Battleground Pacific Read online

  Madcap follies ensue.

  We get on our knees, gathering around the hole, about five of us—excited children, starting up a high-stakes game of craps.

  Hurriedly I dig around my gear, finding my marine-issue pamphlet of Japanese phrases, while the other guys busily decide what to do next.

  “De te,” I begin, calling down the hole. Christ, how do you say this? “De te ki te … ku da sai!” Come out! “Ah, shit! Is that it? Koufuckyou … crap! Koufuku sit e ku da sai!” Surrender!

  “Sterl, what the hell are you doin’?” Levy asks.

  “Watashi—I mean … Oh, for chrissakes, I’m tellin’ this goddamn Nip to come out an’ surrender!”

  I concentrate again. “Wata-shit-shi … Goddammit!… Wa anata ni kigai wo kuwaeru tsumori wa arimasen! There! That’s it! ‘We. Won’t. Harm you!’”

  “Hey, get a load of Mace, willya?”

  Boom! I duck. Just as soon as I get the words out of my mouth a marine tosses a grenade down the burrow. One would expect to get sprayed by the grenade blast, but evidently the hole is so deep that none of us get hurt. Everybody laughs.

  “Oh, Christ, that’s rich! Throw another one!” Leyden smiles.

  I laugh, too. It’s hilarious as once more I break into my Nip lingo and start rattling it off.

  Several more explosions go off as marines toss more grenades down the chute.

  Bill hands me a grenade, too, and I flip it down the hole with one hand, my Japanese comic book of phrases in the other.

  “It’s okay!” Leyden calls down the hole. “Mace says we won’t hurt you!”

  Nobody had the thought that we were making so much noise, a whole company of Japs could’ve snuck up and blown all of us to high heaven, for not paying attention in class.

  Eventually, though, everyone pipes down, wiping watering eyes, flushed in the face, as a few trailing giggles put the final touches on a chilling realization. Yes, we could’ve been killed—and for what? Suddenly everyone appears older … and embarrassed with age.

  Presently a marine gets up, not looking at any of us, and says, “Well, either he’s long gone or a goddamn goner, that’s for sure.”

  That’s all it takes. We pick ourselves up and move. The time for childish games was over before we grew up.

  And so it goes. We creep up the ridge, slow ivy, olive serpents, twisting through the crags and gaps between the stones. The sizzling heat and sweat make the stock of my BAR slippery to the touch. Most of us have already turned down the back flaps of our helmet covers, so that the cloth hangs down over our necks, in an attempt to fend off the sun.

  My part of the 3rd Platoon sets up on the left side of the ridge, which runs the length of the island—kneeling, lying prone, finding a perch to hold on to. Tiny pebbles of coral roll down the cliff, agitated by worn boondockers seeking purchase.

  The other half of the platoon takes the right side of the ridge, and in the center of the ridge is where Corporal Van Trump and Lieutenant Bauerschmidt set up the communications area.

  The “communications area” in this case consists of nothing more than “codes” that Bauerschmidt and Van Trump bandy between themselves from one side of the ridge to the other. They don’t have radios, so the two of them are a little too loud for my taste. Every Nip on the island has certainly written down their name, rank, and serial number—and probably what they ate for breakfast that morning, too.

  “Hey, Van,” Bauerschmidt calls out to Van Trump. “Hey, Zero,” is Van Trump’s reply. As fast as Van Trump moves up on our side of the ridge is how quickly we move as well. It’s a slow process—we’re all jumpy and on edge, scanning for Japanese. We are the very front of the assault.

  However, just as we’re about to move up some more, Frank Minkewitz (who’s standing on the beach guarding our rear) calls to us, “Hey! There’s a Nip sitting on a rock over here!”

  On a what?

  “Then shoot the sonuvabitch, Frank!”

  We’re amazed that Frank doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even raise his rifle to his shoulder. The Jap merely walks off, as easy as he pleases, leaving Frank on the beach by himself.

  That was the start of Ngesebus: the first drops of rain that come before the gullywasher. The clues began coming in lightly, and it didn’t take a regular Sherlock to decipher that there was going to be a storm. The Nips were right there—almost on top of us—only they were invisible, sharpening our nerves on a stiff leather strap.

