by Chris Lynch
The four of us walk in a fairly tight two-by-two formation down the hill, through the jungle land, toward camp.
“I just hope somebody would straighten out my feet when the time comes,” I say, answering a question I now don’t think anybody was going to ask. “Not leave me lying there all bent up and stupid-looking like that.”
“Sure,” Bryant says from behind me. I think he’s just not ready for multi-syllable words yet.
“You saved my life, Nick,” Klecko says, walking almost nonregulation close to having his shoulder touching mine.
“I did, yeah,” I say, and it does not feel like bragging, because it does not feel like anything.
Westphal is carrying the Japanese rifle, going over it, checking out the features, the balance, the heft. “Now this is a real gun,” he says, not quite achieving admiration for anything Japanese, but near enough for him. “But hey, I think maybe we were a bit unkind about the trusty little M55 earlier, huh? Maybe it has got some kicks in it.”
“Kicks,” Klecko says flatly.
“Lots of kicks,” I say, still feeling the buzzing in my fingers, which is different from the buzzing in my head, or my guts, or my feet.
For eighteen days Vella Lavella is our place of business, and it is our home. I am aching to get away from the island and it’s got to be soon. If I don’t get away via official deployment then I am just about ready to go the Alcatraz route and take my chances with the cruel ocean tides calling from every direction I look.
Stupid as it sounds, I don’t believe I gave much thought at all to what it would feel like to kill a man. I suppose I figured it would be … less personal. Like in movies, where guys get shot all the time. No hard feelings, fella. That’s why we have guns. To keep our distance. To keep us removed. So we can go about our business. So we can kill enemy fighters, not people. Not people, with feet and sandals and maybe little people of their own at home, in little bitty sandals, waiting for him to come back.
The smell, it hasn’t gone away. Not since that moment when the scents of this place and everything that’s happening all merged up into this awful stinger of an odor that I can’t escape from. It’s like a dented fender from a close-call crash in your cheap old jalopy, or a broken, crooked nose that never healed right, or a crack widening in the foundation of your house a little bit at a time. I’ve had all those things, lived with them without ever growing fond of them, and I’ve done all right. The smell — which I have been thinking of as Smella Lavella just to lighten it up, grab a smile wherever I can — the smell, I guess, is gonna be like those things. Things that come to you uninvited, stick around, and never leave, and you get used to them over time.
I will, over time. For now, though, whenever I close my eyes I feel like I’m in a foxhole with a bloody, pulpy dead guy pressed up against me. Because that’s what my dreams have told me to feel, and that’s why sleep ain’t no friend of mine at the moment. So I wait anxiously for a combat assignment to get me off this lump and then see how I do. Otherwise, those tides are always there.
But now, just now, there’s a competing tide washing right over our camp here. Rumors are strong that genuine action is about to come our way. Commander of the battalion has been summoned to the headquarters of First Marine Amphibious Corps (IMAC) on Guadalcanal. It’s a move that almost certainly signals a real deployment, and an important task. Knowing the kind of faith the commander has in us, there is no way he’s leaving IMAC headquarters without some great nasty invasion plan clutched in his fist, or, for the sake of security, stashed elsewhere on his small but rugged person.
Lieutenant Colonel Victor Krulak was not the original commander of the Second Marine Parachute Battalion. We were already at New Caledonia when he came along. At every level, I felt, we had received top-grade instruction and conditioning no matter who was leading us. So the battalion Colonel Krulak found at Camp Kiser was physically rock-hard, and mentally quite well educated on the subject of soldiering.
That was combined, though, with a bit of unruliness creeping in as a direct result of our frustration over being left out of battle month after month. All the while, marines were leaving their guts on beaches and battlefields all over the world. What should you expect if you train a specially selected population of motivated young men to the point where they are up to the job of taking on any army you got, are dying to do so, but are kept cooped up with just each other to engage in hostilities with? I’d say they should be happy we didn’t blow right past unruliness and head straight for open violence and general mayhem.
We were more than frustrated. We were insulted over not being asked to fight. And we were ashamed at the burden being carried by others while we sat.
What I appreciated right off about the colonel was that he liked what he found with us. Sure, we needed discipline, but Victor “Brute” Krulak understood why we were itchin’, even admired us for feeling that way. He knew what to do from day one. It’s my guess that with him being a complete green-blooded US Marine as committed to the Corps as anybody all the way up the pole, he probably already saw the writing on the wall that the Marine Parachute Regiments weren’t ever going to jump into a live battle. The rivalry between us and the Army was already hot and the flame went higher every time the Marines made the news for being spectacular and heroic while the Army just always plugged along being pretty ordinary. Scuttlebutt was that the Marines’ heroics on Guadalcanal and in the newspapers had gotten top Army brass so steamed up that we’d never set foot on another of their transport planes — which the jumps would require — even if we bought every one of our guys a full fare ticket two weeks in advance and returned the aircraft washed and waxed and loaded up with fresh-baked oatmeal cookies.
To be fair, I can understand why they might feel about us the way they do. I’d be jealous and resentful of the Marines, too, if I was stuck in the Army. We should probably include the Navy while we’re at it. They don’t care for us much, either.
