The Nugget

by P. T. Deutermann

  There was an extremely harried Marine major in the tower room trying to deal with various crises. Our guide pushed us up to the desk and then left. The major finally saw us.

  “And who the hell are you guys?” he asked. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for days.

  We told him our sad story.

  “So you didn’t bring me an airplane?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “It was shot down, remember?”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with two aviators and no fucking plane? If you had a bomber and fuel and bombs, I’d be kissing your boots, but otherwise take two APCs and call me in the morning.”

  He gestured for us to get out of there and turned back to the three field radios that were all clamoring for his attention at once. Rooster and I wandered out of the chaos into the hot sunlight and sat down on ammo boxes.

  “Welcome to Guadalcanal,” Rooster muttered.

  “Yeah, well, he is just a little busy. Now that they’ve got wounded there’ll be more Catalinas. We’ll just have to wait for a seat.”

  “That something you know, Boss?” Rooster asked.

  Finally a sergeant stopped to ask who we were and what we were doing there. We again recited our tale of woe. He grunted and took us to a collection of rectangular tents that apparently was the main communications center for the operation. Everyone inside the tent seemed to be really pissed off. We finally learned why: the invasion’s support ships, loaded with food, medical supplies, and water, had been withdrawn “temporarily,” so things were a little tight right now. About that time a firefight erupted somewhere nearby, with lots of machine-gun fire and the crump of mortars joining in. The sergeant told us to stay there. He then ordered a corporal to find us some weapons and some ammo.

  We waited some more, trying to stay out of the way of the beehive of activity going on. We were used to the air-conditioned spaces aboard ship, where everything was clean and nobody was shouting. This was more like a Boy Scout camp where the tenderfeet had been turned loose with a serious job. There was no ventilation in the tents, no fans, and conversation was difficult because of the generators roaring just outside. The corporal returned with two 1903 Springfield rifles, both of which had bloodstains on the stocks. He gave us each a handful of ammo, wished us good luck, and disappeared. Rooster went looking for water and found out he had to go about 200 yards to the nearest “water buffalo,” a short, squat water tank on wheels. He came back to beg somebody for a canteen and then went back to the “buff,” where the guys guarding the tank only filled it halfway. Water was being prioritized for the medics and the wounded. The rest of the troops were advised to catch rainwater in their helmets.

  At around two in the afternoon a jeep came up to the Pagoda and debarked a full colonel and what looked like his aide. When he noticed the two of us sitting there in our damp flight suits with rifles by our side, he walked over. I’d heard that Marines were sometimes called leathernecks. This guy’s face looked like a picture I’d seen of Sitting Bull, only meaner.

  “Okay, I give up,” he growled. “What the hell, over?”

  For the third time I told our story. He gave the standard Marine sympathy grunt and asked if we’d had water or chow. Rooster said he’d raided the water buffalo.

  The colonel nodded. “You have to have water in this heat. Food right now is optional, but I’ll try. We had some inbound but the Navy took it back. I’ll get the comms people to get word to them that you’re here. In the meantime, this island is infested with embarrassed Japs and is by no means secure, so I’m going to get someone to put you in a relatively safe place for the night. Right now, stay put.”

  We both said yessir like a couple of recruits and sat back down once he’d left. Rooster began examining his rifle and then started to load some rounds into its magazine. I was a shotgun man so he had to show me how to operate the thing. Each rifle had a bayonet folded under the barrel, which we left alone. A few minutes later a Marine showed up and handed us some C-rations and a single bullet-dented canteen. Progress.

  That night the Marines seemed to be extremely edgy. There’d been reports that the Japs had landed a large force of infantry somewhere along the island’s north coast and were intent on retaking the airfield. The local commander, General Vandegrift, had set up three defensive lines around the airfield, even though he was convinced the Japs would come over the beaches at Lunga Point, not from the interior. Rooster and I were given steel helmets and a pick and a shovel. We were told to dig a slit trench about a hundred yards from the Pagoda.

