Hit the Beach

by Len Levinson

  The platoon passed through the lines and the GI's looked at them in awe. The word had spread like wildfire across the island that one platoon had met the spearhead of the Japanese attack and beaten them back, got surrounded, and fought free. The soldiers looked at them and could see that they'd been through hell. They were ragged and bloody ... and they looked ready to do it all again.

  “Boy,” said one young marine, gazing in admiration, “they look like one bunch of butchers, don't they?”

  “I wonder how they did it?” said another marine standing nearby.

  “I'm not sure I want to know...”

  Also by Len Levinson

  The Rat Bastards:

  Death Squad

  River of Blood

  Meat Grinder Hill

  Down and Dirty

  Green Hell

  Too Mean to Die

  Hot Lead and Cold Steel

  Do or Die

  Kill Crazy

  Nightmare Alley

  Go For Broke

  Tough Guys Die Hard

  Suicide River

  Satan’s Cage

  Go Down Fighting

  The Pecos Kid:

  Beginner’s Luck

  The Reckoning

  Apache Moon

  Outlaw Hell

  Devil’s Creek Massacre

  Bad to the Bone

  The Apache Wars Saga:

  Desert Hawks

  War Eagles

  Savage Frontier

  White Apache

  Devil Dance

  Night of the Cougar

  * * *

  Hit the Beach!

  * * *

  Book 1 in the Rat Bastard Series

  by

  Len Levinson

  Excepting basic historical events, places, and personages, this series of books is fictional, and anything that appears otherwise is coincidental and unintentional. The principal characters are imaginary, although they might remind veterans of specific men whom they knew. The Twentythird Infantry Regiment, in which the characters serve, is used fictitiously—it doesn't represent the real historical Twentythird Infantry, which has distinguished itself in so many battles from the Civil War to Vietnam—but it could have been any American line regiment that fought and bled during World War II.

  These novels are dedicated to the men who were there. May their deeds and gallantry never be forgotten.

  HIT THE BEACH

  Copyright © 1983 by Len Levinson. All Rights Reserved.

  EBook © 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-842-1

  Library ISBN 978-1-62460-183-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover photo © TK/iStock.com.

  * * *

  Hit the Beach!

  * * *

  ONE . . .

  The soldiers stood in the hold of the ship, listening to the sound of battle above them. They wore new green fatigues and helmets covered with camouflage netting, their rifles slung over their shoulders and bandoliers of ammunition hanging from their necks. It was hot and they were packed in tightly, smoking cigarettes and perspiring in the dim light. They were waiting to board the landing craft and hit the beach of a small island in the South Pacific called Guadalcanal.

  Pfc. Bannon leaned against the bulkhead, a Chesterfield dangling from the corner of his mouth. A Jap bomb could land on the ship at any moment, and he imagined water pouring through the bulkheads, drowning him and his buddies like rats, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to think of the ranch in Texas where he'd worked before the war, of cattle grazing in the vast golden fields and him riding along on his horse, without a worry in the world.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Frankie La Barbara, standing next to him. “I wish we could get the fuck out of here.”

  “Won't be long now,” Bannon replied.

  Suddenly there was the roar of an explosion, and the ship convulsed. The GIs in the hold fell down like tenpins in a bowling alley and then clawed each other and the walls in a frantic effort to get up again.

  “Jesus—we're hit!” shouted Private Ramsey, his eyes bulging.

  “We're not hit,” growled Sergeant Harrington, disentangling himself from the bodies all around him. “Calm the fuck down.”

  The soldiers got up and looked around fearfully. They saw no water and the ship wasn't listing. Sergeant Harrington was right. From afar they heard the rattle of machine guns and multiple shellbursts.

