Code Talker

by Joseph Bruchac

  We Marines usually felt resentful toward the Navy, and with good reason. When the first Marines were dropped on Guadalcanal back in August of 1942, the naval commander had been Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner. In one of the dumbest moves of the war, he’d failed to prepare for a Japanese naval attack.

  The result was what we Marines called the Battle of the Four Sitting Ducks. On the night of August 8 and 9 a Japanese task force came tearing down the Slot, which is what we called that stretch of ocean between the Solomon islands and New Britain where the Japanese base at Rabaul was still in operation. They sank four American cruisers. Our whole fire support group was wiped out. Turner was forced to sail away with his supply ships only half unloaded. That left the Marines on Guadalcanal without any naval support, only half of their supplies, and 50,000 Japanese ready to wipe them out. So, with half the spokes knocked out of Operation Cartwheel, lots of Marines were just saying, “Here we go again!”

  Few of us slept the night before D-day. We waited on board our ship for the first light of morning to show us the island. I kept checking my watch, uncertain if I wanted its sluggish hands to move faster or just stay still forever. Finally it was 0530—5:30 A.M. in civilian time. The President Adams was still a few miles out from land, following the battleships and minesweepers that went ahead of us to enter the bay. Our objective was Blue Beach One, the landing zone closest to Cape Torokina.

  It was too dark for me to clearly see the other men around me. Moving through the night sea in enemy waters, our ships were always kept in blackout so they couldn’t be seen by Japanese planes. You weren’t allowed to light even a match. But I knew that darkness would soon be broken before the dawn. I strained my eyes toward the northeast as I stood by the rail. Other silent men stood watching beside me. We could hear the sound of whetstones being drawn along blades as some of the other Marines sitting on the decks behind us honed their already razor-sharp knives and bayonets. Other leathernecks were tying and retying their boots, checking and rechecking their packs, their guns, their ammunition.

  A few of us tried to carry on conversations, saying anything we could think of to keep ourselves calm.

  “What about them Yankees?” said someone with a southern accent.

  I knew it had to be Georgia Boy. He wasn’t talking about northerners. Even though he was from the Deep South he loved the New York Yankees baseball team.

  “They cleaned up them Cardinals four games straight,” Georgia Boy added. No one answered him.

  One Marine a few men down to my left was singing softly to himself the first lines of a song that had just come out the year before. It was very popular with us Marines. He had a good voice, but either didn’t know the whole song or was so nervous he could only remember the first line.

  Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,

  Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition . . .

  I reached down to touch my buckskin pouch filled with corn pollen. I had prayed earlier that morning, but now I whispered the words again in our sacred language, asking the Holy People for protection.

  “Get ready for the fireworks, Chief,” said the dark shape of a tall Marine next to me.

  Suddenly, a brilliant starburst appeared straight ahead, followed by another and another. Two seconds later, the thunder of the cannons reached us. It was 0600. The destroyer Wadsworth had begun the shore bombardment right on schedule. Other bursts of light began to appear as the Terry and the Sigourney joined in. Each ship had its own fire support area. Their shelling was supposed to soften up the beaches, drive back the enemy, and destroy his positions. It had worked on Guadalcanal. The surprised Japanese there had retreated back from the beaches and the first landings had gone almost unopposed.

  Now the last of our minesweeper destroyers, the Anthony, opened up. It was so much closer to us that the firing of its big guns outlined the whole ship. The thudding wha-boom of its cannons made our own decks quiver. The Anthony’s target was a small island called Puruata. Our transports had to pass close by there. The Anthony’s five-inchers roared off two-gun salvos, one after another, though no return fire answered.

  On and on the shelling went. The whole sea ahead of us was alive with fire and drifting smoke. It was impossible to hear anything other than the constant, deep-thudding booms of our naval bombardment. It was pounding like the giant heart of the war itself or a great thunderstorm without an end.

