by Len Levinson
“But—”
“Shut up and do as I say. I don’t have any more time to waste on you. Get out of here.”
Lieutenant Arazaki looked into Major Sakakibara’s eyes, and it was as though a fire was burning behind those narrow slits. Major Sakakibara’s mouth was set in a grim line, and a chill ran up Lieutenant Arazaki’s back.
“Yes sir,” he said.
He turned around and crawled out of the cave, taking a deep draft of fresh jungle air.
“Let’s go,” he said to his men.
“What about Major Sakakibara?” asked Sergeant Kushikino.
“He’ll be along later.”
“I thought he was supposed to accompany us.”
“Shut up and get going.”
“Yes sir.”
Lieutenant Arazaki marched out of the area with his men, and Major Sakakibara poked his head out of the cave, blinking at the noonday sun.
The field hospital complex comprised six large tents with their walls rolled up to admit sunlight and fresh air. Mosquito netting kept the bugs out. Wounded officers lay in their own separate tents, segregated from wounded enlisted men. Nurses and orderlies bustled around, administering to all ranks hurt during the night and morning fighting, and the operating tent looked like a butcher shop as doctors sawed off destroyed limbs or removed bullets from the innards of soldiers. Trucks arrived regularly carrying more wounded men from the front.
In one of the hospital tents at the edge of the complex lay Private Victor Yabalonka, the former longshoreman from San Francisco, his chest bandaged and blood seeping through the white swathes of gauze. No cots were available in the enlisted men’s tents, and Private Yabalonka lay directly on the hard ground.
He was barely aware of the ground as he opened his eyes in his steamy hospital tent that afternoon. He was awakening from a deep stupor caused by the medication and morphine they’d given him. A terrible pain rose in waves from deep in his chest, but somehow the pain didn’t bother him too much. The drugs that befuddled him also made the pain bearable.
At first he didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t care. His head felt as though it was filled with lead. It was like floating through a sea of sludge. He groaned and tried to move, but he couldn’t move. He knew he wasn’t dead, but he didn’t feel very alive.
He remembered vaguely what had happened to him. A Jap shot him, and his handy pocket Bible hadn’t saved him. Getting shot was the last thing he remembered. He realized that the medics must have brought him to the hospital. Other wounded men lay all around him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see who they were.
Sunlight streamed through the openings where the tent walls had been rolled up, but somehow everything looked dark and turbid to Private Yabalonka. He knew he was wounded badly and wondered if he was going to die. He’d been in the war long enough to know that wounded men often were shipped back to the hospital, where they died. He knew that chest wounds were serious, and often fatal. Maybe I’m going to die, he thought.
He was only twenty-four years old, and thought he was too young to die. Although he was drugged almost to the point of unconsciousness, he still was awake enough to know that he wanted to live. The life force inside him pushed him toward healing while his torn arteries and lungs impeded the flow of blood and oxygen within his body.
He didn’t want to die. He thought he had so much to live for. He was young and yesterday he’d been healthy. He’d always taken his good health for granted, but now he realized how precious it was. He couldn’t even move. If the Japs attacked the hospital compound, he’d be a sitting duck.
His breathing was shallow and he slipped from consciousness into unconsciousness, and then back again. Sometimes he felt as if he was floating through the air, and other times he thought he had become separated from his body somehow, and looked down at himself lying on the ground inside the tent.
He coughed and sighed, and wondered if he was going to die. He felt desolate and scared. He had no friends or family to succor him, no girlfriend to bend down and kiss his forehead. His buddies were far away and he was among strangers, just another wounded GI, and nobody cared.
This fucking war, he thought, and a tear rolled down his right cheek. A salty taste was in his mouth, and he felt sorry for himself. I never even had a chance to do anything in my life, he thought, and now I’m gonna die.
He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs wouldn’t fill up with air. It was as though a huge weight sat on his chest. He groaned, and then a figure in a tan uniform appeared above him.
“Are you all right, soldier?” asked Lieutenant Frannie Divers, a red-headed nurse from the state of Washington.
“Ooohhh,” was all Yabalonka could say.
“You’ll be all right,” she said. “Just take it easy.”
She dabbed his arm with cotton that had been dipped in alcohol, and then jabbed in a hypodermic needle full of morphine. Yabalonka felt warm waves of comfort pass over him. He closed his eyes and drifted off on those waves.
Lieutenant Frannie Divers looked down at him. She was exhausted, because there’d been so many wounded men. She hadn’t slept last night, and had seen so many bleeding young soldiers that she felt like breaking down and crying.
But she didn’t break down and cry, because the men needed her. Followed by an orderly, she moved to the side of the next wounded young soldier, who wore a bloody bandaged stump where his left leg had been.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked softly, kneeling beside him.
“What’s on your mind, Hutch?” asked General Clyde Hawkins, commanding officer of the Eighty-first Division.
“I’ve got to talk to you, General,” said Colonel Hutchins. “Got a minute?”
“Have a seat,” General Hawkins said. “Be right with you.”
