Les Dillon was bewildered, too, and he’d seen a lot more nasty things over a lot more years than Private Casteel had. “Damned if I can tell you,” he answered. “Maybe they think they’re scaring us when they do that kind of stuff to a body.”
“They got another think comin’!” Casteel said hotly.
“Yeah, I know.” Les also knew the Japs hadn’t done everything to bodies. Some of those poor men—most of them, probably—were alive when the enemy got to work on them. He could only hope they’d died pretty soon. “We just have to keep pushin’ and keep poundin’. They won’t do anything like that once they’re all dead.”
“Sooner the better,” Casteel said.
“Oh, hell, yes.” Les felt fatherly—almost grandfatherly—as he went on, “But you got to remember not to do anything dumb, though. Killing Japs is the name of the game. Don’t let them kill you. You do something stupid, they’ll make you pay for it before you can even blink. Take bayonets.”
Randy Casteel nodded eagerly. “Oh, yeah, Sarge. I know about that.”
“Make sure you remember, dammit. The Nips have more evil tricks than you can shake a stick at,” Les said. Normal bayonet drill meant keeping the cutting edge toward the ground. But the Japanese bayonet had a hooked hand guard. The Japs used it to grab on to a U.S. bayonet. A twist, and the Marine’s rifle went flying. “Keep the left side of the blade toward the deck and you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, Sarge,” Casteel repeated. Several men had died before somebody was sharp enough to figure out a counter. To look at your average Japanese soldier, you wouldn’t think he was big enough or strong enough to win a bayonet fight—but he was. Oh, brother, was he.
“Other thing to remember is, don’t use the bayonet till it’s your last choice,” Les added. “Blow the little fucker’s head off instead. Let’s see him get sneaky trying to dodge a bullet.”
In training, everybody fussed about the bayonet. In the field, it made a tolerable can opener or barbed-wire cutter. It wasn’t a great combat knife; like almost all Marines, Les preferred the Kabar on his belt.
“Over here! C’mon! This way!” The call from ahead came in perfect English. Randy Casteel glanced at Les.
The platoon sergeant shook his head. “Sit tight,” he said. “Another goddamn decoy.” Some of the enemy soldiers knew the language, and some of the locals still worked with them and for them. The locals had grown up speaking English, so of course they had no telltale accent to give them away. If you paid attention to shouts from people you didn’t know, you’d charge right into an ambush.
Les stuck his head up—just for an instant, and not in a place from which he’d looked before. Somebody in khaki was moving out there. He snapped off a shot and ducked down again. Not even the scream that followed made him take another look. The Japs should have gone in for amateur theatricals. Look at the soldier you thought you’d just killed and it was even money he’d be waiting to plant one right between your eyes.
The sun dropped down toward the Waianae Range. Les muttered under his breath. “More goddamn infiltrators after dark, sure as shit.”
“Yeah, Sarge.” Randy Casteel nodded. In the daytime, American firepower and airplanes dominated. At night, it was the Japs’ turn. They’d sneak into the American lines by ones and twos. They’d roll grenades into foxholes or jump in with a knife. The rule now was two men in a hole, one of them awake all the time. It made war even more exhausting than it would have been otherwise, but it saved lives.
At least one American had been shot by somebody on his own side for not coming out with the password fast enough to suit a trigger-happy Marine. Les felt sorry that had happened, but not very. Anybody dumb enough to move around at night when he didn’t have to and dumb enough to draw a blank on the password was probably dumb enough to get himself killed some other way if he hadn’t found that one.
“You know the word for tonight?” Les asked Casteel.
“Lizard lips,” the kid answered. Les nodded. Most of the passwords had l’s and r’s in them: those were the English sounds that gave the Japs trouble.
Darkness fell fast here. Twilight didn’t linger the way it did in more northerly climes. And when it was dark, it was dark. The electricity was out. There was no background glow, the way there would have been if lights shone not far away. A few fires burned, but with the rice paddies wet there weren’t many of those, either.