  Bannon lit another cigarette and dropped his trusty Zippo into his pant pocket. The near-miss had shaken him up and he was trying to control himself again. He looked at Sergeant Harrington, who was chewing a plug of tobacco and appeared fundamentally no different from the way he'd looked in Australia, where they'd trained for this landing. Harrington was an old soldier who'd fought in the First World War. Bannon felt confident that everything would be all right as long as Harrington was there to tell them what to do. Bannon relaxed and leaned against the bulkhead. The worst thing that could happen was that he'd be killed, and he was going to die sooner or later anyway, so what was the big deal?

  They heard a hoarse voice in a distant part of the hold: “All right, let's move it out!”

  Frankie La Barbara, who was six feet tall and built like a heavyweight, snapped his right finger into the air. “You heard the man!” he shouted. “Let's fucking hit it!”

  “Shaddup, La Barbara,” Sergeant Harrington said. “Who asked for your two cents?”

  “The man said to move out, Sarge!”

  “Shut the fuck up, La Barbara.”

  Frankie grumbled and looked at Bannon, who shrugged. Bannon was as tall as Frankie, but was lanky and sinewy. He had straight sandy hair and green eyes. The men milled around, waiting for the troops ahead of them to move out. Bannon stood on his tiptoes and saw the soldiers farther down the corridor moving toward the ladderwells.

  Frankie La Barbara chewed a wad of gum frantically. “Well, looks like this is just about it,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  Bannon puffed his cigarette, wondering if he'd be alive when the sun went down that day. He'd been in the Army eight months and hadn't fired a shot in anger yet, but he and the rest of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment were about to go ashore and fight for their lives against the Japanese on Guadalcanal. The Marines had landed on the island two months earlier, in the first American land offensive of the Pacific war, but had made little headway against the Japs, and now the Army was being sent in to save their asses.

  “Okay, let's go!” yelled Sergeant Harrington.

  “You heard him!” said Corporal Tuttle, Bannon's squad leader. “Move it out!”

  The men of Fox Company rumbled through the corridor, hearing bombs exploding above them. Their worst fear was a Japanese torpedo hitting the bulkhead right next to them, and they wanted to get off that ship and on dry land, where they'd have a chance.

  They climbed the ladderwell, and the sounds of battle became louder. They heard airplane engines snarling across the sky and sailors shouting to each other on the deck of the transport ship. Bannon lugged his full field pack and M 1 rifle up the ladderwell. He'd taken intensive infantry training ever since he'd enlisted in the Army on the day after Pearl Harbor, and the Twenty-third was supposed to be a crack regiment, but he still didn't know what he'd do when the Japs started firing at him and the shit hit the fan.

  Bannon took a turn in the ladderwell and could see the sky, a trail of smoke running across it. The fresh salty air was tinged with the odors of diesel smoke and cordite. The noise was fearsome,
and as Bannon climbed higher, he saw an airplane streak past with smoke pouring out of its belly. A wave of fear passed over Bannon, and he took a deep breath as he reached for the rung in front of him.

  “Keep moving!” said Harrington. “What the fuck's the matter with you guys?”

  Some of the soldiers were faltering. They didn't want to go up on deck, where the fighting was, and dragged their feet.

  “Holmes!” screamed Harrington. “If you don't get fucking moving, I'm going to put my boot right up your goddamned ass!”

  “Hup, Sarge,” grumbled Private Eddie Holmes, climbing to the next rung. He was above Bannon, and Bannon wanted to punch him in the calf to get him going faster.

  Frankie La Barbara's jaw worked like a frenzied machine as he chewed gum and switched it from side to side in his mouth. He had black hair and a darker complexion than Bannon, and people said he resembled the actor Victor Mature. Frankie was high-strung and felt as if his head would explode if he didn't get up on deck fast.

  He was behind Bannon and he could see that Holmes still had too much space between him and Corporal Turtle, who was in front of him.

  “Holmes,” Frankie snarled, “I'm gonna kick your fucking ass when we get on deck.”

  Holmes picked up his pace, because he was scared to death of Frankie La Barbara, who had proven himself to be nasty and vicious in numerous barracks fights during training.

