Battleground Pacific Read online

  This guy, Albert Einstein? He put together all these special figures and formulas to tell us that time is relative. He could have saved himself the trouble and spent fifteen seconds with the marines on Okinawa. Then we’d see how fuckin’ smart he is.

  Here’s the rest of the story.

  Fighting the Japanese, darting across a rice paddy like this, in the face of withering fire, is time compressed, time expanded, time destroyed, yet never time on the money. That’s what I want you to understand. The story’s no good if it doesn’t make any sense … and from this moment forward, none of it makes an ounce of sense.

  When I was on Peleliu, I could break down the moments and give myself hope against the gallows. On Okinawa, the moments break the person down.

  By the time we hit the embankment, on the other side of the rice paddy, we’re safe but we’re sorry. Also cold and wet—the temperature on the island has dropped considerably, the mist in the air a prelude of the rain to come.

  The whole goal of this morning’s run was to go over the rise on our side of the line and attack the Nips on their side—crossing open ground in the process, and climbing over an eight-foot-tall embankment to reach the Japs.

  Whatever genius hatched this plan must have been a regular Einstein.

  “Dammit!” Junior yells as he runs up to the embankment. Junior, like the rest of us, attempts to slow down, lest he slam right into the slope. “Where the hell are the Japs?” He stops running.

  With my back against the embankment, I crane my neck, looking over my shoulder, and then up—measuring the height of the wall that separates us from the entire Nip army.

  Junior sees what I see, and I notice the slow realization cross his face.

  “That’s about right, Junior,” I tell him.

  We’ve only been on southern Okinawa for a day, and already it’s evident what the trouble’s going to be. Unlike Peleliu, where at least the enemy would come out and play, Okinawa gives off a helpless and depressing energy. A marine can’t fight what a marine can’t see. Out here, there’s only the notion of Nips—even though we’re fully aware of who’s smacking us across the mouth.

  The shelling begins to taper off, but that doesn’t make us less jittery. Some marines simply collapse from the run, out of breath; they can’t believe they made it. You almost want to check for bullet holes in your dungaree jacket. Mostly, we crouch behind the embankment, wondering what our next move’s going to be. If we’re supposed to scale this wall, forget it; we left the ladders on the amtracs a month ago. If we go back, then what was the point? Well, that’s the infantry for you. We don’t ask questions, we just do it. It is the riflemen who are always at the front of the attack, always up against some sort of obstacle or embankment, as thick as the job is hard.

  The only consolation is that, protected as we are against this wall, the Nips can’t see us either. Still, the Japs toss in a few shells on the rice paddy for good measure, sprinkling us with dirt, and who knows what else.

  “No, no! I don’t need a stretcher! Leave me alone!” I look over in the direction of the shouting and see that they are still trying to evacuate Lieutenant Menselos. I don’t know how badly Menselos is wounded, but the way I figure it, either he’s showing his moxie or he’s playing it smart. Menselos knows that if they carry him out of here, they’ll have to cross the rice paddy to do it—and crossing the rice paddy on a slow-moving stretcher would be like putting a bull’s-eye between your ass cheeks. Bang! Anyway, I lean into Whitby and kind of joke, “Look, Wimp, if that guy don’t wanna get on the fuckin’ stretcher, I sure as hell will!”

  Bob doesn’t say anything, though. He simply gives a wan smile.

  The fact is, nobody’s talking—especially the new guys. They all sport the same feral look in their eyes, from being shaken in a cage and tossed in a corner. I look, and I wonder if I appeared that frightened when we hit the beach on Peleliu. Except that it doesn’t matter, because whatever they’re feeling, I’m probably experiencing the same thing.

  Given that Okinawa has its own fears to fight, there’s no way even the saltiest vet could have anticipated this. What puts a sharper point on it is that the whole experience is viewed against the relative ease we had during the month we spent on the northern part of the island.

  As soon as we reached southern Okinawa on May 1, 1945—WHAM!—they let us have it!

  One moment we were cautiously walking through the rubble, nervously scanning the bombed-out hills before us, and in the next second the ground felt like it had lifted a foot, as the artillery began to fall in. When the earth dropped again, I swear, we were scrambling around on thin air.

