Now it was quiet enough for the Coxswain to shout to the senior officer in the boat, the Captain commanding Able Com-pany, "There's debris in the water by the landing ramps; this is as close as I can take you!"
Macklin could tell by the look on the Captain's face what he thought of this news.
"Everybody out of the boat!" the Captain shouted. "Follow me! Let's go! Get the lead out!"
He clambered up onto the side of the landing craft and from there onto the concrete pier, and vanished from sight.
Lieutenant Macklin decided that in the absence of orders to do something specific (his orders had been, "Macklin, you go in with Boat Nine.") it behooved him to remain aboard the land-ing craft to make sure that everyone else got off.
He did so.
Then he climbed onto the pier, on his stomach, with his Thompson submachine gun at the ready. He heard the engine of the landing craft rev, and knew that the boat was backing away from the pier to return to the transport for the second wave.
When he looked down the pier, the last of the Marines reached the end of it, turned to the left, and disappeared.
There was the sound of small-arms fire, but it was, as far as Macklin could tell, the familiar crack of.30-06 rifles and the deeper-pitched boom of.45-caliber submachine-gun and pistol ammo. He had been told that the sound of the smaller-caliber Japanese small arms would be different. That means we're not under fire!
He got to his feet and began to trot down the pier toward the shore. Once erect, he could see Marines on the beach, moving inland through the vegetation and around the burned and shat-tered buildings of the Japanese seaplane base. He started to run, to catch up.
Near the shore, he saw that his initial assessment of probable damage from the bombing and shellfire had been correct. A bomb, or a shell, had struck the pier about fifteen yards from shore, taking out all but a narrow strip of concrete no more than three feet wide.
As he made his way carefully across this narrow strip, he felt as if, in the same moment, someone had struck his leg with a baseball bat and slapped him, very hard, in the face.
And then he felt himself flying through the air. There was a splash, and he went under water. There was a moment of abject terror, and then his flailing hand encountered a barnacle-encrusted piling. He clung to it desperately, to keep himself from slipping off and drowning.
Then he became aware that his foot was touching bottom. He straightened his bent leg, and found that he was in water about chest-deep.
Where the hell is my weapon?
I dropped it It's in the water. I'll never be able to find it. Now what the hell am I going to do?
What the hell did I fall over? I must have slipped. No. I was struck by something/
He put his hand to his face. His fingers came away sticky with blood.
My God, I've been shot in the face! I'll be disfigured for life!
And then he remembered the blow to his leg. He felt faint and nauseous, but finally gathered the courage to try to find some damage to his leg. He became aware of a stinging sensa-tion. Salt water, he realized, was making an open sore-a wound!-sting.
He couldn't bend far enough over to reach the sting without putting his face into the water. Gingerly, he raised the stinging leg. He couldn't feel anything at first, and only after a moment detected a swelling in the calf.
But then he saw a faint cloud of red oozing out of his trouser leg-
I've been shot in the leg! But why doesn`t it hurt?
Shock! It doesn't hurt because I'm in shock!
I'm going to pass out and then drown!
A glob of blood dropped off his cheek into the water and began to dissolve as it sank.
I'm going to bleed to death!
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed by Thy Name...
What the hell is the rest of it?
Dear God, please don't let me die!
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...
"Move your ass! Run!Run!Run!Run!Run!Run!"
It's the second wave!
Now there was small-arms fire, single shots and automatic, and it didn't sound like.3O-O6s or Thompsons, and then there was a whistling sound followed by a crump and then a dull ex-plosion, and he felt a shock wave and then another and another in the water.
"Get your dumb ass up and off the pier, or die here, you dumb sonofabitch!"
He saw, vaguely, figures running across the pier above him.
He found his voice.
"Medic! Medic! Medic!"
There was no response, and there didn't seem to be any more movement on the pier above him. The strange-sounding-the Japanese-smalls-arms fire continued, and there were more mortar rounds landing in the water.
"Medic! Medic! For Christ's sake, somebody help me!"
Now the leg started to ache, and his cheek. He put his hand to his face again, and the fingers came away this time with a clot of blood.
"For the love of Christ, will somebody help me? Medic! Medic!"
There was splashing in the water from the direction of the shore.
It's a Jap! It has to be a Jap! The invasion failed, and now I'm going to die here under this fucking pier!
"What happened to you, Mac?"
"I've been wounded, you ignorant sonofabitch! And it's `Lieu-tenant'!"
Fingers probed his face.
"That's not bad," the medic said, professionally. "Another half an inch and you would have lost your teeth, maybe worse. But you just got grazed. Is that all that's wrong with you?"
"My leg, I've been wounded in the leg."
Fingers probed his leg.
