Shootin' Texan

Paced by tanks, 38th Division infantrymen were storming a narrow gorge, its 500-ft. walls honeycombed with Japanese caves, leading to Wawa Dam east of Manila. The tanks stalled in the bouldered terrain. So they called up lanky Charles R. Oliver Jr., who a year ago was a Wortham, Tex. high-school student, gave him a bazooka and appointed him spearhead.

The bazooka was borrowed and Charlie noticed that the sight was broken. A runner started back to battalion headquarters for a new sight, but the attack could not wait. With two scouts on his flanks to protect him, Charlie and his bazooka loader moved forward, the men of A Company trailing cautiously behind.

They rounded a bend, started up a concrete path and saw a pair of 20-mm. Jap guns aimed down the trail. Charlie got them with a squirrel-hunter's "bark" shot, hitting the rock wall beside the guns and splattering them with shell and rock fragments. Next he blasted open the heavy steel doors of a Jap tunnel and set off a store of enemy ammunition.

Charlie moved nearer the dam, firing again & again: He saw four Jap huts half hidden by boulders on a hill across the river. He fired four rounds, demolished four huts. At the very end Charlie Oliver spoiled his record. He saw a small cave far up the opposite cliff, fired twice and missed both times. That brought his day's score down to 28 hits in 30 shots. When he reached the dam Charlie said that next time he wanted a bazooka with a sight on it.

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