  We made haste, but fast!

  Zigzagging at a run, I passed an officer calling into his radio, “Smoke! More smoke!” Kzzzzzkzzz! A smattering of dirt clods bounced off the top of my helmet, in between the explosions. Marines were just about breaking their necks seeking a safe place to hide. Finally I dropped into an army-made foxhole. Other marines did the same, peeking out over the rims of their holes, and flash! A volcano erupted and sent so much muck into the air, there was only a giant wall of brown before our eyes. I closed my lids, and all I saw was red.

  Eventually the incoming began to die down, being replaced by a thick carpet of new smoke rising over our whole area, swirling over the ground, and shrouding us in a fog. The tendrils of smoke, wafting in our midst, reminded me of the mist that always appeared in the graveyard scenes in one of those horror pictures. I never liked that kind of film, even as a kid.

  They’ve got this whole place zeroed in. Realization hits hard. There’s nothing they can’t hit out here.

  Now I think about Europe and how the GIs are getting blown to pieces over there.

  In this case, though, the Nip volleys were only designed to shake us up—and teach us a lesson: There’s nowhere we can’t touch you. You will be violated, repeatedly. You will never forget our advances.

  “Sonuvabitch! These guys aren’t fucking joking!” Eubanks said.

  “No, they’re not,” I agreed, while I watched the smoke dissipate, revealing the hillocks beyond the fog.

  Meandering out of our holes, cautiously, we took in our new environs, measuring the feel of the place, ominous and oppressive. It was worse than we thought. Everything was mired in at least six feet of confusion. Not even the officers had a clue.

  “What the hell’s going on with this place?”

  “Whatever it is, it looks like this line has been occupied for a long time.”

  “Well, you can bet the big-shot marines will have to do what the army couldn’t, huh?”

  Another marine smiled. “That’s a familiar goddamn refrain, if I ever heard one.”

  “Hey, fellas—but at least they left us some coffee!”

  It was coffee, alright, but it was even worse than the regular sludge the marines foisted on us. The coffee was in a five-gallon kerosene can, cut off at the top, and just sitting out in the open, cold and still. So we got an idea and put some composition C underneath the can to heat up the joe. Although there couldn’t have been enough heat—not even in the earth’s core—to make this brew go down any better. For all we knew the army guys could have pissed in it, cleaned their weapons with it, or used it to prime a carburetor. But get this … it was good stuff! You’d take a drag off of a cigarette and then a sip of the coffee, and the bitterness in the back of your mouth alone was enough to wake you up. Not that many marines needed a pick-me-up. First of all, it rained like a sonuvabitch our first night in, and after we attacked the embankment, the following day, every marine—veterans and new guys alike—was hepped up with a good case of the nerves. For good reason, too. This was a new type of war, and it bit hard beneath the flesh, cutting against the grain of the combat we had come to expect.

  Even as we were being trucked down south, the sunshine turned cold and lifeless. The truck engines hummed too quietly as the weight of our new surroundings formed the manacles that would create within us the prisoners of battle, sl
aves to the gun.

  Farther south, the scene changed slowly from green-on-green to a filthy sickness, which seemed to cover everything. Southern Okinawa looked like the black-and-white photos of Belgium during World War I—muted earth tones, scant vegetation, pitted and pocked ridges from the constant shelling—and in the many shell holes along the muted ground lay the detritus of war in its myriad forms. Empty crates of ammunition, spent shell casings, burned-out military vehicles of all types, discarded personal equipment …

  In one spot along the road, there were the rows of army dead—covered in ponchos, lying on stretchers, most of them shoeless, their buddies having scavenged the best pairs for their own use. I looked down at my own boondockers, to check the wear, wondering if anybody would have any use for them if I got killed. When you think like that, it’s not fatalistic. Fatalism would be checking your buddy’s boondockers to see if he wore the same size as you.

  As far as I knew, nobody thought like that. In fact, we didn’t speak much during our whole journey south. Marines were simply too busy taking it all in—and puking out what the mind couldn’t stomach.