By the time he took the reins at Fort Kiser, Brute Krulak, all five-foot-five and 130 pounds of mean green marine, would not only have been up on these matters of interservice feuding; listening to him talk, it was a fair bet he was an active and enthusiastic part of it.
Therefore, while we never neglected our jump training when it was possible, the methods, tactics, and intensity Colonel Krulak brought to his training regime all seemed designed to keep us in the game in the event that our defining element — parachuting — was going to be denied us by forces beyond our control. He was going to put on the field a band of special forces that would be the equal of those any other nation could boast. Including and especially the US Army’s famous Rangers.
“It’s more than just the Army being petty with us, though,” Sergeant Silas says as the bunch of us walk together. We’re about to hear the big announcement Colonel Krulak has brought back for us all.
“What else is there?” I ask.
“Well, ‘what else’ is that paratroops and this campaign were never going to be a good fit. All those pint-size islands, landing zones almost nonexistent …”
“You’ve seen the density of the jungle terrain here,” Corporal Havlicek interjects. “Well, I can tell you, it’s all uphill from Vella Lavella. That’s not the kind of canopy a paratrooper jumps through; it’s the kind he bounces off of, and lands back on the beach with everybody else anyway.”
I open my mouth to counter, but I can’t think of anything.
“It would be terrific to get a real chance,” Silas adds, “and this outfit would be exceptional at it. But the cold fact is, no special unit in the world can jump behind enemy lines if there are no enemy lines to be found.”
The more I hear the more obviously right this argument becomes. And the more grateful I am that Colonel Krulak had the foresight to turn us into a commando unit without even bothering to tell anybody what he was really up to.
We file into the big mess tent that will just about accommodate the entire six-hundred-and-fifty-strong battalion. It�
��s an odd moment, trying to fit us all in at the same time. Makes me realize this is one of the very few times the entire unit has been called together for anything like this. One more reason to expect something big’s up.
We’re among the more conscientious — or more anxious — squads, who get here early and quickly fill up all the dining tables and chairs. The next wave take all the spots around the edges. It’s cozy enough that I hope the stragglers will be reasonable and just hover around outside to listen. There are plenty of screen windows if they want to look on as the colonel speaks. And as for being able to hear Brute Krulak from that distance, talking over the several hundred blocky heads shouldn’t prove to be an obstacle for him.
In the meantime, there is lots of low murmuring, chatter, and laughter among the troops, all steadily increasing in volume the longer we wait for the main event. The frenzy that could build here is as likely as not to be something the man himself is engineering. A rabid audience would most likely suit him.
Across the table, I notice Klecko is at it again. He is staring the stare that was born in this place just this week and is one of the many things I hope we leave behind when we escape this wretched rock. If Krulak comes out and announces that they’re asking for volunteers to parachute down into a live volcano, I’ll be the first guy with his hand in the air. This lump of lava we’re on now feels like it’s haunted, and Klecko and I both feel it.
I lean across and tap his elbow. “Zack, man, please, how many times already have I asked you not to do that? Knock it off with that thing, really, or I’m gonna wind up as demented as you. We don’t want to get sent home like that, do we? Cripes, the jerks in the Eastern Shore League would have me for lunch. They’d rag me so bad I’d never be able to hit real pitching again. You want that to happen to me? After all I’ve done for you?”
Oh, jeez, why’d I have to go and say that?
“Scratch that. We do for each other and always have. But, I told you, Zachary, I don’t want to talk about any of it. You’re alive, I’m alive, there’s a war on, y’know, so we’ll take being alive as a pretty good state of affairs. And just not talk anymore about who killed or didn’t kill who, right? Right? Now buck up, kid, we’re gonna be great. First step is we’re getting outta here, and we’re goin’ to a fight. That’s the perfect start right there.” The whole place stirs as The Brute makes his entrance. “And here, here he is, so very soon we will know. I’m already packed, how ’bout you?”
He gives me the tilted-head look, like when you try to explain the infield fly rule to a dog.
“No, I’m not packed yet, Nick. No matter what the colonel tells us today, we’ll still have time to pack up properly. You sure, though? That you’re gonna be able to get on with things, with whatever we gotta do, once you leave Vella and everything behind?”
“I don’t know,” I say wearily. I don’t even look at him but focus on our commanding officer smiling broadly and wrestling the podium out of his way.
“You killed somebody, Nicky. And you had to do it because I stopped being a soldier and started being a clown. Unforgiveable. I even think that sniper came up specifically for me, because what a fool I was. We passed that spot maybe two dozen times on patrols and he was happy just layin’ low until his men came and evacuated him to some other island. Like they already did for so many other guys. But I raised him up, right out of the ground, because I was so childish, so dishonorable, acting as if there was no danger, acting like he and his comrades were nothing. Acting like, hey, Mr. Enemy, have a look at the nation of oafs who are invading all your islands and killing you left and right. That was all my fault, all of it, and it is beneath the dignity of every marine who ever suited up. Conflict is serious. War, and the people who fight it, are serious. The people we fight it for are serious. How can I tell Rosie how close I already came to dying, and how come? She made me promise to do my job but not do anything foolish because I gotta get home in the end.”