  A Japanese bomb landed on the afterdeck of the transport ship, and the ship shook violently. Bannon and the men around him were thrown off the ladder, and they tumbled against each other, banging around and bouncing off the bulkhead as they dropped to the deck beneath them. On his way down, Bannon was hit in the face with the barrel of somebody's rifle, opening a cut on his left cheek. When he landed, the blood was flowing smoothly out of the wound and he felt dazed.

  The men pushed and crawled over each other as they tried to. get up. They heard wild shouting on the deck above them, and the ship's artillery was firing rapidly.

  “On your feet!” Sergeant Harrington yelled. “Let's get up that fucking ladder now!”

  Bannon leaped toward the ladder and went up three rungs at a time. He heard soldiers scrambling after him, and when his head cleared the top deck, he looked around and saw billows of black smoke rising from the afterdeck of the ship. The sky was full of bursting shells, machine-gun tracer bullets, and dogfighting planes. Off the starboard bow a transport ship was burning, and men jumped over the side into the water. The noise was deafening, and Bannon could sense the panic in the air.

  He grabbed his M 1 and ran to the side of the ship where Fox Company was supposed to disembark. Soldiers crouched along the gunwales, and Bannon saw Captain Gwynne on one knee, leaning on his carbine.

  Bannon took his position against the gunwale and crouched down, watching GIs erupt from the ladderwell. Private Homer Gladley, a farmer from a remote corner of Nebraska, ran to the gunwale, followed by Billie Jones, who had been an itinerant preacher in Georgia before the war. Next came Corporal Tuttle and Private Craig Delane, the rich guy from New York. Sergeant Harrington followed Delane out of the ladderwell, and next was Frankie La Barbara, running in a crouch, holding his BAR with one hand and keeping his helmet firmly pressed onto his head with the .other. His jaws were going a mile a minute, and he kneeled beside Bannon, looking around nervously.

  “What the fuck are they waiting for?” Frankie said between chews and gum snaps. He glanced at Bannon. “What happened to you?”

  Bannon wiped the blood away with the back of his hand. “Keep your head below the wall or you're liable to get it shot off.”

  “Huh? Oh!”

  Frankie ducked his head. Sergeant Harrington spat a wad of tobacco juice onto the deck and looked at his watch. A flaming Zero caterwauled through the air above the ship.

  “LAND THE LANDING PARTY!” shouted a voice over the loudspeakers.

  “Let's go, men!” yelled Captain Gwynne. “Over the side!”

  “Over the side!” echoed Sergeant Harrington.

  Bannon didn't want to do it, but he raised himself up and climbed over the gunwale, grasping the thick rope net that draped down the side of the ship. In the water below were landing craft bobbing up and down, their crews looking fearfully at the sky. Bannon climbed down the rope net, which shook and twisted as the other men of the Twenty-third grappled with it. He imagined being shot in the back by a diving Zero, but he was reaching a point where his fear was turning into anger against the filthy goddamn Japs who were making him go through all this shit. The soldier above him stepped on his helmet, and Bannon cursed at him. Another soldier stepped on his right hand, and Bannon shouted in pain. No one heard him, because the sounds of machine guns and bombs drowned out his voice. When Bannon pulled his hand loose, his knuckles were bleeding. He hadn't even been in combat yet, but already his knuckles were bleeding. Goddamn son-of-a-bitch bastard!

  Down the rope net he went, his full field pack pulling him backward and its straps cutting into his shoulders, cutting off the flow of blood to his arms and making them go numb. His helmet was askew on his head, but he couldn't straighten it because he was sure he'd fall if he took a hand off the net. All around him men grunted and cursed as they wrestled with the rope net. They'd done this exercise dozens of times during training in Australia and the States, and it always had been a mess, but today it was for real. Today they were in a real war.