  Now I know what our evening supper must feel like. It starts off nice and tasty, pleasing to the tongue, but then it gets chewed to bits by the teeth in things. That’s okay, though, because once it hits the belly, it’s still relatively in one piece. Then it has to wind its way through a labyrinth of guts and tripe, squeezing its way through the countless bends and turns that sap the nutrients from it—finally just to come out another piece of shit, like everything else that succumbs to the process.

  Like the army guys we were relieving—the 27th Infantry Division. When they let us off the trucks, we walked the rest of the way to the front (This place disappoints me) as the army headed back to the rear for a well-deserved break. I had seen this exchange before, and it never deviated from exactly what it looked like—removing the dirty linen and putting out the clean. New company had arrived.

  Even as we loiter against the embankment on May 2, bitterness rises in the back of my throat again, only I haven’t had any army joe to put it there.

  Sergeant Chase walks over.

  “Say, what’s the dope, Sarge?” I ask.

  “Well, we’re pullin’ out of here, for one. The way they look at it we’re stuck or somethin’.”

  Well, that figures.

  Chase resumes, pointing across the way. “See that embankment? The one that follows that draw, back where we came from? We’re gonna cross that thing, one at a time. Gotta keep our heads low—but when we get up to our side of the line, over the rise, we should be okay.”

  So that’s the straight skinny: a “strategic withdraw.” In other words, a retreat, and retreat we do. Only this time, as far as I know, we don’t receive any casualties from the Japanese. The only thing that comes close is the poor marine who was right behind Whitby.

  See, to get back, the only obstacle in our way was a gully, which most of us jumped over with ease. It was only a few feet deep, but because Bob was such a shrimp, he balked at making the leap. By the time the 3rd Platoon made our jaunt back, everybody had ceased with the one-at-a-time business. Each marine went as he pleased. So as Whitby was standing at the lip of the gully, contemplating the leap, another marine, running with his head down, plowed right into Bob’s back. The marine’s helmet gashed his nose, and Whitby went across the gully anyway.

  I’m not so sure it would’ve taken us all day to go one at a time, despite our rush to get the hell out of there. Besides, the only thing that mattered was finding a secure way back, instead of the hard way forward. It was the upside to the alternative—and that was going down for good!

  *

  May 3!

  Heavy mortar and artillery fire drops in on the 1st Platoon right after they clear the rise.

  They’re getting hammered, for God’s sake!

  I watch the earth rain upward, toward the sky, just beyond our lines.

  The call goes up immediately. “Stand by with ponchos for the wounded!”

  We’re right behind the 2nd Platoon, waiting our turn to go over the rise … just like we did the day before, up and over, attack the embankment … and then what?

  Marines run like mad, heads on backward, a classic route. The attack ends just as soon as it began. “Ponchos! Ponchos, over here!”

  I spy a group of Marines struggling with a limp marine in the center of a poncho, and I sling my M-1 over my shoulder and race to help them get the poor guy to safety. Boom boom boom boom boom! The rapid-fire artillery is still shattering the ground, but I don’t think; I merely react.

  “C’mon, guys, fuckin’ move it!”

  I run around toward the rear of the poncho, hooking my fingers under the fabric, trying to keep the train balanced, because whoever this wounded guy is, he’s giving the team fits. You waddle like a duck, trying to move a load this heavy, not letting the poncho down, not letting your buddy down—because if this guy falls, you’ll cringe inside. Because once a marine falls, you don’t want to let him down again.

  This wounded marine …

  Boom boom boom boom boom boom!

  Oh, sweet Jesus!

  The wounded marine has his dungaree jacket pulled up to his chest. His dungaree pants are pulled down, all the way to the middle of his calves. Where there isn’t blood, I see the chalk white of his skin, appearing nearly transparent, so blanched I can make out a web of blue veins beneath the skin, sending blood through his heart, and out of a hole in his groin where his genitals used to be. Actually, I can’t tell how big the hole is down there, because of all the blood—but his penis and testicles certainly aren’t in the near vicinity.