  Schwantz held up one arm and halted the column, gazing back at us nervously. I didn’t know if he’d spotted something or if he was merely looking for Van Trump.

  I was about to check on Levy when …

  Ping!

  What the, Christ!?

  Something hit the right side of my helmet and careened off it, only moving my head half an inch in the process.

  Corporal Alex “Hurricane” Hensen gawked at me with startled eyes. “Oh boy … I thought you were gonna go down!” he said.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked, feeling around the top of my helmet.

  “Yeah.” Hensen still looked like he couldn’t believe his lying eyes.

  “Jesus, what was that?”

  I didn’t know what to think, or how close I came to being killed, but I sure as hell knew that we were close to the Japs—and they were close to us. Very close.

  We got moving again, scrambling up the cliff in the direction of a loud banging noise coming from the little piece of flatland to our right, near the beach. Three Sherman tanks with a contingent of infantry were chugging up the turf, the tanks just blazing away, as groups of Nips ran up to the tanks, trying to climb aboard and drop grenades down the tanks’ hatches. Naturally the riflemen were not going to stand for it. The turkey shoot began, with Japs getting shot and falling beneath the tanks’ treads, leaving behind puddles of raw meat mixed with gritty dust. The ground was a sponge for gristle and blood.

  Up … and move.

  We were ten feet from the edge of the cliff, and Levy was on point. So close to the Nips. We had no idea how close. Behind Levy was Donald Schwantz, then Charlie Allmann, followed by Nippo Baxter. I was another ten feet behind Baxter, as a covering force to our rear.

  I was in charge of covering the rear with my automatic weapon because the machine gunners were having a rough time climbing, with their tripods and extra ammo, their heavy weapons and miscellaneous gear. They were really humping it. The pangs on their faces were sharp and angular under the day’s sun. If we were to get into a scrap with the Nips right then, there would be no place for the MGs to set up, with the ground tilting and the mangrove growing thicker up the slope.

  “C’mon.” I reached my arm out and gave Zombie a hand up.

  Zombie. His name said it all. He was assuredly the tallest guy in the company, built thick across the chest, with muscles that could probably rip your head clean off, if he got you in a chokehold. The real kicker about Zombie was, he wouldn’t win any beauty contests (not that many of us would), and every other word out of his mouth was unintelligible—a real zombie, nothing upstairs.

  After I helped him up, something caught my eye, just lying off to the side. A Jap rifle! Not the ordinary variety of Nipponese craftsmanship I had seen before, either. No, this rifle had a yellowish tint, with a fine tiger-striped grain to the wood. It was a real showpiece. A high-sheen devil that made me think it would hit a bull’s-eye every time.

  I had to be fast. Quickly I stuck the rifle deep in some of the mangrove for safekeeping; the plan was to come back for the rifle after the island had been cleaned out—hoping the machine gunners were too absorbed in their labors to notice me messing around in the brush.

  Just as I got back into position, two close shots rang out and I instinctually ducked, scanning where the shot came from.

  Who’s hit?

  Levy rushed out of the thicket ahead, straight toward us. He looked flustered, brandishing his canteen. The dented metal of the canteen told the whole story. Sy had gone too far ahead o
f the squad, and as he went into the mangrove, a rifleman mistook him for the enemy and popped off two rounds in his direction.

  Either the bullets hit the canteen or Levy smacked the ground so hard that his weight mashed the metal. Whatever the case, it was almost unreal that something like that could happen to Levy again. Levy was a walking rabbit’s foot. Everybody knew it. We simply gawked at Sy for a moment, taking it all in. How can anybody be so lucky? There stood Sy, red-faced, embarrassed, his chest puffing up and down: a bellows stoking a fire. Nobody knew who fired the shots, or if they did, no one was telling.

  Besides, who would’ve owned up to it? The dumb rifleman who nearly nailed Sy was probably just as thankful that he hadn’t killed a kid like himself.

  We were close. So close that Nippo moved up and took over point from Levy. All the time I really hoped I didn’t have to look Allmann in the eyes, because “Levy draws fire, okay?”

  Because … Goddamn, we’re close!