  Bougainville was visible now in the hazy morning light. I saw explosions from shell strikes blossoming on its distant shore. I knew that men might be dying there, but what I saw at that moment did not seem terrible. Those bursts of white fire from the guns, those red circles where shells landed, looked like exotic blossoms, flowers that bloomed, then faded in less than a heartbeat.

  The tall Marine standing next to me leaned his head close to mine. Although I could make out his features now by the light of the explosions, I had never seen him before. He had a little black mustache and thick dark eyebrows that met over his eyes, almost like there was a caterpillar crawling over his brow. His dark eyes gleamed and there was an excited wolfish grin on his face. I’ve never forgotten that face of his, even though I never saw him again.

  “They’re giving it to ’em!” he yelled in my ear. “Won’t even be a worm left alive on that beach by the time we get there.”

  I didn’t yell anything back to him.

  Somehow, I knew his optimistic words were not true. Our naval bombardment went on and on, but I could feel in my bones that there were still enemy soldiers alive on Blue Beach. They were dug deep into the ground in reinforced bunkers. They had not run away from their posts this time. Their hands were on their weapons. They were waiting to kill us.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  First Landing

  All through the bombardment the President Adams and the other eleven transport ships kept moving in closer to shore. When we were off Puruata our own guns opened up, firing ranging shots from our three-inch battery. That way if anything came back at us from a shore battery we would have the right range. Nothing came back at us from the island, but our ship’s gunners still sprayed it with bursts of twenty-millimeter fire as we passed abeam.

  The Marine who’d been singing started up again as soon as we fired our last burst. We were slowly making our way toward our eight landing craft, ready for the signal to board. Apparently our singer was in a different LCVP and so his voice was getting farther away. He’d changed his tune now to one that had just become popular this year.

  “Oh what a beautiful morning,

  Oh what a beautiful day. . .”

  “LAND THE LANDING FORCE.”

  It was the command everyone had been waiting for. The big chain rattled as our ship dropped anchor. It was 0645. The landing boat I was in jolted back and forth as it was rail-loaded over the side. That is the way we did it then, grandchildren. We’d climb into our landing boats before they were lowered into the water. It made things faster at a time when a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death. Ours was a small landing ship designed for troops, not one of the huge LSTs that carried in trucks and tanks. There were just thirty of us on board.

  I sat there. Five minutes passed, then ten. Waiting. Twenty minutes, then half an hour. Waiting and not knowing. Those two things, grandchildren, were always very hard for me. Finally, at 0715, the command was given. We were dropped into the waves and our engines roared. I took a deep breath. We were finally on our way toward the island.

  But we were not yet there. Our alligator would not be the first to touch the beach, even though we were in the initial landing wave of 7,000 Marines. Our beach was the farthest away. We were almost three miles from shore and our landing craft only went eight knots an hour. It would take us another ten or fifteen minutes. The longest ten or fifteen minutes I’ve ever known.

  The shelling kept on as we approached the shore, visible in the growing light as a white line of tide. Rounds from our destroyers passed over our heads to strike the beach. So
me shots fell short and landed in the sea, raising great columns of water. The sound of our boat’s engine changed. We were no longer going forward but holding steady.

  “Gotta hold here at five hundred yards,” a blocky Marine with lieutenant’s stripes shouted back over his shoulder. “Otherwise we might get clobbered by our own shells.”

  Then, as suddenly as it began, the shelling stopped. The thunder of the big guns no longer rolled over the water. One final geyser of spray rose ahead of us and that was it. It was like being in a movie theater when the film breaks partway through the show. But we still held off the island.

  “That was the main course,” said the lieutenant. “Here comes dessert. Fresh fruit delivered by air.”

  The droning sound that had begun coming from overhead turned into a roar as thirty Grumman TBF Avengers came swooping in. The tubby little fighter planes dove like hornets, bombing and strafing the beaches where we’d soon set foot. Their run only took five minutes. Ammunition spent, bombs dropped, they peeled off, heading back toward their base at Munda.

  Some of the Marines on our landing craft cheered.

