by Len Levinson
“Where?”
The Mosquito pointed, and Sergeant Suzuki trained his binoculars in that direction. “I see them! Good work, Private Nanamegi!”
Sergeant Suzuki picked up the phone and reported the sighting to Captain Hisahiro, in his office deep in the fortress. Captain Hisahiro looked at his map and realized that the Americans were occupying new ground in that jungle, evidently preparing for an attack. He had to be economical with his shells, saving them for the American attack, but it wouldn't hurt to lay a barrage on those Americans over there, because they weren't dug in yet and he could inflict casualties, maybe even make the Americans pull back.
He picked up the phone on his desk and called his artillery officer to arrange for the barrage.
The first shell landed while the GIs were digging in, and they all dived into their holes. Lydia Kent-Taylor whipped out her camera, because it was just another picture situation to her. GIs hit the dirt during artillery bombardment. The next shell landed close by, startling her. She realized that she would have been killed by that shell if she'd been standing closer, and a wave of fear swept over her.
Something enormous and heavy hit her from behind, sending her flying into the muck. She thought she'd been hit by a bomb, but then she felt someone crawl off her and looked around to see Butsko.
He pushed her face into the muck. “Keep your head down, stupid!”
“Now just a moment...!”
Another shell landed in their vicinity, and she jerked as if somebody had plugged her into a wall socket. She could feel its concussion in her stomach and easily could imagine being blown apart. Terrified, she hugged the ground and trembled, feeling naked and vulnerable.
“C'mon with me, nitwit,” Butsko said, grabbing her collar.
She was paralyzed with fear, so he dragged her behind him, heading toward a shell crater. He crawled in and pulled her in after him. She toppled to the bottom beside him and looked up fearfully.
Butsko took out a cigarette. “You'll be safe in here,” he said. “And besides, they say you never hear the one that lands on you.” Flicking the wheel of his Zippo, he took a drag on his cigarette.
She looked at him in disbelief. He was leaning casually against the wall of the crater, smoking a cigarette as if nothing were happening. Shells slammed into the ground all around them, and tiny clods of earth rained down on them. A small rock landed on Lydia's cloth fatigue hat, stunning her.
“You ought to wear a helmet,” he said, “but I guess it's hard to focus your camera when your're wearing a helmet.”
She stood on her hands and knees in the bottom of the crater, trembling all over and flinching hard whenever a shell landed. She wished she'd worn the helmet Lieutenant Harper had given her, but it had been too heavy, had clanged against her camera whenever she raised it to her eyes, and had not been very flattering. Her heart beat like a tom-tom; she was scared to death. A shell landed close to the crater, caving in one of the walls, and she screamed, leaping onto Butsko and hugging him tightly.
Butsko patted her ass and chuckled. “Take it easy. The Japs can't keep this up for long, and it could be worse. They have only three artillery pieces out there, and they have to watch their ammunition. Can you imagine what it'd be like if they had as much artillery as we do?”
She held him tightly, smelling his masculine odor, his stubbled cheek against her smooth one, and his big hands on her nice round ass. Dirt covered her left leg, the sky was full of thunder, the earth shuddered, and she felt herself getting turned on.
She pushed away from him, pressed her back to the opposite side of the crater, and tried to pull herself together.
Butsko puffed his cigarette and looked at her through narrowed eyes, one of them blackened by her earlier in the day.
“Lady,” he said, “If you keep hanging around this platoon, I'm probably going to fuck you, you know that?”
Her eyes widened, and she became so angry and confused that she didn't know what to say. Her hands trembling, she checked her cameras and equipment to make sure everything was all right.
He watched her and chuckled. “Relax,” he said. “Your problem is that you're too tense all the time. Nobody ever gets out of this world alive, so what in the hell are you worried about?”