This actually provides me with one of those hard-to-come-by smiles.
“I imagine she was thinking about foolish hero stuff like throwing yourself on live grenades, or storming a hill full of Japanese gun nests all by yourself …”
“Oh, and not, Don’t forget to not act like a big dope and dance around on patrol and make yourself look like a juicy fat duck in a shooting gallery just for the lonely Japanese sniper? You think she probably hadn’t anticipated that one, huh?”
My small smile has slipped away. “Do you suppose he was? Lonely?”
“Arrrr,” Klecko says in frustration, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair tightly. “You, buddy, best pal o’ mine, you surely figured you were gonna have to kill somebody eventually, no? This great big adventure, shoved into motion by you alone.” He looks at me like he’s worried he said the wrong thing. “Except, of course, it’s never you alone. It never will be, either. Buddy system, right to the end. We won’t get separated, no matter what. And when we cross that finish line we’ll go all the way back to that wise-guy recruiting officer together and say, see, pal, now this is a real buddy system you’re lookin’ at.”
“Buddy system,” I say. “We’ll be great. It’s just taking some adjustment.”
Klecko nods because he understands, because he always has and that’s why he’s here.
Except I don’t really believe anybody can understand this. Until it’s their turn.
For now, I am grateful for the understanding nod that will have to do until my adjustment sets in, like it surely will.
And with any luck it starts right here …
“I have some good news for you,” The Brute bellows, louder than any five-and-a-half-foot unamplified lieutenant colonel in history. “Our long wait is over. Our battalion has its mission — and it is a mission for which we have been specially chosen because only we have the expertise to pull it off. General Vandegrift himself told me that Second Battalion is the best-trained outfit in the South Pacific, and if you ask me, the general is in this case showing a tendency toward understatement.”
We are as disciplined a group of men as has ever existed. But you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise during the long stretch of raucous, earsplitting, throat-tearing noise that follows.
The Brute allows us our noise, until he doesn’t. When he raises his hand, the silence that follows is absolute.
“Our target is Choiseul Island, currently home to some five thousand enemy troops. They will have the numbers, and furthermore, they will know we are there. Soon after we make our landing on what our coastwatchers assure us is an unguarded beach, the Marine Corps will announce to the United States media that twenty thousand marines have landed on Choiseul. We know the Japanese are watching our news reports, and we know that they have so far been able to rely upon what they learn there. That reliance is going to cost them. But if our single battalion is going to pull this off, we are going to have to make some noise on that island. Can we do that?”
Can we ever. Can we ever make some noise. We give him just a little preview of it now.
The Brute, somehow, is able to speak over all six hundred and fifty of us.
“While we engage the enemy on Choiseul,” he roars, “our brothers in the Third Marine Division will be landing at Bougainville. Every Japanese soldier we draw away from the invasion of Bougainville is a Japanese soldier who cannot shoot those men. If our diversion is successful, we save marine lives. No mission is more important than that, and I can think of no greater honor.”
It comes as no surprise that Krulak is as adept with spirited public speaking as he is with a bayonet. As he continues his address, he gets all the guys roaring and stamping their feet several times. Even one very serious point he feels the need to stress more than once brings only cheers. “We will be on our own in the realest sense. We will have the PT boat base and air cover, both from Vella Lavella, but that is all the backup we are going to get, regardless of what we run into.”
Roars for the words on our own. More roars for the Patrol Torpedo boat c
rews we’ve gotten to know somewhat during endless patrols around Vella. Good guys all around, including one skipper, a lieutenant whose father is supposed to be America’s ambassador to Great Britain, according to scuttlebutt. Could be true, since Lieutenant Kennedy kinda looks like he could be the ambassador himself. If he ever put a shirt on, anyway.
The Brute even wraps up his address by showing that his skills extend to death-based comedy tucked neatly within useful practical advice. “Snipers will be targeting the men in charge, so don’t go around addressing officers by rank out there. If you want a fast and short-lived promotion, just call me colonel, I will call you general right back.”
At the end there’s no stomping only because every last marine is already on his feet, clapping, whistling, and looking for all the world like we’ll be charging straight to the boats to start this thing right now.
But Zack was right, as he tends to be when over-excitement threatens to carry things away. We will have a few days to prepare.
Our platoon holds back while the rest of the crowd rowdy-files out into the evening. We remain seated at our long table like some board of directors clearing the room for top-level business.
“So,” Sergeant Silas begins, “what do we think of what we just heard?”
“Are we even sure what we just heard?” Larry Seigfreid asks. Larry is a good guy and smart like a science professor. He is one of our two genius demolition experts, along with Mal Graham, who is just as smart. They speak infrequently, and mostly to each other. They sure know their explosives, though, and every other kind of chemistry, apparently. The two of them spend their free time actually devising their own invented demolition devices from every discarded scrap or surplus kit that has anything dangerous left in it at all. Truth is, I can almost never make heads or tails out of them, and I was more than happy to tell them that on several occasions. It’s how they got their nicknames, Seigfreid being a good sport and going along with being “Heads,” while Graham, I suppose understandably, took longer to warm up to “Tails.”
