Suicide River

by Len Levinson

  Then she heard a laugh, and realized the person laughing was Frannie Divers. She looked at Captain Epstein, and Captain Epstein looked at her, his face pale as snow.

  She heard a man's voice, and she'd know that voice anywhere. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but it was Butsko's voice. She still was looking at Captain Epstein, and Captain Epstein still was looking at her. Captain Epstein scowled, and Betty grit her teeth. Her heart beat faster. That dirty rotten Butsko had stood her up and humilated her. Now she was going to tell him what she thought of him and slap his ugly face as hard as she could.

  She heard Butsko's voice more clearly.

  “I wish we had a hotel we could go to,” Butsko said. “I got more mosquito bites than Captain Epstein's got twitches.”

  Frannie laughed, and Captain Epstein got to his feet, his right cheek twitching so furiously it was as if someone was pinching it and jerking it up and down. Betty got to her feet too, but didn't know what she was going to do. Somehow she couldn't believe that Butsko really was out there with Frannie. Now Betty wished she'd gone to bed like a good little girl. She'd put herself in a position where she had to do something, but she couldn't imagine what. She imagined she was supposed to be mad, but instead she felt confused and awkward. She was in the wrong place at the right time.

  Captain Epstein knew exactly what he was going to do. He stood stiffly, his jaw protruding belligerently, and intended to stare at Frannie, not saying anything, just so she'd know he knew she was a no-good worthless bitch. His arms were straight down at his sides and his fists were balled up. Leaning forward, he looked as though he was off-balance and would fall on his face, but somehow he didn't fall. His cheek continued to twitch and he was determined to play the part of a gentleman wronged.

  The rustling in the jungle came closer. Butsko's voice could be heard again. “Let's do this tomorrow night,” he said.

  “You think you can get more of that white lightning?” she asked.

  “I'll try.”

  “It was awfully good. What do they make it with?”

  “I don't think you really want to know that part,” Butsko said.

  Butsko and Frannie emerged from the jungle, and at first they couldn't believe their eyes. It appeared that Dr. Epstein and Betty Crawford were standing in the darkness behind the pharmacy tent, and Dr. Epstein looked as though he was about to fall on his face. Butsko and Frannie blinked, and then they realized with dismay that Dr. Epstein and Betty Crawford were in fact standing behind the pharmacy tent.

  Frannie felt embarrassed, but Butsko didn't give a fuck. He was an old soldier and believed you pushed the hardest when the going got the toughest. He also had a perverse sense of humor.

  He stopped in front of them and grinned. “Hello there,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Captain Epstein expected apologies and remorse, not a wisecrack, and on top of everything else, Butsko wasn't even an officer. Captain Epstein got mad. His face felt on fire. Although he'd told himself he'd keep his mouth shut and walk away after Frannie saw him, Butsko's manner and remark made his emotions boil over.

  Captain Epstein looked at Frannie and said, “How could you do this to me—you bitch!”

  Butsko held up the palms of both his hands. “Wait a minute now,” he said, still grinning because he was enjoying everybody's discomfort. “That ain't no way to talk to a lady.”

  Now it was Betty's turn to blow her top. “What lady!” She pointed her forefinger at Frannie. “Do you mean that tramp over there?”

  Frannie recovered suddenly from her embarrassment at getting caught with Butsko. “Who are you calling a tramp, you little twerp!”

  "Twerp!” screamed Betty.

  Betty lost her composure completely. She bared her teeth, snarled like a wildcat, and dived onto Frannie, knocking her off-balance, and together they fell to the ground.

  "Whore!” hollered Betty, trying to scratch out Frannie's eyes.

  "Bitch!” replied Frannie, tearing open the front of Betty's shirt, revealing her Army-issue brassiere to the world.

  They punched, scratched, and kicked each other, rolling over and around on the ground, getting filthy and all messed up. Butsko turned to Captain Epstein and shrugged.

