Battleground Pacific Page 14

  Suddenly four shots rang out.

  “What the fuck? Who’s that!?”

  The shots were so close that I almost fell from the precious piece of mangrove holding me up.

  It was only Jimmy, test-firing the tommy gun he had picked up from Sergeant Thomas Rigney when Rigney was killed on the beach that morning. Only Jimmy, yeah, right! I thought to myself. Sonuvabitch, Jim, if the Nips find out where we are, we have nowhere to run in this shit—and here you are testing your goddamn piece in the middle of the friggin’ night, no less!

  Names of dead marines began to come to mind, drips from a leaky roof, and into the place where home used to be. The leaks needed fixing, so I shook them off, just as a wet animal flaps his shaggy coat to shed the rain and the wild.

  Today we lost Private Joe Mercer and Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Rigney. Lost is Anthony Putorti. Lost, Lyle Van Norman. Charles E. Williams, lost.

  Not lost the way a marine misplaces his mess kit, or lost as if I can’t find my flashlight in the dark. These things I would find again … even in the dark. Lost as in killed, destroyed, where you will never see them again, never … not even in the light.

  When I look up, the sky is a dead slate of gray.

  I try to find the moon, but it is lost to me.

  *

  Morning arrived, and as the rain left us, in came Lieutenant Bauerschmidt and suggested we’d better not get acquainted with the Japanese dead, looking for souvenirs or shaking their hands.

  It seems that two guys from L Company killed a Nip, and as they were taking the gold from the corpse’s mouth, some live Japs snuck up on the marines and slaughtered them both.

  Hearing this wasn’t the best way to start our morning, yet since none of us had any real sleep last night anyway, it didn’t really matter. Scuttlebutt aplenty, the grapevine was like that all the time: It was always everything you didn’t want to know, and nothing you did.

  “Holland … Minkewitz … Mace.” Van Trump called the closest BAR men over. “Come over here and test-fire your weapons, willya?”

  “Yeah, sure, Van. What’s goin’ on?”

  “Ah, I don’t know … I just got a feelin’ an’ I wanna play it safe. So let’s hear ’em.”

  Minkewitz pulled the trigger of his BAR and nothing happened. We looked around curiously at one another. Gene Holland moved forward and it was the same. Bupkes. I expected my weapon to start sparking fire, but I got zilch out of mine, too.

  “Say, what gives?” Gene asked.

  “You guys strip your weapons.” Van raised his eyebrows, as if he were expecting that to happen. “It rained last night, so I dunno … just clean ’em before we move out.”

  It was the greatest idea I had heard from Van Trump the whole time I’d known him. Van Trump, the guy who, whenever he got the chance to rest, would sit down and immediately start polishing the revolver he swiped from the dead Hellcat pilot. Thanks to Van, if we ran into Japs we’d be ready, instead of pissing ourselves because our BARs wouldn’t fire.

  Under the circumstances, there was not a quicker trio of marines on the island than the three of us, sitting down with our toothbrushes and scrubbing over the vital parts of our weapons, the trigger assemblies, the chambers, the magazines, until everyone was satisfied that his weapon was clean—ready for business.

  They all fired again. So we moved out.

  That’s the way it was done. A marine had to be quick and efficient, cleaning his weapon in the field. On very few occasions did we have the time to completely fieldstrip the entire weapon and give it a thorough bath. The simple toothbrush was probably the marine’s closest friend, besides his weapon itself.

  No sooner were we on the move, though, than they had us stop and wait for more orders. I gave Sy a thumbs-up, and he gave the same back. That was starting to be a comforting ritual between him and me.

  Yet comfort is a bed of nails when the mortars start raining in.

  You couldn’t mistake the sound of mortars for anything else—screaming mortar rounds are distinct—as we hit the dirt, covering our helmets with our hands. I landed right next to Don Schwantz—so close, in fact, that we were Siamese twins. Dirt huggers. Grubworms.

  The first mortar round exploded in the tree right above us. The explosions were black flowers, death lilies, their petals blooming out dark tendrils of swirling shrapnel, falling from the leaves and down atop us. The second mortar round was from the same garden, and it planted itself in an almost identical spot. That time, however, its brimstone seeds hit Donald in the back, six times. I watched blossoms sprout up in his dungaree jacket where the shrapnel ripped through and lodged in his flesh. No blood. Only the torn jacket. Schwantz didn’t make a sound. Not because he was hit so bad, but due to the fact that he was just as shocked as the rest of us.