  Because …

  The strangest thing unfolds before us.

  In a world of brown, green, and gray, where even the blue sky has lost its luster, something attracts our attention like nothing else. There’s a cave. In front of the cave hang the most vivid strips of red and yellow fabric that I’ve ever seen. The cloth is about as wide as a good scarf, hanging down from the upper edge of the cave’s mouth and waving ever so slightly—ever so faintly, as soft air comes from within the subterranean cavity, just enough to curl the edge of the strips outward and up, like the tips of a pixie’s shoes.

  We give the cavern a wide berth, keeping our eyes peeled for even the slightest hint of something foul coming from the yawning entrance.

  This has to be a trap.

  I begin backing up, slowly, following Nippo through some foliage, watching the cave’s mouth as I go. The machine gunners keep close to me, the ammo carriers trying to situate themselves so that if they have to grab their carbines, they can drop their load and start firing.

  This red … so close … and this yellow, an abomination.

  I part the scrub and find myself at the base of a small ridge. Nippo has already climbed up, firing his M-1. Bang! One! Bang! Two! I can hear some of the guys beyond the greenery, chattering.

  “What’s all this crap hangin’ here for? This ain’t right.”

  “Yeah, yeah, this is just wrong.”

  Nippo holds up two fingers to indicate he has just picked off two Japs.

  I eyeball the heights and figure that I should climb up, too.

  By all appearances this is a Jap rattrap, just as I thought it would be, and if I don’t get up there our guys might be ambushed.

  Okay, this is what I’m here for. Go on, Brother. Start climbing.

  It’s a small climb. I get up, parallel with Baxter, and I surmise that on the other side of the small ridge is a drop below us—but I certainly don’t have to stick my head over to figure that out.

  “They’re down there.” Nippo points. “There’s somethin’ … it looks like, I can’t make it out too well … it looks like the entrance to a cave.”

  Angling my head in that direction, sure enough, from my vantage point I can see the curvature of a cave entrance. Then I quick-look and spy another ridge moving above and over me—so that if I climb up there I might be able to come down over the top of the Japs, if they’re prowling around down there.

  Leaving Nippo, I take one more fleeting glance below, where all the machine gunners are crouched down, about six of them, as I ease myself closer to the lip of the ridgeline.

  The sweat is really cascading off of me. I can feel every loose pebble and sharp crag, dry to the touch, running along the pads of my fingers and becoming one with my grip. Against my chest and stomach, it’s the same thing, as the earth scrapes my ribs, even protected as they are beneath my dungaree jacket. There’s a difference in me now: Something the civilian version of myself would never understand. Fear is a letter home that I forgot to send. Nobody reads it. Nobody wants to know. I don’t feel anything. An uncomplicated calmness descends on me, as the marine takes over … and the kid from Queens with the dead sister melts away, like the last rivulets of wax from a waning candle.

  The candle dissolves into the crackle of a fuzzy and chopped voice, coming in low and unexpected on the ridgeline. (Close to the flame) I pause, as I’m about to come over the top of the rim, trying to ascertain the direction of the voice, barely making out the helmet of a marine, perched among the mangrove on a little outcropping.

  At first I don’t recognize him. The marine is Charlie “Dusty” Rhodes, an observer for the 81 mm mortars. What the hell is he doing up here? Rhodes, a kid who has a keen interest in baseball like me, speaks into a field telephone, calling in coordinates, completely oblivious that the enemy is right below him.

  “Hey, Dusty,” I whisper. “Nips! There’s Nips, right down there!” I point down, indicating to Rhodes their location.

  Dusty merely looks at me as if I’ve got some nerve.

  “Well, fuck you too, Charlie,” I mumble under my breath. The thing is, Charlie Rhodes doesn’t have a clue that he can get bumped off, right now, by the Japs below. I know, however—and that’s part of what ticks me off.

  What I’m about to do …

  I get in position to look over the ridge, weapon at the ready … and what I’m about to do, I have no doubt that I’m going to lean over the edge and destroy whoever’s down there.

  It’s an easy thing to do. Much easier than you’d think. To kill a man.

  With my right hand white-knuckling the forestock of my BAR and my left hand gripping the trigger housing, I pull myself calmly over the ridge, without a thought of being killed.