"That hurts, goddamn you!"
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get you ashore. Let go of that piling and wrap your arms around my neck."
"Ashore?"
"Lieutenant, I've got badly wounded people ashore. Please don't give me any trouble."
"I'm badly wounded," Macklin said indignantly.
"No, you're not. Your leg ain't broke. You got one of them half-million-dollar wounds. Some muscle damage. Keep you out of the war for maybe three months. In ten days you'll be in the hospital in Melbourne, looking up nurses' dresses. Now come on, put your arms around me and I'll get you ashore, and some-body will be along in a while to take you back to the ship."
Lieutenant Macklin did as he was told. The medic carried him on his back to the shore, and a few yards inland. Then he low-ered him gently onto the sand, cut his trouser leg open, and ap-plied a compress bandage.
"My leg," Macklin said, with as much dignity as he could muster, "is beginning to cause me a great deal of pain."
"Well, we have just the thing for that," the medic said, taking out a morphine hypodermic. "Next stop, Cloud Nine."
Macklin felt a prick in his buttocks, and then a sensation of cold.
"I gotta go," the medic said, patting him comfortably on the shoulder. "You're going to be all right, Lieutenant. Believe me."
A warm sensation began to ooze through Macklin's body.
I'm going to be all right, he thought. I'm going to live. They're going to send me to the hospital in Melbourne. It will probably take longer than three months for my leg to heal I will receive the Purple Heart. Two Purple Hearts, one for the leg and one for the face. There will probably be a small scar on my face. Peo-ple will ask about that. "Lieutenant Macklin was wounded while attacking Gavutu-twice wounded when assaulting the beach at Gavutu with the first wave of the Para-Marines."
I'll be a captain for sure, now. And for the rest of my Marine Corps career, the scar on my face will be there to remind people of my combat service.
(Six)
Command Post, Tulagi Force
1530 Hours 8 August 1942
The headquarters of Brigadier General Lewis T. Harris, Com-manding General of the Tulagi/Gavutu/Tanambogo Force, were now in the somewhat seedy white frame building that had before the war housed the Colonial Administrator of Tulagi, and was somewhat grandly known as "the Res
idence."
Thirty minutes before, the building had been the forward command post of Lieutenant Colonel "Red Mike" Edson, com-manding the 1st Raider Battalion. When the Commanding Offi-cer, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, drove up to attend a commanders' conference called by General Harris, the small de-tachment of Raiders charged with protecting the Raider com-mand post were still in place, close to but not actually manning their weapons (rifles, BARs, and light.30-caliber machine guns).
Thirty minutes before, the island of Tulagi had been officially reported "secure."
There was a moment's hesitation before a sergeant called, "Atten-hut!" and saluted the 2nd Battalion Commander. For one thing, he was hatless, riding a captured Japanese motorcy-cle, and was carrying a rifle slung over his back, which was not the sort of thing the Raiders expected of a Marine major.
But the salute was enthusiastic and respectful. The reputation of the 2nd Battalion Commander had preceded him. It had been reliably reported that during the mopping-up phase of the inva-sion, the 2nd Battalion Commander had been seen standing in the open, shooting a particularly determined Japanese sniper who had until then been firing with impunity through a one-foot-square hole in his coral bunker. The Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion had fired at him twice; and when they pulled his body from the cave, they learned the sniper had taken two hits in the head.
The story had been of particular interest, and thus had quickly spread, both because that wasn't usually the sort of thing majors and battalion commanders did personally, and also because he had done it with an M-l Garand rifle. The Garand was supposed to be the new standard rifle, although none had yet been issued to the Marine Corps; and it was supposed to be a piece of shit, incapable of hitting a barn door at fifty yards.
But there was no denying the story. A dozen people had seen Major Jack NMI Stecker stand up, as calmly as if had been on the rifle range at Parris Island or `Diego, and let off two shots and put both of them, so to speak, in the X-ring.
There was also scuttlebutt going around that Major Stecker had won the Big One, the Medal of Honor, as a buck sergeant in the First World War in France. No one could remember ever having seen a real, honest-to-Christ hero like that. And as Major Stecker walked up the shallow steps to the Residence, two dozen sets of eyes watched him with something close to awe.
General Harris was in his office, the Sergeant Major told Major Stecker, and he was to go right in.
There were no enlisted men in General Harris's office, but only the other two commanding officers he had summoned to the commanders' conference, Major Robert Williams of the 1st Parachute Battalion and Lieutenant Colonels Red Mike Edson and Sam Griffith, CO and Exec of the 1st Raider Battalion.
They were all holding canteens, presumably full of coffee. There were two cans of bore cleaner on the shelf of the field desk.