  “Corpsman!” I yelled. Donald was writhing on the ground, holding his back … and there I was, literally touching Schwantz, and I didn’t so much as scuff a knuckle. Lucky.

  Doc Caswell and Chulis worked on Don as I got to my feet, peering up into the trees, looking around. Everybody looked around. Something was strange about those mortar rounds.

  “Say, did anyone see where those mortars came from?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “But those things? There’s probably about forty yards left of this goddamn island, tops. So how’re the Nips gonna get that kinda elevation to spot us in, huh?”

  Van Trump came storming up. “Get your gear together. This is bullshit! Those were our own goddamn 81s that hit Don, sure as shit they were!”

  Van was probably right again.

  “Okay, fellas, let’s get outta here,” Jimmy said, getting his word in.

  As we shoved off again, I’m sure, to a man, everybody thought about what just happened to Schwantz. Somebody should get on the horn and see about those 81 mortars … find out what’s goin’ on.

  Van Trump pulled me aside. “Mace, you and Allmann—you take Allmann and move up about twenty yards, alright? The Japs might think we’re tryin’ to surround them and come on out.”

  For moment I thought I heard Van Trump say something about me and Charlie moving up, alone, twenty yards ahead of the rest of the squad. That couldn’t be right, could it?

  “You want us to move where, Van?”

  “Just … oh, about twenty yards, I’d say. If the Nips think we’re surroundin’ ’em, it’ll be hands up or lights out for the bastards.”

  I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. It almost sounded like a joke without the punch line, yet I was waiting, like a dummy, for one anyway. Nevertheless, I didn’t even attempt an argument.

  “Sorry, Van,” I said, “but there’s not much room to surround anyone.”

  I merely trotted off, looking for Charlie so we could start the half-baked quest for Corporal Richard Van Trump and be done with it.

  *

  For Charlie and me, isolated somewhere on blistering Ngesebus, the sudden sound of twigs snapping all around us both inflames and quiets us. I have never been so close to death as I am in this moment.

  The Japanese are very near to Charlie and me. Their smell is unmistakably rife with curdled sweat and ricey brine. Even alive the Nips have a clear odor to them.

  We cannot see them. They cannot see us. We are two marines recessed in a crevice of rock, shaped like a small bowl, surrounded by thick foliage. Still, we know they are here. We hear them, shuffling among the mangrove. Black marbles for eyes—searching, darting back and forth. They are as scared as we are, I’m sure, even though they have the upper hand.

  Nips push aside branches and brambles, just as Charlie and I had done less than an hour ago, when we traveled up on Van Trump’s orders and found this little place to wait.

  Alone. Encapsulated in the deep vinery. Suffocating.

  If the Nips find out that two marines are within arm’s length of them, I doubt they will even bother taking us prisoner. They will butcher us just like we would butcher them.

  I’m looking into Charlie’
s eyes, and I mouth the words, “Do. Not. Move … Keep. Quiet.” Even the effort it takes to move my mouth in silence causes an automatic cringe response inside me that says I’ve done too much, said too much, I’ve given us away.

  Where the Christ is everybody? Van Trump’s gonna get us fucking killed out here!

  We don’t dare fire at the Nips (don’t even think about it) because we don’t know their strength. There could be two of them, maybe four … even one hundred and we wouldn’t know it.

  So we are forced to wait … waiting out the itch in the center of our brains, with no means to scratch it. Waiting … as the movement and footfalls ebb into nothingness, leaving only the sounds of bugs crawling on low leaves—and the occasional click in my throat. Even without the seemingly immediate presence of the Japs (are they really gone, or just faking?), there’s something even more empty and dead about the absence of marines in the area. We are anxious for the sounds of friendly boondockers replacing the hobnail pad of enemy boots. Nobody calls for Charlie or me. No Corsairs zoom overhead. There’s nothing tangible that lets us know that reality even exists in the here and now. There are only the thin minutes of decision and indecision, playing themselves out beyond the scope of infinity.