  “Women,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Captain Epstein stared at the two women struggling on the ground. He was fascinated and appalled by what they were doing. Never had he seen two women fight before, and they were really fighting. Frannie, the bigger of the two, was sitting on top of Betty and squeezing her throat with both hands. Betty, turning green, clawed red lines onto Frannie's face. Captain Epstein found himself becoming sexually aroused. He wanted to take his clothes off and dive on the both of them. He felt the weird desire to have them beat him up. Captain Epstein never realized it before, but he was a kinky son of a bitch.

  Butsko decided the fighting had gone on long enough, and he'd better stop it before somebody got hurt. With one hand he grabbed the collar of Frannie's shirt and pulled her into the air, where she dangled, her feet off the ground. “Cut it out!” Butsko snarled.

  Betty jumped up off the ground and charged Frannie, but Butsko held out his hand and her breastbone collided into it. Butsko tighted his fist around the front of her shirt. “I said cut it out!”

  His booming no-nonsense voice sent chills up the backs of both the women. They stopped struggling. Butsko eased Frannie to the ground and removed his hand from the front of Betty's shirt. “Calm down you two,” he said. “Enough is enough.”

  The two women stared at each other, hatred in their eyes, their faces red with anger. Frannie pursed her lips and blew her red hair out of her eyes. Then she raised her hands and wiped the rest of it away. She had black-and-blue marks and scratches all over her face. Betty had a bloody nose and a loose tooth, as well as a black eye.

  “Slut,” Betty said to Frannie.

  “Shitpot,” Frannie replied.

  Butsko couldn't help laughing. Captain Epstein's eyebrows were knitted together. He still had a hard-on and wondered whether he should see a psychologist.

  “I don't know about all of you,” Butsko said, “but I'm hitting the sack.” He looked at Frannie. “I'll see you tomorrow night, same time, same station.”

  She nodded. Butsko adjusted his submachine gun on his shoulder and took three steps, when suddenly he heard thunder far off in the distance. He stopped cold and looked toward the Driniumor.

  “Oh-oh,” he said.

  On the east side of the Driniumor, Japanese artillerymen, stripped to their waists, shoved shells into their guns as fast as they could, while other artillerymen pulled the strings that fired the shells. Volley after volley blew out the barrels of the big guns and flew in long murderous arcs through the sky. Every Japanese artillery piece fired constantly, one shell after the other again and again, while the artillerymen sweat profusely in the humid night air.

  The muzzles of the guns flashed yellow and orange, illuminating the gun crews and crates of artillery shells piled up next to the guns. The shells were passed from man to man and stuffed into the breeches of the guns. The loud constant roar of the explosions numbed the men's hearing, but still they loaded.

  The fire was concentrated in the center of the American line, where the main assault would be launched, and also on the beach, where the diversionary attack would take place. The Japanese artillerymen could see the sky light up in the distance where the shells landed. They knew the Americans were getting blown to shit over there, and the Japanese artillerymen were glad. They'd been training for this bombardment for weeks, and now at last they were able to vent their spleen against the Americans.

  Their bodies glistening with sweat, they loaded, fired, and reloaded their guns, which blasted and recoiled again and again, while on the American side of the Driniumor the jungle exploded and burned.

  The shells spread devastation all across the Eighty-first Division line. Tents were blown into the air, motor pools set aflame, and soldie
rs who happened to get caught on open ground when the bombardment commenced were mutilated by flying shrapnel.

  Bannon and Frankie La Barbara crouched low in their deep foxhole. The explosions made their ears ring, and the ground shook so violently it made clods of earth break off from the walls of the hole and fall into the grenade sump. The two GIs covered their ears with their hands and shivered with fear, because they knew one of those shells could fall into their hole and wipe them off the face of the earth.

  “You owe me twenty bucks!” Bannon shouted above the roar.

  “I'll give it to you on payday!” Frankie replied.

  The ground shook and heaved. An explosion nearby blew down trees, and one of them fell a few feet from the foxhole, sending up a cloud of dust and smoke. Another shell hit the dirt only twenty yards away, blowing dirt and rocks into the air.

  The dirt and rocks fell onto Frankie and Bannon. One rock the size of a baseball landed on Frankie's helmet, and for a moment he thought he'd been hit by shrapnel. He screamed in imaginary pain, but then felt the rock roll off his head and fall onto his shoulder, finally dropping into his lap.