  The rope net lurched in Bannon's hand, and a body came toppling through the air at him. A soldier had lost his grip and fell onto Bannon, who held the net with all his strength. The soldier toppled off Bannon's back and plummeted to the deck of the landing craft below. Bannon didn't look at him because he could feel the panic rising again. I've got to get down into that fucking boat, he thought. I'm just a sitting duck up here.

  Bannon descended the net as quickly as he could. Somebody dropped a rifle and it clanged against Bannon's helmet. Bannon didn't try to catch it; all he wanted to do was get into that landing craft. He had only about ten more feet to go.

  Barroooom! The transport ship rocked with the sound of an explosion on its far side. It had been hit again, and this time it felt serious. Immediately the ship began to list perceptibly, and Bannon knew it had to be a torpedo below the waterline. If the ship sank, he didn't want to go down with it. He clambered down the net and finally came to the gunwale of the landing craft. Turning the rope net loose, he dropped into the hull of the boat.

  One of the crewmembers was bending over the soldier who'd fallen, and Bannon recognized the soldier as Private Tommy Ryan from Cleveland, a skinny pimply faced kid about eighteen years old who wasn't very strong and was always fucking up. Ryan was out cold.

  “I saw him come down,” said the sailor. “Landed right on his fucking head.”

  Maybe if ll knock some sense into him, Bannon thought, as he turned and looked at the soldiers scrambling down the net like a bunch of monkeys.

  “Get down!” screamed the sailor.

  Bannon dropped onto his stomach on the deck of the landing craft, and as he went down, he saw an airplane coming toward him at an altitude of about twenty feet. Bullets slammed into the side of the landing craft and then stitched up the side of the transport ship. Bannon watched in horror and saw soldiers writhing and twisting on the net. Some fell into the landing craft and others jumped in to gain cover.

  Bodies fell all around Bannon. Some got up and huddled behind the gunwales, some lay still, and others screamed and clutched wounds.

  “Medic!” yelled Corporal Turtle.

  There was pandemonium in the landing craft. Hunched-over soldiers moved back and forth, their eyes ablaze with terror, and some clustered around the men who'd been shot. Sergeant Harrington's face was red with emotion and appeared confused, an observation that troubled Bannon, because Harrington was the one who was supposed to know what he was doing. Corporal Turtle looked at Sergeant Harrington, waiting for him to give an order. Bannon's mind was cold as ice and his jaw was set as he
crouched behind the gunwale and looked around him. All the factors of the situation fell into place in his mind, and he saw quite clearly what needed to be done. The men in the craft should be told to take cover, and the ones on the net should be told to hurry down. When they were all in the craft, the order would be given to go ashore. There was no need to panic. If you got shot, you got shot, and there was no sense worrying about it.

  “Hey, look—it's Suarez!”

  A dead body was rolled onto its back, and sure enough it was Suarez, the medic, his bag of bandages still slung over his shoulder.

  “Holy shit, the medic's dead!”

  Everybody turned to Sergeant Harrington, who looked around nervously. They weren't even loaded into the landing craft yet and already they'd taken casualties. Bannon looked up at the side of the transport ship and saw that the list had increased. The sky was filled with puffs of smoke and the orange trails of tracer bullets.

  Frankie La Barbara saw Bannon and made his way toward him, his BAR hanging from his shoulder. “Wow, what a fucking mess!” He looked back and forth, his jaw going a mile a minute. “One of them fucking bullets came this far from my head!” He held up his hands six inches from each other.

  Bannon couldn't keep still any longer. “Hey, let's get in here!” he yelled to the men climbing down the net. “Move your fucking asses, you bastards!” He dashed toward Suarez, the dead medic, and pulled the medicine bag off his shoulder. Opening the bag, he took out bandages and sulfa. “Somebody help me with the wounded!”

  Nobody moved to help him; everyone was in a state of shock. Bannon crouched over Corporal Sandusky and ripped open his shirt. Sandusky's shoulder was a mass of mangled gristle and bone. Bannon tore open a packet of sulfa powder and poured it over the wound, then plastered a big bandage on top of it.