  “Nothing coulda lived through that.”

  “Home run.”

  “Bye-bye, Tokyo Joe.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just checked my gear, making sure the radio was strapped tightly in front of me. George Kirk, another code talker who had seen combat on the Canal, had given me that advice about our bulky hand-cranked TBX radios.

  “Always carry this big baby right in front of you,” he’d said. “It’ll protect you from anything short of a mortar round. When it comes to hitting the beach I’d a lot rather have this than one of those new little portable units. Heck, they won’t even stop a twenty-two.”

  “All right,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s go.”

  Once again, we moved forward in the waves. It was bright enough now to see clearly everything in the boat. As I looked back I noticed something I hadn’t been able to see before the dark lifted. Our little alligator had a ramp on the back to be lowered when we got close to shore and swung around so the aft side was toward the beach. That way the landing craft could make a quick run back out to sea once everyone was off. Someone with a sense of humor had written words in big letters on that ramp.

  FIRE EXIT

  WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST

  We were so close I could see how hard the surf was pounding the shore. The beach was not at all like the one we had practiced on at Guadalcanal. It rose up here from the edge of the water as abruptly as a high wall.

  Fifty yards from that steep beach, the guns opened fire. Not ours this time. They were the guns of the Japanese. A round from a Japanese .77 hit the waves so close to us that our boat rocked like a toy swatted by a giant. But we kept going, bullets pinging off the prow.

  “Keep your heads down,” the lieutenant yelled. “Get ready to go!”

  There were eight boats in our wave. As we swung around, I saw the boat to our starboard side take a direct hit. It rose up out of the water in an explosion of smoke and flame and spray. When it fell back it looked as if it had been crushed in a huge fist. Then our ramp grated on the sand.

  “GO, GO, GO.”

  It was not just the lieutenant shouting. We were all yelling that word. And we went.

  Someone’s hand was on my shoulder as we all surged forward, leaping or stumbling onto the beach, firing our weapons in the directions that it seemed the bullets were coming from, falling onto our bellies to get under the deadly crossfire, crawling up that wall of sand to find ourselves confronted by the jungle’s thick walls of green.

  Despite all that confusion, the noise of hostile fire, the sound of men crying out as they were hit by shrapnel and bullets, we kept pushing forward. Our training took over, even though some of us were so confused and afraid that we could hardly think. The five boats that survived pulled back from shore to the President Adams for another load.

  I don’t remember digging a foxhole, but I found myself inside one, my shovel stuck in the moist dark sand and tree roots at the bottom of the four-foot-deep hole. The sounds of firing were still all around me as the Japanese continued to cover the beach with their well-planned ambush. Another Marine, close to twice my size, was next to me. I was tying a handkerchief around his arm, which had been wounded by shrapnel. It was Georgia Boy. I hadn’t known he was in the landing craft with me, but it must have been his hand on my shoulder, urging me forward as we hit the beach.

  “Chief,” he said, “y’all are one tough little Navajo. You know y’all drug me in here with one hand?”

  I finished knotting the bandage and Georgia Boy leaned back against the wall of our foxhole. As I looked at my watch I noticed that my fingernails were broken and bleeding. It was 0845.

  Of the twelve landing zones, our beach, Blue Beach One, was the worst. Despite the sound and fury of our shelling and our air attack, the Japanese pillboxes had been untouched. Dug deep into the coral ten yards back from the beach, roofed with coconut palm logs and concealed under a thatch of leaves, 300 Japanese had waited out the storm. Our hundreds of rounds of five-inch shells had all either landed too short or too far inland or exploded overhead when they hit the palm trees.

  I looked back down at Blue Beach One. It was a mess. The surf and the high sand wall had made it impossible to unload the tanks. They were bogged down and stuck. Dozens of landing craft were broached and stranded, some so badly damaged by the surf and the coral reef that they’d have to be towed back for repair.