  Ten minutes pass, and I can count each breath, each exhale. The air comes out as hot as the tropical sun.

  Twenty minutes, and Charlie looks deeply pale, a disembodied spirit, whose only color is the plum-tinted splotches under his eyes. Pitiful being.

  Thirty minutes, and I’m eyeballing the way Charlie and I came up; the eyes play silly games, seeing a kaleidoscopic image as the leaves overlap one another, seemingly a millionfold.

  Forty minutes pass. I know then that we’ve been forgotten. It’s almost impossible to believe, yet it’s true—as if the thought of being disremembered is somehow foolish against the foolishness of war.

  This can’t be right. There’s no way this is friggin’ right!

  “Charlie,” I whisper breathlessly. “Charlie, we gotta get the hell outta here. This is not right.” I pause. “C’mon … but slowly.”

  Slipping through the leaves, which sigh against our dungarees, we glide smoothly out. Every step we take seems choreographed, as if we know what we are doing. We don’t know what we’re doing, though, any more than we know what the face of dumb luck looks like. As it is, dumb luck is staring us right in the eyes. No Nips. This is as clear as the coast will ever get.

  Eyes open, Mace; don’t be stupid, now, I tell myself, over and over.

  Down a little slope, Charlie and I creep along, fingers on our triggers with just enough pressure to keep them from going off, yet squeezing them firmly to the point that if needed, not a split second will go by and we’ll rattle off with tympani and trumpets.

  My heart triple-pumps, seeing the telltale signs of Jap footprints in places where the earth has yielded from last night’s double rain. It doesn’t take a keen eye or a Nippo Baxter to make out the unmistakable marks of the Japanese pigeon-toed gait upon the soft earth.

  When I see the last Nip footfall, I tell Charlie to come on, and we make a quick dash into a small clearing, not even ten yards from where we started.

  We skid to a halt. There’s something before us both gruesome and unexpected.

  Flat on the ground, there’s a marine poncho, laid out and disheveled, smeared slick red with blood. Fresh red. Fresh dead? Fresh blood. Mixed into this madness are at least a dozen unspent .45 caliber rounds, bright in the day’s clear brilliance, some of them submerged in itty pools of blood and whorled with fingerprints, outlined in scarlet.

  “What in the … world!?” Charlie gawks.

  Corpus delicti. Where the hell’s the body?

  “C’mon, Charlie.” My mouth barely works. “C’mon, Charlie, let’s beat it!”

  We take off down a little weedy path, Olympic sprinters. Second gear. Christ! Third gear, all the way, assholes and elbows, all the way!

  Even when we hit the jungle we don’t break speed. We’re scratched and cut by whipping vines, and even that feels like a million bucks simply because it’s so good to be alive. Even if the Nips were to take shots at us now, I don’t think they could hit within ten feet of us.

  No gas mask to tangle me, no beautiful Jap rifle (that sonuvabitch can rot on this stinking island, for all I care); we’re not even out of breath. The jungle scenery flies by and breaks open in a blur of green speed. Faster, faster …

  Charlie and I burst out of the mangrove in record time and into clear daylight and sandy beach. There’s the ocean—azure surf, and as blue as the sky is vast.

  Spread before us on the beach, maybe one hundred yards away, scores of marines, chatting and grab-assing, line up as they prepare to enter amtracs, heading back to Peleliu—all of them oblivious to our presence.

  “Hey, hey!” Charlie shouts. “Don’t leave us!” We wave our arms so that we can be seen, and at the same time we try not to be mistaken for the enemy and be shot by several hundred anxious marines.

  By the time we’re going down the line, scouting out our platoon, marines are ogling us as if we are two nutcases. I don’t care. I’m gunning for dumb-ass Van Trump and anybody else who didn’t think it was worth their time to come get Charlie and me.

  Where is that ignorant sonuvabitch?

  When I finally spy Van Trump, though, my anger washes back down with the rest of the bile I was force-fed today. Van is propped up on a stretcher, being carried into a waiting amtrac. His eyes are bulging, his whole head swathed in bandages, blood fighting through the cloth, on its way out of Van’s body.

