[The following takes place during the Bougainville Campaign in the Pacific Theatre of World War II.]
That night Ira’s childhood vanished forever. He was sharing a foxhole with Bill Faulkner. Faulkner remembered: “We took turns sleeping and Ira was sitting in one corner with his rifle between his legs and I curled up in another to get a little shut-eye.”
Faulkner was jolted awake by bloodcurdling screams. Horrified, he tried to make sense of the violent lashings in the darkness. Ira was struggling with his bayoneted rifle. Impaled on the long knife blade was a Japanese soldier, still screaming. The infiltrator had crept soundlessly to the edge of the fox-hole. Then he had sprung with lethal intent toward the two young Americans. In the darkness, he had not glimpsed the point of the blade that was now killing him.
Source:
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. “Call of Duty.” Flags of Our Fathers. Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2006. 86. Print.
Further Reading:
Holy shit. You can't get luckier than that.