“You gonna sack out on me if I give you first watch?” Les asked. “Tell me straight. If you’re beat, sleep now, and I’ll get you up at midnight. I can last, and I don’t want both of us screwed because you couldn’t.”
“If you don’t mind, Sarge, I better sleep now. I’m pretty beat,” Casteel said.
“Okay. Go ahead,” Les told him. The kid curled up, twisted a couple of times like a dog making a nest, and was dead to the world inside of two minutes. Les knew unconsciousness would sap him just as fast and just as hard when his turn came. Bare ground? Damp ground? Rain? He’d sleep on a bed of nails like an Indian fakir.
For now, though, he had to stay awake. He stuck his head up to look out of the hole. That was all he did; anyone walking around at night was presumed to be a Jap. He peered south, his rifle close by him. Most of the fires down around Schofield Barracks seemed to be out. He muttered something foul. He might have spotted Japs sneaking forward against a background of flame. Now he’d have to do it the hard way.
He wished for the moon. It wasn’t a childish wish for something he couldn’t possibly get. He just wished it were in the sky. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t come up till Randy Casteel went on watch. He shrugged. Odds were the kid needed more help than he did. So he told himself, anyway.
A few strands of barbed wire looped in front of the American position. Les didn’t think they would slow the Japs down. But the Marines who’d set out the wire had also hung K-ration cans partly filled with pebbles from it. With luck, a noise from those would give some warning.
Off to his left, a rifle cracked—an Arisaka. A burst from an American machine gun answered it. Les wondered if a night firefight would break out. That would be the last thing anybody needed. But the firing died away. As far as Les could tell, all it had done was scare everybody who was awake. Casteel’s breathing never even changed.
Les longed for a cigarette. That would have to wait till daylight. The flash of a match and the glow of a coal just asked a sniper to draw a bead on you. He longed for a cigarette, but he wasn’t dying for one.
The stars wheeled across the sky. Nothing happened, but something always could. Waiting for it, wondering when it would come and how bad it would be, wore away your stomach lining.
Out ahead, something rattled. Les’ rifle was against his shoulder before he knew how it had got there. The noise might not have come from a Jap. The other night, somebody’d used up a stray cat’s nine lives all at once. But you never could tell.
Was that a moving shape, there on this side of the wire? It might have been too small and low for a man, but it might not have, too. The Japs could crawl on their bellies as well as snakes. Finger tight on the trigger, Les hissed out a challenge: “Password!”
No answer. No movement. Silence. He wondered if his nerves were getting the best of him. He called the challenge again. Still nothing. But the shape of the shadows ahead looked different from the way it had before he heard that rattle. It might have been his imagination. He didn’t think so. He thought it was a Jap, maybe two. The rifle bucked against his shoulder.
Japs had fine discipline—better discipline, probably, than the Marines. But holding still and not making a sound despite a wound from a high-powered .30-caliber round proved beyond this one. He groaned. Les fired again. The Jap screamed, the cry slowly subsiding into an agonized gurgle.
But sure as hell, more than one enemy soldier lurked out there in the darkness. With a bloodcurdling shriek, the Jap Les hadn’t hit dashed at him. He fired once more—and missed. Night shooting was as much a matter of luck as anything else.
Still shrieking, the Jap jumped down into the foxhole with him.
If Les hadn’t got his M-1 up in a hurry, the Jap would have gutted him like a tuna. The knife in the enemy soldier’s hand rebounded from the stock. Les had told Randy Casteel about the virtues of firing as opposed to the bayonet. He had no time to aim and shoot. He didn’t even have time or room for a bayonet thrust. He used a buttstroke instead, and felt the big end of his piece slam the side of the Jap’s head.
He thought—he hoped—the blow would fracture the enemy’s skull. But either the Jap had a devil of a hard head or Les hadn’t hit so hard as he thought he had. The Jap kept fighting, if a little dazedly. He slashed out with his knife. Les felt his tunic tear and the hot pain of a blade cutting his arm. He hissed a curse.