In the late afternoon, as the sun dropped toward the horizon, a meeting was held in General Hawkins's CP tent. All staff officers, regimental commanders, and battalion commanders were there, standing around the map table as General Hawkins stood with his swagger stick, holding an end in each fist, the swagger stick horizontal at thigh level.
“All right, gentlemen,” he said, “the battle for this miserable little island has gone on long enough, and tomorrow we're going to bring it to an end. I will tolerate no excuses, and there will be no room for failure. Any commander who fails to attain his assigned objective will be relieved of command. Is that clear?”
The room was silent, and the officers gazed at General Hawkins, who clearly was in an ass-kicking mood. Colonel Stockton, his waist abutting the table, looked down at the map, which showed Kokengolo Hill at its center, three inches higher than the flat terrain around it. All terrain features were represented on the map: the jungles were green plaster molds and the flatland was sand. The runways of the airstrip were plaster strips painted black.
“All right,” General Hawkins continued, “let's move on. Here we are”—he pointed his swagger stick at the map and waved it back and forth—“and here's Corps. We're bringing all our power to bear on the airfield, and it will be in our hands by nightfall. Our objective is Kokengolo Hill and all ground to the south of it. Kokengolo Hill is the key to the entire campaign, not just in our sector but on the whole front. It is the strongest fortification that the Japanese have have left on New Georgia. It will not be easy to assault, but assault it we will, from all sides, with unrelenting violence, until it is ours.” He pointed to the maps. “All of you can see your regiments, indicated by colors on the map. The Twenty-third is here, the Fifteenth here, and the Thirty-eighth here. Your orders are quite simple. When the bombing and artillery barrage ends tomorrow morning, you attack from where you are right now and you continue attacking until the airfield is ours. That means sweeping all the way up to Kula Gulf and the Solomon Sea. Instruct your men to kill every Jap they see unless they're surrendering, but tell them to make sure they're surrendering. If they have any questions, tell them to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. General MacArthur thinks we've been on New Georgia too long and he's getting impatient. He wants this campaign to end, and that's precisely what we're going to do tomorrow. Any questions?”
It was night on New Georgia. In the area held by the recon platoon and Company A, guards were posted and the troops were asleep. Ammunition for the attack in the morning was stacked up in special foxholes dug into the ground. All the men had been issued C rations for the day. Before dawn they'd wake up and move into position for the attack.
A short distance behind the recon platoon line, not far from her tent, Lydia Kent-Taylor paced back and forth in a small jungle clearing, chain-smoking cigarettes, crossing and uncrossing her arms. She thought she was losing her mind, and she couldn't remember any time in her life, except for when her mother died, that she felt so distraught.
“Is that you, Lydia?” asked Leo Stern in the darkness.
She spun around. “Yes, it's me, Leo.”
He walked toward her and appeared in the dim light of the half-moon. “I thought I heard somebody out here. Are you all right?”
“I can't sleep,” she said.
“What's wrong?”
He stood in front of her, about a foot taller than she, gawky and goggle-eyed in his glasses; he'd always reminded her of a buzzard, but he had a heart of gold.
“I want to leave here,” she said.
He paused for a few moments. “You can't be serious.”
“I am very serious.”
“What's wrong?”
She looked away from him. “I'm afraid.�
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He placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. “That bombardment was hell today, and it scared me, too, but it sounded worse than it was, and it's over now anyway. We're safe here, and tomorrow you'll get some great pictures and I'll get a great story.”
“It's not the bombardment,” she said. “It's something else.” She looked into his eyes. “I'm afraid something terrible is going to happen to me here, Leo.”
“Do you mean you think you'll be killed?”
“No, worse than that, I'm afraid.”
“What could be worse about being killed?”
“Being humiliated.”
“By what?”
She leaned against him, and he wrapped her arms around her. She took a few moments to organize her thoughts.
“I don't know if I can explain it, and I don't know if you can understand,” she said.
“Try.”
“Well, I feel like I'm losing control of myself, as if I'm not myself anymore.”
