Battleground Pacific Read online

  I wasn’t able to see Sy off, again, just as I wasn’t able to say good-bye to him when he was hit the first time. He should never have come back, that stupid fucking kid! He should be home!

  I simply sit—miles away from anyone living, and all those who wish they had never been born. Head in hands …

  … I cry.

  Jesus Christ, Sy, why’d you have to come … back!?

  *

  “GODDAMMIT! I’LL KILL ALL YOU JAP SONUVABITCHES! I’LL SHOOT ALL YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!”

  There’s the sound of a thousand voices spewing from my mouth as the thundering din of my boondockers claps the ground and splits the stones as I move up the line, my BAR pointed at the ridgeline where the Nips are hiding.

  Only now, I’ve become bigger than myself. So fired with anger I could kill the whole Nip army with one spray of my weapon!

  There’s Jimmy, keeping up behind me, viewing me for what I really am—merely a young man, changed, but still just as small to the world as he was before Levy’s death. All because Sy was “tired of this shit.”

  “Mace! Hey, Mace!” Jimmy hollers over my shoulder. “Goddammit, Mace”—Jim wheels me around by the arm—“Stop! Just stop, ya stupid shit!”

  October 1, 1944.

  I face Jimmy, but for a second I don’t see Jimmy’s face at all. Instead it is Levy’s face, grinning at me like when he and I were truckin’, giving a thumbs-up to one another on the amtrac coming in. Then it is my own reflection, where Jim’s visage should be; my face wet with sorrow, ashamed, even though I shouldn’t be. Finally there is only Jim. Jim McEnery. Despite all of his failings. Despite all of the failings we share together as marines, Jimmy had faced more death and decay than I have ever dreamed of.

  At the sight of Jim’s true face, beyond what the marines have made us, I deflate just as quickly as I had blown up.

  “Mace … Sterl,” Jim says, his hands on my shoulders. “Listen, Sterl … You’ve gotta get your shit together, ya got that? You can’t do this. Not like this. You’re the best BAR man I got, and you’re just gonna get yourself killed, like this … and for what? Tell me that. For what, huh?”

  I wish I could say something to Jim, but I can’t. Jimmy’s words have no lies in their truth. His expression is a rarity on Peleliu, unbridled in its honesty, even for two raggedy-ass marines, standing at the gates of one another’s private nightmares.

  *

  I would hate to be killed by the Japanese, but I don’t hate the Japanese man.

  Yet I’d hate to think that after throwing all these grenades over the ridge I haven’t killed the man I’m supposed to hate.

  The thing is, I don’t like the bastards very much, though.

  (Throw!) (The sound of grenades exploding over the ridge at the Nips feels good, simply because I hope to be ripping them apart in the process. American iron flies in all directions, rending the life from Nip bodies.)

  I’ll continue to dislike the Jap because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here right now. All of us would be alive. I wouldn’t be pissed because this generation’s war is my war. Rotten stinkin’ luck!

  (Throw!) (Other marines join me in tossing grenades over the ridge. The only thing better than the explosions would be the screams of the Japanese. The fact that we don’t hear anything other than our own blasts means nothing. Or it means everything. We can’t even see what we want to annihilate. For all we know, the Nips are watching our efforts from a distance, laughing to themselves at the futility of it all.) (Throw!)

  (Throw!) (Like I’m standing in the outfield throwing to home plate—the ball arcs in the crystal sky, tumbling over itself. Except unlike in Queens on a beautiful spring day, gathering my breath to pitch one over the ridge is like having my mouth wrapped around the tailpipe of a car. When I suck in a breath, someone starts the engine and my lungs fill up with heat.)

  No, not hate. To hate the Japanese would mean to lose my self completely. My mom might not recognize me now. My dad, my sister, might wonder who this stranger is beneath my green veneer; nonetheless, if I gaze at myself in the mirror, I know I would still be able to make out the chalk outline of myself, akin to what you’d find at the scene of a crime. At least there’s that. For one day, if I were to wake up dead, or view myself at a distance, killing with a smile, like some pulp villain, that would be too much to bear.