  An exhausted-looking sergeant brought us a shelter half while we were digging in so that we’d have cover from the nighttime downpours. He was a short man, carrying a carbine-style rifle on a shoulder sling. He also had two hand grenades, a canteen, six ammo clips, a first-aid kit, a 1911 model .45, and a large knife hanging off his webbed belt. I wondered how he could even walk. He examined our unimpressive efforts in moving the red Guadalcanal dirt, squinted, and shook his head.

  “Gotta go deeper, Ensign,” he said. “Think China. You need to be able to stand up in that hole with just your tin hat showing. And make one end deeper than the other so’s the rain will collect there and not in your shoes. Then build a lump so’s each of you can poke a rifle up over that dirt and kill some Japs. You know how to fix those bayonets?”

  We didn’t have the first idea. He showed us, trying to disguise the fact that he thought we were hopeless.

  “Your hole here is behind two other defensive perimeters,” he said, “so you should be okay if the Japs hit us tonight. But you never know. In the meantime, don’t shoot at anything or anybody unless they’re wavin’ a sword or screaming banzai. If some shit does start tonight, fix those pig-stickers, keep your heads down, and leave the serious business to us.”

  “They didn’t teach us much in the way of infantry tactics at flight school, Sergeant,” I offered.

  He grinned, squatted down on his haunches and lit a cigarette, then offered each of us a smoke. We eagerly accepted.

  “Ain’t much to it,” he said. “If they come, there’ll be a whole lot of noise. Rifles, machine guns, mortars, maybe even some arty. And flares. There’ll be lotsa flares. The Brits told us that the Japs give their troops some kinda pill to amp ’em up just before they jump off the line, so they scream a lot.”

  He paused to take a huge drag on his cigarette, burning it down to a glowing half. “If they make it all the way to the runway, there won’t be that many of ’em left. It also means there might not be that many of us left, either, so you two might have to stand tall right here and start shooting. The trick is to make each shot count. None of this between-the-eyes shit, especially when your own eyes will prolly be closed. You aim for his knees and fire once. Work the bolt, aim for his knees if he’s still upright, and sque-e-e-ze the trigger. Don’t jerk it.”

  “His knees?” Rooster asked.

  “Everybody shoots high when they’re scared. Aim for his knees and you’ll hit him in the belly. Then pick out another one and do it again. One round: one dead Jap. That’s the way to kill ’em all. Where’s your water?”

  We had the one canteen, but it was empty. He handed over his canteen and told us to drink up. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “But you gotta understand something: the fuckin’ Navy has done a bunk. As in, they cut and run. There was a big sea fight last night and our guys got creamed. Bunch of our heavy cruisers went down. A thousand or more dead. Plus: the fuckin’ carriers have left. Without air cover, the transports, which still have half our gear, have also left. So we’re on our own here, and there ain’t much in the way of chow, fuel, or ammo.”

  “Left?”

  “That’s the word the colonel used, when he wasn’t cussin’ the yellow-bellied squids, no offense to you two flyboys. Listen: You shoot some Japs close to your hole? When things calm down, go out there and scrounge their rice bags. Colonel sez we’re all gonna be rice-bellies before this shit’s over. Make sure they’re dead before you ta
ke their stuff, though. You know, just stick ’em with those bayonets. If they move, stick ’em again like you mean it.”

  I looked at Rooster after the sergeant had left. There’d been just the hint of a gleam in the sergeant’s eyes when he talked about sticking Japs. It was possible he’d been putting us on just a little bit. Still.

  “You ever heard that expression, out of the frying pan and into the fire?” I asked.

  He nodded bleakly and we returned to our dig-down-to-China project. As darkness fell we were exhausted, soaking wet with sweat, but standing in a slit trench with our chins on the top edge. All our excavated dirt was mounded up around our hole. We’d been so busy digging in that we’d forgotten that we needed a way out of the trench, so then we had to dig some more to cut steps into that hard red dirt at one end. A corporal came by as we finished up. He was carrying almost as much gear as the sergeant had been, but he had an M1 rifle, not a carbine. He handed over some C-ration boxes and two canteens of water. We drank eagerly, trying to ignore the bitter taste of whatever they’d put into the water to make it safe.