Colonel Hutchins sat on a chair in front of General Hawkins’s desk and wanted to pull out a cigarette, but he’d thrown his pack of Luckies away. He was nervous and jumpy, clicking his teeth and unable to get comfortable in the chair, shifting his ass from one side to the other, crossing and recrossing his legs.
Meanwhile, General Hawkins signed documents on his desk. He had blond hair and a blond mustache, was tall and slim, and had been first captain of cadets when he was at West Point. His father and grandfather had been generals, and he, at fifty years old, was one of the youngest major generals in the United States Army.
Finally General Hawkins laid down his pen and looked up. “What’s on your mind, Hutch?”
“I’m in trouble, sir.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I was with the medics this morning, and Captain Epstein says he’s gonna recommend that I be removed from frontline command.”
“You look like you’ve taken a beating,” General Hawkins said. “Are you hurt that badly?”
“No sir. Not at all.”
“What’s the trouble, then?”
“Captain Epstein says I’m in bad physical condition because of my age and things. He says I’m not physically fit for frontline command anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” General Hawkins said. “I’m going to miss you. You’re the best regimental commander I’ve got. We’ve had our differences in the past, but you always got results for me, and that’s what matters ultimately in war.”
“I don’t want to wind up behind a desk,” Colonel Hutchins said.
“We all have to do a lot of things that we don’t like.”
“You don’t have to do what Captain Epstein says, do you?”
“If he says you’re not fit for frontline command, I’ll appear inept if I leave you in frontline command. I’m not General of the Army, you know. My actions are reviewed by my superiors, just as your actions are reviewed by me.”
Colonel Hutchins leaned forward in his chair. “But it’s not as if I’ve got a bullet in my brain or anything like that. My problem is that I smoke and drink too much. What if I stopped smoking and drinking, and exercised more? Then I’d be all right
, wouldn’t I?”
General Hawkins smiled. “I suppose so, but can you stop smoking and drinking?”
“I’ve stopped already.”
“For how long?”
“All morning.”
“That’s not much time.”
“It is for me. I threw out my cigarettes and poured my jungle juice out of my canteen. I’ll do calisthenics with my troops every morning, push-ups, jumping-jacks, and all that happy horseshit. I can do it. Give me a chance, General.”
“I don’t know,” General Hawkins said. “My ass’ll be in a sling if I don’t follow Captain Epstein’s recommendation.”
“Just say you gave me a chance to redeem myself. What’s wrong with that? I been in this man’s Army for twenty-seven fucking years. Doesn’t that entitle me to another chance?”
General Hawkins stuffed a cigarette into his ivory holder and lit the cigarette with his Ronson. He leaned back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at Colonel Hutchins.
“What the hell do you want to stay at the front for?” he asked. “Haven’t you had enough war?”
“War is my job,” Colonel Hutchins said, “and I do it better than most people. My place is here, not behind some goddamn desk someplace, putting my signature on requisitions for paper clips and toilet bowls. I’m a professional soldier like you. How’d you like to be sent someplace where you have to be a desk jockey for the rest of your life?”
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“Neither do I. I’d rather die here than keel over behind a damned desk someplace.”
General Hawkins nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Then don’t relieve me of command.”
“How can I ignore the doctor’s recommendation?”
“Just say I’ve stopped smoking and drinking, and I’m doing calisthenics with my men every morning. Tell ‘em you’re giving me one more chance, in view of my illustrious service to date.”
“And you’ll walk out of here and start hitting the bottle again. I’ll look like a dope.”
“I’m not going to drink again.”
“I don’t think you can stop.”
“I can stop. And I can stop smoking too.”
“For how long?”
“Until this goddamn war is over.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“I never said it’d be easy, but I said I could do it.”
“I don’t know,” General Hawkins said. “I’d like to give you a chance, but then I’d be taking a chance myself.”
“I won’t let you down,” Colonel Hutchins said. “What do you want me to do—get on my knees and beg?”
General Hawkins puffed his cigarette holder and looked at Colonel Hutchins. He had no idea of who to replace Colonel Hutchins with if he relieved him of command, because he couldn’t think of anybody who could fill Colonel Hutchins’s shoes.
“All right,” General Hawkins said, “I’ll give you one chance, but I want to make it clear that it’s just one chance and no more. If I ever smell alcohol on your breath again, you’re out, understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“And if I see you with a cigarette in your mouth, you’re out too, got it?”
“Yes sir.”
“Just remember this, Hutch. Your men need you and I need you. If you take another drink, you’ll be letting all of us down. Don’t let us down, okay?”
“Okay.”
“That’s all.”
Colonel Hutchins raised himself up and stood at attention in front of General Hawkins’s desk. “Thank you, sir.”
“Just keep your side of the bargain. That’s all I ask.”
“Yes sir.”
Colonel Hutchins threw a snappy salute, performed a smart about-face, and marched out of the office.
Major Sakakibara emerged from the jungle, a sullen expression on his face and his head tucked into his shoulders. He looked like a hunchback as he made his way to the tent complex that comprised the headquarters of General Hatazo Adachi.
