by Len Levinson
“All right men,” he said, “this is it! This’ll be your first encounter with the press, and I want you to relax. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ve all faced much more terrifying things than reporters with pencils in their hands. Just talk slowly and answer questions honestly. Smile a lot for the cameras. Make America proud of you. Let’s go!”
Captain Farr turned around and stepped out onto the staircase. The band began to play John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and Butsko felt a chill run up his spine. The soldiers moved toward the staircase. Lieutenant Norton pushed Butsko.
“Move it out, soldier,” he said.
Butsko placed one foot in front of the other. He joined the long line of servicemen and advanced toward the door. It drew closer and he stepped out into sunshine so bright he had to squinch up his eyes. The band played spiritedly, and a crowd of people were spread over the runway. Bulbs flashed on cameras and the newsreels rolled. Microphones were set up and announcers babbled away. Butsko noticed a bunch of attractive women near the microphones, and a number of them were blondes. He hoped Lana Turner was one of them.
Lieutenant Norton nudged Butsko and Butsko descended the staircase. The crowd cheered and balloons were released into the air. Flags flew from tall poles held up by the hands and leather belts of the color guard. Butsko blinked in amazement as he walked down the stairs. He could see soldiers being kissed by women, and other soldiers interviewed by men carrying microphones. It was like watching a movie, but it was real and he was part of it.
Butsko was a nasty son of a bitch, but the patriotic mood of the occasion overwhelmed him. His foot touched down on the tarmac and he felt glad to be back in the good old U.S. of A. Overcome with emotion, he got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground. The photographers snapped pictures of him and the newsreels whirred.
Butsko got to his feet and a man in civilian clothes thrust a microphone in front of his face.
“How does it feel to be back in the States, soldier?” the man asked.
“Great,” Butsko replied, and the newsreel cameras recorded his gnarled battle-scarred face in a variety of close-ups, medium shots, and long shots.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“John Butsko, sir.”
“Where you from?”
“McKeesport, Pennsylvania.”
“When’s the last time you were home?”
“I can’t even remember.”
Lieutenant Norton pushed Butsko forward. A beautiful woman took Butsko’s hand and led him toward other servicemen lined up to the rear of several civilians wearing business suits. The civilians shook the hands of the servicemen, pumping Butsko’s arm so hard he thought it would break off at his elbow. One of the civilians stepped up to a podium that sprouted eight microphones. The civilian gave a speech full of oratorical flourishes, welcoming Butsko and the others to the great city of Los Angeles.
A flashbulb popped in front of Butsko’s face, and he was blind for a few moments. When he could see again he was standing behind the microphones with other GIs and numerous beautiful women. Butsko looked at the one next to him, and his eyes bugged out of his head because she looked just like Lana Turner.
“Hey,” Butsko said to her, “are you really Lana Turner?”
“I sure am,” she replied with a big smile. “What’s your name?”
Butsko’s mind was blown. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. He coughed and managed to say in a hoarse whisper: “I’m Butsko.”
“How do you do, Sergeant Butsko,” she said, shaking his hand as the flashbulbs burst and the movie cameras caught Butsko’s every twitch. “Let me introduce a friend of mine, Rita Hayworth.”
Butsko’s jaw hung open. Rita Hayworth and her beautiful auburn hair advanced toward him, holding out her hand. Butsko didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. She took his hand in hers.
“Welcome home, soldier,” she said.
“Thanks,” Butsko replied weakly.
With a smile she bent forward and pursed her wonderful curvaceous lips. Butsko went weak in his knees. Her lips touched his cheek lightly, and Butsko thought he’d faint.
“We’re all grateful for everything you’ve done,” Rita Hayworth said, and Lana Turner bent toward Butsko, kissing his other cheek, knocking his cunt cap askew on his head.
Butsko smiled stupidly, as the cameras rolled and flashbulbs popped in the air.
McGurk smoked a cigarette, sitting with his back against a tree. A figure approached on a jungle trail, and McGurk sat up straighter.