  “Use that shelter half to catch rainwater,” the corporal said, seeing our faces as we gagged on the treated water. “It tastes a whole lot better. And smear some of that mud on your arms and faces so the skeeters go somewhere else. They got malaria around here. Come morning, head up to the Pagoda. There’s scuttlebutt that we’ll have a cook tent tomorrow.”

  We got him to refresh us both on how to operate the Springfields, begged a little more ammo, and then dutifully rigged one edge of the shelter half so that rain would collect. For once we hoped it would rain, because our canteens were nearly empty. Even at night it was very hot and wet on this godforsaken island. I promised myself that I would never, ever, complain about the living conditions aboard a Navy ship.

  We heard vehicles moving around as night settled in, their big diesel engines grinding away in the hot darkness. There were no lights showing anywhere, which had to mean that the Marines were expecting a Jap attack. Rooster and I checked our rifles to make sure they were loaded correctly. The sergeant had made a big deal about making sure the bullet’s pointy end faced down the barrel. We went ahead and put the bayonets on and took a few practice aims over the rim of our trench. The rifles were unwieldy with the bayonets fixed, but we had that dirt mound to rest them on. We looked at each other in the darkness, both of us surely thinking the same damned thing: What the hell were we doing here?

  We picked our way through the C-rations. Fortunately Rooster knew how to operate the tiny can opener that was glued to one of the cans. We then decided to take two-hour shifts so that one of us would always be awake. Rooster was more tired than I was so he went down first, sitting lengthwise in the trench with his back against the crude steps we’d cut into the earth. The shelter half covered only his head and chest. If it really rained, he’d get soaked, but we’d had to shorten it to catch precious drinking water. Towards the end of my first watch I heard some sporadic shooting off in the distance.

  Probably some animal spooking the sentries out in the jungle between us and the sea, I told myself. I know the feeling, I thought. The dark jungle around us was full of small sounds. Then three red flares turned night into day behind us and all hell broke loose.

  The sergeant had been understating the noise. A veritable tidal wave of gunfire rose around the airfield and rolled over our little foxhole: the crack of rifles, the deadly, deep-throated chatter of the .50-caliber machine guns, thumps from mortar tubes, and the nasty bang of some kind of field artillery, probably those short 75mm howitzers I’d seen when we landed. I couldn’t have said anything to Rooster if I wanted to because of the ear-smothering racket. More flares, white ones this time, and then some red ones that seemed to be farther out. White: Marines—red: Japs? We had no idea, but when a couple of bullets puffed our shelter half up into the air we both did a synchronized deep knee bend.

  Bits of dirt began flying off our mound and down into the trench, and, if anything, the noise got worse. Worse meant closer, I told myself, and I pulled back the bolt and jacked a round into my rifle’s chamber, closed the bolt, upon which the rifle immediately fired because I’d had my finger on the trigger. Fortunately it was pointed up and out of the trench but it scared the shit out of both of us. There was smoke now, gun smoke and what smelled like burning oil. I had to see.

  I reloaded and then used my bayonet to cut a small notch into the mound of loose dirt around our trench and peered over the edge just as more flares went off. To my horror there were men everywhere, running, kneeling, shooting, falling down, throwing grenades, spinning around as they got hit. I leveled my rifle over the mound. Rooster was suddenly right there alongside, his rifle pointed out into the smoky gloom, and then some kind of round, probably mortar, went off about 50 feet in front of us. Fragments from the mortar explosion hummed past our heads. I was so scared that all I could do was gawp at the firefight that was going on right in front of us. I wanted to shoot, to do something, but there was no way to tell friend from foe. That was until three smallish figures in green uniforms came out of the darkness and ran straight at us, bayonets leveled, furiously working the bolts on their rifles and screaming their lungs out. Japs! Rooster fired immediately and one folded over and went down. I fired next, aiming at his knees just like the sergeant had told us, and the man’s face exploded. He fell like a tree. We both shot the third guy, who shot back, blasting a clump of red dirt into my face. He collapsed ten feet from our trench, hitting face-first, and then, sweet Jesus, got back up onto one knee and lifted his rifle. We both worked our bolts and fired simultaneously. One of us hit him in the face, the other lifted the top of his skull right off. We’d both aimed at his belly.

