hundreds. Adkins was a solid leader who never froze but seeing evans body hit the ground in the trench he froze for what felt like 10 minutes but was only actually about a second. As soon as he came to he checked that the emplacement was clear and ran to evans body. As he kneeled down next to the body he heard a chuckle and evans coughed and said "holy shit, that was close huh? Aww sarge were you worried about me?" Adkins. Breathed a sigh of relief and looked at evans helmet, a quarter inch indent was scraped along the side of his helmet showing the innards of the lining. Another tenth of an inch to the left and the side of evans head would have been shot clean through. And to top it off the shit head was laughing about it, "fucken idiot" said adkins "you're lucky you didn't die! Or am I unlucky that I have to keep dealing with your shit?" Inwardly he felt ecstatic he had survived. After resting for another 30 seconds adkins pulled the remaining 8 marines as three had died or been wounded taking the emplacement and started developing the next move. Poking up he realized the emplacement to the left of his had also been taken by another squad. Peering to the right he saw the machine guns at that emplacement still firing at the beach, it seemed as if those japs hadn't realized they had taken the emplacement next to them. Adkins quickly decided to take another emplacement to help out the remaing beach landings. He layed the plan out for his marines, they were going to try to move more inland and attack this emplacement from the rear. Slowly creeping out of the first Emplacement and moving into the jungle directly behind their emplacement the men moved as quietly as possible attempting to avoid being seen. as they moved through the jungle the 50 yards to the next Emplacement they came across a small pathway leading to the rear of it. Sgt Adkins left two men, Jackson and Richmond, to guard the the pathway so no one could come behind them. He instructed them to attempt to kill anyone silently unless the felt that shooting was the best option. He trusted Jackson to handle his job he'd been given, he only worried about the new guy he'd left with him. Pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind he urged his remaining 8 men to continue quietly. In a matter of a few minutes they had slowly snuck behind the Emplacement, Sgt adkins counted the men in the Emplacement and just as he had finished his count of 15 he heard 5 shots ring out of the jungle behind them from a distinctly american M1. He immediately shouted to his men "Grenades, NOW!" his men pulled the pins and threw 9 grenades in all. As the grenades began leaving the hands of the marines a few japs had heard the commotion from the jungle and turned with guns ready to fight. The first jap made the turn and shouted to the rest of them warning them of the threat behind them. When the rest had turned the first one had already started firing at the Americans dropping one as they all dove to the ground. At this point the grenades began landing among the Japanese and exploding.