He laughed softly. “I've never known you to lose control of yourself in all the time I've known you. I think that bombardment shook you up a little too much today, but it's over now. You've got to understand that it's over now, and you were never in any real danger.”
“I told you, it wasn't the bombardment, Leo.”
“Then what is it?”
“You promise you won't laugh?”
“I promise.”
“And you must never never tell anybody.”
“I promise that too. Tell me already, because the suspense is killing me.”
She pushed away from him, fidgeted with her feet, and finally threw up her hands in exasperation. “It's that goddamned Butsko!”
“What'd he do this time?”
“He hasn't done anything.” She drew back her foot and kicked a rock twenty feet. “Remember that you promised not to laugh.”
“I remember my promise.”
“Well... I ... shit! I don't know how to say it, so I guess I'll just say it. I'm falling in love, or in lust, with the big, smelly son of a bitch!”
Leo's jaw dropped open and the features on his face went slack. “No!”
“Yes.”
“But he's just a brute! You said so yourself!”
“That's what's so arousing about him—that's it!” She balled up her fists. “He is a brute. Cant you see it? He's a male in extremis, all power and energy and sexuality, and what is that if not a brute? For God's sake, Leo, he literally reeks masculinity. When I'm near him I feel faint. I'm afraid I'll just throw myself at his feet! But if he were just a brute, I think I could deal with him. I could dismiss him if he were a brute, do you know what I mean? But he's not stupid, and all the men here worship him. Even Craig Delane, who's even more of a snob than I am—and that's saying something—even he worships him. Butsko is a decent man, maybe a hero, underneath the scars and lumps all over him. This war has torn his body apart, and he probably doesn't even believe in it to the extent that many Americans do, but he fights anyway out of professionalism and a sense of honor. He's a man of honor, Leo. He could have taken advantage of me today—I would have been putty in his hands—but instead he saved my life and let me be. That scares me. A man like that could own me. I'd be his slave. If I was ever alone with him, I think I'd lose my mind, and I can't afford that, Leo; I've got too much to lose; my career, my family, everything. That's why I want to get the hell out of here right now, tonight, and go to another part of this front. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how I feel.” She looked up at him and held his skinny biceps. “Let's get out of here, Leo. Come with me. If I stay with this damned recon platoon, I think it'll be the end of me!”
He took her arms off his biceps and stared intently at her for a full thirty seconds while she examined his face, alarmed, because she'd never seen such intensity and concentration in Leo's face.
“This is not the Lydia Kent-Taylor I know,” he said in a soft deep voice. “This is not the famous photographer who's been everywhere, photographed everything, and subordinated everything else to her career in journalism, a career that has made her famous, practically a household world. This is not the Lydia Kent-Taylor who's pulled strings and buttonholed generals for three months so she could go to the front—not the front behind the front where the other photographers and journalists hang around, but the real front, where the real GIs are doing the real fighting, to show America and the world for all time what this war is like in its fiercest, hottest place. The Lydia Kent-Taylor I know would be itching to start tomorrow. She'd be up cleaning her camera and polishing her lenses, writing down information, planning what kind of story she wanted to do. You're not the Lydia Kent-Taylor I know. You're a high school girl with a crush on the football coach, and I'm not going anywhere with you, because this is my big moment too. My ambitions are no less than those of Lydia Kent-Taylor. I want to write about this war in such a way that it'll be read not just by the folks on the home front but by historians and students who'll want to know what this war was like for centuries to come!”
She stood frozen for a few moments, thinking about what he said. Taking out a cigarette, she lit it with her Zippo, turned away, and paced back and forth. It was true, tomorrow would present a fabulous opportunity for her, an opportunity she'd been moving toward for a long time, and how could she throw it away?
“C'mon,” Leo said gently. “Pull yourself together. If Butsko bothers you that much, don't ever let yourself be alone near him. I'll stick to you like glue if you want. You know that nothing will happen to you if I'm around.”