  Bloody poncho …

  The realization suddenly hits me: As far as Van Trump goes, he was in no shape to tell anybody that he sent two marines up ahead—and had no way of ordering somebody to pull us back.

  I see Jimmy on the beach and ask him what happened to Van Trump, besides the obvious.

  Jimmy scratches his head and looks over toward Van Trump, with an air of annoyance and disbelief.

  “It was those damn code words of the lieutenant’s and Van’s,” McEnery begins. “Shit, that’s stupid. All day long this ‘Hey, Zero,’ ‘Hey, Van’ crap—and then some Nip must have gotten wise to it, I guess. Called out, ‘Hey, Van, where are you?’ and I bet Van calls back, ‘Over here!’ Picks up his head and takes one in the jaw. Just like that.”

  “Christ, Jim! That’s too ba—” I pause for a moment … wait a second! My anger begins to percolate again. I can feel it in my throat, acidic.

  “Wait a sec, Jim! So Van gets hit, right? You guys just pull out and leave me and Allmann out there, by ourselves. Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  For a moment McEnery looks like he has just gotten bawled out by a PFC (which he has); then his expression goes dumb. “We didn’t know you were out there.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jimmy, you don’t count goddamn heads or somethin’?”

  Before McEnery can open his mouth I simply walk off and stand in my own line to board an amtrac. I can’t get off this island quickly enough. Anger, yes—but more relieved that I’m not out in the mangrove getting my pockets rifled through by Tojo and Co.

  This island is a nightmare. However, if I’d known what awaited me on my return to Peleliu, I would have wished I’d never woken up.

  Man, that was rough duty.

  Our amtrac glides back across the water toward the mother island.

  Just forget about it.

  It’s difficult to forget. Below the permanent hum of the amtrac’s motor, marines talk in hushed voices, trading scuttlebutt about who bought it out of our company, as if their names have no meaning anymore among the living—merely daily topics to reach for, like the change in the weather or who won last night’s ball game. Idle minds and tongues of fire. Flippancy makes the fear fly home.

  Corporal Arthur W. Cook.

  Lost.

  Private Henry J. Ryzner.

  Lost.

  Corporal Walter B. Stay.

  Lost.
<
br />   Lost. Lost. Lost. Lost …

  They say Billy Leyden was wounded in the head by a Jap grenade. I’m concerned, but they tell me he’ll be okay. Evacuated, but good.

  Lucky bastard, Bill. No more of this crap for you.

  The surf splashes up the sides of the amtrac and sprays a thin mist of Pacific blue against my face.

  At least I feel something—anything—other than myself.

  *

  There’s one other thing about Ngesebus I should tell. It’s not about the battle. It’s not about the island. It’s not even about the war. It’s about the people inside the uniforms.

  As they loaded us into amtracs, the victors of Ngesebus—filthy and disheveled, dungarees as stiff as canvas, weapons carried at cocky angles—they told us we would return to the bivouac area on Peleliu, and from there, we were bound for Pavuvu. We had done our duty and we had done it well.

  Just a ways on the shore, a camera crew filmed us file past, capturing the moment for posterity. Marines gave various looks into the camera. Some marines smiled wanly, bashfully, as if it were expected of them to say cheese. Other marines pointed at the lens and cracked jokes. There were even some marines, unfazed by the limelight, who were just too hollow, or too tough, or too bitter, to care what the United States thought of them at the moment.

  The camera merely rolled, emitting a swirling purr, in contrast to the stomp of hard boots on coral ground. The camera’s mechanical eye seemed so out of place in hell. Why would anybody want to see the sour underbelly of the world, when there were far more lovely things on God’s earth worth capturing?

  As for me and Levy, when we passed by the camera, we were both too “New York” not to ham it up—to have a hoot—even in the ass crack of the apocalypse.

  I grinned at Levy and he grinned back, the two of us telegraphing our intentions in perfect unison—a giddiness that is only found in kids (just kids), not yet jaded by the prospect of imminent death. In fact, in that moment, right there, there was no war … no war, no boondockers, no bombs, no bullets … no bullets, no sting of death, no Japan, no Roosevelt, no pain … no pain, no hunger, no anger, no blood, no tears … no tears, no sacrifice, no race or color, no Peleliu, and no Marine Corps.