  However, the main concentration of Japanese defenders had been where we made our landing. Everywhere else there had been only light resistance. By nightfall, despite our problems, we had once again managed to bring almost 14,000 Marines and 6,000 tons of equipment on shore.

  Our command post was set up at Cape Torokina. Our Navajo net began sending messages from the commanders concerning operational orders. Every-thing from the rear echelon to the forward echelon and back was sent through us. So I had a clearer picture than most. Seventy Marines killed or missing. Another 124 wounded. The Japanese had resisted hard, but our superior numbers had finally forced them to disappear back into the jungle.

  By the late afternoon, everything was as quiet as a picture postcard. It had been a long, strange day. Some of the Solomon Islanders who had been watching our invasion from the jungle came out and began wandering around the beach. They were happy to see us. They shook hands with us Marines and patted us on our shoulders. The natives were all barefoot and almost naked. Some of them carried bows and quivers of arrows.

  “Ya’ll kill any Japanese with that rig?” Georgia Boy said to one of the islanders whose arrows were tipped with jagged pieces of metal that had once been shrapnel.

  The man smiled, showing his red-stained teeth, as he nodded and held up two fingers. Suddenly a mortar shell came whistling in, landed 200 feet away, and exploded. Georgia Boy dove down into our foxhole. The native man, who’d survived months of enemy occupation, didn’t even flinch.

  He waved his hand. “Him fella bomb fall too far to hurt we. I hear him coming long time. Want fruit?” Then he handed us a bunch of bananas.

  As I drifted off to a fitful, exhausted sleep late that night, I thought about what was the strangest thing of all that first day of combat. All that fighting had happened without seeing even one Japanese soldier.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  On Bougainville

  The next two days on Cape Torokina were spent setting up our base and strengthening our position while small parties tried to follow the trails that led farther into the island. It wasn’t easy. The jungle was thick and the trails dangerous and narrow. Everything about Bougainville was strange to me. As a Navajo, I was used to a dry land and so were most of the other Marines. Unlike our enemies, our men had never fought in this kind of terrain before.

  I quickly discovered that the whole island, aside from the first hundred yards nearest the beach, was nothing but swampy jungle. Whenever I dug another foxhole, cu
tting down through ferns and rotted vegetation and tree roots and mud, the bottom of it would be filled with water by the time I finished. Whatever wasn’t jungle was steep and rugged hills. There was even a volcano on that island and while I was there it was erupting!

  I’d read about volcanoes in my geography book and I was excited at the prospect of being so close to a real one. One of the patrols I was on took us so high up on one of those hills that I was above the jungle. And there, only a mile or so away, was the volcano. Boy, that was something. It was all wreathed in smoke from the hot lava inside it.

  But the volcano was not the only hot thing on that island. Everything was boiling. Bougainville was even steamier than it had been on Guadalcanal. You felt like you were inside a stew pot with the lid on. And although it hardly seemed possible, the insects were fiercer here, too.

  “Are the mosquitoes like this where you come from?” I asked Georgia Boy one night as we bedded down, trying to arrange our netting to keep out those buzzing bloodsuckers that always seemed to find ways to get to our skin.

  “Well,” he drawled, “there’s not so many, but there is some big ’uns back home. But if we ties down the horses and cows at night, them mosquitoes don’t usually carry ’em off.”

  Speaking of horses makes me remember the Atabrine pills we had to take to keep from getting malaria. They were big enough to choke a horse and always stuck in my throat when they were going down. They tasted bad and that taste stayed with me for hours after taking them. They were awful.

  I hated those pills, so much that I tried to avoid taking them. I would pretend to swallow while hiding the pill under my tongue. That way I could spit it out later. We had a radio tent set up as the base for our communications. Watch Officer Alex Williams was the supervisor there and that was where we went to take our pills. Not only was the watch officer in charge of dispensing the pills to us, he had also been told to keep a very close eye on us Navajos. For some reason we had developed a reputation. So, when he handed me my pill he would watch closely as I put it into my mouth.