"Forgive me for saying so, Major," General Harris greeted Major Stecker, "but aren't you a little long in the tooth for a motorcycle?"
"With respect, General," Major Stecker said, "I am not too old for a motorcycle. I am too old, and much too tired, to walk up here."
"May I then offer you coffee, to restore your vitality? Or did you bring your own athlete's-foot lotion?"
"I gave that to my company commanders," Stecker said.
General Harris handed him a canteen cup.
"That's the good news," he said.
"Thank you, Sir," Stecker said. "What's the bad?"
"You're about to go report to General Vandergrift," Harris said.
"Why me?"
"You're junior to these three," Harris said.
"I couldn't plead old age?" Stecker asked.
"No," Harris said simply.
"Aye, aye, Sir," Stecker said. "Sir, before I go, I want to put in one of my officers for a Silver Star. I'd like to be able to tell General Vandergrift that you approve."
"Who?"
"Captain Sutton, Sir."
"What did he do?"
"We were having a hell of a time getting pockets of Nips out of their caves," Lieutenant Colonel Griffith answered for him. "We couldn't shoot them out, and when we threw grenades and explosives in, they just threw it right back out. Sutton-I saw this, and agree with Jack that he should be decorated-Sutton tied explosives to a piece of timber-"
"Where'd he get the timber?" Harris asked curiously.
"From the blown-up buildings on the beach," Griffith went on. "As I was saying, he tied explosives to a plank, a board, and then under covering fire ran to the mouth of the cave-caves; I saw him do it half a dozen times-and put it inside."
"Why didn't the Japs just throw it back out?" Harris asked. "Am I missing something?"
"He hung on to the board, General," Griffith said. "Wedged it against the inside of the cave until it blew."
"Oh," Harris said.
"If any of the Japs had figured out what was going on, they'd have come a little further toward the mouth of the cave and shot him. He was really exposed, doing what he was doing, and he saved a lot of lives."
"OK," Harris said. "You can tell the General that I approve of the award of the Silver Star to your Captain Sutton, Jack."
"Thank you, Sir."
"Now that that's decided," Red Mike Edson said, laughing, "I will tell you something else Captain Sutton did."
"Something funny?" Harris said, as he poured more bore cleaner in their canteen cups.
"He got carried away. He found some gasoline somewhere, and added a can of that to the explosives."
"That didn't work?"
"It worked. It blew his clothes off and damn near fried him."
"Was he hurt?" Harris asked.
"No, not seriously. But he was down to his skivvy shorts, and they were singed, and there's not a hair on his body."
There were chuckles all around.
"And speaking of people who really exposed themselves," Edson said, "I heard of an officer-and I think Sam saw this, too-who stood out in the open, really exposed, with a Mickey Mouse rifle he got somewhere, and put two rounds into the head of a Jap sniper at a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards. How about a medal for him?"
"No," Jack Stecker said firmly. "Absolutely not."
"The motorcycle kid here?" General Harris asked.
"Sir, I did what any Marine private is supposed to do. Engage the enemy with accurate rifle fire. That's all. Nobody should get a medal for doing his duty."
"I'm not sure I can disagree with that," Harris said, after a moment. "And what the hell, Red, Jack's already got enough medals."
"He sure inspired a lot of kids out there," Edson said.
"I'm sure he did, but that's something else we have to expect from a Marine officer," Harris said, his tone of voice making it clear that he did not wish to entertain any further discussion of the matter.
"Before Jack goes over there, I want from each of you, start-ing with Jack as the junior commander, a one-word description of the Japanese we just fought."
"What for?"
"I want it, and I want Jack to give it to General Vandergrift, something we're thinking before the adrenaline goes away. Jack?"
" `Courageous.' Maybe `tenacious.'"
"One word."
"Then `courageous,'" Stecker said.
General Harris wrote that down, then said, "Williams?"
"I'll agree with `tenacious,' " Major Williams said after a mo-ment's thought.
"Griffith?"
"Fanatical," Lieutenant Colonel Griffith said.
"Red?"
"I was going to say `fanatical,'" Edson said.
"Say something else, anything but `zealous,' " Harris said.
"OK. How about `suicidal'?" Edson said.
"If that's what you think, fine," Harris said, as he wrote it down.
"Just out of idle curiosity, why couldn't I have said `zeal-ous'?"
"Because that's my word," Harris said.
" `Zealous'?" Edson asked incredulously. "As in `He was zeal-ous in his pursuit of the busty virgin'?"
"The word comes from zealot," Harris explained. "They were a band of Jews in biblical times who jumped off a mountain rather than surrender-after a hell of a fight-to the Romans."
"I wonder how well versed General Vandergrift is in biblical lore?" Edson replied dryly.
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