  (Throw!)

  Rather, I have become an automaton, a mechanical thing, a robot out of one of those Buster Crabbe serials.

  Okay, Mace, if you’ve gotta kill somebody, you just do it. You do it, so you don’t get killed and you can get the hell outta here. Get the hell outta here! (Throw!) And you don’t think about home too much, don’t daydream like a sucker, don’t volunteer for anything, yet for God’s sake don’t shirk your duty! Don’t loaf. Keep your head down and your eyes open. Squeeze the trigger; don’t pull it. Don’t be stupid, and (Throw!) get the hell outta here!

  October 1, 1944. The day is setting like a stone in the horizon of my heart.

  I don’t think about home, yet I would kill every Jap on the island just to get back there.

  Presently we exhaust ourselves throwing grenades. Grenades I do hate. I never carry them. You cannot trust the pin on them like you can trust your finger on a trigger. It’s when you pull the pin and let go of the spool, and that thing starts sizzling in your hand as the fuse inside burns down—who knows if some munitions worker back in the States didn’t come to work after pulling a bender, or fighting with his wife, and absentmindedly gave a whole batch of them a few seconds less in the fuse before they explode? I remember lighting a firecracker, when I was a kid, and the fuse burned down before I could get it out of my hand.

  Lyman Rice pitched a grenade a few moments ago, and it careened off the mangrove, exploding back at us. The guys swore the Nips were throwing them back—but I know different.

  Still, that pretty much ended our grenade throwing for the day. Besides, this was supposed to be a “defensive move,” remember? What’s that saying? The best offense is a good defense? Or the best defense is a good offense?

  Whatever fire had burned over Levy’s grave has turned into smoldering embers in the pit of my stomach. A weak flame: I hurt now about as much as one of Flash Gordon’s robots. Dumb skin. Clipped circuits. Burned vacuum tubes.

  Exhausted and alone in a crowd.

  With the ridge and the Japs to my right, I settle back, chest heaving, watching the sky bleed out with the dying sun, as I phase into thoughts of the previous night, when our squad lay beneath a tent at the bivouac area, knowing nothing about the events of October 1.

  That evening we lay on the ground beneath the tent, Levy on my right, all of us shooting the shit, smoking cigarettes and not paying much attention to the call for “smoking lamps out.” The brass weren’t going to come down on us smoking after dark, anyway. We were in a secure area, and we knew it: feeling good about being out of the crap, even though we had just found out we weren’t going back to Pavuvu after all.

  Nonetheless, young men will invent ways to take it all in stride, as long as the next knucklehead has it just as bad as you do.

  What keeps us in the war, though, is the random shots coming from deep in the ridges and the occasional budapbudapbudap of a machine gun up there.

  Intermittently Sy breaks into his best Sam Jaffe impersonation from the film with Cary Grant and Victor McLaglen, about the water bearer and such. By now we all know the lines and we’ve all seen the picture, so we indulge Levy and cut up a bit, despite ourselves.

  We’re tired, though—bone weary. Even though the ground feels like a plank of wrought iron, it doesn’t take long for most of us to fag out, without so much as a word or a good night.

  Maybe Levy could have gone on all evening, but I doubt it, though the kid is nearly inexhaustible. Soon, however, I’m falling asleep as well, when something in the corner of my mind catches the sound of Levy’s voice downshift and drive into words not made of this earth—not fashioned by
ink and paper, by men made of dust and clay.

  In fact, Sy’s utterances are a sacrilege in reverse, joined as we are to Lucifer’s hip on Peleliu. Yet the words are as lyrical and divine as they were intended to be, the lines originally gifted to a little Jewish shepherd boy who would one day rule a kingdom much greater than this twisted devil’s dominion we presently die on.

  Seymour Levy speaks of green pastures and still waters, of fearlessness in the face of evil, even in the presence of his enemies …

  Although I was there, in the moment … it was not my moment. It was Levy’s moment in time.