  Bannon clicked his teeth nervously. He took out a cigarette and lit it up, taking a deep puff, seeing flashes and pulsations of light against the night sky.

  “I think it's time to fix bayonets,” he said to Frankie. “The Japs'll be coming soon.”

  Frankie nodded. He pulled his bayonet out of its scabbard and affixed it to the end of his M 1 rifle. Bannon did the same. They ducked low in the foxhole and hoped they'd be alive when the bombardment ended.

  In his command post bunker, Colonel Hutchins tried to raise his old buddy Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Bollinger, commander of the Sixty-third Field Artillery Battalion, on the telephone, but the lines were dead and he surmised the bombardment must have cut the wires.

  Colonel Hutchins looked around and saw his staff assembled around him, looking at him for direction. The ground beneath their feet heaved as if an earthquake was taking place, while huge craters were blown into the ground by Japanese shells.

  “Bombasino!” Colonel Hutchins said. “Get over here!”

  “Yes sir.”

  Pfc. Nick Bombasino from South Philly strode toward him, wearing the big backpack radio.

  “Turn around,” Colonel Hutchins said.

  Bombasino turned around and Colonel Hutchins unhooked the transmitter, holding it against his face. He spoke the call letters of Lieutenant Colonel Bollinger's headquarters into the mouthpiece, but heard only static and whistles through the earphones. He couldn't get through by radio either. His headquarters was cut off from the rest of the world.

  He returned the transmitter to the backpack radio and pushed Pfc. Bombasino away. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, he looked down at the map table spread next to him. The big question now was when the bombardment would end. Colonel Hutchins didn't think it'd last too long, because he knew from intelligence reports and his own common sense that the Japs didn't have much artillery ammunition, since they were cut off from their sources of supply.

  When the artillery bombardment ended, the Japs would come. Then all Colonel Hutchins's skill as a combat commander would come into play. It was easy to be a winner when your side outnumbered the other side, but the shoe would be on the other foot this time.

  I've been with this regiment too long to let it get wiped out, Colonel Hutchins thought. If the going gets too tough, I'm just going to pull my men the fuck out of here.

  In his command post dug into the ground, General Adachi raised his hand and looked at his watch. The bombardment had been going on for approximately four-and-a-half minutes. It would end in only a few more seconds. Then the main attack would begin. He looked at his officers and they looked at him. No one said a word. Everyone knew what the stakes were. They'd done all they could do, and the artillery was completing its job. Then the battle would be turned over to the ordinary foot soldiers who ultimately would win or lose the battle. Everything depended on them now, those ragged tired hungry soldiers out there in the trenches, holding on to their rifles and bayonets, waiting for the order to attack.

  “How're you doing?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked Private Worthington, who was undergoing the first bombardment of his life.

  Worthington huddled at the bottom of the foxhole, his face drained of color, his eyes wide open and staring as if he'd seen a ghost. “I knew it'd be bad,” he said, “but I never knew it'd be this bad.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge laughed. “Hell—you haven't seen anything yet. You should've seen some of the bombardments we took on Bougainville. Now that was a real war.” Private Worthington looked at Lieutenant Breckenridge.

  He couldn't imagine anything worse than what he was going through just then. The bombardment seemed as though it'd never end. The explosions hurt his ears and he could feel the concussion waves in his guts. He imagined one of the shells falling on him and blowing him to bits. He found it hard to believe his life could end so suddenly, for no good reason at all.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge calmly lit a cigarette. “Don't worry,” he told Worthington, “the old soldiers say you never hear the one that lands on you.”

  Twenty-five yards away, Pfc. Morris Shilansky sat stolidly behind his .30-caliber machine gun, his hands on the grips and his thumbs on the triggers, waiting for the Japs to come. Incoming shells whistled all around him, explosions took place everywhere, huge trees were blasted into tiny toothpicks, but he didn't move a muscle. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes glinted like tiny chips of ice. When the Japs attacked, he wanted a piece of them. He hoped the bombardment would end so they'd start coming. They were going to pay for the Jews of Europe who'd gone up in smoke.

  McGurk lay behind the sandbags, looking up at him. “I think you'd better get down, Shilansky.”

