William Edward Sempert

Sometime late that night when it was my turn on the gun, I was sitting about half asleep when I heard a loud *crack* like someboy breaking a big stick right behind me. It scared me half to death. What the hell was that? A few seconds before, it had been eerily quiet except for the fire burning inside the pillbox and the waves breaking on the beach.

It turned out that a good friend name Bill Sempert was watching my back when he noticed a Jap soldier sneaking out of the surf. He had swum beyond the breakers and had come in behind our lines. No doubt his aim was to take out the machine gun as a suicide mission – and there I sat behind the gun, looking the other way. Instead of shooting or killing the guy with a bayonet, Bill, a big man, just waited for him to come close. The Jap was inching along on his belly and he had to crawl past the chunk of concrete where Bill was waiting.

Bill held his M1 rifle by the barrel and smashed the man's skull with the butt, breaking the stock completely in half. He went at it like he was killing a snake with a big stick. Bill carried that broken rifle the rest of the battle and fired it like a pistol just for the fun of it.