  Me, I was gently wrapped in the arms of sleep. Me, I say my bit to a long-dead sister, every morning: as a shield, as a guide. To me, however, God is a busy guy, and since he didn’t start this crap on Peleliu, why should we think he needs to bail us out of it? Why muddy the waters, when nearly every marine, including the little dog we left on the beach, has already given God an earful of entreaties and supplications?

  But Levy …

  But Levy … his words ring true in the presence of his enemies—as his last words of prayer marry with my last bits of consciousness …

  “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

  So Levy said and so Levy did. It just turns out that the rest of his life was less than a day away. Less than a day, but no matter. That he dwells in the house of the Lord, at this very moment, I have no doubt.

  Later that same night I awoke in the tent, with all thoughts of Levy’s prayer out of mind. The night was deep and dark, only slightly illuminated by orange and red flashes blanching the skyline. Explosions in the mountains, gone just as fast as they appeared. The flash and then the thunder, mocking nature, chain lightning.

  I could be up there now, and don’t you forget it.

  It was just me awake. The whole squad, as far as I could tell, was fast asleep. Still a machine gun rattled off in the distance, budapbudapbudap …

  Then to my right I heard a sighing sound. It was Levy, and with each burst from the gun Sy groaned in his sleep. Just a soft moan, which only occurred right after the machine gun tapped out its rhythm.

  What the hell is he dreamin’? I wondered. Certainly not still waters and green pastures.

  Lying on my back, listening for a while, eventually I fell back asleep. It was a dreamless evening for me, unlike Levy’s sleep, where machine guns echoed out the final ticks of seventeen years in forty winks.

  Now, one night later, up on the ridges, I think about those things as I drift off to sleep once more. However, this night, the evening of October 1, I do dream—and in my dream you can take out everything Levy recited in the Twenty-third Psalm, and roll it all down the hill with the toilet paper and the rotting Japs, leaving me with only one line out of God’s sacred stanzas—taken out of context, sinister in its meaning, alone …

  “In the presence of my enemies.”

  That’s what I dream. The presence of my enemies.

  *

  Darkness engulfs Peleliu as if the whole island is wrapped in the tenebrous wings of a nightmare. It has a beat, a pulse, this night, a fever and a whisper. Of course, it is a nightmare, awake or asleep, it’s a nightmare. My eyes scan the lip of the ridge to my right, over and over, marking every dip and rise, every stone and pebble, all the outcroppings of mangrove, the slots over the side where a Nip might appear and shoot me full of holes. For some reason something’s missing. It’s not the landscape. No. I’ve made sure of it. I’ve held the same small features of the ridge steady, in my mind, as if my eyes are shutters and the earth is a still-life image captured on glossy 8 × 10 paper. I simply want to believe nothing has changed out there—for if Japs are about to come over the ridge, I want to be able to get the drop on them before they get the drop on me. Survival by inches, yards, and feet. Yet something is definitely missing. Vaguely, I’m aware that other marines are around me. Yes. This place smells like rotten meat. I have no idea where Allmann is—but that’s nothing new. Then I realize what’s missing. This whole time on the island there’s always been the sounds of combat emanating from somewhere. But not now. Always, no matter how near or far, the racket of war keeps you in the here and now. It’s almost a comfort to hear the din of combat, because it lets us know either that we’re not alone on the island or that we’re not quite dead yet. But not now. No single rifle shots, no mortar thumps, no machine guns nor flares, no cursing of men, no cries for corpsmen, no shuffling of gear, no drone of fighter planes, no radio crackle or cannonades whooshing from navy ships. Life in a void. Yet suddenly there’s a small lump on the ridgeline, only a few feet above me. It wasn’t there a second ago. So I check again the mental photograph in my head against what’s before my eyes. Jesus Christ, what the shit is that? The lump inches up and becomes wider in its silhouette … and then up a small amount more, and then more it rises … until I can now make out the turtle-shaped outline of a Japanese helmet, the crease of its brim flaring out, and then the darkened face, beneath the helmet—and I don’t need a light to make out the features looming over the ridge; for in my photograph the face is a mocking moon, with the same slit-eyes, flattened nose, and tanned, emotionless features, the same … I’ve got to shoot this bastard … but then an arm comes up, bent at the elbow, in a high arch, splayed fingers gripping my side of the ridge, and then another arm comes up and does the same, he’s pulling himself over the goddamn ridge, his arms appearing much like the forelegs of a spider, with another six legs sure to follow; and his back is bowed at the top just like an insect, too … a half-arachnid, half-man creature (but this is only my imagination, right? Fighting me back? This is a man and I’ve got to kill him). Kill him, goddammit! Kill him! My breath hitches in my chest and I believe I can feel my finger on the trigger …

  I close my eyes.