Then the Jap grunted, more in surprise than anything else, and went limp. The hot-iron smell of blood filled the foxhole, as well as an earthier stink—the soldier’s bowels had let go. He was dead as shoe leather before he finished crumpling.
“Hell of a way to wake somebody up,” Randy Casteel said peevishly.
“Thanks, kid,” Les panted. “Got a wound dressing handy? Can you stick it on my arm? He nicked me a little.” He worked his hand. The fingers all opened and closed and gripped the way they were supposed to. He nodded to himself. “Doesn’t seem too bad.”
“Lemme see.” Casteel bent to get a close look in the darkness. “Yeah, I can patch you up. You just got a star to go with your Purple Heart.” He fumbled in his belt pouch for the dressing.
“All things considered, I’d rather have a blowjob,” Les said, which jerked a startled laugh from the other Marine.
“What the fuck’s going on?” somebody called from not far away. If he didn’t like the answer, a grenade would follow the question.
“That you, Dutch?” Les said. “Two Japs, looks like. I scragged one. Other one tried to keep us company. He cut me a little, but Casteel gave him a Kabar where it did the most good.”
Somebody else out there in the darkness asked a low-voiced question. Dutch Wenzel’s reply was loud enough to let Les hear it: “Oh, hell, yes, sir, that’s him. Ain’t a Jap in the world talks English like that.”
“I dusted some sulfa powder on the wound, too, Sarge,” Randy Casteel said.
“Good. That’s good. You did everything just right,” Dillon answered. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Uh, half past ten.”
“Think you can sleep another hour and a half? I’ll go back on watch. I won’t be able to get any shuteye for a while anyway—not till the arm quiets down a little.” He said nothing about the pounding of his heart, which also needed to ease. Nothing like damn near getting killed to keep you up at night.
Casteel said, “I’ll give it a try.” He needed almost ten minutes to start snoring this time. Les envied him his youth and resilience. I’m supposed to be the smart one, he thought. So how come I’m the one who got cut?
THE JAPANESE OFFICER ON TOP OF JANE ARMITAGE squeezed her breasts one last time, grunted, and came. She lay there unmoving, as she had while he pumped away inside her. He didn’t care, damn him. He patted her head, as if she were a dog that had done a clever trick. Then he dressed and walked out of the room.
Dully, she waited for the next violation. She knew she ought to douche, but what was the point? With so many Japs every day, douching seemed a pitiful stick in the wind against pregnancy and disease.
How long did the average comfort woman last? How long before the sheer physical endurance you needed to take on man after man after man—none of whom gave a damn about you except as one convenient hole or another—combined with mind-numbing self-loathing to make you decide you couldn’t stand to go on for one more cock, let alone one more day? Jane was stubborn. The end hadn’t come for her, because she still wanted to see the Japs dead more than she wanted to die herself. But new girls had replaced several from the original contingent by now, and the ones who’d left hadn’t gone on rest cures. They’d died, died by their own hands.
Jane flinched when the door opened. But it wasn’t another horny Jap wanting a few minutes of fun before he went back to killing American soldiers. It was one of the Chinese women who ran the soldiers’ brothel for the occupiers. She fluttered her fingers, a gesture that meant Jane had taken on her last man for the day.
Wearily, she nodded. The Chinese woman closed the door and went on to the next room. Occupiers. The word echoed in Jane’s head. In Shakespeare’s day, she remembered from a lit course at Ohio State, to occupy a woman meant to screw her. Jane had never thought to see the connection so vividly illustrated in the twentieth century.
Not far away, Japanese field guns boomed, shooting at the Americans pushing down from the north. She wished the guns would blow up in the Japs’ faces. She hadn’t really understood the futility of wishing till she got here.
Before long, American shells screamed in. Counterbattery fire, they called it. That was what she got for being an artilleryman’s wife. Ex-wife. Almost ex-wife. She shook her head in sour disbelief. She’d thought Fletch wasn’t the lover she deserved. Maybe he wasn’t. But a million years of Fletch would have been paradise next to what she’d gone through the past few weeks.