  Suddenly a Marine appeared, flopped down on his belly next to our trench, and emptied a submachine gun out into the darkness like a Chicago mobster, mowing down more green figures who were coming at us. When he’d taken care of business, he saw the three dead Japs nearby and grinned. Way to go, squids, he said. Then he was gone, running into the dark with his submachine gun held sideways on his hip, firing into the darkness.

  I rubbed as much dirt out of my eyes as I could and then hunkered down, rifle pointed out, waiting for something to shoot at. Then a heavy .50-caliber machine gun erupted up on the Pagoda and proceeded to sweep the entire area, cutting down green men, trees, bushes, ammo crates, and everything else out there in the weeds. Incredibly we saw muzzle flashes out in those weeds, as dying Japs shot back.

  And then it was over. The firing petered out and finally stopped. The flares hissed out in the wet sawgrass. A string of single shots cracked the air for the next twenty minutes, and then we heard a rebel yell from somewhere way out there on the field. It was repeated all around the airfield. Two planes were burning on the edge of the runway, casting the whole scene in bright orange light as they settled into their own demolition. I could see distant figures moving cautiously here and there, using whatever cover there was, kneeling to shoot or stab and then scrambling sideways before somebody shot back.

  I suddenly had to sit down, which is when I discovered that I’d pissed my pants. I looked over at Rooster, who was clutching his crotch, aghast at apparently having done the same thing. Aim for their knees, the sarge had said. Aim, hell, I thought. Dive-bombing a Jap carrier was a piece’a cake compared to this shit. Rooster remembered that we were supposed to go get their rice. I said I was willing to wait until morning. Two Marines came trotting by just then, looking for trouble. They saw the dead Japs, saw us, and quickly relieved the bodies of their ration bags before disappearing into the night. And yes, they did stick the Japs in the throat before reaching down to rifle through their combat belts. Oh, well, I thought, hopefully we’ll be lifted out of here in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I told Rooster he had the watch. He started laughing, but I was too exhausted to see the humor in our situation. Then it started to rain. Perfect. Nobody would be able to tell we’d pissed ourselves.

 
; The next morning found us both sound asleep in our hole, sitting in about six inches of muddy red water. Our efforts to catch rainwater had been defeated by the bullet holes in our shelter half. We climbed out and walked toward the Pagoda, where a mess tent had been set up. We joined the line and found out they had coffee, powdered scrambled eggs, and canned bacon. It smelled wonderful. One of the guys in line recognized us.

  “Hey, it’s the flyboys,” he announced. “They killed some Japs last night. How about that shit.”

  There were murmurs of approval from the line. One Marine asked how many we’d bagged.

  “Three,” I said. “Here, anyway.”

  “Yeah? That mean you been killin’ Japs somewhere’s else?”

  I nodded. “The two of us dive-bombed the Jap carriers at Midway. We and the rest of our squadron probably killed a couple thousand Japs that day.”

  There were whistles of appreciation, and then lots of questions about Midway. We got our chow and joined a small knot of Marines sitting on pallets, their rifles across their laps while balancing their mess kits on top of their rifles. While we were talking to the Marines a clutch of R4Ds appeared, escorted by some fighters. Six of the two-engine aircraft in all, which back home were called the DC-3, landed, bringing medical teams and the material needed to set up a field hospital. They also brought ammo, food, and enough avgas to refuel the fighters, who would escort them back to home base. Once unloaded they took aboard grievously wounded Marines for the flight back to the big field hospital at Nouméa. We hitched a ride on one of them for the 1,000-mile trip, both of us sporting USMC utility caps. Hopefully from Nouméa we could get back to the Big E, where we would have some stories to tell.