  *

  I open my eyes.

  In the exact spot where the Jap was coming over the ridge, in my dream, there is now a big empty space of night, looking identical to the photograph I had taken in my mind right before I fell asleep.

  That was some friggin’ dream ya had there, Mace, I tell myself. Despite the heat, you could probably chill a beer in the cold drips coming off my body.

  Here and there, the familiar noise of sporadic combat echoes across the island: small arms popping, machine guns burping, and the occasional grenade littering the night with its garbage. There’s my BAR lying across my lap right where I left it. The trouble is, I’m not in a very good spot. My position is too cramped. If the Nip from my dream comes over the ridge, I don’t think I can whip my rifle around fast enough to pop him off before he gets to me.

  I get up and slide down a ways, down the rough path, remembering that there’s a marine who carries a pistol as a sidearm. Because I know that if I’m stuck up there where I can’t use my BAR, a pistol will do the trick in close quarters.

  I find the marine quickly—he’s only down the path a few yards.

  “Say, you still got that pistol you been carryin’ around on ya?”

  “Yeah, I still got it. What’s—”

  “Lemme borrow it, willya? I’m in a pretty tight spot up there, an’ I don’t think I’ve got room to use my rifle if one of those Nips comes over the ridge, ya know?”

  He gives it to me. It’s only a small peashooter, probably a .32 caliber Colt or S&W his parents sent to him as extra protection. Nothing like the .45 caliber revolver Bauerschmidt totes around with him, or the .38 service revolver Van Trump pilfered off the dead pilot. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve caught a break with at least something I can shoot the Jap with; otherwise I’d being zinging pebbles at him. Or good luck with this crappy knife the Marine Corps issued me.

  So there I sat, pistol in hand, BAR draped over my legs while my eyes sting from staring at the same spot for hours. Sleep had been the only thing I’d been fighting since I came back with the peashooter.

  Then just at daybreak something ha
ppened.

  First light brought with it a sudden noise—not human, yet familiar, and nearly as quick as blinking an eye. A chicken! Appearing right in the spot where the Nip should have been. A goddamn chicken!? The bird was flustered, perched on the ridge. Closer to the point, it’s not as if the chicken could have climbed up there! No way. Feathers all in a ruffle, wings batting the morning air—that bird was thrown up there by a Jap, sure as hell it was!

  The bird scared the crap out of me—just not enough for me to pull the trigger on it.

  I had seen and known plenty of shitbirds on Peleliu, but a chicken? The only birds I had known on the island were the indigenous birds, with their eerie exhale/inhale call in the mornings. Otherwise, Peleliu was a wasteland, devoid of anything larger than a blowfly; meaning that my feathered friend up there was domesticated, and more than likely a trap set to entice a marine to give his position away by taking a potshot at the bird.

  *

  Watching the chicken for a while, waiting for the Nips to complete the caper that never came—eventually they pulled us off the line and we were back on the West Road, having said good-bye to the chicken, the turds, the corpses, the shit paper, and the place where a seventeen-year-old Jewish kid from Brooklyn lost his life because he was tired of this shit.

  We all were. Sick and tired of this and that. Once more, this—the moth-worn scuttlebutt about going back to Pavuvu. “You guys put a cork in it, willya? We’re not goin’ back to Pavuvu.” Once more, that—“They don’t care about us.”

  Mostly we made small talk, as we headed south, keeping the conversations light. Nobody said anything about what happened back there. It would’ve broken our hearts to even try.