The oddity about the boomerang setup is that behind the straight line between where PFC Allen is arranged with his machine gun and my position, you’re safe inside the boomerang, but if you cross the line, heading into the CP, you’re likely to get clobbered.
No place is truly safe out here, but from the Nips’ vantage they have spots they like to zero in on, not to mention the odd-duck shell they’ll throw into the soup, just to see if they can take out one of us on a stretcher.
Before we can warn the major, bbbrrrrrrppppppp! A Jap machine gun opens up, sprouting mud funnels all along the line. “Shit! Get down!”
We can see Douglas and his entourage pause for a moment, appearing to be about to scramble, but they don’t budge. Uncertain of what to do, the machine gun rips through them and sends a couple of marines at the end of the line spinning toward the earth.
“Goddammit!” Eubanks says between gritted teeth.
As tight as our space is, the three of us still manage to bring our weapons to our shoulders, futilely hoping for something to shoot at—at least preparing to deliver cover fire.
The Nip machine gun continues, yet it’s off target, raking the mud around where Douglas and his men used to be. Evidently, the marines finally spread out far enough, where they’re at safer intervals.
It feels as if the oxygen has been removed from the air. The gun stops. Our eyes dart around, scanning for any signs of close-by Nips—or any of the major’s men, for that matter. I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and I let it out slowly. It would be foolish to run out there and try helping them. If they can somehow get up and make it closer to the inside of the boomerang, we can get them out of here. Yet the problem is further compounded by the fact that some of those marines are wounded. That makes the trick of getting them to safety closer to suicide.
“Men?” Douglas says, out of breath, but still retaining his stentorian timbre. “You men come up to my position!”
“He’s gonna get these guys fucking killed,” I mumble under my breath
There’s a long pause. We can see Douglas, safe inside the boomerang, but we can’t get a fix on his men, down the slope.
Eventually a weak voice floats in the air, location unknown. “We can’t, Major, we’re pinned down and have two wounded men!”
As if to accentuate this point, the Nip machine gun rattles off a few bursts, smoking the ground, close to the wavering voice. What the Japs are really doing is seeking the direction of the voices, the same as we are.
Major Douglas replies, “I order you to come up here, now! That’s an order!”
Nah, nah, I think. Don’t you do it, guys. Don’t even think about it.
They don’t have to think about it. The sky erupts—and that’s it! Hundreds of rounds rain in!
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
These are no mere explosions; instead, the shells coming down are so intense it sounds like the film in a projector being rewound, only amplified a hundred times. Vmmmpppp, vmmmppp, vmmmppp, vmmmppp! Ssssttttt, sssstttt, sssstttt, vmmmppp! You dare not open your mouth, lest you collect a bellyful of fire.
Then something snapped inside of me, as the world went to hell around me—something happened that isn’t easily explainable.
I jumped out of my foxhole, sprinting inside of the boomerang. I don’t recall why I did it, and why nobody stopped me, but out there in the midst of the falling shells, a call for a corpsman went unanswered, and I simply couldn’t stand the feeling. Nothing was real. In fact, all the images in those moments were still-life photographs, captured in the eye of a cyclone: One image passed, and then another, in rapid succession. One image was of the two wounded men from Douglas’s cadre. Somehow they had made it inside the shelter of the boomerang, but with the shells falling in, no place was safe. They were holding each other up the best they could. Another image of a jeep! (I make a break for the jeep!) Then “Hurricane” Hensen. Bloodied. Bishop. Bloodied. Then another marine—he might have been the corpsman for all I knew. I didn’t care.
(I spotted the abandoned jeep, sitting in out in the open, and all I could think about was getting the wounded men the hell out of there. Only when I hopped into the jeep, nothing happened—it wouldn’t start! Okay, stupid ass. In my haste, I forgot to turn on the damn ignition!)
Somehow, I manage to pull up in the jeep to pick up the wounded, despite the jeep’s protests.
“Okay, let’s get these guys loaded up! C’mon, give me a hand!”