Major Sakakibara wore a clean tattered uniform and he’d taken a bath in a stream using captured American soap to wash his filth-encrusted body. He had no idea why the famous General Adachi wanted to see him, and thought perhaps he was going to be court-martialed for his multifarious frontline atrocities.
“They’re all weaklings,” he muttered underneath his breath as he approached General Adachi’s tent. He was referring to the Japanese high command, not the Americans. Major Sakakibara thought the Japanese high command was too timid and effeminate, lacking the true brutal warrior spirit.
He turned down the corners of his mouth and entered General Adachi’s tent. It was full of staff officers, and Major Sakakibara felt ill at ease. He knew that they’d graduated from military academies and possessed all the social graces, whereas he was an uncouth former street peddler who’d risen through the ranks and become an officer due to his courage and ferocity in battle.
He shuffled his feet nervously and looked around, wondering which fancy young staff officer to address. One of them, with smoothly shaven beaver cheeks, looked up at him from behind a desk.
“Major Sakakibara?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Major Sakakibara.
“I’m Lieutenant Ono, the general’s aide-de-camp. I’ll see if the general can see you now. Why don’t you have a seat?”
“That’s all right. I’ll stand.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Lieutenant Ono arose and walked away, pushing aside a tent flap and disappearing into the bowels of the tent system. Major Sakakibara sidestepped into a comer and stood with his hands behind his back, feeling conspicuous and out of place, hating the fancy staff officers and clerks working at desks.
There isn’t a real soldier here, he thought. These people wouldn’t stand up and fight for the Emperor even if you held a pistol to their heads.
He narrowed his eyes and wondered anew what General Adachi wanted him for. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong lately, but there was no telling what might bother the higher-ups. They sat in comfortable tents and sipped tea all day, planning grand strategies that failed.
The tent flap was pushed aside, and Lieutenant Ono returned. “Major Sakakibara?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Come with me, please.”
Major Sakakibara stepped out of the corner and followed Lieutenant Ono through the canvas corridors of the tent complex. They turned left and right, seeing officers and clerks working at desks, and then finally Lieutenant Ono pointed to a tent flap ahead.
“That’s General Adachi’s office.”
Major Sakakibara squared his shoulders and walked forward, pushing aside the tent flap, entering General Adachi’s office.
General Adachi sat behind his desk, smoking a cigarette and drinking tea out of a small white cup. Major Sakakibara basically was a street peddler at heart, and went weak in his knees before such a famous and distinguished general. Somehow he forced himself to march toward General Adachi’s desk and deliver a proper salute.
“Have a seat,” General Adachi said in a friendly manner, a slight smile on his face.
Major Sakakibra sat, but kept his back erect as if on parade.
“Care for a cup of tea?” General Adachi asked.
“No sir.”
“Don’t you like tea?”
Major Sakakibara was flustered. His face turned red. He felt awkward and out of place, and wished he could be someplace else.
“I like tea, sir,” he stuttered.
“Then have a cup.”
“Yes sir.”
General Adachi poured tea from a pot into another small white cup, moving his chin to indicate that Major Sakakibara should take the cup. Major Sakakibara leaned forward and picked it up. General Adachi raised his cup in the air.
“To the Emperor’s health,” he said.
“To the Emperor’s health,” Major Sakakibara repeated.
Both officers sipped their tea. Major Sakakibara was so ner
vous his hand trembled. He felt like a shithouse rat. What does the general want from me? Major Sakakibara wondered.
“How are you today?” General Adachi asked genially.
“Very well, sir.”
“And your men?”
“I don’t have very many men left, sir, and my supplies are running low.”
“Yes,” General Adachi said, “casualties have been heavy lately. The Americans outnumber us and it’s difficult to overcome their numerical superiority. In fact, it would be accurate to say at this point that the Eighteenth Army has been defeated on New Guinea.”
Major Sakakibara wanted to say that Japanese soldiers weren’t defeated until they were dead, but he didn’t have the courage. “Yes sir,” was all he could reply.
“However,” General Adachi said, “we can still inflict punishment on the Amercians, and by so doing, we can win honor for ourselves and the entire Eighteenth Army, don’t you agree?”
“Yes sir.”
“They should pay dearly for what they’ve done to our great army, shouldn’t they?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m glad you think so, because that’s why I’ve asked you to come here this afternoon.”
Major Sakakibara wondered if he was having a dream, because the situation he was in didn’t make sense to him.
“You appear uncomfortable, Major Sakakibara,” General Adachi said.
Major Sakakibara didn’t know how to reply. He managed a mumbled: “Yes sir.”
“You are uncomfortable?”
“Yes sir,” Major Sakakibara said.
“Why?”
“Because you are such a distinguished general, sir, and I am only a lowly soldier.”
“We are all lowly soldiers here on New Guinea,” General Adachi said, “and our situation is most perilous right now, but at least we can die like soldiers, is that not so?”
“Yes sir.”
General Adachi leaned forward, and his eyes burned into Major Sakakibara’s face. “I have decided that you will lead our last attack against the Americans.”