She realized he was right. If she felt herself losing control, a few well-chosen words from Leo would snap her back to reality. She couldn't let her passion for Butsko, which seemed a little melodramatic and silly to her now, get in the way of her career. If she could become a war photographer, an enormously difficult career for a woman, she could handle Butsko, especially if Leo was with her to help out. The bombardment today must have unhinged her a little—that and lack of sleep.
“Thank you, Leo,” she said. “I do think you've brought me back to my senses.”
“It's been a hard day. I feel a little strange myself.”
“Will you really stay with me all the time, as you said?”
“Sure. We're in this together, you know. This war is going to make us, and we've got to help each other, because when you get right down to it, we have only each other out here.”
She lurched toward him and clasped him in her arms, resting her face on his flat, bony chest. “Oh, Leo, thank you so much!” she said.
A half hour later, alone in her tent, Lydia lay on her low canvas cot and smoked her last cigarette of the day. She still felt nervous and jumpy, but Leo had calmed her down a lot. She'd get through tomorrow somehow. She'd just concentrate on the images of war and not think about Butsko.
Although he scared her, she let herself think of him now, because she knew enough about psychology to understand that the harder she tried to push him out of her mind, the more energy he'd have in her unconscious mind, and that energy would mess her up. She recalled how he'd looked during the bombardment, husky and brave in his tattered uniform, scars all over his face and arms, an atmosphere of calm strength about him. “I'm probably going to fuck you,” he'd said. God, what a discourteous way to talk to a woman; yet, when those words had struck her brain, she'd thought she'd jump out of her pants.
He was uncouth, there was no doubt about that. He was also arrogant, brutal, and utterly ruthless. If he had a kind side, she'd never seen it, although she could sense that it was there. At least she hoped he had some kindness in him. Without kindness he'd be terrifying.
All her life she'd wanted to fall in love with someone like Leo: a decent man who was courteous and intelligent, shared her interests, and treated her with respect. Unfortunately men like that didn't excite her. She could take them or leave them. But the big, burly, hairy-chested ones like Butsko, who were impolite, far beneath her intellectual level, and
didn't understand her at all—they were the ones who excited her. Men like Leo had natures too similar to hers; there was no mystery to them. She could never go to bed with someone like Leo, whereas Butsko was provocative and different, like landing on another planet where everything was turned upside-down.
Lydia had very little sexual experience. A few clumsy young men when she was a student, a few men like Leo, and one rough, tough carpenter in an unfinished attic once—that was the extent of her love life. She'd never had a really good fuck in her life, and sometimes she thought she was frigid. Unsure of herself sexually, she couldn't cope with someone who affected her like Butsko.
Well, she thought, in a few days I'll be gone from here, and this'll all be a memory. Besides, people really don't need sex as much as they think they do. It's all a big delusion.
She tossed and turned for most of the night, trying to believe that.
TEN . . .
Lydia finally fell asleep but was awakened a few hours later by explosions in the distance and the roar of airplane engines overhead. She shook her head and looked at her watch: It was a quarter to five in the morning, just light enough to see the hands on her watch's dial.
Crawling toward the front of her tent, she pulled aside the flap and looked out. Directly in front of her, about thirty yards away, Lieutenant Breckenridge was talking with a few of his men, one of them Butsko. Vapor rose from the jungle floor as if small fires were burning, and in the dim light the soldiers with their rifles and helmets were phantasmagorical. There's enough light there for a picture, she thought, reaching for her camera bag. She pulled out her Leica and screwed in the ninety-millimeter F4 Elmar lens, because it would distort perspective and add to the eeriness of the scene. She raised the camera to her eye and turned the lens barrel until the lines converged and the soldiers came into focus.
“The artillery barrage will continue until we're approximately here,” Lieutenant Breckenridge was saying, pointing to the map. “Then it'll stop and we'll charge the mission station. We'll have to get inside before they start shooting back.”