“It’s Bannon!” he said.
Everybody turned around and watched Bannon walk into the clearing. “Hey,” Frankie La Barbara said, “the fucking AWOL’s back!”
Bannon veered toward Frankie’s foxhole and trudged on resolutely. He stopped at the edge of the foxhole and looked down at Frankie. “What’d you call me?” he said.
Frankie looked up and snarled. “I called you a fucking AWOL.”
Bannon unslung his M 1 rifle and gripped it by its barrel, like a baseball bat. “Say it again.”
“You’re a fucking AWOL.”
Bannon swung the butt of his rifle at Frankie’s head, and Frankie tried to get out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. The rifle butt whacked Frankie, and Frankie went down for the count.
“Who’s next?” Bannon asked.
Nobody said anything. Bannon held his rifle in his right hand and walked toward Private Joshua McGurk from Skunk Hollow, Maine, who now stood in front of the tree he previously had been sitting against.
“Hi,” said Bannon.
“Hi,” replied McGurk.
“Remember yesterday when I told you to go out on the patrol?”
“Yep.”
“Remember all the shit you gave me?”
“Who me?”
Bannon aimed his rifle at McGurk’s left thigh and pulled the trigger.
Blam!
Smoke billowed out of the barrel of the rifle, and a red dot appeared on McGurk’s thigh. McGurk hollered in pain and collapsed onto the ground. Blood oozed out of the hole in his leg.
“From now on,” Bannon said, “anybody who talks back to me is gonna get shot, only next time I’ll aim higher. Any questions?”
Nobody said anything.
Bannon slung his rifle and headed back to his foxhole. As he drew closer he saw Worthington standing inside, looking at him with eyes wide as saucers.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Bannon asked.
“Nothing,” Worthington replied.
“Nothing what!”
“Nothing Sergeant!”
“That’s better.”
Bannon jumped into the foxhole and pushed Worthington to the side. Worthington’s back hit the wall of the foxhole with a thump.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Bannon growled, “and call a medic for that idiot out there who just got shot by a Jap sniper.”
Worthington hesitated, and Bannon gave him a backhander across the mouth.
“What’re you waiting for, young soldier!” Bannon shouted. “You wanna get shot by a Jap sniper too?”
“No Sergeant!”
“Then get on that walkie-talkie right now and call the medics, you fuck-up!”
“Yes Sergeant!”
His lip bleeding, Worthington raised the walkie-talkie to his face and called Headquarters Company. Bannon sat in the bottom of the foxhole, stood his rifle up against the dirt wall, and snarled.
TEN . . .
Colonel Hutchins spent the rest of the next day near his telephone communications, and whenever he left his headquarters he brought Pfc. Nick Bombasino with him, Pfc. Bombasino carrying a backpack radio.
Colonel Hutchins expected the Japs to attack at any moment, but they didn’t attack that day. He slept fitfully during the night, on a cot near his desk, but the Japs didn’t attack at night either. The next morning was quiet also. Colonel Hutchins wondered when the Japs would attack. He knew they weren’t having
a picnic south of his regiment’s position. They were going to attack sooner or later, and the anxiety was driving him nuts.
Alcohol and nicotine withdrawal were driving him nuts too, but he thought the worst was over. The pains in his guts and his headaches weren’t quite as severe as they’d been, but during the brief periods when he slept during the night he dreamed of chainsmoking cigarettes and guzzling bottles full of fine bourbon whisky. It all tasted wonderful, but he awoke in the morning with the jitters.
The morning was dark and brooding. Clouds covered the sky and it appeared as though it would rain. Colonel Hutchins knew it was just the kind of weather that the Japs liked to use as a cover for their attacks.
Chewing gum like a maniac, he decided that the Japs probably would attack that day. He passed down the order that all listening posts be moved forward fifty additional yards, to spot the Japs before they got too close.
