I Fell in Love with an Aleutian Vampire is reissued here as the illustrated WWII in Adak Commemorative Edition with over 200 stunning images directly related to the narrative (the original version having been phased out in favor of this supreme edition, available both as a paperback and e-book). This book concerns the difficulty of the Aleutian battle treatre, the native Aleuts and their vampire myths (the "iidigidi"), and the incredible journey of a US Army lieutenant sent there to fight.
Excerpt from the narrative:
The ice floe steepened to a sixty degree angle, where further above, the rear of Company G disappeared into a wall of clouds obscuring the summit. Suddenly, the enemy opened fire on them.
Colonel Yamasaki had beefed up his ridgeline reinforcement, desperately pinning the 4th Infantry down about 200 yards from the top. Enemy machine guns, flanking fire, and grenades being lobbed from well-defiladed positions caused numerous wounded US soldiers to go sliding back down the towering ice floe, trying to slow their glide by thrusting their bayonets into the snow. We attempted to grab the hapless soldiers as they passed, but by the time they reached us, most were moving too fast. The kicker came in the form of occasional outcroppings of rock, which claimed an untold number of additional casualties in gruesome collisions. Dead bodies began piling up at the base of the mountain - and they were mostly Americans. Within a few short minutes, the Battle for Buffalo Ridge had reached a critical state.
Suddenly, the sun broke through over the summit, and all along the right-flanking crest appeared a line of Aleut warriors with a great, luminous rainbow arching over them. They were wearing body armor made of rows of wooden rods lashed together, and carried harpoons, spears with throwing boards, stone and bone knives, and a mishmash of guns dating centuries back. Most strikingly, they were all going barefoot. In short order, this mysterious battalion of three score Unangax fighters made battle with the 300-odd hardline Japs entrenched on the opposing ridgeline. The indigenes began by launching lances from throwing boards, aiming at targets both near and far with uncanny accuracy. Some of the most adept native fighters wore fearsome wooden masks. The speed and precision in which the Aleuts attacked was simply astounding.
But the battle was not entirely asymmetrical, for the native Attu army was taking on a hail of return fire from Japanese Type 100 submachine guns and Arisaka rifles.
The wooden-armored warriors returned the Japanese favor with their anachronistic guns, some of which appeared to be eighteenth-century pistols and M1891 Cossack rifles from World War I.
General Simon Buckner sent up a radio call to Buffalo Ridge. A pair of oversized binoculars hanging at his chest evinced he'd been watching the action firsthand, and now he demanded further intel on the "unknown unit" that had come to the aid of Company G...