  It’s Sergeant Heeb. We’re carrying Sergeant John P. Heeb, from Rushville, Indiana, out on a poncho, in a swirl of chaos, and it wouldn’t matter a good goddamn if he lived or died. Robbed of his manhood, he’s a goner. To have survived Peleliu, only to lose your balls on Okinawa?

  This island will end up emasculating every one of us.

  *

  Finally, it’s quiet. Quiet enough, anyway. We settle in behind a humpback hill, which is part of the odd terrain that dots all of southern Okinawa.

  They pull K Company into battalion reserve, a few hundred yards behind what they now tell us is called the Shuri Line. Pulling us back is really laughable, because it’s much easier for the Nips to lob their artillery in at an arc, as opposed to the flat trajectory that looks our front lines square in the teeth. This means that the poor riflemen who think they’re safe might really be in for the works.

  A case in point: All hell breaks loose!

  The impact of the first rounds leaves you reeling. The rest leaves you numb.

  There’s no use to trying to describe what being under an artillery barrage is like, nor how helpless you feel, getting trapped like this … but insanity? I can tell you about crazy, and it has nothing to do with bravery, or the roar of the crowd. Dumb is plain dumb, but crazy is just how it sounds.

  “Hey, you dumb sonuvabitch, get down!” The ground tilts right … then left, and stays there. Only nobody actually yells this to the major, and even if somebody did, Major Paul Douglas wouldn’t have heard anyone over the gleam of the oak leaves radiating from his collar, let alone the noise from the cannonade.

  As if he were back in the States, relaxed in his swanky Illinois home, standing in front of his lavatory mirror, Paul Douglas strolls over to a nearby tree, debris falling all around him, while he takes out a safety razor, hangs a pocket mirror on the tree, and begins to shave his face in the middle of a Nip barrage.

  Sane marines scramble and jump in foxholes, our hands over our helmets, our fingers plugging our ears, taking quick looks over the edges of the holes to watch the crazy major get drilled. Yet he never goes down—and a poor newlywed like Marion Westbrook does?

  Anyway, seeing something like that—nobody would believe it back home, even if I were to tell them.

  Nobody would believe a fraction of what I’ve seen.


  Cherry-boys, in sailor’s caps, tongue-wag the local villagers with tales of blood and Japanese villainy. Seventeen-year-old enlistees, still sweet with candy behind their ears, who couldn’t tell you the difference between a peep-sight and a poop-hole, can recite anything you want to know about slitting Nip throats. Still the riflemen on Okinawa hear things beyond sound. We see things that were never meant to be seen, as we fade into the night.

  Late at night (May 3? May 4?), we’re called out of our foxholes and instructed to move out. Tiny sweat beads are cold on the backs of our necks. One foot in front of the other, single-file soldiers, traipsing around in the darkness, with no information to go on. Zilch.

  Junior’s voice is small and distinct, right behind me. He’s got a cautious tone now, a whisper.

  “Mace. I wish I had one of those … things, right about now. What did they call those things? Snoopy Scopes? Snooper Scopes? Is that it?”

  Yeah, they are called Snooper Scopes. I nod to Junior that he’s got the name right, not considering that Junior can’t see me in the darkness, any more than a Snooper Scope can.

  They had brought these gadgets up to the line—some type of night-vision apparatuses. The first one, as big as a football, they called a Snooper Scope. You looked through the lens in the front of it, and it lit the night up green—not necessarily giving a better field of vision, but only a different tint to the darkness. In effect, it made the vague shapes in front of us even more blurry, as opposed to the sharpness of the naked eye.

  They even had a version of the scope that fit on a rifle. Though the clarity was a smidge better, if a marine sniper tried to pick off a Nip at five hundred yards, at night, it would take a lot more than a fancy scope to drill a hole through his rice-eating ass.

  It would take a lot more than a marine sniper, for that matter.

  I had already seen one of those snipers operate, and all he did was clean his rifle, look through his scope for a few minutes, and then resume the rifle cleaning. Over and over, he would perform this noble task, never deviating from the script; then, when he felt he had sniped enough, he’d move to another spot in the rocks, in case the rocks on the Jap side of the line had spotted him spotting them.