The Signal Corps in Foxholes by Captain Fred E. Kyer, 7th Signal Company Walter Kalinowski and Isadore Eisenberg, a couple of inseparable wire men in the 7th Signal Company, were constantly throwing shady deals into one another, but remained good buddies in spite of it all. It was a rough afternoon on May 14 (Attu, 1943), at that early stage in the battle when the lines were just becoming fixed, and the two forces were really getting down to business on each other, Kalinowski and Eisenberg had been given the mission of laying a wire to a battalion on the line from the regimental CP, and they had gotten about three-fourths of the way out to the battalion with their reel of wire when a Jap machine gunner spotted them and opened up. The two Irishmen dropped their wire and dove headlong into a shallow little hole, in which there was barely room to lie side by side. Kalinowski was lying on the uphill side of the hole, and the persistent Jap gunner poured a stream of zinging bullets past his shirt tail. Kalinowski quivered. The Jap fired another long burst, and Kalinowski quivered. After a few minutes and several more bursts, he nudged Eisenberg, "Say, buddy, I'm cold over here. How about swapping sides?" "Sure, pal," Eisenberg answered. So while Eisenberg rolled up, Kalinowski rolled over him and into the deeper security of the downhill side of the hole. The Jap continued to fire at the two men until the fog settled down and curtained them. Then they crawled gingerly out of the hole, picked up the reel of wire, and accomplished their mission. Nothing was said of the swapping of sides in the hole until they were almost back. Then Eisenberg looked out of the corner of his eye at Kalinowski. "Say, buddy," he asked, "were you really cold on your side of that hole?" Kalinowski grinned, "Man, I was freezing to death." Eisenberg raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, " he said. "Those bullets stirred up a very chilly breeze, didn't they, pal?" Early in the battle, when the Japs sprayed the top of the hill every time anything moved up there, Bernard L. Hillers, a wire man in the 7th Signal Company, was sent up to Major Smith to lay a wire from the 17th CP to an OP located on the top and forward end of the Hogback. The gang had moved out from the CP and had gotten up onto the top of the Hogback with their wire when the Japs across the valley picked up the activity and began blasting away. The gang broke and took cover in some very shallow hastily prepared slit trenches as the bullets ripped over them. The cover was just barely deep enough with maybe a couple of inches to spare. It was a nasty, tense situation, lying out there helpless and quiet---the only sound being the vicious crack of the bullets inches overhead. Then, easily and resignedly, the faint sound of a harmonica drifted out over the shallow foxholes. Hillers, our boy, had rummaged around in his pockets and found his damn mouth organ. There he lay, flat on his back, while the bullets cracked over him, playing the plaintive "Too Late, Too Late." An extract from "The Capture of Attu," As Told By The Men Who Fought There. From the Fighting Forces Series of The Infantry Journal, 1115 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington , DC.