  Shilansky didn't even hear him. Shilansky was in another place. Through the holocaust of explosions and flames he looked toward the far bank of the Driniumor, hoping to see a Jap. But he didn't see anything, not yet. But soon they'd come, and he'd be ready.

  “C'mon you little yellow bastards,” he muttered. “Let's get this show on the road.”

  “General Hawkins wants to speak with you, sir,” said Master Sergeant Seymour Bunberry, the sergeant major of the Persecution Task Force, standing beside the bank of shortwave radios.

  “Tell him I can't talk to him right now,” General Hall replied.

  “Yes sir.”

  General Hall stood at his map table and looked down at it. He already knew what was going on and didn't need to waste time talking with General Hawkins. The big attack by the Japanese Eighteenth Army was taking place on schedule, and the full weight of the bombardment was hitting the Eighty-first Division. A smaller bombardment fell on the beach where the Thirty-fifth Division was deployed, but that appeared diversionary. General Hall had the main situation figured out. He wished he'd stationed the 114th Regimental Combat Team closer to the front, but that was just hindsight. At the time he'd been sure he was making the right decision, and despite everything, he still believed it was the right decision.

  “Colonel MacKenzie!” he said.

  “Yes sir!” replied Colonel MacKenzie, rushing toward the map table.

  “Order the Hundred Fourteenth RCT to move up here.” General Hall drew a line over the map with his finger, and it covered the area behind the Eighty-first Division front line. “Direct all available artillery to open fire here.” He pointed to the east bank of the Driniumor opposite the Eighty-first Division. “Then call General Hawkins and tell him to hold on until help arrives.”

  “Yes sir!”

  Colonel MacKenzie dashed to the telephones and transmitted the first two orders easily. The third call, to General Hawkins, didn't go through. Colonel MacKenzie correctly surmised that the telephone wires had been cut by the bombardment. He crossed the room and at the bank of radios told an operator to get General Hawkins for him, but after several attempts the operator still couldn't
get through.

  Colonel MacKenzie returned to General Hall, who looked down thoughtfully at the map. “Sir?” said Colonel MacKenzie.

  General Hall looked up. “What is it?”

  “I couldn't reach General Hawkins, sir. Evidently his communications are out.”

  “Then he'll have to figure out what to do on his own,” General Hall said.

  FOURTEEN . . .

  At approximately 2355 hours, the artillery bombardment stopped. The first Japanese unit to come out of their holes was the First Battalion of the Seventy-eighth Infantry Regiment. It was followed by the rest of the Seventy-eighth Regiment, then the Eightieth Regiment, and finally the bulk of the Japanese Eighteenth Army.

  The Japanese soldiers attacked in three waves, running down toward the Driniumor River, jumping in and dashing across, splashing and kicking, holding their rifles with fixed bayonets in their hands, screaming bloody blue murder. Their officers waved their samurai swords in the air, exhorting the men on. Every Japanese soldier knew it would be all-out and winner-take-all until the bloody end of the battle.

  Morris Shilansky was the first GI to open fire. He sat behind his .30-caliber machine gun and pushed the thumb triggers. The machine gun barked viciously, dancing around on its tripod legs, shooting sparks and hot lead out of the barrel.

  The bullets streamed down toward the Driniumor River and cut down a bunch of Japs, but the rest of the Japs kept charging. The belt of ammunition feeding into the machine gun snaked around wildly in the air as Shilansky moved the weapon from side to side on its transverse mechanism, mowing down Japs. “Grab that fucking belt!” Shilansky hollered.

  McGurk jumped up and dived on the belt, holding it steadily in his hands so it would feed smoothly into the chamber of the gun. Meanwhile, all around them, the other GIs in the recon platoon raised themselves and perched their weapons on the rims of their foxholes. They fired M 1 rifles, carbines, Thompson submachine guns, and Browning Automatic Rifles, raking the attacking Japanese soldiers with a hail of bullets, but the Japanese soldiers were all hyped up and the ones who weren't killed or wounded maintained the momentum of their frantic banzai charge, baring their teeth at the Americans, anxious to get close and engage them hand-to-hand.