Then he sat at his desk and waited, drumming his fingers on the top of his inkpad, glancing at maps and hoping the Japs would attack so he could wipe them out for once and for all. At mid-morning he decided to go out and inspect his front lines.
Colonel Sakakibara stood with his fists on his hips and looked down at the map spread before him on a collapsible table. He saw where the American positions were and where his position was. His men were deployed across a broad front in a long skirmish line. They weren’t dug in and they’d made no noise. Some had no bullets for their rifles, and some carried American M 1s. A few had hand grenades. Every soldier’s bayonet was affixed to the end of his rifle.
Colonel Sakakibara checked his watch. It was eleven-thirty in the morning. His attack was scheduled to begin at noon, and dark oleaginous clouds covered the sun.
Colonel Sakakibara stepped back from the map table and lit a cigarette, which he knew might be his last cigarette. He intended to lead the attack himself, in front of all his men. He was resolved to kill as many Americans as possible, and he wanted to go down fighting.
“I don’t need the maps anymore,” he said to his aides. “Fold up the table and put it away.”
A patrol from the recon platoon set up a listening post in no-man’s-land, far in advance of the Twenty-third Regiment’s main positions. The patrol consisted of Bannon, Frankie La Barbara, Worthington, and the Reverend Billie Jones. Bannon and Worthington were side by side, lying on the ground, and Worthington held the walkie-talkie against his ear, listening for news.
Bannon looked at the sword that McGurk had left behind when he was carried off by the medics. Bannon had seen many Japanese swords since his first days of fighting on Guadalcanal, but this one was by far the oldest and most beautiful. He admired the inlaid gold and carvings of crysanthemums, wondering who’d made the sword and who’d owned the sword and how many Americans it had killed.
He perked up his ears, hearing the hush of rain against the treetops. The storm that everybody expected had finally arrived. A jagged streak of lightning shot across the heavens, but Bannon couldn’t see it through the thick foliage over his head. A few seconds later he heard a peel of thunder, and knew that heavy rain was on the way.
He didn’t mind the rain itself, but the sound of the storm would make it difficult for him to hear the approach of the Japs. The jungle was so thick he wouldn’t be able to see the Japs until they were right on top of him. He didn’t like that idea so much. He wished McGurk was there to help out, because McGurk was a woodsman from Maine and he was much better at locating Japs in the jungle.
Bannon regretted shooting McGurk, but it had to be done. If he didn’t establish authority in the platoon, the platoon wouldn’t be worth a shit. The men would have contempt for him, and Butsko probably would shoot him when he returned.
Bannon didn’t want the Japs to take his men by surprise. He wondered if it might be a good idea to send one man ten or fifteen yards in advance of the others. That way the man could warn the others. Who should he send? He looked at Worthington, who’d hunted big game in Africa before the war.
“Worthington,” Bannon said.
Worthington turned toward him. “Yes Sergeant?”
“Think you can handle a special little job for me?”
“What kind of special little job, Sergeant?”
“I’d like you to move ahead ten or fifteen yards and look out for Japs.”
“All by myself?”
“That’s right.”
Worthington shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I’ve never done anything like this by myself before.”
“There’s got to be a first time for everything. You’re not afraid, are you?”
“You’re fucking right I’m afraid.”
“I thought you were the guy who hunted lions and tigers before the war.”
“There aren’t any tigers in Africa. The tigers are in India.”
“Well whatever it was that you hunted.”
“Yeah, I used to hunt big game.”
“Then you should know your way around a jungle, right?”
“I wasn’t in many jungles. I did my hunting mostly on the veldt.”
“What the fuck is the veldt?”
“Sort of like plains.”
“Oh. So in other words you’re not worth a fuck?”
“What do you mean—I’m not worth a fuck?”
“If you can’t be my point man, you ain’t worth a fuck.”
“Why don’t you be the point man?”
Bannon grabbed Worthington by the front of his shirt. “Who do you think you’re talking to, young soldier?”
Worthington recalled McGurk getting shot by Bannon earlier in the day. “Sorry Sergeant.”