A few marines rushed over and helped me lift the wounded onto the back of the jeep, although it was rough duty trying to cram that many into a vehicle designed to accommodate only four passengers. The end result was six wounded marines, some dying, stacked in the back, little toy soldiers: arms and legs sticking out here, a slightly wounded marine attempting to keep his perch there.
Frantic.
Never mind that I had no idea how to shift the gears of the jeep. Even the simplest tasks can get muddled when time comes down on you. Mud was up to the tires as the jeep’s wheels spun out, fanning sludge and belching smoke from its exhaust. A few shells fell in, but my main concern was how back-heavy that thing was, weighed down with marines. If I can fight these gears in the right direction, I’ll grind this thing to hell to move this lurch-wagon forward … Goddammit, this piece of shit! Every curse word under the sun … if I could only make this thing move! Move, goddamn you! We were moving, alright, but the ground on Okinawa was nothing but a quagmire of slop, deep grooves, shell holes, and furrows—anything to bog the jeep down, not to mention everything to toss the wounded out. All the time I was thinking that at any moment a Nip shell would come down on us and kill all our efforts, effortlessly.
Finally, our luck changed; we were on solid ground. Firm enough, anyway, for me to afford a few quick glances at my passengers along the way to make sure I hadn’t lost one on the trip. Firm enough to actually feel a gust of wind on my face as we began gaining decent speed.
By the time we pulled up to the battalion aid station, it was all worth it.
I didn’t even have to hop out of the jeep. Immediately a team of corpsmen, medical staff, and a few regular marines came out and began unloading the wounded, shouting out medical terms, orders for bandages, for drugs, for stretchers, for anything to help the wounded … as I merely closed my eyes, exhausted to the center of my being, though wholly absorbed in the sounds of salvation for a few broken marines I was lucky enough to escort to safety. Just think, how ironic, Hurricane Hensen and me, on a jeep ride again … Peleliu, 1944.
I could have fallen asleep, right where I sat, my forehead resting on the steering wheel. Besides, after everything that happened today, perhaps I deserved that luxury.
Only Lieutenant Clean Gyrene doesn’t think I deserve anything, nor, evidently, does he think much of the six marines I brought to the aid station. Granted, those marines probably would have made it without the jeep, without me, or even without Major Douglas nearly getting a pair of them killed. But to give me shit over a crummy jeep that would have gotten smashed to oblivion just sitting there anyway?
“I found the jeep abandoned in an open field, sir!”
The lieutenant eyes me coolly, in a manner that speaks volumes about where he believes he resides in this world, versus the place he knows I do.
He doesn’t even bother saluting. He merely turns around and dismisses me. “Well, leave the jeep here. It belongs to us.”
No shit. I thought it was mine, asshole.
All I can do is turn around and walk away, striding past our artillery guys, slogging past the mortarmen, toward the company CP, and out onto the very flank of the western side of the boomerang, into my little foxhole, where I’ve been holding the line. Holding the goddamn line. On Okinawa.
The whole way back I’m fuming. I mean, I’m really eaten up. Given enough time to walk it off, though, I realize I’m lucky to be a Marine Corps rifleman. I could never talk about babies with a shitbird lieutenant like that. I could never joke about Junior’s
pimples, or laugh at Wimpy for trying to jump over a gully, and I’d never have the opportunity to do my part by wiping a Jap from the face of this earth, if I spent my days making life difficult at a battalion aid station. No matter how much I hated being there, at least I had a reason to stay. I had a reason for joining the marines. I had a reason for helping those boys to safety. I had a reason for being in the middle of danger, too many times to count, now—and I know that I will do it all over again, before this war runs its course. One way or another, I will.
Because reason makes all the difference in the world.
Because a war without reason is no war for all.
“Jesus, Mace.” Eubanks is waiting for me back at my foxhole. “You look like hell.”
“That’s funny, I was about to say the same thing to you. Did you see whatever happened to Major Douglas?”
