lone BAR man fired twenty-six magazines, some five hundred bullets, in a fifteen-minute period, until his overheated rifle rebelled and fired only single shots. In less than an hour, Adachi’s lead battalion was scythed from four hundred to ninety survivors, many of whom spent their last energy to crawl or run back across the river. The blood of their comrades turned the shallow water red and speckled the rocks of the riverbed. Many had been snared in coils of barbed wire above the riverbank and slaughtered. Still, throughout the night, the Japanese threw more battalions into the fray. Their
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