A white woman poked her head into the room. Beulah stayed—was stuck in—the room next door. “Come on,” she said. “We might as well get something to eat.”
“Okay.” Jane made herself climb to her feet. More shells burst within a few hundred yards of the apartment building–turned-brothel. “I wish a couple of those would land on this place and blow it straight to hell.” Even though she knew wishing was useless, she couldn’t stop. What else did she have left?
Beulah only shrugged. She was broad-shouldered and stolid and, Jane suspected, not very bright. If anything, that helped her here; not thinking was an asset. “Gotta keep going,” she said. “What else can we do?”
Hang ourselves. But Jane didn’t say it. She’d been taught as a girl that saying something made you more likely to do it. She wasn’t sure she believed that any more, not after a couple of psychology classes, but any English major would have said words had power. If they didn’t, why pay attention to them in the first place?
The comfort women gathered together in what had been a storeroom and now, with the addition of chairs and tables no doubt stolen from people’s homes, did duty for a dining room. Some of the women didn’t want to have much to do with anybody. Jane was one of those. Others talked about what they’d done and what their Japs had done; they might have been factory workers comparing the behavior of machines. If they were going to talk, they didn’t have much else to talk about.
Supper was rice and vegetables—more than Jane would have got if they hadn’t kidnapped her. The Japs might not have wanted to fuck her if she looked like a starving woman. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t have done this for all the gold in Fort Knox. She wouldn’t even have done it for a T-bone smothered in mushrooms and onions.
Somebody said, “What’ll the Japs do if it looks like they’re gonna get kicked out of Wahiawa?” There was something new to talk about after all.
“Please, God,” somebody else said, “and soon!” A woman sitting near Jane crossed herself. That anyone could still believe in God impressed her—and horrified her, too. What did it take to get you to see nobody was on the other end of that telephone?
“Maybe they’ll let us go,” Beulah said.
“Not the Japs!” Jane said. “They never do anything for anybody. They do things to people instead.”
“So what’ll they do to us?” Beulah asked. “What can they do that they haven’t already done?”
Jane winced. That question made altogether too much sense. After weeks of having to lie down for endless men she hated, what was left in the way of degradation? But someone had an answer: “They’re liable to kill us all. That way, we won’t be able to tell anybody what they made us do.”
No one spoke for a little while. The unwilling comfort women weighed the odds. Wo
uld the Japanese murder them in cold blood? It didn’t strike Jane as the least bit unlikely. Dead women told no tales. She said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“How?” three women asked at the same time. The windows were barred. The doors were guarded. The Chinese women who ran the brothel for the Japs—their boss was a snake named Annabelle Chung—kept their eyes open for trouble all the time. Even talking about escaping was dangerous. Some of the miserable women in this room informed. No one knew who, but the fact seemed inarguable. What could they get that would make squealing on their fellow sufferers worthwhile? Not more food, the usual currency of betrayal in the rest of Wahiawa. Fewer horny Japs? After a while, what difference did that make? But Jane couldn’t see any other reason to snitch except general meanness. Of course, that wasn’t impossible, either.
No matter how many women asked the question, nobody answered it. An answer did occur to Jane: give the guards some of what she had to give the other Japanese soldiers. Before she landed here, sucking a stranger’s cock to get something she wanted would no more have occurred to her than killing herself. She probably would sooner have killed herself. She remembered that, as if from very far away. Now . . . She’d had to get down on her knees so often for nothing at all, why not do it once more if she really needed to? And it wasn’t as if suicide were a stranger to her thoughts nowadays.
She looked around at the other comfort women. Were they thinking along with her? How could they not be? A few weeks of this had coarsened the women it didn’t kill. Some of them hadn’t even bothered to put on clothes before they came to supper. There had been evenings when Jane didn’t bother, either, though she’d thrown on a muumuu now. Would they all be thinking, Well, why not? What’s one more after so many?
End of the Beginning Page 38