Eubanks shakes his head. “No, hell, no—I was too busy watching you tear out of here. I thought you were a goner, for sure.”
I take a drag off my cigarette; it’s the last one in the pack. “Whattaya mean by that?”
“Whattaya mean, what do I mean? The way them Japs were walking their mortars in right behind ya—Christ! Maybe you didn’t see how close they were to ya, but boy, we sure did!”
I don’t doubt what Eubanks says; nonetheless, the fact is I didn’t see or hear any mortars walking up behind the jeep. I was simply too focused on getting the wounded out of there.
The truth is, I couldn’t care less about what didn’t happen. I’m only concerned with what did.
*
Here’s the rest of the story. I hope you understand.
Understand the way a marine feels when he’s lounging in his foxhole, and all of a sudden he looks up in the sky and spies three white streamers in the air, coming in from behind the company lines. The streamers are the tiny trails that mortar rounds give off, only they’re not visible most of the time. You have to catch them just right, against the skyline—as they’ve traveled a long way, having lost velocity, almost suspended in the empty air, like a child’s mobile above his bassinet.
The streamers are at a good distance, dipping down now, in the vicinity of the 1st Platoon. About to drop. About to drop.
The stomach turns. These mortars are some of ours.
Thump!
Thump, thump!
“Stretcher bearer! Over here!”
You lie to yourself and say they’re not, but they are.
It begins to drizzle.
Children tell stories that when it rains, it is the angels crying up in heaven; sweet little angels, sweet little children. If that’s really the case, then on Okinawa, the angels truly have something to cry about. It’s always friggin’ raining here.
Now it’s raining on our own guys.
“Stretcher bearer! Over here!”
*
We’re off the line, for a brief respite, and it’s probably the only joyous day that any of us have had on southern Okinawa so far. From here on out, it will assuredly be the last.
“Can you believe that?” Leyden grins. “I just can’t believe it.”
Orley Uhls sits on a stump, not far away, eating something out of a C-rat can. “Ya know,” he says, with his mouth stuffed with food, “this is just one step. And the next step means we get our asses out of here. Mark them words, boys.” Uhls accents each of his words with a wag of his spoon, to prove his point.
Somehow, some way … we know it’s the truth.
This morning we were listening to the radio on a tank when the word came over that Germany had surrendered to the Allied forces—that the war was over in Europe.
The news came as a shock, because not only did it seem like the war would go on forever (war had been so ingrained in us over the last few years that, sadly enough, we couldn’t imagine ourselves without it), but also, the fact that we were still here, combating the Japanese forces, made a warless world a chimera that seemed to laugh in the face of our current situation.
After all, the news didn’t change the position of our lines, or the texture of the mud, the tint of the sky, or the amount of ammunition each of us carried in our pouches. Nor did it change what we knew was coming—that we’d be making another assault on the Japanese soon, and more marines would surely die in the process—like PFC Garner Mott yesterday, like a few other new marines (nobody seems to remember their names).
Still, if there was an end to all of this, the news made it more real, somehow more tangible, less fantastical to the mind—if only for the reason that hope, like death, is a contagion that spreads, for better or worse.
“Say,” Junior says, “maybe now we can get the Germans to come over here to lend us a hand, huh?”
A lot of marines nod in agreement. It doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea. We’ve all heard the Germans are fierce fighters, so maybe they could supply us with just enough forces to get us over this hump.
We are being naive, of course. We’re only viewing the big picture from a foxhole’s view. None of us has a clue that the Nazis were committing atrocities against the Jews and Poles. To the marines standing right here, hearing the news, the German people are just like us. They look like us, they dress like us—hell, there are tons of Germans back home, and they are all good people. Uhls? That’s a German name, and he’s pretty good at killing Nips, so why not the rest of them?
Because we are the United States Marine Corps. We started over here, so we’ll have to finish over here—even if that means invading mainland Japan. Even if that means dying to the last man. Even if that means more of Okinawa, because nothing else matters but the moment at hand, let alone what’s going on in Japan … or Europe, or Russia, or the Philippines.