  What happens next occurs so quickly that I see every moment like the rising of the setting sun.

  A Japanese soldier is only eight feet below me.

  His moon-shaped face lifts and looks at me. (I see the shape of his face so clearly.) My reflection mirrors off the glossy surface of his pupils. His eyes never change. Only the moon. He knows, but he doesn’t, what’s about to happen to him. He sees. Only the big muzzle of my weapon. He swings his rifle around. (There are two other Japs, lying on the ground, bringing their rifles around, too.)

  I aim at the moon. Shooting for the moon.

  It’s so easy. In a downward arc, I empty my weapon into his face, and into the bodies of the other two Nips on the ground, my rifle bucking in my hands.

  Down! Behind the ridge, I turn around rapidly and wave three fingers triumphantly at the machine gunners.

  Maybe it’s so easy because I didn’t actually witness how my rounds went through the Nips, but I can only imagine the first one.

  I know, at such a close range, his head exploded, ripping instantly through bone, cartilage, brain, and muscle.

  “Hey, you guys, pitch me up some grenades!” I yell to the machine gunners.

  A few of them relay some grenades up to me, and I pull the pins on two of them, dropping one and then the other, pitching them over the side for good measure, muffled thumps followed by acrid air.

  Jim McEnery comes up, a bazooka man in his wake so that they can shoot some heavier stuff over the side of my ridge. I think to myself, as I hop down, What the hell is this? What’re they gonna do, kill ’em twice?

  They have a better idea when they finally call up a flamethrower team to torch any Japs who still might be in the cave. Here’s the gag: The Marines with the flamethrower can’t get their gear to work, so they have to go back and send another crew up in order to spark the entrance. Eventually they light it up.

  At the mouth of the cave the reds and yellows of the streamers are engulfed in a brighter shade of orange, mixed with the sooty by-product of liquid fire.

  Jimmy looks on with satisfaction. It is good.

  “Okay, guys, I guess that about covers it,” Jim says. “We won’t worry about those Nips anymore. Let’s move up.”

  As we move along, we just about get to where Van Trump and the rest of t
he squad are situated when a shout comes from the rear, “Fire in the hole!” We duck automatically. The ground warbles and the air folds as a great boom collapses the cave behind us in the final act of sealing it up. Rubble falls in a great sheet, flinging out pebbles and a cloud of dust. Nobody goes in … and nobody comes out. In essence, the demolition marines have taken some C-4 explosives and laced them around the cave, effectively entombing any Nips that might be alive in there.

  And that’s it. Unfeeling and uncaring—why should anybody care? Any compunction to reflect on what I just did to three human beings is swallowed up by the chaos that’s intrinsic to war as a whole. Callousness and indifference are not symptoms of the state of the soul, but instead, they are symbols that one’s gratitude is intact—that my life is still in my own hands, and not bleeding out in the palms of yellow-tinted villains.

  Stigmata for the lambs of Pearl Harbor and Peleliu.

  *

  Night came and the rain came in blankets of wet, some of us climbing the side of a ridge, seeking a different level, as the water seeks its own.

  “Christ! What are we supposed to do, climb a tree?”

  No dice. The weather was edging into misery, and the sky was falling down. We couldn’t dig. Setting up some semblance of a line, the best we could do was slip and fall on tangles of vines and porous rock. The earth became more atrocious the thicker the rain fell.

  Poncho clad, Allmann and I—with Jimmy following behind—finally made our way up the side of the ridge, wiggling up and nestling against the rock, and whatever mangrove happened to peek from its coral prison. There was very little light, and the closest sound was the constant drumming hum of the rain. I had my foot stamped down hard against a medium-sized trunk on the ridge—the only thing that kept me from tumbling, head over ass, to the coral below.

  Through the hazy rain I barely made out a navy destroyer, moving at a snail’s pace out on the water. Jesus Christ, what a place! Weapons under our ponchos, helmets pouring rain into our faces; I shook my head to clear my eyes of water, but that was a futile act as well. So I buried my face into the stinking rock, with little choice but to wait out the night under the downpour. Where the hell was all this water when we landed on Peleliu?