“Get the fuck going and watch out for Japs.”
“What’ll I do with the walkie-talkie?”
“Give it to me.”
Worthington handed the walkie-talkie to Bannon. “Should I go now?”
“Yeah, and if you see any Japs, crawl back here and let us know. Any questions?”
“What if the Japs see me first?”
“You’d better not let them see you first.”
“But if I try to crawl back here to report them, they might see me moving through the underbrush.”
“They’d better not fucking see you moving through the underbrush. Any other questions?”
“No Sergeant.”
“Get going.”
Another bolt of lightning streaked across the heavens, followed by a terrific thunderclap. Rain poured down onto the jungle and dripped through the trees onto the advancing skirmish line of Japanese soldiers.
Colonel Sakakibara was in the center of the line, slightly ahead of everyone else. He marched resolutely through the jungle, not flinching as branches scratched his face and arms, and vines scraped across the top of his helmet. He knew he was going to die, and was happy about it. At last the grim ordeal of the war would be over for him. He would meet his honorable ancestors in heaven, after chopping up as many American soldiers as he could with his samurai sword.
The long wave of Japanese soldiers swept through the jungle, rain soaking their uniforms and dripping off the ends of their noses. The ground was mushy and rapidly becoming mud. Monkeys chattered in the trees as they raced for shelter across branches high in the air. It was ten minutes before high noon.
Worthington crawled through the underbrush, trying to estimate whether he was ten yards ahead of the others yet. It scared him to think that he was all by himself in no-man’s-land. He didn’t want to get too far away, but he didn’t want to be too close either. If he was too close Bannon might notice and shoot him in the leg the way he’d shot McGurk in the leg.
Worthington, along with the other members of the recon platoon, was amazed at the change that had come over Bannon during the past forty-eight hours. Bannon had been unsure of himself before and actually had tried to reason with the men. Now he was as rotten and nasty as Butsko. He talked to the men as though they were nincompoops, which was the way
Butsko had talked to them. It was almost like having Butsko back in the recon platoon, and Worthington wasn’t sure whether he preferred the old Bannon to the new Bannon.
Torrents of rain fell on him as he crawled through the muck. The jungle was gray-green and misty in front of him, and visibility was poor. Worthington decided he was far enough in the jungle, and slithered underneath a bush. He picked a few leaves out of the way so that his vision would be unobscured, and settled down to wait for the onslaught of the Japs.
He had no idea whether or not Japs would assault the regiment mat day, so he wasn’t especially primed for his job. High winds whistled through the jungle and thrashed leaves and ferns. Worthington knew it would be difficult to discern between the effects of the wind and the movement of Japanese soldiers. Me and my big mouth, he thought. I should’ve never told anybody I used to hunt big game in Africa.
Mosquitoes buzzed around his bare arms and face and sucked out his blood. He slapped them but they wouldn’t go away. The rain washed the citronella off his body. He was miserable and moderately frightened. Removing his helmet so that he could see better, he glanced to his right and left to make sure no Japs were sneaking up on him.
Rain poured onto the jungle and thunder reverberated across the sky. Worthington thought it’d be a bloody horrible mess if the Japs attacked. The fight would be hand-to-hand sooner or later, and it was difficult fighting hand-to-hand if you couldn’t get your footing on the slippery mud.
This fucking war, Worthington thought. This fucking Army. That morning he’d spoken to Captain Mason and put in for Officers Training School. Captain Mason told him it might take a few months before the orders came down, if they came down. There was no guarantee that Worthington would be accepted to OCS, but Captain Mason had said that Worthington had a good chance. The road to Tokyo was paved with young lieutenants, and the Army always needed a steady stream of replacements.
Private Worthington relaxed underneath the bush. He knew he was well camouflaged and no Jap coming through the jungle would see him before he saw the Jap. Everything was okay. Maybe being point man might not be such a bad idea. It was an important job, and he was tired of being just another dope in the recon platoon.