The war ending in Europe was merely the last bounce of the ball. Now it was up to the marines to put the ball in the basket.
Have you ever tried to dribble a deflated ball?
May 8, 1945.
12
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JUNIOR HUDSON?
“HEY! WHERE THE HELL ARE you going?”
Okinawa, May 1945.
One moment Sergeant George Chase is lying beside me in the middle of a muddy road, alongside a levee—we’re about to run up the road, and into the jaws of a Nip counterattack—and in the next instant he jumps up and takes off toward the rear.
“Hey!” I yell. “Where the hell are you going?”
Chase doesn’t look back. He just keeps running. “I got hit in the arm!”
Bullshit! I didn’t so much as hear a snap or feel his body move before he hopped up and ran. Chase was as close to me as Donald Schwantz was on Ngesebus—hip to hip.
One more glance over my shoulder and Chase has already vanished. Screw it. I never liked you anyway, ya sonuvabitch.
I look back up the road, and I see some marines run by in the distance, but brief blooms of Nip artillery shells obscure them from my view. The artillery appears to be walking straight in my direction, so I know I have to get moving. Get moving, or that crap will come right down on top of me.
The whole attack had been another foul-up.
The rifle platoons started off this morning with weapons at high port, thrusting into the guts of the Japanese lines, only to find ourselves scattered by Nip high explosives, about fifty yards in. The Japs didn’t even have to use machine guns or small-arms fire to break the attack; the artillery did its job again, just like it had from day one. We were nothing but eggshell targets, scrambled on the inside, cracking down the center.
Thunderclaps popped the tops of our heads open and sent their currents straight to our brains—
—shut the hell up!!!!!
All you can do is grit your teeth and tuck your head, swerving, like a drunk, at a jagged run, as you’re pelted by the mud, crud, and unidentifiable gunk that for all you know could be bits of your buddies flying by and attaching to your skin, your clothes … your goddamn mind! Vague human-shapes lie still on the ground as you run past, having blended into Okinawa’s shade so that the living and
the dead are no longer separated by breath and pulse. I went through all of this, only to find myself in the center of a churned-up road, with no idea if I was too far ahead of the attack or too far behind. I barely even recognized Sergeant Chase.
“Chase!”
Boom!
A spray of mud falls just outside of our reach. I slip and fall in the sludge, hugging the earth, only raising my head after the last particles of mud fall.
“Chase.” I low-crawl next to him, nearly out of breath. “We gotta get the hell outta here. Get up the road!”
The sergeant simply gives me a sideways glance, as if I’m an annoyance. Still, that’s all it takes for me to see his downturned countenance and the premature crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. He’s eaten a rotten egg. It’s a rotten day.
Chase helped me realize that we were ahead of the attack after all. He got up and dashed away, leaving me stranded.
Oh, to hell with it.
My only option was to push forward. I knew that up the road the Nips were waiting. Waiting by the hundreds, perhaps. This damned sense of duty I’ve always had, that cursed feeling of purpose—either the Marine Corps trained me too well or they didn’t train me well enough. The way I see it, if they put a rifle in my hands, I’m accountable for using it.
Though the rifle saved my skin on Peleliu, it would probably get me killed on Okinawa.
Okay, Mace. Get up. Let’s go—
(pause)
Listen to me …
She’s not here.
My eyes begin to sting from the threat of crying, so I press my palms deep into my sockets, damming up the stream where dead emotions live. I tell myself that it’s only mud in my eyes … or the wind, slapping my face, sledding pell mell down Donnelly Hill.
Was she ever here?
Every day in combat, on Peleliu and Okinawa, every morning before I started out, I invoked her name. Be my guide. Every morning, except this day I never gave her a thought. Before today, I always named her. I might not have consciously summoned her spirit, but I did. Sister Dorothy …
Battleground Pacific Page 29
